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 The church s 
 
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 citizenship 
 
 
The University of Chicago Publications 
 IN Religious Education 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ERNEST D. BURTON SHAILER MATHEWS 
 
 THEODORE G. SOARES 
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF RELIGIOUS 
 EDUCATION 
 
THE CHURCH SCHOOL 
 OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMFANT 
 
 HIW TOBK 
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE XJNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURBH 
 
 THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 
 TOKTO, OSAKA, KTOTO, FITKUOKA, SENDAl 
 
 THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY 
 
 SHANSHAI 
 
Mnv 2:- 1 
 
 A, 
 
 rhe CHURCH SCHQDt- 
 OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 By 
 
 Allan Hoben 
 
 Associate Professor of Homiletks and Pastoral Duties 
 The University of Chicago 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 
Copyright 1918 By 
 The University or Chicago 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Published August 1918 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE 
 
 The progress in religious education in the last few 
 years has been highly encouraging. The subject 
 has attained something of a status as a scientific 
 study, and significant investigative and experimen- 
 tal work has been done. More than that, trained 
 men and women in increasing numbers have been 
 devoting themselves to the endeavor to work out 
 in churches and Sunday schools the practical prob- 
 lems of organization and method. 
 
 It would seem that the time has come to pre- 
 sent to the large body of workers in the field 
 of religious education some of the results of the 
 studies and practice of those who have attained 
 a measure of educational success. With this end 
 in view the present series of books on "Principles 
 and Methods of ReUgious Education" has been 
 undertaken. 
 
 It is intended that these books, while thoroughly 
 scientific in character, shall be at the same time 
 popular in presentation, so that they may be avail- 
 able to Sunday-school and church workers every- 
 where. The endeavor is definitely made to take 
 into account the small school with meager equip- 
 ment, as well as to hold before the larger schools 
 the ideals of equipment and training. 
 
viii General Preface 
 
 The series is planned to meet as far as possible all 
 the problems that arise in the conduct of the educa- 
 tional work of the church. While the Sunday 
 school, therefore, is considered as the basal organi- 
 zation for this purpose, the wider educational work 
 of the pastor himself and that of the various other 
 church organizations receive due consideration as 
 parts of a unified system of education in morals 
 and reUgion. 
 
 The Editors 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 Foreword 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The Demand 5 
 
 II. Civic Training for Childhood .... 21 
 
 III. Civic Training for Early Adolescence . . 53 
 
 IV. Civic Training for Later Adolescence . . 85 
 V. Civics in the Rural Church School . . 103 
 
 VI. Adults in the Church School of Citizenship 130 
 
 Index 175 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book aims to assist the awakened national 
 spirit to a forward step in rehgious education. The 
 Christian objectives of citizenship are presented as 
 implicit in the gospel and conducive to the highest 
 personal attainment in religious experience. Sug- 
 gestive, but not formal, programs are offered for 
 use in the church school. Attention is given both 
 to the formation of right civic attitudes and to the 
 expressional use of the information imparted and 
 the attitudes induced. It is taken for granted that 
 the bibUcal content of the church-school curriculum 
 will not be curtailed by this venture, but that 
 pertinent selections will be used and that the repe- 
 tition, which at present is considerable, will be 
 reduced in order to provide greater opportunity for 
 training in the application of Christianity to social 
 behavior. 
 
 It is evident that if civics is to find a larger place 
 in rehgious education the teaching forces of the 
 churches will need due preparation. Therefore 
 this book is written in the hope that it may be 
 used as a text in teacher-training classes, in mid- 
 week meetings of the church, and by thoughtful 
 parents. We take it that the numerous community 
 
2 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 training schools organized for the improvement of 
 reHgious education are by their very name friendly 
 to the citizenship idea and are convinced that the 
 church school must not allow the present crisis 
 for democracy to pass without registering wiser 
 methods and deeper devotion in public service. 
 
 The author is not proposing to write about the 
 Great War, although of necessity it colors and 
 stimulates one's message. It is rather in the spirit 
 of the following utterance of Mr. Franklin K. Lane, 
 Secretary of the Interior, that the elements of good 
 citizenship are offered for the consideration of 
 church people : 
 
 Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open 
 the door of Alaska, but a mother in Michigan worked from 
 sunrise until far into the night to give her boy an education. 
 She too is making the flag. Yesterday we made a new law 
 to prevent financial panics; yesterday, no doubt, a school 
 teacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will 
 write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. 
 We are aU making the flag. The work that we do is the 
 making of the real flag. 
 
 / am not the flag, not at all. I am but its shadow. 
 
 I am whatever you make me, nothing more. 
 
 I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a people 
 may become. 
 
 I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of heart- 
 breaks and tired muscles. 
 
 Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest 
 work, fitting the rails together truly. 
 
 Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from men 
 and cynically I play the coward. 
 
Foreword 3 
 
 Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that 
 blasts judgment. 
 
 But always I am all that you hope to be and have the courage 
 to try for. 
 
 I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling 
 hope. 
 
 I am the day^s work of the weakest man and the largest 
 dream of the most daring. 
 
 I am the clutch of an idea and the reasoned purpose of 
 resolution. 
 
 I am no more than what you believe me to be and I am all 
 that you believe I can be. 
 
 I am what you make me, nothing more. 
 
 I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol 
 of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes 
 this nation. My stars and my stripes are your dreams and 
 your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, 
 firm with faith, because you have made them so out of your 
 hearts, for you are the makers of the flag and it is well that you 
 glory in the making.^ 
 
 ' From the Chicago Herald, June 15, 19 14. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE DEMAND 
 
 An urgent civic duty confronts the American 
 church. The hour has struck when inertia or 
 evasion is treasonable. Democracy is part and 
 parcel of Christianity. The values which Jesus 
 Christ placed upon every child of man have now 
 been so widely heralded and so fully attested as the 
 basis of human welfare that every form of autocracy 
 has become, in and of itself, immoral. At the 
 point of the sword in the hand of ruthless tyranny 
 the nation has rediscovered her soul and found 
 it to be at one with the struggling freemen of 
 the whole earth. At the same time the church, 
 grateful for the full freedom which in this land 
 the state has both granted and guarded, comes 
 up to the help of the Lord against the mighty, 
 and in so doing deviates not at all from her 
 divine mission. 
 
 Faith in the right as touching foreign or domestic 
 problems does not mean a let-alone policy, as if 
 God would miraculously intervene in support of 
 justice in either case, but on the contrary the 
 heartiest mobilization of power in support of 
 right which in the long run attracts, creates, and 
 
6 The Church School of Citizenshh' 
 
 consolidates its forces more effectively than evil. 
 To clarify the import of democracy as Christian 
 ethics and to Christianize patriotism for national 
 and world service is an educational task and as such 
 can be most hopefully undertaken with children and 
 young people. Moreover the nature of the task 
 is so distinctly moral and rehgious that the church 
 school is obligated to attempt it. Possibly there 
 is also a certain advantage making for unbiased 
 and supernational treatment in the fact that the 
 church has no economic ax to grind and is clearly 
 dedicated to world-redemption. 
 
 Usually as men work back to ultimates, whether 
 in personal or in national crises, they come into 
 the area where the church illumines, unifies, and 
 energizes action. The mobilization of the hearts 
 of men in what is right, whether for foreign policy 
 or in domestic reform, constitutes a mighty service 
 to humanity. *' Thrice is he armed that hath his 
 quarrel just." God, whose will is expressed in the 
 fundamental and historic ideals of this nation as 
 also in the gospel of his Son, lays upon both church 
 and state the common duty of reaUzing the King- 
 dom of God. Taken alone, neither is sufficient for 
 the task. The church's plea for righteousness 
 remains an indoor doctrine of the few until the 
 civil power accepts and applies it in law and usage. 
 The principle of brotherly love developed and 
 tested within the church group awaits larger 
 
The Demand 7 
 
 demonstration in the wider field of national and 
 international affairs. 
 
 Democracy must fully accept and practice the 
 Christian ethic or fail. Blind optimism will not 
 save it, nor will wealth, nor "efficiency," nor 
 brute strength. Only Christ's way of life can last. 
 Men by nature must discard, gradually or violently, 
 every inferior scheme of collective living until they 
 reach righteous and automatic peace in the Golden 
 Rule. The church, being pre-eminently the cus- 
 todian and propagandist of this faith, carries a 
 corresponding liability to render this superlative 
 service to the state. 
 
 This duty, however, is very different from the 
 trite practices by which an enslaved and state- 
 owned church renders the citizenship more sub- 
 servient and pliant in the hands of usurping rulers. 
 In a democracy the citizens themselves are the 
 state, and those to whom power is delegated are 
 but the servants of the people. Hence good 
 citizenship is not the surrender of good judgment 
 to any ruler, permanent or temporary, but rather 
 the intelligent consideration of public questions 
 together with moral courage to insist upon righteous 
 public policy. Whatever conditions or beliefs 
 may have forced the early Christians, or any 
 subsequent generation of them, to eschew the 
 politics of temporal kingdoms and to hope for 
 heavenly compensation or for the miraculous end 
 
8 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 of the age, the situation in democracy today 
 demands, not withdrawal, separatism, or heavenly 
 restitution for earthly injustice, but rather full 
 and sacrificial devotion to realizing the ideals of 
 Jesus Christ in organic social life. 
 
 The demand that the church should relate her 
 adherents effectively to the all-inclusive organiza- 
 tion, government, seems altogether reasonable. 
 Already the curricula of Sunday schools, young 
 people's societies, organized classes, and men's 
 brotherhoods include the application of Christian 
 ethics to home, school, vocation, charity and relief, 
 temperance, health, and allied subjects, so that the 
 educational forces of the church are ready for a 
 synthesis of certain of these subjects and the addi- 
 tion of others to form a course on citizenship. 
 
 It should be noted also that such an effort is 
 most timely in view of the revived national spirit 
 which without Christian direction may settle into 
 the hard rut of exclusive nationalism, and also in 
 view of the demand of thoroughgoing democracy 
 that the efforts of people of good-will may graduate 
 from the old aristocracy of doles and charity to the 
 finer practice of social justice. In other words, 
 the church school of citizenship should Christianize 
 patriotism and democratize amelioration. 
 
