Religious education

“ Home-education should be religious. As the child has a religious nature, religious wants, and a religious end to accomplish, it should receive from its parents a religious training. Religion is educational. We are commanded to teach religion to our children. The admonition to "train up a child in the way he should go," and to "bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," is a scripture sanction of religious education. Nature and the bible are the text-books for such a training. The child should be taught natural and revealed religion. ”

“ But from certain data which has come out of the study one is able to obtain ideas concerning the view of the educators on the aim of religious education and the degree in which this aim is being attained. We note in the first place that all of those who answered the questionnaires were cognizant of the religious motives in education. Perhaps a few typical quotations will emphasize that. "I think much personal good is done. The student gets a clearer idea of the Bible and its value in the world today." "I regard the course in religion as vital and essential to any thorough education." ”

“ Religious education seeks to direct a religious process of growth with a religious purpose for religious persons. Religious education is the spirit which characterizes the work of every educator who looks on the child as a spiritual nature, a religious person; it is the work of every educator who sees his aim as that of training this spiritual person to fulness of living in a society essentially spiritual. ”

“ Religion, then, forms the spirit and essence of all true education. As leaven must be diffused throughout the entire mass in order to produce its effects, so religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child's entire education, in order to be solid and effective. Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Here are laid the primitive principles of future character and conduct. ”

“ Education must be founded upon knowledge, not upon faith; and religion itself should be taught in the public schools only as religious history and as an objective or scientific exposition of the different religious systems prevailing among mankind. Any one who, after such an education, still experiences the need of a definite law or rule of faith may then attach himself to any religious sect that may seem good to him, but cannot claim that the community should bear the cost of this special fancy! ”

“ But here we have the breadth of minds so wide in the sweep of their intelligence, so profound in their insight, that we are almost startled with the perception that, pictured on these walls, we have indeed a true measure of the thoughts of God. Let us glance for a moment at our nineteenth century conception of education. In the first place, we divide education into religious and secular. The more devout among us insist upon religious education as well as secular. ”

“ It is safe to say, and this without reservation, the most fundamental problem in England and America to-day is the problem of religious education, because this lies at the roots of all else—political, social, and theological. ”

“ In education one cannot separate the utilitarian side,—the fitting of the child for the struggle of life,—from its main purpose,—the development of moral character. The moral aspect alone gives to human life its true character, its real value. As there is no morality without religion, the system of education that would debar this essential feature falls short of its full meaning. With this principle in view any fair-minded man will understand how true Christian parents demand a school where their children will receive religious education. ”

“ For it is in these schools, above all, that the children of the people ought to be carefully taught from their tender years the mysteries and precepts of our holy religion, and to be trained with diligence to piety, good morals, religion and civilization. In such schools religious teaching ought to have so leading a place in all that concerns education and instruction, that whatever else the children may [Pg 312] learn should appear subsidiary to it. ”

“ In other words, we are a religious people. And yet, notwithstanding this fact, so far as thoroughgoing, systematic religious education is concerned, when compared with the time and efforts devoted to education along other lines, and its quality, it suffers painfully. In nearly all of the states, five days a week, of at least four or five hours each, are given to what we call secular education, as against one day per week, of one hour each, to religious instruction and worship. ”

“ For a goodly number of intelligent minds—agnostics and independents in their theological views—it has already to a large extent supplanted the Church as an agency for moral, and in a qualified and unconventional sense, of religious education. ”

“ So closely bound together are moral and religious training that a discussion of one without the other would be incomplete. In a word, religion is the most generic kind of culture as opposed to all systems or departments which are one sided. All education culminates in it because it is chief among human interests, and because it gives inner unity to the mind, heart, and will. ”

“ That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated ”

“ The aim has been to give in concise, popular form answers to some of the many questions thus raised, with the conviction that they are in the mind of every thoughtful man and woman to-day, and especially on the lips of earnest pastors, missionaries, and Sunday-school teachers. There are indications on every side of a deepening and far more intelligent interest in the needs and possibilities of religious education. Its vital importance to the life of the Church and the nation is being understood as never before. ”

“ Moreover, it is the Christian religion alone that affords men the means to obtain God's grace, which enlightens the mind to see the beauty of virtue, inflames the heart with love for it, and inclines the will to practise it with perseverance. If we then wish to be sure of having a virtuous and virile people, we must Christianize our youth, especially during their school hours; we must bring up our children in a religious atmosphere. I have already remarked that religion may be compared to leaven. ”

“ The religious purpose in religious education yields the point of view and the principles of classification that are important for religious educators.
The conceptions of religious education just passed in review warrant certain deductions. Any institution which meets adequately the requirements of religious education must have genuinely religious men and women in the entire teaching and official force. Such persons will determine the atmosphere and spirit of the institution. ”

