Christian Education
Christian Education CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
By Jesse P. Sewell By education I do not refer alone to the processes of instruction, but to the entire process of development by which the human being is equipped to live his life in such a manner as to achieve the greatest amount of success, to enjoy the greatest happiness, and to give to his fellows the broadest and most useful service. Any process through which the youth of the world may be carried which does not thus prepare them for life does not deserve to be called education, regardless of the physical, mental and cultural development it may give. This education can only be given in such a way as to a ccomplish its service in the finest and noblest living when it is given from the viewpoint of Christianity. Will you please read with me just here some statements from God’s Word.
“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: It is written in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me” (Jesus in John 6:44-45).
“ Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But those are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing ye might have life through His name” (John 20:30-31).
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing, them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Jesus ii Matthew 28:19-20).
“Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). In these passages the following truths are clearly and positively presented:
1. Man, uninfluenced by the power of God, cannot come to Christ. ,
2. God exerts His influence to bring man to His Son through teaching.
3. The testimonies of the gospel are for the express purpose of producing
faith in man, that, in Jesus Christ, he may have life.
4. Children of God are to teach the gospel to every nation that by it men
may be made disciples.
5. Disciples are to be taught to observe ad things commanded by the Lord
that they may enjoy His blessed fellowship to the end. The service of Christian development is made a sacred and definite responsibility of Christian father-hood. These passages might have added to them a score or more of others, teaching just as plainly the same truths. By them the service of Christian Education is firmly established as a fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion and the most important and sacred function of the church of God. With these fundamental truths in plain view on the very surface of the sacred scriptures during the cen-turies, the church has never taken her educational work seriously, and does not do so now. With this background of scripture teaching in our hearts let us now study some present day conditions.
“The National Industrial Conference Board has re-cently made public its survey, showing that during the year 1925 more than one-fourth of the total net public expenditures was applied to public education. The total public school expenditure was more than $2,000,000,000, which the board declares exceeded the combined expenditures for our military, police, fire protection and prohibition enforcement. An increase of 37.1 per cent in the cost of public education between 1910 and 1925 and an increase of 69.4 per cent' from 1890 to 1925 are indicated.
One of the important factors in the present school expenditure, however, has been the proportionately greater enrollment, which increased from 68.6 per cent of the 18,500,000 children of school age in 1890 to 83 per cent of the 29,700,000 children of school age in 1925. A greater proportion than ever now attends high school after graduating from grammar schools, 15 per cent of all those enrolled attending high school 1925, as against only 1.6 per cent in 1890, an increase the more significant as the cost of high school education per pupil is estimated as amounting to two and a half times that of grammer school education. The average school term has been lengthened from 134.7 school days in 1890 to 169.6 days in 1925, in-volving corresponding salary increases, greater main-tenance and repair costs as well as greater outlays for supplies. More regular attendance, increasing the proportion of pupils attending school each day from 64.1 per cent of those enrolled io 80.5 per cent, is counted another factor in definite dollars and cents addition to school costs. Factors entering into the nominal increases of costs, the report states, are the changed purchasing value of the dollar, population increase, -ncrease in enrollment and better attendance, the lengthened school year and greater high school attendance. The National Bureau of Economic Research tells us we are getting richer, richer not merely in dollars, but richer in what the dollar will buy. In 1921, our total “current income” was $62,736,-000,000. In 1926, it was $89,682,000,000. Per capita the jump from $597 to $770, or per worker, from $1,537 to $2,010. Our rate of illiteracy is the lowest in the history of the nation. The average length of human life is greater than at any previous time. This is an inspiring picture we have been considering. I am delighted to call your attention to it. It demonstrates beyond question that through our pres^ enr system of education we are making our people physically strong and mentally intelligent, and finan-cially prosperous. But I am sorry that there is another picture, just as true to facts, that is as dark and gloomy as the one just considered is bright and inspiring. Truth demands that I now call your attention to it. The National Economic League recently sent a ques-tionnaire to 5,700 members of its national council, asking what in their minds constitutes the gravest problem now confronting the people of the United States. The answers show that it is the solemn judgment of 87 per cent of the outstanding business men of the nation that the crime wave presents the gravest problem now before the American people. We do not need statistics to reveal to us that this is an exceedingly serious problem. We have only to look about us in our own city and to read the daily papers. In every paper we read of misdemeanors and felonies, thefts, robberies, burglaries, shootings and murders. Young girls are debauched. Women are attacked and then cut to pieces or killed in their own homes. Boys and girls of high school age are frequently arrested drunk. Those are the stories we read every day,—not occasionally. And we know the papers do not tell it all by any means.
