Supreme Court to hear religious scholarship case

The U.S. Supreme Court will address an important issue next fall for students interested in pursuing degrees in theology. They will seek to answer the question of the constitutionality of supporting or denying a student a scholarship based on the student’s choice of theology as a major.

The specific case at hand involves Washington student Joshua Davey, who qualified for a Washington Promise Scholarship. The state revoked the scholarship when Davey announced he would be studying theology at Northwest College. Davey will be represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for ACLJ, said, “There are 37 states that have either a constitutional amendment or a statute that bans this kind of - what they call - ‘government aid to pervasively sectarian schools.’ This case is going to decide whether that’s constitutional or not.”

Sekulow explained that the argument Davey will use before the high court is that since the individual student makes his own decision on a major, the government really has no right to be involved.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the case will affect many college students across the country. Elvin Stephenson, a student at Nazarene Bible College, said, “I wouldn’t have been able to do it at all [without government assistance]. It would have been out of reach.” He said that if you look out across a chapel service at his college, most of the students you will see receive some kind of government aid.

Mary Butler, vice president of finance at Nazarene, said that about 67 percent of the college’s students are on some form of financial aid. He said that financial aid is more important for those pursuing theology because although ministers provide a high value to a community, they are often not very highly paid.

“It’s vital then that persons going into a low-paying profession have the assistance that it takes to get the education to be able to provide the quality of service they need to provide,” said Butler.

— E.P. News