Worship in the Sunday school; a study in the theory and practice of worship

Front matter

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WORSHIP

Chapter I Introduction

All the forces of social uplift and individual inspiration are the obvious concern of every one who claims the privilege of leading men Godward along the path of normal religious growth. 1 America, so long the land of risk and cure, is becoming the land of prophylaxis. The spirit of prevention has its religious and educational embodiment in the enlightened instruction of the child. The Christian God is no less compassionate in preventing than he is in forgiving sin. Indeed, have they not most need of forgiveness who, by sheer neglect of available knowledge, have let their children grow up in unhappy ignorance, hoping that a gracious God will mend the vessels they have marred in making?

There is a ministry of evangelism and a ministry of education; but it is the failure of the latter which gives occasion for the first. The true regeneration of society will never come until every child is led into the light of Christian manhood or womanhood, not by the path of moral or physical wreck or danger, but through the natural upbuilding and unfolding of a glad, free life, guided and inspired by the love of those who are privileged to be his teachers.

1. For an account of such forces, see the "Annual Survey of Progress in Religious and Moral Education," for 1913, by H. F. Cope, General Secretary of the Religious Education Association.

The significance of childhood in education has been more or less dimly realized from prehistoric times, but it is only recently that men have tried consciously to shape the life of the child so that what it thinks and does shall be brought into harmony with social needs. We no longer trust to a blind chance to bring the wayward boy to sober maturity, or the scatter-brained girl to the dignity of efficient womanhood. Instincts and desires and tendencies, it is found, do not educate without the appropriate materials for their satisfaction. Nor is it enough that there should be materials without instincts. We do not expect appetite to sustain health when there is no food to satisfy it; nor will the finest bread in the world keep alive a man who is dying of thirst. The teacher must know the pupil. He must know how his mind expands, unfolding first in one direction, then in another, much as the plant grows leaf and flower and fruit. What will the child do if let alone, and what can he be led to do if aided? What contribution to world history does society demand of him? What must be offered him as the materials out of which he is to construct a life, and how and with what effect are these means to be applied? Such questions as these we have come to ask regarding general education, with the result that our whole educational system is being transformed, indeed, revolutionized. 1

The social Significance of education is twofold.

1. Compare Thorndike, Education; Cubberley, Changing Conceptions of Education.

Introduction 3

It looks backward over the experience of the race and seeks to embody in the rising generation what has been found of value. To use President Butler's phrase, education is "a gradual adjustment to the spiritual possessions of the race. . . . The child is entitled to his scientific inheritance, to his literary inheritance, to his aesthetic inheritance, to his institutional inheritance, and to his religious inheritance." l While individual in standpoint, this sentence gives the basis of social control, as a conservative influence — conservative, that i&, of all that is good in the past. By such a process each generation is brought under the control of the dominant motives and ideals and methods of society. It is social control, not through the exercise of political or police power, not through emotional appeal in oratory and crowd movements, but through the early formation of habits that correspond to the demands of the prevailing social mores.

From the other point of view, education may be thought of as a means of social progress and development. As Davidson puts it, "Education is conscious or voluntary evolution." And so far as evolution is conscious, it has a forward look. There is an adjustment to the future as well as to the present and the past. The inherited culture of the race becomes a means to higher racial culture consciously to be achieved, instead of an end merely of individual endeavor. That we have discovered the method of organic evolution does not imply

1. Butler, The Meaning of Education, p. 17.

that we are helplessly within the grip of mechanical powers and can do nothing to hasten or retard the slow and stately progress of the race. Rather does the discovery that we are within a process whose method is understood give us a means of control over the process itself. We may use the method of evolution to accomplish the social purposes which we have consciously set before us. And this method, as Davidson 1 says, is realized in education, which, by control of present conditions, achieves an adjustment to the conditions of the life to be.

All education is concerned with the individual's social efficiency and with his own satisfaction or richness of life — with conduct and appreciation. The individual and society are correlative, each the condition of the other and each the end of the other's life. The past, present and future individuals, who are in an eternal and ideal as well as an actual and temporal association, are the only conceivable objects of educational theory or ethical interest. Yet the individual, thought of apart from society, is an abstraction. When we deal with men, women and children we must think of them not as isolated, but as in some relation. The individual has been called a nucleus of relations. General educational theory recognizes the interdependence of men, and emphasizes their present relationships and duties as members of the State. Religious educational theory adds the conception of their mutual dependence on God and emphasizes their eter-

1. Davidson, A History of Education, p. 1. Cf. MacVannel, Outline of a Course in the Philosophy of Education, pp. 3, 4, 28, 43 ff ., etc.

