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Religion is what it is to-day, because of their earnestness. A truer ideal is the chief need. Our workers will sustain a fresh and more accurate conception with an enthusiasm even greater than they have hitherto shown. This is the very first step toward co-ordination. The conception for which this Council stands is now the possession of comparatively few. Popular ignorance of an adequate idea of religious education is the call for its clear definition and aggressive proclamation which we should answer with all our might. The general theme of this convention, "The Aims of Religious Education," sharply outlined and brought to every church, will help every agency within it to find its special place, and, therefore, its relation to every other.

(b) It is possible to bring the local church to feel that, without prejudice to other functions in a community, it is a school for religious education. It ought to be easy to show that religious education, as we conceive it, includes evangelism, and that the great purpose of life's multiform activities is to bring every human being to self-realization according to the norm in the mind of God. Church_energy is contributory to this, and every agency takes its appropriate place when this idea is received. To quote from Professor Coe, "The Church as a school needs to be systematized. All its work on behalf of the immature is, or should be, educational: it should proceed from the developmental point of view. There should be a definite plan for the child from his infancy to the close of adolescence. This implies, finally, the organization of the church and the family into educational unity." With such a conception dominating church activity no agency within it will be permitted to travel the path of a wandering comet. Such coordination would lead the child-life from its earliest beginnings in the home, through a series of impressions and normal self-expressions in church and other agencies, all the way to maturity. Steady advance from one stage to another could be made without a break. The kingdom of God would be within the soul what every realm of God without is seen to be, a progress from blade to ear, and to the full grain in the Confession of religious life would be not so much a formal as a vital process. It would be the developing expression of the inborn religious capacity in ways appropriate to each period of its growth.

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(c) An intelligent pastor will bend his efforts to this co-ordination. The training of ministers in the conception and principles of religious education ought to be required in every theological seminary. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. How can agencies within a church be co-ordinated if the pastor is unequal to the task? 1 Education in Religion and Morals. By Professor George A. Coe. Page 288.

If the course in the seminary cannot be lengthened to do this, let it be so altered that the study of some of the antiquities can give way to preparation for meeting existing conditions. Is it right to require a knowledge of all the minute sects and insects of the past until students can name every parasite that has grown upon the vine and its branches, and leave the future pastors unprepared to cope with problems that they will face immediately upon leaving the seminary? Let the dead bury the dead, but let us be ready for to-day's battle. Such a training would save our coming leaders from the embarrassments of ignorance and experiment that now confuse us who are working out our own pastoral salvation. Yet we can study these conditions. What excuse is there for absolute failure by any of us when we have so much literature upon this subject, and our laboratories already prepared? If any pastor would gather the parents of his parish, his Sunday-school officers and teachers, the heads of the societies in his church, and his workers into a class for the study of this problem of co-ordination, and with the book from which I have quoted, or some such text-book, as a basis, study the problem of co-ordination, he would at once make experimental realization, besides ennobling his work in many other respects.

These three possibilities are immediately practicable: the spreading of the conception of religious education, the awakening of the church nto the consciousness that it is a school for religious education, and the efforts of pastors qualified to lead in the work.

(4) Limitations. The limitations correspond to the possibilities, and are of two kinds, the permanent and the transient. To the permanent belong all those factors in the problem over which we have no control, such as the unique work of God, and the personal freedom of human beings. We turn to some limitations that can be removed, but not without wise and persistent effort. And here the connection, of a local church with denominational and interdenominational enterprises must be taken into account. How is such co-ordination as is here contemplated to be realized in the local church when powers outside of it determine the activities of its agencies? For instance, the lessons used by most of our Sunday-schools are fixed by an interdenominational committee, whose work is not controlled by the conception of religious education assumed in this paper. Again, the topics for the meetings of our young people's societies, both senior and junior, are selected for them by general committees that foster the united societies. If we were to introduce other illustrations of local church agencies controlled by movements of a general character, the situation would appear still more complicated. How far can these general interdenominational

enterprises be enlisted in the effort to co-ordinate the local church agencies? How near can denominations that control the activities of local churches be brought to such a step as is here advocated? In highly centralized forms of denominational government, ought it to be impossible to secure a study of the problem here stated? And in loosely organized congregational polities, should not the local churches feel perfectly free to co-ordinate their agencies without reference to outside general movements? These questions need careful study. My purpose is accomplished by indicating that some of the limitations of coordination lie in the relation of the agencies within the local church to general denominational or interdenominational movements. Here, also, let me repeat, the solution of our difficulties seems to lie in the direction already indicated, the diffusion of the true idea of religious education.

