God and man at St. Grottlesex…: at many prominent boarding schools, Christianity is slowly being forgotten

National Review, Dec 31, 1997 by Andrew Oliver

During the 1960s and '70s, America's elite boarding schools were tempted by social upheaval to stray from their Christian foundations. Many succumbed. Choate Rosemary Hall, which was founded in 1890 by an Anglican priest, decided to do away with compulsory daily chapel and replace it with an interdenominational and intercredal service on the second Thursday of each month. And Choate's religion department now boasts a catalogue of courses on Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey reduced required chapel attendance to twice a term (even as a new pipe organ was being installed in the Chapel) and no longer sings the school hymn because, according to a school spokesman, it is too "Christocentric in nature."

The situation at Choate and Lawrenceville is by no means unusual. In Nearer, My God, William F. Buckley Jr. examines the state of religion at a dozen New England prep schools and finds evidence of a general collapse. Over the last several decades, a number of schools, including Phillips Exeter and Deerfield, have eliminated compulsory chapel attendance. And most other schools -- e.g., Milton, Hotchkiss, St. Paul's, Brooks, St. George's -- reduced their religion requirements by varying degrees. In fact, Groton School is exceptional for having maintained an Episcopal religious tradition which includes required daily chapel five times a week, Sunday chapel (or the equivalent for Catholic and Jewish students), courses in Bible studies and ethics, and grace before meals.

Most of the boarding schools in the Northeast had, before the 1960s, a religious culture which actively affirmed the truth of Christianity. Bible classes provided an intellectual foundation for faith; daily chapel services taught students to practice their faith, and conveyed to them the idea that religion was something real -- not something of merely academic or historical interest. In fact, religion was perceived to be sufficiently important that students were, to a certain extent, selected on its basis. The major boarding schools were populated almost exclusively by the sons of prominent American Protestants.

In the 1960s, the schools began to broaden their student bodies. The sons of prominent Catholics and Jews were increasingly being admitted. Then the sons of less prominent Americans. And then the daughters. Finally, the schools began attracting interest internationally. Today, foreigners account for nearly 12 per cent of the students in these schools. Unfortunately, as the schools have diversified their student bodies, they have, for the most part, become timid about defending their identity as Christian schools.

Almost without exception, the schools continue to offer courses in religious subjects loosely defined. It's true that Taft's classification in the religion category of its course Race, Class, and Gender in American Society is a bit of a stretch, but then Taft is one of the few boarding schools that has never been affiliated with any religious denomination. However, while the boarding schools tend to offer basic courses in the Bible and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, except at Groton, Kent, and St. George's these sorts of courses are no longer required. At some schools students must take a minimum number of religion courses. But these can often be selected from catalogues with an impressive variety of choices. For example, at Exeter, students can satisfy the requirement by taking courses on Zen Buddhism, existentialism, and Values in a Changing World; at Lawrenceville, by taking courses on Chinese Philosophy and Islam.

The diversity of these course offerings is, of course, by itself unobjectionable. However, seen side by side with the schools' general retreat from the practice of Christianity, it is a testament to a deliberate effort to remain entirely neutral as to the truth of Christianity.

Curiously, it is at the schools which have most thoroughly abandoned Christianity that students are most sensitive to its appearance. At Deerfield, for example, where neither chapel attendance nor religious courses are required, students who object to the Judaeo-Christian overtones of the convocation, baccalaureate, and commencement ceremonies are not required to attend. These sensitive students have also campaigned successfully to have the hymn "Lead On, O King Eternal," replaced at the ceremonies with the less Judaeo-Christian, less masculine in imagery, "Morning Has Broken."

Such concessions to non-Christian students are made, of course, to acknowledge the importance of other "spiritual views." But, in fact, it is at the schools where Christianity is still taken seriously that other beliefs are also taken most seriously. At Groton, Kent, and St. George's, for example, students who wish to be excused from the Sunday Eucharist are required to attend formal services of another kind.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult for the boarding schools to adopt an agnostic view of Christianity. Students are generally aware that Christianity once animated their communities. The empty chapels continually declare it. Because it is no longer practiced, students must conclude that Christianity was abandoned either because it is less true than other religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. -- or because it, and other religions, are simply false. They cannot conclude that Christianity is as true as -- or more true than --other religions; if that were the case, it would still be practiced.