The Fine Print

The College Charter(s)

The founding charter of the College of Charleston made a clear claim about what kind of person was capable of running the school when it was written that "no person shall be eligible as a trustee [of the College] unless he shall profess the Christian Protestant religion." This initial charter from 1785 did not last long before being replaced. Nonetheless, it speaks to a difficult start for secularism at the College that was not so easily escaped. Although this Protestant-only rule did not apply to the general faculty and staff, the implication with the trustee position was that in order for one to be able to lead the College (successfully, correctly, morally perhaps) one had to be a member of a Protestant church. Even if the school was willing to employ non-Protestants as professors, those holding the most directorial power in terms of finance, politics, and final decisions were required to be Protestant. The College of Charleston's first charter demonstrated the school's initial commitment to building Protestant leadership and values. Ultimately, this dismissal of the potential perspective to be gained from non-Protestant leadership was fairly standard behavior for most universities in the early United States, and the College was no exception.

In 1791, the College of Charleston drafted a new charter to replace the first one, in which the clause requiring trustees to be members of a Protestant church was struck down in the name of religious freedom. However, this editorial fix was not quite as simple as just allowing anyone to take office at the College regardless of religion. In the new document, the language was changed to say "no person shall be excluded from any liberty, privilege, immunity, office, or situation in the said College, on account of his religious persuasion, provided he demean himself in a sober, peaceable, and orderly manner, and conform to the rules and regulations thereof." The problem presents itself here in the stipulations required to put religious freedom in place. The section of the charter that insists all candidates act in a "sober, peaceable, and orderly manner" reflects a not uncommon practice of devising loopholes through which Protestant leadership could censor or restrict Jews and Catholics from fully participating in positions at the College. The power to determine what kind of behavior was appropriate for non-Protestant employees remained in the hands of those in charge of the College, which may have often looked restrictive and assimilationist. With the degree to which societal norms as a whole were centered and structured around Protestant Christianity, conforming to the "rules and regulations" often looked like adhering to Protestant social values.

Petitioning the Board

In 1855, Jewish student Solomon Cohen submitted a petition to the Board of Trustees for exemption from coursework at the College related to Christianity. His petition was successful, and the Board ultimately granted him permission to graduate without completing the required theological courses, however, the Board's reasoning behind their decision to exempt him provides an interesting look into the logic that allowed Protestant leadership to let this go. In the recorded board meeting minutes, the trustees of the College discuss what they call the "evidences of Christianity" as it makes up part of the senior curriculum at the school. This language implies a level of falsity in the religion of Jewish students that Cohen is asking for exemption on the behalf of, and makes clear the College's investment in propagating Christocentric ideologies. Furthermore, as they worked to reason out how and why Jewish students may not want to participate in classes on Christianity, the Board of Trustees determined that "it may be embarrassing to students not brought up in the Christian faith" to be a part of these classes without having been raised in the tradition. The framing of the question around this supposed lack in the formative experiences of Jewish students, rather than examining how mandatory classes on Christian theology might be an infringement on religious freedom, demonstrates how the leaders of the College viewed the absence of Christianity as a personal embarrassment. Cohen's petition calls into question the status of previous Jewish students, and points to the assumption that they most likely had to silently suffer through a heavily Christian education in order to graduate. The attitudes of the Board of Trustees clearly favored Christian positions, Christian education, and Christian students. Instead of altering the curriculum, Jewish students were pushed out of class. Rather than holding equal space for uniquely Jewish learning, Jewish students were sidelined and their lack of Christianity was deemed an individual embarrassment to be dealt with discreetly.

Although from the second charter onward the College professed a basic rule of religious freedom, and technically there were no strict legal barriers in place preventing a person of any religion from holding a position at the school, close reading of early College documents points to the understanding that even in the absence of a direct claim to Protestant Christianity, an underscored commitment to normative Protestant ideology was expected anyway, in the various ways that leaders of the school discussed what religious freedom could or would mean. The Board of Trustees worked from an assumption of a Protestant Christian majority, and directed the language of the College in accordance with that, strongly reluctant to consider non-Protestant traditions as potentially valuable perspectives for the school.