II. The co-ordination of agencies within a church with those in the same community outside of it. Among these may be named the public school, the library, the various clubs for boys and girls. All these shape young life. If we may not bring the private and state schools to our idea of religious education, we can adjust the agencies within the church to these energies that lie outside. We can do this by pointing out to the boys and girls the essentially moral value of their training in other schools. We should make them see and feel that the use of opportunity, neatness, promptness, honor, sincerity, and all the other traits of character developed by the state school, are essentially religious. We must bring them to see that the exercise of these in specifically religious realms will yield even nobler results than they produce in the sphere of pure intellectuality. We should make our methods in church agencies as rational and self-commending to the boy and girl as are those of the state school. The personality of the teacher, the genuineness of the methods of study, ought to match those in the day school. The fact of the unity of education makes our problem severe. All education has a religious value, and all religion should have an educational value. Now what happens to the student who belongs to both the week-day and Sunday schools? He compares equipment, the competence of teachers, the methods of study, the results of methods, and grades them, indeed degrades one or the other. We cannot expect him to co-ordinate the two agencies. We must articulate them for him. We are bound by every consideration that affects maturity to prevent impressions which, though vague in the beginning, grow into clearness as the child grows, and at last find expression in the false opinion, spoken or acted, that religious education is one thing and general education is another and a

far superior thing. True educational methods in the use of our church agencies will go far towards preventing this harmful mistake. The neglect of such methods is largely responsible for the disparity of results in the two realms which the boy only feels at first, but at last clearly defines to himself. Let us not neglect any opportunity compatible with the rights of all citizens to influence the instruction and methods of the state schools. Surely, Christians have some rights which they did not surrender when they made and guaranteed the religious freedom of their state institutions. Nevertheless, the chief direction in which we must now look for the co-ordination here advocated must be in the uplifting of the educational value of our church agencies so that in this respect they will be recognized as not a whit behind those of the state schools. That was a tremendous question lately put to the writer by a college sophomore, who is thinking of entering the ministry: "Can I take the whole of my selfhood with me into the ministry?" He was urged not to enter it otherwise. Investigation into the origin of his question took us back into this very lack of co-ordination of his church training with his other educational experiences. Said another, a freshman, from a high-class preparatory school, with his first conscious shock from the disparity of methods and results in these two spheres: "I stand for the thing for which the church stands, but not for all the methods by which the church stands for it." Is there no way of saving our young men and women from such questions and conclusions? If there is, let us find it.

III. In conclusion, I would suggest that the Council of the Religious Education Association appoint a committee to investigate this entire matter. A scientific study of the situation, an accurate description of it, would surely arouse a widespread interest in improving it. No more practical work could be undertaken at this time, none which would more plainly justify the existence of the Association. Out of such a study would grow suggestions of the most practical kind. Hundreds of our most intelligent ministerial and lay workers face the problem daily, and long for some light upon it. Even where the problem is not so sorely pressing there are dim misgivings as to the efficiency of present prevailing methods. And yet more loud is the call to awaken those who see no problem at all, whose satisfaction with present conditions is the complaisance of folly.

WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE IN RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION BETWEEN ROMAN CATHOLICS
AND PROTESTANTS?

VERY REV. PROFESSOR THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D., J. U. L.
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C.

I think I may say at once that some co-operation is possible in the matter of religious education between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The general sympathy which the proceedings of this Association awaken among the former is a fair sign that we hold something in common, ideally at least. A common aim presupposes and calls for some measure of co-operation, however circumscribed it may be, when we reach the stage of execution. Co-operation, however, is a very broad term, and it may be well to state at once, clearly and frankly, the field in which it seems impossible to look for any mutual helpfulness between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Religious education with Catholics is something positive, systematic, and exclusive, in accordance always with the doctrines and precepts of the church. For this reason, it is impossible to establish any system of immediate co-operation in religious education with those who cannot accept these doctrines and precepts, or the authority of the Church by which they are maintained. Experience has shown the futility of intermediate combinations made. up of concessions, or based on mutual minimizing and sacrifices. In the matter of religious doctrine, everything is in one way or another essential, or may be easily made to take on that character. We should find it, therefore, impossible to construct manuals of religious doctrine that would satisfy both Catholic and Protestant parents and authorities.

It does look, at first thought, as if we ought to be able to produce a manual of morality that would express certain principles and criteria of conduct that have long been looked on as our common inheritance, either from the Jewish law or from immemorial Christian experience. But right here we are confronted by some preliminary questions that are vital, and that must be frankly answered before we can say what ideas are to go into such a manual. What is the basis of morality? What are its nature, scope, sources, sanction? Shall it be treated as purely natural, or with reference to the supernatural character impressed upon it by the Founder of Christianity? Is it something absolute, or is it something temporary and shifting, adapted always to the actual

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