USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Religious Education Association : proceedings of the first annual convention, Chicago, February 10-12, 1903 > Part 3
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6. A polemic reason. Among the phenomena of the religious world today, none is more striking than the variety of beliefs and practices. Many of these are, to modern students of religious truth, simply grotesque. With all allowance for the moral sincerity of those who cherish these singular notions and performances, sane judgments will agree that fundamentally they rest on mistaken conceptions of the Scriptures, and errone- ous methods of interpretation. But they leach our churches, and, what is worse, produce perversions of normal Christian manhood and womanhood. The only
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remedy for these is the constructive one of a better method of Bible study. Sarcasm and ridicule only intensify devotion, because they arouse the martyr spirit. Argument and debate over opinions usually lead men to fortify their peculiarities by a prejudiced use of the Scriptures. A sane method of Bible study, as a basis for the true conception of the Bible and the knowledge of its teachings, is the only way to save our churches from the loss of many to whose beautiful and sincere spirit the enthusiasm of these "isms" appeals, but of whose very deficient intellectual conceptions these same "isms" easily take advantage .. If a "next step forward" could be a germicide for these intellectual bacilli that have produced the conspicuous doctrinal and practical aberrations we now see, is it not greatly worth our while to take it ?
These, and other conditions that might be indicated, converge to make imperative some forward movement. They unite to form the cry of the man from Macedonia: "Come over and help us." When we go we may have only a jail, and rods for our backs ; but let us go never- theless. We must move toward him. A step backward would mean cowardice, a step sideward would mean dodging. Forward is the only honest direction. All agencies- homes, schools of all kinds, churches, socie- ties of young people, the religious press, and all other instrumentalities that participate in the religious educa- tion of the world-should unite in an energy whose holy discontent with the present situation would be expressed in terms similar to the motto of an organiza- tion of men once known as the "Restless Club,"
Anywhere but where we are; Nothing could be worse than this ; The best is good enough for me.
II. Can we then have any idea of what this next step will be? It must be a step. Leaping is out of order.
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"So is the kingdom of God, . . . . for the earth beareth fruit automatically; first the blade; then the car, then the full grain in the ear." We are not here to bury dynamite under existing defective agencies, to explode it by verbal or operative concussion, to delight in the loudness of detonation, and to cherish the vague hope that the paradox of such a catastrophic elevation of reluctance and good custom that has corrupted the religious world, will somehow lodge the things we want to uplift in serene and satisfactory altitudes. There is not one of us who has this spirit, or approves such a process. We are not flying or running, but walking, and we shall not grow weary in taking "the next step."
Because it is the next step, naturally it must be taken from where we now stand. Direction is always a result- ant of energies. The more numerous the energies, the more complex the problem of direction. Any single agency can walk as it pleases in the pursuit of its own ideals and take the consequences. But when different agencies combine their energies, each one modifies and is modified by every other, and the resultant direction is the product of interaction. Whatever this Convention does will necessarily be of this nature. One thing is surc, that without combination the agencies that desire improvement of the present situation cannot work together, and there is no effective way to combine with- out organization.
The idcals of such an organization must be (a) compre- hensive enough to include all desirable members of it ; (b) worthy to enlist the enthusiasm of every agency inter- ested in religious education ; (c) gradual enough to pre- vent the sense of violence in leaving the last for the next; and (d) practical enough to be possible of realiza- tion. These are the four characteristics of "the next step," whatever it may be: comprehensive, worthful, gradual, and practical. At once some directions are
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eliminated. The next step cannot be ecclesiastical. Nor can it be dogmatic. No body of conceptions, whether liberal or conservative or moderate, can form our north star. Nor can it be commercial. The farther aloof we keep from either union or rivalry with publishing enter- prises, the more hopeful will be our prospects. Since it cannot be ecclesiastical, nor dogmatic, nor commer- cial, the "next step forward" must be wholly and aggressively educational.
.
And what is the educational step to which we are shut up by the very necessities of the situation? It is simply this : An organized and vigorous campaign for uni- versal Bible study according to sound educational methods. All education is discipline in normal methods for the energy that is being educated, whether physical, mental, or moral. "Normality" is the great word. The fruit of education is developed energy acting according to normal processes. The next step forward in religious education will be educational. All hail to the pros- pect of that step! Questions as to plans, methods of accomplishing them, agencies for their execution, while of the utmost importance, are secondary compared with the clear conception of the ideal itself. This is the open path that lies before us. It satisfies the four canons imposed by the present situation, since it is compre- hensive, worthful, gradual, and practical. No objection can be found to this ideal as a resultant by any interest, whether ecclesiastical, dogmatic, or commercial. It con- fines itself to the realm to which we all belong, and invades no other.
