The pastor and religious education

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE BORE WORD ee UU aus ating! cesta atacues 7 I. SHOULD THE CHURCH KEEP PACE?......... II II. Wuy Don’t THey Stay FoR CHURCH?..... 30 III. How Can THE MinistER Hotp His Younc PORTS oh ied sls oh elias sunluatom eh ainey aia wie 50 IV. Is tHe Junior CuHurcu a Way OvrT?....... 78 V. Wuat Is THE CHuRcH TRYING TO Do?..... 92 VI. Can Reticious EpucaTion REMAIN a Lay- MAN'S DMIOVEMENT Hie Ue UU OO Ae II4 VII. Does a DrrEector SOLVE THE PROBLEM?.... 136 VIII. Can THE MINiIsTER TAKE ON ANOTHER TASK? 153 IX. THE CHURCH AS A SCHOOL IN CHRISTIAN PAY eee iatis Leal CER Se tool SIG ch A 171 X. THE Pastor His Own EpvucationaL Dr- EOS Se Pee ee INES RCM RED URE Nag 8 206

Foreword

THE Ministerial Alliance of a midwestern city was in session. The question under discussion was “religious education.” A veteran of half a century’s pastoral experience, honored by all for his achievements, said, “‘If I had my way about it, I would wipe out the Sunday school. I would abolish this whole program of religious education.”’

“But,” remonstrated one of his colleagues, ‘‘what about the Board of Religious Education of your denomination? How would it function without Sunday schools?”

“IT would wipe out that board and others like it,”’ responded the veteran. ‘‘We have been led too far astray by this religious education from the central evangelistic purpose of the church.’’

A very successful pastor in an excellent church said enthusiastically, after week-day religious education had been launched in his city, ‘‘I tell you, this week-day work is the thing. It won’t be long now until we can do the necessary teaching that way and then we can close up the Sunday school and give the church itself a chance on Sunday.”

_ A thoughtful pastor expresses his observation that many good people have a Sunday-school experience of religion. Although church members, they have far more enthusiasm for the Sunday church school!

1 Throughout this book the term ‘Sunday school” will be used to indicate the traditional teaching agency of the church, the term “church school” will mean the total modern educational program of a church, and the term “Sunday church school’’ will refer to the Sunday session of such a program.

FOREWORD than for the church. Naturally, such a situation is not quite satisfactory to the pastor.

Many a minister has the harrowing experience, weekly, of seeing a great company of his people, especially the younger group, turn their backs upon the church, just at the point where he takes charge of the morning program to lead the congregation in worship. He wonders whether there is something wrong with himself, the program, or the people, that he should thus be denied effective contact with so many at the high point in the church’s weekly schedule.

A great religious educator goes as far as any minister would in saying: ‘“‘The complete abolition of the school would be a long step in advance. It is an obsolete institution. Historically, the Sunday school was a lay movement of religious education which formed an alliance with the church. The Sunday-school superintendent has always regarded himself as the head of the institution. The time has come for the church to resume its function of religious education, for the minister to resume his function of educational direction, for the separate institution of a religious school to be abandoned. We need a church and only a church.’”?

For nearly a century and a half the Sunday school developed largely as a layman’s enterprise performing an important service for the church, but, except here and there, not receiving a great deal of attention from the clergy. ‘Then, almost suddenly, the traditional Sunday-school movement

*Soares, Theodore Gerald, Religious Education (1928), p. 262. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

FOREWORD metamorphosed into a veritable religious educational renaissance. It began to claim a place of chief attention and influence in the life of the church. It developed its own self-conscious profession. Its teeming activities threatened to push the minister to one side, unless he found a place for himself among them.

For the minister to ignore religious education is no longer possible. 'To oppose it is a natural first impulse on the part of the minister who finds it seemingly frustrating the program to which he is accustomed and for which he is trained. To use its resources and techniques to further his own purposes and ideals for his congregation, is becoming the attitude of an increasing number of successful ministers.

Whatever may have been the characteristic traditional attitude of the minister toward Sunday-school work, one thing is clear—the minister of to-day is forced into some intelligent and consistent attitude toward religious education, if he is to maintain his place of leadership in the local church program. It is the purpose of the following discussion to assist ithe pastor in finding his proper place in the educational program of his church.

The bibliographies are purposely limited in order to supply very definite guidance in further reading. They are restricted for the most part to recent publications on the assumption that most pastors will already be familiar with the older works which have value still. Many excellent volumes have been excluded which deal in a general way with the modern church and the pastor’s functions and

FOREWORD responsibilities in its program. This is not to imply that they are not valuable, but, rather, that the alert pastor will already be familiar with their helpful messages. The bibliographies as well as the treatment itself have sought to deal quite definitely with a particular point of view regarding the pastor’s educational function and responsibility.