 One of the great social transitions of the time 
 is that from philanthropy to civics, and just as 
 the church has been an inspiring and guiding power 
 
The Demand 9 
 
 under the old order, which was acceptable before 
 the democratic conscience was achieved, so now 
 should she perform a similar service for the chan- 
 ging social order. Through the long centuries 
 while the emphasis was on ambulance service she 
 did magnificently well, and in the new order, which 
 calls for the abolition by civil process of the pre- 
 ventable evils whose results demanded so fine an 
 exercise of mercy, she should deliberately plan 
 to be correspondingly effective. The same love, 
 heroism, and sacrifice heretofore devoted so largely 
 to mercy and relief must be chiefly devoted to 
 training and exercising a citizenship which by its 
 clear perception of justice and its tenacious demand 
 for Christian standards will gradually Christianize 
 all public relationships. 
 
 For the sake of those who fear that so ambitious 
 a plan may divert attention from personal piety 
 and, on the whole, prove a net loss by denaturing 
 the gospel's moral imperative for the individual, 
 certain reassuring facts should be called to mind. 
 In the first place, the magnitude of the campaign 
 calls the recruit to utter devotion in a spiritual 
 relationship to Jesus by which he is at once and 
 forever enlisted against unrighteousness whether 
 within himself or in the world about. He who will 
 take up his cross and follow Jesus in the struggle 
 to establish fully the Kingdom of God in the earth 
 must seek complete inward fitness as God's gift 
 
lo The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to him for this holy use. The piety which consists 
 in being mustered out of the world's fray is less 
 Christlike than this. 
 
 In the second place, it is well to remember that 
 social or political action turns upon the conviction, 
 integrity, and ability of individuals. Shaftesbury, 
 Gladstone, Lincoln, prove this, but not they alone. 
 Every question coming into council or going abroad 
 for verdict by the electorate is subject to a series 
 of conscious decisions in which right and wrong 
 are the great categories. The Christian in council 
 or polling-booth, on board of directors or trade- 
 union committee, may and often does decide the 
 issue. What would Christ desire for the housing, 
 health, and opportunity of the community's 
 children? From that public policy he cannot 
 swerve. Whither does His spirit lead in this reform 
 of temperance or in this perennial issue between 
 property and life ? If the direction can be known 
 one's vote is determined. So of the board of 
 directors wavering between profits and human 
 rights and the labor committee oscillating between 
 class vengeance and public good — in every case 
 the decision of the big questions of public, financial, 
 or industrial policy comes home to the individual 
 to throw his weight for or against Christ. Surely 
 the church cannot refrain from definitely preparing 
 her youth and, in so far as is possible, her adults 
 also for intelligent and uncompromising Christian 
 
The Demand ii 
 
 action in all such important situations. The 
 change that is coming over individual piety is not 
 deterioration but application. God is more des- 
 perately needed by one who exposes himself to the 
 issues and hazards of active citizenship. 
 
 If the forces of Christ do not stand true, wrong 
 may become the established policy, and in place 
 of the church Christianizing the community the 
 community paganizes the church. The opposing 
 forces through all the ages are in contact over a 
 front as wide as human affairs, and to crucify 
 Christ afresh is to lend one's influence to that 
 power of unrighteousness which nailed him to the 
 cross. It is equally criminal if, having power and 
 knowing the issue, we stand aside or desert, allowing 
 unrighteousness to have its way. For a Christian 
 to neglect citizenship is to do that very thing. 
 
 A third reassuring fact for those who fear the 
 loss of piety in the melee of public life and ac- 
 tive citizenship is that this venture widens one's 
 opportunity to serve the Master. The standard 
 inner duties of the church cannot enlist the services 
 of any large portion of the membership, and the 
 more important of these duties are intrusted to 
 those who are professionally trained. Noticeably 
 in recent years an increasing number of the more 
 energetic and socially minded, among women as 
 well as men, have been relinquishing their more 
 devotional and passive roles within the church 
 
12 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to engage in civic reforms of large dimension and 
 of concrete significance. This high-minded and 
 aggressive service is not yet correlated with church 
 life, and unless the exodus is to continue with more 
 loss to the church and an unnecessary feeling of 
 estrangement on the part of these vigorous, prag- 
 matic people it will be necessary to incorporate in an 
 orderly way the social civic element and import of 
 the gospel, so that, through teaching, through com- 
 mittees, delegates, and reports, and by meetings, 
 exhibits, conventions, and what not, the full impulse 
 for righteousness may get accredited expression. 
 
 When one thinks what this might mean for 
 Sunday-school classes, brotherhoods, women's and 
 young people's societies, forums, and midweek 
 meetings, the possibility of enriching and validating 
 church life by the strenuous and the concrete quite 
 overbalance the obvious dangers of secularism, 
 misjudgment, and partisan strife within the church. 
 Good sense and the atmosphere of brotherly love 
 will rather lift the concerns of public life, not only 
 to a plane of frank and earnest canvass, but to the 
 level of prayer, as if the compassion of Christ 
 beholding the multitude as sheep without a 
 shepherd were again ours, moving us to lay before 
 God the bafifling needs of our common organic 
 life. The devotional quite as much as the mental 
 worth of civic problems awaits development within 
 the church. 
 
The Demand 13 
 
 It also follows that by this means ' 'Jbeing goo d." 
 which for some church members amounts merely 
 
 to avoiding personal scandal, might, be. .more 
 
 generally translated into "being good for some- 
 thing." Such an experience constitutes a real 
 accession of virtue; and the consciousness of 
 having served in some capacity for the good of all 
 the people is a real bond binding one to his Lord. 
 The discharge of civic duty in this spirit stimulates 
 genuine piety in yet another way. Many pro- 
 fessing Christians are laggards who have almost 
 lost sight of Christ. The high-tension words of his 
 unsparing demand of discipleship no longer mean 
 anything. They have been dulled by frequent use 
 or blunted against the set habit of inaction. But 
 when one comes face to face with the antichrist of 
 mammon in public affairs, when one sees the pitiful 
 toll of misgovernment, then the nature of sin is laid 
 bare and the dynamic of a fighting faith enters 
 one's blood. 
 
 When such conditions are never faced and 
 collective sin is never realized the corresponding 
 repentance which leads to more Christlike character 
 is also forfeited. The indictment of many a sub- 
 Christian church might well be expressed in the 
 ancient word, 
 
 Israel doth not know 
 
 My people doth not consider. 
 
14 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 It is also a law of personal piety that one cries out 
 to God as the burdens and moral responsibilities to 
 which he is committed are perceived to have pro- 
 portions going infinitely beyond his unaided human 
 strength. Has not this been the sainthood of the 
 noblest souls, from prostrate prophets beholding 
 their country's need to that apostle who would 
 redeem the Roman world, and on to Cromwell, 
 Lincoln, and the Moses of our time — Booker T. 
 Washington? If the church seeks a great and 
 valid piety let her wrestle in the world-darkness till 
 the break of day, and in the very injury of the 
 struggle find God anew. 
 
 At the present time most churches are meeting a 
 better response from children and adults than they 
 are from youth. The need of a piety that shall 
 satisfy the idealistic and campaigning qualities 
 of young people is very generally acknowledged. 
 The docility of children and the quietism of the 
 mature or senescent receive relatively adequate 
 recognition. But there is something very holy 
 and potent which too seldom hears the bugle call 
 that mobilizes manhood for the Kingdom of God. 
 May it not be that the latent devotion of that great 
 host just coming over the crest into man's estate 
 needs but to see the active battle line where evil and 
 righteousness surge back and forth in formal and 
 mighty combat in order to take on the full armor 
 of God and to fight the good fight of faith ? There 
 can be no knightliness without a cause, and if by 
 
The Demand 15 
 
 adopting education for citizenship as part of her 
 task the church can consecrate to the Kingdom of 
 God young men and women who might otherwise 
 settle into the spiritual provincialism of ordinary 
 self-interest she will have improved her ministry to 
 their souls and to society. 
 
 Possibly no further plea for the general idea of 
 the church school of citizenship is needed in order 
 to give it fair trial in the field of religious education. 
 It is only to assure those who are properly jealous 
 for the personal virtues which are inseparable from 
 Christian living that the attempt has been made 
 to show that these may be enhanced and motivated 
 by acquaintance with, and participation in, the 
 problems of society's organic life. Beyond this 
 maintenance of historic personal piety it is very 
 probable that a canvass of opinion outside the 
 church would reveal a definite conviction among the 
 struggling classes of society to the effect that all 
 such piety is suspected until the hands that have 
 been kept clean lay hold of the soiled and broken 
 hopes which try to pull themselves together in the 
 one inclusive effort of civil government. This 
 skepticism on the part of the unchurched popula- 
 tion, which is 60 per cent of the whole, may rightly 
 be considered a demand for the civic and social 
 application of Christianity. 
 
 But a still more important demand will be 
 found in the character of the problems which 
 confront the republic. The marked trend toward 
 
1 6 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 public control of activities formerly held to be the 
 exclusive concerns of private persons or corpora- 
 tions is imposing an increasing burden on educa- 
 tional agencies. Greater intelligence on public 
 questions and higher civic morality become 
 necessary as this governmental area widens. The 
 public schools can hardly be expected to meet even 
 the intellectual needs in a time when every shortage 
 either of home, playground, diet, or trade is laid 
 at their doors, and at best the moral and religious 
 appeals and values of public questions cannot be 
 adequately handled in the schoolroom. This 
 situation offers the church an opportunity to 
 supplement the school and possibly to pioneer in a 
 neglected field; while the religious and moral 
 phases of the subject are legitimately hers by 
 virtue of a division of labor now well established. 
 Good citizenship will not be realized until very 
 much of the crude individualism now masquerading 
 under "efficiency" and indentured to unmitigated 
 self-interest is transformed by the service ideal of 
 Christianity. To bring the civic interest under 
 church tutelage would promote this end. 
 
 Similarly in the popular repudiation of feudal 
 conceptions of philanthropy there may be a net 
 loss to benevolence and brotherhood unless the 
 arbitrary munificence of industrial and financial 
 overlords becomes the good-will that is guaranteed 
 in law and practiced in the wealth-making process. 
 
The Demand 17 
 
 To socialize the endeavor of all and to make each 
 "person a servant of the common good in the 
 measure of his ability is the task of Christianity 
 and the goal of civic training. In the degree in 
 which such education fails, any shift in the balance 
 of power, whether from capital to labor, from 
 factory to farm, or from expert to politician, will 
 only mean a new form of tyranny. All citizens, 
 the capables as well as the struggling classes, stand 
 in need of an education which shall define the 
 essentials of the common good and energize their 
 expression and use in law by the exhaustless 
 dynamic of Christian faith. At the present time 
 the world needs no further proof that efficiency 
 unguided by the humane and democratic principles 
 of the gospel becomes the arch enemy of civilization. 
 The demand, however, for a church school of 
 citizenship arises, not only from these fundamental 
 conceptions of democracy, but equally from con- 
 sideration of the specific problems confronting the 
 nation. Some of these are industrial, having to do 
 with the contending camps of capital and labor; 
 some ethnic, having to do with immigration and 
 the race problem; some correctional, judicial, 
 educational, and what not; but, as Ell wood* has 
 pointed out, they may all be included in the prob- 
 lem of living together. This very limited plea for 
 the church school of citizenship cannot undertake 
 
 ■ Charles A. Ellwood, The Social Problem, chap. i. 
 