Furthermore, it promises untold benedictions upon the conditions that impel us to take this step. It shares in the atmospheric educational enthusiasm; it is the natural evolutionary outcome of the work of the past; it is the missionary aspect of educational attainment, and so satisfies the altruistic spirit of the scholar; it
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will be effectively irenic toward those who, whether through our mistakes or their own prejudices, have spurned the study of the Scriptures; it will prevent the shock that our intelligent young people feel when they become conscious of the unlikeness between methods pursued in secular education and those followed in religious culture; and it will effectively destroy the wild notions and performances that are based upon concep- tions and processes of study that will not stand the test of intellectual sanity.
In addition to meeting the needs suggested by the conditions that have begotten this Convention, it will gratify every craving for Christian truth by every heart that properly descrves to be called spiritual. Can we not all surrender ourselves to this ideal? Is there any- thing in it that alarms even the most cautious? Does it fail in any element that the boldest can reasonably demand? And will it not unite all agencies under the penalties of their own unbelief in the apparent axiom that there is now needed an organized and vigorous campaign for universal Bible study according to sound educational methods ?
The consideration of results need not detain us. Wc may be like men walking through the woods with a lantern on a dark night. The end of the journey may not be in sight. We do not care if it is not. But the lantern gives enough light for the next step. And that we ought to take at once, unless we are prepared to spend the night in the woods.
PRESIDENT J. W. BASHFORD, PH.D., D.D.,
OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, DELAWARE, OHIO
The problem which confronts us is the advancement of religious education among our young people without adopting any measure which even looks toward the union of church and state. It is casy to maintain the
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independence of church and state-we have done that for a hundred years. If, on the other hand, we had a state religion, it would be easy to foster the religious education of the young. But to forbid our state uni- versities and public schools taking any step toward the adoption of a state religion, and at the same time to advance the religious education of the young-this is the problem which confronts us.
A glance at history may throw some light upon the problem. In 1630 the town of Boston was founded. The second entry in the town records is as follows : " Resolved, That Brother Philemon Pourpont be entreated to become scholemaster for the nurture and instruction of our children." The Boston Public Library contains the curriculum of her public school in 1781-one hun- dred and fifty years after its organization. The course of study then consisted of the New England Primer, Dillworth's Speller, the Psalter, the Creed, the New Testa- ment ; and the course closed with the study of the Old Testament. Every textbook in the course, aside from the reader and the speller, was a text-book on religion. Out of curiosity I examined Dillworth's Speller, and found that the spelling lessons were interspersed with moral and religious instructions in order that the young people wrestling with our abominable English orthography might be duly reminded that there was a God above them and a judgment day ahead. I turned to the New England Primer, and found that the first six pages were devoted to the alphabet and short words in spelling. Then fol- lowed a short catechism, the Lord's Prayer, Watts' "Hymns for Children," and two more catechisms. You thus see that, from the founding of the public schools in New England to the close of the American Revolution, the public school was simply the hand-maiden of the church, training the children of the colony in orthodoxy and in practical righteousness.
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Doubtless the Puritans were narrow and bigoted. Yet the religious training of their children for a hundred and fifty years produced by 1776 a body of men whose clear thought, lofty patriotism, and moral heroism in the Revolution astonished the civilized world.
But our ancestors left the Old World for the sake of religious freedom ; and the dread of a state church, together with the growth of liberty of conscience, culmi- nated in the New World in the complete separation of church and state at the adoption of our constitution. This led to a revolution in the curriculum of the com- mon schools between 1780 and 1820. Not a religious text-book can be found in a public school in the United States today. We have solved thoroughly-and I trust forever-one-half of the problem which confronted us.
The other half of the problem, namely the religious instruction of the young, is stirring the civilized world today. England, in the name of the religious training of her children, has recently adopted so unjust and obnoxious a system of ecclesiastical instruction in her public schools that we may hope for a party revolution. In France one ministry has resigned and another is seriously threatened by the political and ecclesiastical reaction which has arisen from the attempt to separate the church and the state in the religious training of the children. What solution can we find for this second part of the problem -the part which is still vexing the leading nations of the Old World ?
Four steps at least seem possible : First, let all teachers and public speakers and newspapers lay fresh emphasis upon the responsibility of parents for the moral and religious training of their children. We have approached dangerously near state socialism in our sys- tem of public education. We can readily defend the maintenance of public schools by taxation on the ground that some general intelligence on the part of all our
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people is essential to the safety of the republic. But there hardly seems to be adequate reason for the state to supply text-books for the children any more than for the state to supply food and clothing. Certainly text-books, like food and clothing, should be furnished by the city to the children whose parents are unable or cannot be compelled to supply their little ones with these needed articles. But the wholesale furnishing of text-books for all children, like the wholesale attempt to furnish instruc- tion in all possible subjects, only tends to foster the sentiment of irresponsibility upon the part of fathers and mothers.
