The Editor's Page come to play so important a part in the cultural life of Japan. Professor Holtom presents in this issue a study of unusual value, not only for its conclusions, but even more for its demonstration of what may be accomplished with meagre materials if one possesses the technical skill of a historian. Teaching religion to college students is no easy task. Approached, as it usually is, from the point of view of biblical study, it leads to the raising of critical questions which center attention either on the problem of authority or on the details of a religion of long-vanished centuries. Professor Aubrey sketches a new method of dealing with the subject. Starting from the fact that religion is a social reality in human history, he proposes to guide students in a direct study of this reality. The report of his experiment will be of interest to all who are working at the problem of religious instruction in the colleges. WHO'S WHO in this issue of the Journal? Theodore Gerald Soares is professor of religious education and head of the department of practical theology in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.-A. Eustace Haydon is associate professor of history of religions in the University of Chicago. Matthew Spinka is professor of church history in Central Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio.-Daniel C. Holtom is professor of church history in Japan Baptist Theological Seminary EXPERIENCE AND NATURE, by John Dewey, Columbia University. Price $3.00 "Here is a thinker of the first rank, whose talents have been unpretentiously dedicated to the enfranchisement and enrichment of human life."-New York Times. PLURALISTIC PHILOSOPHIES OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA, by J. Wahl. Authorized translation by Fred Rothwell. Price $3.00 A careful study of the philosophies advocated by leaders of idealistic monism as compared with the pluralist theories of leading pragmatists. RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY: HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT, by C. Stuart Gager, director of the Botanical Gardens, Brooklyn, New York. Price $1.00 A clear statement of the mental attitude of scientific men and the method by which they conduct their investigations and arrive at their conclusions. LA GEOMETRIE, by Rene Descartes. Price $4.00 French-English edition. Translated by Marcia Latham, with an introduction by David Eugene Smith. Contains reproductions from the original French edition published in June, 1637. BENJAMIN PIERCE, 1809-1880. Price $1.00 Biographical sketch and bibliography by Prof. R. C. Archibald, Brown University. Reminiscences by President Emeritus C. W. Eliot, President A. L. Lowell, Professor Emeritus W. E. Byerly, Chancellor Arnold B. Chace. MECHANICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, by Ivor B. Hart, University of London. Price $4.00 "The main outlines of Leonardo's work in dynamics and statics are given with a clarity and an understanding that make the book a valuable introduction to these important branches of Leonardo's scientific studies. . ."-The London Times. THE CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS, by Gilbert Ames Bliss, University of Chicago. Price $2.00 "The main purpose of this series of monographs is the diffusion of mathematics and formal thought as contributing to exact knowledge and clear thinking, not only for mathematicians and teachers of mathematics, but also for other scientists and the public at large. . . . . We heartily recommend Professor Bliss's book either as a text for a short course on the Calculus of Variations or to any serious scientist for private reading.”—Science. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA, or Song of the Blessed One, The chief devotional book of the Vishnuites. In it millions of Hindus have for centuries found their principal source of religious inspiration. HOMER AND THE PROPHETS, or Homer and Now, A study of Homer's moral and religious meaning and his political tendencies with special reference to present-day problems. PATENTS, INVENTION AND METHOD, by H. D. Potts. Send for complete catalogue Price $1.00 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 122 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois Volume VI JANUARY 1926 Number 1 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE LAST THEODORE GERALD SOARES This survey gives a bird's-eye view of the extraordinarily fruitful work in a relatively new field. Problems of child-study, pedagogy, aims of education, tests of character-building, and other important phases of religious education are considered in the light of the work of a quarter-century. Religious education as a scientific study belongs to this century. The term was scarcely used twenty-five years ago. There was no college, university, or theological seminary giving instruction in the subject. While there was a large popular literature on Sunday-school methods, teacher training, plans of lesson teaching, and the like, there was not a single book that dealt in any significant and scientific manner with the developing religious experience of childhood and youth, and with the educational processes by which such experience could be promoted. The first book that in any sense outlined the problem appeared in 1900-Principles of Religious Education, by Nicholas Murray Butler. There were, however, three important movements at the end of the last century which constituted a basis for the development of religious education. The first was the popular interest in the scientific study of the Bible. The publication of The Old and New Testament Student was the means of leading thousands of ministers to an understanding of the historical method in the study of a literature which had been to many of them a mere storehouse of texts. Already in 1890 the Blakeslee Lessons (afterward the Bible Study Union Lessons) had provided for Sunday schools a method of serious, though it seems to us today very dry and academic, study of the biblical material. The homiletic method which had so largely obtained in Sunday-school teaching was beginning to give place to a scholastic method. In the minds of most progressive religious educators the correct achievement of biblical knowledge was the main desideratum. Of course it was always understood that it should be practically applied, but it was expected that correct knowledge would naturally lead to correct application. The second interest making for a new religious education at the close of the last century was the Child Study Movement, of which G. Stanley Hall was the conspicuous leader. The center of educational interest was to be shifted from the material of the curriculum to the needs and interests of the child. A new interest in genetic psychology developed and elaborate questionnaires were sent out to parents, teachers, and others associated with children to discover the "characteristics" of each period of child development. The emphasis of this new study was upon the reform of general education, but it had a vital influence upon the teaching of religion. A third factor that was to have the most far-reaching effect in the new science of religious education was the development of the social character of the educational process. John Dewey had been experimenting at Chicago in the formation of children into a society to learn the meaning of life by engaging in some of the primitive processes of living, such as weaving, spinning, cooking, and the like, allowing the intellectual interests to arise naturally from these activities. In 1899 he published School and Society, a book little noted by teachers of religion at the time, but containing the germ of most of the developments of the next quarter-century. This was followed in 1902 by The Child and the Curriculum. But at the beginning of the century Dewey had little influence in the religious field. It was the first two movements discussed above that were most determinative. Taken together they produced the interest in the graded Bible curriculum, which was the early aim of religious education. Irving King's Psychology of Child Development (1903), Kirkpatrick's Fundamentals of Child Study (1903), and especially G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence (1904), were the bases for an examination of the Bible to find the various elements that would fit each age of child development. It was thought that certain interests emerged as the child progressed, and that these interests could be met by correspondent biblical material. G. Stanley Hall gave a great vogue to the recapitulation theory and its pedagogical correlate, the culture-epochs theory, and made a plea for the Old Testament as preferable for children because they were recapitulating the child experience of the race. This theory dominated the more popular books, such as The Boy Problem by Forbush (1907). Significant attempts to outline a Bible curriculum were Haslett, The Pedagogical Bible School (1903) and Pease, Outline of a Bible School Curriculum (1906). The preparation of a series of textbooks was undertaken by Harper and Burton under the general title of "Constructive Bible Studies." An interesting indication of the development of material for the youngest children is seen in a comparison of the Preface of the first edition of the initial volume in the "Constructive Series," Ferris, The Kindergarten in the Sunday School, with the Preface to the latest revision (1925). In the former an apology is offered for the use of stories from outside the Bible on the ground that they came nearer to the experience of the child. In the latter, a preface to exactly the same book, the explanation offered is for the use of Bible stories at all for such young children, on the ground that contrary to some present opinions, there is some material in the Bible that is within the kindergarten experience. |