# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S327
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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PARISH EDUCATION 327

the best solution to the problem of adequate religious instruction.
But only 32 per cent of our children have an opportunity to attend
a Christian school! Sixty-eight per cent of our children of ele-
mentary age and more than 90 per cent of our youth of high school
age are enrolled in the public school system.

As Christian citizens we must have a deep concern for the
moral and spiritual welfare of all the children and youth attending
public schools and high schools. This concern should be a grow-
ing concern, because so large a percentage of our own children
and youth are without benefit of Christian schooling. In actual
figures, about 250,000 of our children of elementary school age
attend public schools, and of the 120,000 high school youth in our
church about 113,000 attend public high schools.

Most of the 250,000 pupils attending public school receive no
religious instruction prior to preconfirmation instruction except
that given them in Sunday school and for some (140,000) an addi-
tional two weeks in vacation Bible school. Figuring generously,
this means about 80 hours of religious instruction per year. More-
over, the instruction is given outside the context of the individual’s
daily school life and is to that extent less effective as a means of
making Christian principles the chief motivation for life and be-
havior. Released-time classes open the way for an ‘additional
35 or 40 hours of instruction. What a challenge the released-time
program ought to be to the hundreds of churches of Synod which
have no educational agencies except the Sunday school and vaca-
tion Bible school!

During the past few years released-time instruction has re-
trieved its losses. The enrollment today is as large as it has ever
been in the past and may be close to two and a half million stu-
dents. So bright is the outlook for this type of school that a special
Conference on Weekday Religious Education is planned to be held
in Oberlin, Ohio, June 25—28, of this year. In preparation for this
conference, six teams were set to work already in 1955, to make
a study of six salient phases of the weekday movement. The
findings of these teams are reported in Religious Education, Feb-
ruary, 1956. No doubt the Oberlin Conference will give an added
impulse to weekday religious education and will prompt many
churches to make the weekday school available for their children
and youth.

In view of the unusual opportunity that released-time classes
offer for additional hours of religious instruction, the Board for
Parish Education urges the congregations of Synod to give con-
sideration to the released-time program and to introduce this type
of instruction as soon as practicable, for pupils in the elementary