The Minister and the Boy Part 5

Suppose that to groups of boys beyond middle adolescence competent and high-minded representatives of various trades and professions present in series the reasons for their choice, the possible good, individual and social, which they see in their life-work, the qualifications which they deem necessary, and the obstacles to be met; and suppose further that the ethical code of a trade, profession, or business is presented for honest canva.s.s by the cla.s.s, must there not result a stimulus and aid to vocational selection and also a more lively interest in the study of specific moral problems? In this way teaching cl.u.s.ters about an inevitable field of interest, about live and often urgent problems, and there is nothing to prevent the use of all the light which may be adduced from the Bible and religious experience.

To describe the method more specifically, the lawyer presents his profession and subsequently the cla.s.s discusses the code of the bar a.s.sociation; or the physician presents his work and then follows the canva.s.s of the ethical problems of medical practice, and so of the trade-union artisan, the merchant or teacher, the minister, or the captain of industry. All of this is diffused with religion, it has its setting and sanction within the church, it supplements for a few, at any rate, the present lack in public education, and it is real and immediate rather than theoretical and remote.

Let this be complemented with visits to inst.i.tutions, offices, plants, courts, and the marts and centers of commercial, industrial, and agricultural life; and, best of all, cemented in the personal friendship, practical interest and sponsorship of an adult and wise counselor who helps the boy both to the place and in the place; and, within the limits of the rather small const.i.tuency of church boys at least, there is guaranteed a piece of religious work that is bound to tell. For surely every legitimate interest of life is religious when handled by religious persons, and the right moral adjustment of the whole self to the whole world, with the emotion and idealism inhering in the process, is the task and content of religion.

CHAPTER VII

TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP[8]

The altruism of America is philanthropic rather than civic and in deliberate disregard of government, the average citizen of the United States has no equal. However intelligent or capable he may be, he is in the main a poor citizen. This habit of having no care for the ship of state and of seeking comfort and self-advantage, regardless of her future, is exactly the reverse of what one would expect. For by the manner of her birth and her natural genius the republic would seem to guarantee forever a high type of efficient public service.

But the capable and typical man of the church, and presumptively the man of conscience, studiously avoids the hazards of political life. It is not necessary to rehea.r.s.e the well-known and deplorable results of this policy whereby the best men have generally avoided public office, especially in munic.i.p.al government. Intelligence of the ills of the body politic or of the fact that it lies bruised and violated among thieves serves chiefly to divert the disgusted churchman to the other side of the road as he hastens to his destination of personal gain. Indeed it is not an uncommon thing for him to be a past master in circ.u.mventing or debauching government and in thus spreading the virus of political cynicism throughout the ma.s.s of the people.

Such a separation of church and state is hardly to be desired, and the call to political service is quite as urgent, quite as moral, and far more exacting than the perfectly just calls to foreign mission support and to the support of the great philanthropies of the day. Because of the influx of foreign peoples, the unsolved race problem, tardy economic reforms, uncertain justice, political corruption, and official mediocrity, America stands more in need of good citizenship than of generosity, more in need of statesmen than of clergymen.

No subsequent philanthropy can atone for misgovernment, and furthermore all social injustice, whether by positive act or simple neglect, tends to take toll from the defenseless cla.s.ses. The more efficient extricate themselves, while the ignorant, the weak, the aged, and chiefly the little children bear the brunt of governmental folly. It is for this reason, together with the pa.s.sing of materialistic standards of pomp and circ.u.mstance and the growing insistence upon human values, that the women are demanding full citizenship. And this new citizenship, including both women and men enfranchised upon the same basis, will not be without the ardor and heroism of those who in former days bore arms for the honor of their native land. For just behind the ranks are the unprotected children, the new generation whose opportunity and treatment const.i.tutes the true measure of statesmanship.

But here as everywhere the only highway leading to that better tomorrow is thronged with little children upon whose training the issue hangs.

What do the home, school, church, and community tell them as to citizenship, and, of more importance, what civic att.i.tudes and actions are evoked?

The home, by picture and story and celebration, by the observance of birthdays, national and presidential, by the intelligent discussion of public interests, by respect for const.i.tuted authorities, by honest dealing, and by a constant exercise of public spirit as over against a selfish and detached aim, may do much to mold the boy's early civic att.i.tude.

