Religion and the War

ALLAN

or the inclusion of religion in our educational program, and for the use of ed

urged the educational method of Christian nurture. He did more than any other one man to determine the present trend in religious education. Yet his wo

transferred to the school many of the educational functions once fulfilled by the home, and had wrought a change in the forms of family religion. The public schools had become increasingly secular in aim, in control, and in material taught. The development of science and philosophy in independence of religion had made it po

lum of religious education. In 1903, the Religious Education Association was organized, its membership drawn from the whole of the United States and Canada, and its purpose declared to be threefold: "To inspire the educational forces of our country with the religious ideal; to inspire the religious forces of our country with the educational ideal; and to keep before the public mind the ideal of religious education, and the sense of its need and value." In 1908, the International Sunday School Association authorized its Lesson Committee to construct and issue a graded series of Sunda

made to correlate public and religious education. Churches in general have come to see that they have an educational as well as a religious function in the community, and that there is a sense in which they share with the public school a common task. The public school can teach the "three R's," the sciences, arts and vocations; the church must teach religion. Both are needed if the education of our children is to be complete. Many churches are employing paid teachers of religion and directors of religiou

ed new buildings for their schools are postponing their erection till the war is over. Training classes for teachers are harder to keep up. Ministers are going into war service; and those who stay at home are doing double work or more. Churches, like business

ify the church's educational program, in point both of content and method. This conviction rests upon these fundamental facts: that the worl

sed and more or less fully believed, belong together. The full

which is education's goal. Religion without education lacks intelligence and power, and condemns

from mediocrity and caprice. Education without democracy perpetu

nd religion without democracy cannot realize th

d convictions are gaining a new force and a deeper meaning in and through the experiences of these years of war. The struggle for democracy is

Pan-Germanism shall have been not only balked but destroyed. The democracy for which we fight to make the world safe will be a chastened, changed, completer democracy. It will be a democracy between nations as well as within nations, for the doctrine of the irresponsible, beyond-moral sovereignty of the s

man is wrong. The general moral sense of men has not been over-tender on this point hitherto. They have checkmated the exploiter if they could, as they did checkmate Napoleon, but they have not always, or even usually, looked upon him as a wrong doer. It required G

rmanist scriptures: "Not to live and let live, but to live and direct the lives of others, that is power." "To compel men to a state of right, to put them under the yoke of right by force, is not only the right but the sacred duty of every man who has the knowledge and the power." "The German race is called to bind the earth under its control,

rst among you, shall be servant of all." The present struggle is not merely between democracy and autocracy as rival systems of government. It is a struggle between opposed philosophies of life. Nietzsche was more consistent than the Kaiser who has followed him, for Nietzsche did not claim to

e will be any one trend of the churches in the immediate future. Yet this is clear: that the interests of democracy and the interests of true religion are ultimately one. We may confidently expect the churches of tomorrow to real

and to estimate its values. Our eyes are being opened to the diametrical difference between democratic and undemocrati

n school organization, as well as in ideals of scholarship, the world sought to follow Germany. If here and there one objected that German education seemed to sacrifice the individual to the system and to beget an obedience too impl

heir military masters. They seem on the whole to like the kind of government they have, and to want to be exploited by Prussia. They are perilously near to what Mr. H. G. Wells has

develop habits of mind rather than free intelligence; they have valued efficiency in a given task above initiative and power to think for oneself. They have set children in vocational grooves and molded them to pattern. They have educated the few to exert authority, and have trained the many to obey. They have nurtured the young upon hatred of other peoples; and, m

telligence than the German teacher's dictation methods. Professor Charles H. Judd has recently pointed out the confusion and waste of time brought about by the fact that our eight-year elementary school was modeled upon the German Volksschule, which is a school for the lower classes, and not intended to lead on to higher education. Our purpose, on the contrary, is to maintain for every American child an open ladder through e

hod. Such education practices and aims at intelligence rather than habit of mind. It trains its pupils to think and choose for the

