THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 
 
 The Church and 
 Religious Education 
 
 WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE ' ^ i 
 
 President Hartford Seminary Foundation 
 
 COMMITTEE ON THE WAR 
 AND THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 
 
 Issued by 
 
 ASSOCIATION PRESS 
 New York: 347 Madison Avenue 
 1919 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This booklet is one in a series appearing from time to time under the 
 general heading. The Religious Outlook. These publications are 
 being brought out under the direction of the Committee on the War and 
 the Religious Outlook in the hope that they may help to focus attention 
 on some of the larger issues facing the Church after the war. 
 
 The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook was constituted, 
 while the war was still in progress, by the joint action of the Federal 
 Coimcil of the Churches of Christ in America and the General War-Time 
 Commission of the Churches “to consider the state of religion as affected 
 by the war, with special reference to the duty and opportunity of the 
 churches, and to prepare its findings for submission to the churches.” 
 Full reports of the Committee will be submitted later in the year. In 
 the meantime the present series of booklets, issued under the auspices of 
 the Committee, is offered as a preliminary endeavor to emphasize certain 
 phases of the task of the Church that particularly challenge its attention 
 at the present hour. 
 
 Communications designed for the Committee may be addressed to the 
 Secretary, Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert, 105 East 22nd Street, New York. 
 
 Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook 
 
 Mrs. Fred S. Bennett 
 Prof. William Adams Brown 
 Miss Mabel Cratty 
 Mr. George W. Coleman 
 Pres. W. H. P. Faunce 
 Prof. Harry Emerson Fosdick 
 Rev. Charles W. Gilkey 
 Mr. Frederick Harris 
 Prof. W. E. Hocking 
 Rev. Samuel G. Inman 
 Prof. Charles M. Jacobs 
 Pres. Henry Churchill King 
 Bishop Walter R. Lambuth 
 Bishop Francis J. McConnell 
 
 Rev. Charles S. Macfarland 
 
 Pres. William Douglas Mackenzie 
 
 Dean Shailer Mathews 
 
 Dr. John R. Mott 
 
 Rev. Frank Mason North 
 
 Dr. E. C. Richardson 
 
 Very Rev. Howard C. Robbins 
 
 Right Rev. Logan H. Roots 
 
 Dr. Robert E. Speer 
 
 Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes 
 
 Rev. James I. Vance 
 
 Prof. Henry B. Washburn 
 
 Pres. Mary E. Woolley 
 
 Prof. Henry B. Wright 
 
 Copyrlglit, 1919. by William Douglas Macienile 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 I. Education as Essential to the Spread 
 OF Christianity 
 
 II. The Revelations of the World War 
 
 1. The Power of Education 
 
 2 . The Church as Christian Educator 
 
 a. Non-Christian Basis of Civilization. 
 
 b. Human Nature as Revealed in the 
 
 Soldier. 
 
 c. The Soldier’s Ignorance of Chris¬ 
 
 tianity. 
 
 d. The Resulting Challenge to the 
 
 Church. 
 
 III. The Teaching Function of the Church 
 
 1. The Persons to Be Instructed 
 
 a. The Church and the Children. 
 
 b. The Church and Young People. 
 (The Rivalry of Secular Education.) 
 
 c. The Church and the Education of 
 
 Adults. 
 
 2 . The Materials of Religious Education 
 
 3. Religious Education as a Profession 
 
 3 
 
IV. The Present State of Religious Educa¬ 
 
 tion IN America 
 
 1. The Various Agencies for Religious Edu¬ 
 
 cation 
 
 2. Possibility of More Complete Coordina¬ 
 
 tion and Cooperation 
 
 V. Religious Education as the Fountain 
 
 Head of History 
 
 1. As to the State 
 
 2. As to the Church 
 
 Appendix 
 
 4 
 
THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Education as Essential to the Spread of 
 
 Christianity 
 
 If the Church of Christ is to win the world 
 it must make a program of Christian Educa¬ 
 tion and carry it out over the whole earth. All 
 the higher religions depend in a large measure 
 upon the intellectual element in our nature; 
 they all stimulate the emotional life by the 
 measure of truth which they reveal to the mind 
 and conscience of men. But of only one 
 religion is it true to say that it cannot fulfil 
 itself in the life of human beings without aim¬ 
 ing deliberately at universal education. Of 
 Christianity alone can it be said that it addresses 
 itself to the whole personality of every indi¬ 
 vidual. Its full meaning and power cannot 
 be discovered when the individual becomes 
 content with any definite measure either of 
 knowledge or character. Every true Christian 
 habitually looks and presses toward the un¬ 
 measured, the infinite, as his goal. Hence the 
 Christian Church must always feel that its end 
 is unattained as long as any ])eople in the world 
 are left ignorant of the fullness of the truth 
 which it proclaims and of the demands which 
 it makes uj)on the individual conscience, in¬ 
 telligence and will, and upon the national life as 
 a whole. 
 
 The Christian religion, })y its very nature, 
 
 5 
 
presents a more or less definite view of God 
 and the universe; of man and his history; of 
 duty, its nature and authority. This it does 
 even when it addresses children in a Christian 
 community or the members of a savage tribe. 
 These three elements of the intelligent life are 
 quickened in every human being whenever the 
 Gospel is proclaimed,when its origin and mean¬ 
 ing are taught, when its demands are brought 
 to bear upon the human will. It is thus that 
 Christianity stimulates the imagination, the 
 conscience, the intelligence, as well as the emo¬ 
 tions and the will of all human beings. The 
 simplest presentation of it to the simplest mind 
 involves at least the beginnings of these rich 
 elements of the highest culture—the Chris¬ 
 tian view of the universe, of history, of duty, 
 of destiny. Upon these the ripest forms of 
 Christian intelligence and character are devel¬ 
 oped. They are the bases of all life and expe¬ 
 rience, of all Christian thought and of all Chris¬ 
 tian hope. 
 
