Baylor Professor Chosen for Religious Education Seminar

Dr. Michael Beaty, associate professor of philosophy at Baylor University, recently accepted an invitation to participate in the Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education.
The Lilly Seminar is a three-year project in which leading scholars of diverse institutions will gather twice a year for discussion on the role of religion in American academic life. The institutions represented include the universities of Princeton, Yale, Notre Dame, Chicago, California at Berkeley, Fuller Theological Seminary, the American Academy of Religion. The New York Times will also be a participant.
Beaty and Dr. Larry Lyon, professor of sociology at Baylor, are engaged in a research project on Baylor and Baptist higher education which is supported by Lilly Endowment Inc., who also is sponsoring the seminar. A manuscript based on their research should be completed by May, 1997.
Religiously-affiliated institutions need to examine their place in American higher education, said Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff, the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University who is co-director of seminar.
The topic of the first meeting is a series of questions which are: where does religion currently stand in higher education and how historically has that point been reached? How does religion constrict or enrich the academic enterprise? How does it comport with academic freedom? What does and should church-relatedness entail for institutions sponsored by denominations? How should government relate to religiously affiliated institutions and to religious activity in state-sponsored schools?
The first meeting of the group will take place Jan. 31- Feb. 2, 1997, in Key Largo, Fla.
For more information, contact Beaty at 755-3368.