Inside Higher Education posted the following article.  The resulting comment thread, which includes the comments of our Director, William Sumner Scott, follow it.

How Sectarian Is Too Sectarian?

A federal judge ruled Friday that Colorado is entitled to bar state scholarship funds from going to students at “pervasively sectarian” institutions.

The ruling rejected a suit brought by Colorado Christian University, which did not challenge a state agency’s determination of the university’s religious nature, but said that applying a test of whether an institution is “pervasively sectarian” amounts to a violation of some religious institutions’ freedom to express their faiths. But Judge Marcia S. Krieger ruled that despite a general skepticism in federal courts of late about barring religious institutions from receiving government funds, Supreme Court rulings still gave Colorado the right to limit the use of its funds as the state has done.

The ruling could be significant beyond Colorado. The university is taking the case to a federal appeals court, where any ruling will have more value as a precedent. The U.S. Justice Department is also involved in the case — and tried to use it (without success before Judge Krieger) to ease the process by which religious colleges receive government aid. The university is also receiving support from the Alliance Defense Fund, which has been quite successful in challenging limits on religious groups in higher education. In fact, the decision is notable in being a rare victory for strict separation of church and state in higher education — at a time when many courts have been adopting a more porous church-state wall in academe.

At issue are a series of student aid programs created by Colorado for state residents who attend colleges, public and private, in the state. A Colorado student at a private college in the state could gain $2,500 a year in assistance under the programs. Students are not barred from using the grants at any religious college and the funds flow to Regis University and the University of Denver, which are Roman Catholic and Methodist institutions, respectively.

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education found that Colorado Christian University — unlike Regis and Denver — fit certain characteristics of “pervasively sectarian” in that its faculty and student body must share certain religious views, participation in religious services and theological instruction is required, and so forth. The university has never shied away from its religious identity, which is clear in its Statement of Faith, which declares the Bible infallible.

The university’s challenge was based on the fact that its students have similar majors to those at other public and private colleges — business, education, humanities, sciences, etc. The argument was in essence that business students at Colorado Christian are suffering unconstitutional religious discrimination because they enroll at a Christian university instead of a secular one. The Bush administration backed that argument, accusing the state of entering “the dangerous thicket of deciding what is too religious and what is permissibly religious.”

Much of the legal discussion on the case focused on a 2004 Supreme Court ruling known as Locke v. Davey that Washington State was entitled to bar theology students from receiving state student aid. The Bush Justice Department argued that the ruling limited the ability of states to bar student aid from supporting non-theological majors at religious institutions.

Judge Krieger disagreed. She noted that the Locke decision was based on the idea that theology students were not being barred from engaging in their desired programs of study, were not being excluded from public life, and were not being forced to abandon their faith. Rather, Judge Krieger noted the language of the Supreme Court ruling that the state “has merely chosen not to fund a distinct category of instruction.” She said that finding also fit in Colorado.

On the question of students’ majors, Judge Krieger said that wasn’t relevant once an institution had been found to be “pervasively sectarian.” Colorado Christian’s “contention that the bulk of its students major in secular subjects may be nominally accurate, but ignores what it means to be found to be a ‘pervasively sectarian’ institution,” Krieger wrote. She cited a U.S. Supreme Court definition of “pervasively sectarian” as describing “an institution in which religion is so pervasive that a substantial portion of its functions are subsumed in the religious mission.” And she cited a Colorado Supreme Court definition of such a educational institution as such a place “whose educational function is not clearly separable from its religious mission.”

“CCU’s argument equating the ’secular’ education it offers and secular classes at public and generally sectarian schools such as Regis University and the University of Denver is misplaced, as the fact that those schools have not been found to be ‘pervasively sectarian’ indicates that the secular character of instruction at those schools is readily severable from any religious teaching,” Judge Krieger wrote. “Even though there are classes or programs at CCU designed to prepare students for secular jobs or careers, because CCU is a ‘pervasively sectarian’ institution, even its secular instruction is infused with religious components. Thus the unchallenged determination that CCU is ‘pervasively sectarian’ makes even its secular instruction an ‘essentially religious endeavor,’ akin to the theological instruction in Locke.“

Because the university did not challenge (in the court case) its designation as “pervasively sectarian,” the judge wrote that she did not consider whether the evaluation was fair. But in several footnotes she pointed to evidence suggesting that secular courses at the university may not be the same as those at the University of Colorado at Boulder. For example, she quoted Colorado Christian officials saying that all courses “are framed within the Christian worldview.”

The university issued a statement Friday pledging to appeal and blasting Judge Krieger’s analysis.

“The effect of the ruling is to say that Colorado students will be denied state tuition aid for college if they want to attend a religious school,” said Bill Armstrong, the university’s president. “Judge Marcia S. Krieger’s decision is a setback for the students involved and for religious liberty.”

— Scott Jaschik

Comments

Faith Defined

Faith is belief without facts.

Faith has no place in any institution of higher education.

It must be eliminated as an organized business.

Falwell passed his business on to his children.

All organized religions are frauds upon the public.

This decision is correct — it needs to be expanded.

If organized religion were regulated under the Securities Act of 1933 and Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002 and taxed as are other businesses, it would soon become extinct.

The World would be a safer.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
wss@jefound.org
http://jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 10:15 am EDT on May 21, 2007
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Too Christian

So, if your college is “too Christian”, too bad? What about all those tax payers who are also “too Christian”? Seems like they should have a say in where their tax money is being spent.

Frank McCown, at 12:00 pm EDT on May 21, 2007

Immediate Press Release
Contact: Ron Rex
Vice President for University Advancement
Colorado Christian University
Phone: 720-838-4486
rrex@ccu.edu

Inside Higher Education posted the following article.  The resulting comment thread, which includes the comments of our Director, William Sumner Scott, follow it.

Georgetown Law’s New Precedent

Jenny Woodson is no stranger to controversial causes. It’s just that the first-year law student didn’t expect that, at the most stressful time of her year, she’d be at the center of a divisive case about adherence to religious principles.
Related stories

Like classmates before her at the Georgetown University Law Center, Woodson accepted an unpaid summer position with an organization that supports abortion rights — Planned Parenthood’s public policy and litigation department. When asked during her job interview if she could secure funding for the work, Woodson said she wasn’t sure. Would a Jesuit institution provide financial support for a student to work there?

Not a problem, Woodson’s interviewer told her. Georgetown had a history of funding similar summer internships. So she expected no trouble when she turned in a 50-word job description to the campus group that provides fellowships to students participating in public interest jobs.

But in late March, Woodson was told that T. Alexander Aleinikoff, dean of the Law Center, had decided that the campus group could not fund her internship. (Georgetown helped Woodson find a nonprofit organization that plans to support her work.)

“It wasn’t a change in policy,” Aleinikoff said. “As we became more involved in the funding and more aware of the project, it was clear that the university could not fund advocacy of abortion rights. There’s a very narrow exception in an area that is central to the core identity of the university.”

Equal Justice Foundation, the student-run group that provides the fellowships, receives some funding from alumni and outside sources. But a growing percentage — this year more than $100,000 — of the money comes from the Law Center, which collects and distributes all donations.

Woodson is upset with what she calls Georgetown’s inconsistencies. She said it is intellectually dishonest for the Law Center to claim its action is motivated by a desire to follow Catholic teachings.

“If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

Days after learning of the Law Center’s decision, Woodson approached the student group Law Students for Choice, which is not officially recognized by the university. Joy Welan, the group’s president, said she agrees with Woodson that Georgetown mishandled the situation.