 The task of the Church in the world cannot, 
 therefore, be worthily pictured unless we 
 include its educational work in our picture. 
 The question is not only, How many souls have 
 been saved? We must also ask, What has 
 Christianity made of Christendom? Earnestly 
 we must ask, fearlessly we must answer that 
 second question. And our answer both as to 
 success and failure will reveal the measure in 
 which the Church has conceived of, attended 
 
 6 
 
to, and carried out the task of Christian Edu¬ 
 cation . 
 
 The Revelations op the World War 
 
 The great historic convulsion which we now 
 speak of as the World War has stimulated 
 human mtelligence already over the whole 
 earth to an amazing degree. It has compelled 
 every important institution in the world to 
 consider afresh its own meaning, its own possi¬ 
 bilities, its own influence in the almost universal 
 reconstruction of society which proceeds so 
 rapidly before our very eyes. The Church of 
 Christ is involved in this truly sublime, al¬ 
 though startling, process of self-criticism and 
 rededication. Significantly enough, Christian 
 men are compelled to engage in this self-criti¬ 
 cism most earnestly in those parts of the world 
 where the Church has existed for centuries 
 and where the present situation reveals the 
 extent at once of its failure and of its success. 
 
 1 . The Power of Education 
 
 For our present purpose it must be noted that 
 everywhere in Europe and America thought¬ 
 ful people are roused to a fresh estimate of the 
 extraordinary meaning and power of the process 
 of education itself. It has been pointed out 
 by Mr. Benjamin Kidd that the world is pre¬ 
 sented, in the cases of Japan and Germany, 
 with two concrete examples of the enormous 
 
 7 
 
influence which can be exerted in a brief space 
 of time upon the fundamental character, the 
 general policy and, therefore, the immediate 
 history of a whole nation by the instrument 
 of education. In each of these countries during 
 the last fifty years a revolution of character has 
 been wrought by the establishment of the public 
 school system, through which generation after 
 generation of children and young people have 
 passed under the direct dominance of the State. 
 In each of these cases the State has enjoined and 
 secured that the process of teaching from the 
 lowest to the highest grades should be character¬ 
 ized by definite interpretations of the history, 
 character, and policy of its nation. Patriotism 
 has been instilled in terms of the dominant pol¬ 
 icies of the government of the day. It is not 
 too much to say that the German people have 
 been fundamentally transformed during that 
 period, not merely by the influence of the press, 
 and the legislative policies of the imperial govern¬ 
 ment, not merely by the creation of armies and 
 the establishment of a military organization 
 throughout the whole range of the empire—but 
 also by the process of education which drew the 
 rising generation into deep personal sympathy 
 with the outlook, methods, and aims of that 
 government. 
 
 The world has now before it in vivid and 
 astonishing reality the most complete illus¬ 
 tration which can be imagined of the power of 
 education when it is unified in spirit, drastic 
 
 8 
 
in method, and persistent in the firmness of its 
 prolonged fulfilment. 
 
 2. The Church as Christian Educator 
 
 When we come to ask what definite facts are 
 presented to the Church regarding its work in 
 Europe and America considered from the edu¬ 
 cational point of view, the following facts must 
 be stated: 
 
 a. There has arisen—and the world is witness 
 of it—a struggle between the Christian and 
 non-Christian view of the State. It would be 
 untrue to say that the non-Christian view of the 
 State is limited to Bolshevism or any other 
 political movement which is avowedly anti- 
 ecclesiastical . It is true to say that in no country 
 of Christendom have the national government 
 and the industrial,commercial, and social organ¬ 
 izations been thoroughly consonant with the 
 Christian spirit—realizing the fundamental ethi¬ 
 cal principles which are revealed in the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ. The struggle in which Christen - 
 dom now finds itself engrossed is a revelation 
 both of the success and of the failure of the 
 Church of Christ to make Europe and America 
 truly Christian, even in their view of national 
 life. The Church has not trained these nations 
 to be Christian. 
 
 Success must be asserted in so far as nations 
 have arisen whose avowed purposes in winning 
 the war have been to maintain standards of 
 
 9 
 
national character and policy which were un¬ 
 known to the ancient world but which it is 
 now insisted must become the adopted ideals of 
 all governments. In so far as these Christian 
 ideals have illuminated the conscience and won 
 the confidence of any great governments of the 
 world, they are evidences of the success of the 
 Church’s work in that field. 
 
 On the other hand, failure must be confessed 
 in so far as false principles have been openly 
 allowed,defended, and enforced by governments 
 and armies in any part of Christendom. To 
 that extent it must be confessed that where the 
 Church has had no rival religion to contend with, 
 where its witness has been borne among people 
 nominally attached to its system of life, it has 
 thus disastrously failed to enlighten the under¬ 
 standing and conscience, and failed to secure 
 that the Spirit of Christ shall control the policy 
 or will of the governments and the people. 
 
 b. It is necessary very briefly to take note 
 of the testimony which comes from all kinds 
 of witnesses among the vast armies engaged in 
 this war as to the capacity of the soldier for 
 noble, moral action and of his general sensi¬ 
 tiveness to a religious appeal when it has been 
 made wisely, sincerely, and wdth a passion of 
 personal conviction. That is to say, wherever 
 men have admired, as all soldiers do, the quali¬ 
 ties of courage, loyalty, and kindness, there we 
 have the materials to which the Christian appeal 
 can direct itself with great confidence. That 
 
