the Protestant churches of America toward clearer aims and better
methods in religious education. A situation had developed that bid
fair to let religion drop out of the education of American children.
Changed social, economic and industrial conditions had transferred to
the school many of the educational functions once fulfilled by the
home, and had wrought a change in the forms of family religion. The
public schools had become increasingly secular in aim, in control, and
in material taught. The development of science and philosophy in
independence of religion had made it possible for college students to
get the idea that religion is not a significant part of the life and
culture of the time. The Sunday school, indeed, was at work, teaching
children of God and his will. But its curriculum was ungraded, its
teachers untrained, and its instruction limited to one period of half
an hour in each week.
Roughly speaking, the beginning of the present century may be taken as
the date when the Christian people of America began to awake to the
danger involved in this situation. As early as the late eighties,
President W. R. Harper, then Woolsey Professor of Biblical Literature
at Yale, had organized the American Institute of Sacred Literature,
and had begun to publish a graded series of Inductive Studies in the
Bible. In 1900, under his leadership, the University of Chicago
published the first of its present series of Constructive Studies,
which provides text-books for a graded curriculum of religious
education. In 1903, the Religious Education Association was organized,
its membership drawn from the whole of the United States and Canada,
and its purpose declared to be threefold: "To inspire the educational
forces of our country with the religious ideal; to inspire the
religious forces of our country with the educational ideal; and to
keep before the public mind the ideal of religious education, and the
sense of its need and value." In 1908, the International Sunday School
Association authorized its Lesson Committee to construct and issue a
graded series of Sunday school lessons in addition to the uniform
series which it had issued year after year since 1872. In 1910 the
Sunday School Council of Evangelical Denominations was organized, a
mark of the more definite assumption by the several denominations of
responsibility for the educational work of their Sunday schools and
for the training of teachers. In 1912, the Council of Church Boards of
Education came into being, which has devoted its energies thus far
mainly to cooperative effort in behalf of Christian colleges and for
the religious welfare of college and university students generally.
These are but a few outstanding factors in a movement greater far than
any single organization or group of organizations. There has been an
awakening of the spirit of education in religion. Sunday schools the
country over have been graded, and here and there week-day schools of
religion have been begun; problems of curriculum, method and
organization have been studied and graded curricula devised; classes
and schools for the training of teachers have been organized; and
attempts of various sorts have been made to correlate public and
religious education. Churches in general have come to see that they
have an educational as well as a religious function in the community,
and that there is a sense in which they share with the public school a
common task. The public school can teach the "three R's," the
sciences, arts and vocations; the church must teach religion. Both are
needed if the education of our children is to be complete. Many
churches are employing paid teachers of religion and directors of
religious education. Courses in religious education have been
organized and professorships of religious education established in
colleges and theological seminaries. "The Educational Ideal in the
Christian Ministry" was the subject of the Lyman Beecher Lectures on
Preaching, in the Yale School of Religion, a few years ago. The young
men who are entering the Christian ministry in these days are being
trained, not simply to preach and to care for a parish, but to teach
and to direct the educational work of a church.
The immediate effect of the war has been to retard this movement in
some degree. Preoccupation with the war itself and with more
immediately pressing needs, has made more difficult the work of the
churches in this as in other respects. Churches that had planned new
buildings for their schools are postponing their erection till the war
is over. Training classes for teachers are harder to keep up.
Ministers are going into war service; and those who stay at home are
doing double work or more. Churches, like business houses and
factories, have found their organizations broken by the departure of
members of military age. Many of their best teachers and leaders have
gone to war; and it is not easy, in these days of urgency and stress,
to discover others to take their places.
It is probable, however, that a deeper effect of the war will be to
intensify our sense of the importance of religious education and to
clarify the church's educational program, in point both of content and
method. This conviction rests upon these fundamental facts: that the
world is achieving democracy; that it believes in and relies upon
education; that it is experiencing what may prove to be a renewal of
religion.
Education, democracy, religion--these three, we have long professed
and more or less fully believed, belong together. The full life of
each of the three is bound up in that of the other two.
Education without religion is incomplete and abortive; it falls short
of that life more abundant which is education's goal. Religion without
education lacks intelligence and power, and condemns itself to what
Horace Bushnell called conquest from without, as contrasted with
growth from within.
