Indiana School of Religion

Established in Bloomington, Ind., as the Bloomington Bible Chair by the Disciples of Christ in 1910; name changed to Indiana School of Religion in 1917.

The mission of the School was to provide Biblical and religious education to, and to promote the religious education of, students who attended Indiana University. In 1953, IU established an Area of Comparative Religion, which allowed the students to begin taking religious courses for credit. In the mid-1960s, IU went on to organize a Religious Studies program and it was largely due to this move by IU that led to the dissolution of the Indiana School of Religion in 1970.

According to its charter, the mission of the Indiana School of Religion was to provide and promote Biblical and religious education to students who attended Indiana University. This statement of purpose was based on the idea that higher education would be incomplete without providing students with instruction in the religious culture of the United States and the world. As a predecessor to the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, the Indiana School of Religion attempted to fulfilled this mission during its sixty-year tenure at the university from 1910-1970.

The Indiana School of Religion began as a small community association formed by the Disciples of Christ in the early 1900’s. Initially, the school was called the Bloomington Bible Chair. This organization was part of the Bible Chair movement of Christian churches around the turn of the 20th century. In 1904 the State Christian Church Convention approved a plea by T. J. Clark, pastor of the Kirkwood Avenue Christian Church in Bloomington, for the establishment of a Bible Chair at Indiana University. Five years later the initiative was taken up by President William Lowe Bryan, and on October 29, 1910, the Bloomington Bible Chair was incorporated, and began holding meetings in the Kirkwood Avenue Church. The name was changed to the Indiana School of Religion in 1917. In its first meeting on November 7, 1910, a Board of Directors was organized, comprised of 11 directors, with Dr. Joseph C. Todd as chairman. Within the Board of Directors, an Executive Committee was organized to carry out the business of corporation between the times of the annual meetings of the board.

Initially, members of the Board of Directors were limited to members of the Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ. Similarly, the group of people targeted for enrollment in the School was the Christian student body and members of the Christian Church within the community. However, in 1922, a resolution was passed to allow members of other religions to hold positions on the board, and the focus began to shift to be more inclusive of peoples of other denominations. By the 1950’s there was a big push to target members of the three major religious traditions: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Beginning in 1914, the Indiana School of Religion was housed in a series of buildings at the intersection of Indiana Avenue and Third Street in Bloomington, directly adjacent to the campus of Indiana University. The initial building purchased in 1914 and which sat on the corner of Third Street and Indiana Avenue burned down on December 26 of that same year. Another building was acquired across the street in 1915, and was used for offices, classrooms and the residence of the Dean until 1921. Other buildings that occupied this area included two student residence halls, Wharton Hall and Bethany Hall; the Bungalow, a residence for faculty members; and the School of Religion Hall, which was used for offices, a chapel, library, and classrooms. In 1956, a limestone building, paid for mainly through a large endowment from the Eli Lilly Company, was constructed on Union and Seventh Streets to provide classrooms, offices, and other necessary facilities for the School in one building.

For the first 43 years, the School of Religion offered courses in religion to university students and the community on a non-credit basis, using facilities adjacent to the Indiana University campus. The expenses for the school and faculty salaries were paid for completely by donors and benefactors. During these first decades, enrollments were not large, and the School struggled to sustain itself. From the 1940’s to the mid-1960’s, there was a great deal of debate over the issue of teaching religion at state-funded schools. Indiana School of Religion officials were heavily involved in researching this issue, putting the school at the forefront for implementing the concept of religious instruction in state-owned institutions of higher education.

After the retirement of Joseph Todd in 1952, Rev. Daniel J. (D. J.) Bowden was appointed as director of Indiana School of Religion in 1953. In that same year, Indiana University established an “Area of Comparative Religion” within its College of Arts and Sciences, supervised by a faculty committee with Dr. John W. Ashton as chair. Many courses taught in this area were by faculty of the Indiana School of Religion, who were given the title of lecturer by the university. This resulted in the first religion courses to be taught for college credit at Indiana University, with Harold E. Hill of the School of Religion being the lecturer for these courses. However, at the time it was unconstitutional to use tax money to support these faculty members, so they continued to be paid through School of Religion funds.

In 1963, two factors played in transferring the responsibility of religious studies from the School of Religion to Indiana University. First, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tax money could be used to teach religion on a non-sectarian basis. Second, the university received a grant from the Danforth endowment that supplied monies for the purpose of religious instruction. As a result, an interdisciplinary committee was formed to decide the future of religious studies at Indiana University. Joseph Sutton, the chair of the committee, recommended that there be a clean break from the School of Religion. The following year, Indiana University commenced its Religious Studies program, with courses still being taught primarily by School of Religion faculty members. However, in 1965, Religious Studies was established as a department of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the university decided to start from scratch and appointed new faculty and staff from outside the School of Religion, placing the existence of the School in jeopardy. Over the next five years, the Indiana School of Religion was gradually forced to close shop.

Eventually, D. J. Bowden, director of the School, was offered an appointment in the university’s scholarship department. Although Harold Hill was kept on as an instructor, he resigned from this position after disagreements with Joseph Sutton, who had become Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, and left to teach at the University of Tulsa. The School of Religion building was sold, and the monies invested into an endowment. The Board of Directors at the School of Religion was persuaded to transfer these funds, along with the annual income from the school’s primary endowment, to the Religious Studies program. This money allowed the program to make headway as a full-fledged department because they could hire teacher assistants to take some of the burden of instruction off the young faculty, thus expanding the available courses. By 1970, there was little left of what was once the Indiana School of Religion, and on May 20 of that year, to officially terminate its existence, a resolution was adopted at a meeting of the Board of Directors to dissolve the school and all its organizations.