Ritual and Regulation

For much of our history, the College of Charleston was almost exclusively interested in serving the religious needs of the Protestant majority student body. Non-Protestant, particularly Jewish and Catholic, students had limited ability to request the respect of their own religious boundaries or to opt out of Protestant practices in any permissible way that did not come with significant consequences. The model student was expected to be, or at the very least behave like, a Protestant Christian.

Until the mid-20th century, chapel attendance was mandatory for students every weekday morning. Absences were recorded and reported each day, and if a student missed two or more chapel meetings in one week they would be subject to disciplinary action by the president of the college. The threat of direct punishment from the top official of the school was no small matter for a student in a precarious religious position. For these students, college life came with overt instructions to show up and act Christian. Similarly, in order to achieve honors standing at the college, students were required to attend at least ninety percent of the semester's chapel services. This religious component of academic awards meant that to be acknowledged as a high standing student one had to regularly participate in practicing Christianity, forcing students to decide between rightful recognition for their academic achievements and their religious convictions. These standards of attendance and awards removed any pretense of meaningful choice surrounding chapel services for non-Christian students.

Non-Christian students also found very little support from their Christian peers with regards to the mandatory chapel policy. Student opinion on the matter was mostly favorable, as is expressed in an op-ed piece in the student literary magazine published in 1930, which argued against the national trend of abolishing these types of religious requirements at colleges and universities. In the article, the author claims "it is obvious that the average student should derive some benefit from the Bible lesson and prayer... possible exception might be made for students of an alien belief. But it would be hard to draw the line in such cases, and a few minutes of religious exercise could not possibly do any harm." The assumptions made here are highly representative of how the majority Christian student body approached the notion of religious difference. This idea that it should be "obvious" that chapel services would be beneficial to all is inherently dismissive of the ways that forced participation harmed the emotional and religious lives of non-Christian students on campus. The presumption that participation in Christianity is always a positive good, and the language of "alien belief" to refer to non-Christians, was ostracizing and degrading to students who did not want to be a part of Christian practices.

The expectation to assimilate the College was communicating to non-Christian students was deeply embedded in institutional culture. Even among peers, non-Christian students were held to an assumed Christian standard, and received little support when contending with administrative policies. There were virtually no meaningful avenues that non-Christian students could take to distance or remove themselves from Christian worship, forcing these students to make divisive and difficult decisions weighing their status as a student against their own religious traditions. This historical centering of Christian ritual on campus pushed others to the periphery, and demonstrated a serious lack of care for the spiritual well-being of non-Christian students.