Table Of ContentAN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE PROGRAM OF RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF PASADENA
A Pro ject.
Presented t©
the Faculty ©f the Scho©l of Education
The University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
©f the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science in Education
hy
Albert P. Leeming
July 1950
UMI Number: EP45929
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This project report, written under the direction
of the candidate’s adviser and approved by him,
has been presented to and accepted by the Faculty
of the School of Education in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Master of
Science in Education.
Date..
h
Adviser
Dean
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM........................ 1
Description ©f the situation.. ................. 1
Statement of the problem..................... 2
Authority for development of the problem . . . 4
The scope and delimitation ©f the problem . . . 9
Definition ©f technical terms and words . . . . 10
Released time ................................ 10
Dismissed time ......................10
Religious education ................... . . . 10
Weekday church school........ .............. 10
Legal s t a t u s ............................... 11
Importance of the problem........................11
Organization of the study........................11
II. STATEMENT OF PROCEDURES USED IN THE SOLUTION OF
THE PROBLEM............................ . 13
The emergence of the problem................... 13
The development of a bibliography. . . . . . . 14
Determination ©f a selected-bibliography . . . 15
How reliability and validity were conceived . . 15
III. THE MAJOR ASPECTS OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION PLAN
AS IT EXISTS IN PASADENA....................... 18
IV. THE PROGRAM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS IT EXISTED
IN CHAMPAIGN.......... 24
iii
CHAPTER PAGE
V. SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PROGRAMS.,
OF PASADENA AND CHAMPAIGN........................ 28
VI. COURT DECISIONS CONCERNING RELEASED TIME IN THE
UNITED STATES AND THEIR LEGAL IMPLICATIONS . . . . 33.
VII. CONCLUSIONS ........................... 60
VIII. RECOMMENDATIONS....................... 63
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................66
PART I
THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM AND THE PROCEDURE
CHAPTER I
THE MATURE OF THE PROBLEM
With the publication ©f the recent decision of the
Supreme Court ©f the United States relating to the legal
status of various programs of religious instruction and
education in the public schools throughout our land, there
have arisen numerous and varied conjectures regarding the
constitutionality of the aforementioned programs if either
school time or school property, or both, were involved.
Description of the situation. Since the Supreme
Court of the United States ruled in the epochal McCullbm
1
decision in 1948, many articles have been written in maga
zines, books, newspapers, and journals speculating on the
pros and eons of the issues involved, and the likely results
in the framework ©f public education in America. Churches
have, in general, come to the defense of the program, while
writers and. lay people have seen hazards involved in some
©f the programs still in progress which have not been chal
lenged by court action. Much ©f the seeming confusion
which exists regarding the legality of a specific program
in a given community stems from the character of that pro
gram and organizational difference® which are found in it.
^ McCullom vs. Board of Education,,. Yol. 333, U. S.
E03 (1948).
Even the high tribunal saw potential difficulties in making
an inflexible decision covering all programs of religious
2
education in America. It is left to individual school dis
tricts t© govern their actions in view ©f competent legal
advice within the state educational and civil laws as well
aw federal law.
After the MeCullom decision was rendered, local in
terest in the program of religious education in the public
schools ef the Gity of Pasadena became apparent. The writer
is concerned with this program in connection with his classes
at the upper elementary level, and the interest in making
a comparison between the pregram in Champaign, Illinois,
which was declared unconstitutional, and the program in Pasa
dena. An attempt will be made t© locate similarities and
differences in the two programs in the effort to determine
the unofficial legal status of the Pasadena program. It
should be borne in mind that this project is la the nature
of a study only, and should not be interpreted as an attempt
to influence or initiate policy.
Statement of the problem. The purpose of this study
is to present an inquiry into the legal status of the pro
gram of religious education now related to the public schools
of the City ©f Pasadena. Though it is realized by the writer,
2 Ibid., p. 231.
and by many students of the problem, legal and otherwise,
that there are many perplexing aspects to the solution of
the problem at hand, some basic questions will serve to in
dicate the legal problems involved .in the light ©f the facts
pertaining t© various programs ©f religious education and
the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court. The
questions with which this study will concern itself are as
follows:
1. What are the major aspects of the religious
education plan as it exists in Pasadena, Cali
fornia?
3. What are the major aspects of the religious
education program as it existed in Champaign,
Illinois, prior t© the decision ©f the Supreme
Court?
3. To what extent and in what ways are there simi
larities and differences between the released
time program now.being conducted in the public
schools of Pasadena, and the one in Champaign,
Illinois, declared unconstitutional by the Mc-
Cullom decision of the United States Supreme
Court?
4. What are the educational and legal implications
©f the various decisions concerning released
time in the United States?
Authority for development of the problem. The move
ment to establish weekday religious schools is comparatively
recent. In 1905, George U. Werner proposed to the Inter-
ehureh Conference in New York City that publie-school pupils
be released one afternoon a,week in order t© attend religious
classes in their own ehurches. Perhaps as a result ©f this
meeting, a weekday chureh school was established in 1906 in
3
the Christ Lutheran Church in New York City. However, the
real beginning ©f the religious education movement in its
4
present form occurred in 1913 in Gary, Indiana. At this
time, William Wirt, Superintendent ef the Public Schools ©f
Gary, offered t© release pupils from the schools for religious
instruction. Thus, in the school year 1914-1915, the first
weekday church schools in cooperation with the public schools
5
were conducted in Gary and enrolled 619 pupils.
The movement spread slowly at first, then more rapid
ly, as the Gary experiment was widely copied. By 1922,
38,000 pupils in over three hundred schools ©f weekday reli
gious education were reported, when Erwin L. Shaver made an
3 All background and historical material in this sec
tion is summarized from J. Paul Williams, The New Education
and Religion (Association Press, New York, 1945}"“unless
otherwise annotated, pp. 54ff.
4 Date given as 1909 by Floyd S. Gove, Religious Edu
cation on Public School Time (Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1926), p. 20.
5 Erwin L. Shaver, "The Movement for Weekday Religious
Education," Religious Education. 41:7, January, 1946.