1 8 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to discuss these interrelated problems, each one of 
 which has already produced an extensive literature. 
 To strengthen the conviction that the facts involved 
 in these issues of social morality should have a 
 more important place in religious education and to 
 indicate methods by which the facts may be so 
 incorporated as to secure intelligent and moral 
 attitudes in keeping with the Christian religion is a 
 sufficient task. The Christian mottoes on the 
 walls of our national home need to step out of their 
 frames and get into action. 
 
 The temper of our entire people needs to be 
 changed from that of negative criticism to that of 
 idealistic support. By virtue of the wide and 
 partisan publicity given to the failures and weak- 
 nesses of officials of every rank and because so much 
 comment relative to public service is frankly 
 cynical there is need of a reappreciation of the 
 essential principles for which the nation stands. 
 It is clearly unjust to focus the attention of youth 
 upon the pathological features of democratic 
 evolution in such a way as to produce adolescent 
 cynics. The destruction of legitimate faith in any 
 sphere is a serious blow to faith as a whole. The 
 mere fact of reaching one's majority cannot make 
 a good citizen of the youth who entertains the error 
 that all positions of pubHc trust are secured by 
 *'puU" and used for personal gain. The history 
 of the United States is something more than the 
 
The Demand 19 
 
 sum total of her mistakes. The slow achievements 
 of democracy are sacred by virtue of what they cost 
 and what they register. It is immoral to dismiss 
 politics with the hypocritical epithet "rotten." 
 An education which encourages or permits one to 
 stand apart from the struggle, as being thus more 
 righteous, is not religious but antireligious. Cor- 
 respondingly it is a form of treason to familiarize 
 young people with the abuses of delegated power 
 and to leave them uninformed as to those chapters 
 in our history which might be headed Cuba, China, 
 John Hay. 
 
 The building of democracy calls for sound 
 timber, and presumably some of the very best 
 quality will be found in the uplands of the church 
 domain. In view of the bearing of democracy on 
 human rights and prospective world-peace may it 
 not be quite as religious to select and to direct into 
 public service those who are reliable, capable, and 
 conscientious as it is to place them in the ministry 
 or to send them to foreign-mission posts ? In order 
 to make the standards of Jesus operative in the 
 normal processes of society it is necessary that his 
 followers serve in those processes, and it may well 
 be that the church school of citizenship will result 
 in sending into public life many first-rate persons 
 who might otherwise have been content with 
 merely passing their negative verdicts from safe 
 positions on the side-lines. 
 
20 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1. What reasons can you offer for giving civics a larger 
 place in the church school at this time ? 
 
 2. In what ways should the church's missionary pro- 
 gram affect her civic teaching ? 
 
 3. What should the church group demonstrate to society 
 at large ? 
 
 4. List the characteristics of the good citizen from 
 (a) the point of view of monarchy and (b) the point of view 
 of democracy. 
 
 5. Why is philanthropy an unsatisfactory solution of 
 ills in a democracy ? 
 
 6. What dangers may attend the revival of patriotism 
 and good citizenship in the church ? 
 
 7. Interpret civic service as an aid to personal religion. 
 
 8. Illustrate the statement that the church must Chris- 
 tianize the community or the community will paganize 
 the church. 
 
 9. Mention some examples of collective sin in your own 
 community. 
 
 10. What are the advantages of a good-citizenship 
 platform as compared with a sectarian or party-politics 
 platform ? 
 
 11. What results in public life might reasonably be 
 expected from the church school of citizenship ? 
 
 12. Discuss the question as to whether the church school 
 should be exclusively a Bible school. 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics. 
 Rauschenbusch, W., The Social Principles of Jesus. 
 Ross, E. A., Sin and Society. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 CIVIC TRAINING FOR CHILDHOOD 
 
 It is the aim of this chapter to suggest certain 
 forms of civic training suitable for small children 
 and adapted to use in the church school. By use 
 in the church school we mean that the activity 
 may be carried on there, or that the school may 
 inspire and direct the activity, receiving reports 
 and granting suitable acknowledgment for what 
 the small citizen does outside the class. 
 
 If bragging and exaggeration are not encouraged 
 there is distinct merit in the just, social recognition 
 of good conduct which the class may give and which 
 the child naturally craves. The civic effort of 
 the pupil will be standardized and elevated by 
 such a review, and good- will conduct in the home, 
 on the street, and at school will be stimulated 
 thereby. Observations of the helpful conduct of 
 others should also be reported. 
 
 An examination of all the Sunday-school lesson 
 series has revealed the presence of some civic 
 material in every case. Historically this presents 
 itself, first, as entirely biblical; secondly, as con- 
 tributing to those personal virtues which must 
 always underlie good citizenship; thirdly, as 
 
22 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 treating some social problem — usually temperance 
 — on its own merits; and fourthly, in the process 
 of evolution, as dealing in similar fashion with 
 other social and civic problems of the modern 
 world. The tendency is toward modernism over 
 the bridge of extra-biblical biography. There is 
 a creditable amount of such material scattered 
 through all the existing Sunday-school courses, and 
 the aim of this book is to encourage its larger use, 
 to give it coherence about a sustained civic ideal, 
 to suggest teaching methods, and to enrich in 
 quality and quantity the body of civic material 
 for use in the church school. 
 
 In this chapter we aim to make gradual progress 
 from the earliest years of Sunday-school attendance 
 up to the age of twelve. While the text follows 
 this order it does not attempt to set the limits as 
 specifically as would be necessary in a series of 
 formal lessons. If the teachers and church people 
 generally can be persuaded to embrace within the 
 scope of religious education a larger civic content, 
 then the actual organization of courses will not be 
 long delayed. 
 \/ Attitudes are more important than information. 
 Reverence is a virtue; theology is not necessarily 
 so. The intellectual concepts of the child who 
 kneels, clasps his hands, closes his eyes and bows 
 his head in prayer may be quite fragile or imper- 
 fect, but the act indicates and favors an attitude 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 23 
 
 of mind which makes for personal rehgion. Within 
 this attitude of reverence all that is knowable of 
 God and man takes its place as experience widens, 
 and although some of the information may be of a 
 kind to test rather than to support faith, yet, with 
 this attitude secure, the life will be ennobled and 
 refined. 
 
 It follows that the very blending of national 
 symbols with those of the place and exercise of 
 religion will bind together in a common respect 
 and reverence the twofold obligation of duty to 
 God and country. ^' Above, about, within, and 
 supportin g all is God, and in his plan of protection, 
 opportunity, and_ support for me is my country. ' ' 
 The child may naturally feel that way about it. 
 Both are vast, impalpable, real, continuing through 
 the centuries, embracing life, benevolent. Bible 
 and hymn and prayer, the flag, and the loving 
 memory of patriot intertwine and embody these 
 two realities. 
 
 This is the philosophy of it, but the child is not 
 interested in philosophy. Concretely his civic 
 attitude will be determined by such visible things 
 as the flag itself, by pictures of the noble dead, of 
 his president and other notable officials, and of 
 the large and humane enterprises by which the 
 government protects and enriches the life of the 
 people. Of marked influence also will be the 
 celebration of the nation's festal days with his 
 
24 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 participation in song, recitation, march, decorations 
 and feast, pantomime, pageant and dramatic play, 
 and visits to historic spots, monuments, and govern- 
 mental buildings. What he does and sees will shape 
 his attitude of loyalty quite as much as what he is 
 told. The best way of telling is the story growing 
 out of the pictures and experiences above suggested. 
 
 Furthermore, in order that the true patriotic 
 spirit be confirmed in his immediate experience 
 and conduct he should learn just what the govern- 
 ment is doing for little children and what little 
 children may do for it. No doubt the news 
 method now used in moving-picture shows to 
 inform the public on the vast and humane work 
 of the government will be adapted to use in the 
 church school and will greatly enhance civic educa- 
 tion. Particularly all that interests the small 
 child, such as milk inspection, pure water, protec- 
 tion and safety on the streets, infant welfare, pub- 
 lic parks with wading-pools, sand piles, and swings, 
 children's departments in libraries with their 
 story-telling hour, open-air schools for tubercular 
 children, and many other exhibits of public concern 
 for our very little citizens will, upon proper pre- 
 sentation by film or printed picture with simple 
 comment, incline the child to that just pride and 
 gratitude which underlie good citizenship. 
 
 Yet to know and enjoy all this is not sufficient. 
 %/ Some experience of partnership is desirable. With- 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 25 
 
 out doing his part the child may drift into the 
 great company of citizens who are strong for their 
 "rights" but quite oblivious to their duties. Just 
 as in the home such help as the child can give is the 
 sure means of moralizing his affection, so in the 
 community, to the extent of his relation therewith 
 and of his ability to co-operate, he must lend a 
 hand. Unfortunately the usual home background 
 upon which civic co-operation might be depicted 
 is very much of a moral blur. Whether sturdy or 
 sickly the average small child from early infancy 
 sets out to reign supreme, and most parents con- 
 nive with an incipient absolute and irresponsible 
 monarchy which bodes ill for democracy. At- 
 tempts to upset the order and diurnal routine of 
 the household are made very early and very suc- 
 cessfully. Later, toys are scattered about and 
 furnishings are abused and left in disorder for 
 mother or maid to gather up and "set to rights." 
 To this extent a little grafter comes into being 
 who may exploit things generally and leave his 
 proper burden of responsibility to the home govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Any successful training of the small child for 
 citizenship must meet or overcome this rather 
 common difficulty. The fond way in which the 
 soft parent overtaxes the immature judgment of 
 the small child by asking "dearie" whether he 
 wouldn't like to do this or that clear personal or 
 
26 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 social duty implicit in home life will probably 
 have to be changed into the higher kindliness of the 
 imperative mood. However, either with or with- 
 out this and other improvements in home regimen 
 the church school of citizenship must set out with 
 an action program including public duty and 
 benevolence for the small child. The doctrine and 
 practice of good-will must become his. 
 