There are three billion dollars worth of property stolen in the United States every year. There is a forged check cashed in the United States every three and one-half minutes, night and day.In his exposition of the Sunday school lessons for June 24th, Dr. Wm. T. Ellis wrote, “Men who gather statistics say that in the United States there are 285.0 young men of college age in prison, which is 35.0 more than the number in college.”
Kathleen Norris in a wonderful article, entitled, “Home, The Center of the World”, published in Pic-torial Review, February, 1929, says, “Our children grow up without any sense of a background behind them, or of a code and plan for the future. They are shifted about' from house to hc^use and school to school, and very often shifted as well from family to family. An agitated mother poisons their very babyhoods with long, passionate tales of the defects of their father’s folks; later she includes Dad himself in this category. They are forced into criticism and partizan- ships in those very years when they ought to be rooted most deeply in family loyalty and affection. Prayers have long ago been dropped from the scheme; there is never any mention of duty, honor, family tradition. Why should there be? Grandma is a handsome divorced woman with a permanent' wave and a diamond collar, living at a hotel. Mother looks twenty-five, and would sell her immortal soul to be it once more. Dad cares about two things, business and golf, and gives to everything else only a kindly, absent- minded attention. ‘‘My sister is lucky,” said a young woman to me complainingly a few years ago. “She’s only twenty-five—she married a man with a good deal of money and had a darling baby girl; now she’s gotten her divorce and her alimony, and her whole life is before her!”
If that is the ideal of the younger generation—and the advocates of companionate marriage, alimony, divorce, and birth-control seem eager to assure us that it is—then the American home has vanished forever.” Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. recently made the following statement, “Eight years ago, when I was first married, 70 other young couples of my former wife’s and my personal acquaintance were married during the spring and winter sodial season. Within four years, 39 divorces took place, and while I was in Reno, 22 of the others came there also. Today but nine of these families still are living as man and wife. And of these nine, there are to my distinct knowledge only two who are not having what society calls ‘affairs’ with other persons on the side. A deplorable state! Yet one which we must face, for this condition is almost universal; it is not confined to the so-called ‘smart set.’ In the State of Illinois, where there were almost 10 times as many divorces granted as there were in Nevada last year, 85 per cent of them were found to be in families where the average yearly in-come was not in excess of $5000.”
Under the auspices of the Institute of Social and Religious Research of New York City, Walter S. Athearn, one of the deans of the University of Boston, recently directed a nation-wide survey of the basic causes of crime. His first inquiry was into the amount and quality of religious and moral instruction which the children of the nation are receiving. In his report he says, “Our survey showed that there are millions of children and youth in America today who are unreached by the edu-cational program of any church. Seven out of ten of the children and youth of the nation are growing from infancy to maturity without any systematic instruction in religion or ethics.” The second inquiry was into the ethical ideas of the children and youth of the nation. This section of the survey shows, “A high susceptibility to immoral conduct in typical groups of American youth.” It re-vealed, “Low ethical ideas in a sufficiently large area of our child life to guarantee the ongoing of our crime wave for years to come.” The third inquiry was into the age of persons now committing our major crimes. The results found by Prosecuting Attorney Wm. H. Remy who conducted the survey in Indianapolis gives a fair idea of the entire survey. They are as follows:
“The average age of persons convicted of burglary in Indianapolis in 1913 was 29 years; in 1923 the average was 21 years; a fall of eight years within a period of ten years. In 1913 the average hold-up man was 28 years of age; in 1923 the average hold-up man was 21 years of age. In 1913 the average person convicted of grand larceny was 29 years of age; in 1923 the average person convicted of grand larceny was 23 years of age. In 1913 the average age of the persons convicted of bigamy or wife desertion was 32 years of age; 1923 the average age of persons convicted of bigamy or wife desertion was 23 years of age. One-half of the auto-mobile thieves are boys of the high school age, between 18 and 19 years of age.”