Chapter I Should The Church Keep Pace?

SUPPOSE some twentieth-century Rip van Winkle who had fallen asleep about twenty years ago should suddenly awaken next Saturday evening to find himself standing on the public square of his old home town! His amazement would doubtless far exceed that of his noted prototype. Imagine him rubbing his eyes at the galaxy of electrical advertising and standing aghast amidst the dashing about of high-powered automobiles. What would he make of the barking of the loud speaker and of the ‘‘talkie’’ or of the zoom of the aeroplane overhead, to say nothing of new styles in skirts and skyscrapers! His first impression would probably be that, through some terrible mistake, he had awakened in a different world than the one he had known before his twenty-year nap.

But suppose, unlike the original Rip, he had been a respectable churchman, and he should sleep on through Saturday night and awaken at about eleven o’clock Sunday morning to find himself comfortably seated in his old home church. He might feel quite at home!

The church to-day is in the midst of a world which is changing with confusing and increasing rapidity. The expansion of man’s control over the hitherto mysterious and ominous forces of the universe has transformed his whole mode of living. New ways of getting his work done have greatly

II increased leisure and lightened drudgery, at the same time vastly multiplying productivity. New modes of travel and communication have enlarged his contacts and brought the very world to his doorstep. New means of amusement and self-indulgence have jaded his sensibilities with their glitter and thrill. New ways of personal enrichment and enlargement of life have revealed spiritual potentialities hitherto undreamed. But in it all change is the most constant and characteristic note.

Modes of living change more to-day in a decade than they did formerly in centuries. Adjustments as great as those which were once scarcely demanded in the long life of a nation or a race now must be made several times in the life of a single generation. That this confusing condition of change will continue even more rapidly in the future is one of the few certainties toward which we dare look.

The task of the traditional educator was comparatively simple. He had merely to prepare his students to live in the same world in which he himself had grown up—to pass on to them the modes of conduct and the solutions for life’s problems which had always been sufficient. Change was so slight as to be negligible.

But the modern educator dare not be nearly so sure of himself. How can he prepare his students for a future which is so largely unpredictable? Who knows what specific skills and knowledge and modes of conduct these students will need, in order to live effectively in the world of two or three decades hence? So the modern educator says that the best he can do to help these boys and girls get ready for that unknown world and life of to-morrow,

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is to help them live skillfully and richly now. If they develop initiative and resourcefulness in making adjustments to life’s demands to-day, we may trust that the unpredictable world of to-morrow will find them courageous and self-reliant, ready to make the best of it, come what may.’

With change apparent all about us, with general education adjusting its philosophy so as to accommodate rather than to resist change, with science promising still further to speed the rate of change, and with scarcely an institution or a custom sacred enough to escape the iconoclastic modern; what shall we say of the church? Shall the church change too? Or shall there remain at least one changeless Gibraltar amidst the swirling tides of humanity? Is the church not needed as one place of refuge where pilgrims out of the past may catch their breath and feel momentarily at home?

Religion has always functioned in human experience as a steadying and conserving force. It is the confidence and reassurance growing out of religious faith that gives poise and control to the believer in the midst of whatever uncertainties, or mysteries, or readjustments life forces upon him. If the institutions of religion were as responsive to every whim of popular fancy and every new interest or sensation brought about by our changing order as is the theater, for example, certainly they would fail to serve the real mission of religion in human life. We may rightly expect, therefore, a degree of stability, poise, and continuity in the program of the church which continually lays it

1See Kilpatrick, Education for a Changing Cwilization, The Macmillan Company, publishers, New York.

under the charge of being out-of-date in a rapidly changing social order. The church can afford to face the charge of being ‘‘old-fashioned”’ better than it can afford to fail in conserving true values and in steadying human waywardness. The church dare not become fickle even though many of its members do.

On the other hand, the Christian religion is far more concerned with ongoing human experience than with mere preservation of the past. Its institutions and their programs, therefore, dare not become dissociated from life with all its changes. A church in which one who belongs to a previous generation would feel ‘‘quite at home” may be failing to provide a real religious home for those of its own generation. After all, our concern as church leaders is not so much to provide a refuge for a rudely awakened Rip van Winkle as it is to provide poise and power and guidance to those living the life of to-day. Perhaps Rip should have slept on—or not have gone to sleep in the first place.