ill say; it is more direct and practical; it brings more immediate results. It is more patriotic, moreover, they will insist; it better serves the ends of authority; it makes people more prosperous and contented, each in his appointed niche. But such arguments, we may well hope, will no longer win the uncritical assent that they have sometimes found. German education may be more efficient in the fulf

nstruction in her schools. But the content of this instruction in religion has been intellectualistic and formal. It has pressed upon German children a body of historical facts, moral precepts and theological d

ncipation from a religion of mere authority and convention and their growth into a religion of the spirit. We aim, not simply to win their assent to a given body of beliefs or to attach them to the church as a saving institution, but to help them to become men and women who can think and choose for themselves. The Protestant principle of the universal priesthood of

e vital, and less intellectualistic. Instead of proceeding upon the assumption that true belief comes first and that right life is the expression of prior belief, it will recognize that adequate insight and true belief are more often the result of right life and action. "If any man willeth to do h

the label. Religion is being tested, stripped of sham and embroidery, and reduced to reality. And there are being revealed breadths and depths of real religion that we had not understood. There is a vast amount of inarticu

a judgment day. A great moral issue has stood out, sharp, clean-cut and clear. It has set men on the right hand and on the left. It brooks no moral hyphenates; it permits no half-allegiance, either to country or to God. Beneath all pretense and profession, it lays ba

dy and mind, of needless death and of mothers brave but broken-hearted. And most of this is the result of supreme moral evil, the work of a power deliberately seeking world-domination and exploitation of the rest of ma

ave revealed to us the supreme power of the human spirit to endure pain, to resist evil, and to coun

how very little hold traditional Christianity has upon men.... So far as I am able to estimate, we are faced now with this situation, a Christian life combined with a pagan creed. For while men's conduct and their outlook are to a large extent unconsciously Christian, their creed (or what they think to be their creed) most emphatically is not.... Nevertheless I feel that out he

their power. Neither are the "prophetic" folk who misunderstand their Bibles so persistently and look so confidently for the second coming of the Lord, winning an assent at all commensurate with their effort. But there is a vast amount of quiet, sensible, devoted Christian living in America. There is more of genuine religion among us than we had realized. That religion, for the most part inarticulate, and hardly knowing itself to be Christian, is finding expression in action. The spirit in which America entered the war; the high moral aims which President Wilson, i

s fundamentally Christian character? The answer to that question lies with the churches. And there a

ustifies itself by a way of believing about God and duty and immortality. The point is, that in the natural order of growth life has a

oms and beliefs are relevant to the real issues of life and function in essential ways. Our creeds will become simpler, but more vital. And that will make possible a closer unity of the churches. One may well question both the possibility and the desirability of a complete obliteration of denominational lines. We may always have and need denominational loya

r, again, to be more fully Christian in its co

now beginning in a practical way to understand and strive for, he taught and lived and died for. Christianity'

riking phrase, which he expounds in a remarkable article in The New Republic on "The League of Nations." "Existing states," he says, "have become impossible as absolutely independent sovereignties. The new conditions bring them so close together and give them such extravagant powers of mutual injury that they must either sink national pride and dynastic ambitions in subordination

guarantor of world unity and sought to establish morality upon a basis of enlightened self-interest. The passage cannot be quoted too often, nor too firmly impressed upon the minds of the present generation, for there were those among us who, even up until the invasion of Belgium, kept protesting that there could be no war in a world so bound together by economic and commercial ties, and there are those now who find in such interests the only durable basis for world reconstruction. "Brethren," said Robertson, "that which is built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest must be shriveled to atoms. Therefore, we who have observed the ways of God i

e added love. The brotherhood of man must be established upon a common acknowledgment of the Fatherhood of God. The world community ca

ls. However much it may be tempted to the lower view from time to time, we may reasonably expect that henceforth the world is done with belief in a mere tribal or national God. The supreme and inmost bond of

precious that in a more careless, unthinking time we had accepted as a matter of course. And it is entirely possible that victory may wait until in America, as in England and France, there are few families that do not live in closer fellowship with the unseen world because their sons are there. The gradual disintegration of family life which the past half century has witnessed was but incidental to a rapid change in social, economic and industrial conditions. There is reason to expect that the family will so adjust its life to these conditio

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