The Family and the Church : Part 1

Religious Education in the Family
by Henry F. Cope

(Page 17 of 23)

If the family is engaged in the development of religious character through its life and organization, it ought somehow to find very close relations with the other great social institution engaged in precisely the same work, the church. Both churches and homes are agencies of religious education. In a state which separates the ecclesiastical and the civil functions, where freedom of conscience is fully maintained, these two are the only religious agencies engaged in education.

As the family is the child's first society, so the local church should be the child's second, larger, wider society. The home constitutes the first social organization for life, the one in which growing lives prepare for the wider social living. Then should come the next forms of social organization, the school and the church, each grouping lives together and preparing them, by actual living, for wider circles of life.

1. Relations of Church and Home

Many of the perplexing problems which arise in the family, as an institution, in respect to its relations to the church, and as to the developing relations of children to the church, would be largely solved if we could get an understanding of the fundamental relations of these two institutions. The institutional difficulties occur because these relations appear to be competitive. Here is the family with its interests in bread-winning, comforts, recreations, and pleasures, and on the opposite side, making apparently competing claims for money, time, interest, and service, stands the church. That is the picture unconsciously forming in many minds. There is more or less feeling that money given to the church is taken from the family and impoverishes it to that degree, that time given to the church is grudgingly spared from the pleasures of the home, that it is always a moot question which of the two institutions shall win in the conflict of interests.

But the family must take for granted the church as its next of kin. The home must not by its attitude and conversation assume that the problems of the relationship of children to the church arise largely from the opposite concept, as though these were rival institutions. We carelessly think of the children as those who, now belonging to us, are to be persuaded to give their allegiance to another institution, the interests of which are in a different sphere. We think of the church as an independent thing and therefore feel quite free to discuss its merits or shortcomings and to criticize it if it fails to meet our standards, just as we would criticize the baker for soggy or short-weight bread; to our minds, the church is something set off in society, separate from the homes, as much so as the schools or the library or a fraternal lodge.

This thought of the church as a separate something, having an existence independent of ourselves and our families, leads us farther astray and makes yet more difficult the development of right relations between the church and the children. If the church is a thing apart we can analyze its imperfections as we might stand and ridicule a regiment of raw recruits. It marches by while we stand on the curb. But here, surely, is one of the simplest and most easily forgotten truisms: the church is no more than our own selves associated for certain purposes. If the church fails in an adequate ministry for children, shall we condemn it as we would a bridge that failed to carry a reasonable load? We do but condemn ourselves. If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I must help to make it fit. Before falling back on the lazy man's salve of caustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before setting in the child's mind an aversion to this institution, based on my opinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to better it. True, I am only one; but surely, where so many family tables are each Sunday devoted to finding fault with the church and its services, I can find many others who will aid in at least stimulating a sense of personal responsibility for any incompleteness in the church.

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?

Copyright 1915 by The University of Chicago