USA > New York > Our diocese : a study of the history and work of the Church in the Diocese of Central New York > Part 7
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It is safe to say that no teacher and no rector who has once mastered the principles underlying the series of lessons and who has seen for himself the enthusiasm of the children, the eager receptive attitude of even the youngest and the educational effect of having the pupils exemplify, in practice, deeds, action, those theories that they have learned in class, can fail to value and utilize it as vastly superior, psycho- logically, to any other of the numerous systems of whatever sort that have been published in such numbers.
Let us now consider these principles in a little more
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detail. This great movement of the Church School is tending to make the idea of service to men in Christ's name the central and regulative feature, for the greatest aim of all religious education is the possession of Christ's spirit, the spirit of universal love going out to serve others. A child should not only be taught the meaning of Baptism but he should also learn that thereby he is made a soldier and servant in Christ's great missionary army, with an obligation to help in the making of Christ's Kingdom on earth.
Because heretofore the activities of the young people in the average parish have been unorganized and unrelated, so that the expression of Sunday School teaching has been hampered rather than fostered, there must be one unified plan of activities, cooperating with all the central agencies of the Church, active in their behalf, the Sunday School putting its impress on and supplying the impetus for every- one. This is plainly a far larger idea than the old concep- tion of the Sunday School and one that calls for parochial re-organization. The rector is the center of the parish, its heart, its core. Upon him rests the responsibility of unifi- cation. Interest or lack of interest on his part makes itself felt. His interest produces understanding of the needs of his boys and girls and discovery of men and women as teachers. His interest shows parents the value of the train- ing of the Church School and leads the boys and girls in the missionary enterprise of the parish.
But he may be aided by a sort of Parochial Board of Education, made up of representatives of the school, the vestry and the parish organization. This Board then utilizes all the parish organizations as means to express parish life, to set its boys and girls to work for a better world. Cooperation is the watchword. Thus the Woman's Auxiliary might provide from its members both teachers and leaders, might help in the school missionary box, in
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the mission study classes, by assisting in making costumes when plays are given, asking in turn that the school help in their missionary teas, at their parish suppers, knitting dish towels, amusing babies at mother's meetings. The Altar Guild may help the boys and girls in learning about the Church and the Altar, and the boys and girls can help in getting flowers, in mending cottas or cleaning brasses. The Church Periodical Club can see that classes have copies of the Spirit of Mission and can get help in distri- buting magazines. It all presents a picture of a real vital- ized parish, studying in all possible ways to do the will of the Master.
Quite naturally the organization known as the Church Service League has been developed as a sort of Federation of National organizations. It is really immaterial whether the devoted women of the Church working for the mission in all lands are called the Woman's Auxiliary or the Church Service League. But in the latter there is the suggestion of concerted action, of association with other activities and of organized and distributed effort that the former does not have. Every child in the parish should have a continuous training for a life of social relationship towards which each period of life should contribute its share. In the Christian Nurture training some activity is provided for every child or young person in the parish so that they may come to realize that every form of service which expresses the mission of Christ is truly missionary. This broader conception of missions will lead up to a truer understanding and loyalty to the Church and her mission. It is but right that every child shall be made a part of the corporate life of the parish and be given the opportunity of working in the parish for each of the five fields of service.
Gradually it is becoming apparent that the practice of the League activities cannot be included in the Sunday School
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hour, that that is the time for teaching and that another hour is needed. Hence the development of weekday religious instruction, when the application is made and ser- vice is rendered. The day school authorities have generally throughout the country been more than ready to make concessions for this, releasing the children from school one or two hours a week, that they may go to their own churches for religious instruction, and even allowing such instruction to count on the school curriculum. Plans for this newly organized work are as yet tentative. Sometimes it is done through the same teachers as on Sunday. Some- times another teacher, perhaps some busy mother or some retired school teacher offers herself. Sometimes the rector or the superintendent takes the school himself in groups or as a whole and drives home as no one else could do the lessons of the week.
The work to be done is being more and more system- atically arranged. In the case of the world and nation, articles are made that go in boxes to far-off missionaries. In the case of the diocese some church institution is studied and helped. In the case of the community, interest is kindled in local institutions, hospitals, homes, and various kinds of village improvement. In the parish, visiting, dis- tributing, working are carried on as the rector directs and as opportunity offers. It is not possible here to even list the possibilities for service that have been recognized and utilized. But lists may be had from both diocesan and national Departments of Religious Education.
The scheme of lessons cannot fail to stir every true teacher both to become a part of such a well-devised order and to employ to the fullest extent the opportunities it offers for real religious training.
