THE FAMILY AND THE CHURCH
If the family is engaged in the development of religious character
through its life and organization, it ought somehow to find very close
relations with the other great social institution engaged in precisely
the same work, the church. Both churches and homes are agencies of
religious education. In a state which separates the ecclesiastical and
the civil functions, where freedom of conscience is fully maintained,
these two are the only religious agencies engaged in education.
As the family is the child's first society, so the local church should
be the child's second, larger, wider society. The home constitutes the
first social organization for life, the one in which growing lives
prepare for the wider social living. Then should come the next forms of
social organization, the school and the church, each grouping lives
together and preparing them, by actual living, for wider circles of
life.
§ 1. RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND HOME
Many of the perplexing problems which arise in the family, as an
institution, in respect to its relations to the church, and as to the
developing relations of children to the church, would be largely solved
if we could get an understanding of the fundamental relations of these
two institutions. The institutional difficulties occur because these
relations appear to be competitive. Here is the family with its
interests in bread-winning, comforts, recreations, and pleasures, and on
the opposite side, making apparently competing claims for money, time,
interest, and service, stands the church. That is the picture
unconsciously forming in many minds. There is more or less feeling that
money given to the church is taken from the family and impoverishes it
to that degree, that time given to the church is grudgingly spared from
the pleasures of the home, that it is always a moot question which of
the two institutions shall win in the conflict of interests.
But the family must take for granted the church as its next of kin. The
home must not by its attitude and conversation assume that the problems
of the relationship of children to the church arise largely from the
opposite concept, as though these were rival institutions. We carelessly
think of the children as those who, now belonging to us, are to be
persuaded to give their allegiance to another institution, the interests
of which are in a different sphere. We think of the church as an
independent thing and therefore feel quite free to discuss its merits or
shortcomings and to criticize it if it fails to meet our standards,
just as we would criticize the baker for soggy or short-weight bread; to
our minds, the church is something set off in society, separate from the
homes, as much so as the schools or the library or a fraternal lodge.
This thought of the church as a separate something, having an existence
independent of ourselves and our families, leads us farther astray and
makes yet more difficult the development of right relations between the
church and the children. If the church is a thing apart we can analyze
its imperfections as we might stand and ridicule a regiment of raw
recruits. It marches by while we stand on the curb. But here, surely, is
one of the simplest and most easily forgotten truisms: the church is no
more than our own selves associated for certain purposes. If the church
fails in an adequate ministry for children, shall we condemn it as we
would a bridge that failed to carry a reasonable load? We do but condemn
ourselves. If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I must
help to make it fit. Before falling back on the lazy man's salve of
caustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before setting
in the child's mind an aversion to this institution, based on my
opinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to better
it. True, I am only one; but surely, where so many family tables are
each Sunday devoted to finding fault with the church and its services,
I can find many others who will aid in at least stimulating a sense of
personal responsibility for any incompleteness in the church.
The family cannot afford to take the attitude of hostile criticism, for
it is thus fighting its first and most natural ally, the one other
institution engaged in its own special work. If the forces for spiritual
character be divided, how easily do the opposing forces enter in and
occupy! The family needs the support of the wider public opinion of the
church, insisting on the supremacy of righteousness. The family needs
the co-operation of the church in its task of developing religious
lives. The family needs the power of this larger social body controlling
social conditions and making them contributory to character purposes.
The family needs the stimulus which a larger group can give to children
and young people.
This does not mean that we must never criticize the church. It is not
set off in a niche protected from the acid of secular tongues and minds.
Ministers of the gospel are unduly resentful of criticism, perhaps
because, after they leave the seminary, no one has a fair opportunity to
controvert their publicly stated opinions. But the church needs the
cleansing powers of kindly, wise, creative criticism. Anyone can find
fault, but he is wise who can show us a better way. This church is the
family's ally; it is our business to aid her to greater effectiveness.
The new church for our own day awaits the services of the men of today.
The purpose of the family is the basis of alliance with the church. As
in every other relation and purpose of the home, so here: the dominant
factor is the conscious function of the home and family. If the home is
really a religious institution it will seek natural alliance with all
other truly religious institutions. Ideally, what is a church but a
group of families associated for religious purposes? Is not the church
simply a number of families co-operating in the ideal purposes of each
family, the development of the lives of religious persons and the
control of social conditions for the sake of that purpose? Without
entering into disputation as to the relationship of little children to
the church, is there not just this relation to the human society called
the church, that it is a grouping of families for the purpose of the
divine family?