 10 
 
these impulses constitute religion it is foolish 
 to assert. That they are the very stuff upon 
 which religion employs its powers, out of which 
 the spirit of Christ can make the perfect man, 
 is the true assertion, and one that fills all 
 thoughtful men with an illimitable hope. 
 
 c. The most dismal revelation that confronts 
 the Church as the result of its study of the great 
 mass of men assembled in the armies of the 
 world is the extent to which these masses have 
 been found separated from and even ignorant 
 of the Christian faith. The testimony is prac¬ 
 tically universal that in all the armies there was 
 to be found an appalling range of ignorance 
 concerning the fundamental truths of the Chris¬ 
 tian religion, concerning the claims of God in 
 Christ upon the allegiance of the individual 
 man, and the meaning and value of those reli¬ 
 gious habits and practices which strengthen 
 faith, inspire vision, and build up character.* 
 
 d. The revelation of the extent of this igno¬ 
 rance of Christianity among inilabitants of 
 Christendom is itself a revelation of the educa¬ 
 tional task of the Church. That Church has 
 for a thousand years occupied all parts of 
 Europe; it has presided over the whole develop¬ 
 ment of the European populations of North 
 and South America. And this is the result! 
 
 *For a fuller discussion of this subject and the testimony of 
 chaplains thereon, see the comprehensive report of the Com¬ 
 mittee on the War and the Religious Outlook on the Religious 
 Outlook as Revealed by a Study of Religion in the Army. 
 
Before us is the picture of whole nations 
 where the vast majority of the soldiers reveal 
 their ignorance of the truths of Christianity 
 and their personal separation from its faith. 
 In many of these countries at this hour we are 
 presented with a spectacle of millions of men 
 and women engaged in wildly striving for a new 
 social order in a manner which reveals how 
 little they are directed by the spirit of Christ. 
 Their minds seem to be too often indifferent 
 to that view of God and the universe which 
 springs from the Gospel of Christ. It is true 
 and right to say that these modern uprisings 
 of the workers and the peasants, these claims 
 made for justice and liberty, for the “square 
 deal” and the merciful spirit are indeed to 
 some extent the products of Christianity. In 
 no part of the world and in no period of history 
 which has been uninfluenced by the Church, 
 can such movements or such a claim be con¬ 
 sidered as possible. And yet the very move¬ 
 ments which are the offspring of the Christian 
 spirit are carried on in ignorance of the 
 Christian truth and its claims. The establish¬ 
 ment of one set of Christian ideals is made and 
 fought for in defiance of another section of the 
 moral system that we call Christian. It is a 
 distracted world. Christian principles are ap- 
 ])ealed to and jjromoted by an unchristian 
 spirit and by unchristian methods; and that, 
 on continents where for hundreds of years the 
 Church of Christ has had no religious rival; 
 
 12 
 
wliere tlie governments have, as a rule, given 
 full opportunity to the Church to exercise all 
 its ministries and especially that sublime minis¬ 
 try with which we are here concerned—the 
 ministry of Christian education. 
 
 Thus the educational task of the Church is 
 presented to our minds in a world where its 
 failure, in spite of a certain large measure of 
 success, must be confessed with great humility. 
 The hour has struck for a fearless and complete 
 study of the whole situation. The Church 
 must conceive more thoroughly and completely 
 than it has ever done the work of religious educa¬ 
 tion. It must investigate the breadth and 
 depth of this work. It must discover and 
 frankly describe the causes of its failure in the 
 past. 'It must concentrate attention with a 
 new and noble passion upon this work for the 
 future. 
 
 The Te.\ching Function of the Church 
 
 From our preceding considerations it is clear 
 that a gigantic effort must be made by all 
 leaders of all Churches to re-survey the work 
 of the Church in the light of that long experience 
 which has come to a great crisis in this supreme 
 hour of the world’s history. The Church must 
 deliberately set itself to conceive afresh its 
 position and meaning as it confronts the rise of 
 international civilization. The very fact that 
 all nations are, as we hope, being drawn into a 
 
 13 
 
permanent alliance is a challenge to the Church 
 of Christ. With a new sense of urgency it must 
 study its position and its responsibility both 
 to God and to men in the presence of a world 
 becoming unified. 
 
 At its rise the Church found itself inevitably 
 and naturally confronted with the work of 
 evangelizing adults. Into every new country 
 which it enters this appears still as its first 
 mode of operation. And even in those coun¬ 
 tries which we include under the name of Chris¬ 
 tendom, where vast masses of mature men and 
 women live outside the range of conscious 
 fellowship with God, direct evangelism in every 
 form is necessary. The Church will never 
 cease to feel its anxious responsibility for the 
 winning of grown men and women to the faith 
 of Jesus Christ. But wherever a Christian 
 community begins to be formed and wher¬ 
 ever a national life confronts it, where no other 
 religion than the Christian religion is nominally 
 in force, the Church must face as its fundamen¬ 
 tal work the making of the Gospel effective 
 upon the character and lives of human beings 
 by means of what we call the educational pro¬ 
 cess. This process must be studied m relation 
 to the child, the youth, and the adult. In each 
 of these stages it must be studied in relation to 
 the family and the wider social environment 
 of the individual. It must be studied also in 
 relation not merely to the general civic spirit 
 and character and the personal religious life of 
 
 14 
 
the individual, but in relation also to the needs 
 of the Church itself as a mighty organization 
 which can only do its work throughout the 
 world by means of highly trained leaders in 
 every form of Church work. It is only when we 
 conceive of the Church’s work in this complete 
 way that the vision arises before us of a process 
 by which the world shall be literally soaked in 
 Christianity; a world in which Christian truth 
 and the might of the Christian spirit shall be 
 brought to pervade the entire life of the entire 
 world of men. 
 