Beginning with Courses 1 and 2, on "Our Father's Care " and "Our Father's Gifts" for children under five, the story of God's love for men is explained through Bible
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stories and through the story of the Gospel. The children are brought by simple explanation into touch with the ser- vice and customs of the Church. Childlike forms of prayer and hymns are taught, the simplest kinds of work suitable for baby hands are made use of.
Course 3, for children of about six years, develops the idea of God as creating, protecting, and guarding his people.
Course 4, for children of about seven years, treats of our duty to God and to our neighbor while Course 5 continues the subject through the applications of the Church year and Course 6 gathers up the lessons of the preceding years and applies them as a sort of climax to a child's survey of the missionary activity of the church.
Courses 7 to II, inclusive, form a sequence of four courses, closely connected in idea, intended to begin with a child of about ten and to lead him up to and through the experience of confirmation. The general subject is the Life in the Church. The child begins to realize his mem- bership in the Church. As an individual he first learns what the worship of God means as embodied in the church year (Course 7) and the sacraments and services of the Church (Course 8). As Christ is the center of that wor- ship the next step is to review the life of Christ (Course 9) and then inasmuch as the organization and message of the Church were the outcome of that Life he is carried briefly through the history and work of the Church through the ages. The Climax of this second group is Course II, which furnishes to the growing youth a distinct vision of the whole world in relation to Christ's message, starting a de- sire to follow the leadership of the great messengers of the past and to dedicate a new life to active service.
Courses 12, 13 and 14 are less frequently used but have to do with the important subject of Biblical Study and Criticism, of Christian Philosophy, and of personal Christian Ethics. In all the courses the five-fold aim is invariably
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followed and, like the strands of a cable, they are woven through every course. A child to be adequately trained for life in the Church should be led to grow along all the five lines simultaneously. He must learn to do, to feel, to ap- preciate, as well as to know. The five columns make clear to the teacher that his work is not merely drilling the class in facts but rather leading a few fellow-churchmen younger than himself into a fuller and richer life.
But the leaders must be trained either by themselves or in some normal or training school. Indeed it is not too much to say that the very completeness of the education sketched above is its chief obstacle. No teacher can, as in the old days, pick up her lesson or story-book at the last moment and be acceptable to the class, to the school, or even to herself. Every teacher in day school knows, and every teachers' institute insists that never should instruction be ventured on unless thorough preparation has preceded. And to prepare to teach the elements even of Christian Nurtue calls for real mental exercise. Teacher training is the real difficulty. Who will doit? How may candidates be secured ? What inducements can be offered ? This pro- blem is as yet unsolved and meantime teachers are training themselves as best they can.
At the little school at Chadwicks, just outside Utica, the Diocesan Department has maintained a demonstration school, carefully observing all the details suggested. Its success is beyond question and what it has done any other school can do. The inclination thereto is all that is needed.
Another phase of religious education, receiving much at- tention from the Diocesan Department is the instruction that ought to be given by the church to her children not within the village or city parish limits. There are hun- dreds if not thousands of children in the rural communities in this diocese who have no christian teaching whatever. There are many of them with church antecedents, who would naturally be brought to baptism but are beyond the
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reach of any clergyman. They grow up without any church teaching and the church thereby not only suffers loss itself but also fails to touch the lives that might so easily be in- fluenced. One plan suggested is to employ large carry-alls and bring into some parish church all possible children within a radius of ten miles, much as is done for the day schools. Another is to organize a system of correspondence lessons, so that children beyond the reach even of carry-alls may still get church instruction. The problem here is pro- bably one of superintendence quite as much as of scholars.
To estimate the value and efficiency of any particular school is not easy. There are no general examinations such as colleges make use of-even if examinations could test the progress of christian nurture. No statistics are available to find out the kind of character resulting from attendance at any particular school. Two tests, may, how- ever, be used at least as a rough measure of any school's worth.
First, the number of children in the school may be com- pared with the number of communicants in the diocese. It ranges from 0% to 75%, apparently 50% being a reasonable average for parishes that consider their schools successful- that is, a parish with 500 communicants should have at least 250 in the Sunday School and one with 50 communi- cants, at least 25 scholars.
Another test is concerned with the machinery of the school, a good school having the following ten standards of excellence, as set by the Board of Religious Education :
I. School Graded.
2. Teachers Trained.
3. Forty-Minute Lesson Period.
4. Home Department.
5. Point of Graduation.
6. Seventy Per Cent Attendance.
7. Missionary Instruction and Offering.
8. Conference of Officers and Teachers.
9. Training in Worship.
IO. Training in Service.
