3
permissible as long as the institution is not “pervasively sectarian.” In a pervasively
sectarian institution, however, the religious and secular aspects of the institution are so
closely intertwined it would be impossible to provide funding without advancing the
religious mission of the institution in violation of the First Amendment.
Some church-related schools refuse to accept funds beyond student financial aid
in order to retain their autonomy and to avoid constitutional conflicts.
5
For those that do
accept more direct forms of aid, the pervasively sectarian doctrine creates a constitutional
dilemma. On the one hand, institutions adopting a program of integration of faith and
learning, with its emphasis on advancing a Christian worldview throughout the curricular
and non-curricular programs of the institution, run the risk of becoming pervasively
sectarian and inviting legitimate establishment clause challenges. On the other hand, the
U.S. Supreme Court has typically upheld aid to church-related institutions of higher
education and has been unwilling to declare a school pervasively sectarian. Moreover, in
recent years a significant number of justices have declared their opposition to the
pervasively sectarian doctrine and the no-aid interpretation of the establishment clause on
which it rests. Instead they have suggested that the Court replace the traditional no-aid
approach to church-state jurisprudence and replace it with an equal treatment or neutrality
approach that would allow for more aid to flow from the state to religious institutions as
long as the aid was distributed to religious and non-religious entities in a
nondiscriminatory fashion. Consequently, the constitutionality of a church-related
institution receiving government aid will not only depend upon the nature of the aid and
5
Wheaton College, Grove City, and Hillsdale are among the evangelical Christian schools that refuse to
take government grants in order to maintain their institutional autonomy; Naomi Schaefer, “Vulnerable
Under God: Could Religious Colleges Be the Next Institutions Under Legal Attack?” American Enterprise
(2002): 4.
Convention