USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Religious Education Association : proceedings of the first annual convention, Chicago, February 10-12, 1903 > Part 6
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Passing thus with briefest reference these important principles, it is still possible to put with reasonable brevity the great essentials of religious education. They will be found to connect themselves closely with the two other great inferences from modern psychology -the conviction that the real is always concrete, ending in supreme emphasis on the personal, and the recogni- tion of the central importance of will and action.
Christianity assumes, I take it, that the end of religious education is never mere knowledge or learn- ing, but to bring the individual into life-the largest, richest, highest life ; and that life it conceives to be the sharing of the life of God-his character and joy. John thus reports Christ as saying : "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." "This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." With the Christian conception of the character of God,
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this makes the religious life, just so far as it is developed, at once and inevitably ethical. In Christian thought, then, religious education and moral education cannot be dissociated. The goal sought may be considered to be, therefore, either bringing men into a real acquaintance with God-making this relation to God a real relation not only, but the dominating relation of life; or the attainment of the largest life-a life of character, of happiness, and of influence. In either case, the supreme conditions and means are the same.
For, if one thinks of the goal as the attainment of character, say, he must recognize at once that to any at- tainment of character self-control is necessary. But self-control, our psychologists insist, is never negative, but always positive-not mere self-restraint, but the control of self through positive replacing of the evil- tempting considerations by attention to the other inter- ests and considerations that ought to prevail. The power of self-control, then, goes back to the power to recog- nize, to appreciate, and to respond to certain great inter- ests and forces. The end of moral education thus becomes to bring the individual, on the one hand, into the possession of great and valuable interests; and, on the other hand, to foster habits of persistent response to those interests. The great claim of religion, and pecu- liarly of the Christian religion, is that it offers to men the absolutely supreme interests and is able to make these permanent and commanding in life. The very end of religious education is to make men see the greatest reali- ties and values-above all and summing up all, to make men see Christ.
What, then, are the chief means by which men are to be brought into the possession of these great objective interests as abiding and commanding ? The answer of modern psychology seems to me to be by no means doubtful : through personal association and work, char-
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acter through contagion and expression. The prodi- gious emphasis laid by Professor Baldwin and Professor Royce upon imitative activity in the development of the child is really an emphasis upon both personal associa- tion and work. The great means to the largest life-to character, to happiness, and to influence-and to a shar- ing of the life of God as the greatest of all realities and values, are personal association and active expression. And the really supreme conditions of the highest asso- ciation and work are reverence for the person and the mood of objectivity. These means and conditions, I judge, modern psychology insists must rule in all reli- gious education.
Our problem then becomes simply this: How can the religious teacher most effectually use these great means, and best fulfil these essential conditions ? How can we bring personal association and active expression most effectively into religious education? How can we best insure that the spirit which pervades it shall be one of sacred respect for the person and of the mood of objectivity - the mood of work and of a self-forgetting love, rather than the mood of self-absorbed introspec- tion?
I. Association. How can the religious teacher make most effective the factor of personal association? The very meaning of that life of God, which men were to share in religion, Christ taught, is love; and it is conse- quently a life of unselfish, loving service into which, above all, he seeks to bring men. The social self of the child must be awakened. To this end, personal association is self-evidently the great means.
I. In the first place, this shows that religious teach- ing must clearly recognize that the child needs society as such. No one can learn to love in solitude. If really unselfish service is to be called out, there must come to the child some real conviction of the essential likeness
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of others to himself, of the inevitable way in which the lives of all are knit together, and of the value and sacredness of the person of others. The very first step to these essential convictions is some real knowledge of others through association with them. Not even the associations of the family, it should be noted, are suffi- cient here to give the sense of what is due toa person sim- ply as such. The religious teacher may well recognize, therefore, the very great service rendered in just this respect by the public schools. In this broad sense, it is a genuine religious service-a service that cannot be rendered with anything like the same effectiveness by any select private school, however religious. For in the public school the child meets those of all classes, finds a common standard applied to all, and much the same response made by all; and so learns to think of himself as really one of many who are essentially alike. He must thus get some notion of real justice-of what is due to a person simply as such. I am not able to see how more safely than in our public schools this abso. lutely vital contact with men as men could be afforded. It is not merely of exceptional importance for our democ- racy, but it also has an essential contribution to make to the development of the true social self, to the true moral and religious life. The vital breath of Christian- ity is democratic-the recognition of a real brotherhood of men. An agency that so completely embodies and teaches the democratic spirit as do our public schools, with whatever defects, is in this broadest sense soundly religious and even Christian. Let the religious teacher, then, recognize the contribution here of the common schools, and abhor in all his own plans the spirit of snobbishness.