 1. The Persons to Be Instructed 
 
 a. We must naturally begin with the educa¬ 
 tion of the children, for in the ultimate ideal of 
 the Church’s influence in the world, evangelism 
 will always be carried on by the winning of the 
 child heart and mind and will to the love and 
 faith and service of Christ. The question be¬ 
 fore the Church is how, as its influence spreads 
 through the world, this truly sublime work is to 
 be carried on. If we look over the field of 
 Christendom, we shall find that there are three 
 main types of ideal and of operation in respect 
 to this range of work. 
 
 (1) There are certain countries where relig¬ 
 ious instruction is universal and compulsory in 
 the public school system. The State assumes 
 that its children must be brought up in the 
 Christian faith and assumes also that those 
 who are appointed by the State to carry on 
 
 15 
 
the general work of education are qualified 
 to carry on religious instruction, without any 
 test being applied by the Church itself as to 
 their personal qualifications for this work. 
 Perhaps Germany may be named as the coun¬ 
 try where this conception has survived and been 
 enforced most consistently, under both the 
 Roman Catholic and the evangelical systems. 
 
 (2) In countries where the State assumes 
 no responsibility for the religious instruc¬ 
 tion of children, special schools have been 
 created by various Christian denomina¬ 
 tions in which the general education of the 
 child is carried on under the supervision of the 
 Church or of groups of Christian people. 
 These special Church schools receive their 
 illustration from many private schools in Europe 
 which are of this type, and in what we call the 
 parochial schools of the United States. 
 
 (3) Where, as in this country and in France, 
 the public school system, extending from the 
 primary department even to the State Univer¬ 
 sity, has been divorced completely from religious 
 education, efforts have been made of many 
 different kinds, and on the whole with very 
 indifferent success, to provide for the Christian 
 education of the children and young men and 
 women by means of special institutions. These 
 include the Sunday schools of the Church, the 
 Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. work in the 
 cities and colleges, the biblical chairs attached 
 to many institutions of higher learning. In 
 
 16 
 
these cases the effort has arisen from sincerity 
 and it is often carried on with great devotion. 
 But it has not succeeded in reaching that 
 measure of power which is necessary for the 
 thorough Christian education of the children 
 and youth of the land. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the Church, 
 especially in modern times, has attached very 
 great importance to the function of the home in 
 the matter of religious education of the children. 
 Where parents are themselves educated, pious, 
 and faithful, their manner of life, their example 
 in the personal use of the Bible and of Christian 
 literature, their efforts to guide and stimulate 
 the interest of their children in the work of the 
 Church and the Sunday school must be reck¬ 
 oned among the greatest educational forces of 
 the Christian religion. Far more remains to 
 be done, however, in arousing and in¬ 
 structing parents as to the manner in which 
 their unique influence must be exercised. 
 
 b. It is one of the most common complaints 
 made by those interested in religious education 
 that while it is comparatively easy to gather the 
 large majority of the younger children of the 
 land for work in the Sunday schools, it is in¬ 
 creasingly difficult to retain them during the 
 stages of adolescence and young manhood and 
 womanhood. At these stages of their devel¬ 
 opment the young people tend to pass beyond 
 the reach of religious education. Consequently, 
 the knowledge and impressions received when 
 
 17 
 
they were children fadeaway. Misunderstand¬ 
 ings and prejudice occupy their minds and an 
 appalling proportion of them become separated 
 in interest from the Christian faith. 
 
 Manifestly, the Church will never be able 
 to saturate national life with Christian prin¬ 
 ciples, and bring an entire people into living 
 fellowship with God so long as this drift of the 
 boys and girls away from the educational in¬ 
 fluence of the Church continues unchecked. 
 
 It is a very wide field over which the Church 
 must work in its effort to reach the youth. 
 Many agencies are already being employed for 
 this purpose, among which we may name, for 
 example, the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A., 
 the Student Volunteer Movement, the Mis¬ 
 sionary Education Movement, tlie Y. P. S. C. E. 
 and other young people’s organizations of a 
 religious character. 
 
 It is at this stage that the modern devel¬ 
 opment of secular education must be very 
 closely studied by the Church in its bearing 
 upon the educational work of the Church itself. 
 For the tendency at present among the leading 
 nations is to carry an authoritative note in 
 secular education further than has been the 
 custom in the past, and thus to inculcate a secu¬ 
 lar spirit. In England the new education act 
 proposes practically to compel attendance at 
 school even after children have gone into 
 business life. Continuation schools will deal 
 with them until they are eighteen years of age. 
 
 18 
 
The process of secular education thus promises to 
 occupy the time and strength, the interest and 
 confidence of young people to the utmost limit. 
 It proposes to arouse and concentrate their 
 attention upon the subjects with which they 
 are severally concerned. When those of them 
 who are going on to an advanced education 
 reach college and university or technical 
 school, they again find a situation where their 
 interest and attention are fastened upon secu¬ 
 lar and professional subjects. Nowhere do 
 they find that the religious point of view is 
 deliberately dealt with or seriously placed 
 in their life by the authority which they recog¬ 
 nize as supreme, namely, the authority of the 
 State and the general society. Nowhere is any 
 pressure brought to bear upon them by the State 
 and society to consider that the study of the 
 religious life has any relation to their general 
 intellectual preparation for personal careers. 
 Nowhere is the authority of the Christian faith, 
 the urgency of the spiritual life, the bearing 
 of religion upon citizenship, brought home to 
 them by the government before whose author¬ 
 ity all citizens bow. 
 
 The Church appears as a rival claimant or 
 even as an intruder upon a system of life which 
 the State considers as complete in itself. It 
 comes to the minds of the young people of 
 Christendom, who are being trained in the man¬ 
 ner above described, as a mere addendum. Its 
 message is a sentimental affair which has no re- 
 
 19 
 
lation to the matter of fact problems, duties, 
 ambitions, and prospects with which the whole 
 pressure of general education makes them so 
 deeply concerned. 
 
