Religious Education in the Family. Henry Frederick Cope
the family to develop the fundamental principle of loyalty, the root of all virtues, gives a position of great importance to the affections in the family. We do well to contend for the maintenance of conditions of family living which will strengthen the ties of affection. If children could be thrust into the care of the state, in large groups, separated from parental care and oversight, it is difficult to see what emotional stimulus toward affection would remain. The personal devotion to intimate adults would in only the smallest degree compensate for the loss of father and mother. We know nothing of such devotion arising to any large degree in orphan asylums, still less in institutions under the cold and impersonal care of the state. It has been urged that the affections of parents stand in the way of a scientific regimen and education for small children. The cold, passionless, automatic parent, then, would be the ideal—a Mr. Dombey or a Mr. Feverel. Parents make many mistakes, but these mistakes are not due to too much affection, but to untrained minds and uneducated affections. It were better to save the values of their affections and on them to build a wise discipline for childhood by providing adequate training of parents for their duties.
Fifthly, there are some elements of the cost of family life, even its apparently unnecessary sacrifice and pain, that we do well to seek to keep. Character grows in paying the high price of maintaining a family. It is the most expensive form of living for adults. Marriages are now delayed because of the fear of the actual monetary cost; but far more serious is the cost in care, in nerves, in patience, in all the great elements of self-denial. No child ever knows what he has cost until he has children of his own. But this discipline of self-denial is that which saves us from selfishness. It is necessary to have some personal objects for which to give our lives if they are to be saved from centrifugation, from death through ingrowing affection. True, many bachelors and spinsters have learned the way of self-denying, fellow-serving love. But how can a true parent escape that lesson? Nor does it stop with parents; as children grow up together they, too, must learn mutual forbearance, conciliation, and, soon, the joy of service. One sees selfishness in the little child gradually fading in the practice of family service, helpfulness, consideration for others. The single child in a family misses something more important than playmates; he misses all the education of play and service. But who cannot remember many families that have grown to beauty of character under the discipline of home life, and especially when this has involved real sacrifices? The stories in the Pepper books illustrate the spirit that blossoms under the trials and hardships of the struggle of a family for a livelihood and for the maintenance of a home.
A clear function becomes evident for this social group called the family. It is that of dealing with young lives, in groups bound by ties of blood and similarity, for purposes of the development of personal character. The family has an essentially educational function. Bearing in mind that "educational" means the orderly development of the powers of the life, we can think of our families as existing for this purpose and to be tested by their ability to do this work, especially by their ability to develop persons, young lives, that have the power, the vision, the acquired habits and experience to live as more than animals. The family is an educational institution dealing with child-life for its full growth and its self-realization, especially on character levels. The educational function suggests the features of family life which we do well to seek to preserve. Many incidental forms may pass, but the essential human relations and experiences that go to develop life and character must be maintained at any cost.
I. References for Study
C. F. and C. B. Thwing, The Family, chap. vii. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.60.
W. F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family, chaps. iv, v. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.
II. Further Reading
"The Improvement of Religious Education," Proceedings of the Religious Education Association, I, 119–23. $0.50.
Religious Education, April, 1911, VI, 1–48.
S. P. Breckinridge and E. Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home. Russell Sage Foundation, $2.00.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What is the chief end of all forms of social organization?
2. What is in the last analysis the aim of every parent?
3. What advantage has the family over the school and larger groups for educational purposes?
4. In what sense is the family an ideal democracy?
5. Show how the family sets spiritual values first.
6. What in your judgment are the first evidences of character development? In what way do these come to the surface in the family? What is the factor of love in the development of character?
7. Is that an ideal family in which none of the members bear pain or are called upon for self-denial? Can you see any especial advantage to character in the very difficulties and apparent disadvantages in the life of the family?
5 See "Democracy in the Home," American Journal of Sociology, January, 1912.
6 Francis G. Peabody, The Approach to the Social Question, p. 94.
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGIOUS PLACE OF THE FAMILY
§ 1. DEVELOPMENT AS A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION
The family is the most important religious institution in the life of today. It ranks in influence before the church. It has always held this place. Even among primitive peoples, where family life was an uncertain quantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to the children afforded the opportunity most frequently used for their instruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalize as to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for those practices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparent care for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best we know; but this much is certain, that there was a common sense of responsibility for the training of young children in moral and religious ideas and customs, and that, in the degree that the family approached to separateness and unity, it accepted the primary responsibility for this task. The higher the type of family life the more fully does it discharge its function in the education of the child.7
It might be safe to say that among primitive peoples there were three stages, or types, of relationship based on the breeding of children, or three stages of development toward family life. The first is a loose and indefinite relationship existing principally between the adults, or the males and females, under which children born when not desired are neglected or strangled and, when acceptable, may be in the care of either parent, or of neither. Since the group, associated through infancy with at least one parent, is as yet undeveloped, any instruction will be individual and usually incidental.
The second form is that of a kind of family unity, either about the mother or the father, or both, or about a group of parents, in which the children live together and are sheltered and nurtured for their earlier years. Here, however, the real relationship of the child is to the tribe, the family is but his temporary guardian, and, at least by the age of puberty, he will be initiated into the tribal secrets. If he is a boy, he will cease to be a member of the family group and will go to live in the "men's house," becoming a part of the larger life of the tribe.8 Such moral and religious instruction as he may acquire will come from the songs, traditions, and conversation which he hears as a child.
The