2. Let us notice, in the second place, that the initial awakening to the sense that a given interest has value at all comes almost uniformly through association with
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those to whom the interest means most. It is indeed through the discernment that in character or peace or joy another has what we have not, that we are led to give attention to those interests that have so counted for this other person. This primary law, which holds for all other values, cannot be set aside in religion. Close association with a few simple people, who may not be technically trained religiously, but who really know God, will quicken the child's spiritual consciousness as nothing else will, and that too without any precocious forcing. Have we practically and sufficiently recog- nized that the child must be much in the society of truly Christian people to find the great Christian aims of growing interest? Is not the religious development of the child sought quite too often in virtual abandon- ment of the association of older Christians? Let us be sure that no brilliant pedagogical devices will take the place of these living forces.
3. But the child not only has his first awakening to moral and religious consciousness in association with others. No force is so powerful in bringing him on into an assured faith and life of his own. The law is clear. We tend to grow inevitably like those with whom we most constantly are, to whom we look in admiration and love, and who give themselves most devotedly to us. Granted such association, the worst pedagogical methods cannot destroy its reasonable efficiency ; and without such association the most approved methods will miserably fail.
4. In the last analysis, the two greatest services that we can possibly render another are really to be such persons as we ought to be, and to bear witness to those greater persons in whom are the chief sources of our life. The fourth way, therefore, in which personal asso- ciation may be made to count is in such witnessing to the highest personalities, and in bringing home to others
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in the most objective way possible those realities and persons that have revealed to us most of God. If the aim of all religious education is to bring the individual into his own living relation to God, then the primary service to be rendered here is to be able, on the one hand, to bring a convincing witness of what the great historical self-manifestations of God, culminating in Christ, have meant to us; and, on the other hand, to be able so to set these forth that they shall be real and commanding to others. On the strictly teaching side, therefore, the power most to be coveted by the religious teacher is power to make real, to make rational, and to make vital these greatest facts. This power culminates in the power to bring home to others the real glory of the inner life of Christ. He who can do that renders to men the highest conceivable service, for he puts them into touch with the supreme source of life-of inspira- tion, of hope, and of courage. He makes it possible for God to touch them with his own life, and with convin- cing power. Absolute trust and humility are called out spontaneously by a real vision of the inner spirit of Jesus. Christ himself built his kingdom on twelve men and their personal association with him. Facing the whole problem of character for all his disciples in all time, he deliberately makes the one great means per- sonal relation to himself, not the acceptance of certain machinery, or methods, or principles, or ideas. The most conserving and inspiring of all influences is love for a holy person.
No man should lose sight just here of the tremendous and special opportunity given to our time by the coming of a historical spirit into Bible study. This theme belongs to others, but I may simply record my con- viction that, on this account alone, it is a reasonable expectation that the best religious teaching and the best response to religious teaching that the world has ever
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seen lie just ahead of us. The historical method is soundly based psychologically, for it makes, as no other can, the definite personal appeal.
In trying to make real these great historical manifes- tations of God, it may be worth remarking that a special value is to be attached, not only to the ordinary analogi- cal use of the imagination and to the rarer historical imagination, but particularly to what might be called a psychological use of the imagination -a clear discern- ment of the mental states involved in a historical situation, and bringing out their parallels in our modern individual and social life.
II. Work. The second great means which modern psychology most emphasizes in religious and moral edu- cation is expressive activity. The psychologist insists that in body and mind we are made for action. If even thought and feeling tend to action, and are normally complete only when the act follows, much more must this be true of the mind's volitions, and most of all of the highest volitions, moral and religious purposes. One inexorable law rules throughout : That which is not ex- pressed dies.
Since the very sphere of the religious life is in the ethical, and it is hardly possible that it should have any true expression at all that does not directly involve the moral life, we are not likely to overemphasize the demand for active expression in religious education. How, then, can this need of work, of expression, best be met in religious education ?
I. In the first place, it is of course true, because of the close connection of the will and muscular activity, that almost any vigorous work is not without its value, in will-strengthening, for the religious life.
2. To aim, further, to develop a healthy body, in the spirit of fidelity to a God-given trust, and because health is a vital condition of character, is ·itself of great
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value. And all well-ordered physical exercise may become, thus, a direct help in religious education.