“We think this is a major change from what [the school] has done in the past, and it interferes with students’ career development,” Welan said. “If [Georgetown] is saying it is instituting this policy because the church demands it, then why aren’t changes happening across the board?”

“The school has tried to be too covert about its affiliation with the Catholic church,” she added. “We want [it] to come out and be honest about what [it wants] to be.”

Welan said the university still allows student groups like hers to bring to campus speakers whose positions differ from the official Jesuit policy, and that while it won’t provide funding for those speakers, the institution will set aside space, which Georgetown has already paid for.

Georgetown, she said, has taken a “piece-by-piece” dismantling approach rather than dealing with the issue of abortion rights holistically. For instance, she said before the academic year began, her group lost the right to have the “.edu” at the end of its e-mail account.

“We’re concerned that this one issue is being targeted and wondering how far this is going to expand in the future,” Welan said.

Deborah Epstein, associate dean for clinical programs and public interest, said Georgetown is trying to make its funding restrictions as narrow as possible so that students can still take part in the vast majority of public interest work.

“The law school is being quite clear — we cannot provide our own funding through EJF or other means for students to work at an organization whose primarily purpose is abortion rights advocacy,” she said. “That’s all we’re saying.”

Daniel Hughes, president of the student group Progressive Alliance for Life, said he is among the students who have confronted administrators with concerns over summer internship funding. He said he threatened to take the matter to the church officials if action wasn’t taken. Aleinikoff said Georgetown’s decision had nothing to do with external pressure.

Hughes said the university is finally taking the appropriate action by honoring church teachings.

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.

“If this is finally a sign of them owning up to their commitment to honor the church, I’ll be impressed but surprised,” he said. “This seems like a grudging, half-hearted commitment.”

Woodson, the law student, said she is also upset with the timing of Georgetown’s decision. She said by waiting until late in the application process, the law school hamstrung EJF.

“Almost every year someone has a job like this,” she said. “It should have been foreseen. If the school is going to make this decision, announce it in an open forum so students can understand what is going on and so people pledging money understand the new limitations.”

Epstein, the associate dean, said it was an evolving decision that “could have been made any year.”

Georgetown is working on a new statement to clarify that EJF cannot fund future summer jobs involving abortion advocacy groups.

“This is a practical question that we are trying to resolve with prudence,” Aleinikoff said. “Our policy is one of total free speech. We welcome a full discussion on campus, and speakers of diverse viewpoints are brought by student groups.”

— Elia Powers

Comments

The Right to Pick and Chose

At the core of the abortion belief and all other beliefs based upon interpretation of ancient writings is the teaching of Deuteronomy 13:6-9 — let one who teaches a false religion die at the hand of the truly religious. No educated person could possibly continue to refer to any written work based upon this arcane belief, yet the Torah, Bible and Koran do just that. No less than two of them are wrong.

Obviously, this problem goes deeper than how to deal with abortion at Georgetown Law. All law schools must teach sufficient sanity to overcome the lack of tolerance taught by all organized religious people if religious wars like the ones to preserve the Theocracies of Afghanistan and Iraq are to be eliminated. At present, no American law school makes the effort.

Begin with the question: Why no payment of real estate taxes by owners of religious brick and mortar? The buildings are protected by services provided by the pubic. The free tax ride is support of those religions with buildings over those that do not. Those who want to be free of religion pay for them all. Is that legally correct?

The Georgetown Law abortion issue should prompt a broad discussion of the harm organized religion does to the World.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
www://jefound.org
wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 7:41 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Who Decides Where the Line is Drawn

Woodson is upset with what she calls Georgetown’s inconsistencies. She said it is intellectually dishonest for the Law Center to claim its action is motivated by a desire to follow Catholic teachings.

Woodson said further “If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

Why is the abortion issue more important than the support of the death penalty?

Who let organized religion into the provision of higher education, or any formal education for that matter.

Quizzical, at 8:01 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Who let organized religion into the provision of higher education, or any formal education for that matter.

People who believe in liberty, I would say. To forbid organized religion to establish private educational institutions would be a step on the road to authoritarianism.

K.T., at 9:16 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Response to KT

Then they must teach only what they can prove — all discussion is qualified by “there may not be a God and, certainly, the printed word must be the work of man.” If you have an opinion on abortion or any other issue, it is only your opinion or analysis of the facts, not the word of God.

Otherwise, we are led by the insane.

Quizzical, at 10:11 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Religion and Freedom

We can only teach what we can prove? So black holes are out? Any teaching of the meaning of Moby Dick (as but one example) is dead?

But wait, this is not even that. While Quizzical (a non de plume, I am certain) is railing against what GU may or may not teach, this is not an article about instruction; this is an article about the limitations on funding for students’ summer internships.

I support GU’s position on funding, but I oppose GU’s position on abortion. My position on what has been reported here is based upon my belief in the (necessary) rights of private educational instutions.

Andrew Purvis, at 11:15 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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liberty and orthodoxy

I concur with Mr. Purvis. Requiring a private institution to teach only what Quizical finds provable is not too much different from requiring people to assent to a theological doctrine of an established church.

chris b, at 11:35 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Fact from Fiction

Certainly, Black Holes can be taught — when presented as the unknown.

The problem with the denial of abortion promotion funding is that the decision was based upon the belief that the word of God demands no funding.

It is wrong for an institution of higher learning that attempts to mold future leaders of intellectual thought, particularly a law school, to make business judgments based upon any belief that is attributed to an unproven source, such as God.

Or a mislabeled source, such as the claim that the written word of man, such as the Bible, has devine inspiration.

AP was close to express his positions as personal to him.

But he missed the point because funding denial must be condemned as impossible to justify.

Chris, at 1:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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Georgetown misled alumni donors

This article misses an important point: Georgetown’s policy change means alumni donors to EJF were misled.

While much of EJF’s funding for student summer public interest fellowships comes from Georgetown University, a large percentage of it comes from alumni donations. Alumni donated to EJF during its fund drive, expecting that reproductive rights fellowships would be funded just as they were in previous years. Georgetown waited until after the fund drive to announce that it was pulling funding from this student. Had I, and other alumni donors, known that Georgetown would discriminate in this way, we would not have contributed.

Moreover, EJF has always funded fellowships based on student votes: Students select the projects they deem most worthy of funding. If Georgetown wants to preserve a Catholic identity, it should accept students who will vote in line with what it considers Catholic doctrine. Otherwise, it should respect student and alumni choices to fund reproductive rights projects. And it certainly should not take alum’s money and then change the rules.

Emily E. Arnold-Fernandez, GULC ‘04

Emily E. Arnold-Fernandez, at 1:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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As a student, has I known that EJF would not fund students who spend their summers working in non-profits that litigate reproductive health, I too would not have donated this year. While the Administration says the decision could have been made at any time, I find it curious that the decision was made after the donation process has all but concluded. This leaves the impression that they snuck the change in after the fact. In addition to being inconsistent across the board (by funding students who work in jobs that support the death penalty, etc) this new policy decision stymies student’s educational and professional development — surely an anathema to the goals of GULC. Furthermore, it will end up penalizing students who don’t have the economic capability to forgoe funding and take the summer job in spite of the University’s refusal. As a result, only students with an indepenent source of income will be able to participate in these non-profit jobs. Considering the big push to have law students go into public interest work, this is sad and ironic.