Introduction 5

nal relationships and privileges as children of God. There is no absolute line of division between these positions. Both recognize that the individual as an end is gained through the individual as a means.

Indeed, the conflict between self and others, between pleasure and duty, is largely administrative, when one's view of life is dynamic. The educationist asks how he can produce the most perfect individual. And the answer is that the most perfect individual is produced only by his own activity in social relations; that efficiency in certain kinds of social conduct is one method of gaining and one method of judging character. He sees that in proportion as this conduct is socially directed and centered in the good of others, the individual grows toward the ideal character and is rewarded by satisfaction. It is the aim, therefore, of the educator, first, to get this conduct out of the individual, and, second, to make it deliberate, that is, ethical. He strengthens the social interest and inhibits the self-interest, in order that the child may gain that highest selfdevelopment which is the end and aim of life. 1

The conscious aim of the individual must therefore be the service of all, the ideal of brotherliness. And this, in Christian ethics, is identified with the highest satisfaction. One can start from either end of the line, — but if he would save his life, he knows he must lose it; and if he lose his life, he knows he will save it. The reward of service is sonship.

1. Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, pp. 391-397; MacVannel, op. cit., Chap. VIII.

The key to the proper balance between the tendency to "socialize" and the tendency to "individualize" lies in the word "freedom. " The freeing of the individual consists in making habit his tool and not his master. He must be given the power to gain consciously chosen purposes, to organize his experience, not around external rules imposed from without, but around the values of life which he himself has weighed and selected. Education must give habits, but it must also cultivate attitudes. It must create the capacity to react with a fine sense of appreciation to all the intricacies of social relationship. Indeed, it is the attitude of a man which we most value. His acts give evidence of his sympathy, but it is his desire to sympathize that most comforts us. The act becomes for us the symbol of the attitude. So-called secular education seeks, among other things, to develop social attitudes needful in the relationships of men, in business, politics, recreation. Religious education, if it be Christian, strives for the cultivation of Christian attitudes. It makes for the growth of the broadest possible outlook on life. It is interested primarily in the associations which are permanent and universal, and it thinks of the individuals so associated as members of a permanent and universal family — the children of God.

In this country it is in the School of the Church that systematic religious education, of a public nature, is to take place. It is here that Christian attitudes must be developed, Christian purposes formed and the necessary habits acquired. The

Introduction 7

day school gives twenty -five hours a week to its task. The Sunday school gives an hour and a half, or less. It is an important problem, therefore, to discover how this time can be most effectively used. The discussion which follows is an attempt to show how the assembly of the school, short and infrequent as it is, can become an effective instrument for the training of children in Christian attitudes and in Christian worship.

It is thus suggested that one function of the School of the Church, as an institution for Christian education, is to control its pupils so as to develop within them Christian attitudes. The next chapter attempts to show how worship, in the course of history, has come to be: A means by which a leader controls a group in such a way as to develop attitudes of social value; and an experience within which the members of the group may realize the largest social fellowship. Chapter III then points out how, in spite of the social and religious importance of worship, the significance of the Sunday-school service for religious education has not been generally recognized. In Chapter IV, the purpose of the Sunday-school service is made definite in terms of certain specific attitudes to be developed through efficiently controlled worship. This brings up the problem of the psychology of feeling. Chapters V and VI, therefore, indicate in a general way what the nature of feeling is and what place it occupies in education and in the experience of worship. The way in which services have been constructed and carried out in accordance with the purposes and methods so far suggested is shown in Chapter VII. In Chapter VIII a few indications of the effects of these services are given, while Chapter IX attempts to formulate the results of the whole discussion in a few guiding principles for the planning and conduct of worship in the Sunday school.

Chapter II The Social Function Of Worship

The origin of ritualistic practices is manifold. They have their roots in the primitive impulses and needs. The original springs of human activity supply the substance, as the environing conditions supply the forms of religious observances. 1 Food, sex, defense and play all contribute motifs for the accumulation of those social customs which we term ritualistic. But the form which these customs take is largely determined by the circumstances of human existence. The much quoted case of the Todas 2 of southern India shows how the prevailing way of satisfying the need for food through the raising of buffalo and the extensive use of milk products has given form to most of their ceremonials. In contrast with this, the ritual of the North American Hopis, 3 who live on the desert near the Grand Canon, is concerned with the interests of desert life — the raising of grain, the coming of the rainy season, and so on. Describing a rain-making ceremony among the Zunis of the South West, J. G. Frazer says, in part: 4

1. Ames, E. S., Psychology of Religious Experience, Chap. III.

2. Rivers, The Todas.

3. Frazer, J. G., Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. Ill, p. 229, with bibliography.

"Each of the priests possesses certain fetishes, or sacred instruments, which he uses in his professional business. They are hollow reeds, some filled with water and others with edible seeds of all the kinds known to the Zunis. In one of the water-filled reeds there is kept a small toad which seems to thrive in its cramped quarters. . . .