3. Moreover, as character continually involves the working out of certain aims and ideals, the embodying through work of any ideal can hardly fail to be a real assistance in the ethical and religious life. All manual training, for example, is here a real contributor to religious education, as are also any societies that involve the carrying out of some ideal.
4. But, as the Christian spirit is pre-eminently the spirit of unselfish love, and as love to God can be shown chiefly in service to man, the kind of expression specially called for in religious education is active service for others. Any really useful work has here its religious value. To avoid pride and priggishness and introspec- tion, especially in the case of younger children, it is probably distinctly better that this attempted service for others should not be in lines that could be thought to be peculiarly religious in the narrower sense. The simplest self-forgetful work for some practical cause-the cup of cold water in the name of a disciple-will meet the case. It is not unnatural, therefore, that societies and clubs and committees of various sorts should find 'here their legitimate place in religious education. Getting chil- dren thus to take an interest, for example, in the protec- tion of animals, in the protection of the defenseless, in the cleanliness and beautifying of the town, in the culti- vation and giving of flowers, is not without its value. The training of the clubs themselves is, moreover, some direct preparation for complex life in society.
5. But, after all, though there are no societies, or clubs, or committees (and I have some feeling that these have been overdone by zealous reformers, to the exclu- sion of something better, and to the fostering of pride and the need of public recognition ), the one great neces- sity in the expression of the Christian life is doing, in
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the common everyday ways, the really unselfish thing. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, because ye have love one for another." Are not teach- ers sometimes driven to devising more or less artificial ways of service because the home training, especially in well-to-do homes, is too often really a training in idle- ness and selfishness? The best place of all for the child to express the Christian spirit is in obedient, faithful work at home, and in the unselfish spirit shown in the home relations. To allow a child to grow up in idleness and selfishness at home is a hideous wrong, that even the most scientific analysis of his needs, and the most pedagogic meeting of them by a teacher, can never make good. A reasonable return to the use of home "chores," of which Charles Dudley Warner writes so feelingly in his Being a Boy, would be a very distinct contribution to the real religious education of countless children. I doubt if there is any greater single need today, in religious education, in the broad sense, than the need that parents should take pains to see that children have some useful service to render daily in the home, and learn there some thoughtful, unselfish consideration of others.
6. As to the peculiarly religious expression of the Christian life-in prayer, Bible study, speaking to others either privately or publicly on religious themes, and taking part in the membership and activities of the church-if the Christian fellowship has been what it ought to be, and if an objective historical method has been followed in the teaching of the Bible, much of this, I believe, will follow in time, in the most natural and wholesome way, almost as a matter of course. The child will find himself drawn out toward God in some natural expression of his own life in prayer and in Bible study. Some elementary instruction in the real meaning of prayer, Bible study, so-called "testimony," and church
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membership, that will enable the child to see how exactly analogous these all are to what he does in other spheres of his life, may greatly help his sense of reality here, and save him from formality and sham. One caution seems to me important as to prayer. Children's prayers should be directed much more to the easily understood demands of duty, and less to mere asking for things.
And, as the relation to God in Christ comes to have some real meaning to the child, some expression in speech will tend to follow. At first, if the child's life is normal, such expression will quite certainly be along ethical lines, and may be thus of real value. The reli- gious life is primarily for a child a call to do the right thing. The relation to God, in its deeper bearing on the very springs of living, and the glory of the inner life of Christ, the child can hardly appreciate at first; and he should not be forced to any expression here. That will come in due time. It is perilous to crowd children to peculiarly religious expression in meetings; for expression before conscious experience is a direct train- ing in dishonest cant.
Still less is formal doctrine to be thrust on the child. The only value of a doctrinal statement is that it is an honest expression of a truth which has become real and vital for one in his own experience. Such statements of doctrine can grow only with one's growing life; they cannot be learned out of a book. The one imperative thing, then, for the child is to bring him into a genuine religious life of his own. Life first, and then its expres- sion ; not the expression of someone else in order to life. The danger of the dogmatic catechetical method here is real and great. It is perhaps not unimportant for us to note, too, that Christ's method, in bringing his disciples to the confession of his messiahship, was one of punctilious avoidance of all dogmatic statements upon the matter.
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III. The spirit of religious education. A closing word upon the spirit of religious education. The wise use of these greatest means of personal association and expressive activity, it has been implied in the discussion of them, requires scrupulous respect for the personality of the pupil, and a prevailing mood of objectivity.