But most homes will do little of this, and both home and school fall short in pledging the new life to the common good and in guaranteeing to the state her just due. Frequently the home provides lavishly and at sacrifice for the comfort and even luxury of the children and exacts nothing in return. Mothers slave for sons and neglect, until it is too late, those just returns of service which make for honor and self-respect. Graft begins in the home, and it is amazing what pains we take to produce an ingrate and perforce a poor citizen.

Similarly, the boy attends the "free" schools. Here is further advantage without the thought of service in return, something for nothing--the open end of the public crib. But the public schools are not exactly free schools. Everything, whether at home or school, costs, and someone pays the bills. The prospective citizen should be made to realize this, and it would do him no harm actually to compute the cost. Through home and school, society is making an investment in him. Let him estimate in dollars and cents his indebtedness for food and clothing and shelter, travel, medical care, education and recreation, and all the other items of expense which have entered into his care and training for the fourteen or seventeen years of his dependency.

Such an exercise, which cannot include those invaluable offices of parental love and personal interest, may have a sobering effect, as will also a conscious appreciation of the social inst.i.tutions and utilities which are the gift of former and contemporary generations of toilers.

But how can the schoolboy come into the self-respect of partnership?

Probably by building up the consciousness of "our school" and by being sent from home with the idea of helping teacher and school in every way to accomplish the most and best for all concerned. Ordinarily the home supplies the child with no such suggestion and in some cases works even counter to the school and against good citizenship. The teacher is added to the ranks of the child's natural enemies, where unfortunately the policeman has long since been consigned; and the school?--that is something for which he carries no responsibility. Actual experiment of the opposite kind has proved most gratifying, and this immediate att.i.tude toward his first public inst.i.tution sets the child's will toward the practice of good citizenship in the years that lie ahead.

The curriculum of the elementary schools of Chicago makes a very thorough attempt to train the child in good citizenship, an attempt beginning with the anniversary days of the kindergarten and proceeding throughout the eight grades. In addition to history, civics of the most concrete and immediate kind is so presented that the child should be brought to an appreciation of the city's inst.i.tutions and organized forces and of the common responsibility for the health and security of all the people. The same policy is pursued, unfortunately with diminishing attention, throughout the high-school course, and yet the superintendent of schools testifies that public education is failing to secure civic virtue. The children have not come into partnership with the school and other agencies of the common life, they have not achieved a nice sense of the rights of others, they have not been lifted to the ideal of service as being more n.o.ble than that of efficiency alone.

Of course there are many reasons for this: the quizzical temper of the community at large, the constant revelation of graft, the distorted school discipline which makes tardiness a more serious offense than lying or theft; the neglect to organize athletics and play for ethical ends; the criminal's code with regard to examinations--a code very prevalent in secondary schools, both public and private--that cheating is in order if one is not caught; the bitter and damaging personalities of party politics and the very transient honors of American public life; and, perhaps chief of all, the very elaborate provision for every child with the implication that he does the school a favor to use what is provided rather than the imposition of an obligation upon him both to help in securing the efficiency and beauty of the school and to discharge his just debt to society in the measure of his ability as boy and man.

Another productive cause of poor citizenship is the general contempt in which immigrants are held, and especially the treatment accorded them by the police and by most of the minor officials with whom they come in contact. This primitive disdain of "barbarians" is common among the school children and tends to make the foreign children more delinquent and anti-social than they would otherwise be. A very recent case sums up the situation. A gang of five Polish boys "beat up" a messenger boy, apparently without provocation. A Juvenile Protective officer visited the home of one of these young thugs for the purpose of talking with the mother and getting such information as would aid in keeping the boy from getting into further trouble.

The mother was found to be a very intelligent woman and explained to the officer that her boy had been constantly angered and practically spoiled at school; that it had been ground into him that he was nothing but a "Polack," and that no good thing was to be expected of him. The school boys had taken a hand in his education; and by reflecting in their own merciless way the uncharitable judgment of their elders had helped to produce this young pariah.

If one will but travel on the street cars in the crowded districts of our great cities and note the churlish discourtesy and sarcastic contempt with which "the foreigners" are generally treated, or will take the pains to ascertain how cruelly they are deceived and fleeced at almost every turn, one will soon conclude that we are making it very hard for these people and their children to become grateful and ardent citizens of the republic.

