Bad news for religious education...

I don't know if any of you have kids in religious elementary or secondary schools. But there is a court case working its way through the courts in California that could have an effect on religious schools all over the country.

The case involves 5 students from Calvary Chapel school in Murrieta, CA. They applied to the University of California, and some of the courses they took in high school were not accepted because they were taught from a narrow, Christian perspective. A federal court judge ruled that the university was within its rights to disallow these courses based on its Christian content.

I understand that universities have the right to decide what courses they will allow. But I do worry that this ruling will have the effect of forcing Christian schools to alter the spiritual components of its classes. It could happen that Christian schools will tone down or even eliminate those components, in order to make their classes conform to a certain university's idea of how the world works.

The case itself will be appealed, first to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Christian schools will lose there, and then their last appeal will be to the US Supreme Court.

I guess it all boils down to your view of the world. Universities are basically controlled by people who have accepted a materialistic view of the world. They don't have any room for spiritual or supernatural ideas to enter into the realm of objective truth. Depending on how widely they want to enforce their worldview, they could effectively neuter Christian secondary education in the US....

Read reports about the case here and here.