The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-12-25
ECCLESIASTICISM.
The UNCONVENTIONAL Academies
and Schools Fill All
of the Requirements
for Religious Training.
BY W. C. SAWYER, Phi. ID.
Professor Of German and French in Belmont School.

Religion and culture were inseparable in
the early ages of the world. Art first built
or adorned shrines for primitive worship,
and literature found no voice till it was
lifted up to magnify the strength or cour-
age OF some hero who was credited with
achievements SO impossible to men that
divine honors could not be withheld. Thus
the great epics of the world have become
our textbooks of religious beliefs and
myths. AS mythology gave way before
revelation and dawning civilization, sci
ence and the higher culture enabled man,
cropping toward his majority, more clearly
10 think Gods thoughts after him. A
step farther, and he claims their author
ship his own, and begins to have visions
of the promise and potency of all forms of
life in the crude matter of the universe
This stage is a twilight of the gods"
threatening the downfall not only of Zeus
and Odin, but of Jehovah as well. The
distinction of religious and secular now
becomes we'll defined, and the relations
between these contrasted forms of culture
become strained.
1t is well to recognize this partial revo-
luton in considering the sources and char
acter of the light that shapes the religious
beliefs and observances of the youth of
California.
In the excellent public schools of Ger.
many religion is taught parallel with
logic, chemistry and comic sections, and
similar tests are applied to the results.
The worst boy IN all the gymnasia may
win credit of 95 per cent in religion"
without provoking smile or suggesting
any incongruity. The German educator
insists that every boy and girl shall be
able to say, "Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in VAIN; but even
their clergymen and ladies transgress this
law every day without suspecting that God
cares.
Religious training in California makes
little account, perhaps too little, of this
theoretical mastery of sacred history or
ecclesiastical dogmas. Our teachers trou-
Bile themselves very little about teaching
the decalogue, but will in no case suffer
the profaning of Gods name. If any time
is devoted to enlightening an offender
upon the nature of his guilt, he may be
told that God has issued special decree
against that offense, or, more likely, he
may be informed that it is ungentlemanly
and gross.
Either the German or Californian
method alone is defective; but this COM
parison may serve to impress the fact that
the popular American use of the terms
religious" and religion" relates pri-
marily to practice and experience, and
only more remotely to tn cory.
Is there any religious training in the
public schools OF California; From the
kindergarten to the end of the university
courses, the State dares not teach anything
that can reasonably offend Jew, Catholic,
Protestant or Atheist, as such. What
room then can be found for religious train
ing, since generalities are so weak, and
every specific dogma is likely to proceed
from the oracles of some denomination,
and thus be offensive to some other?
Even Longfellow's psalm OF Life" would
| hardly be permitted to sing in our schools,
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken Of the soul,
| If Atheism and Materialism had any liter
| allure OF their own to take its place.
| To be sure, these irreligious denomi-
nations do not fight religion in the schools
under their own banners, but are glad to
help the Catholics put the Bible out of the
schools, and then to help the Prctestants
put out the Catholics. These parties make
no permanent coalitions, and thus the only
religious peace in the schools is a peace
without religion, i. e., without specific
| religious teaching.
The Catholics are not satisfied with such
training, and they strenuously insist upon
separation, so that they may regulate at
their own discretion not only the amount
of catechism in the curriculum, but also
the character of the historical and literary
studies.
Protestants generally incline to accept,
and do accept, for their sons and daugh-
| tiers, public schools that are not religious,
provided they are not irreligious; and
| they are often more patient than is becom-
| ing of the flippant skeptical deliverances
| of certain youthful science teachers.
! 1t is often claimed that adequate reli-
gious training is afforded by the homes.
the Snuday-schools and the pulpits Pos
sibly these agencies brought to an ideal
efficiency might afford all needful dis
| tinctively religious training; but such as
] thew now are they are not effective enough
| to satisfy all of the pious fathers and
mothers who have keen sense of the re-
| sponsibility of parents. They realize the
| weakness of these agencies most when
their children are obliged to leave home to
enter upon the higher education.
| Many who desire to cultivate the spirit
| ual as we'll as the intellectual faculties of
their children believe that widening in.
telligence permits and should be accom-
panied by widened religious experience.