"At a rain-making ceremony in winter the priest draws a picture of a cloud with pollen and meal on the ground and places the water-filled and seed-filled reeds on the picture. This is the most solemn part of the ceremony; the hearts and minds of all concerned are now filled with adoring wonder at these holiest of fetishes and with a trembling hope that the gods will thus be moved to water the earth. It is a supreme moment to the Zunis and has been compared by an eyewitness to the administration of the Holy Eucharist in the Catholic Church. Afterwards the priest with the assistance of a female associate consecrates a mixture of water, meal and a powdered root in a bowl, and standing up whirls a bull-roarer, while the associate whips the contents of the bowl into frothy suds symbolic of clouds, and another associate plays the flute. . . . Next the priest, laying aside the bull-roarer, dips two eagle feathers in the holy water and with it sprinkles the offerings. All night long the appeal to the gods is crooned in low, weird, yet musical tones."

But varied as are the origins and forms of ritualistic practices, they are alike in this, that they are all maintained for some more or less definite purpose. This purpose naturally varies with the conditions of existence, but the fact of practical intention, however hazy it may be, is always present. The ceremony may take the form of an actual participation in the practical process itself, as in the cases just mentioned. 1 Or it may be for the purpose of re-

1. Cf. also Sumner, Folkways, p. 123; Henke, F. G., A Study in the Psychology of Ritualism, p. 10.

moving some social taboo or overcoming "negative magic"; 1 or for overcoming distinctions which have grown up between the sacred and the secular, and so providing for intimate association with the sacred; 2 or it may be used in an educational way in initiatory rites, to inculcate the tribal mores in the proper emotional setting, 3 and so on.

Recent authors seem to have established the theory that religion and religious practices have grown up within and have emerged from the evolving social consciousness. The impulses which make a man religious are of course inherited, just as is his physique, but the form which his religious consciousness takes is moulded by the situations, physical and social, with which he has to deal from his childhood up. The steps in the development of religious practices can, for the most part, be referred to changes in the social matrix. And these changes, further, are due to the enlargement of a socially conserved experience, which is the product of the interaction between a changing environment and new, as well as changing, individual minds. Ceremony is a social reaction in a double sense. It is a group custom, and therefore prescribed for the individual; and it also has reference to other minds with which the worshiper is or is conceived to be in some relation.

In working out this theory of the social origin of religious practices, the place of the individual has

1. Ames, op. cit., pp. 88 ff-

3. Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 465 ff.

perhaps been under-emphasized. 1 The social consciousness seems sometimes to be given an almost personified significance, as though it could exist per se, somewhere else than in the individual mind. Rather must we refer back to the contents of the individual consciousness for an explanation of every change in the social consciousness. All variations, whether of body or mind, are in the first place variations of the individual, and may be by heredity or communication transferred to other individuals. Back of every custom and every change in custom stands the variant individual. But it may be here objected that, although individuals may be a determining factor in the birth of custom, yet no custom at its birth is religious. Rather must it acquire a social value, and by habit become associated with the furtherance of some social end, before it can be called religious; 2 and by that time the individual's initiating influence is lost in the greater force of social pressure. It is not to be supposed, however, that there is a certain stage in which there is only social custom, and then a later stage in which some

1. Irving King, for example, in The Development of Religion, Chap. V, in dealing with "The Origin of Religious Practices," is so intent on pointing out the social origin of ceremonials that the contribution of the individual is overlooked.

2. The following sentences from King, op. cit., p. 82, may suggest how this takes place. "Thus of the Hurons we are told, '"their remedies for diseases; their greatest amusements when in good health; their fishing, their hunting and their trading ; the success of their crops, of their wars, of their council; almost all abound in diabolical ceremonies." . . .'