 It is a natural result of this that an enormous 
 number of young men and women of all grades 
 of society confront the problems of industry 
 and consider the reconstruction of society, 
 without any recognition of the spiritual life 
 of man, without giving any place to re¬ 
 ligion or the voice of the Spirit of God. An 
 increasing hostility is to be found in an increas¬ 
 ing range of educated human life toward any 
 attempt which is made to interpret the 
 industrial and political problems of the day in 
 terms of the will of God as revealed in Christ. 
 
 But the Church fails, Christianity has passed 
 away from the life of man, unless by some means 
 the edueational process can be so filled with 
 Christian truth that the situation above de¬ 
 scribed shall be corrected, and man’s earthly 
 life and secular problems be interpreted and 
 solved in the light of his spiritual nature and 
 on the basis of his relations to God. 
 
 c. It has been recently pointed out that the 
 Church has failed to conceive of its work among 
 adults as involving the continuous exercise 
 of the intellectual life upon Christian truth and 
 duty. It is amazing to discover that the work 
 of the Church is done in so haphazard a manner 
 that the citizens are left to discuss and decide the 
 great problems of the Christian life without 
 
 20 
 
systematic instruction from those who are ap¬ 
 pointed to be the teachers of the Church. Too 
 often the attempts to give that instruction are 
 characterized by shallow thinking, unmethod¬ 
 ical discussions, haphazard and sentimental 
 appeals rather than by the steady illuminating 
 of the mind. It has been often complained 
 of, and with justice, that a great deal of the 
 preaching of today does not meet the minds of 
 men in such a manner that those who are 
 trained in the modern world find themselves 
 intelligently instructed and inspired. The work 
 of Christianizing the world involves not merely 
 the continuous and successful bringing of the 
 children into the Christian life and the successful 
 instruction of the young people in Christian 
 truth and its application, but also the continuous 
 stimulation of the intelligent life of the grown 
 men and women in relation to the Christian 
 ideal. 
 
 2. The Materials of Religious Education 
 
 A complete survey of the educational task 
 of the Church would involve necessarily an 
 account of the various subjects or fields with 
 which such instruction must be concerned. 
 In brief, its aim must be so to teach Christianity 
 that the world of human beings shall believe 
 it and live by it. It is true that this cannot be 
 done without the work of the Spirit of God. 
 But that is what He is for. His presence and 
 power are guaranteed wherever that aim is 
 
 21 
 
pursued with relentless vigor and pure intent 
 and methods of true wisdom. Christianity is 
 a way of living with God and our fellowmen 
 which has been realized, described, and made 
 possible by Jesus Christ. It can be taught rightly 
 only when it is so taught that men see in it the 
 very will of God concerning the character and 
 destiny of humankind. It must be presented 
 as the one interpretation of the meaning of life 
 which has the authority of God Himself, the 
 Creator and Lord of our world and our existence. 
 
 This teaching must be adapted to every 
 grade of intelligence, and made convincing to 
 the honest heart and the ripest mind. It is a 
 view of the world, a range of experience, a 
 system of life, a picture of the destiny of man 
 which can win the world only if it is presented 
 steadily by a community of people who live 
 by it. Their character, intelligence, and spirit, 
 their w^ay of living as well as their words, must be 
 able to convince the conscience and assure the 
 minds of all that here, in Christianity, God is at 
 work to fulfil His purpose in the creation and 
 redemption of the race. 
 
 When the Christian community sets itself 
 in this spirit and with passionate conviction 
 to educate the world, its work will have to be 
 conceived in the broadest and most powerful 
 manner. Christianity cannot be taught with¬ 
 out the study of its Holy Scriptures. Of that so 
 much has been written that we need not enlarge 
 on it here. 
 
 22 
 
Christianity cannot be taught, even to young 
 children, without a description of the nature, 
 formation, and history of the Church, as the 
 organization of the Christian community. The 
 diflBculties here are immense. But many of 
 them will disappear when the various sections 
 of the Church set themselves to do this work 
 together. It is a great defect of Christian 
 education in America that it limits itself almost 
 exclusively to the Bible. The young mind is left 
 to make for itself living connection between 
 the Bible and the organized life of today in 
 Church and State, with disastrous results. 
 
 Christianity cannot be taught, even to young 
 children, without presenting a certain view of 
 the universe. It is a view which is incompat¬ 
 ible with certain other theories. To speak of 
 God at all is to antagonize atheism and agnos¬ 
 ticism. To speak of Christ at all is to speak 
 of the eternal life and to inculcate views of 
 human nature in its moral and spiritual struc¬ 
 ture, against which various hostile philosophies 
 dash their intermittent waves. In the later 
 years of youth this involves a deliberate dealing 
 with the “evidences of Christianity” and with 
 the fundamental truths of the Gospel, over 
 against the current forms of antagonism. 
 
 Christianity cannot be taught, even to young 
 children, without throwing the light of God’s 
 will upon the field of practical life. The con¬ 
 science has to be enlightened, the will to be 
 determined, the emotions to be stirred by the 
 
 23 
 
authoritative announcement of the laws of 
 God and the infusion of the Spirit of Christ, 
 in the directing of conduct and the molding 
 of those ideals of personal life which consti¬ 
 tute the Christian character. 
 
 Christianity cannot be taught to young men 
 and women without describing to them the 
 obligations which are laid upon them as mem¬ 
 bers at once of the State, which claims from 
 them a noble citizenship, and of the Church, 
 which claims their devotion to the spread and 
 the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. As 
 members of the State they need to learn how 
 deeply the ethical principles of the Gospel 
 should penetrate the social institutions and the 
 political, industrial, and commercial life of 
 mankind. As members of the Church they 
 should learn how deeply their confession of 
 Christ and union with His community pledges 
 them, not simply to its support as an organi¬ 
 zation, but to the constant and fearless exercise 
 of its moral ideas and principles, its brotherly 
 love and self-sacrifice in all the relations of life. 
 
