Religion: Religion in Schools

U.S. parents and churchmen alike had a right to rub their eyes in wonder last week at the news from Britain. In the U.S. almost every State makes it a crime to give sectarian instruction in the public schools, but within a few weeks Parliament will actually make religious instruction and daily worship a statutory requirement for every school in the United Kingdom.

Surprising as this British move seems today, the passage of such a law would have seemed even more surprising to men of earlier generations—for exactly opposite reasons. For centuries Christianity...