I. On the one hand, we may never forget that the whole aim of moral and religious education is to bring the individual to a faith and life of his own; and this requires at every step the greatest pains to guard the other's own moral initiative. The very highest mark, I believe, of the moral and religious life, is a deep sense of the value and sacredness of the individual person. No one can be brought to that by the over-riding of his own personality by others. I may not dwell upon it, but it seems to me that the one absolutely indispensable requirement in a true religious education is that it should be pervaded through and through with a deep reverence for the person of the pupil ; and this often has a decisive bearing upon methods.
2. On the other hand, if, as modern psychology insists, we are made for action and no experience is normally completed until it issues in action, then the normal mood, it would seem, must be the mood of activity, of work, not of passivity, or brooding-objectivity, not subjectivity or introspection. All personal relation and all work suffer from undue preoccupation with our own states. Only so much introspection as to be sure that one is really fulfilling the objective conditions of life is either needed or wise. We are to fulfil the conditions and count upon the results. Here too I may not stop for ampler justification and application of the principle, but can only declare my conviction that the clear teach- ing of psychology indicates that the prevailing mood in religious education must be one of objectivity, not, as has been perhaps most often the case, one of introspec-
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tion. This principle will plainly affect the methods used.
In a word, then, modern psychology and pedagogy seem to me to demand that religious teachers should constantly recognize the complexity of life and the unity of the nature of man; that they should use as their greatest means personal association and expressive activity ; and that they should permeate all their work with the spirit of deep reverence for the person, and with the prevailingly objective mood.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS AFFECTED BY THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE BIBLE
PRESIDENT RUSH RHEES, D.D., LL.D., UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
Let me ask you to consider very concisely certain of the things which we may claim to have been accom- plished and effected by modern historical study of the Bible, in order to consider how these will influence the modern conception of religious education.
In the first place, modern historical study of the Bible has effected a recedence of emphasis on theories of inspiration behind the recognition of what we may call the fact of inspiration. By the fact of inspiration I mean the recognition that in the Bible the human spirit finds stimulus and instruction for those deeper move- ments of the soul which we call religious. This stimulus and instruction the modern historical study of the Bible brings out in clear emphasis. The theories of inspiration are the various ways in which men have undertaken to express their notion of how an infinite God ought to have indicated his will and thought to men. With these, modern historical study of the Bible has nothing what- ever to do.
Secondly, this study has led to the recedence of the theory of inspiration, because it has shown the essential reverence of criticism. Criticism is the modern effort to answer certain questions which are forced upon readers of the Bible by traditional views. It is most natural to ask who wrote certain books, when they were written, and why they were written ; and criticism is simply the modern, fearlessly honest, effort to answer these ques- tions with a, perhaps bold, disregard of the answers that
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have been handed down by the tradition which furnishes the questions.
Thirdly, the essential reverence of criticism has brought to mind the fact that Christianity is the flower of a rich growth, the growth of the religion of Israel, of a people which began its walk with God with the most crude conceptions of his way. Modern histori- cal study shows the growth of elementary ideas through the ministry of prophets and priests and sages until they attained their flower and consummation in Jesus Christ. From Him, as understood by the apostles, Christianity has come. Modern historical study sets before our minds with utmost clearness the fact that the religion of which we are the heirs is a growth.
Having these things in mind then, the doctrine of inspiration being in the background, criticism being recognized as essentially the reverent inquiry for fact, and reverent criticism furnishing us with the fact that Christianity is the result of a development in religious knowledge and practice, we may turn to the question specifically before us. But before seeking the definite answer to our specific question, I should like to indicate my conception of religious education, not as differing from those who have gone before me, but to make clear what I shall have to say.
I think we must recognize the fact that religious edu- cation is not the study of a religion, not simply the inter- esting inquiry as to the mode of operation of the human mind in that experience which we call religion ; but that it is rather something which aims at an intensely personal result. It seeks, in the first place, to acquaint the mind with some facts, not of religion in general, but of religion as the supreme and highest good, in order to awaken in the individual mind vital and working conceptions of God, and duty, and destiny. For the sake of conciseness, I will confine the consideration to those three conceptions,
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simply reminding you that the larger and higher applica- tion of Christian doctrine lies on the borderline between the thought of God and duty ; for sin is duty not done, and redemption is God bringing the human soul back into the path of duty. The object of religious education then, I say, is to beget in the children who are taught true conceptions of God, of duty, and of destiny, not as interesting ideals, but as controlling influences in their lives.
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