Along with the new conscience in education cline new' concepts in religion. It passed again into the realm of life. Quickening social re,.
sponsibility brought religious thinking close to reality; it became concerned with people. It was seen that if its ideals. were to be realized it must be through persons intelligently governed by those ideals. Seeking to save society the churches are coming to see a program of grow ing an ideal society by developing ideal per sons, an educational program. The child has come to have a new importance because his life is at its determinative, developing period and because he may be trained to become an effective religious person. One can have re ligious persons only as such persons are trained; the time to train them is in the de velopmental periods and the scientific methods of modern education are the truly religious methods of such training.
Further the demand for religious education arose from a quickened public conscience. With a rapidly rising wave of juvenile de linquency it was evident that the young were not being adequately prepared for the elemental duties of living. The general curriculum was much richer than in former times, but it was poorer in that it failed to include the elements that make for strength and ideals in character. The disciplines that failed to include discipline in the art of living were inadequate for the de mands of life. In the realm of conduct some thing is required beyond knowledge; ideals must be developed, the motives formed, the will trained. The realm of judgments, motives, ideals of life and will to live is essentially the realm of religion. Training in these respects is religious training. In meeting the problems rising out of the recognition of the need for such training the schools have been compelled to look to the religious agencies for aid.
Religious education in the United States has received stimulus on account of the relations between the agencies of religion and those of education. The people' of the United States are entirely committed to the policy of the separa tion of Church and State. This involves the
separation of the work of the schools from that of the churches. Instruction in religion is the responsibility and privilege of the churches.
The public agencies of education cannot give formal instruction in the subjects of re ligious history, philosophy and methods as such because (I) Such instruction would be ian?) It might be Christian in the broadest sense; but nevertheless, this is a land of abso lute religious freedom, a land where, within the limits of the civil law, all faiths have equal rights. Public money cannot be legally nor ethically devoted to teaching Christianity as such. (2) Such instruction, if attempted by the public schools, could never be satisfactory to the religious agencies. It would be sure in some instances to run counter to cherished be liefs. Nor is it possible to agree in the schools on a common creed. Even in the churches all attempts to agree on a common creed have re sulted in such a planing away of the parts as to leave nothing at all. Even though the creed were reduced to the briefest, barest possible terms, the objection would still hold that such a creed, formulated for the public schools, would be the creed of the schools, and they would be come creedal institutions. (3) The teaching of religion in any such a formal manner and even in any so innocent a form of matter would be an invasion of the peculiar privilege of the churches. (4) Formal religious teach ing in these schools would not attain the ob ject desired; it would result, as the German system has resulted, in the formalization of reli gion until it is destitute of practical, vital mean ing to the child. (5) Sectarian teaching means sectarian interference. Under the paralyzing effect of denominational oversight, of fear of offending on this hand and that, the teacher would be without the freedom of life and the teaching without direct character values. (6) Public school teachers are neither trained nor selected for the work of teaching religion.