"In all such cases, the religious practices, as they are called, are hardly above the level of practical expedients. Perhaps one reason why these simple ceremonies have been regarded as religious has been that they are quite like the genuine religious practices of a later stage of development. As certain of these values stand out and acquire greater prominence in the social consciousness, they become in so far religious, and the activities, which were before only practical expedients, are now transformed into religious ceremonials."

customs have been transformed into rites. It would hardly do to say that at any stage there were no customs which had become religious rites. The process of raising customs to the level of religious practice and the process of forming new customs go on at the same time. The new customs are ever furnishing material for the elaboration of rites. But how is this material selected? The variant individual must be the originating factor in this selection. He who holds the secrets of the mysteries can alone open the doors of tradition to welcome the new and the different.

But admitting for a moment the whole weight of social pressure as determining the general form of the ceremony, there is yet the control of any single instance of its observance to be accounted for. Where there are no calendars, no absolute dates, how can the beginning of a rite be fixed upon? Evidently some individual — either the religious leader of the group, or some one in the group who is more awake to the changes of the season, or more responsive to the passage of time — must supply the cue. Further, many ceremonies are not seasonal or regular at all, but have to do with accidental events such as birth, death, war, pestilence. Who starts these ceremonies? Some one must, and however much a slave to tradition he may be, yet is he for the time being the controlling factor in this ceremony. 1

This is seen with especial vividness in such practices as occur in revivals. Disregarding for the mo-

1. That some kind of leadership is present is recognized by AmeSt op. cit., p. 71, but the significance of leadership is not traced out.

ment the influence of the official leader, we see that what "sets the thing off" is some more suggestible individual. It is true that he will do what the social consciousness expects of him — but the social consciousness may provide him with a variety of possible reactions. He may start by "speaking in tongues," or he may roll on the floor, or he may simply pass forward and repeat a formula. Whichever is done first the rest will do, so that, in a real sense, some individual may be said to control the practice at that moment. 1

Such control is of course unconscious. It is itself a phase of crowd action. But not so the control which the leaders of the group exercise. 2 As soon as some one individual "comes to himself" and is differentiated as a separate personal consciousness, so that he can distinguish between his own ends and the ends of the group, and hence make consciously for the one or the other, then control becomes deliberate. In the case of the revival, the leader has a definite aim in mind and he uses such ritual or cus-

1. Cf. Davenport, F. M., Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 50 ff., 225 ff., Chap. XII.

2. Le Bon, The Crowd, Book II, Chap. Ill, "The Leaders of Crowds and Their Means of Persuasion." Compare also the following from some unpublished lectures of G. A. Coe's (paraphrased) :

4 ' Religion is a group phenomenon, but it is influenced in most important ways by the variant individual. In religious societies an individual may be important because he either (a) Embodies in especial fulness the present lif e interest of the group (Shaman) ; or (b) Sways the group toward one of several such interests (Priest) ; or (c) Dissents from present interests or customs and modifies them (Prophet).

' ' The leadership of the Shaman is due to the fact that he relieves emotional tension in some crisis by focalizing the group-consciousness, and partly by leading to successful action. The leadership of the priest consists chiefly in maintaining and developing ceremonies, sacred literatures and education. The prophet seeks to return from conventionalized religion or religious decay to the source of religion. Ethical group action is sought, and this implies transfer of authority from the apparent compulsion of the automatic to deliberately approved ideals."

tomary religious practices as he thinks will get that result. And it is not very different in the case of some primitive ceremonial. The medicine man wishes to bring rain. He initiates the ceremony which is supposed to have rain as its effect. That the people also wish rain and want the ceremony does not detract from, but only adds to the extent of his control — he now holds the key to the satisfaction of their wants, and that is the secret of all permanent control. 1

The fact that these practices are prescribed by tradition does not exclude the fact that the leader may use them for his own ends. This type of situation is usually limited to the affairs of a small group or even of only one person. It is commonly called magic. But it may take on larger proportions, and a small coterie of religious leaders may seek their own private ends through the control of public ritual. 2 To assert that some such private interest is involved in the control of ritualism wherever a leader is dealing with a "crowd" consciousness would need wide proof. That it is sometimes present, as the interest of either an individual or a single institution, is suggested by reference to some of the practices of the Catholic Church, to the work of Dowie 3 and Mrs. Eddy, 4 and some of the Mormon leaders.

