FOUR PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CLYDE WEBER VOTAW There are latent possibilities of humanity that call for fuller development, as there are latent possibilities of the soil that call for more thorough cultivation. We are wasteful of both our natural and our human resources. More intelligence, better method, keener purpose will enable us to improve our common. agriculture; more intelligence, better method, keener purpose will enable us to improve our common humanity. One has but to look around to see that men and women, boys and girls, have unrealized capacities-many remain stunted physically, mentally, and morally because they have not room to grow, or because blighting conditions surround them, or because other persons overshadow them, or because their resources as fast as they develop them are gathered in by other hands to promote other welfare than their own. It is intensely pathetic that many people whose lives would have been larger, stronger, and happier through higher education must remain small, weak, and hungry, because higher education is inaccessible to them. Again, human welfare suffers a constant loss in that many persons who have the ability and impulse to promote the common good are restricted in their social service by limited opportunities and meager resources. It is one of the gross defects of our current civilization that it makes so much of material achievement and relatively so little of moral and spiritual achievement. Religious education seeks to make good these and other deficiencies in our present living. 1. The first principle underlying religious education is, that religion is the primary element in life. It makes for the vital aspects of human well-being. There is no other element in life so important, because no other element equally conditions human welfare. Religion stands for an ideal attainment of the whole personality, in itself and in its relations to others; or, in historic phrase, religion stands for the sanctification of body, mind, and spirit. At its latest and best, religion includes all that morality includes, all that social righteousness, social justice, and social service include, all that "loving one's neighbor" can be reasonably interpreted to mean, all that self-sacrifice and altruism require, all that forgiveness signifies, all that helpfulness can effect. In some sense and measure religion has for long meant these things. If such a list of qualities and actions seems like an extension of the term "religion"-making it more inclusive, more concerned with the common life, more directed to the present good, then let it be said that our conception and application of religion must progress with the progress of the race, must develop as our understanding of life develops, must be fitted to the modern conditions and needs. Religion exists as an aid to living; it is truest when it is most helpful. The evidence of this is in the history of all religions during their vital stage, and especially in the history of the Christian religion. The moral content, purpose, and effect of religion are essential to it, gaining in importance as religion ascends. And those may prove to be right who hold that in time morality will dominate and determine religion, so that religions will be strong as their moral element is strong, weak and transient as their moral element proves its inadequacy to solve the practical problems of everyday life. The recession of the creedal, ritual, and ecclesiastical features of religion, which is so notable a feature of the present time, is a natural and proper shifting of the point of view. The change of major interest in religion from future destiny to present welfare makes decidedly for the common good. One still hopes, trusts, and, so far as may be, labors for ultimate well-being-his own and others in the world that is to come; but the remoteness of this end is recognized, while it is felt that the best guarantee of an eschatological salvation is the achievement here and now of a moral (i.e., spiritual) salvation which is both individual and social. It becomes increasingly clear that the best preparation for the eternal time is being and doing right in the present time. Being and doing right now because it is right is an imperative obligation and has in itself adequate worth. We do not wish to lose we must not, shall not lose the values that the creedal, ritual, and ecclesiastical features of religion have had, and still largely have, for men. What we do wish is to transmute former values into present ones, and to find new values in religion. New light upon life is breaking forth from our modern experience and thought, in which we may be discoverers, or of which we may at the least be beneficiaries. Can we not anew strengthen, adapt, and apply religion to the social conditions that oppress humanity? As things are now, success comes only to the fortunate few; the many are held down to ignorance, toil, poverty, and misery. Can we not in some way raise ourselves out of the moral blindness, weakness, and perversity that still afflict us? Can we not shake off the selfishness, materialism, dishonesty, unfairness, luxury, and waste that stifle our principles and defeat our ideals? How are we to improve the current habits, make men thoughtful and serious, establish high ideals in the nation and in the commonwealth? We answer: by making religion vital and dominant; namely, by bringing it about that all living-of all persons, all the time-shall be religious in