The History of Released Time in Calif.

In Los Angeles the Christian Released Time Education; Bible Instruction program began in 1944. Under the umbrella of the California Education Code Section 46014. This was not a new idea to the founding organizers. As early as of 1914 the Indiana school education law permitted students to be released from school for the purpose of religious education. At this time it was permissible to use available school facilities for meetings. This brought resistance and in 1948 was taken to court in the case McCollum vs. Board of Education of Champaign Illinois. The decision rendered that it was not permissible to use the school grounds for a meeting place. Again in New York a program began after the Indiana Released Time classes started but nearby facilities were used for meeting. In 1952 the legality of this Released Time program itself faced opposition. This resulted in the case of Zorach vs. Clauson. In this regard the late Justice William O. Douglas included the following statement: This released time program involves neither religious instruction in public classrooms nor expenditure of public funds. It takes obtuse reasoning to inject any issue of the free exercise of religion into the present case. No one is forced to go to the religious exercise or instruction is brought to the classrooms of the public schools. In the McCollum case, the classrooms were used for religious instruction and the force of the public school was used to promote that instruction. Here, as we have said, the public schools do no more than accommodate their schedules to a program of outside religious instructions. We follow the McCollum case, but we cannot expand it to cover the present released time program unless separation of Church and State means that public institutions can make no adjustments of their schedules to accommodate the religious needs of the people. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion. With the Supreme Court decision behind the program, the present Los Angeles Christian Released Time Education organization incorporated and filed with the Secretary of State.

Christian

Education

Released Time Education  In  Los Angeles, Calif.