The question is not whether the church will undertake to make such adjustments in her program as will enable it to deal with life in a complex and rapidly changing world. Rather, it is a question of discovering just what characteristics of our modern life it is that demand adjustment in the church’s program, in what aspects of her program those changes are needed, and in what the adjustments will consist.

The present-day pastor is conscious of several very effective competitors for the attention of his constituency which were unknown to his predecessor a generation ago. The automobile has made it pos-

SnUuiLe THE COURCH KEEP PACE?

sible for millions to attend the church of their choice with convenience, speed, and comfort, who must formerly have attended at great difficulty if at all. But unfortunately, instead of bringing people in vaster multitudes to the church, the automobile seems to have become one of the most effective means of taking them off on Sunday outings, leaving empty churches behind them. ‘‘How can we convert those automobiles?’ is many a pastor’s problem.

The Sunday paper, potentially a power for general intelligence and culture, has, for uncounted families, set the tone of Sunday reading and thinking at a pagan level and monopolized the hours of Sunday morning once spent in church. Shall the pastor compete for the attention of this constituency by lurid sensationalism?

As a result of the amazing privileges brought to millions of homes by the radio, more good preaching is being heard to-day, no doubt, than ever before. The audiences of several of the most effective pulpiteers of the country have been multiplied by tens of thousands. Yet the radio sermon is not considered an ally by the majority of pastors. For too many of their audience it constitutes an excuse to be absent from their own church and to shirk any real part in the responsibility and fellowship of church work. Whatever value the radio has had in creating a general interest in religion and in disseminating inspiration and guidance through the broadcast sermon, the average pastor has found his task made more difficult and exacting as a result of its unintentional competition.

Popular amusements, more widely accessible and more skillfully purveyed to the public than ever before, are more generously patronized, including a greatly increased patronage by church people. Shall the church install its own motion pictures and dances, entering openly into competition with commercial types? Can it compete successfully? If it does, what has it gained?

The vastly increased productivity of modern power-driven industry has produced luxury and leisure with their attendant self-indulgence and ease. Inevitably moral tissue tends to become flabby and religion to lose its virility and heroic qualities. Pleasure becomes an end in itself and a final justification for any conduct. In a young people’s church convention a fine-appearing lad was to speak on the subject, ‘‘The Mind of Christ in Our Social Life.” He said that he would deal with the subject by a defense of modern youth, which has been so much slandered. After justifying high-school fraternities and dancing by saying that all were usually judged by the worst, he disposed of the matter of girls smoking cigarettes in these words: ‘‘A girl smokes for one of two reasons, either to be smart or because she likes it. If she smokes just to be smart, she’ll soon give it up. So why worry about it? If she smokes for pleasure, let her smoke!’ This concluded the speech, and it went unchallenged among a group of Christian youth and their leaders! The stern challenge of the gospel of Christ falls as a strange tongue upon such ears. The pastor wonders whether he should cultivate a vocabulary more in harmony with the age or whether he must risk being considered ‘‘old fogey’’ and cry out in protest against such pagan standards.

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But there is a deeper problem than that constituted by the increasing attractiveness of the agencies or interests competing with the church for the attention and allegiance of her constituency. The church of to-day has a new type of mind with which to deal. Great as have been the changes which have come over our modes of living in the last generation, our modes of thinking have changed still more.

In fact the whole dazzling structure of modern civilization rests back upon a new mode of thinking, the achievement of which alone made this gala day possible. It was not until man learned to measure with extreme accuracy and minuteness, to experiment with far-seeing and undiscourageable purpose, to gather data with infinite pains and _patience, to interpret these data with insight and imagination, and to use the results of the tireless efforts of predecessors and coworkers—it was not until man learned to think scientifically that our modern world of magic became possible. Only as men gained the courage to challenge every cherished superstition, to doubt every accepted notion, and to root the word “impossible” out of their vocabularies, did they lay hold of the secrets which unlocked these mighty forces of the universe and enslaved them again in the service of man. It is the scientific method, which is primarily a mode of thinking, a type of mind, that has built for us our fairyland of luxuries and thrills.

The scientific method was for a time the possession of a few specialists whose uncanny feats amazed and puzzled us. Our general mode of thinking was not greatly affected thereby. To-day, however, the most efficient and extensive educational system ever developed is busily engaged in putting the growling generation into possession of at least the general patterns of the scientific method. The type of mind with which the church of the future must deal is one that is inquisitive, critical, analytical, and logical, rather than credulous and submissive to arbitrary intellectual authority.

Modern education is quite confident of its ability to develop a general national type of mind. Evidences of the power of the modern educational method are not far to seek. “‘What you would put into the state, first put into the school,’ was the slogan of William von Humbolt, Prussian minister of education. On this principle the schools of a great nation of peace-loving, docile, and industrious people were dedicated to the creation of the military mind. In a generation the nation was converted into a mighty military camp with a national morale and a will-to-conquest which were the admiration and despair of the civilized world.

