Danforth Foundation (Saint Louis, Mo.)

The Danforth Seminary Internship Program, first inaugurated in 1956, was designed to afford opportunities for students chosen as interns to test themselves for a possible vocation in campus Christian work.

During the 1960s, a growing apathy toward Christianity was apparent in American society, particularly among college and university students. This attitude was evidenced by changing religious awareness and commitment, moral values, social action and political thought. The Danforth Foundation sponsored a study beginning in 1963, under the direction of Kenneth Underwood, which sought to create an awareness of the issues and present resulting implications. In 1969, Wesleyan University Press published The Church, the University and Social Policy, Volumes I and II, containing the basic reports and papers of the Danforth Study.

During the 1960s, a growing apathy toward Christianity was apparent in American society, particularly among college and university students. This attitude was evidenced by changing religious awareness and commitment, moral values, social action and political thought.

In view of these crucial changes and the resulting "daily multiform contradictions and discontinuities in our thought and action as we try to live with the vestiges of our traditional faith in a modern, technical, rapidly changing, mass society," the Danforth Foundation sponsored a study beginning in 1963 which sought to create an awareness of the issues and present resulting implications.

Kenneth Underwood, a faculty member of Wesleyan University and formerly of Yale Divinity School, was appointed as director of the study. Through questionnaires administered to a sample group of campus and parish ministers and university students, sufficient data was gathered for analysis, serving as the representative opinions of this specific population of American society.

In 1969, Wesleyan University Press published two volumes containing the basic reports and papers of the Danforth study. The publication of these volumes was never realized by Dr. Underwood due to his death from cancer in 1968 at age fifty.