§ 2. THE FAMILY IDEAL IN THE CHURCH
Would there be any question as to the naturalness of the relation of our
children to the church if the family ideal so controlled our thinking as
to saturate theirs? Is not this the present need, that both family and
church shall conceive the latter in family terms? By this is meant, not
simply that we shall think of what is called "a family church," a church
into which we succeed in projecting our families in a fair degree of
integrity, but that we shall think of the organization and mission of
the church in terms of family life and of the ideal of the divine
family. Keeping in mind the general definition already given of a family
as persons associated for the development of spiritual persons, let us
hold the church to that same ideal; the lives of persons associated in
the broadest fellowship that includes both God and man for the purposes
of spiritual personality. The church then should be the expression of
that family of which Jesus often spoke, the family that calls God Father
and man brother.
Closer and more helpful relations between family and church follow where
the principles of the family prevail in the latter. The family is an
ideal democracy because it exists primarily for persons. It places the
value of persons first of all. So with the true church; it will exist to
grow lives to spiritual fulness, and to this end all buildings,
adornments, exercises, teachings, and organizations will be but as
tools, as means serving that purpose. As the family sees its house,
table, and activities designed to personal ends, so will the church. In
an institution existing to grow lives, the great principle of democracy
and of the family will prevail, viz., that to the least we owe the most.
Just as the home gives its best to the little child, so will the church
place the child in the midst. Just as the home exists for the child and
thus holds to itself all other lives, so will the church some day exist
for the little ones and so hold and use all other lives.
The prime difficulty of relating the children in our families to the
average church lies in the fact that they are children, while the church
is an adult institution. Its buildings are designed for adults--save in
rare and happy exceptions;[46] its services are designed for adults; it
has a more or less extraneous institution called a school for the
children. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and
land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows
the many that already as children are its own to drift away. It often
fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the
growing period. There still remain many churches that must be converted
from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving
service for the development of spiritual lives and, especially, for the
development of such lives through childhood and youth. They must hear
again the Master's voice regarding "these little ones," regarding the
significance of the child. And all must be loyal to his picture of his
Kingdom as a family and must, therefore, do what all true families do,
become child-centric. A church in which children occupy the same place
that they hold in an ideal family will have no difficulty in finding a
place for the children. It will be a natural and unnoticed transition
from the family life in the home to the family life in the church.
§ 3. A PLACE FOR ALL IN THE CHURCH
The family may help directly toward the realization of this ideal by an
insistence on the family conception and the family program in the
church. Bring the children with you to the church and seek to find there
a place for each as natural as the place he occupies in the home. If the
church makes no such provision, if it has no place for children, in the
name of our wider spiritual family relationships we must demand it. Let
the voice of the family be heard insisting on suitable buildings and
specially designed worship for child-life--suitable forms of service and
activity. Let the thought that goes to furnish these in the home be
carried over to provide them in the church.
Parents may help their children to find right relations with the church
by their attitude toward it as the larger family group. To think and act
toward this institution as our home, the wider home of the families, is
to establish similar habits of thought in children. Such a concept is
not always easy to maintain; the church includes many of different
habits of thought from ourselves, divergent tastes and habits of general
life. Here one must exercise the family principle of responsibility
toward the weaker and immature. This family, the church, just like our
own family, exists, not to minister to our tastes, but that we may all
minister to others.
The principal service which the family may render to the church is,
then, to foster an interpretation and view of the latter which will
relate it more closely to the home and will make it evidently natural
for child-life to move out into this wider social organization for
religious culture and service. Surely this should be the attitude toward
membership in the church, whether that membership begins theoretically
in infancy or in maturer years; the child is trained to see the church
as his normal society, the group into which he naturally moves and in
which he finds his opportunity for fellowship and service. The family
may well hold that relationship steadily before its members. In
childhood the child is in the church in the fellowship of those who
learn. The Sunday school is the spiritual family in groups discovering
the way of the religious life and the art of its service. The fellowship
grows closer and the sense of unity deepens as the child's relationship
passes over from the passive to the active, from the involuntary to the
voluntary--just as it does in the home--and develops, as the child comes
into social consciousness, into a recognition of himself as belonging to
a social organization for specific purposes.