Democracy without education cannot long hold together or be saved from
mediocrity and caprice. Education without democracy perpetuates caste
divisions, or else breeds discontent and class hatred.
Democracy without religion is doomed to fail; and religion without
democracy cannot realize the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man.
These, I say, are familiar convictions. They are natural to
Protestantism; they have entered into the very making of America. Yet
just these old convictions are gaining a new force and a deeper
meaning in and through the experiences of these years of war. The
struggle for democracy is not only leading us to a new comprehension
of the meaning of democracy itself; it is helping us to understand
better both education and religion.
It does not lie within the limits of this paper to canvass the wider
and deeper meaning of democracy which is opening before us. The
messages and addresses of President Wilson have interpreted that
meaning not simply to America but to the world. No one yet knows the
full promise of life after the war, when Pan-Germanism shall have been
not only balked but destroyed. The democracy for which we fight to
make the world safe will be a chastened, changed, completer democracy.
It will be a democracy between nations as well as within nations, for
the doctrine of the irresponsible, beyond-moral sovereignty of the
state must return to the perdition whence it came. It will be a
democracy applied more fully to the whole of life, social, economic
and industrial as well as political. It will be a democracy of
completer citizenship, that gives place to women as to men. It will be
a democracy of duties as well as of rights.
The world is acquiring a new conscience. Just as the nineteenth
century made slavery abhorrent to the moral sense of men in general,
the twentieth century will likely be looked back to as the time when
the world's conscience decided that the exploitation of man by man is
wrong. The general moral sense of men has not been over-tender on this
point hitherto. They have checkmated the exploiter if they could, as
they did checkmate Napoleon, but they have not always, or even
usually, looked upon him as a wrong doer. It required Germany's
attempts at conquest and subjugation to wake the world to the absolute
wrong of that monstrous thing--that one man should use another as a
mere means to his own pleasure or aggrandizement, or that one people
should so determine the destiny of another people.
Here lies the supreme moral issue of the war. Shall the world, which
has become a neighborhood, organize itself into a great community of
mutual respect, good will and brotherhood, or shall its structure be
that of restless orders of exploiters and exploited? It is
over-familiar; yet, lest we forget, hear some random verses from
various Pan-Germanist scriptures: "Not to live and let live, but to
live and direct the lives of others, that is power." "To compel men to
a state of right, to put them under the yoke of right by force, is not
only the right but the sacred duty of every man who has the knowledge
and the power." "The German race is called to bind the earth under its
control, to exploit the natural resources and the physical powers of
man, to use the passive races in subordinate capacity for the
development of its _Kultur_." "Life is essentially appropriation,
injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity,
obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation at the least, and in its
mildest form exploitation."
Contrast with this the words of Jesus: "Ye know that they who are
accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great
ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you: but
whosoever would become great among you, shall be your minister; and
whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all." The
present struggle is not merely between democracy and autocracy as
rival systems of government. It is a struggle between opposed
philosophies of life. Nietzsche was more consistent than the Kaiser
who has followed him, for Nietzsche did not claim to be a Christian.
He frankly proposed a "transvaluation of values" which would do away
with the religion of Jesus as fit only for slaves. That proposed
transvaluation of values the Kaiser is trying to bring about, however
piously he may lie about it or claim God's partnership in his
enterprise.
Prophecies are always hazardous; never more so than now. The outlook
for religion has been discussed both by puzzled pacifists and by
facile forecasters of the fulfilment of their own wishes. One may
perhaps question whether there will be any _one_ trend of the
churches in the immediate future. Yet this is clear: that the
interests of democracy and the interests of true religion are
ultimately one. We may confidently expect the churches of tomorrow to
realize this more fully, not simply in the ideals they preach, but in
the temper and quality of their own life. _One effect of the war
upon religious education, undoubtedly, will be to make it more
democratic in aim, content and method._
Education in general will become more democratic. The experiences of
these years are helping us to understand education and to estimate its
values. Our eyes are being opened to the diametrical difference
between democratic and undemocratic education. We have come to see
that the latter may be as great a menace to the world as the former is
a vital resource.