GULC 3L, at 5:10 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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LSFC : Georgetown :: Georgetown : Military Recruitment

I know we all hated the SATs, but the title says it all. Aleinikoff’s hypocrisy is much more astonishing than the article suggests.

Georgetown receives significant government funding, but tuition and alumni donations constitutes most of Georgetown’s operating budget. Similarly, EJF receives significant funding from Georgetown, but student, alumni, and professor donations constitutes most of EJF’s budget.

When Congress threatened to pull funding from the entire university if the law school refused to allow military recruiters on campus, Aleinikoff fought the decision all the way up to the Supreme Court. Yet he feels that it’s perfectly acceptable for him to do the exact same thing to EJF — even though EJF doesn’t have the resources to contest his decision.

Moreover, EJF doesn’t directly determine which student projects get funded. Student, alumni, and professors donating anonymously rank the projects. Those rankings ultimately determine which projects get funded. It’s rather odd for a school that strongly emphasizes community to suddenly prevent the community from determining how their dollars should be spent.

Meredith E., at 5:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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If Georgetown wants to hamstring the work its students do, then it should be honest and direct about it and work consistently within the Catholic tradition. Don’t fund pro choice groups, don’t fund gay rights groups and don’t fund people working in support of the death penalty. Then be prepared to take the hit academically and financially when you drop in the rankings. Picking on a single student in a underhanded and secretive way is, at best, poor management and at worst, cowardly. Either way, it surely isn’t an intellectually consistent or honorable position.

Sean S, at 8:00 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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Sean,

I believe that perhaps you are allowing your personal views on abortion to color your comments on Georgetown’s decision.

I would be very suprised if Georgetown funds any pro-death penalty groups. Your other example, gay rights, shows a lack of knowledge about Catholic doctrine. I suggest you research what the stands are and then make your comment and the world not being “all good” or “all evil”.

Regarding ‘taking a hit’, Georgetown is a Catholic university, not a catholic university. As I understand things, being willing to ‘take a hit’ for something they believe in something they are supposed to do. Personally, I admire people and organizations that take stands on principle at a financial cost. And usually I admire them whether I believe in their cause or not. Too few universities do that.

Did you make these same type of arguments whenever Georgetown divests its investments in securities related to industries or regimes it finds morally reprehensable. Probably not, so long as you also find those firms morally reprehensable.

In any case, I don’t feel that Georgetown’s discontinuation of funding pro-abortion activities will seriously impact its standing or will cause any of its student’s to leave the school due to fear of having their marketablity diminished. In my experience most students are not that narrow in focus when looking for a school and, in any case, I suspect abortion activists don’t flock to schools which consider natural law a moral basis for decision making.

stm60, UConn, at 7:25 am EDT on April 7, 2007
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Religion and Law School

The stand on the abortion issue or any other discussion motivated by what the law is or should be is admirable.

The interjection of religious dogma detracts from the process.

Should the religious be allowed to remain in the law school business is the question prompted by this article and the comments.

The end result should be the loss of accreditation for all religious law schools – a free, peaceful, society begins with secular law schools open to all people.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
www://jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 4:05 pm EDT on April 7, 2007
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So Mr. Scott, a free, peaceful society begins with the loss of accredidation for religious law schools? What sort of concept of freedom are you operating from? Do you wish to deny private institutions the right to self-regulation (unless they agree with your tolerant views)?

Cory Madsen, at 8:35 pm EDT on April 7, 2007
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What Daniel Hughes FAILED to say was that the reason he doesn’t want Catholic doctrine applied across the board (“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said) was because he is gay and also the head of the campus gay rights group. So he’s fine with enforcing Catholic doctrine when it comes to an issue he has ABSOLUTELY NO PERSONAL STAKE IN, but he certainly doesn’t want Catholic doctrine enforced in every respect, because then he wouldn’t be so welcome on campus anymore. He is an unbelievable hypocrite and entirely without credibility.

concernedstudent, at 6:20 pm EDT on April 9, 2007

Comment on the below article:

Topic Merits Discussion

Once the topic is selected, those with views can attempt to convince others of their position. No group is better qualified to take on that challenge than the American Historical Association. Our hope is that they do more than merely vote, but also publish reasons for their positions.

From our view, the word Democracy was abused by the United States administration.

That word requires separation of church from state and safety to all people regardless of race, color, sex or creed.

These attributes are not present in the governments installed by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a consequence, Americans are less safe today than they were before the wars our government initiated.

History should be fact first, interpretation later. Howard Zinn’s work “A People’s History of the United States” should be the model for the presentation of all historical events. The foreign policy, much less the wars, initiated by the United States over the past 30 years will not stand that scrutiny.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Historians Vote to Condemn War in Iraq

Members of the American Historical Association — who in an earlier generation engaged in warfare among themselves over what stand to take on Vietnam — have overwhelmingly voted to condemn the war in Iraq and to seek its “speedy conclusion.”

The vote — announced Monday — ends a highly unusual process in which the anti-war resolution was considered. It was first passed by members who attended the association’s business meeting during the annual convention in January, in Atlanta. But in a move unprecedented in recent history, the AHA’s governing council decided that the measure had such “intrinsic importance” that it should be considered by all members. So an online discussion was sponsored in February and voting concluded last week.

Members voted 1,550 (76 percent) to 498 (24 percent) for the resolution. Those voting represented about 15 percent of the group’s membership — far more than the approximately 100 who were at the business meeting in January. The debate over the resolution has been controversial not so much because historians are backing the war, but because some of them believe that it is not in the best interests of the association to take a stand on this issue.

The measure itself — the Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession — relates the war in Iraq to key issues of importance to scholars. For instance, it notes that there have been cases of foreign scholars being excluded from the United States because of heightened security measures, and that authorities have reclassified previously unclassified documents. Other parts of the resolution are more related to broad moral criticisms of the war, saying that historians object to “using interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons required by a civilized society.”

The resolution concludes by urging all members of the group to “take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession” and to “do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.”

A group called Historians Against the War campaigned for the resolution, saying it was important for scholars to take a moral stance. A joint letter released by a number of supporters of the resolution said that it was designed to encourage “conscientious scholarship.” The letter added that “we prefer not to be remembered by posterity as ‘good Americans’ who accepted grievous wrongs, but rather as citizen-scholars who took a public stand to oppose the misdeeds of the powerful when they directly assaulted the ethical standards of our profession.”

David R. Applebaum, a professor of history at Rowan University and one of the organizers of the effort, said via e-mail Monday that he was “elated” by the outcome of the vote. “It will help us translate thought into action,” he said. “In the long run, I think it will encourage young people to enter a vibrant, vital and engaged profession that has an important part to play in the building of a more democratic society.”

One of those who spoke against the resolution in Atlanta was James Sheehan, a past president of the association, a professor at Stanford University, and a critic of the war. In Atlanta, he advocated that historians — as individuals — do whatever they could against the war. In an interview Monday, he said that the association did the right thing by having a broader vote on the resolution and that he was disappointed, but not surprised by the outcome.

He said that there are two problems with the resolution. First, he said, “it seems to me that people join the AHA with certain expectations, and the fact that the association will take political positions is not one of them. In a way, you are violating the conditions of membership, and I suspect a few people will leave.”

Second, he said it was important for the association to take political stands on issues “narrowly concerned with the interests of scholars in general and historians in particular.” So he said it was important for the AHA to speak out as it does against visa denials to foreign scholars or restrictions on access to presidential records. “But by taking more general stands, we weaken our moral authority and we become identified with partisan positions,” he said. “There is only a certain amount of moral capital that we have.”

