Godless and Immoral

Any attempt at introducing a sectarian, doctrinaire approach to religion at Harvard would be inconsistent with the University's secular traditions.

This was the gist of President Conant's remarks at the chapel service in Memorial Church on Tuesday. In reaffirming Harvard's tradition of religious toleration and non-denominationalism, Conant was defending Harvard from certain critics who "condemn all secular education as godless and immoral."

In distinguishing between the responsibilities of church and school in meeting the grave moral, political, and economic problems of today, Conant quoted from ex-President Eliot's statement on the religious ideal in education. "The churches must see to it," Eliot wrote, "that each imparts to its children ... its own conceptions of the nature and attributes of the Deity, of the historic Christ, of ecclesiastical authority, and of the authority of the books it holds most sacred. Each church will need to teach its own history and its own peculiar thought, and to familiarize its children with its peculiar dogmas and with the rites and observances which it holds most sacred. With all these instructions the free school can have nothing to do; but the families and the churches can severally build them on the firm foundations which the public schools have laid in the minds and hearts of its pupils, foundations which are universal and eternal."

Eliot wrote these words at the beginning of the century when the problems facing university students were not so pressing as they are today. Such words are a perfect definition of the ideals of mid-Twentieth Century education as well. They deserve repetition whenever secular education is irrationally blamed for the sad state of mankind and morals. They are an excellent answer to these attacks on free educational institutions--attacks which must be answered before terms like "godless" and "immoral" assume a new, broader meaning.