purpose, character, and action. By preaching, teaching, and exemplifying a twentieth-century Christianity that has a clear vision of the way and goal of humanity, that knows the conditions of modern life, that supplies the needed inspiration, restraint, and guidance which a man needs and society needs to keep it straight and enable it to achieve. Particularly, by promoting the moral-religious development of boys and girls during the formative period of their education. Two generations are upon the stage-the older and the younger, the passing generation and the oncoming generation. With which chiefly lies the future? Upon which will educational effort tell the more? For which should we mainly work? The older generation is retiring through the wings, its act in the drama of life approaching the end; but the younger generation is moving compactly, sturdily to the front, its act about to begin. Whether one counts himself with the oncoming or the passing generation, the future with its possibilities and promise-belongs to the young. Education, therefore, is the main chance. To make our sons and daughters, our boys and girls, the kind of men and women that we should like to have been, to help them to achieve the ideals of living which we reach out for but cannot grasp, to equip them to establish righteousness, prosperity, peace, and happiness upon still better lines-this is what we want to do, this is the task of education. There is no group, organization, or class of men or women who cannot devote themselves to this problem and contribute to its solution. It is the common task, and the particular ambition of all free, normal, intelligent, serious, and energetic persons. Self-preservation may be the immediate law of nature, race perpetuation and advance is the ultimate law of nature; nature regards the individual as subordinate and ancillary to the race. The greatest human instinct, the greatest human obligation, the greatest human happiness is to provide a succeeding generation, characterized by those qualities and supplied with those resources which will insure physical, mental, moral, and social progress for mankind. 2. A second principle underlying religious education is, that all education is to be primarily moral-religious in aim. This is to hold for every educational agency which present society provides and operates. We have many educational agencies: for greater distinctness and efficiency the educational function is distributed. From primitive times there have been two great educational institutions for the child, the home; for the adolescent, the social order. The Mediterranean civilization, in the ancient period, had four educational institutions: the home, the social order, the school, and the church. The school had been added to promote especially the intellectual training, the church (i.e., the religious institutions of the period), to promote the moral-religious training. In this modern period we have as a heritage these four major institutions the home, the social order, the school, and the church. Nor have we been able to create others of equal importance. Our contribution to education thus far has been some improvement of the inherited agencies, and the launching of a few additional minor agencies, the newspaper and magazine press, the public library, the educational and religious convention, and the like. We are seeking to clarify and advance the aim of education, we are largely increasing the material of education, we are further systematizing and standardizing the educational process, we are extending the area of education among the people as a whole, we are developing an "efficiency" type of education alongside of the "cultural" type, we are acquiring in the light of biological science a better knowledge of child characteristics and child growth, we are replacing some of the scholastic materials and methods that had become classical, we are enlarging the social spirit and point of view in education, we are establishing the ethical interest and aim as primary and dominant. This is the way ahead educationally, and real progress is being made. The professional educators are keen, wise, and active in promoting this fundamental improvement; even the general public takes part intelligently and appreciatively in modern educational advance. The opportunity is immediate and urgent for a reconnection of religion with education. Today they are apart, whereas historically the relation between them has been close and strong. In the United States the public schools have been under religious influence; more than that, they have been intentionally, concretely, and to some extent formally religious. The colleges have been mostly of church foundation and under church control. The indebtedness of the American schools to the churches of America is not to be overlooked or minimized. But this older relationship is fading out. Education has become an independent science and profession. Presidents and professors are not drawn from the ministry as formerly, but from the ranks of professional educators; denominational colleges are freeing themselves from church control; state colleges and universities are multiplying in which disconnection from the church is strictly maintained; the public schools are excluding religious exercises and the Bible. The vast body of school officials and teachers far outnumber the ministers, lawyers, and doctors; and they as a body assume or declare their independence of the church, together with the kind of religion for which |