— Scott Jaschik

Comment on the below article:

We Need More Articles Like This One

The comment by Mr. Washington discloses that there is some lucid thought left in America.

Money + alcohol and other drug consumption = no moral conduct.

Power + Organized Religion = absolute right to act.

Combine them and the general public does not have a chance. That is where Yale and other educational institutions come into play. They can move to become part of the solution.

They must lead the way to separate the components.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Unusual Mix of Prayer and Politics

Yale Divinity School students burned a copy of the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments at a recent Ash Wednesday service before marking their foreheads with the ashes – not as protest, they say, but to repent for their own complicity in “the ongoing injustice being perpetuated by our nation.”

“Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent where we remember our sins and the ways that we are complicit in evil in our society. As an American, the way that’s most clear today is through the War on Terror and the war on Iraq,” said Christopher Doucot, a first-year master’s student who came up with the idea for the service. About 40 to 45 students, faculty, administrators and local residentsattended the service, intended to provide an opportunity for reflection on such topics as secret prisons, “indiscriminate bombings,” domestic spying and torture.

“We were reminding ourselves of our own complicity,” said Doucot. “We’re not pointing fingers at anyone but ourselves.”

A Tuesday Yale Daily News account of the unusual Ash Wednesday service indicated that the ritual burning has “sparked concern among the school’s alumni and some students.” But while it’s obvious that in a country that periodically debates banning flag-burning, such an approach to melding politics and prayer might not prove popular, Doucot said that he has not heard from anyone who was offended, “not a soul.” Rev. Dale Peterson, associate dean of students at Yale Divinity School, said that if there was any controversy, he wasn’t aware of it. It was just a small service, said Reverend Peterson, who was among the attendees, held on a day that at least two much larger services were occurring on campus.

Doucot did acknowledge however that organizers were hoping the action would draw attention to their concerns. “You don’t do things to be provocative,” he said of the service. “But one of the fears I have is being ignored.”

“I absolutely hope people have a visceral reaction … if they have that strong of a reaction to how a symbol is treated, how it’s burned, then there’s hope that upon reflection, they will have as strong of a visceral reaction to that symbol being violated in practice, which is what searches without warrants do, which is what torture does.”

The service was conducted quietly, without signs or fanfare. Participants stood in a circle and read each commandment or constitutional amendment aloud. Each text was then burned, one by one.

“As the organizers of the service, we believe that the rights and responsibilities held up in those two documents have already been violated by this government, as well as by ourselves as citizens and Christians,” said Tamara Shantz, a third-year divinity student, via e-mail. “The burning was then symbolic of what has already been accomplished, not as a symbol of our lack of respect for the values upheld in the Bill of Rights and the 10 Commandments.”

“It wasn’t burning these documents as if they were not of importance,” explained Reverend Peterson. “It was the exact opposite. We were putting them on our foreheads, after asking God’s forgiveness for not living up to the ideals of them.”

But while Jessica Anschutz, a third-year divinity student who also helped organize the service, said that the first she heard of any controversy was from The Yale Daily News reporter, Tuesday’s article has succeeded in raising the profile of the small service.And not all Yalies, it turns out, are comfortable with the premise behind this particular approach to prayer.

“[Ash Wednesday] is a fully spiritual event; it’s not political in any sense. To pervert it like that is really inappropriate especially at a place like a divinity school,” said Stephen Schmalhofer, a Yale junior and author of the blog, ” For God, For Country and For Yale.“

“It seems that to put this in a political context completely removes this from the Christian tradition of the event, which is something that too often happens at the Yale Divinity School … they have the tendency to manipulate these traditions for political statements, to really rip these traditional devotions from the Christian community in which they were conceived,” Schmalhofer said.

Jonathan Serrato, a sophomore at Yale and the student outreach chair for the St. Thomas More Undergraduate Council, said that while he believes the organizers of the Ash Wednesday service had good intentions and were trying to make a good point, their approach was inappropriate.

“I do believe that there is a call for Christians of all denominations to ‘wake up’ and realize that we must live our faith and do everything in our power to correct what we see as wrong in society, even if the most we can do is try,” Serrato said in an e-mail. “However, I don’t feel that this event was appropriate for the time or the message that they were trying to convey. For me, Lent is a time of personal cleansing and preparation for life after death. Also for me, the ashes given on Ash Wednesday are sacred and come from the blessed palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, and I feel that this event could be considered unintentionally disrespectful.”

“It does seem like this is the kind of thing that you have to do very, very delicately, but it appears that this is something they did do delicately,” said William “Beau” Weston, a professor of sociology at Centre College in Kentucky and a Yale Divinity School alumnus.

“It’s actually a pretty classy act. It does raise one’s alarm to have students burning anything, but there are circumstances in which that’s an appropriate thing to do. Ash Wednesday names the context,” said Weston.

“The tradition of using worship as a time to engage the hearts of the people and engage in dramatic action is a rich one,” added Bill McKinney, president of the Pacific School of Religion, a Berkeley seminary, and a professor of American religion. “If you think of liturgy as the work of the people, which is its original meaning, then for the people to express ritually their most powerful hurts and pains and needs, for those who feel that our country’s on the wrong track, it’s very much consistent with the way worship works.”

— Elizabeth Redden

Following is the Foundation’s reaction to the California decision to allow the state government to issue bonds to finance the construction of buildings at religious schools. The complete decision is here.

Childhood Indoctrination to Blame

Lawyers receive no legal education on organized religions relationship with the First Amendment.

This vacuum is filled with the prejudices provided to them by their parents from childhood.

As a result, do not expect the Courts to get religious related decisions right before formal education catches up with the free pass religion is given to teach that the books they print are the word of God without proof there is a God much less that the books have any value other than as recorded history and opinion.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Big Win for Religious Colleges

In a major win for religious colleges, the California Supreme Court on Monday ruled, 4-3, that even “pervasively sectarian” institutions can have bonds issued by government agencies on their behalf, potentially saving them millions of dollars in the costs of construction.

To be eligible, the colleges must offer a broad array of courses and the facilities must be used in ways that are equivalent to the use of facilities at secular institutions. So dormitories, dining halls, and classrooms for not specifically religious courses would be fine, but presumably the funds could not be used for churches or to house academic departments focused on religious instruction.

In the past, colleges that have religious ties, but in which religion does not play a dominant role in the campus ethos have won the right to have bonds issued on their behalf, with the associated tax benefits. But Monday’s ruling goes much further in extending that right to colleges where religion is central to everything on the campus. As a result, the dissent said that the majority had gone too far.

The ruling came in a case involving requests to issue bonds by Azusa Pacific University, California Baptist University, and the Oaks Christian School.

As described by the court’s majority opinion — and consistent with the universities’ descriptions of themselves on their Web sites — the two universities offer a broad range of courses, and take faith seriously. California Baptist expects students to live by “biblically based Christian principles” and to attend church services. Faculty members must be Christians and 51 percent must be Baptists. But only about 5 percent of students major in Christian or ministry studies.

Similarly at Azusa Pacific, only about 7 percent of students major in religious studies, but the institution’s faith is central. All faculty members must be Christians. Students must exhibit “moral character” consistent with religious belief and must complete 120 hours of student ministry assignments.

The institutions want the bonds issues on their behalf for such facilities as dining halls, dormitories, athletic facilities and classroom buildings.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court of California analyzed tests on church-state separation that have been applied under both the California and U.S. constitutions. The majority opinion stressed that separation of church and state did not require “hostility” toward religion, and it applied a series of tests, which the colleges’ bond proposal passed.