Benjamin Kidd, in his book, The Science of Power, uses the above and similar illustrations to show the invincible power of education to create any kind of social order its leaders may set before themselves. He concludes that any ideal may be realized or any dream fulfilled in the life of the oncoming generation if they are but permitted to take it up as a part of their social heritage through education. Since we have a highly efficient educational system reaching all but a negligible portion of our children and youth, the mental type of the future is largely being determined by it. This system is increasingly scientific in its viewpoint, method,

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and aims, and will inevitably produce a scientifically minded generation.

Now, so far, the scientific method has been chiefly concerned with physical forces. Its conquests have been largely in the material realm. It is not surprising, therefore, that the scientific method and type of mind have come to be popularly identified with a materialistic philosophy of life. It has even been frequently assumed that the scientific method is restricted to dealing with physical entities or material things. The mechanistic behaviorists in psychology seem unwilling to grant the existence of anything except the physical basis of consciousness. They stigmatize as “‘unscientific’’? any attempt to deal with data of human experience which are not physical in nature. Due to the preoccupation of science so far largely with data of a material nature, it is not surprising that the scientific type of mind has tended toward a materialistic philosophy.

For the time being, at least, we must grant that the rapid dissemination of the scientific type of mind has embarrassed organized religion and made the task of the minister vastly more difficult. Even though this be a temporary situation, this new type of mind with which the church of the immediate future must deal constitutes a problem greater than that of the many hindrances to regular church attendance.

“‘For the time being,’”’ we say, for who shall dare to dream of the accomplishments of the scientific method in the realm of the spirit if the ingenuity and resources which have been invested in the physical sciences to exploit nature were to be invested in the psychical sciences to discover and b, capitalize the resources of human nature? Why should we doubt that discoveries in this spiritual realm are before us just as revolutionary and as rewarding as have been corresponding discoveries in the physical? The field is more difficult of exploration and the data are more elusive. Progress will likely be slow. Yet we already know enough about mental hygiene and psychiatry to revolutionize criminology and transform our whole attitude toward the sinner and the outcast. It took medical science to dissociate physical disease from guilt for sin.2 What might happen if mental disease were similarly understood scientifically and so treated, without necessarily being bound up with guilt?

While, therefore, the first outcome of the rapidly spreading tendency to think scientifically may be a materialistic philosophy of life and a paganized social order, we are all too much in debt to the scientific method to decry it. And it does not yet appear what the same type of mind, applied exhaustively to the realm of the spiritual, may accomplish. Be that as it may, the fact remains, the church has to deal with a generation who have gained at least some proficiency in scientific thinking, materialistic though it be. What are the implications of this fact for the program and method of the church?

There are at least four attitudes which the church may take, and various churches are taking, toward the modern type of mind.

1. The church may conceive of religion as a system of belief and practice which is an entity within

2 Note: ‘Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 20

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itself, and which may go on the even tenor of its way with little regard to the currents of thought and life prevalent in the world at large. Religion thus becomes sort of a closed system, once for all delivered to the saints. By it the believer is saved from the world in which he lives, but the world itself goes to the devil who owns it, or at least possesses it. Religion is thus a “scheme of redemption’? by which, through a prescribed transaction, the individual is taken care of in the future life.

A fire escape is built on the outside of a house to be used in case worse comes to worst, but inside the house are the much more comfortable staircases and doorways for everyday use. So religion is a system attached to life for emergency purposes, to be kept in good repair and ready in case something should happen, but not to be used much in everyday traffic. Whatever may go on in life as a whole, however currents of thought and modes of living may change, this type of religion ‘‘stands hitched.”?’ It has no problems of adjustment or adaptation. It is, indeed, a complacent and satisfying sort of religion, yielding an assurance and peace of mind not easily gained otherwise. Little wonder millions cling to such a fire-escape cult in the name of Christianity.

2. At the opposite extreme the church may conceive of religion as simply a quality of life as a whole, so interrelated with all aspects of living as to be subject to every important change. But so conceived, religion seems to lack any real substance or function. Unless it is able to rise above the vicissitudes of life and assert its own constant purposes and ideals, it fails to give personality that integrity, poise, and self-control which, as religion, it should. Perhaps, after all, there was something ‘fonce for all delivered to the saints,’ even though it were not a mere closed formula of self-preservation. If we cannot afford to have religion set apart from and unaffected by life, neither can we afford to make it a mere sentimental way of looking at our changing experiences.

