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For thousands of young Americans, such a dismissal today would be intellectualhleresy. Brown University reports that more students are taking courses in religion than ever before; the number of Smith girls enrolled in religion courses has doubled to 442 since 1950. On campus after campus, says Amherst's James Martin, "there is what one might call at least a new look at the values of our Hebrew-Christian heritage, not only as a neglected and important factor in our cultural history, but also as a possible source of faith for living in today's world—or yesterday's, or tomorrow's. For some men the new look is a second look at ideas and personalities briefly encountered in Sunday school and long since dismissed.
"For others ... it is a first look at something brand-new to their thinking. These come to us as religious illiterates. They are totally ignorant of Biblical literature . . . What they find, when they look for a first time with relatively mature minds at the Hebrew Epic, the Hebrew prophets, the wisdom of the authors of Job, the life and teachings of Jesus, the Resurrection Faith of the early Christian church, the synoptic vision of an Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, the courage of Luther or the consistency of Calvin, the . . . challenging insights of Kierkegaard, Buber, Earth, Tillich, or the Niebuhrs—what they find when they look at all this for the first time is, I suggest, at least something to think about, and finally something to decide about, one way or another."