The key hurdle for the religious colleges was a test on whether the bonds would — in the majority’s words — “serve the public interest and no more than incidentally benefit religion.” The majority said that the colleges would pass this test provided that they used the funds for facilities that are not religious and nature and that any educational offerings in these buildings be for instruction that is comparable to that at secular institutions.

“The straightforward assessment … is whether the academic content of a religious school’s course in a secular subject such as math, chemistry, or Shakespeare’s writings is typical of that provided in nonreligious schools,” the Supreme Court ruled. The decision went on to say that enforcing this requirement does not require monitoring of what is said in class each day or limit a professor’s freedom of speech.

“When a school establishes, through its course descriptions or otherwise, that the academic content of its secular classes is typical of comparable courses at a public or other nonreligious schools, it is not necessary to scrutinize the school’s say-to-day classroom communications,” the ruling said. “The circumstance that a teacher may, in addition to teaching a course’s religiously neutral content, express an idea or viewpoint that may be characterized as ‘religious’ does not result in a benefit to religion that is more than incidental to the state’s primary purpose of enhancing secular education opportunities for California residents.”

The key, the court said, was to make judgments on the use of the facilities, and not the broad religious goals or identity of a college. Citing previous rulings by their court, the justices noted that fire and police departments provide the same protection for religious institutions as for secular institutions, so there is no automatic ban on government assistance to even the most religious of institutions.

Lawyers involved in the case told California newspapers that they thought the colleges involved — and most religious colleges — would have no difficulty meeting the tests set by the court.

The three judges who dissented said that the majority paid too little attention to the benefits of a government-issued bond to the colleges. By saving money on facilities, even if those are facilities for secular purposes, the colleges gain additional funds to advance their religious missions, the dissent said.

In that context, the dissent said, it was relevant just how significantly religion pervades campus rules and programs.

“Given the trial court’s uncontested findings that the schools are ‘organized primarily or exclusively for religious purposes,’ “restrict admission of students by religious criteria,’ ‘discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring faculty,’ and ‘integrate religion … into classroom instruction,’ the proposed bond agreements clearly violate” the state Constitution’s separation of church and state, the dissent said.

The Constitution, the dissent said, “simply does not permit a public entity to act as a fundraiser for schools of this nature.”

— Scott Jaschik

Comment to the below article:

Study Religion More Not Less

Religion must be studied in its historical and emotional context.

“First, the word ‘faith’ in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for ‘religion,’ ” he wrote. “A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.”

Faith is more than a mere euphemism.

The word comes with credibility in excess of self confidence that it does not deserve. Myth must be relegated to its proper position in higher education if the religious component is to be stripped from organized violence and other abuse.

Infidels by Dave Anderson must become required reading.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Harvard Moves Ahead on Curricular Reform

In October, a faculty panel at Harvard University issued a draft plan to change the undergraduate curricular requirements for the first time since 1979, proposing that certain broad subjects be required, while giving choice within those areas for a range of courses. On Wednesday, the panel released the final version of its proposals, which now go to the faculty for consideration and expected approval (with tweaks always possible). The final version keeps the basic framework from October, but adds one broad topic in the humanities and formally removes the initial designation of religion as its own required topic.

While there have been plenty of quibbles over the version released in October, it has generally received praise — both in Cambridge and elsewhere, where Harvard’s general education choices are always eyed as a potential model.

The approach outlined by the panel would replace very broad categories like foreign cultures and science with considerably more specific areas for study. All undergraduates would have to take a course that focused on the United States and the world, for example. At the same time, the faculty panel avoided an overly rigid formula full of required courses (likely to have been unpopular with the students and viewed as impractical by professors) and also avoided a return to distribution requirements, which while providing breadth also allow students to ignore many areas they don’t want to study.

Both Derek Bok, Harvard’s president, and Jeremy R. Knowles, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, issued statements praising the report. Bok said that the recommendations would create “a thoughtful and coherent structure to further the aims of a strong undergraduate education.” While Harvard is expected to name a new president shortly, and the curricular review started under the former president, Lawrence H. Summers, the turnover is not expected to delay or derail the process.

When the panel presented its draft plan in October, it would have required students to take seven courses in the following categories:

*      Cultural traditions and cultural change.
*      The ethical life.
*      The United States and the world (one each in the U.S. and the world).
*      Reason and faith.
*      Science and technology (one in a life science and one in a physical science).

While making some changes in nomenclature, the committee made two larger changes in the final version. It added a new humanities category and — as it did in an intermediary draft — broadened the “reason and faith” requirement (which was seen by some as too focused on religion) to the category of “culture and belief.”

Now the plan calls for students to take one course in each of the following eight categories:

*      Aesthetic and interpretive understanding.
*      Culture and belief.
*      Empirical reasoning.
*      Ethical reasoning.
*      Science of living systems.
*      Science of the physical universe.
*      Societies of the world.
*      The United States and the world.

The first category is seen as a boosting of the humanities portion of the new curriculum. “Reading a poem, looking at a painting, and listening to a piece of music are complex capacities that build an informed sensitivity, an interaction between the intellect and the senses,” the report says, in explaining the significance of this requirement. “Students need to know how to interpret cultural works — to know, for example, how to distinguish the literal and the symbolic, something that is crucial to evaluating and making sense of everything from religious texts and lyric poems to pop songs and motion pictures.”

Courses in this category, the report says, should “develop students’ skills in criticism,” “introduce students to primary texts and/or works of art in one or more media,” and when possible include out-of-classroom visits to exhibits, performances, readings, etc.

One of the proposals in the October draft that received considerable attention was the requirement for study of reason and faith, which would have required in some way study of religion. That was amended — first in December and finalized Wednesday — to a requirement on culture and belief. The proposal to focus on religion drew criticism from some prominent Harvard professors, such as Steven Pinker, who wrote in The Harvard Crimson that the proposal was flawed in logically and rhetorically.

“First, the word ‘faith’ in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for ‘religion,’ ” he wrote. “A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.”

Pinker, a professor of psychology, added: “Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith — believing something without good reasons to do so — has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for ‘Astronomy and Astrology’ or ‘Psychology and Parapsychology.’ It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

While the final report of the Harvard panel did change the name and broaden the category, the report still includes a strong argument for the study of religion. “Religion has been, and continues to be, a force shaping identity and behavior throughout the world. Harvard is a secular institution, but religion is an important part of our students’ lives,” the report says. “When they get to college, students often struggle to sort out the relationship between their own beliefs and practices and those of fellow students, and the relationship of religious belief to the resolutely secular world of the academy.”

— Scott Jaschik

Two comments to the below article:

Beyond Her Control

Only an organized religious institution could be this insensitive to the need for love and affection at a time of stress.

Without an expression of a belief in God, this problem is one of God’s choosing and beyong Julie’s control.

My hope is that there is a hell and the people responsible for infliction of pain upon Julie go there.

This should never have become a legal issue. But now that it is, it should be resolved on a motion for summary judgment.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

No Religious Exception

This case should begin with a challenge to the existence of a religious exception. Law requires proof, not belief. Facts, not myth. See Dave Anderson, The Infidels. This is must reading.

FM, on behalf of the legal profession, I apologize for the poor education on religion and the application of the First Amendment to religious issues provided by law schools in this country.

