Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Harvard Students Discuss Religion More Than Sex
Thursday, February 8, 2007

94% discuss religion. And 71% attend religious services. Or so says a new report from Harvard, released as an attempt to quiet the furor over the fact that the school dropped the religion requirement that had been proposed last year.

Harvard University announced Wednesday its biggest curriculum overhaul in three decades, putting new emphasis on sensitive religious and cultural issues, the sciences and overcoming U.S. "parochialism."

The curriculum at the oldest U.S. university has been criticized as focusing too narrowly on academic topics instead of real-life issues, or for being antagonistic to organized religion. Revisions have been in the works for three years.

One of the eight new required subject areas -- "societies of the world" -- aims to help students overcome U.S. "parochialism" by "acquainting them with the values, customs and institutions that differ from their own," said a 34-page Harvard report on the changes.

An earlier proposal would have made Harvard unique among its elite Ivy League peers by requiring undergraduates to study religion as a distinct subject, but that was dropped in December.

The changes to the general-education requirements, imposed on students outside their major, still address religious beliefs and practices. Study of those issues, however, would be folded into a broader subject of "culture and belief." ...
Founded to train Puritan ministers 371 years ago, Harvard has been criticized by some conservatives in recent decades as a liberal bastion unfriendly toward religion.
A task force of six professors and two students which drafted the new curriculum said religion should be addressed, but only as one of several cultural influences.

"Harvard is a secular institution but religion is an important part of our students' lives," it said. It noted that 94 percent of Harvard's incoming students report that they discuss religion "frequently" or "occasionally," and 71 percent say that they attend religious services.

The report doesn't actually record the percentage that discuss sex, but can it possibly be more than 94%? Isn't anybody shy there?! I predict that more Harvard students discuss religion than sex, and I predict that this is a topic of some amusement in New Haven...

Labels: Religion in America

Posted by B Feiler at 7:47 AM
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