Mr. Athearn gives the following summary of the results of the survey:
1. Millions of American children unreached by the educational program of any church.
2. A low level of ethical ideas in selected samples of American youth.
3. A high susceptibility to immoral conduct among typical groups of American youth.
4. A rapid increase of juvenile delinquency.
5. A rapidly spreading emphasis on agnostic and materialistic views of reality which,
tend to eliminate a personal God from the life of the rising generation.
6. An army of untrained, unsupervised voluntary religious teachers attempting to
teach morality in poorly equipped and meagerly supported religious schools.
7. Commercialized amusements and the influence of vividly portrayed criminal
conduct in the daily press and on the movie screen.In the presence of
these facts and many others which might be given, equally convincing, we are
forced to ask, “What is the cause of this nation-wide, spiritual and moral
breakdown? “This is just another way of asking, “what is the cause of our
present nationwide crime wave”?
It is perfectly clear that we cannot account for it on the basis of the physical and mental degeneracy of the people. The average length of life is greater than at any previous time, and the illiteracy is the lowest in our history. We must look elsewhere. But one answer seems to square with the fact’s. The crime wave is due to the absence of an adequate program of moral and religious education for the chil- hood and youth of the nation. Our ancestors established our democratic institutions and built our great' system of law on the theory that the life and success of both depend on the intelligence and moral integrity of our people. To the end that all the people might be educated a nation-wide system of common schools has been established. Because we believe in a complete separation of Church and State religion was removed from the public schools. In our large and rapidly increasing crime rate we have positive and unanswerable proof that we have failed and failed miserably as teachers of morals and spirituality. As a result, the lowest rate of illiteracy and longest span of life are matched by the highest rate of spiritual illiteracy, the highest crime rate. We have made the nation physically strong and mentally intelligent, but we have failed to make the nation moral and spiritual.
Hon. James J. Davis, our present Secretary of Labor, in a recent magazine article says, “The soul of this nation will die if we do not instill in the minds and hearts of our children some proper form of moral and religious sense.”
Again he says, “Men may say what they will, but we shall never have a morality that respects the rights and integrity of others unless our morality has a religious sanction. To put morality on anything but a religious basis is to build on sand. It is religion that gives vision, strength, inspiration, and without it we are nothing.” In the same article he says, “I would plead for q conception of education large enough to take into itself everything that deepens the human consciousness, that inspires the human soul, and gives one a vision of the eternities. This, a moral education, to use the word in its highest sense, will do. As every historian can show, morals divorced from religion are sorry affairs without any point. But morals not so divorced can rise to the height that religion itself has attained. A British poet put it exactly when he said that true religion is ‘morality touched with emotion.’ Such a religion this age has not outgrown, nor will any other age outgrow it.”
Judge Wm. McAdoo, Chief Magistrate of New York City, in a magazine article, published in October, says, “What is, perhaps, most evil in the influences of mod-ern youth is the new materialism which has come into vogue—a cynical, negative and hopeless attitude toward life as a whole. Those influences which led many college students within the past year to commit suicide are akin to those which impel the daughters of re-spectable families to lives of dissipation and those of the poor to wrong doing. It is the feeling which has come into being—expressed in pathetic letters left by several of those student suicides—that there is no purpose to life, that the universe is run by mechanistic processes rather than by a governing spiritual
power, that immortality is a delusion and religion an exploded superstition.”