An indirect and perhaps inevitable result of the attempt of the church to furnish all the religious instruc- tion needed by the children has been the lessening of responsibility upon the part of fathers and mothers for the spiritual welfare of their own.
The forward movement for the advancement of religious education should begin with a vigorous attempt upon the part of ministers and educators and editors to throw back upon parents the chief responsibility for the religious welfare of their children. An earnest effort upon the part of fathers and mothers to cultivate the friendship of their boys and girls, the sharing of family interests and responsibilities between parents and chil- dren, the exchange of mutual confidences during the turbulent period of adolescence, and especially the mutual exchange of hopes in spiritual struggles, will advance in a degree beyond calculation the moral and religious growth of the young people of America.
The old system of family prayers and household religion has disappeared too largely. Perhaps it was too formal and mechanical. In spite of the system, or pos- sibly because of it, there was self-suppression and a lack of a joyous, victorious type of family piety. Its re-establishment seems to many an impossible achieve-
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ment. But the cultivation of a cheerful, practical house- hold piety, with Scripture mottoes and hymns and blessings and prayers together; the laying of the chief emphasis in religion upon a childlike trust in God mani- festing itself in daily righteousness and in the gentle courtesies of the new chivalry -such household piety commends itself alike to the common-sense and the sentiments of our American people. The interest and the love of parents are already assured in our new enter- prise. What ought to be done can be done. Let us inau- gurate a crusade for the introduction and acquaintance and mutual companionship of parents and children ; let us arouse the dormant sense of responsibility upon the part of parents for their children as the first step in the spiritual progress of the twentieth century.
The second step in the advancement of religious education in the United States is the improvement of our Sunday schools. The brief history recited above shows that between 1780 and 1820 the public-school curriculum was revolutionized. The purely religious course of study was supplanted by a secular course of study. The Sunday school was a providential discovery for the crisis which confronted the American people at the separation of church and state. And the Sunday school has rendered a providential and immortal service to the nation. Harsh criticism of this institution is due to the blindness which fails to recognize its providential place in American history, and to the injustice which fails to appreciate the service which love renders freely to our children.
But the very greatness of the service which the Sun- day school has rendered the nation in the past, her unique position as the teacher of morality and religion to our children, should make us all the more eager to se- cure all possible improvement for the future.
I do not think that this improvement will arise by
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employing teachers generally in our Sunday schools as we employ them in our day schools. Many men and women whose incomes are far greater than the incomes of our teachers in the day schools are serving our Ameri- can Sunday schools out of love for the young people. It is absurd to speak of men like the late Lewis Miller and D. L. Moody, like John Wanamaker and B. F. Jacobs, Associate Justice Brewer and Russell Conwell, Drs. Hurlbut and Peloubet, like Henry Clay Trumbull and Bishop Warren and Bishop Vincent, as mere "arti- sans in teaching," "practicing" on the souls of our chil- dren. When the profession of teaching in the American Sunday school ceases to be a call of duty and a labor of love and becomes the drudgery of hirelings, we shall see the decadence of the most fruitful form of spiritual activity in our churches.
On the other hand, the members of the church and the fathers and mothers of the children taught should at least acknowledge the loving service of the Sunday- school teachers by furnishing them, at the expense of the church, a fine working teachers' library, with the best possible lesson-helps and with the latest appliances and objects for illustrating and making interesting the les- sons. More, the church ought to furnish her Sunday- school teachers an opportunity to kindle afresh their en- thusiasm and to enrich their mental and spiritual lives by sending them to Chautauqua assemblies and summer schools where they can increase their knowledge of the Bible and their proficiency in the religious training of the children. Surely we can push the organization of non- resident classes among Sunday-school teachers for the thirty-seven courses already organized by the American Institute of Sacred Literature.
I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I feel an inward conviction that during the next ten or fifteen years a million people ought to be organized for the
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daily study of the Bible. If we can secure through the Institute of Sacred Literature an intelligent grasp of each author's meaning in writing the various books of the Bible, and then rekindle enthusiasm by the devo- tional study of the Bible as the Word of God, we can inaugurate a spiritual revolution among teachers and stu- dents in the next twenty-five years, which will be greater in its consequences than any other religious revolution inaugurated in the history of the church. How more fittingly can we prepare for and introduce the Dispensa- tion of the Spirit ?
The third step in the religious advancement of the young people of the United States should be taken by our private colleges. In these institutions of learning, from Yale, Harvard, Hopkins, Chicago, Northwestern, and Stanford down to the humblest college founded by the weakest church in America, there cannot arise the slightest embarrassment over any possible union of church and state, or the slightest objection to the more vigorous moral and spiritual activity of the profes- sors.