 Thus largely conceived the educational work 
 of the Church challenges us at once by its 
 magnificence of scope, its sacredness of mean¬ 
 ing, its immeasurable power over the history of 
 man. 
 
 3. Religious Education as a Profession 
 
 It is manifest that the educational work of 
 the Church must include the training of men 
 
 24 
 
and women for all the operations of the Church 
 as a national and world organization. In our 
 day we conceive of the ministry of Christ as 
 being carried on in multiplied forms. Every¬ 
 where the ultimate aim of all Christian ministers 
 is the same—on the one hand to bring men and 
 women into real and ever fuller fellowship with 
 God in Jesus Christ, and on the other to render 
 helpful service to every form of human afflic¬ 
 tion, and to the building up of a Christian 
 civilization. But each form of Christian ser¬ 
 vice deals with a specific method for pursuing 
 and realizing those ends. The more complex 
 these methods become, and the more varied the 
 operations of the Church in projecting the 
 spirit of Christ into the mind, heart, and life of 
 the world, the greater is the call for the profes¬ 
 sional training of expert workers. Here again 
 the Church has as yet poorly conceived of its 
 task both as to the ideal and as to the method 
 of its fulfilment. Today, in a new world 
 arising before our eyes, professional and tech¬ 
 nical efficiency is the first cry that strikes upon 
 our ear in literally every form of discussion and 
 every organized movement which are con¬ 
 cerned with the temporal interests of men. The 
 Church must not lose its glorious heritage and 
 fail of its divine task by neglect of this funda¬ 
 mental ideal. Here, if anywhere, it must give 
 itself to a deeper consideration of its respon¬ 
 sibility and opportunity. We need a world 
 filled with men and women who are working 
 
in every department of Cliiircli oj)eration as 
 those who are thoroughly trained for their 
 office and are filled with the spirit of its par¬ 
 ticular meaning and value. 
 
 This applies of course to the training of the 
 ordained minister, but no less truly does it ap- 
 ply to the training for every other kind of 
 Christian service which the complex life of the 
 world draws forth from the heart of the Church. 
 
 The Present State of Religious Education 
 
 IN America 
 
 In an appendix is printed a partial and 
 unclassified list of the institutions which are 
 connected directly or indirectly with the field 
 of religious education in the United States of 
 America. A thorough survey of the field, 
 methods, and educational standards of all these 
 agencies ought to be undertaken immediately 
 by an independent and competent body of 
 men and women. Here we can only in brief 
 manner indicate the work which such a com¬ 
 mission would have to undertake.* 
 
 In the first place, we need a careful class¬ 
 ification of these institutions in order that we 
 may see what fields have been entered upon and 
 
 *A special sub-committee lias been appointed by the Committee 
 on the W^ar and the Religious Outlook to make a more compre¬ 
 hensive study of the educational task of the Churches. It is now 
 preparing a report on the Teaching Work of the Church in the 
 Light of the Present Situation. 
 
 26 
 
wliat fields are being neglected. Two main 
 divisions would evidently come before us. First, 
 those agencies which deal with general religious 
 education for its own sake. Second, those 
 agencies which have been created to carry on 
 the training of the various classes of Christian 
 workers at home or abroad. Such a division 
 of the field would open up in this way: 
 
 General Education. This must comprise all 
 the work done in the name of the Church 
 and its boards, by the Sunday schools, 
 and the denominational schools and col¬ 
 leges. It is stimulated and superintended by 
 
 (1) the strictly denominational agencies and 
 
 (2) inter-denominational agencies such as the 
 International Sunday School Association, the 
 American Sunday School Union, the Missionary 
 Education Movement, the Student Volunteer 
 Movement, and others. 
 
 Professional Education. This field will in¬ 
 clude all those church agencies and institu¬ 
 tions which are engaged in the specific work of 
 training young men and women for the various 
 forms of ministry in the modern Church. These 
 have been multiplied with great rapidity during 
 the last thirty years. Here, too, we must dis¬ 
 tinguish. First, there are the strictly denomina¬ 
 tional institutions. These include the ma¬ 
 jority of theological seminaries and a con¬ 
 siderable number of so-called “training schools” 
 for lay service. Next, there are the interde¬ 
 nominational agencies, comprising many theo- 
 
 27 
 
logical seminaries, the colleges of the Young 
 Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associa¬ 
 tions, the Board of Missionary Preparation, 
 and others. 
 
 In a class by itself deserves to be placed 
 the Religious Education Association, which 
 has done so much by its annual conventions 
 and its magazine to promote higher ideals of 
 religious education, to bring together the 
 leaders in that work for consultation and in¬ 
 spiration, and to quicken the production of 
 valuable literature on the subject. 
 
 It is evident that in addition to a mere 
 enumeration and classification of the education¬ 
 al activities of American churches we need a 
 thorough study of their aims and standards. 
 Only in this way can we hope to see both what 
 ought to be done and how best it can be done. 
 Anyone familiar with even a part of the field 
 must be filled with hope, because so much 
 is being attempted, because so many zealous 
 and able men and women have given their 
 lives to this vital cause. But there can be 
 no doubt that the work as a whole, conceived 
 of as the effort of the Church in America to 
 educate all Americans for the Christian life 
 is woefull}^ inadequate. Some of the work is 
 extremely poor from the educational point of 
 view. Some of it lacks spiritual fervor, with¬ 
 out which it cannot win the heart of the world. 
 