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The Christian Nurture Series is not a device for making the task of a Church school teacher easy. The courses in the series do not " teach themselves," nor can they be used in a mechanical or extempore fashion. The series aims rather to reveal the true worth of the task of teaching, believing that the church is not lacking in men and women who are ready to dedicate themselves to a real task of real worth. The success of Christian Nurture depends upon our williness to sacrifice ourselves for the children. Where rectors, officers, and teachers bring that willingness to the problem of the school they will be bringing to the Christian Nurture Series that which alone can insure its success.
CHAPTER X
CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE
S OCIAL SERVICE is a much abused and often misunder- stood term The phrase that has been adopted by the Church as a comprehensive one to denote all kinds of Christian activity having to do with ministering to the bodies of men is Christian Social Service. Thus, play- grounds, soup-kitchens, lodging-houses, hospitals, and re- formatories, are all forms of social service and are christian as well if their activating spirit is that of Christ. Social service is neither socialism nor bolchevism nor is it the sort of statistical enquiry that seems to be the goal of so many so-called social workers. Rather, it is an effort in- tended to include all kinds of service suggested by the second great commandment-" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
The phrase to most persons suggests an ambiguity, fail- ing as it does, to distinguish between the work of indi- viduals and the work of organized bodies. The Church has always fed the hungry, visited the prisoner and ministered to the sick, both through her clergy and through her membership. Is it social service for an individual to visit a sick person in a hospital or must there be a committee of the parish to arrange details before the act comes under this designation ? Probably the spirit of the work deter- mines the proper answer. The individual visit may carry only a cup of cold water and yet be blessed and on the other hand the committee may go with a ton of coal and lose the reward. But the age is one of organization, when efficiency is furthered by combined and directed effort and when individuals are ready to turn over to committees work that had been done before in a scattered, unorganized way. Thus relief work has generally been taken over by
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charity organizations apparently freeing the individual from personal obligation. But Social Service does not in any sense mean a reduction in personal responsibility.
Rather, it seeks to emphasize the responsibility and obli- gation of every baptized person to follow the example of Christ in ministering to the bodies of men as well as to their minds and souls. Religion has for a great many persons meant only attendance on church services with such a compliance with moral precepts as happened to be convenient. Open violation of such injunctions as "Thou shalt not steal" might not be practiced. But positive virtues, such as "Feed the hungry ", " Clothe the naked ", were often overlooked. The spirit of the church must be the spirit of the Master, who came " not to be ministered unto but to minister " and the person whose religion con- sists in entire obedience to the negative precepts of the Bible is in the same class with the Pharisee of whom it was said : "How dwelleth the love of God in him ? "
Organization of social service work has been undertaken by the church as a means of awakening in its members a sense of their obligation to follow their Leader who "went about doing good." The movement seeks to emphasize the positive virtues. It teaches that every one of us is imper- fectly fulfilling his christian life unless he is demonstrating practically the new life in him by the love he shows his neighbor. It does not preclude organized charity nor com- bined effort, if better results may be had thereby. But it is aimed particularly at the individual as the necessary foundation of all that may be built thereon.
It may be said that such a' detail of christian teaching and any special stress to be laid on it should be left to the clergy and that an organized effort to teach any one part of the christian doctrine is unwise. But the leaders of our church have seen the crying needs of humanity-children sold into industrial slavery, delinquents condemned by
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neglect to a hopeless future, the sick and afflicted forgotten, discouraged and destitute. Society itself, shaken by the selfishness and greed of individuals has seen in this teach- ing of the church the only hope for a sorrowing and tor- mented world.
In 1916, the church organized a Department of Social Service and appointed as secretary, a clergyman whose headquarters were in the Church Missions House in New York City. This secretary made innumerable addresses in all parts or the country, in parish churches, at conventions, and before summer school classes. He wrote and dis- tributed many pamphlets, organized branches in the several diocesses and slowly made progress in his task of arousing the church. In 1919, the General Convention reorganized its administrative machinery by the appointment of a Presid- ing Bishop and Council and the work of social service was put in charge of a permanent Commission with a consecrated and devoted clerical leader as executive secretary. Since then, two national conferences have been held with many speeches and many resolutions and in the dioceses a great deal of social service machinery has been started. A text book called "The Social Opportunity of the Churchmen" has been prepared by the Commission and the book has been used by hundreds of study classes held in a majority of the dioceses.
In this diocese the subject has been kept constantly before the clergy. At conventions stimulating addresses have been made. In the convocation districts also, the import- ance of social service has been urged. Yet it is not possible to report in detail what has been accomplished, for two reasons. First, true Christian social service must come as the result of Christian character. No amount of organiza- tion, no association of social workers can succeed in true service unless the individuals involved are themselves eager
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to show forth in concrete form the fruits of the spirit that is in them. A committee on Legislation, or on jails, or on any other civic problem is likely to accomplish nothing unless it is animated by the enthusiasm of conse- crated individuals. It is therefore in the lives of indi- viduals that social service shows itself, a manifestation that naturally does not lend itself to statistical reports.