1. Cf. Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 312-313, on the place of the priest in Roman ritualism.

2. Cf. Breasted, J. H., Development of Religious Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 307 ff., 363 ff.

3. Cf. John Swain, "John Alexander Dowie; The Prophet and His Profits," Century, Vol. 42, p. 933.

4. Cf. Powell, L. B., Christian Science, pp. 98-107.

As more and more members of the group become individualized, leadership must become ethicized, and the purposes of the leaders must more and more be guided by the ends which the whole group consciously sets before itself. At this point worship becomes democratized and leadership itself becomes a means by which the social will is expressed. Control is now truly social and can never again become purely individual. But that individual leadership is still needed in some form is a fact which grows out of the survival within men of the tendency to group themselves about a leader, and of the survival in society of forms of worship which depend for their observance on the presence and participation of a leader of worship. As long as worship remains a feature of group activity, it must involve some kind of leadership, whether independent or accountable to the group.

After describing the fundamental human impulses and showing by frequent illustration that "ritualism is built upon this native endowment," Henke proceeds to point out the place of thinking or attention in the formation of rites. It is in the shock of some crisis, where habit and blind impulse are no longer sufficient for adequate adjustment, that attention is born. 1

The function of attention is to throw the individual back upon his resources, and to give him a chance to draw more widely from his experiences.

1. Henke, op. cit., p. 21.

It is at this phase of development that the end sought is "brought into consciousness" in the form of an idea. When the objects of instinctive endeavor are thus made the ends of conscious action, two worlds are born — the world of self and the world of values. Each individual comes to feel in his own consciousness a distinction between himself and his surroundings. The self dissatisfied is contrasted with the self conceived as satisfied. Present need or desire is defined in terms of a future satisfaction to be gained from the external world. When an ideal satisfier is made the object of effort, "evaluation" begins as a type of mental action. 1 Purpose and choice become factors in human development. Certain of these values which are the common possession or desire of the group, gather around themselves group actions, born of ancient custom. Such of these activities as have acquired a peculiar significance from their relation to the social welfare form the body of religious ceremonial, which, in its modern form, is "public worship." The development of religious ritual is thus seen to have a double aspect — the evolution of values and the evolution of practices.

The factors which enter in to alter forms are many. The variation in the individual has already been mentioned. As long as thought is uncritical, unscientific, these variant forms usually appear as additions to or elaborations of the ritual. The

1. Cf. Coe, "Religious Value," Journ. Phil. Psych. Sci. Meth., Vol. V, No. 10, 1908. 2 development is therefore, in the direction of complexity, as is illustrated by the religious practices of the Hebrews after their settlement in Canaan. The consequence of this tendency is to put ritual more and more under the control of an individual or a special class, whose special function it is to know and conserve the accurate forms of worship. No change in the social consciousness is needed to account for such accretions to the ceremonies.

But, as Henke has illustrated, 1 there is a close relation between changes in the social consciousness and the practices of religion. These he divides into five classes, and the influence in each case is seen to be one of criticism and elimination. (1) Crises; for example, transitions from one type of life to another. The ceremonies of the nomads fall into disrepute when they take up agriculture (The Hebrew cultus an exception). (2) The religious genius actually opposes and reforms current religious practices. (3) A great change in fortune — calamity or vice versa. (4) The rise of scientific explanations and mechanical notions. 2 ^Exorcism becomes unpopular. (5) Complete socialization of the universe. The god becomes rational and social. But the influence of these forces on ritualism is not so direct as the more primitive variations noted above. The second type mentioned, the prophetic reform, may indeed result in direct change from individual influence. But this change is of no social consequence unless it is accompanied by a

1. Henke, op. cit., Chap. VI.

2. See page 21 note 1.

change in social valuations. And so with all the other changes. They are the consequence of evolutions of value. Things once thought worth while are no longer striven for. The ceremonials grouped around such values therefore cease to keep any hold on those for whom these values no longer exist. Much of the symbolic ritual of the Catholic Church, for example, was dropped by the Protestants because of the attacks of the Reformers on the things symbolized.

The forms of religious practice are thus seen to be determined as much indirectly by the evolution of value, as by the more direct elaborations already described.

Through these changes in ritual the fact of ritual itself gradually comes under observation and criticism. It, too, is rationalized as in some forms of Christianity, or in some secret societies. Whereas formerly only the leader, if anyone, recognized the real nature of ritualistic observance as affecting not the gods but men, so now the whole group comes to regard the rites as a means of changing men, that is, of social control. Such is the use of ritual in the Greek letter fraternities and similar societies. The effect of the rites upon the neophyte is well recognized by the group. Again, the ritual of legal procedure has been carried over from the time when religion and law were not separated. It no doubt assisted in preserving respect for authority and in securing order. Under the influence of democracy it is gradually being simplified or eliminated. The flag drill held in our public schools is another case in point. It is definitely planned so as to develop allegiance to the country.