 Some of the items that may be included in the 
 civic program of the child under public-school age 
 are the sharing of toys with children in public 
 institutions, the making of picture-books for them, 
 paper-doll outfits, and contributions of "goodies," 
 both on special occasions and at other times 
 throughout the year. This work might be organ- 
 ized, assembled, and cleared through the church 
 school, which would also stimulate home activity 
 for this end. But benefaction is not the only or 
 the main expression. In fact, for the church train- 
 ing to stop with voluntary philanthropy is to miss 
 (the essential of democratic citizenship which is 
 based, not upon optional good-will, but upon the 
 just duties of a partnership. 
 
 This great partnership, which includes the child 
 and his family, makes streets, keeps them clean and 
 in repair, safe and lighted. In order to do this 
 many people work hard, all pay something, and 
 some incur actual danger. The good partner will 
 not litter the street with paper or other refuse, but 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 27 
 
 on the contrary will help to keep it neat. He will 
 not damage or destroy the lamps, trees, or shrubs, 
 which belong to all, but on the contrary will protect 
 such property. He will obey the traffic officer who 
 makes it safe to cross the street and he will keep 
 to his own side — the right side — of the walk. He 
 will not spit upon the walk and he will help exter- 
 minate flies and other pests. 
 
 Such lessons seem trivial, but the ordinary 
 pedestrian in our American cities having started 
 wrong in these respects is a correspondingly con- 
 firmed nuisance, expense, and liability to the com- 
 munity. Accidents multiply, traffic is blocked or 
 impeded, whole neighborhoods are unkempt, and 
 a large army of men is kept busy in street and park 
 picking up after these crude individualists who 
 did not set out with the idea of "my city." Also 
 much of the malicious mischief of boys of a some- 
 what later age, when they break street lamps and 
 deface public property, might be forestalled by 
 such initial instruction in civil service. To open 
 their eyes to the labor involved in public works 
 and to listen to their accounts of how sewers are 
 built, pavements laid, and fires fought may awaken 
 and increase civic appreciation. 
 
 It is probably necessary that some experience of 
 personal ownership should underlie these attempts 
 to train the child in the practice of that collective 
 ownership which the citizen enjoys. Here again 
 
28 The Church School of Citizeistship 
 
 the methods of the home Hmit materially the 
 degree of success of the church school. The secure 
 and inviolate possession of his own things, a proper 
 place for their safe-keeping, and particularly some 
 experience in making his wealth as contrasted with 
 much ingenuity in destroying it are imperative 
 factors. Also some self-denial in saving enough 
 to buy what he cannot make and in general a 
 responsibility commensurate with his years and 
 applied to his most cherished possessions seem 
 necessary as a background for the proper respect 
 of public property. 
 
 However, the home, being a collective enter- 
 prise, goes farther than the "mine" with its cor- 
 responding responsibility. It proceeds to "ours." 
 This is especially true where there are a number of 
 children who play and work together. The church 
 school is that sort of a family augmented and 
 organized. Each one of these small children under 
 public-school age has his own outfit, bearing his 
 name, and also his own place for its safe-keeping; 
 while all unite in holding certain larger property 
 and conveniences necessary to the group as a whole 
 and too expensive for individual ownership. In- 
 dividual and collective care of property makes for 
 good citizenship, while the lavish and indis- 
 criminate provision of material, whether in home 
 or school, stifles appreciation and favors destruc- 
 tion rather than conservation. 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 29 
 
 Some children unfortunately seem to achieve 
 consciousness as a soul mainly on the "no, no" 
 basis. Their sense of importance is gratified by 
 refusing to join in any group activities. The 
 teacher of infant classes is familiar with the type 
 and for the sake both of the individual and of 
 society will try to overcome the timidity, awk- 
 wardness, or selfishness which, if allowed to persist, 
 will blight the life and thwart citizenship. Of 
 all teachers one must most revere the kinder- 
 gartner who can detect and remove this antisocial 
 bias. She is truly serving the state. 
 
 The child's entry to the church school and all 
 of his experiences therein should make for courtesy 
 and decorum. Good manners are a part of good 
 citizenship. Instead of undermining the child's 
 respect for those who by virtue of position or age 
 are worthy of fine regard, and instead of making 
 the place of worship ridiculous by hubbub and 
 disorder, the church school should foster whatever 
 good breeding the home may have initiated, or 
 begin that which the home has neglected. Parallel 
 with the smartness developing when the child 
 enters the public school there is the irreverence 
 frequently noted when the child attends Sunday 
 school. The decline of this virtue may not be 
 fatal. There may indeed be some compensating 
 gain in friendliness and naturalness, but cheap- 
 ness and lack of sense of fitness and proportion 
 
30 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 make against civic virtue. Start the children 
 wrong in that institution whose function it is to 
 conserve the sacred things of life, and the chances 
 for continuance in a brazen conceit oblivious to the 
 sanctuary values of God and country are multi- 
 plied. "There is no necessary connection between 
 democracy and rudeness and slouchy conduct and 
 manner There is no necessary causal con- 
 nection between an abolition of privilege, caste, 
 and class, and bad manners."^ Possibly greater 
 care in such matters might tend to remedy the 
 indecorous haste and confusion so often exhibited 
 at the close of public worship, where the haste to 
 grab wraps, the ear-splitting efforts of the organ, 
 and shrill gossip dissipate in one explosion any 
 approach to formal reverence which the service 
 may have induced. 
 
 This prevalent scandal which makes against all 
 public order has as antecedent the noisy class- 
 room, the late-comer, the slovenly work, the 
 scramble for the best seat, and the general fail- 
 ure of that orderly helpfulness which might be 
 secured by officers and teachers who would take 
 pains always to be in place before the children 
 arrive and whose knowledge and exercise of dis- 
 cipline measured up to the importance of their 
 task. 
 
 ' E. L. Cabot, A Course in Citizenship, Introd., p. xiv (William 
 H. Taft). 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 31 
 
 Advancing a grade or so to the time when the 
 child becomes famiHar with the street by virtue of 
 going to the public school and using the street for 
 play and adventure, the very important matter 
 of his early contacts with the agents of government 
 comes to the fore. To the small child of this age 
 the policeman is the government, and his attitude 
 toward officials, as toward law and its enforce- 
 ment, is largely determined by his experience with 
 the police officer. Unfortunately there is here also 
 an unfavorable background for good citizenship. 
 At least in all cases where exasperated parents have 
 held over the child the threat to have the police- 
 man "get" him if he fails to obey, or disobeys, 
 parental commands, and in cases where the child 
 is famiHar with Sunday-supplement caricatures of 
 the officer, it becomes especially difficult to build 
 up the right relationship. For in the one case he 
 regards the policeman as his natural enemy and 
 in the other as a joke. In order to offset this very 
 prevalent misunderstanding the church school 
 should find the right kind of officer to be invited 
 to attend several of its sessions for the purpose of 
 pleasant acquaintance with the children and of 
 instructing them as to how they may help him in 
 rendering the city safe and bringing the maximum 
 happiness and benefit to all. Perhaps the most 
 important item in such a plan is the establishment 
 of this friendly co-operation in place of the blind 
 
32 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 enmity which too often exists. It is not in place 
 here to indicate the improvements in the personnel ^ 
 duties, and methods of the police necessary to the 
 largest success of such a policy, but the principle 
 holds true that the best way to secure finer service 
 from the police is to expect it of them and to 
 include them in the common aim of church and 
 state to promote justice, safety, and well-being. 
 To appreciate and use the policeman in this simple 
 way may, while helping both the child and the 
 officer, lead to larger co-operation of the whole 
 church in law enforcement. 
 
 Possibly before this time the child will have 
 made the acquaintance of the postman, the most 
 welcome of public servants. The delight of the 
 first letter or parcel received by mail leaves the 
 door of the mind ajar for some explanation of this 
 wonderful service, and it is quite possible to make 
 a postage stamp a very good text for a civic lesson 
 in the church school. Moreover the postman, like 
 the policeman, might well attend the school and 
 explain his work and how the boys and girls can 
 help him. One feels sure that with this sort of 
 friendship they will not keep him waiting at the 
 door or ask unreasonable favors. Probably it is 
 not possible to develop the same refinements of 
 appreciation in the case of the iceman, ashman, 
 garbage man, and milkman, but the fact that they 
 are very necessary servants whom we should help 
 
Civic Training tor Childhood 33 
 
 needs to be impressed upon the child. Those 
 who perform these duties are so frequently over- 
 looked or looked down upon that to develop in the 
 child a Christian attitude toward them is identical 
 with training for citizenship. 
 
 Then there is the health ofl&cer, whose duty it 
 is to keep people well and to protect little children 
 and others from contagious diseases. In order 
 to do this he must sometimes quarantine the family 
 so that the child cannot go out to play or to school. 
 The latter privation may be endured without excess 
 of grief so far as the child is concerned, but the 
 frequency with which families unlawfully jeopardize 
 the health of others calls for full explanation of the 
 civic duty of observing quarantine. Here again 
 the presence of the health ofhcer in the church 
 school, with his explanation of why the liberties 
 of some must be curtailed for the safety of all and 
 his stories of what happens when the health laws 
 are broken, may assist the children themselves to 
 observe the law and aid them in fortifying the 
 flabby citizenship of their parents. 
 
 Imagine also the place of the fireman in the 
 church school of citizenship. The sessions in 
 which he tells his experiences and intersperses the 
 rules for fire prevention and fire fighting will be 
 all too brief. And yet if you want matches, gaso- 
 line, and ashes kept in their places, fiire escapes 
 clear of obstacles, and cool-minded citizens for 
 
34 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 emergencies, why not use our good friend whose 
 civic halo the children can already see ? 
 
 Such a method will be effective not alone with 
 the small child. One of the best pieces of civic 
 study which the author has directed was under- 
 taken by a picked group of eighth-grade boys who 
 in weekly sessions throughout a whole winter 
 devoted themselves to an understanding of the 
 fire department of a great city. In addition to 
 the less romantic information on fire prevention 
 they learned by visit and observation the intricate 
 methods of the electric fire-call system and wrote 
 very good papers on many phases of fire-fighting, 
 rescue work, and resuscitation, as well as biog- 
 raphies of the notable fire-fighting heroes of the 
 force. 
 
 These are the first public officers of the child's 
 acquaintance and the day school is his first public 
 institution. Ordinarily the child hears of it as a 
 free school and undoubtedly in some instances 
 even fancies that he should be paid for spending 
 his valuable time therein. None too often will its 
 nature, purpose, and cost of upkeep per child have 
 been explained to the unthinking or unwilling 
 patron of this greatest American institution. It 
 is quite possible that an interpretation of the school 
 as the community's largest contribution to child- 
 hood could be made with considerable grace and 
 effectiveness in the church school. In a word, the 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 35 
 
 church school will assist the child to those early 
 appreciations which make all the difference between 
 school life as an imposition and as a generous 
 opportunity to learn and to help. The various 
 ways of helping the teacher and of benefiting the 
 school, when pointed out at the outset of school 
 life, will find ready response from the average child. 
 For to be big enough to help and important enough 
 to count in the rating and welfare of the school is 
 a compliment which the normal child craves and 
 heeds. 
 