The time was, not long ago, when Germany was deemed the school-master
of the world. German efficiency and German obedience to authority were
seen to be the products of German teachers and German schools. In
methods of teaching and in school organization, as well as in ideals
of scholarship, the world sought to follow Germany. If here and there
one objected that German education seemed to sacrifice the individual
to the system and to beget an obedience too implicit, we felt that it
was only because the Germans are such docile, pious, family folk, and
we rather chided ourselves for our rougher ways and for that self-will
that made us unholily thankful that we had been born in a freer land.
But now the character of German education stands revealed. We are no
longer as hopeful as we once were of the possible success of an appeal
to the German people over the heads of their military masters. They
seem on the whole to like the kind of government they have, and to
want to be exploited by Prussia. They are perilously near to what Mr.
H. G. Wells has given as his definition of damnation--satisfaction
with existing things when existing things are bad. They are
experiencing what Mr. Edmond Holmes has called the Nemesis of
docility.
And it is their system of education that has brought about this
result. If the German people are damned to satisfaction with
irresponsible autocracy and fatuous docility, their schools have
damned them. For a century, German education has been at work to breed
the present world-menace. The German schools have made the German
people what they are. They have sought to develop habits of mind
rather than free intelligence; they have valued efficiency in a given
task above initiative and power to think for oneself. They have set
children in vocational grooves and molded them to pattern. They have
educated the few to exert authority, and have trained the many to
obey. They have nurtured the young upon hatred of other peoples; and,
much as the Jews of old awaited the Messiah, they have lived and
labored in expectation of "The Day." They have exalted Vaterland into
a religion, and have degraded God into a German tutelary deity. The
German schools have welded the German people into a compact,
efficient, military machine. The desires of the State are their
desires; the Kaiser's will is their will.
We have been following false gods, therefore, in so far as we have
sought to shape our schools upon German models. "The German teacher
_teaches_," wrote one of our great educators some years ago, in
criticism of our American way of giving to children text-book
assignments which they are expected to study for themselves; yet the
text-book method, fumblingly as we have so often used it, gives better
training in initiative and intelligence than the German teacher's
dictation methods. Professor Charles H. Judd has recently pointed out
the confusion and waste of time brought about by the fact that our
eight-year elementary school was modeled upon the German Volksschule,
which is a school for the lower classes, and not intended to lead on
to higher education. Our purpose, on the contrary, is to maintain for
every American child an open ladder through elementary school,
secondary school and college to the university; and to that purpose a
six-year period of elementary education is much better adapted--a plan
which many of our school systems have adopted within the last decade.
We need better vocational education in this country and better systems
of vocational guidance; but we are becoming clear that these must not
be of the German sort, that compel a choice before the teens.
Education in a democracy must be education for democracy; and
education for democracy must itself be democratic in content and
method. Such education practices and aims at intelligence rather than
habit of mind. It trains its pupils to think and choose for
themselves. It prizes initiative above conformity, responsibility
above mere efficiency, social good will above unthinking obedience.
Such education is more difficult, of course, than education of the
undemocratic type. We shall at times be tempted to fall back into the
ways of the German schools in some respect or other, because they
represent the line of least resistance in education. Specious
arguments will be presented in favor of these ways by shortsighted
"practical" men. Education of the German type is more efficient, they
will say; it is more direct and practical; it brings more immediate
results. It is more patriotic, moreover, they will insist; it better
serves the ends of authority; it makes people more prosperous and
contented, each in his appointed niche. But such arguments, we may
well hope, will no longer win the uncritical assent that they have
sometimes found. German education may be more efficient in the
fulfilment of its end than American education--but what an end it has
sought and reached! In the moment of our temptation to undemocratic
short cuts in education, we shall henceforth look to the Germany of
yesterday and today, and shall be strengthened to resist. Her ways are
not our ways. Her schools cannot be ours. Education must mean to
America something quite different from what it has meant to Germany.
The contrast between democratic and undemocratic types of education is
as great with respect to religion as with respect to the rest of life.
Germany has been most careful to maintain religion as a subject of
instruction in her schools. But the content of this instruction in
religion has been intellectualistic and formal. It has pressed upon
German children a body of historical facts, moral precepts and
theological dogmas; but it has not begotten the freedom of inward
spiritual initiative. State-controlled, it has bent religion to state
uses, and has in time begotten a generation who can believe in the
"good old German God."
Religious education in America has been and will be more democratic.