 If anyone looks upon the work of religious 
 
 28 
 
education in America as one work, done in the 
 name of one faith to produce one total result 
 in America, the present agencies must appear 
 almost ludicrously inadequate. Taken as a 
 whole, they lack coordination and pursue their 
 various ways with little help from each other. 
 No one looking at the whole thing would 
 conceive it as a united, living, powerful, 
 deliberately planned process. There must be 
 most serious effort to secure coordination and 
 cooperation. The common vision of the whole 
 must inspire each part. Each part must be 
 brought to the test of adequate standards, 
 both intellectual and spiritual, if the Church 
 of Christ is, by the deep vital process of ed¬ 
 ucation, to fill America with the truth and fervor 
 of the Gospel and faith which we call Christian. 
 
 Religious Education as the Fountain Head 
 
 OF History 
 
 We have attempted in the preceding pages 
 to describe the position of the Church as an 
 educational institution in the presence of the 
 immeasureable changes which are being wrought 
 throughout the world today. 
 
 Let us briefly review the situation from the 
 point of view of the State and of the Church 
 respectively. 
 
 1. As to the State 
 
 The whole world, so far as it is civilized in anv 
 
 29 
 
real measure, is confronted, as never before in its 
 history, by the fact that the process of educa¬ 
 tion is the only one which deals with the history 
 of man at its fountain heads. The creation of 
 history must henceforth be found in that work 
 of training each rising generation for the 
 great task of life. In a world where a human 
 career cannot be achieved without a large 
 amount of real knowledge, that knowledge 
 must be effectively conveyed to every child. 
 
 This fact has now been seized with great 
 vigor by all the well-established governments 
 of the world. They recognize two fundamen¬ 
 tal features in the modern situation. ■ First 
 is this, that the whole fabric of modern civil¬ 
 ization can only be sustained by an educated 
 people. Not only must the leaders be trained, 
 more elaborately and thoroughly than ever, 
 each for his special task of importance, but 
 the humblest worker must have at least the 
 elements of education. The second is this, 
 that the very nature of a democratic govern¬ 
 ment rests not merely on the will but on the 
 intelligence of the governed. Only an intel¬ 
 ligent consent can establish a true authority. 
 But intelligence means change; and hence there 
 is much agitation and there will be great 
 industrial and social transformations among the 
 best educated nations. Exactly there, how¬ 
 ever, is to be found the least chance of sweeping 
 anarchy and bloody revolution. For educa¬ 
 tion makes for the continuity as well as the 
 
 30 
 
efficiency of national governments and social 
 institutions. Every one of the leading nations 
 is therefore committed to the great cause of 
 universal education. It must be made more 
 thorough and it must be prolonged, not merely 
 that every boy and girl may have the opportu¬ 
 nity for complete development, but that each 
 nation may have the fuller ability to take its 
 place in the commerce and industry of the 
 world, and that each government may rest on 
 the secure foundation of an intelligent people. 
 
 It appears further to be settled in most 
 countries that the State education shall be 
 purely secular. This arises from two fears; 
 first, that of discrimination among the warring 
 sections of the Christian Church, which popular 
 opinion will not allow; second, that of submit¬ 
 ting the development of knowledge to those 
 restraints of the ecclesiastical mind which in 
 past ages have proved themselves too often 
 to be narrow and disastrous to the progress of 
 science. 
 
 Nevertheless, most great statesmen are aware 
 that education molds character and that a 
 purely secular education must and will result 
 in the production only of an earthly-minded 
 generation whose ideals consist of the passionate 
 will to “get on,” and whose conception of get¬ 
 ting on is instilled only by the prospect of 
 individual success in those careers for which 
 they have been trained. But moral idealism, 
 that which infuses generosity and sacrifice, 
 
 31 
 
truthfulness and love into the heart of the child 
 and thus into the soul of a generation, cannot 
 be taught without religion. If we are being 
 trained only to “get on” in the world, and to 
 help our country to “get on” in competition with 
 others, how can we be trained also to live for 
 others and to aim at the brotherhood of man.^ 
 
 2. As to the Church. 
 
 The two great agencies of education stand 
 today, as never before, face to face, the State 
 and the Church of Christ. Neither can do its 
 work without the other, and yet they appear 
 as rivals. No secular education can raise up a 
 nation of moral and spiritual men and women, 
 and no church could be expected to assume the 
 responsibility for carrying on the full, fearless 
 development of secular knowledge. That, at 
 least, is the general opinion prevailing among 
 the leaders of the leading nations of the world. 
 The supreme purpose of the Church must be con¬ 
 ceived as that of saturating the mind and heart 
 of humanity with the truth of God as that is 
 revealed for the perfecting of the race in all 
 its life, character, and development through 
 the faith and spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In pursuit of this ideal the Church has hither¬ 
 to considered its educational work as being in a 
 manner subordinate to its other two great 
 tasks of evangelizing adults and of influencing 
 public national movements. As to the first, 
 it has been far too content with the event which | 
 
 32 
 
we call conversion and with the formal reception 
 of converts into the membership of the Christian 
 community, when its dealing with them ceased 
 to be effective. The Church has further, es¬ 
 pecially since the days when it became recog¬ 
 nized as the religion of the Roman Empire, set 
 itself to deal with processes of national life and 
 legislation directly. It has sought to correct 
 evils by governmental legislation and by the 
 power of the secular executive government. 
 It has sought political power for its own spiritual 
 ends. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that too many, 
 even among the Christian leaders of the Church, 
 for fifteen hundred years, have conceived of 
 these two forms of Church work as adequate, 
 as if the direction of history and the formation 
 of the ultimate spiritual character of the race 
 could be secured by evangelism thus definitely 
 conceived, and by direct influence upon the 
 processes of governmental legislation and ad¬ 
 ministration. By these two operations it has 
 been hoped both to save souls and to leaven 
 the whole mass of humanity with the spirit of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the modern world there has been a gradual 
 awakening of the minds of Christian leaders 
 to the fact that the two great methods just 
 described can be wisely and effectively carried 
 out and the supreme purpose of Christianity 
 achieved only by grasping thoroughly the 
 educational task. And the crux of the whole 
 
 .33 
 
situation lies in the fact that religious education 
 must be carried on, somehow, in the situation 
 created by the establishment of universal 
 secular education by the dominating, or even 
 the domineering, authority of the State. 
 