Looking to the improvement of this condition, while vocational training promises something by way of an economic basis for good citizenship, too much must not be expected of it alone. For if vocational efficiency be created and released in an environment devoid of civic idealism it will never pa.s.s beyond the grub stage. It will merely fatten a low order of life, and this at the expense of much that would otherwise lend verdure and freshness, shade, flower, and fruit to the garden of our common life. The able man or the rich man is not necessarily a good citizen.

That the state, like the home and school, should incessantly give its benefactions without binding youth to service in return is an egregious blunder. There should be some formal entrance into full citizenship, not only for those of us who, coming from other nations, must needs be "naturalized," but for all whom the years bring from the fair land of boyhood into the great and sober responsibilities of citizenship.

When a Greek youth took the oath of citizenship, he stood in the temple of Aglauros overlooking the city of Athens and the country beyond and said: "I will never disgrace these sacred arms nor desert my companions in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone and with many. I will transmit my fatherland not only not less but greater and better than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will observe both the existing laws and those which the people may unanimously hereafter make. And if any person seek to annul the laws or set them at naught, I will do my best to prevent him and will defend them both alone and with many. I will honor the religion of my fathers, and I call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone."

Now, the minister may think that no great part of the improved training for citizenship falls to him. He may be content to instill motives of individual piety, but upon reflection he must know that on nearly every hand there exist today great and insuperable barriers to his personal gospel. Behind the walls which imprison them are millions who cannot hear his message and those walls will not go down except by the creation of public sentiment which organizes itself and functions as law and government. The minister's exercise of citizenship should not be reserved for heaven, where it will not be needed, but should rather get into action here and now.

This means a pulpit policy which recognizes the great dimensions of the Kingdom of G.o.d, and seeks a moral alignment of church and state that will draw out the religious energy to vital and immediate issues, and will necessitate within the church herself clean-cut moral reactions to existing vital conditions. When the pulpit becomes sufficiently intelligent and bold to lay bare such issues the youth and manhood of the country will not in so large measure neglect the pew. Wherever real issues are drawn men and boys tend to a.s.semble.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IMPORTED CIVIC TIMBER]

In the intricate social life of today a ministry devoted exclusively to plucking a few brands from the burning is somewhat archaic. The individual soul in its majestic value is not discounted, but it cannot be disentangled from the ma.s.s as easily as was once the case, or as easily as was once supposed. It was not so necessary to preach civic righteousness when "the gospel" was deemed sufficient so to transform the individual that all external limitations, unG.o.dly conditions, and social injustices would yield to the regal ability of the child of G.o.d.

To recognize the environmental phase of salvation and to undertake this broader task in addition to the "cure of souls" may be to expose the minister to the cross-fire of economic sharp-shooters and a fusillade of sociological field guns. Besides, some of the supporters of the church will object and many will a.s.sert that the minister cannot qualify to speak with first-rate intelligence and authority upon the complex social problems of the day. Indeed, by endeavoring to utter a message of immediate significance in this field, he will discredit his more important mission as a "spiritual" leader. Again, if he should speak to the point on social issues no heed would be paid to his deliverances, and he has plenty to do in routine pastoral work.

The strength of these objections must be granted, and more especially so in the case of weak men, men of unripe judgment, of hasty and extravagant utterance, and of inferior training. For undoubtedly present-day problems of social welfare and such as affect religious living do lead back, not only into economic considerations, but also into questions of legislation and government.

But even so, will the minister consent to be without voice or program in the shaping of social ethics? Will he follow meekly and at a safe distance in the wake of the modern movement for economic justice and humane living conditions? Will he allow people to think for a moment that his job is to coddle a few of the elect and to solace a few of the victims of preventable hardship and injustice?

Suppose that, with the exception of denouncing the saloon and praising charity, he omits from his pulpit policy the creation of civic ideals and the drawing of moral issues in behalf of the higher life of all the people, will not the male population consider him rather too much engrossed with the little comforts, sentiments, and futilities of a religious club?