 The consciousness of such importance will 
 reduce the number of "don'ts" with which the 
 child who is learning street deportment is usually 
 beset. Helping and directing strangers will be 
 according to form. Taunting peddlers, snow- 
 balling women and smaller children, throwing 
 stones, and indulging the vast nuisance-making 
 propensities of boyhood of this age will give place 
 in part to a semiofficial responsibility. It must be 
 assumed, however, that the play organization and 
 facilities of the community will be such as to satisfy 
 the desire for adventure and physical experiment 
 which must otherwise be registered in these 
 unsocial ways. 
 
 From the civic point of view it has been through 
 lack or scarcity of such connections with the child's 
 practical daily life that religious education has 
 been hitherto somewhat weak. In so far as the 
 
36 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 content of religious education has lacked applica- 
 tion in the home, on the street, or at school, by 
 that measure has it been inadequate for character- 
 building and negligible for good citizenship. The 
 value of clarifying and standardizing behavior in 
 these fields familiar and necessary to child life 
 consists, not solely in the fact that it is sound 
 pedagogy, but, for our purpose, in the fact that 
 the very remote in time and place and the very 
 unusual, however fascinating, in story form may, 
 taken alone, leave him quite unfitted for social 
 conduct. The supposition that the child will of 
 himself bridge the gap and transfer the best or any 
 part of the antique, however noble, to the situations 
 which are actually his is often too generous. 
 Furthermore there is the constant danger of so 
 identifying religion and its practice with experi- 
 ences that are never his that he may never so 
 much as entertain the hope or purpose of being 
 a good child of God in these normal and necessary 
 relationships. 
 
 Among the lessons of this early period, and as 
 especially timely in the present world-crisis, the 
 prospective citizen needs training in thrift and 
 conservation. No waste, whether of water at the 
 tap, electricity, gas, fuel, food, clothing, or any- 
 thing else can be condoned as less than immoral. 
 These things mean the very life of people and 
 possibly of democracy itself. Probably there has 
 
Civic Teaining foe Childhood 37 
 
 never been a time of like advantage in gathering 
 every child into the hallowing influence of a great 
 cause. Intemperance, whimsicalness, indulgence, 
 extravagance — these and their allies have no place 
 in the conduct of the child, who, being unable to 
 serve in military fashion, may yet serve truly and 
 effectively in the spirit of the same noble discipline 
 of the soldier. The war, in itself a ghastly failure 
 of human intelligence, morality, and religion, will 
 nevertheless snatch our youth from sordid self- 
 seeking, emancipate and ennoble our women, and 
 save our children from the wasteful habits that have 
 become national. 
 
 So close to conscience may the church school 
 bring the many phases of this vast problem that a 
 whole army of children will interpret national need 
 and rise to a great experience of self-control and 
 real helpfulness within a sphere where duty rules 
 desire. This is already under way and has epoch- 
 making possibilities for religious education. To be 
 devoted to a just cause to the extent of sacrifice 
 in the field of one's cherished and conscious satis- 
 factions is to be on the path that shineth more and 
 more imto the perfect day. Here again the ad- 
 vantage of a spiritual appeal that calls for action 
 rather than for mere appreciation assures by its 
 very nature actual training in citizenship. 
 
 The whole vexed problem of obedience is 
 smoothed out under the grave consciousness that 
 
38 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 we are at war, and soldierly virtues of prompt 
 execution without complaint are practical in rising, 
 washing, dressing, partaking of plain food, doing 
 chores as a military detail, and, in a word, accepting 
 the regimen necessary to worthy partnership in 
 the cause. This vivid sense of enlistment need 
 not necessarily vanish with the return of peace if 
 only the children are thus habituated to the de- 
 mands of collective living and effort and gradually 
 acquainted with the urgent cause of righteousness 
 and humanity which always needs the same 
 chivalrous support and service. The church school 
 has a remarkable opportunity to build up and 
 carry over for permanent use this great body of 
 social morality which is the bone and sinew of good 
 citizenship. 
 
 Who can measure the value of children's savings 
 which, instead of being squandered in candy and 
 needless toys, have gone and are going into the 
 Liberty Loan? In addition to the individual 
 value of these self-denials there is the profound 
 sense of partnership with one's country in behalf 
 of the world's welfare. Every little bank — and 
 their name is legion — that has been emptied into 
 the United States treasury has guaranteed a finer 
 loyalty on the part of the young investor, and every 
 bond possessed is a certificate of better citizenship. 
 Every child in the church school should have some 
 part in this patriotic effort. 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 39 
 
 Probably from the age of eight or ten years 
 onward the even greater joy of producing wealth 
 from the soil may be encouraged and directed by 
 the church school. Here is a great opportunity 
 to enrich the summer program which for most 
 schools has been flimsy and lacking in appeal. 
 Probably there is no more satisfactory and timely 
 religious exercise for the child of this age than to 
 co-operate with God in producing the food that 
 is necessary to life. Not only the sense of dignity 
 and usefulness in meeting the acute need of the 
 present time is to be taken into account, but 
 the more lasting benefit that comes from the 
 nurture and care of plants, from participation in 
 nature's scheme of cause and effect, from the 
 labor which compels appreciation of the food we 
 eat, from emulation and joint endeavor, aesthetics, 
 patience, perseverance, and the ennobling experi- 
 ence of adding to the world's wealth something 
 which without the child's effort would not have 
 existed. 
 
 It is to be hoped that religious education, which 
 in some instances has been forced into this field 
 by the present crisis, will make itself at home here 
 for future service and that the classes and groups 
 which can be held intact for the summer season 
 will be provided with plots and directors, so that 
 the activity side of the church school, which has 
 always been inadequate, and the summer program. 
 
40 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 which has lacked vitality, may be improved in 
 rendering this larger service to the children. 
 
 There is no reason why the church gardens 
 might not culminate in Thanksgiving exhibits, 
 services, and distributions to the needy; and the 
 exhibits might well include, besides the best samples 
 of green vegetables, also those products that have 
 been canned, preserved, or dried, as also the cost 
 accounts of the various undertakings. The extent 
 to which this might be done in village and country 
 districts, where poultry and live stock might be 
 included in the experiment, would be such as to 
 form a real bond between the church school and 
 the progress and welfare of the community. 
 Wherever the products were sufficiently large to 
 be sold the individual and the working group in 
 collective enterprises would have the further 
 education of determining the cause to which some 
 of the returns should be donated. The great 
 freedom of the church to experiment in this field 
 and the fact that the public-school organization 
 is abandoned for the summer, leaving hosts of 
 children with all too little to do, constitute a chal- 
 lenge to be eagerly accepted. 
 
 Among the civic benefits to be expected from 
 such a program one should include the likelihood 
 of directing more of our future citizens into 
 lives of productive toil. The number of persons 
 engaged in trade or barter of various kinds, persons 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 41 
 
 whose labor, however remunerative, is not ele- 
 mentally productive, always tends to be relatively 
 too great. So also the professional and advisory 
 classes of society are distended with fee collectors 
 of one kind and another. The scramble to get 
 away from the soil and so from one of the sanest 
 and most useful vocations may be corrected in 
 part by these happy experiments, in which through 
 the church school many a child who would other- 
 wise remain ignorant of the joy of production may 
 discover the clue to a happy and highly useful life. 
 
 It should be pointed out also that as contrasted 
 with athletics, whose place in civic training will 
 later be discussed, gardening with its emulation 
 of the workers engaged affords an experience quite 
 as useful for citizenship as the contests in which 
 one party wins and the other loses. The degrees 
 of excellence, down to the lowest, register some 
 real measure of success, something of value accom- 
 plished, and this is not always possible in athletic 
 contests. Emulation is perhaps in the long run a 
 higher civic exercise than is the ''I win, you lose" 
 contest. 
 
 In gardening there is a refinement also in the 
 working out of cause and efifect. In the abstract, 
 no doubt, the exercise in arithmetic may bring 
 this home to the child. Unless the component 
 items and operations are correct the result will be 
 wrong. Similarly the working of cause and effect 
 
42 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 in static fashion is brought home in manual train- 
 ing, where the imperfect part or shoddy work mars 
 or even ruins the article as an assembled whole. 
 But in gardening one is working with live and 
 growing things. He is partner with great, mysteri- 
 ous forces whose working is sufficiently known to 
 dictate the gardener's part if success is to be 
 achieved. To deal with things in the making and 
 to have nature register your mistakes and neglect 
 or your wisdom and diligence in her assembly of 
 materials seen and unseen into a product not 
 before in existence — this is a very religious manner 
 of learning the moral nature of our orderly world. 
 The shiftlessness and failure of many of the 
 triflers, ne'er-do-wells, and hard-luck apologists 
 who are a debit to society and a menace to the 
 state could be traced in part to the uncorrected 
 juvenile philosophy, so favorable to laziness and 
 so convenient for excuse, which places the blame 
 upon things and does not manfully take its place 
 in the succession of cause and effect. A rather 
 extended experience with children convinces one 
 that such fatalism is their besetting philosophy. 
 Whether by virtue of animistic ideas, attributing 
 personality to things, or through fear of dis- 
 approval and punishment they follow the method 
 of Eve with the serpent and Aaron with the golden 
 calf. Things just happen. The causal relation 
 between effort and result does not figure, It is a 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 43 
 
 gamble. Why hold them responsible ? The vase 
 fell and crashed, the water spilled, the plants died, 
 poverty existed, war broke out, injustice prevailed, 
 and all similar conceptions of individual and social 
 fatality in which responsible human action hides 
 or escapes come from lack of such grouping in 
 moral order as may be had in unsurpassed fashion 
 through experiment with the productive soil. 
 
 Nor can one lightly regard the civic value 
 attaching to an actual performance of the labor 
 and care incident to the successful production of 
 food. Perhaps the best cure for wastefulness as 
 for complaining about one's rations is to know by 
 experience the labor cost which the articles embody. 
 Many a social gulf now separating people into 
 distinct and unsympathetic, if not antagonistic, 
 classes could be bridged here and there if only the 
 individuals on both sides knew by actual experience 
 the amount of life that has gone into the homely 
 necessities by which we live. To have half of 
 our population wholly uninitiated in this respect 
 is to court misunderstanding and an irreverent use 
 of wealth. 
 
