Studying God on Campus

The scholarly study of religion, shorn of both catechism and clericalism, is fast becoming a major subject in secular U.S. colleges and universities. Two decades ago, only a dozen state-supported campuses had full-fledged religion programs; elsewhere, religion was usually nothing more than the Bible as literature, taught by English professors. Now, says Cyrus Pangborn, head of Rutgers' religion department, "universities recognize that the study of religion is as respectable a discipline as philosophy or sociology."

At least 75% of the nation's four-year colleges have religion courses; more than 20% of U.S. state schools have separate religion departments. Princeton, a Presbyterian-founded school that is now as secular as any state university, started a religion program in 1946 with one teacher, three courses and 70 curious students. Today the department has 14 professors, 20 courses, and an average enrollment of more than 1,000. At Iowa, which set up a pioneering religion department in 1927, courses now attract 3,500 of the university's 16,000 students. The 1 1/2-year-old religion department at the University of California's Santa Barbara branch has five fulltime instructors and 600 students, including 20 majors.

From Barth to Caprew. In the medieval university, theology was queen of the curriculum, a position it lost--except at church-run schools--during the time of the Enlightenment. The new interest in religion on campus stems mostly from the 20th century Christian intellectual revolution that produced Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and the Niebuhr brothers, who proved that theology was relevant in the modern world.

Religion is still so new as a scientific discipline that universities are somewhat at odds about how to teach it. Columbia concentrates on a sociological approach. At Rutgers, the emphasis is on relating religion to modern life through courses on contemporary theological trends and the relation of religion to science. Princeton and Western Michigan lean heavily to religious history. Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley have no separate religion departments, but offer a number of courses in different departments. At Michigan, for example, primitive religion is taught in anthropology classes, the background of the Bible in the Near Eastern studies program.

Some universities still have to settle for what religion educators contemptuously call the Caprew (derived from Catholic-Protestant-Jew) approach: introductory courses about specific religions taught by ministers of these faiths. At the University of Texas, half a dozen courses are taught by local Bible instructors at student centers a couple of blocks off the campus. The courses are listed on the class schedule but not in the university catalogue: bewilderingly, they are acceptable for credit in the colleges of education and business administration, but not in engineering or pharmacy.

University religion courses are designed not to defend one faith but to explain all. "We're not selling it; we're studying it," says Chairman John Hutchison of the Claremont College's religion department. Universities deliberately avoid hiring propagandizers for a faith. "It's completely irrelevant to us whether a man is a good Christian or a good Protestant or a good atheist just so long as he is a good and competent scholar," says Columbia's Joseph Blau. Western Michigan has had a Jesuit priest teaching Hinduism and Buddhism, while at Wisconsin a course on the Reformation is taught by a Jew, another on the philosophy of religion by an avowed agnostic. Stanford's religion course on ecumenism is taught jointly by Presbyterian Robert McAfee Brown and Roman Catholic Michael Novak.

No Marks for Piety. The objectivity of the religion courses sometimes startles students, who frequently sign up to have their faith reinforced, not scrutinized. At Michigan State Dr. Robert T. Anderson, a conservative Methodist theologian, begins Religion 220 by telling his students: "The Bible is the greatest collection of mythology in the history of Western civilization." Students who were fundamentalists in September frequently are demythologizers by January. Some students who have no faith take the courses because they fill a genuine lack in their experience. Seven of 14 who took one Dartmouth class on Kierkegaard billed themselves as agnostics. Students who study religion as a snap generally get their heads snapped back. For a doctorate in the subject at Columbia, graduate students need a working knowledge of Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Hebrew, besides French and German. "You don't get marks for piety," says Stanford's Brown.

Religion is expanding so fast as a study that most universities have a hard time finding competent teachers. Dr. Thomas O'Dea, head of Columbia's religion department, estimates that it will be five years before there are enough Ph.D.s "to fill a demand that is so large it's almost a vacuum." Yet O'Dea believes the vacuum will be filled, since colleges are realizing that "without a thorough knowledge of a culture's religion, it is often nearly impossible to understand that culture."

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