THE RELIGIOUS PLACE OF THE FAMILY
§ 1. DEVELOPMENT AS A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION
The family is the most important religious institution in the life of
today. It ranks in influence before the church. It has always held this
place. Even among primitive peoples, where family life was an uncertain
quantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to the
children afforded the opportunity most frequently used for their
instruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalize
as to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for those
practices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparent
care for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best we
know; but this much is certain, that there was a common sense of
responsibility for the training of young children in moral and religious
ideas and customs, and that, in the degree that the family approached to
separateness and unity, it accepted the primary responsibility for this
task. The higher the type of family life the more fully does it
discharge its function in the education of the child.[7]
It might be safe to say that among primitive peoples there were three
stages, or types, of relationship based on the breeding of children, or
three stages of development toward family life. The first is a loose and
indefinite relationship existing principally between the adults, or the
males and females, under which children born when not desired are
neglected or strangled and, when acceptable, may be in the care of
either parent, or of neither. Since the group, associated through
infancy with at least one parent, is as yet undeveloped, any instruction
will be individual and usually incidental.
The second form is that of a kind of family unity, either about the
mother or the father, or both, or about a group of parents, in which the
children live together and are sheltered and nurtured for their earlier
years. Here, however, the real relationship of the child is to the
tribe, the family is but his temporary guardian, and, at least by the
age of puberty, he will be initiated into the tribal secrets. If he is a
boy, he will cease to be a member of the family group and will go to
live in the "men's house," becoming a part of the larger life of the
tribe.[8] Such moral and religious instruction as he may acquire will
come from the songs, traditions, and conversation which he hears as a
child.
The third type approaches the modern ideal, with a greater or less
degree of permanent unity between the two parents and with permanence in
the group of the offspring. The parental responsibility continues for a
greater length of time and, since the tribe makes smaller claims, and
the parents live in the common domestic group, much more instruction is
possible and is given. The tribal ideals, the traditions, observances,
and religious rites are imparted to children gradually in their homes.
The last type brings us to the Hebrew conception of family life. It
developed toward the Christian ideal. At first, polygamy was permitted;
woman was the chattel of man and excluded from any part in the religious
rites. But it included the ideal of monogamy in its tradition of the
origin of the world, it denounced and punished adultery (Deut. 22: 22),
and it gave especial attention to the training of the offspring. "And
these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and
thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up ... and thou shalt
write them upon the door-posts of thy house and upon thy gates" (Deut.
6: 6, 7, 9).
Much later, the messianic hope, the belief that in some Jewish family
there should be born one divinely commissioned and endowed to liberate
Israel and to give the Jews world-sovereignty, operated to elevate the
conception of motherhood and, through that, of the family. It made
marriage desirable and children a blessing; it rendered motherhood
sacred. It tended to center national hopes and religious ideals about
the family.[9]
There are a few glimpses of ideal family life in the Old Testament. They
are all summed up in the eloquent tribute to motherhood in the words of
King Lemuel in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It must be
remembered, however, that such ideals did not belong to the Jews alone,
that Plutarch shows many pictures of maternal fidelity and wifely
devotion, that Greek and Roman history have their Cornelia, Iphigenia,
and Mallonia.[10]
The Jews are an excellent example of the power of the family life to
maintain distinct characteristics and to secure marked development.
Practically throughout all the Christian era they have been a people
without a land, a constitution, or a government, and yet never without
race consciousness, national unity, and separateness. Their unity has
continued in spite of dispersion, persecution, and losses; they have
remained a race in the face of political storms that have swept other
peoples away. Their unity has continued about two great centers, the
customs of religion and the life of the family.
The results of Jewish respect for family life can also be seen in
the health of their own children. In 1910, for instance, among poor
Jews in Manchester the mortality of infants under one year of age
was found to be 118 per thousand; among poor Gentiles, 300 per
thousand; and comparisons made some six years ago between Jewish
and Gentile children in schools in the poorer parts of Manchester
and Leeds (England) have shown that the Jewish children are
uniformly taller, they weigh more, and their bones and teeth are
superior.[11]
§ 2. THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY
The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a new
institution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but as
controlled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of the
home and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He did not
give formal rules for the regulation of homes; rather he made a
spiritual ideal of family life the basic thought of all his teaching. He
said more about the family than concerning any other human institution,
yet he established no family life of his own. He is called the founder
of the church, yet he scarcely mentions that institution, while he
frequently teaches concerning home duties and family relations. He
glorifies the relations of the family by making them the figure by which
men may understand the highest relations of life. He speaks more of
fatherhood and sonship than of any other relations. He gives direction
for living, using the family terms of brotherhood. He points forward to
ideal living in a home beyond this life. He teaches men when they think
of God and when they address him to take the family attitude and call
him Father.
