Religion: The Iowa Plan

In the folklore of modern secular education, it is widely held that college religion courses, to be admissible, must have all the faith squeezed out of them. In consequence, many U.S. colleges load their religion curricula with "safe" and secular subjects, e.g., the Bible as literature and contemporary religious ideals. The School of Religion at the State University of Iowa has long disagreed. There, along with conventional, basic religion courses, a harmoniously working faculty of Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish clergymen give honest representations of their respective religious teachings in separate courses and for college credits.

Last week in Iowa City the...