§ 4. CHILD UNITY WITH THE CHURCH
At some time every child of church-attending parents will want to know
whether he "belongs to the church." One must be very careful here,
regardless of the ecclesiastical practice, to show the child that he is
essentially one with this body, this religious family. He may be too
young to subscribe his name to its roll, but he belongs at least to the
full measure of unity appreciable by his mind. He must not be permitted
to think of himself as an outsider. Indeed, no matter what our theology
may hold, every religious parent believes that his children belong to
God. Do they not also belong to the church in at least the sense that
the church is responsible for their spiritual welfare?
The sense of unity must be developed. Writing the child's name on the
"Cradle Roll" of the church school may help. Assuming, as he develops,
that he is a part of this spiritual family, naturally expecting that he
will have an increasing share in its life, will help more. Parents who
dedicate their children to God pass on to them the stimulus of that
dedication. A church service of dedication is likely to impress them
with a feeling of unity with the church; seeing other children so
dedicated they know that a similar occasion occurred in their own early
lives.
The forms of relationship must develop with the nature of the child. The
church needs not only a graded curriculum of instruction but a graded
series of relationships by which children, step by step, come into
closer conscious social unity, each step determined by their developing
needs and capacities.
It is easy to say that the responsibility lies with the church to
provide these methods of attachment. But the church we have been
sketching is a congeries of families, after all, and it will do just
what these families, particularly the parents in them, stimulate it to
do.
§ 5. INCIDENTAL DIFFICULTIES
But what of those instances in which parents are convinced that the
church does not furnish a normal and healthy atmosphere for the child's
spiritual life? There are churches where the Sunday school is simply a
training school in insubordination, confusion, and irreverence, or where
religion is so taught as to cultivate superstition and to lead
eventually either to a painful intellectual reconstruction or to a
barren denial of all faith. There are churches of one type so devoted
to the entertainment of adults, to the ministry to the pride of the
flesh and the lust of things, that a child is likely to be trained to
pious pride and greed, or of another type, in which religion is a matter
of verbiage, tradition, and unethical subterfuge.
Parents must be true to their responsibilities. The family is the
child's first religious institution. Fathers and mothers are not only
the first and most potent quickeners and guides in the religious life,
but they are primarily responsible for the selection of all other
stimuli to that life. Under the drag of our own indifference we must not
withhold from the child the good he would get even from the church we do
not particularly enjoy; neither dare we, for fear of criticism or
ostracism, force the child under influences which, in the name of
religion, would chill and prevent his spiritual development, would
twist, dwarf, or distort it. Responsibility to the spiritual purpose of
the family is far higher than any responsibility to a church. The
churches are ordered for the souls of men.
What shall we do in the family when the sermon is always tediously dull?
Don't try to force children to go to sleep in church; they will never
get over the habit. Insist that there shall be a service suitable for
them parallel to the adult service of worship.[47] Next, try to
overcome the present popular obsession regarding the sermon. The church
is more than an oratory station. The sermon is only one incident. Many
criticisms of the sermon indicate that the critic measures the preacher
by ability to entertain, that he attends church to be entertained. If
that is essentially your attitude, you cannot complain if your children
are dissatisfied unless they too are entertained according to their
childish appetites. When the sermon is poor, put it where it belongs
proportionately and enlarge on the many good features of church
fellowship and service.
In a word, let the church be to the family that larger home where
families live together their life of fellowship and service in the
spirit and purpose of religion and where there is a natural place for
everyone.
I. References for Study
H.W. Hulbert, _The Church and Her Children_, chaps. i-v. Revell,
$1.00.
H.F. Cope, _Efficiency in the Sunday School_, chaps. xiv-xvi.
Doran, $1.00.
George Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. xiv.
Appleton, $1.50.
II. Further Reading
A. Hoben, _The Minister and the Boy_. The University of Chicago
Press, $1.00.
E.C. Foster, _The Boy and the Church_. Sunday School Times Co.,
$0.75.
G.A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, Part II. Revell,
$1.35.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What are the special common interests of church and family?
2. What are the fundamental relationships of the two?
3. What conception of the church ought to be fostered in the
children's minds?
4. When is criticism of the church unwise?
5. What changes might be made in church life for the sake of the
children?
6. What changes would bring the church and the home closer
together?
7. What should be the children's conception of unity with the
church?
8. Should children attend, in family groups, the church service of
worship?
9. Does the plan of a short service for children meet the need?
FOOTNOTES:
[46] See a pamphlet on _Church School Buildings_ (free) published by the
Religious Education Association; also H.F. Evans, _The Sunday-School
Building and Its Equipment_.
[47] See the author's suggestion for the Sunday school in _Efficiency in
the Sunday School_, chap. xv.