Again he says, “As chief magistrate of the city of New York, through whose courts each year pass more than a half million cases ranging from petty larceny to murder, I can state from observation that most crimes on the part of young people are committed by those whose parents have failed to bring them up according to religious precepts or who have lost the faith of their forefathers.” In the same article he says further, “I have found one thing more definitely established than all others— that is, people who go wrong and drift into crime are those who have lost faith in God. What is there to live for, what inducement is there to lead a righteous life, if there is no faith? Ethics are not a substitute for the Sermon on the Mount. In my dealings with young criminals I find the parents of many have brought them up without any spiritual teachings whatever, and this is not confined to the parents of boys and girls who become criminals. It prevails through the higher orders of society. What this lack of religious training, of simple belief in a divine Creator to whom we are responsible for what we make of our lives, brings about, one can see in the rampant dissipation, moral degeneration and intractibility of the young today.” From the Literary Digest I quote the following: “Regular attendance upon Sunday School during the period of character formation would cause criminal courts and jails to close, for there would be no ‘raw material’ to work on. This is not a platitude from the pulpit. It is an expression of belief of a judge who has had long experience. In the eighteen years he has sat upon the bench in two courts, Supreme Court Justice Lewis L. Fawcett, of Brooklyn, has had more than 4,000 boys less than 22 years arraigned before him, charged with various degrees of crime. But of this large number, only three were members of a Sunday School at the time of the commission of their crimes.”
Robert Babson says, “The crying need of today is not more cultural and scientific knowledge. Our prosperity will collapse of its own weight unless our spiritual growth catches up with our material growth.” In a recent address President Coolidge said that “We do not need more national development; we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power; we need more spiritual power. We do not need more knowledge; we need more character. We do not need more law; we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen; we need more of the things that are unseen.”
Until we come to our Bibles and relearn our Chris-tianity and build into our educational system a program of spiritual and moral training to match our efficient system, of physical and mental training, our rate of spiritual and moral illiteracy and our wave of sin will mount higher and higher. This program to be effective must include the home, the church and the school, each functioning constantly and efficiently as a center of moral and spiritual train-ing. The most sacred responsibility that rests on mankind is the responsibility of parenthood. Our children are in no way responsible for their existence. We are entirely responsible. The most inexcusable and sinful neglect possible is to bring a human life into existence and then shirk the responsibility to properly train and develop that life. The family and home are not an end, but only a means to an ‘end, that is, the perpetuation and proper development of the human family.
Each home is, consciously or unconsciously, inten-tionally or unintentionally, an educational institution, and in it the very foundations of character, spirit, at-titude and conduct, are laid in the hearts of the children who go out from it. Largely speaking, other educational agencies can only build on these foundations, and only such character, spirit, attitude and conduct can be developed as these foundations will sustain. All Christian parents and all Christians who con-template marriage and parenthood should certainly study carefully and thoroughly methods of Christian education, especially for children in the home and family. A conscious, intentional, planned effort should be made to properly instruct, inspire, guide and restrain the children in each home. This is vitally important, and the effect will be far reaching. But far more important, and far reaching in effect is the home as it is normally, not as it is in its seasons of conscious effort to instruct, edify and influence the children, but as it is in its own habitual normal character, spirit, attitude and conduct. The normal habitual preferences, controlling inter-ests, established estimates of persons and pursuit's, the ordinary circle of associates, the usual standards of conduct, the accepted ideas of work and amusement, will have far more effect on the foundations of char-acter being laid in the hearts of the children of the home than all of the intentional conscious efforts at instruction and direction. These are important and should have constant, intelligent and prayerful atten-tion. The former are more important and demand ever more constant, more intelligent and more prayerful at-tention. Much depends on what the home does. Much more depends on what the home is. The home, in order to hope for the highest accom-plishment in its God given task must be able to look to the church for thorough efficient co-operation and support. The most sacred function of the church is her edu-cational work, the task to teach every creature in all the world. But with the clear and positive teaching of the scriptures before her and with nearly 2,000 years of experience and observation behind her, the church does not now take her educational work seriously. She depends almost entirely for the accomplishment of this, her most' important one, on one hour session one day in the week. And usually this is with untrained supervision and instruction. We would not depend on such procedure to teach anything else to which we attach the slightest importance. Yet' we seem perfectly satisfied with it in teaching the human family the one thing on which God depends to draw men to His Son that they may live.
Few churches conduct any week day Bible classes. There are few teacher training classes and my brethren have produced no teacher training literature, or at least very little. We conduct protracted meetings to lead people to Christ, but no meetings or schools to train the church for more efficient Christian teaching. We conduct singing schools to teach the people to better sing—but no schools to teach them to better teach.
We have produced vast quantities of literature, good, indifferent and bad, for general reading by adults, but practically none that can be used by parents in the home or teachers in the church in teaching and inspiring and guiding the children and immature.
