Church-related college eligible for state funds

Academe, Nov/Dec 2000 by Bradley, Gwendolyn

A federal judge has reversed an earlier ruling and declared that Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland, is eligible to receive state funds. The college is controlled by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Maryland provides state-funded grants to private colleges, including several other religiously affiliated institutions, through the Joseph A. Sellinger Program. Under the program's eligibility requirements, recipients must be accredited and maintain degree-granting programs outside the area of religion. In addition, program funds may not be used for "sectarian purposes" such as religious worship or religious instruction.

In 1992 the Maryland Higher Education Commission ruled that Columbia Union College was unable to meet the last requirement because it was "pervasively sectarian." In a 1996 ruling, Judge Marvin Garbis agreed. The college appealed his decision, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered the lower court to reconsider.

Pervasive sectarianism has been a litmus test for religious institutions seeking state funds since Roemer v. the Board of Public Works of Maryland, a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that also involved Maryland's Sellinger Program. In a separate ruling this June, four of nine Supreme Court justices opined that the "pervasive sectarian" test should be discarded. But because they did not constitute a majority, Garbis again applied the test to Columbia Union College's case.

Columbia Union requires its approximately 675 traditional, full-time students to attend weekly chapel services; residential students must attend an additional three worship sessions a week. The college also gives preference to Seventh-day Adventists in faculty appointments, demands that course syllabi in every department include a statement on the integration of faith and learning, and instructs faculty members to "bear in mind their peculiar obligation as Christian scholars." About 90 percent of the faculty members and thirty-four of thirty-eight trustees belong to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In the most recent go-around, Matthew Finkin, professor of law at the University of Illinois, served as an expert witness for the Maryland Higher Education Commission. Finkin, a former chair of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, argued that because of its sectarian nature, the college does not foster an environment of intellectual freedom in accordance with the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

But in August, Garbis disagreed, reversing his earlier ruling. He found that even though religious doctrine appears in courses outside the college's religion department, religious indoctrination is a secondary, rather than a primary, goal of those courses. His ruling makes Columbia Union eligible to receive about $800,000 a year from the Sellinger Program. Maryland officials plan to appeal the ruling.