Reforms must begin with law students if we are to have a republic. We have lost it for now to big business and political donations.

No reforms occur without the support of a free press. Bill Moyers and the 3,500 followers who went to Memphis and their supporters are the champions — Into the Buzzsaw edited by Kristina Borjesson is the source book for the cause.

Best wishes Julie — Those who love you are all that count. The rest of them can wallow in their stone age self righteousness.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Gender Change Costs Dean a Job

Religious institutions have long had leeway to hire and fire based on creed. But what happens when a man who professes the faith also starts to appear on campus as a woman?
Related stories

At Spring Arbor University, a Michigan institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, the pending termination of a transgender faculty member (and ordained Baptist minister) has raised just that question. John — who now goes by Julie – Nemecek, the former associate dean for The School of Adult Studies, said she was demoted after sharing her diagnosis of gender identity disorder with supervisors. She has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint, alleging that the university discriminated against her based on sex and perceived disability.

Meanwhile, Spring Arbor asserts its right to counter behavior in “direct conflict” with its religious ideals. In a written statement, Spring Arbor’s leadership affirms that its expectation for faculty to “model Christian character” is “clearly communicated to students, faculty, and administrators alike, and is protected by the U.S. Civil Rights Act and supported by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.”

Nemecek, a 16-year employee who is on hormone treatments and typically dresses “en femme” (her phrasing) when in public, said she first informed the president of Spring Arbor of her gender identity disorder diagnosis — and her plans to treat it in part with behavioral modifications, including wearing makeup and fingernail polish and dressing in feminine clothes — in December 2005. Nemecek said the university subsequently demoted her from the associate deanship position to a non-tenure track associate professor of adult studies position, with an accompanying 20 percent pay cut, and this winter informed her that she would be terminated as of June.

The termination decision comes after more than a year of isolation and restriction, Nemecek said. Under the terms of her current contract, Nemecek, who has her doctoral degree in education, is to teach only online courses and to work from home. The conditions of the contract, as provided by Nemecek, also call for her to “refrain from discussing his transgender situation with Spring Arbor University personnel or students,” requires that she not wear makeup, feminine clothing, or otherwise represent herself as female or transgender while on campus, requires her to seek counseling from a Christian professional who could provide “alternative perspectives,” and states that the “university will request permission to receive updates on the state of his condition.”

Subsequently, Nemecek said she received correspondence in October citing her for, among other things, wearing makeup and earrings to a campus learning fair and wearing university apparel to the grocery store (“Unless the university wishes to provide me with $300 or so to replace my SAU paraphernalia, I have no intention of changing my clothing to go to the grocery store,” the EEOC complaint reads).

Mediation on the EEOC complaint, in which Nemecek seeks unspecified damages and a reinstatement to her former position or a fiscally comparable faculty appointment, is scheduled for March, she said. If the mediation fails, she plans to file a federal lawsuit.

“What they have from the state is a statement that they can hire Christians. My beliefs are about as orthodox as they come and, if anything, this has strengthened my faith, not weakened it,” said Nemecek, who identifies as a conservative evangelical and does not plan to undergo sexual reassignment surgery in part due to her respect for her marriage.

“The university has a very clear statement of faith. I’m in full agreement with everything in it. They have a code of conduct; I’m in full agreement with what they say there too. They really have nothing in either of their statements or the denomination they’re affiliated with that would justify the way they’re responding to me,” Nemecek said.

A university spokesman referred all comment on the matter to a Grand Rapids-based public relations firm, which confirmed Spring Arbor’s decision not to renew Nemecek’s contract after the spring semester.

“We first learned of John’s situation a year ago and have worked closely with him ever since. At the same time, as an evangelical Christian university, Spring Arbor requires its faculty and administrators to be Christians and to follow biblical principles in all aspects of their lives as part of their positions as leaders of the university and our students. Our curriculum integrates faith in all aspects of our liberal arts education, and we expect our faculty to model Christian character as an example for our students,” the statement released by the public relations firm reads in part.

“Spring Arbor University has faced situations in the past where the actions of faculty members have been in direct conflict with the ideals we uphold. We approach all situations like this with grace and in all cases work with the individual to give them the opportunity for restoration. However, if they choose to persist with activities that are inconsistent with the Christian faith, we have a responsibility to take further action,” it concludes.

“It’s a really messy area of law,” said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University in Washington. “The questions involve the right of religious organizations to hire people based on religion, but at times the categories of religion creep over into other protected categories.”

The university will likely be on strong ground when it comes to the removal of Nemecek from her associate deanship, Tuttle said, since religious institutions are granted broad latitude by the courts to pick and choose their leaders. The termination of a faculty member, on the other hand, is usually subject to more stringent legal analysis, he said. But dozens of similar cases are out there in litigation, Tuttle said, and courts often draw fine lines about when religious institutions are and aren’t protected. “It’ll be interesting to watch.”

— Elizabeth Redden

Comments to below article:

This disguised psychology ends in war

The approval of the right to accredit Bible Colleges came up before the US Department of Education National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity during its December 4, 2006 meeting.

Jefound and I filed a written objection, request for the opportunity to present an oral presentation, and made a presentation to the Committee. Our work and the hearing transcript are published at our website at http://jefound.org. (The department of education would not allow us to video the proceedings – this must change during the rule making procedures now in progress).

In short, study of any religion other than for its historical value has no business as a higher (or lower) education subject and certainly is a violation of the First Amendment when it is condoned as a religion by an agency of the Federal government.

The Bible at Deuteronomy 13:6-9 advocates death to infidels. This is the root source of all religious violence against non-believers (The Infidels — Dave Anderson — 2005; The Legacy of Jihad — Dr. Andrew Bostom 2005).

The Association for Biblical Higher Education advocates strict adherence to Biblical teachings as the word of God on its website. http://abhe.gospelcom.net/

Spiritual is history, myth, or psychology and should be studied as such.

Educators have let the American people down by allowing this material to be taught as the word of God.

There is no mass criticism of the failure of the United States government to demand the separation of Islam from the Afghanistan and Iraq Constitutions because political leaders and journalists do not want to admit the connection between Islam Theocracy and American Theocracy. For a discussion of American Theocracy see Kevin Phillips -American Theocracy — 2006.

Einstein said the first lines of defense to Fascism are the educators. Educators failed the Germans at the time of the invasion of Poland and have failed the Americans at the time of invasion of the Middle East.

We either improve higher education or perish. The first step is to recognize that the First Amendment protects the individual right to believe in God, not organized religions’ right to teach exclusiveness and hate.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Spiritual Accountability

Susie, like her older brother and sister, enrolled at a Christian university in her home state. While at the university, she became increasingly involved in issues of social justice, helping out regularly at a soup kitchen and organizing a food drive. She attended chapel weekly, as required, but reported that she frequently daydreamed or took it as ‘down time’ from her busy schedule. Has Susie grown spiritually in college? To what degree? (Please round to the nearest whole number).
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It’s a task few assessment experts would envy — a mandate to measure a student’s spiritual growth in a world far more complex than that simplistically sketched above. How to make the seemingly subjective experience of faith objective, to measure a college student’s spiritual growth as you would a child’s height, with penciled marks noting an inch here, an inch there, on a four-foot paper ruler taped to the president’s door?

For many religiously affiliated institutions, that’s not a hypothetical question. As the accountability pressures on higher education grow, and words like “measurable outcomes” become common parlance in academe, religious colleges are increasingly embracing a need to measure the spiritual and moral outcomes they promise in their mission statements to deliver. They’re seeking ways not only to measure their own students’ spiritual commitments — and how those commitments might change from freshman to senior year — but also how they as institutions stack up, spiritually speaking, relative to peer colleges.