The entire precedent of the pulpit, both in biblical days and since, is wholly against such silence. If it is not the minister's business to know the problems of social ethics, so as to speak confidently to the situation from the standpoint of Jesus, whose province is it? Must he dodge the greatest moral problems of the day, all of which are collective? Has he not time and training so to master his own field that he will be second to none of his hearers in the possession of the relevant facts; and does he not presumably know the mind of Christ?

It is idle to say that his hearers will pay no heed, and it is idle to think that as a champion of justice and a better day he may not get a scar or so. But the man who has the mind of Christ toward the mult.i.tude and who thinks as highly of little children and their rights as did the Man of Galilee is going to be significant in making states and cities what they ought to be; and whatever disturbances may arise in the placid separatism of the church, the Kingdom itself will go marching on. The chief ingredient needed by the pulpit of today in order to inspire men and boys to n.o.ble citizenship is courage--moral courage.

But the new citizenship is in training for peace rather than for war, for world-wide justice rather than for national aggrandizement; and to this the Christian message lends itself with full force. The rehearsal of war and strife, the superficial view of history which sees only the smoke of battles and the monuments of military heroes, give place to an insight which traces the advancing welfare of the common people. The minister will inspire his formative citizens with good portrayals of statesmen, educators, inventors, reformers, discoverers, pioneers, and philanthropists. He will charm them into greatness at the very time when a boy's ideals overtop the mountains.

Conducive to the same end will be the rugged and humane ideals and activities of the Boy Scouts under his control; and all that is well done in the boys' clubs--the athletics, debates, trials, councils, literary and historical programs, addresses by respected public officials, visits to public inst.i.tutions, the study of social conditions, especially in the young men's cla.s.ses of the Sunday school--will make for the same good citizenship.

If the Men's Brotherhood is of significance in the community it is quite possible to bring political candidates before it for the statement of their claims and of the issues involved in any given campaign, and boys of fifteen years and over might well be invited to such meetings.

Then, too, such activities for community betterment as are outlined in the closing chapter of this book should be of some benefit, since the boy is to become a good citizen, not by hearing only but by doing; and the great success attending "Boy-City" organizations should inspire the pastor to attempt by this and other means the training of a new citizenship.

In fact, the matter is of sufficient importance to have a definite place in the Sunday-school curriculum and a boy might far better be informed on the plan of government, the civic dangers, and the line of action for a good man in his own city than to fail of that in an attempt to master the topography of Palestine or to recite perfectly the succession of the Israelitish kings.

If the minister has faith in a living G.o.d, if he believes that people are not less valuable now than they were four thousand years ago, if his Golden Age comprises the perfect will of G.o.d entempled in the whole creation, if he believes that this nation has some responsible part in the divine plan for the world, if he believes that righteousness is more desirable than pity and justice than philanthropy, and that the unrest of our times is but opportunity, he will in every way gird his boys for the battle and deliver constantly to the state trained recruits for the cause of human welfare which is ever the cause of G.o.d.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOY'S RELIGIOUS LIFE[9]

Comparative religion is unable to make a satisfactory investigation of the successive stages in the religious life of the individual. For the purpose of religious education it is highly desirable to add to the historical survey and the ethnological cross-sections of comparative religion a longitudinal section of the religion of the individual. This, however, is impossible because the important data at the bottom of the series are unattainable. In the study of childhood, as in the study of a primitive race, the individual is so securely hidden away in the group that the most penetrating scientific method cannot find him, and the tendencies which are to integrate into religious experience are so taken in hand by the society which produces and envelops the new life that the student of religion must deal with a social product from the outset. The isolated religion of an individual does not exist, although in the more mature stages of prophetism and philosophy p.r.o.nounced individual features always a.s.sert themselves.

The potential individuality in every child forbids, however, the a.s.sertion that he is only a mirror in which the religion of his immediate society and nothing more is reflected. There is from a very early time an active principle of personality, a growing selective power, a plus that comes out of the unmapped laboratory of creation, that may so arrange, trans.m.u.te, and enrich the commonplace elements of the socio-religious matrix as to amount to genius. But, nevertheless, the newcomer can scarcely do more than select the given quarter which from day to day proves least unpleasant, while the fact of being on the great ship and in one cabin or another--or in the steerage--has been settled beforehand.

Hence the religious life of the boy depends largely upon family and community conditions which in turn rest upon economic considerations.