They say in Germany: "As the young men in the universities think today, so will the nation think tomor- row." We teachers in the private institutions of learning owe a greater service to the ideals of the Christian men and women who founded our universities and whose sac- rifices make possible our lives of study than we have yet recognized, much less discharged. More should be done by us in teaching the Bible as the most potent moral literature of the world, and as containing a revelation of the righteousness and love of God in the gift of Jesus Christ. It is not creditable to strong universities that they maintain chairs in almost all possible subjects-and not one of them has a needless chair-it is not credit- able that they maintain chairs of dentistry and farriery and have no chair of the English Bible. "But these
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ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone."
When we remember that there are 129,000 young people in our private colleges and universities and profes- sional schools, as compared with 46,000 in our state uni- versities, when we remember that these private colleges and universities are not restrained by any fear of the union of church and state-surely it becomes our high duty, as it is our providential privilege, to set the pace of moral and spiritual training in the American universi- ties for the twentieth century. But we can do more than teach. We can co-operate with the Christian stu- dents in promoting the religious life of the universities, just as we already co-operate with them in athletics, and take them to work beside us in our laboratories, and unite with them in scientific and classical clubs. We can thus help young people to close the chasm between the actual and ideal, and do much to advance the reli- gious life of the nation. Above all, in this new era of world-expansion, let us present Christ as the hope of the race, and appeal to the moral heroism of our students to carry the message of eternal life, along with our com- merce and our inventions, to all the nations of the earth.
Fourthly, the teachers in the state universities, and especially in the common schools, can do much to advance the moral and religious life of the young. We must never forget the first maxim of teaching, that example is more powerful than precept. We all feel that a teacher who is constantly striving in public-school work to drag in the dogmas of his church fails to com- prehend the genius of the republic and is disloyal to the great mass of his supporters who are not members of his sect. The public must not permit any acts upon the part of teachers which suggest a union of church and state. Upon the other hand, the state does not assume to invade the sanctity of private life. Indeed, the state
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is glad, on purely public grounds, to secure the finest and most ideal characters for public-school work. And there are thousands of cases in our public schools where a Christian woman, like President Mckinley's sister, of Canton, by a sweet, attractive personality and a hopeful, cheerful piety, has done more to mold the moral and religious life of the children than the minister in the pulpit or even the mother in the home. I pray that the time may never come when Christian manliness among men or Christian saintliness among women will prove a bar to public service in the common schools.
But we are not limited to the mere silent influence of example. There is no more objection to a college pro- fessor's attending a meeting of the Y. M. C. A. in the city in which his students live than to his witnessing a baseball game in which his students participate. There need be no more objection to the president of a state university attending church, and even at times participa- ting in the services, than to a justice of the Supreme Court teaching in the Sunday school. The state has never interposed an objection to the reasonable activity of her servants outside of their official duties. And in our state universities those professors are regarded with special love who, outside of their prescribed work in the class-room, are willing to spend and be spent in helping the young people committed to their care to realize their intellectual and commercial aims, their social and moral aspirations.
While theoretically, therefore, the state universities cannot teach the creed of any church, nevertheless it is unjust to characterize them as godless institutions, and unwise to overlook their possibilities for service toward the solution of the problem which we are studying this evening.
We may even go a step farther. Matthew Arnold, who lived and died under the aspersion of heterodoxy,
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nevertheless in his report as school inspector of Great Britain advocated the reading of the Bible in the public schools of England, not in the interest of the church, but because he believed this book to represent the highest literature of the human race.
Huxley, who professed agnosticism throughout his life as to the superhuman claims of Christ, nevertheless pleaded earnestly for the reading of selections from the Bible in the public schools of England, on the ground that the Bible had shown itself for generations the most potent literature for moral culture which the human race possesses. Hence he maintained that common-sense and science unite in demanding the use of this book for the moral training of the young.
The ordinance of 1787 which, next to the constitution of the United States, is the charter of the Northwest, declares that "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of man- kind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Surely this charter, construed either technically and verbally, or liberally and in accordance with its spirit, gives the teachers of the Northwest the right to read before their children selections from that book for which Arnold and Huxley pleaded in the name of literature and life.
A narrow and mechanical construction of the law may forbid the use of the Lord's Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount in public schools in which the precepts of Buddha and Confucius may be read without the slightest criticism. The National Educational Association, whose instincts for the promotion of the highest interests of the children are wiser than the bigotry of secularism, declared last summer, by a unanimous vote, in favor of the use of selections from the Bible for reading lessons in the pub- lic schools.
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