Robert M. Healey

The Preaching Ministry in Scotland's First Book of Discipline

On 27 April 1560 the Protestant Lords of the Great Council of the Realm of Scotland covenanted to procure by all means possible that “the true preaching of Gods Word may have free passage within this realm, with due administration of the sacraments and all things depending upon the said Word.” 1 Two days later they charged a group of ministers “to commit to writing and in a book deliver … judgments touching the reformation of Religion.” 2 Three weeks later, on 20 May, the ministers, whose names “have not been recorded in any part of the surviving documents,” delivered to the Lords their recommendations for the organization of a reformed Christian church for Scotland. 3

An Interim Report on the Study of Religion in Public Schools

The public school in a free society can be repeatedly baffled in its attempts to treat religion competently and satisfactorily. The subject of religion deals consciously with a group of ques tions, often sentimentalized but nevertheless urgent, concerning the nature of man and his place and responsibility in the uni verse in which he finds himself. To avoid serious consideration of the answers proposed to these questions is to give up any concept of education beyond mere training in facts and skills. On the other hand, to treat religion in the public schools of a pluralistic democracy is to risk embarrassment and possibly explosion in both class and community. Religions differ, and the commitment of their respective adherents is often passionate. Furthermore, the careful examination of the belief of any in dividual will usually reveal a complex combination of the qualities of circularity and unpredictability. Belief is circular in the sense that a person sees the need for commitment, a world view, and a moral code as three aspects of a logically integrated whole. But religion is unpredictable in the sense that as people move from any one of these aspects of belief into any other, they move in differing ways and make differing or conflicting af firmations as they do so. These are affirmations which the public school in a free society may neither defend nor reject on religious grounds. Thus in all its dealings with religion the public school must show extraordinary perception, vision, wisdom, and self control. It must limit itself carefully in the field of religion