 So far nothing has been said of aesthetics, but 
 on the border at least of this enterprise are flowers, 
 and no child having fellowship with them can 
 escape some degree of refinement. The well-kept 
 shrubs, trees, lawns, and flower beds are part of 
 the common wealth. They tell the passer-by of 
 
44 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 one form of good citizenship which the proprietor 
 or occupant of the premises is glad to practice. 
 Moreover, from the church garden there will be 
 flowers for the pulpit and flowers for the sick of 
 the parish. Surely the time has come when the 
 many slovenly and ill-kept church grounds should 
 be transformed into exhibits of good citizenship, 
 and the children, given leadership and opportunity, 
 will do this. The planting of a tree is the enrich- 
 ment of the state. 
 
 Those who live with little children are impressed 
 with their proclivity for nature worship. For 
 them at least the Maker of the universe must be 
 he whose handicraft is in stars and sun and moon, 
 clouds and rain, trees and flowers, and all growing 
 things. Is it not in the nature of a benediction 
 that their hands should help Him fashion some- 
 thing new, that the mystery of the life-process 
 should come to them clean and beautiful, and that 
 in all this they should lay the foimdation of good 
 citizenship in being workers together with God ? 
 
 Because of the cosmopolitan character of our 
 population and the child's quick assumption of 
 family or adult prejudice there should be some 
 effort on the part of the church school to keep the 
 child's judgment of alien races, as represented by 
 classmates and playmates, upon the basis of real 
 merit. Possibly at the present time there is some 
 danger of fiercely closing the door against values 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 45 
 
 whose only condemnation is that they are not 
 native American. It would be well for the chil- 
 dren to know how people of foreign birth say and 
 do certain things, sometimes with more aptness 
 and skill than we manifest, and to appreciate their 
 part in making one great, happy family of those 
 who have come together here from all quarters of 
 the globe. All are immigrants, all have or should 
 have a chance, and eminence and honor have been 
 achieved by representatives of every race. The 
 eagerness of the children of the foreign-born to 
 become and to be rated true Americans should be 
 met with cordial assistance, and the cheap epithets 
 which retard that process are not the utterances 
 of real patriotism. The neighbor's happiness is 
 ours, his health ours, his morality ours. Deficiency 
 in these, whether on his part or ours, is a mutual 
 loss. 
 
 Therefore, from the very first the stranger in our 
 midst, whether the shy newcomer to the school or 
 the immigrant in our neighborhood, is to be treated 
 as our guest, to be made at home, to be assisted 
 in all matters of speech and custom, to have our 
 greetings and good wishes, and to share in any 
 advantage we may have from our earlier arrival in 
 this good land. Let no one think this an easy task. 
 It will require line upon line and precept upon 
 precept, for there is very much of the primitive 
 in small children, and the person with pecuHarities, 
 
46 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 whether in speech, dress, or any deformity, is the 
 barbarian whose good treatment is secure only 
 after a large amount of social imagination has been 
 developed. Probably it is for this reason that the 
 untrained child is rude to the aged, thoughtless 
 of cripples, afraid of the deformed, and cruel to 
 those who are very obviously not of his social caste. 
 [ By mutual helpfulness and courtesy in the 
 church school, by helping one another in mastering 
 jessons and the smaller children in putting on their 
 wraps and rubbers, by sharing the best we have, 
 by giving preference to others in occupying the 
 ifavorite seat, and by all of that quiet and cheerful 
 concern which marks Christian breeding we may 
 preserve the gallantry which a misconceived 
 democracy threatens, and add ease and grace to 
 the process of living together. The charm of 
 democracy depends, after all, upon the presence 
 'of_ this spirit. Harsh and unyielding demands for 
 every least . particle of one's rights is inoperative 
 in either family or community living, and the fra- 
 grance of the American ideal is not that of a single 
 flower but rather the successfill blend of many. 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1. Discuss the music program of your school in its 
 bearing upon patriotism and citizenship. 
 
 2. Examine your school's use of pictures and other 
 emblems having civic value and report in detail to your 
 study group. 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 47 
 
 3. What civic lessons for children in about the third 
 and fourth grades do you find in the following stories: The 
 Good Samaritan, Joseph, Moses, David, Ruth ? 
 
 4. List the acts by which a child may prove himself a 
 good citizen in the home. 
 
 5. Do the same for the street. 
 
 6. For the playground. 
 
 7. For the day school. 
 
 8. For the Sunday school. 
 
 9. In what ways could your school acquaint the chil- 
 dren with public servants and bring about co-operation ? 
 
 10. Describe any gardening experiment which your 
 school has attempted. 
 
 1 1 . What public holidays do you observe and how ? 
 
 12. What have your pupils done to aid the Red Cross, 
 Liberty Loan, or the soldiers and sailors in any way? 
 
 13. For the older elementary, grades let your pupils list 
 the public properties which they use or enjoy and ascertain 
 their cost. 
 
 14. Have them also make an itemized statement show- 
 ing the annual cost per child for food, clothing, amuse- 
 ments, and benevolence. 
 
 15. Have the children describe their pets and exactly 
 how they care for them, or, if they have none, their plants 
 and toys and how they care for them. 
 
 16. Have reports of a week's observation covering deeds 
 of the following character: kindness to animals, playmates, 
 and aged, sick, or crippled persons; cotirtesy at home, on 
 the street, and in shop, car, or school; honesty as opposed 
 to immediate self-interest; cheerfulness against odds; 
 generosity with reference to things to eat, toys, chances to 
 play, or other opportunities for enjoyment; neatness as 
 to person and care of clothes; faithfulness in keeping 
 promises, being prompt, and doing exactly one's best. 
 
 (The Ust can be greatly extended and varied. It might 
 be well to make the individual child's assigrmient for the 
 week the observation of but one of these virtues, thus 
 covering a wide range with the help of each pupil; or, to 
 
48 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 work more extensively on the several virtues, having all 
 members of the class report on a single virtue assigned 
 week by week.) 
 
 17. Make inquiry as to how many of the children have 
 savings accounts and see what improvement in this respect 
 you can bring about in six months. 
 
 18. Ascertain how many homes have a story-hour and 
 keep record of how many adopt this custom while the 
 pupils are in your class. 
 
 19. Ascertain the nationalities represented in your class 
 and have a representative of each tell of some notable 
 person of his own race. 
 
 20. Plan some piece of work for the adornment or con- 
 venience of your classroom, or that of some other teacher, 
 or of the general assembly room, and have your pupils thus 
 contribute by their own effort and skill to the common good. 
 
 21. According to your own ingenuity and your knowledge 
 of the situation experiment with sealed orders somewhat as 
 follows: 
 
 Mary Russell 
 
 To be opened Monday, October 29, at 4:00 p.m. 
 
 The sealed envelope thus addressed might contain orders 
 such as: 
 
 Please use the inclosed money, $1 . 00, for flowers, or anything 
 else that you may choose, to cheer our classmate, Olive Bates, 
 who is sick and who lives at 417 Maple Street. Come prepared 
 next Sunday to report to the class exactly what you have done, 
 when you did it, and how our classmate is. 
 
 Your loving teacher, 
 
 Margaret Young 
 
 (This form is intended as suggestive only. The idea 
 could be used to cover reports on absentees, providing books, 
 Sunday-school material, and toys to the sick, or even for 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 49 
 
 recruiting new pupils to the school. Possibly for boys it 
 might be made a little more peremptory or military in tone.) 
 
 22. Get the older boys of the elementary grades to 
 report on pieces of co-operative work going on in the com- 
 munity, such as construction, paving, water installation, 
 bridge building, track elevation, or any similar under- 
 takings, which they usually watch with interest, and, on 
 the basis of their reports, elucidate citizenship as a co- 
 operative task. 
 
 23. Make an outline of a lesson on "Why the Saloon 
 Must Go." 
 
 24. With a week's notice, have a symposium by the 
 older children on what man living or dead has done the most 
 for America, with reasons for each verdict. 
 
 25. Similarly as to what woman holds this place and why. 
 
 26. On the basis of the weekly programs of moving 
 pictures to be exhibited in your immediate vicinity, ascer- 
 tain which, if any, have such civic value that your class of 
 older children might plan to go in a body with you as 
 guardian. Make a record of the impressions made on the 
 children as evidenced by their conversation at the time 
 and in class discussion on the following Sunday. 
 
 27. According to the grades under twelve years repre- 
 sented in your school, Ust the more important interests of 
 (a) boys and (b) girls which should serve as (i) opportunity 
 and (2) material for civic training. 
 
 28. Ascertain how many of the children go to the public 
 library, what stories they have heard told there during the 
 past month, and what books they have drawn and read. 
 
 29. Have the children state in their own words why the 
 public should be grateful to the following workers: doctor, 
 nurse, policeman, fireman, teacher, minister, mother, 
 locomotive engineer, towerman, lighthouse keeper, street 
 cleaner, sewer builder, milk inspector, garbage collector. 
 
50 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 30. Make a collection of biblical stories of patriotic and 
 civic worth and put them in form for effective telling to the 
 younger pupils. 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 Cabot, Ella Lyman (Editor). A Course in Citizenship. 
 
 This is the most useful single book for the teaching of civics 
 to children of elementary-school grade. The author is indebted 
 to it for many of his ideas and much of his bibliography. The 
 material, although selected and arranged for use in the public 
 schools, is equally valuable for the church school, and the book 
 is recommended as the best handbook for the teacher. 
 
 FOR THE PUPIL 
 
 1. In the Lower Grades 
 
 (The teacher wiU read or tell the story, or assign it for the 
 
 story-hour at home.) 
 Babbitt, EUen C. Jataka Tales. 
 Baldwin, James. American Book of Golden Deeds. 
 
 . Fijty Famous Stories Retold. 
 
 Cary, Phoebe. "A Leak in the Dike" {Poetical Works of 
 
 Alice and Phoebe Cary). 
 . "A Legend of the Northland" {Poetical Works of 
 
 Alice and Phoebe Cary). 
 Coe, F. E. The First Book of Stories for the Story Teller. 
 Stevenson, R. L. A Child's Garden of Verses. 
 Taylor, Bayard. Boys of Other Countries. 
 Wade, Mary H. The Wonder Workers. 
 
 2. In the Middle Grades 
 
 Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 
 Barton, Clara. History of the Red Cross. 
 Coe, F. E. Heroes of Everyday Life. 
 
Civic Training for Childhood 51 
 
 Hale, Edward E. The Man without a Country. 
 
 Hill, Mabel. Lessons for Junior Citizens. 
 
 Jewett, F. G. Town and City. 
 
 Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. 
 