“We have developed a very strong emphasis on assessment as part of our accreditation process,” says Randall Bell, associate director for the Association for Biblical Higher Education. “What we tell schools is that you are supposed to articulate your intentions and then examine the results of your activities to see if they’re commensurate with your intentions. Most of our schools intend to help our students grow spiritually, so if that’s one of their intentions, they’re looking for ways to assess if that’s in fact happening or not,” he says.

“We wanted to be in some position where we could begin to help make the case with something more than just anecdotal evidence that what we say is integral to the educational experience on one of our campuses is actually taking place,” adds Ronald Mahurin, vice president for professional development and research at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. “If we say we have a unique mission and identity, are there reasonable ways in which we can help explain this to a broader public — not only what we do, but how effective we are in doing this?”

The leaders of public and private institutions alike are thinking about spirituality these days, as the data suggest that’s what their students are thinking about, too. Researchers at the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles released data in 2005 suggesting that freshmen care about spiritual matters far more than was widely believed — and that they find guidance from colleges sorely lacking in this domain. The researchers are surveying those same students as juniors this spring to pinpoint any changes in their spiritual lives and the experiences that may have brought these changes about.

“We feel very strongly that ignoring the aspect of spiritual development is ignoring the whole student, especially when we learn from our data that our students are very interested in that,” says Helen Astin, one of the principal researchers for the Spirituality in Higher Education survey. Researchers hope to survey 50,000 students this spring at 150 institutions across the various sectors of higher education, says Astin, who stresses that tapping into students’ spiritual lives is an avenue for enhancing student engagement more generally.

But a key difference is that while Astin says she hopes all types of institutions use the UCLA data to inform their attention to students’ spiritual lives, the publics and non-religious privates generally have the luxury of taking the data or leaving it. More and more, religious institutions — pressured to provide outcomes data on their accreditation reports relative to “mission” — don’t see themselves as having that luxury (or, in many cases, even wanting it).

As such, the past five years have been a time of tremendous growth in “spiritual assessment” efforts tailored for students at religious colleges. Some of the efforts are primarily research-oriented, while others are explicitly intended to be used for accountability purposes, as well as to inform decision-making and identify best practices.

“The idea is that we’re really not trying to measure doctrinal beliefs; there are other measures to do that,” says Todd Hall, an associate professor of psychology at Biola University, a Christian institution in California, and founder of Concentus Assessment Solutions, a company that offers a Web-based, 170-item “Spiritual Transformation Inventory” designed to quantitatively measure spiritual vitality. “It’s a little easier to measure that, just to ask students what they believe. What’s been difficult, and what we’re trying to measure, is spiritual and character development.”

“We’re trying,” Hall adds, “to tap into the gut-level measures of someone’s experience with God.”

The Measures

But what size tap do you use? Where do you drill? How deep? It’s not so simple as solely asking if a student prays — but also how often, what type of prayer and, the big question, the meaning derived by the student through prayer, as Hall explains.

Many of the current efforts to assess spiritual growth in college students evolved, to various degrees, out of the Faithful Change Project, an early effort to patiently measure the steps in a student’s spiritual growth from year to year.

The ongoing Faithful Change research initiative tracked a cohort of students at six Christian colleges from freshman year through their graduation in 2002, relying both on quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews that are still being coded, well, quantitatively. Researchers attempted to measure the students’ spiritual growth across the stages of faith development identified by James Fowler, a theologian and developmental psychologist who recently retired from his position leading Emory University’s Center for Ethics.

“It’s not so much the belief statements that are made, not so much the content, or what might be considered doctrine, as it is the cognitive structure,” says Arthur Nonneman, the chair of the psychology department at Kentucky’s Asbury College. Nonneman is currently completing the coding of the interviews along with Gay Holcomb, an assistant professor of psychology and director of institutional research and assessment at Asbury, a Christian institution. In the interviews, Nonneman and Holcomb looked for evidence of critical thinking: Is a student’s faith “borrowed” from parents or peers, or has a student’s faith been analyzed, questioned, fought with, owned?

Their main finding after completing coding of interviews for the students’ first three years (progress on the initiative slowed after a grant from the John Templeton Foundation was largely exhausted) is that crises foster spiritual growth — not just emotional crises, but also significant intellectual challenges in which students are exposed to diverse ways of thinking through classroom work or multicultural experiences.

“When you’re around people who think differently, you wind up getting challenged. You have to defend yourself and in the process of doing that, you start examining your own beliefs,” says Holcomb.

Out of this research-oriented Faithful Change initiative, Todd Hall, formerly involved with the project, spun off to create a more time-efficient, purely quantitative spiritual assessment.

Hall’s Spiritual Transformation Inventory attempts to assess the strength of a student’s relationship with God. Asked to indicate their level of agreement with various statements (from strongly disagree to strongly agree), students select their reactions to prompts like, “I come to know God more fully through my own suffering,” “There is a least one person who is a spiritual mentor in my life,” or “I have friendships in which we regularly challenge each other on our spiritual growth.” About 20 student-specific questions ask about the role that institution-sponsored activities, such as chapel service and ministry sessions, play in fostering the divine relationship: “What impact have mentoring relationships with faculty at your school had on your overall spiritual development?” “What impact have praise and worship sessions sponsored by your school had on your spiritual development?”

Hall’s questions, tailored for Christian schools, are rooted in emotion, as opposed to the more cognitive structure embraced by the Faithful Change Project. To what degree does a student have an awareness of God’s presence? To what degree, Hall asks, does the student participate in a spiritual community, and feel a sense of belonging to it? How securely does a student experience that relationship with God?

About 25 institutions affiliated with the Council for Christian College & Universities participated in the Spiritual Transformation Inventory in the 2005-6 school year, with 15 to 20 participating this past semester, Hall says. A smaller-scale collaboration with the Association for Biblical Higher Education began this fall, and Hall is also launching a wide-scale marketing effort to reach Christian high schools. Not only do students get individual score reports deciphering their results, institutions also get group reports that show how their students’ scores stand relative to those reported at other Christian and biblical institutions. “Essentially, what we’re doing is developing national norms, so the schools have a benchmark to compare themselves against,” says Hall. “It’s designed to provide some fodder for reflection,” to encourage institutions to notice their “gaps” and potentially take steps to address areas where they fall below average, he explains.

Meanwhile, many Roman Catholic colleges are engaged in obtaining similar data to assess institutional performance. For instance, Ellen Boylan, director of institutional research and assessment at Marywood University, in Pennsylvania, has designed a set of 20 questions that 36 Catholic institutions are appending to this spring’s administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement.

Students are asked to agree or disagree, on a five-point scale, with prompts like, “The mission of this institution is widely understood by students,” “The heritage of the founding religious community of the institution is evident here,” and “The faculty at this institution discuss the ethical implications of what is being studied.” Other prompts tap into social values: “The faculty, staff and students here are respectful of people of different religions,” “The environment here encourages students to develop an appreciation of diversity,” and “This institution offers opportunities for volunteering and community service.”

On an institutional level, Boylan will be able to measure the changing attitudes of Marywood seniors, who first answered her survey questions as freshmen. More broadly, Boylan, who recently received a Teagle Foundation grant for the research, also hopes to find some non-Catholic colleges to participate – the survey is not faith-specific – to provide some comparison data across sectors.

