Society for Values in Higher Education

The Society for Values in Higher Education (SVHE) is a US-based non-profit membership organization. Founded in 1922 to promote the teaching of religious studies in American colleges and universities, the society’s members are now broadly interested in issues involving education, including pedagogy, ethics, and social concerns. It has no political or religious agenda. SVHE’s headquarters are at Western Kentucky University, with members across the United States and in other countries.

Most of the first colleges in the American colonies—such as Harvard College (1636), Yale College (1701), and the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) (1747)—were established by Christian churches with the mission of training clergy and lay leaders. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, many American colleges had adopted the model of the German university, focused on science rather than religion, preparing students for a wide variety of professions besides the ministry, and allowing students to choose from a large range of courses. By the early decades of the twentieth century, relatively few institutions offered courses on religion; such courses were even rarer in the rapidly growing state universities.

In 1922 Charles Foster Kent, a professor of biblical literature at Yale University, started advocating for the teaching of religion in American colleges and universities, arguing that such instruction was essential to prepare men and women for ethical practice in any profession. He founded the National Council of Schools of Religion, which would help train teachers for independent schools of religion at state universities. Renamed the National Council of Religion in Higher Education in 1924, Kent’s organization offered scholarships (later called Kent Fellowships) for graduate study in religion. Recipients of these scholarships became the nucleus of departments of religion and religious studies at universities across the country.

American higher education grew quickly in the decades after World War II, and the teaching of religion grew with it. During those decades the National Council of Religion cooperated with the Hazen Foundation to sponsor a series of Faculty Consultations on Religion that helped create programs and curricula for this instruction. Meanwhile the Danforth Foundation started offering financial support to graduate students in religion and other fields. In the early 1960s the two fellowship programs merged to create the Society for Religion in Higher Education, which continued to support the preparation of college teachers of religion and advocate for the study of religion as an important part of the humanities.

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