New Forces in Religious Education
In 1866 a certain clergyman in New York wrote a discourse to which he gave this characteristic title: “Christian Education the Remedy for the Growing Ungodliness of the Times.” The production won in its day sufficient fame to be preserved as a pamphlet in the Harvard Library; but there it has long r...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1910
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1910, Volume: 3, Issue: 2, Pages: 209-229 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In 1866 a certain clergyman in New York wrote a discourse to which he gave this characteristic title: “Christian Education the Remedy for the Growing Ungodliness of the Times.” The production won in its day sufficient fame to be preserved as a pamphlet in the Harvard Library; but there it has long remained unsought, its presumptions of finality dependent at last, for even a bare reading, on some whim of historical curiosity. One need not so much as glance at the discourse to know why it lies, with many a like effort, quite forgotten. The title tells the story of its dogmatic temper, its easy ignorance of ends and means, its lack of insight into childhood. The point of view is naïvely, comfortably, loftily external: it recognizes no great problem in its subject, no need for new data, new thought, new purposes. Discourses of that sort are not written now—or, if written, not preserved.With every year, to be sure, far more is printed on the same general topic than was ever printed in the sixties. Even the inattentive lay reader cannot escape contemporary discussion of religious education; but the modern discourses are of a new kind. The Poole's Index list of magazine articles under Religious Education shows this growth and change with striking concreteness. Beginning in 1802, the Index for eighty years includes only fifteen references to the subject, all of which are serenely general in character. “Religious Education for the Masses”; “The Religious Education of a Family”; “The Religious Education of Children,” these titles fairly represent the kind of treatment which this topic inspired during the nineteenth century. The record in the Index for the four years beginning in 1902 offers a sharp contrast. There are thirty references under Religious Education, and of these a large majority bear titles which show that they are scientific in temper. They are intensive studies in the history or the principles of religious education, or formulations of definite problems in its theory or practice. These titles are characteristic: “Religious Education before the Reformation”; “The History of Religious Education in the Public Schools of Massachusetts”; “The Need of a Professional Consciousness in Religious Education”; “The Philosophy of the New Movement for Religious Education”; “The Place of Action in Religious Education;” “Scientific Aspects of Religious Education”; “The Relation of Religious Education to Science.” |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000006003 |