 Lodge, H. C, and Roosevelt, T. Hero Tales from American 
 
 History. 
 Moffett, Cleveland. Careers of Danger and Daring. 
 Riis, Jacob. Children of the Tenements. 
 Sangster, M. E. Little Knights and Ladies. 
 Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. 
 Washington, B. T. Up from Slavery. 
 
 3. In the Older Elementary Grades 
 
 Dodge, M. M. Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. 
 
 Foote, A. E., and Skinner, A. W. Explorers and Founders 
 
 of America. 
 GrenfeU, W. T. Labrador. 
 Hasbrouck, Louise. The Boy's Parkman. 
 Kipling, R. The Seven Seas: Poems. 
 Lessons in Community and National Life. United States 
 
 Bureau of Education. Section C, Lessons 3, 5, 6, 
 
 and 8. 
 Montague, M. P. Closed Doors. 
 
 Gives sympathetic appreciation of deaf-mutes. 
 
 Perry, F. M., and Kingsley, N. F. Four American In- 
 ventors. 
 
 Pyle, Howard. Men of Iron. 
 
 . Otto of the Silver Hand. 
 
 Red Cross Magazine. 
 
 Roosevelt, T. "Roll of Honor of the New York PoHce," 
 Century Magazine, October, 1897. 
 
 Tappan, E. M. American Hero Stories. 
 
 Tolstoi, Leo. Twenty-three Tales. 
 
52 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 FOR THE TEACHERS 
 
 1. Of the Lower Grades 
 
 All the reading assigned for the children, so that the stories 
 may be told and discussed with sympathy and imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Aesop's Fables. 
 
 Bryant, S. C. Stories to Tell to Children. 
 
 Guitteau, W. B. Preparing for Citizenship. 
 
 Wyche, K. T. Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them. 
 
 2. Of the Middle Grades 
 
 Barnes, M. C. and C. L. The New America. 
 
 Brooks, E. S. The Century Book for Young Americans. 
 
 Dole, C. F. The Young Citizen. 
 
 Dunn, A. W. The Community and the Citizen. 
 
 Frayser, N. C. The Sunday School and Citizenship. 
 
 Gulliver, L. The Friendship of Nations. 
 
 3. Of the Older Elementary Grades 
 
 Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 
 Hutchinson, Woods. Handbook of Health. 
 Richman, J., and WaUach, I. R. Good Citizenship. 
 Roosevelt, T. American Ideals and Other Essays. 
 . The Winning of the West. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 CIVIC TRAINING FOR EARLY ADOLESCENCE 
 
 This chapter aims to indicate what the church 
 school may do in teaching civics to boys and girls 
 between the ages of twelve and fifteen years inclu- 
 sive. These four years are generally recognized 
 as covering the most critical period of development, 
 and their right use is of vast significance in deter- 
 mining social attitudes. It is not in point here 
 to enter into a description of the bodily changes 
 and mental characteristics which because of their 
 undoubted importance have possessed an almost 
 morbid interest for educators. No conscientious 
 teacher will attempt to impart civics or any other 
 subject without a knowledge of the distinctive 
 features of this most important period. 
 
 There is a larger civic element in existing 
 Sunday-school lessons for pupils of this age than 
 will be found for those of elementary grade. The 
 International Graded Series treats temperance in 
 three biographical lessons with John B. Gough, 
 Neal Dow, and Frances E. Willard as the sub- 
 jects for study. The Scribner Series has a lesson 
 also on Frances E. Willard and, like the Inter- 
 national, one or two on self-control. But in the 
 
 S3 
 
54 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 second intermediate year, the first quarter, the 
 Scribner Series provides twelve lessons on civics 
 which are very valuable. They cover the right 
 to life, property, fair dealing, rest, truth, and the 
 rights of parents, animals, the unprotected, and the 
 state. Reverence in speech and conduct, justice 
 in punishments, and conduct and law are also 
 discussed. 
 
 In the University of Chicago Publications in 
 Religious Education a great deal of the entire 
 course entitled Problems of Boyhood bears a sig- 
 nificant relation to citizenship, while the subject is 
 specifically treated in Study XVII. Similarly the 
 Y.M.C.A. course. Life Questions of High-School 
 Boys, has civic value as a whole and treats politics 
 explicitly in Study XIII. 
 
 In Section B of Lessons in Community and 
 National Life, pubKshed by the United States 
 Bureau of Education, Lesson 4 on "Feeding a 
 City," Lesson 5 on ''Saving the Soil," and Lesson 8 
 on "Finding a Job" contain valuable material. 
 
 The Sunday-school session alone, which is 
 inadequate for the younger children, becomes even 
 less effective during this age, and a civic program 
 based upon a session so temporary and restricted 
 cannot make a deep impression on these busy and 
 enthusiastic people. The fact also of a marked 
 tendency toward organization and self-government, 
 appearing at about this time, favors the formation 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 55 
 
 of groups with greater solidarity and more occasions 
 for collective action. Dictation becomes less 
 effective, deliberation and debate more valuable. 
 Action and variety are necessary. The former 
 "what?" and "why?" of the child, which were 
 largely in the nature of a game by which to extract 
 remarks from adults, become more rational and 
 inquisitive. 
 
 The gangs in which boys find such satisfaction 
 and which are formed under the urge of sex con- 
 sciousness, play necessities, and mutual protec- 
 tion are potential for great gains in citizenship 
 if properly handled, and productive of serious 
 harm if neglected. Ideally the class in the church 
 school is also the club or a component division of 
 the club. Such an arrangement will promote all 
 the group activities, provide education in self- 
 government and discipline, and give value to the 
 week-day meetings for social, athletic, and civic 
 ends. 
 
 Such organization, effected for the boys and 
 girls separately, is favorable to an action program 
 which will enlarge the group experience of collec- 
 tive effort beyond the possibilities of the ordinary 
 Sunday-school class. Electing officers, determin- 
 ing policy, financing the group needs, appropriating 
 funds, appointing committees, receiving and acting 
 upon reports, promoting freedom of discussion, and 
 making those adjustments by which majority rule 
 
56 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 becomes enlightened and group endeavor becomes 
 unified will of itself supply valuable civic training. 
 
 The effect of this method in mitigating the con- 
 ceit of those who have always had their own way, 
 in reducing to practical, workable terms the 
 luxuriant ideals of the more creative minds of the 
 group, and in defining the area of substantial agree- 
 ment that will enlist the support of all is altogether 
 an asset for democracy. Also the ways by which 
 the group must undertake to inform itself by refer- 
 ence to committees and by awaiting reports mean 
 much for social and civic sanity. The rudiments 
 of parliamentary procedure can be mastered only 
 in some such way as this. 
 
 Substantial gains in Sunday-school discipline 
 also follow these attempts at self-government. 
 The esprit de corps attained in the conduct of social 
 and athletic affairs carries over to the Sunday 
 session, and the club adviser, who is also the teacher 
 of the class, holds his position by its choice and as 
 one of its number. In contrast with the old situa- 
 tion, where the teacher was a sort of enemy alien, 
 he is now a friendly ally, while success or failure 
 depends upon the class as such. For the individual 
 pupil the disciplinary effect of the judgment of his 
 peers is far greater than that of his elders, however 
 wise. Discipline becomes automatic and social. 
 
 However, it should be emphasized that the 
 teacher who expects these happy Sunday experi- 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 57 
 
 ences and this growth of his pupils in good citizen- 
 ship must be bound into the Hfe of the group by 
 sharing fully in the athletic victories and defeats, 
 the social pastimes and specialties, whether of 
 collecting, hiking, camping, or what not, which 
 constitute the apperceptive mass and the social 
 cement of his little commonwealth. If this "we" 
 consciousness is not inclusive of the teacher by 
 virtue of the fact that he or she will not or cannot 
 pay the price in generous self-giving, then all the 
 discomforts of the superimposed official may be 
 expected, and the pupils are expert in this matter, 
 having a range that runs all the way from inatten- 
 tion, through comedy, to collective opposition. 
 
 For boys the simplest and most effective form 
 of the class-club organization for citizenship is 
 the Boy Scouts of America. No other movement 
 compares with this in locating and using the inter- 
 est centers of boy life, in stimulating and stand- 
 ardizing civic conduct, and in bringing about 
 co-operation with the church. If the boy's "be- 
 longing" were confined to but one organization 
 and his library to but one book, his future as a 
 citizen would be bright by virtue of his scout 
 membership alone and his civic education superior 
 through his possession and use of the best existing 
 book on citizenship — the official Handbook for Boys. 
 It is a very remarkable thing that the most suc- 
 cessful pedagogy for this age and the most virile 
 
58 The Church School of CiTizENSHn> 
 
 religion also should have been supplied, not from 
 the formal institutions school and church, as such, 
 but by an outside movement with no canons to 
 defend and only boy nature to dictate its policies. 
 Happily, however, there is not the slightest an- 
 tagonism between the scout movement and 
 methods and the historic organizations which are 
 making generous use of all its privileges. 
 
 Before indicating the details of co-operation 
 between the church school and the scout troop it 
 may be well to consider some of the elements of 
 scouting that have a direct bearing on training for 
 citizenship. First among these is the avowed 
 purpose of the movement. 
 
 The Boy Scouts of America is a corporation formed by a 
 group of men who are anxious that the boys of America 
 should come under the influence of this movement and be 
 built up in all that goes to make character and citizenship. 
 .... A scout knows his city as well as he knows the trails 
 in the forest. He can guide a stranger wherever he desires 
 to go, and this knowledge of short cuts saves him many 
 needless steps. He knows where the police stations are 
 located, where the fire-alarm boxes are placed, where the 
 nearest doctor lives, where the hospitals are, and which is 
 the quickest way to reach them. He knows the names 
 of the city officials and the nature of their duties. A scout 
 is proud of his city and freely offers his services when he 
 can help. 
 
 A scout is a patriot and is always ready to serve his 
 country at a minute's notice. He loves Old Glory and 
 knows the proper forms of offering it respect. He never 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 59 
 
 permits its folds to touch the ground. He knows how his 
 country is governed and who are the men in high authority. 
 He desires a strong body, an alert mind, and an uncon- 
 querable spirit, so that he may serve his country in any 
 need. He patterns his life after those of great Americans 
 who have had a high sense of duty and who have served the 
 nation well. 
 
