Resources for Religious Teaching

Abstract

ternational Council of Religious Education in 1946 to call a nation-wide conference on the community. Thoughtfully and significantly are set forth ways in which Christians as individuals and as churches may face the educational forces affecting people and participate realistically in making the purpose of God more effective. Pagan forces invade the church because they may dominate much of the life of children, young people, and adults in the community. The value of persons in all walks of life must become the concern of churches. The Human Group is a careful study of a few kinds of small groups in order to find a general theory of social behavior. Social stability, disintegration, and conflict are examined in each group. The author concludes that membership in a small group is a basic need for the welfare of individuals. A sense of belonging sustains a man, enables him to maintain his equilibrium under the ordinary shocks of life, and helps him to bring up children who will in turn be happy and resilient. . ... The civilization that, by its process of growth, shatters small group life will leave men and women lonely and unhappy. Society may decay under the stress of the impersonal and the increase of persons without links to one another. The reaction to this lack of belonging may produce religious forms such as cults or communism. The lonely individuals turn against the institutions and groups that seem to have injured them. During recent centuries men have been gradually set free from the restraints of traditional society. By loosing these restraints, men have lost the sense of belonging to a co6perative group concerned with the deepest interests of each. Freedom that results in emotional isolation may drive men to merge under tyrants to escape. Religious leadership that understands this situation can become a force for brotherhood and satisfy men's need to be linked with others. An exciting book for all teachers of religion is Ashley Montagu's On Being Human which brings together leading, scientific data in support of the processes of co6peration and love. Though the ethic of love is basic in the Christian gospel, it has been sadly neglected by the church in its functional approach to life. Educators in the churches concerned with children of all ages as well as young people and adults need to examine their programs in the light of this emphasis. God in Education emphasizes that if God exists, he must be the sovereign of all Reality and that the truth concerning him must be the controlling principle of all knowledge and of education. The author raises serious questions about the multitude of studies in the university that have no relation between them and the resultant fragmentation of learning which leaves students mentally and spiritually displaced persons. John L. Childs devotes attention in his significant book on a philosophy for general education to a process in which morals are taught functionally and continuously. Education and Morals presents a philosophy of education that fosters genuine democ* Professor of Religious Education, Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford, Connecticut. Miss Baxter is the first woman to become full professor in the Hartford School of Religious Education where she has taught for twenty-five years.