3. A mediating position between these extremes would be to hold tenaciously to the eternal purpose and message of the religion of Jesus, while being quite willing to change the program and method by which to realize and fulfill them, as modes of living and modes of thinking change around us. This enables religion to fulfill its function as a factor of guidance and control in experience, while keeping its thought patterns and activities closely related to current experience.

But it is not always easy to distinguish between that which is essential to the message and purpose of Jesus and those vehicles of method and program which embody and convey it. We may be certain that if Jesus is worthy the place of authority in religion which Christians give him, he made nothing absolutely essential in his message and purpose with which later discoveries in any realm are inconsistent. ‘The embarrassments which theology has suffered in the scientific atmosphere of our day are due to mistaking the husk for the kernel of his message rather than to any real inconsistency. If we have the courage to subject our method and program to whatever reconstruction the present day demands, we may be assured of sufficient remaining message and purpose to give the same

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guidance and poise to life which the Christian religion has always given. Our tenacity for the things of Christ must become far greater than our tenacity for the things of men before we are able to carry this mediating attitude through.

4. Having determined to hold to the eternal message and purpose of Christ while subjecting our methods and programs to whatever changes the currents of a new day demand, we can go still further in dealing with this new type of mind. The church as such can and should take an active hand in creating the type of mind with which it will have to deal in the immediate future. Why leave this entirely to the public school and the uncertain influences of home and community? The church cannot, even if it would, work successfully against the public school in its creative task. It must work with the school and in the same direction, but it may go much further.

The difficulty with the materialistic view of life is not that it is essentially wrong. It is merely incomplete, fragmentary. It is as large a view as public education has generally achieved, but public-school men are seriously and devoutly seeking to discover the means of carrying it much further.

The following excerpt from the Sixth Yearbook of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association is one evidence of this. The subject of this report is ‘The High School Curriculum.’’ The quotation below is from Chapter II, on “The Objectives of Secondary Education.”’ The fourfold objectives of high-school education are outlined as follows:

“rt. To promote the development of an understanding and an adequate evaluation of the self.

‘‘2. To promote the development of an understanding and an appreciation of the world of nature.

“2. To promote the development of an understanding and an appreciation of organized society.

‘4. To promote the development of an appreciation of the force of law and of love that is operating universally.”

Then the fourth is further expounded as follows: ‘‘Man craves more ‘than a knowledge of himself, of nature, and of organized society. He hungers and he thirsts after righteousness. Knowing his own imperfections, he feels that somewhere there is perfection. The great universe calls to his spirit, and unless he ignorantly or willfully closes his ears, he hears the voice of God. No question of theology or ecclesiastical polity is involved here. The individual soul reaches out to orient itself in the universe and to find its place of labor and of rest. No partial view suffices. Only the view of the whole will make it possible to interpret the meaning of day-by-day experience. When this orientation takes place, life assumes poise, dignity, grandeur. Otherwise its striving, its struggles, its achievements seem trivial and insignificant.

“‘No greater task rests upon the secondary school than to help its pupils to find their God. How this is to be done is the greatest of problems. Of one thing only are we sure: We cannot solve this problem by ignoring it.”

Increasingly public-school men are becoming concerned that this oncoming generation shall be spiritually minded. If the schools had the full and effective co-operation of the churches in creat-

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ing the mind of the next generation, the outcome would be vastly more to the satisfaction of both. The next generation will think in scientific thought patterns. But if that means that they will be solely materialistic, it is not because the public school wills it so, but rather because the church has failed to take a hand in the task of education, and the indispensable resources of religion have been lacking. Now, the ordinary church program, in which the minister invests most of his time and energy and the congregation most of its interest and money, is well adapted to maintaining and propagating the ‘‘fire-escape’”’ type of religion described as attitude number one. Indeed, the traditional adult-centered church program of preaching and revival meetings originated and is ideally designed for just that purpose. Many a minister and church would be ready eagerly to embrace the viewpoint expressed as attitudes (3) and (4). But when it came to reconstructing the method and program after modern patterns so as to take a real hand in shaping the mind of the coming generation, they would shrink back in terror, once they realized the proportions of the task. _ The church’s program, if it is to become a determining factor in the developing mind of the oncoming generation, must necessarily center in the needs and welfare of childhood and youth. Its provision to meet the religious needs of adults must become more rather than less effective. But the minister and the church, while continuing to provide for adults, must become child-centered in consciousness. The total church program must revolve around the growing life and responsive minds and hearts of its youth. In planning its buildings, in distributing its budget, in employing its professional leadership, their welfare must be considered first, not last.