The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work

by Allan Hoben

Comparative religion is unable to make a satisfactory investigation of the successive stages in the religious life of the individual. For the purpose of religious education it is highly desirable to add to the historical survey and the ethnological cross-sections of comparative religion a longitudinal section of the religion of the individual. This, however, is impossible because the important data at the bottom of the series are unattainable. In the study of childhood, as in the study of a primitive race, the individual is so securely hidden away in the group that the most penetrating scientific method cannot find him, and the tendencies which are to integrate into religious experience are so taken in hand by the society which produces and envelops the new life that the student of religion must deal with a social product from the outset. The isolated religion of an individual does not exist, although in the more mature stages of prophetism and philosophy pronounced individual features always assert themselves.

The potential individuality in every child forbids, however, the assertion that he is only a mirror in which the religion of his immediate society and nothing more is reflected. There is from a very early time an active principle of personality, a growing selective power, a plus that comes out of the unmapped laboratory of creation, that may so arrange, transmute, and enrich the commonplace elements of the socio-religious matrix as to amount to genius. But, nevertheless, the newcomer can scarcely do more than select the given quarter which from day to day proves least unpleasant, while the fact of being on the great ship and in one cabin or another--or in the steerage--has been settled beforehand.

Hence the religious life of the boy depends largely upon family and community conditions which in turn rest upon economic considerations. Whatever demoralizes the home, degrades the community, and crushes out idealism also damns the souls of little children. It requires no deep investigation of modern society to prove that this is being done, and the guilt of economic injustice and rapacity is measured ultimately in the cost to the human spirit which in every child pleads for life and opportunity, and, alas, too often pleads in vain.

The pre-adolescent and imitative religious life of the boy is fairly communicative, but as soon as the actual struggle of achieving a personal religion sets in under the pubertal stress the sphinx itself is not more reticent. The normal boy is indisposed to talk about the affairs of his inner life. Probably they are too chaotic to formulate even to himself. If he is unspoiled he clothes his soul with a spiritual modesty which some of his sentimental elders might well cultivate. If he does break silence it will probably be in terms of the religious cult that has given him nurture. For all of these reasons it is exceedingly difficult to trace with certainty the development of his personal religion.

The indubitable and hopeful fact is that in every normal boy the potent germ of religion is present. Usually in early adolescence it bursts its casings and shoots into consciousness, powerfully affecting the emotions and the will. Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole world. To believe otherwise is to indict God for the purpose of covering our own blunders. In proportion as society prevents or perverts this moral outreach after God, it pollutes and endangers itself. The atmosphere that kills the lily creates the stench.

In the passage of the boy's religious life from the imitative type to the personal and energized form, or, as he experiences conversion, the battle is usually waged about some concrete moral problem. His conscience has become sensitive with regard to profanity, lying, impurity, or some particular moral weakness or maladjustment and his struggle centers on that. Being often defeated under the adolescent sense--pressure and confusion, he naturally seeks help, and help from the highest source of virtue. He has secreted somewhere in his heart ulterior ideals of service, but for the time being his chief concern is very properly himself; for if he "loses out" with himself he knows that all other worthy ambitions are annulled.

But a religious culture that keeps him in this self-centered feverish state is pathetically morbid and harmful. It short-circuits the religious life. This is the chief criticism of the devotional type of Christian culture. It seeks to prolong a crisis and often begets insincerity or disgust. The real priest of boyhood will certainly stand near by at this all-important time, but he will always manifest a refined respect for the birth-chamber of the soul. In patient and hopeful sympathy, in friendship that is personal and not professional, knowing that the door of the heart is opened only from within, the true minister, like his Master, waits. He knows, too, that a few words suffice in the great decisions of life, and that the handclasp of manly love speaks volumes. The prime qualification is a friendship that invites and respects confidence and a life that is above criticism.

Another important aid in bringing the boy over the threshold of vital and purposeful religion is the favorable influence of his group or "gang." The disposition to move together which is so pronounced in every other field must not be ignored here. The ideal club will be bringing the boy toward the altar of the church and at the right point along the way the minister who is properly intimate with each boy will be assured in private conference of the good faith and earnest purpose of his prospective church member.

Before receiving boys into active church membership it is well that they be given a course of instruction in a preparatory class. Only so can the fundamentals of religion and the duties of church membership be intelligently grasped. The value to the boy is also enhanced when the ceremony of induction is made formal and impressive to a degree that shall not be surpassed in his entrance into any other organization. By all means the boy should not be neglected after he has been received into the church. Mistakes of this sort are common wherever undue importance attaches to the conversion experience, and the numerical ideal of church success prevails. If the task becomes too great for the pastor let him find a responsible "big brother" for every boy received into the church.

As the critical or skeptical traits of youth develop in later adolescence the intellectual formulas and supports of religion will be overhauled. What the boy has brought over out of the early imitative and memorizing period of life will probably come up for review in later adolescence. If his inherited theology corresponds to experience and verifies itself in the light of the scientific methods of school and college no great difficulty will be experienced. But if it does not square with the youth's set of verifiable facts then there is added to his necessary moral struggle for self-possession and spiritual control the unnecessary and dangerous quest for a new faith, so that he is forced to swap horses in midstream and when the spring freshet is on.