# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S325
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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PARISH EDUCATION

325

God’s standards for Christian education and to expand and im-
prove our facilities and program of Christian education. Many
congregations have found the materials provided for Lutheran
Education Week helpful in promoting interest in, and understand-
ing of, the parish education program. It would be desirable for
congregations who have not as yet made use of these materials to
get the benefits that can be derived from the program.

M. Recent Developments in Released-Time Instruction

Religion in the public schools, always a live issue, has become
a subject of widespread interest in recent years. Back of this
extraordinary interest is the general religious awakening and join-
the-church movemént, coupled with the conviction that juvenile
delinquency will continue to be a problem as long as the religious
motivation for behavior is absent from the lives of so many mil-
lions of American children and youth.

An evidence of present-day interest in religion in the public
schools was the National Conference on Religion and Public Educa-
tion, sponsored by the National Council of Churches and held in
St. Louis, November 6—8, 1955. Not only Protestants representing
all the larger denominations, but Jewish and Catholic leaders par-
ticipated in the discussions. Ten study groups were organized at
the conference to investigate and bring in reports on Bible Read-
ing in the Public Schools, on Practices of Worship in the Public
Schools, and on various other aspects of the problem of religion
in the public schools.

The work of the conference was exploratory; hence no ultimate
decisions were made, and there was no formulating of policies for
giving religion a larger place in the public school system. Delegates
and visitors returned to their homes with a sharpened awareness
of the difficulties with which all will be confronted who wish to
make provision for the inclusion of religion in the curriculum.
These people also left the conference with a renewed determina-
tion to do what can be done within the law to bring religious
instruction to the students enrolled in our public school system.

One of the means through which the children attending the
public school can be reached for religious instruction is released-
time instruction. This type of instruction needs to be developed
because, of all proposed solutions, it is least open to criticism.

Released-time instruction received a temporary setback in
1948, when the United States Supreme Court in the McCollum
case declared unconstitutional the practice of holding released-
time classes in public school buildings. There was much dissatis-
faction with this ruling; first, because it was lacking in clarity;