 At present, the Church, as we have already 
 pointed out, is attempting to fulfil its educa¬ 
 tional task in two ways: by the creation of 
 Church schools, including even colleges and 
 universities; and by the introduction, under 
 special auspices and by extra-academic agencies, 
 of religious instruction in those centers of 
 higher education where religious instruction 
 is excluded by the law of the State. The 
 former method suffers from the fact that church 
 institutions are apt to lack the prestige as well 
 as the financial resources of the State institu¬ 
 tions. And in America we have singular 
 examples, under the pressure of that fact, of 
 non-state colleges and universities gradually 
 abandoning the effort to make religious studies 
 compulsory or to create that atmosphere of 
 religious faith and devotion in which alone a 
 religious education can be truly powerful. 
 
 It is the absence of just such an atmos¬ 
 phere which makes the other method of work 
 so hard and the results as yet so meager. For 
 religious education can never be fully real as 
 long as it appears as an extra, a mere addendum 
 to a system which is already conceived of as 
 complete for all the purposes of life by the 
 teachers of a school or the directors of a univer- 
 
 34 
 
sity. Religion so taught must inevitably appear 
 to the mass of the students, as it appears to the 
 authorities themselves, as the intrusion of an 
 alien element, the challenge of a foreigner. 
 
 The ideal could only be reached if a system 
 were established where, amid perfect freedom of 
 intellectual development, the perfect authority 
 of the Christian faith w^ere constantly and gen¬ 
 uinely recognized, where the minds and hearts of 
 the students were kept open always to the joint 
 appeals of thorough training for a definite career 
 and thorough dedication to the will of God— 
 in fact, to the glorious vision of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven upon earth. 
 
 It is to the solution of this problem that the 
 Church of Christ is called, by that voice of 
 God which speaks so loudly and clearly in the 
 history of the present great hour. No longer 
 can the task of education be treated easily and 
 as an aside. That process underlies all other 
 efforts that can be conceived of and undertaken 
 in the lifting of the human race Godwards and 
 the bringing in of His Kingdom among the 
 united nations of the earth. Evangelism, 
 whether among children or adults, cannot be 
 carried on without it. The vast work of the 
 Church cannot be sustained in a manner to meet 
 the modern emergencies without a deeper and 
 fuller training of the thousands of young men 
 and women who are annually entering upon 
 its various ministries at home and abroad. 
 
 In these days when the various sections of 
 
 35 
 
the Church of Christ in America feel that it is 
 possible to raise many millions of dollars for 
 the promotion of the various forms of Christian 
 work throughout the world, the insight and 
 statesmanship of our leaders will be tested by 
 the emphasis which they put upon the several 
 departments of Christian service. For many 
 of us a supreme test of that insight and states¬ 
 manship will be found in the place which is 
 given to the vast field of Christian education 
 which has been described in these pages. 
 To ignore this will be a disaster of an immeasure- 
 able kind. The very greatness of the increase 
 in every other form of service calls for a deeper 
 and wider attention to this particular phase of 
 the Church’s work. Indeed, as we have re¬ 
 peatedly shown, no other kind of Christian 
 work can exercise its true influence if it is car¬ 
 ried on without attention to the educational 
 aspect of the Church’s responsibility and mis¬ 
 sion to mankind. The Church must give its 
 genius, its statesmanship, its divine vigor and 
 courage, as well as its prayers and its money, 
 to this supreme task. 
 
 36 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Agencies in America for the Promotion of 
 Religious Education by the Protes¬ 
 tant Churches 
 
 (The following list is unclassified and probably 
 
 incomplete.) 
 
 American Sunday School Union 
 International Sunday School Association 
 International Sunday School Lesson Committee 
 World’s Sunday School Association 
 The Sunday School Boards or Committees of 
 the Various Denominations 
 The Sunday School Council 
 The Missionary Education Movement 
 Young People’s Societies (Christian Endeavor, 
 Epworth League, etc.) 
 
 The Boards of Education of the Various De¬ 
 nominations 
 
 The Council of Church Boards of Education 
 Home Missions Council 
 
 Candidates’ Committees of the Boards of 
 Foreign Missions 
 
 The Foreign Missions Conference of North 
 Ameriea 
 
 Women’s Boards of Missions (Home and 
 Foreign) 
 
 37 
 
interchurch World Movement 
 Young Men’s Christian Association 
 Young Women’s Christian Association 
 Theological Seminaries Association 
 Religious Education Association 
 Board of Missionary Preparation 
 National Education Association 
 The Student Volunteer Movement 
 The Federal Couneil of the Churches of Christ 
 in America 
 
 The Boy Scouts of America 
 The Woodcraft League 
 The Girl Scouts 
 The Campfire Girls 
 
 The Playground and Recreation Association of 
 America 
 
 Denominational Colleges (where religious “at¬ 
 mosphere” and direct religious instruction are 
 prominent) 
 
 Colleges and Universities where 
 
 (1) Departments of Biblical Literature or 
 Religious Education are established 
 
 (2) The College Y. M. C. A. is encouraged to 
 do educational work 
 
 38 
 
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