Other researchers at Catholic institutions have adapted the survey on spirituality created by UCLA researchers, says Jim Trainer, director of planning and assessment at Villanova University and a member of the Catholic Higher Education Research Cooperative, a group of institutional researchers. There’s been a conscious effort among Catholic colleges, Trainer says, to conserve resources and “piggyback on the efforts that are already in place.”

Meanwhile, a survey of alumni from a broad spectrum of institutions conducted by a Minnesota-based higher education management consultant firm, Hardwick~Day, for the National Catholic College Admission Association, attempts to answer the question of how the institutions impact spiritual growth through the perspective of graduates. Among the prompts: Whether the college experience helped in integrating faith with other aspects of life and how effective the college was in fostering the development of a sense of purpose in life.

James Day, Hardwick~Day’s principal and founder, says the firm has conducted similar studies commissioned by groups such as the Lutheran Educational Conference of North America and The Annapolis Group, an organization of independent liberal arts colleges. Day says that one benefit of the alumni survey (which focuses on a variety of domains, not just spirituality) is that it allows institutions to gain broader context regarding their successes and weaknesses across the various sectors of higher education.

For example, in the 2004 survey commissioned by the Lutheran association, 58 percent of Lutheran college graduates indicated that they learned more about faith in college, compared to 18 percent of alumni of public flagship universities. In the Catholic colleges survey, conducted this fall and scheduled to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, 80 percent of Catholic college alumni respondents indicated the effectiveness of their college in developing moral principles that can guide actions, compared to 79 percent of respondents from other religious institutions, 56 percent of alumni from non-sectarian private colleges and 35 percent of alumni from flagship publics.

“We’d be disingenuous to say that the market didn’t impact it at all,” Trainer of Villanova says about the emphasis on “spiritual accountability.” Especially in Catholic higher education, where broader debates are happening about how institutions will remain vital as the number of individuals in religious life declines, this type of assessment may be needed not only for accreditation, but also to satisfy a different hunger for accountability — to help make the case to the broader public that religious institutions offer something distinctive, says Trainer. “How is it,” he asks, “that we carry on the catechism of the congregation of X, Y or Z, as the membership of that congregation decreases?”

— Elizabeth Redden

William S. Scott, director of JEFound, presented at the accreditation hearings for the Association for Biblical Higher Education and the Association for Clinical Patoral Education, Inc. held on December 5-6, 2006 before the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity.

Click here for his Biblical presentation. Click here for the complete transcript.

Click here for his Clinical presentation. Click here for the complete transcript.

Comments to below article:

Its a separation of Church from State Issue

The problem Americans who care about safety of all people World wide have with Middle Eastern Studies programs is the lack of criticism by the programs of the control Islam has over the region.

For example, Americans are asked to go Afghanistan and Iraq to die while the Constitutions of those Countries name Islam as their official religion.

Not one Middle Eastern Studies program leader has been quoted in the press as either opposed to the control Islam has or the fact that our troops are in harms way without any intent to separate Church from State. The American Government will participate in hanging their former leaders without any possibility of making Americans safer at night.

Neither the Middle Eastern Studies nor the Journalism Departments focus on this issue so Americans can have tangible reasons to oppose the use of violence to change Middle Eastern ideology.

The Great Decision Maker has free reign because academia lead by the U. S. Department of Education does nothing to force the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity to set tangible standards by which to judge formal education in general and Middle Eastern Studies departments in particular.

Democracy is more than the election of the leader. Hitler was elected. If we value our way of life, we must educate our future leaders on how to protect us from harm.

War with a religion can work, but the extent of the bloodshed by use of nuclear energy makes that method risky. Albert Einstein said it best: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

If the Middle Eastern scholars want to avoid criticism from Horowitz and others, they must begin to be fair and balanced in their teaching. That begins with advocacy of separation of Islam from the governments of Middle Eastern Countries. Otherwise, the Middle Eastern departments are nothing more than a threat to the American way of life.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Jan. 15
Strategies on Academic Freedom

Post-9/11, many of the most intense debates about academic freedom have involved Middle Eastern studies. There have been numerous cases in which candidates for jobs or tenure have been opposed at least in part because of their views on the Middle East, with recent flare-ups at Barnard College and Wayne State University. At least 15 of the professors named by David Horowitz in his book last year on “the 101 most dangerous academics” study the Middle East — a proportion that is notable when considering that Middle Eastern studies programs are relatively small, and most students never take a course in the subject.
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In this environment, the Task Force on Middle Eastern Anthropology has issued a new handbook, “Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility After 9/11.” Most of the handbook would apply well beyond anthropology and the project was endorsed by leading scholars of the Middle East from a range of disciplines — many of them professors whose work has been criticized by pro-Israel and conservative groups.

“In the post-September 11 context, untrammeled and free public debate about the relationship between the United States and the Middle East should be a key component of a concerted effort to prevent the reoccurrence of the horrific tragedies on U.S. soil, and to understand related cultural and political trends,” the report says. “Yet an open atmosphere in which scholars and students can analyze the events and repercussions of 2001 have come into the cross-hairs of ideologues who argue that everything has changed or ought to change since September 11, including traditional bedrock American values upholding freedom of speech and public debate.”

In recent years, the handbooks adds, there have been “escalating attempts to silence and marginalize university teachers who resist or challenge narrow black and white teaching.”

Much of the handbook consists of basic information and suggestions, with explanations of policies issued by the American Association of University Professors and others on faculty rights. Professors are encouraged to learn their institutions’ relevant policies, for example, so they have basic information before a controversy erupts.

Some of the most interesting material concerns the classroom — how to prevent and deal with interruptions from those making unfair statements or denigrating the ideas of the instructor or others. The handbook repeatedly states that professors must be willing to be challenged on their ideas, and to welcome a range of views in their courses, but distinguishes between those kinds of challenges and personal attacks.

Many suggestions focus on preventive strategies. For example, the handbook suggests that professors consider guidelines for classroom instruction. “Reminding students of what constitutes proper and productive classroom participation goes a long way towards avoiding unconstructive behavior later on,” the handbook says. Such information may also be included — with other policies — on a course syllabus, the handbook suggests.

Many classroom confrontations can be used for educational purposes, the handbook says. For example, if a student challenges the use of “occupation” by a professor, the professor might talk with the class about why that term is or isn’t appropriate, and the “political claims” that might be associated with alternative terms, such as “disputed territories.”

Technology is presented as a double-edged sword. Professors are advised that they might want to tape lectures that they know will be particularly controversial, so that they don’t find their words later distorted. But professors are also advised that some students secretly and selectively tape lectures of professors they may wish to attack or to share with groups that may wish to draw attention to a professor’s views. A good general rule, the handbook advises, is to have a policy on taping, announcing it at the beginning of a course, and making sure it is consistent with campus or state regulations.

At least one leader of a group that has been highly critical of Middle Eastern studies programs praised the handbook. “This handbook demonstrates the effectiveness of Campus Watch’s efforts to
restore intellectual balance to Middle East studies. Surely, absent the work over the years of Campus Watch and critics of higher education, this new document would never have been written, and the abuses it attempts to correct would continue unchecked,” said Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch.

He added: “If professors heed the handbook’s calls to create a classroom environment in which civil disagreement is welcome, inflammatory language is eschewed, and topics outside the purview of the subject being taught are avoided, we will witness a revolution in higher education; that is precisely what we have been working for.”

— Scott Jaschik