On the whole, there are, as every one knows, a great many churchmen and churchwomen in the diocese who in the spirit of Christ are caring for the bodies of the poor and destitute. In one parish there are Boy Scout Leaders doing splendid work for the physical and mental development of future citizens. In others, there are members of hospital boards and of committees on institutions of various sorts. In others, there are persons who serve as probation officers and on committees of men's and boys' clubs. In many cases there are those who are active in larger movements, as for example in Americanization work and in the Big Brother movement. Still others there are who are inter- ested in progressive legislation, whereby infant welfare work is started and maintained, whereby public health activities are promoted and industrial accidents prevented. There are still others concerned with the environment under which the unfortunates of their community live, doing their best to make it possible for every person to live with sun and air in homes and for boys and girls to have well nourished and well developed bodies. Some have seen in low wages a great drawback to physical welfare in that nourishing food and reasonable amusement and a fair joy in life is prevented in homes where mere existence only can be afforded. Is it too much to expect that in due time when the church has come to a full understanding of the fact that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves that every one of its members shall be active in some form of christian social service ? Not even then will it be possible
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to report it in such a chapter as this. But every clergy- man will know that every member of his parish is showing forth his christianity not only with his lips but in his life.
Second, although there are in the diocese many organized forms of social service, yet there exists no corordination of such work and no central office to which such work might be reported. There are many parish houses where devoted men and women give up many hours of their time for the
TRINITY CHURCH-WATERTOWN
sake of others. There are a number of camps where fresh air, good food and real recreation is provided for those who otherwise would go without their benefits. One such is that of the Girl's Friendly Society at White Lake. Here through the generosity of Miss M. I. Doolittle, there are dormitories, dining room, recreation hall and a new Rest
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House for members of the society. The inception and maintenance of such a vacation house for girls from the cities of the diocese is a splendid example of christian ser- vice. Another camp is provided by Trinity Church, Watertown.
There are many visits made by groups of men and women to jails, hospitals, and almshouses, either for personal visi- tations or for holding services. To mention any would be invidious, but such organized service can be found in almost every parish of the diocese. Calling on the sick, on ab- sentees from church and Sunday school, on new-comers to the parish, are all true forms of social service, whether as a committee or not, if the moving spirit is that of love for fellow man. Real Christian Social Service is that quiet aid that is given from person to person, a cup of cold water, a visit, or even a word, that is not seen of men but by the Father in Heaven. It is this kind of service that the church needs to arouse. It is this kind that members of the church need to feel responsibility for, remembering that "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord ! Lord ! shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
There is also an obligation resting on the church as a body in the matter of social service. We believe that the organized church is not the work of man but of God, that it was provided for from the beginning and was not an afterthought, or an association merely of men and women. We believe that it exists in the world for a purpose, viz., to bear witness to the truth. Thus the church has two distinct duties in every community : first, to lead the way in all matters of mental, moral, and physical betterment. And second, to protest against all degrading influences. Much has been done already. Schools and hospitals and playgrounds, so general in this land of ours and so notice- ably absent in non-christian lands, have come because of and through the church. In the middle ages, the lamp of
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learning was kept alive only by the religious communities. In England, schools and colleges were instituted by the clerical orders. In this country, the first universities were officered by clergy. Today in missionary areas the school is the first weapon used against paganism. When the state takes over the school system from the church the latter finds another social need to be met. In this way, both schools and hospitals in Christian countries have been generally established and their care and maintenance trans- ferred to the state or the city. There is danger, however, that in both the animating spirit may be forgotten and so the purpose be overlooked. Schools without Christianity fail in their chief function, since they provide no proper guide for living. There is now resting on the church a manifest and pressing duty to put into the public schools or to supply in some other way Christian teaching. It is not exaggerating to say that this problem is the greatest of any before the Church today. Not only does the future of the church but the future of the nation depend on our finding the right answer.
There are many places, in the country, particularly where a right conception of Christian social service should lead the Church to provide a community hospital, or a gymna- sium, or a social hall or a library, in order that the whole man and not his soul alone, may be cared for.
There are other places where the second function of the church, viz., to speak her word of protest should be en- couraged. Thus houses known to be immoral, disorderly resorts are and should be fair targets for an organized church. Similarly, agencies for violation of laws, whether against gambling, drinking, or prize-fighting, should stir any Christian community to offensive action. Why does the church hesitate to strike out at such evils? It must be either because her members are reluctant to separate themselves individually from such practices or because the
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