The Sacred in the Secular

Abstract

M OST OF US, perhaps all of us, who teach religion to college students share the hope that through the classroom our students will gain something more than intellectual ideas. Regardless of how we define religion, unless we revert to a purely rationalistic definition, we hope that our teaching will awaken or deepen an appreciation and understanding of man's response to the more-than-human and give fresh meaning and worth to the life of those we teach. Particularly is there a sense of the potential significance of our task in these frustrating days when human life itself seems so utterly precious and precarious. It was with such a sense of humility and with genuine enthusiasm that I undertook to teach a small class recently a course entitled Modern Trends in Religious Thought. studied the historical development of Christian thought from Luther to the present. I tried, among other things, to make vivid Luther's inner struggle which issued in his sense of the graciousness of God, Schleiermacher's then revolutionary approach to theology, the doctrine of divine immanence and the development of the ethical concepts of God in the nineteenth century. then discussed contemporary types of Christian thought. Discussions in class were lively, the assignments stiff' according to student opinion, but read with more than average interest. It so happened that the course was completed and the grades in before I had an opportunity to invite the class to my home for the traditional dinner or dessert party. In the disarming atmosphere of a waffle supper, I casually asked, Did the course touch on any of the questions which you all talk about in your hall 'bull sessions' After a moment of silence, one girl thoughtfully said, No. The next question was: What do you talk about in such sessions when you get onto religion ? We talk a great deal about the strange new cults. There followed a general and spontaneous exchange of comments regarding Amy Semple MacPherson, various theosophist cults, astrology, and superstitious practices. It would have been very helpful, they agreed, if the course had included some understand-