“ It is not sufficient to say, that education is to be conducted on religious principles, for on the subject of religion there exists, in this day, a most unfortunate and mischievous variety of opinions, which would be much diminished if the Holy Scriptures were made the real, as they are the professed, groundwork of every system of Christian instruction. ”

“ Education must superintend the development of the religious consciousness towards an insight into the necessary consequence of its different stages. Nothing is more absurd than for the educator to desire to avoid the introduction of a positive religion, or a definite creed, as a middle stage between the natural beginning of religious feeling and its end in philosophical culture. ”

“ On the other hand, to their credit it is the fact that many who are not Christians, who are careless and neglectful of religion, or are even agnostics, insist upon their children receiving that religious education which they themselves once received, with the just and broad-minded idea that, though they have become careless, cynical, or entirely agnostic, the children shall start as they did with the same training and have the same opportunity of forming their own judgment on these matters. ”

“ As for a college education in divinity qualifying boys for "preaching the word", the absurdity of the conceit is manifest in the fact that the "college-bred divines" are all at variance among themselves upon its meaning. Call a convention of priests and preachers of all religious sects and parties, and assign to them the work of publishing a scriptural and unanimous reply to the simple question, What do the scriptures teach as the measure of faith, and rule of conduct, to him who would inherit the Kingdom? ”

“ They have altered methods of Biblical education in our Sunday Schools, have shown us helpful and harmful ways of presenting religious appeals, and have given us scientific standards to test the value of the materials employed in public worship. ”

“ In fact, in American Puritanism, with its social, civil, and religious results, may be seen the high-water mark of the intellectual and spiritual influence which, in the whole course of history,Page 249 have thus far proceeded from the banks of the Cam." The church, in harmony with the genius of Christianity, has always fostered education. It assumes to guard Christianity by directing education as one of its most powerful of organized forces. ”

“ Still, it is probably true, that the great majority of religious men and women are found in the class-room, and this for the good and sufficient reason that Christian education is the paramount need of the day, and the work on which the future of the Church chiefly depends. ”

“ Christian parent great facilities in the discharge of his religious duties towards his children, as the variety of engaging works which issue from the press are calculated not only to interest but to instruct, and the numerous societies which are formed for the education of the poor, and for evangelizing the heathen, have a tendency to keep up a high sense of the importance of religion in the youthful mind, while they call his powers into active operation. ”

“ An education, that has filled his mind with somewhat distorted meanings, for the terms, religious faith, soul, sin, salvation, religion, total depravity and many others of a similar import, which theology has applied to man's spiritual welfare. ”

“ In the Christian schools, while the carefully-selected American teachers insure good schools and good teaching of the ordinary branches, there is a place for moral education, for simple religious exercises and for Bible study. ”

“ This end can be realized only when religion is made the central point of education from which everything radiates, to which everything returns. For this reason the bishops sought (1897, 1898) to obtain the consent of the ministry to an increase in the time given to religious instruction in the primary and secondary schools. ”

“ If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, 'good fences make good neighbors.'
Notes 1 For an exposition of the religious origins of American education, see S. W. Brown, The Secularization of American Education (1912) cc. ”

“ And, after all, if we concede to the State power and wisdom to single out 'duly constituted religious' bodies as exclusive alternatives for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to also uphold the power and wisdom to choose the true faith among those 'duly constituted.' We start down a rough road when we begin to mix compulsory public education with compulsory godliness. ”

“ You are raising up in these schools men and women who, in the years to come, can, will and must teach the children of their people. Hundreds of them are doing it now. I say must; for Christianized education must, by its instinctive and divine impulses, perpetuate itself and diffuse itself. ”

“ And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ”

“ Let any one who chooses to make the experiment, take, indiscriminately, any number of young persons, of both sexes, who have just left school, and ask them—“are you members of any particular christian church? If you are not, have you formed any distinct, settled religious opinions in consequence of the course of religious instruction received from your teachers? Has any regular, earnest, unremitting effort been made to instil into your minds the general principles of christianity?” ”

“ It is a fundamental principle of Christianity, admitted even by Protestants, that man cannot reach his destiny without a knowledge of the religion which Jesus Christ taught, and which He sealed with His precious Blood. Now this fundamental principle is virtually ignored in our present school system, which proposes to educate without religion. ”

“ For example, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and a knowledge [207] of the Holy is understanding.' Religion must be the basis of all right education; and an education without religion is an education for perdition. Religion, in its most general sense, is the union of the soul to its Creator; a union of sympathy, originating in affection, and guided by intelligence. ”

“ MY DEAR CHILDREN--I purpose to give you, in this letter, an account of my conversion to the true Christian religion--that religion which was established by our Lord and his apostles, professed by their followers during the first two centuries of the church, and which is now followed by the protestant or reformed Christians. I am conscious that neither my abilities nor my education qualify me for this task. A mere mechanic, and possessing but few advantages of education, I find it very difficult to express, as I could wish, the thoughts and feelings which crowd upon my mind. ”