But, it is replied, “parents and teachers have the Bible. No other material is needed.” The idea that vast time, thought, work and money must be expended by the church in preparation of its sacred material of the Bible for adults, who are equipped in mind to properly assort and apply this material, but that all such effort is unnecessary for the young who are not prepared to properly assort and apply the material is so absurd that a reply could be nothing more than a waste of time. The great need of the church today is the development of each congregation into an effective educational unit. With the church as with the home, much depends on the conscious, planned efforts to instruct, inspire, direct and restrain, but far more on the normal sustained faith, character, spirit, attitude and life of the church. Much depends on what the church does. Much more depends on what the church is. With all of these things said, and accepted, I feel that it is unnecessary for me to argue for the necessity of Christian schools and colleges. Every one sees at once the absurdity and the danger of having the effect of such homes and churches, as we have just been con-sidering, neutralized and cunteracted by schools and colleges, thoroughly worldly and material, and even irreverent and unbelieving from the viewpoint of all that is really important and enduring.
I say without apology or fear that the average college today (including the denominational colleges) does
not even maintain a spirit'of culture and refinement. Almost universally the atmosphere is course, vulgar and rough.
Beginning even with the high school, the spirit of the average modern school is the spirit of rag time and jazz. The atmosphere is that of slang, profanity, coarseness, vulgarity, frivolity, extravagance and selfindulgence. Reverence and piety, the conventions and virtues, are laughed to scorn as babyish and utterly out of date, and the students who maintain them are pushed aside as “nobody” in the social life of the institutions. The Christian College is essential, not' only because Christian Education is a positive doctrine of the New Testament, and the Christian College is a necessary part of that process, but also in order to the presentation of the ideals and institutions of the American government.
I do not miss the facts when I say to you that, with the exception of a few individual institutions, the col-leges of America have so far compromised with the forces of materialistic philosophy, irreverent' unbelief, self-indulgence, and extravagance, as to become a men-ace not only to the church and the American home, but to the American ideal of government as well.
If time would permit, I could give you hundreds of instances in college life and procedure proving all of these statements t'o be true.
Christians must be made to see the Christian schoo, not as a priviege, but as a necessity. They must be made to see the entire process of Christian education, from the home to the finished academic scholar or pro-fessional, industrial or commercial worker, as a sacred function of the Christian religion, commanded by the Lord himself. To fail to teach it is to be unsound in doctrine. To fail in the practice is to be disloyal to our Lord. The Christian home, the Christian church, the Christian college, if it would be worthy of the name and make a worthwhile contribution to human development, must be genuinely Christian—Christian in faith, in character, in spirit, in management, in teaching, in attitude, and in atmosphere. When these are sacri- fived to anything, institutional size, custom, wealth, station, whether home, church or school, has lost its savor and is good for nothing but to be cast out' and trodden under foot of men; this regardless of all else that may be true. To trustees, teachers, students, patrons and supporters of Christian education, may I utter this warning? As the years go by and our Christian homes, churches and schools grow in age, influence, power and wealth, as they will, we are going to find it far more difficult to maintain our faith, character, ideals, spirit and service than to obtain all of the material equipment and academic training necessary.
If we do not constantly teach, watch and pray we will lose sight of the fact that God ordained these in-stitutions as a means of service to humanity and not as an end within themselves. Reaching this point we will find ourselves laboring for size, material excellency, wealth, power and glory, and the service of Christian education will be forgotten. In a recent address President Coolidge said, “There is something more in learning and something more in life than a mere knowledge of science, a mere acquisition of wealth, a mere striving for place and power. Our colleges will fail in their duty to their students unless they are able to inspire them with a broader understanding of the spiritual meaning of science, of literature, and of the arts. Their graduates will go out into life poorly equipped to meet the problems of existence, to fall an easy prey to dissatisfaction and despair. Many of our older universities were founded by pious hands at great sacrifice for the express pur-pose of training men for the ministry to carry light to the people on the problems of life. Unless our college graduates are inspired with these ideals, our colleges have failed in their most important function and our people will be lacking in true culture.”
Let us never for one moment forget' that the com-mand of our King is teach every creature in all the nations, and that the law of God to Christian parents is, Bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.