Religious Education in the Family

E-text prepared by Stacy Brown Thellend, Kevin Handy, John Hagerson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
In the work of religious education, with which the present series of books is concerned, the life of the family rightly occupies a central place. The church has always realized its duty to exhort parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, but very little has ever been done to enable parents to study systematically and scientifically the problem of religious education in the family. Today parents' classes are being formed in many churches; Christian Associations, women's clubs, and institutes are studying the subject; individual parents are becoming more and more interested in the rational performance of their high duties. And there is a general desire for guidance. As the full bibliography at the end of this volume and the references in connection with each chapter indicate, there is available a very large literature dealing with the various elements of the problem. But a guidebook to organize all this material and to stimulate independent thought and endeavor is desirable.
To afford this guidance the present volume has been prepared. It is equally adapted for the thoughtful study of the father and mother who are seeking help in the moral and religious development of their own family, and for classes in churches, institutes, and neighborhoods, where the important problems of the family are to be studied and discussed. It would be well to begin the use of the book by reading the suggestions for class work at the end of the volume.
With a confident hope that religion in the family is not to be a wistful memory of the past but a most vital force in the making of the better day that is coming, this volume is offered as a contribution and a summons.
The Editors

The ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childless families, irreverent children, and the decadence of the old type of separate home life are signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives, and insufficient purposes. Where the home is only an opportunity for self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap boarding-house, a sleeping-shelf, an implement for social advantage. While it is true that general economic developments have effected marked changes in domestic economy, the happiness and efficiency of the family do not depend wholly on the parlor, the kitchen, or the clothes closet. Rather, everything depends on whether the home and family are considered in worthy and adequate terms.