Released-Time Seminary (I'm Curious)

[sociotard]

This is just a thread to satisfy my own curiosity. Zorach vs. Clauson was a supreme court case that ruled that high school students could get "release time" to go attend a religous instruction class. In essence, it allowed students take a course when they could've been taking an elective, provided some religous organization was providing a course.

Now, in my area (SE Idaho), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has set up a number "Seminaries" just outside high school campuses for this very reason. They offer four courses (Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Church History), one per year (One year everyone takes OT, next NT, and so forth).

My question for the freepers is: is this done by other churches in your area? If not, what programs do you have?

Just Curious.

[Alex Murphy]

This sort of thing is news to me (but then again, I'm not a recent high school graduate). My own high school did offer a religious history course as an elective in my senior year. IIRC the curriculum was skewed heavily toward dealing with the sociology of various religious movements, and never touched on their theology except for various pantheisms and animisms.

Such courses were not popular in my school, even among class-dodging high schoolers - because of the fear of proselytizing. Offering coursework in the Book of Mormon (a text considered "scripture" by only a limited number of Christian organizations) and Church History (from the distinctive viewpoint that the Church was wholly apostate from the second century until the nineteenth) - probably evokes similar fears among your local students, because they know such views are only held by certain churches in their community.

I don't understand the value of a single course to the students themselves, given what they'll also learn in their federally mandated, NEA-drafted social science courses. Is there some value gained by the sponsoring church? Is the course a stealth evangelistic tool to "reach" the campus? Is there any sort of study that shows students who take "Church History" once a year (whether taught by a public educator or an LDS volunteer) graduate with higher GPAs?

Here's a corollary question for you to ponder: "how many Christian organizations - LDS or otherwise - offer a comprehensive alternative (church-run schools, private schools, home school curriculum, etc) to the taxpayer-funded Public School system? And the follow-up question "how do alternative-schooled students perform on SAT/ACT/college entrance exams, compared to their public-educated peers?

[sociotard]

You make a good point that the seminary courses offered by the LDS church wouldn't appeal to most, which is why the classes are attended primarily by LDS students. Now, in my hometown we form the most common religeon, such that other churches don't really have enough students enrolled to make sponsering a release time program worthwhile. I was wondering if, for example, you could find a baptist equivalent by a school with a lot of baptist students.

As for the benefits for the church and for the students? Well, we find that high school/ college is the time when, if a person is going to leave the church (or, even worse, take up an ammoral lifestyle), they are most likely to do it. So, the church offers additional programs to strengthen it members when they would be at their weakest.

[Missus]

I'm also in SE Idaho... and there are several churches that have sponsored "student union" buildings very close to high school campuses (right across the street), offer such things as morning/lunch Bible study and fellowship opportunities, after school alternatives, etc.

In this community, there are several parochial schools (of various denominations), as well as many folks who educate at home (religious and non-religious.)

Any church could provide the same moral/scriptural support to their students as the LDS seminaries do, and I would hope that the churches would do so! If one church can qualify for "release time" instruction, so might others.