Secular History Research Articles

Church History and Secular History

The historical consciousness of modern Western man, a trait of the cultured mind of the last half-dozen generations, seems to be the legacy to a secular civilization from the historians of the Christian church.Since the creation of man, to be sure, rudimentary types of historical thought have doubtless existed nearly everywhere. With memory and moral freedom of choice was given to Adam the ethical situation in which historical thought appears, for history is the interpretation of social memory in relation to present decisions and hopes for the future. This absolute beginning of historical thought is forever shrouded in mystery, however, and the earliest records of such thought, ages and centuries later, bear little similarity to our patterns of history. These earliest histories are precisely what the modern historian pursues with puritan hatred, myth and legend. The first histories recount relatively little of what men have done; they tell of natural disasters, wars, and migrations primarily as the deeds of the gods. Modern secular history has sought to escape this religious aspect of its archetype, but if the thesis of this paper is correct, the attempt has been vain, the gods have been exorcised from history only by the power of other gods, and the ancient myths displaced only for a more extravagant mythology. And the vagaries of secular Western history are the recognizable corruptions of Christian church history.

Methods and Materials in Teaching the Message of Jesus

the Mid-western Branch of the N. A. B. I. made this pertinent comment: More and more I am feeling the need for an increasing emphasis on motivating for religious living that is personally satisfying, intellectually sound, ethically valid and socially constructive. I do not mean one should try evangelistic appeals or seek for overt decisions. However, I believe one should help the student see what decisions are significant and why they should be made. This statement was followed by a Note: As teachers should we not have a proper concern for the loyalties, commitments and judgments of our students? The successful use of the principle of indoctrination by the fascists, nazis, and soviets makes it increasingly difficult for us to maintain and defend a purely doctrinaire and academic attitude toward our teaching opportunities and responsibilities. I have saved for the last a quotation which seems to me to be very helpful in thinking through the problem of combining knowledge and appreciation in the classroom presentation of It is difficult, this member wrote, I think by no means impossible to combine (the) intellectual attitude with devotional fervor, and to make the combination is exactly the aim and the problem of the teacher of religion. I should like to read the very able exposition of this thesis. For the intellectual presentation of the subject, I feel that the teacher of religion in her classroom should be as objective and scientific in her presentation of the facts concerning the history of the religious heritage as is the teacher of secular history, and that for the metaphysical aspects and implications of these facts she should strive for the same kind of consistency and orderliness that the teacher of philosophy employs. With regard to the religious realities themselves. . . . I believe that the teacher of religion in a college such as ours has about the same sort of problem that the teacher of art has, i. e., she wishes to give her students the setting for an understanding of beauty and a personal contact with it, so far as that can be made possible by the analysis of the subject and the personal enthusiasmn and appreciative attitude of the instructor herself. That is precisely the same sort of problem that the teacher of religion has in her field. She wishes to give her students an appreciation and understanding of religion, and hopes by these means to lead her to experience it; but in my opinion the instructor in religion in a Liberal Arts College has to communicate this appreciation through her own attitude and analysis, not by a directly propagandist or evangelistic approach.