Religious Instruction, Public Education, and The Dallas High Schools Bible Study Course (1923-1985)
Despite the voluminous literature on the Supreme Court's famous mid-century decisions on religion and public education, detailed investigations of how McCollum (1948), Schempp (1963), and related rulings affected particular Bible courses and the communities that offered them are largely absent....
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[2017]
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2017, Volume: 86, Issue: 1, Pages: 145-177 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Dallas, Tex.
/ Protestantism
/ High school
/ Bible reading
/ History 1923-1985
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| IxTheo Classification: | CH Christianity and Society HA Bible KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history KBQ North America KDD Protestant Church RF Christian education; catechetics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Despite the voluminous literature on the Supreme Court's famous mid-century decisions on religion and public education, detailed investigations of how McCollum (1948), Schempp (1963), and related rulings affected particular Bible courses and the communities that offered them are largely absent. This article offers an in-depth retrospective analysis of one such class, the Dallas High Schools Bible Study Course. One of the longest-running Bible programs in the country, it lasted over six decades, likely attracted over 40,000 students, and provided a model for other communities near and far. Indeed, its textbooks remain in occasional use today. This study contextualizes the course within local religious and civic life, the evolving legal landscape, competing notions of church-state relations, differing sensibilities about religious and ethnic diversity, and larger national trends. Despite the program's Protestant nature, until its final days advocates characterized it as a nonsectarian class that separated church and state. That they did so for so long illustrates the deep-rootedness of their commitments to religious education, how contested the implications of the Supreme Court cases were, and how crucial recognition of geographical variation is for exploring the places of religion in American public education. |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S000964071700049X |