If we sum up all the teachings of Jesus and separate them from our
preconceptions of their theological content, we cannot but be impressed
with the facts that he seized upon the family life as the best
expression of the highest relationships; that he pointed to a purified
family life, in which spiritual aims would dominate, as the best
expression of ideal relationships among his followers; and that he
glorified marriage and really made the family the great, divine,
sacramental institution of human society.
We can hardly overestimate the importance of such teaching to the
character of the family. The early Christians not only accepted Jesus as
their teacher and savior; they took their family life as the opportunity
to show what the Kingdom of God, the ideal society, was like. Family
life was consecrated. Men and women belonged to the new order with
their whole households. Religion became largely a family matter. The
worship that had been confined to the temple now made an altar in every
home and a holy of holies in the midst of every family. The scriptures
that belonged to the synagogue now belonged in the home. Above all, this
family existed for the purposes taught by Jesus, that men might grow in
brotherhood toward the likeness of the divine Fatherhood. It was an
institution, not for economic purpose of food and shelter, not for
personal ends of passion or pride, but for spiritual purpose, for the
growth of persons, especially the young in the home, in character, into
"the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
Christianity is essentially a religion of ideal family life. It
conceives of human society, not in terms of a monarchy with a king and
subjects, but in terms of a family with a great all-Father and his
children, who live in brotherhood, who take life as their opportunity
for those family joys of service and sacrifice. It hopes to solve the
world's ills, not by external regulations, but by bringing all men into
a new family life, a birth into this new family life with God, so
securing a new personal environment, a new personality as the center and
root of all social betterment. He who would come into this new social
order must come into the divine family, must humble himself and become
as a little child, must know his Father and love his brothers.
Christianity, then, not only seeks an ideal family; it makes the family
the ideal social institution and order. It makes family life holy,
sacramental, religious in its very nature. This fact gives added
importance to the preservation and development of the ideals of family
life for the sake of their religious significance and influence. It not
only makes religion a part of the life of the home but makes a religious
purpose the very reason for the existence of the Christian type of home.
It makes our homes essentially religious institutions, to be judged by
religious products.
I. References for Study
G.A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chap. xvi. Revell,
$1.35.
Article on "The Family," in Hastings, _Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics_.
II. Further Reading
On the educational function of the family: A.J. Todd, _The
Primitive Family as an Educational Agency_. Putnam, $2.00.
On the religious place of the family: C.F. and C.B. Thwing, _The
Family_. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.60.
I.J. Peritz, "Biblical Ideal of the Home," _Religious Education_,
VI, 322.
H. Hanson, _The Function of the Family_. American Baptist
Publication Society, $0.15.
W. Becker, _Christian Education, or the Duties of Parents_. Herder,
$1.00. A striking presentation of the Roman Catholic view; could be
read to advantage by all parents.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What place did religion hold in the primitive family? What
reference or allusion do we find in the Old Testament to the place
of religion in the family (Deut. 6:7-9, 20-25)? What in the New
Testament?
2. What has been the effect of purity of family life on the Jewish
race?
3. What place did the family hold in the teachings of Jesus?
4. What shall we think of the relations of the church and family as
to their comparative rights and our duty to them?
5. Do you agree that the family is the most important religious
institution?
FOOTNOTES:
[7] For a brief statement see Brinton, _Religions of Primitive Peoples_,
Lecture 4, § 7; also Todd, _The Family as an Educational Agency_.
[8] See Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_, chaps. i, ii.
[9] On the place of the family in different religious systems see the
fine article under "Family" in Hastings, _Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics_.
[10] See Lecky, _History of European Morals_, chap. ii.
[11] Quoted by Lofthouse in _Ethics and the Family_, p. 8, from W. Hall,
in _Progress_ (London), April, 1907.