Religious Education in the Family

by Henry Frederick Cope

The family cannot afford to take the attitude of hostile criticism, for it is thus fighting its first and most natural ally, the one other institution engaged in its own special work. If the forces for spiritual character be divided, how easily do the opposing forces enter in and occupy! The family needs the support of the wider public opinion of the church, insisting on the supremacy of righteousness. The family needs the co-operation of the church in its task of developing religious lives. The family needs the power of this larger social body controlling social conditions and making them contributory to character purposes. The family needs the stimulus which a larger group can give to children and young people.

This does not mean that we must never criticize the church. It is not set off in a niche protected from the acid of secular tongues and minds. Ministers of the gospel are unduly resentful of criticism, perhaps because, after they leave the seminary, no one has a fair opportunity to controvert their publicly stated opinions. But the church needs the cleansing powers of kindly, wise, creative criticism. Anyone can find fault, but he is wise who can show us a better way. This church is the family's ally; it is our business to aid her to greater effectiveness. The new church for our own day awaits the services of the men of today.

The purpose of the family is the basis of alliance with the church. As in every other relation and purpose of the home, so here: the dominant factor is the conscious function of the home and family. If the home is really a religious institution it will seek natural alliance with all other truly religious institutions. Ideally, what is a church but a group of families associated for religious purposes? Is not the church simply a number of families co-operating in the ideal purposes of each family, the development of the lives of religious persons and the control of social conditions for the sake of that purpose? Without entering into disputation as to the relationship of little children to the church, is there not just this relation to the human society called the church, that it is a grouping of families for the purpose of the divine family?

§ 2. THE FAMILY IDEAL IN THE CHURCH

Would there be any question as to the naturalness of the relation of our children to the church if the family ideal so controlled our thinking as to saturate theirs? Is not this the present need, that both family and church shall conceive the latter in family terms? By this is meant, not simply that we shall think of what is called "a family church," a church into which we succeed in projecting our families in a fair degree of integrity, but that we shall think of the organization and mission of the church in terms of family life and of the ideal of the divine family. Keeping in mind the general definition already given of a family as persons associated for the development of spiritual persons, let us hold the church to that same ideal; the lives of persons associated in the broadest fellowship that includes both God and man for the purposes of spiritual personality. The church then should be the expression of that family of which Jesus often spoke, the family that calls God Father and man brother.

Closer and more helpful relations between family and church follow where the principles of the family prevail in the latter. The family is an ideal democracy because it exists primarily for persons. It places the value of persons first of all. So with the true church; it will exist to grow lives to spiritual fulness, and to this end all buildings, adornments, exercises, teachings, and organizations will be but as tools, as means serving that purpose. As the family sees its house, table, and activities designed to personal ends, so will the church. In an institution existing to grow lives, the great principle of democracy and of the family will prevail, viz., that to the least we owe the most. Just as the home gives its best to the little child, so will the church place the child in the midst. Just as the home exists for the child and thus holds to itself all other lives, so will the church some day exist for the little ones and so hold and use all other lives.

The prime difficulty of relating the children in our families to the average church lies in the fact that they are children, while the church is an adult institution. Its buildings are designed for adults—save in rare and happy exceptions;[46] its services are designed for adults; it has a more or less extraneous institution called a school for the children. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows the many that already as children are its own to drift away. It often fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the growing period. There still remain many churches that must be converted from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving service for the development of spiritual lives and, especially, for the development of such lives through childhood and youth. They must hear again the Master's voice regarding "these little ones," regarding the significance of the child. And all must be loyal to his picture of his Kingdom as a family and must, therefore, do what all true families do, become child-centric. A church in which children occupy the same place that they hold in an ideal family will have no difficulty in finding a place for the children. It will be a natural and unnoticed transition from the family life in the home to the family life in the church.

§ 3. A PLACE FOR ALL IN THE CHURCH

The family may help directly toward the realization of this ideal by an insistence on the family conception and the family program in the church. Bring the children with you to the church and seek to find there a place for each as natural as the place he occupies in the home. If the church makes no such provision, if it has no place for children, in the name of our wider spiritual family relationships we must demand it. Let the voice of the family be heard insisting on suitable buildings and specially designed worship for child-life—suitable forms of service and activity. Let the thought that goes to furnish these in the home be carried over to provide them in the church.

Parents may help their children to find right relations with the church by their attitude toward it as the larger family group. To think and act toward this institution as our home, the wider home of the families, is to establish similar habits of thought in children. Such a concept is not always easy to maintain; the church includes many of different habits of thought from ourselves, divergent tastes and habits of general life. Here one must exercise the family principle of responsibility toward the weaker and immature. This family, the church, just like our own family, exists, not to minister to our tastes, but that we may all minister to others.