Horace Bushnell used to say that the aim of all education is the
emancipation of the child. We teach and train our children in order
that they may in due time be set free from paternal discipline. We
fail in the religious education of our children if our teaching does
not result in their final emancipation from a religion of mere
authority and convention and their growth into a religion of the
spirit. We aim, not simply to win their assent to a given body of
beliefs or to attach them to the church as a saving institution, but
to help them to become men and women who can think and choose for
themselves. The Protestant principle of the universal priesthood of
believers involves democracy in religion. And just as democracy can
look forward only to failure unless it can educate its citizens,
Protestantism will fail unless it can educate men and women fit to
stand on their own feet before God, able to understand his will and
ready to enter intelligently and effectively into the common human
enterprises of Christian living.
_A second effect of the war, closely related to this, is that
religious education will concern itself more directly with life, and
will put less emphasis upon dogma, especially upon those refinements
of creed which have operated divisively in the life of the Christian
Church._ Its method will be more vital, and less intellectualistic.
Instead of proceeding upon the assumption that true belief comes first
and that right life is the expression of prior belief, it will
recognize that adequate insight and true belief are more often the
result of right life and action. "If any man willeth to do his will,
he shall know of the teaching." If this be true of adults, it is even
more true of children. Our plans of religious education will first
seek to influence the life, and will deal with beliefs as an
explanation of life's purposes and motives and an interpretation of
its realities and values.
If they will realize this primacy of life, the Christian churches
stand in the presence of a great opportunity. The experiences of these
years have shown us how much more of Christian living there is in the
world than bears the label. Religion is being tested, stripped of sham
and embroidery, and reduced to reality. And there are being revealed
breadths and depths of real religion that we had not understood. There
is a vast amount of inarticulate religion actually moving the lives of
men which the churches may lift to the level of intelligent and
articulate belief if they will but approach it with understanding and
a willingness to be taught as well as to teach.
In Jesus' story of the last judgment, there is surprise all around.
Both those on the right hand and those on the left stand fully
revealed to themselves for the first time, it seems. "Lord, when saw
we thee ..." they cry on both sides. This war has constituted such a
judgment day. A great moral issue has stood out, sharp, clean-cut and
clear. It has set men on the right hand and on the left. It brooks no
moral hyphenates; it permits no half-allegiance, either to country or
to God. Beneath all pretense and profession, it lays bare the real
man. It reveals the hidden qualities of nations. There have been many
surprises. It has shown far more of evil in the world that we had
deemed possible; but it has shown, too, far more of goodness and
courage and true religion than we had thought was there.
Evil is here--real, powerful, poignant, and more unutterably bad than
the farthest stretch of imagination had hitherto conceived that evil
could be. Since the world began it was never so full of pain and
suffering in body and mind, of needless death and of mothers brave but
broken-hearted. And most of this is the result of supreme moral evil,
the work of a power deliberately seeking world-domination and
exploitation of the rest of mankind, even though it involve the
extermination of other peoples, determined to use any methods that bid
fair to bring about this result, and organizing deceit and lust and
murder as the instruments of _Schrecklichkeit_.
But goodness is here too--strong, calm, cheerful, brave, self-devoting
goodness. These years of war have revealed to us the supreme power of
the human spirit to endure pain, to resist evil, and to count all else
naught for sake of the right in which it believes and the good upon
which its heart is set.
This goodness does not always call itself Christian, be it granted,
or even know itself to be such. A chaplain in the English army
writes: "There is in the army a very large amount of true religion.
It is not, certainly, what people before the war were accustomed to
call religion, but perhaps it may be nearer the real thing. It is
startling, no doubt, and humiliating to find out how very little hold
traditional Christianity has upon men.... So far as I am able to
estimate, we are faced now with this situation, _a Christian
life_ combined with _a pagan creed_. For while men's conduct
and their outlook are to a large extent unconsciously Christian,
their creed (or what they think to be their creed) most emphatically
is not.... Nevertheless I feel that out here one is very near to the
spirit of Christ. There is a general wholesomeness of outlook, a
sense of justice, honor and sincerity, a readiness to take what comes
and _carry on_, a power of endurance genuinely sublime, a
light-heartedness and cheeriness (nearly always, I believe, put on
for the sake of other people), a generosity and comradeship which are
obviously Christ-like."[1]