To the editor:

After having been on the faculty of the Kansas University department of religious studies since 1978, I retired two years ago. I can, therefore, only speak from my experience in the past, not from present knowledge. I am responding to remarks that the Journal-World (Saturday, Dec. 3) claimed to have been made by Professor Paul Mirecki.

I agree with Professor Mirecki that the religious studies department at KU does not teach how to be religious. Instead, it studies how human beings express their religiousness. The department is one of the humanities and as such does not pass judgment on the human behavior it investigates but tries to comprehend it.

My own experience, however, belies his alleged statement that the majority of the faculty in the department “are agnostics or atheists, or they just don’t care.” Not only does the description not fit me, but it also does not correspond to my perceptions of my colleagues during my employment at KU. I have found those colleagues to be religiously sensitive, open-minded and deeply caring about religious issues. My experience also was that they took great care to insure that their classes reflected the most recent and well-researched scholarship without infusing their personal biases into the instruction.

S. Daniel Breslauer,

Lawrence