 A scout chooses as his motto "Be Prepared," and he 
 seeks to prepare himself for anything — to rescue a com- 
 panion, to ford a stream, to gather firewood, to help 
 strangers, to distinguish right from wrong, to serve his 
 feUowmen, his country, and his God — always to "Be 
 Prepared."^ 
 
 The great aim of the Boy Scouts of America is to make 
 every boy scout a better citizen. It aims to touch him 
 physically— in the camp craft and woodcraft of the outdoor 
 life in order that he may have strength in after-days to give 
 the best he has to the city and community in which he lives 
 as well as to the nation of which he is a part. It seeks to 
 develop him by observation and the knowing of things far 
 and near, so that later on when he enters business life he 
 may be alert and keen and so be able to add to the wealth 
 of the nation. It teaches him chivalry and unselfishness, 
 duty, charity, thrift, and loyalty, so that no matter what 
 should happen in the business, or social, or national life, 
 he may always be a true gentleman, seeking to give sym- 
 pathy, help, encouragement, and good cheer to those about 
 him. It teaches him life-saving in order that he may be 
 able in dire accidents and peril by land and sea to know 
 just what to do to relieve others of suffering. It teaches 
 him endurance in order that he may guard his health by 
 being temperate, eating pure food, keeping himself clean, 
 so that being possessed of good health he may be always 
 
 ' Handbook for Boys, pp. v, xii. 
 
6o The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 ready to serve his country in the hour of her need. It 
 teaches him patriotism by telling him about the country 
 he Uves in, her history, her army and navy, in order that he 
 may become a good citizen and do those things which every 
 citizen ought to do to make the community and land that 
 he lives in the best community and land in the world. 
 
 Good citizenship means to the boy scout not merely the 
 doing of things which he ought to do when he becomes a 
 man, such as voting, keeping the law, and paying his taxes, 
 but the looking for opportunities to do good turns by 
 safeguarding the interests of the community and by the 
 giving of himself in unselfish service to the town or city 
 and even the nation of which he is a part. It means that 
 he will seek public office when the public office needs him. 
 It means that he will stand for the equal opportunity and 
 justice which the Declaration of Independence and Con- 
 stitution guarantee. It means that in every duty of life 
 he may be on the right side and loyal to the best interests 
 of the state and nation. By the "good turn" that he does 
 daily as a boy scout he is training himself for the unselfish 
 service that our cities and land need so much.' 
 
 So successful has the movement been in carrying 
 out these aims with its two hundred thousand 
 members in this country that Congress has granted 
 it a federal charter of incorporation and the 
 United States government receives its reports 
 annually and has intrusted the boys with large and 
 serious duties in the sale of Liberty Bonds, in coast 
 patrol, conservation, and food production, and in 
 many other ways. Prominent educators such as 
 President Emeritus Eliot and President Lowell, of 
 
 ' Handbook for Boys, pp. ii, 12. 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 6i 
 
 Harvard, Dean Russell, of Columbia, President 
 Hadley, of Yale, and many others have given it 
 hearty indorsement, while among its officers and 
 outspoken in its behalf will be found such statesmen 
 as Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Secretary Baker, and 
 Major- General Wood. 
 
 Of the scout troops 20 per cent will be found in 
 communities of less than 1,000 population, 5,102 
 troops are connected with religious organizations, 
 and there are 2,000 clergymen serving as scout 
 masters. For the year 19 16 the administrative 
 expense was $135,484.67 and there were 54,345 
 men over twenty-one years of age rendering 
 voluntary service. Of these, 8,970 were scout 
 masters. The local councils are composed of 
 leaders in business, religion, and education. Mem- 
 bership in the governing body of the Boy Scouts of 
 America is restricted to citizens of the United 
 States. 
 
 The attitude of the movement toward religion is 
 not merely passive and tolerant. While encour- 
 aging loyalty to one's religious group, whether 
 Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, it at the 
 same time specifically enforces the importance of 
 the religious element in the training of the boy. 
 Men who are to receive certificates of leadership 
 in carrying out the scout program must subscribe 
 to the provision in the Constitution, By-Laws, and 
 Scout Oath "specifically recognizing an obhgation 
 
62 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to God as the ruling and leading power in the 
 universe." At the same time the movement is 
 absolutely non-sectarian. 
 
 The scout oath is as follows: 
 
 On my honor I will do my best : 
 
 1. To do my duty to God and my country, and to obey 
 the scout law. 
 
 2. To help other people at all times. 
 
 3. To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, 
 and morally straight. 
 
 The scout law states: 
 
 1. A scout is trustworthy. A scout's honor is to be 
 trusted. If he were to violate his honor by telling a lie, 
 or by cheating, or by not doing exactly a given task, when 
 trusted on his honor, he may be directed to hand over his 
 scout badge. 
 
 2. A scout is loyal. He is loyal to all to whom loyalty is 
 due: his scout leader, his home, and parents and country. 
 
 3. A scout is helpful. He must be prepared at any 
 time to save life, help injured persons, and share the 
 home duties. He must do at least one good turn to somebody 
 every day. 
 
 4. A scout is friendly. He is a friend to all and a brother 
 to every other scout. 
 
 5. A scout is courteous. He is pohte to all, especially to 
 women, children, old people, and the weak and helpless. 
 He must not take pay for being helpful or courteous. 
 
 6. A scout is kind. He is a friend to animals. He will 
 not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, but will 
 strive to save and protect all harmless Ufe. 
 
 7. A scout is obedient. He obeys his parents, scout 
 master, patrol leader, and all other duly constituted author- 
 ities. 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 63 
 
 8. A scout is cheerful. He smiles whenever he can. His 
 obedience to orders is prompt and cheery. He never shirks 
 nor grumbles at hardships. 
 
 9. A scout is thrifty. He does not wantonly destroy 
 property. He works faithfully, wastes nothing, and makes 
 the best use of his opportunities. He saves his money so 
 that he may pay his own way, be generous to those in need, 
 and helpful to worthy objects. He may work for pay but 
 must not receive tips for courtesies or good turns. 
 
 10. A scout is brave. He has the courage to face danger 
 in spite of fear and to stand up for the right against the 
 coaxings of friends or the jeers or threats of enemies, and 
 defeat does not down him. 
 
 11. ^ scout is clean. He keeps clean in body and 
 thought, stands for clean speech, clean sport, clean habits, 
 and travels with a clean crowd. 
 
 12. A scout is reverent. He is reverent toward God. He 
 is faithful in his religious duties and respects the convictions 
 of others in matters of custom and religion.' 
 
 It is not necessary to go into the details of organ- 
 ization here or to indicate how these ideals are 
 implanted in the neuro-muscular system of the 
 boy by performance. In fact, all is action. There 
 is not a ''preachy" thing in the system. Merit is 
 objective, and of the fifty-eight classes of activity 
 in which merit badges may be won all have civic 
 value, but more noticeably agriculture, architec- 
 ture, art, athletics, aviation, bird-study, bugling, 
 camping, civics, conservation, craftsmanship, fire- 
 manship, first aid, forestry, gardening, interpreting, 
 
 ^Handbook for Boys, pp. 32-34. 
 
64 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 life-saving, marksmanship, pathfinding, personal 
 health, pioneering, pubHc health, safety first, 
 signaling, and surveying. In 1916, 14,947 merit 
 badges were awarded. This fact, however, is no 
 adequate measure of the effect of scouting on the 
 boyhood of the country. The whole fraternity 
 and a large number of boys not included in the 
 membership feel the pull of wholesome civic ideals 
 and engage in the fascinating program. 
 
 Reports constantly coming in from commu- 
 nities all over the land show wonderful activity 
 in clean-up campaigns, animal protection, aiding 
 police, assisting the Red Cross, rescuing the drown- 
 ing, exterminating flies and mosquitoes, fire preven- 
 tion, and neighborhood surveys. In connection 
 with the fiftieth annual encampment of the G.A.R. 
 at Kansas City, Missouri, the following resolu- 
 tion was passed : 
 
 Whereas, The organization of Boy Scouts has rendered 
 a unique and useful service to the G.A.R. on the occasion 
 of the fiftieth encampment ; therefore be it 
 
 Resolved, That a proper recognition of the service be 
 made and that the commander-in-chief be authorized to 
 appoint a committee of three who shall have power to select 
 and secure appropriate medals for presentation to the Boy 
 Scouts of Kansas City in grateful appreciation of their 
 efficient service. 
 
 Incidentally the movement is enlisting the 
 finest type of business and professional men in 
 giving a very personal form of social service and in 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 65 
 
 rendering such aid to the nation as has not been 
 commonly the practice of our most efficient men. 
 The reflex benefit to the manhood engaged in this 
 remarkable work with boys is not the least of its 
 assets. 
 
 In addition to the bonds which bind this great 
 army of boys together, such as motto, badges, uni- 
 form, oath, and law, there is an unexcelled boys' 
 magazine known as Boys'' Life, having a monthly 
 circulation of 100,000 copies. Taken all in all the 
 church school that intends to teach citizenship 
 could not ask any better device for its twelve- 
 to fifteen-year-old boys than the Boy Scouts of 
 America. 
 
 The scout's observations, which tend to become 
 remarkably keen and accurate, and his under- 
 takings in all phases of good citizenship will 
 furnish better material for class use than any text- 
 book, and the realities of right living will come home 
 with great force when taken from the very texture 
 of life in the making. The teacher who has been 
 the story-teller at the camp fire and the respon- 
 sible director in duties that must be exactly done, 
 not only will be free from disciplinary problems 
 in the class session, but will be the trusted sponsor 
 for all of those heroes, biblical and secular, who 
 fire the soul of youth with nobility and high 
 resolve. The canon of biography for religious 
 education on its civic side must be kept open, and 
 
66 The Chuech School of Citizenship 
 
 the real leader will introduce the boys to great 
 citizens both of the long ago and of today.^ For 
 adventure reading of the right sort and for informa- 
 tion on craft technique the volumes constituting 
 Every Boy's Library, published by the Boy Scouts 
 of America, are excellent. 
 
 Since such a movement is now well established 
 and heartily indorsed by those most interested in 
 good citizenship, since it is entirely friendly to the 
 church and offers methods of work with boys that 
 no individual church could otherwise devise and 
 carry out, might not the church school of citizen- 
 ship require all of its boys in the twelfth- to 
 fifteenth-year period to take scouting in regular 
 course ? And in pursuance of this plan would 
 it not be well for the church to select for training 
 and commission as scout masters a corps of her 
 finest young men ? The most serious problem at 
 present confronting this greatest single movement 
 for good citizenship in the United States is that 
 of securing enough trained scout masters of the 
 required age and of the right moral stamp. The 
 church should supply men not only for her own 
 needs but for those of the entire community. 
 This is clearly part of her civic duty. 
 
 For the girls of this period a similarly whole- 
 some movement has been begun in the organization 
 of the Camp Fire Girls. Possibly the restrictions 
 
 ' See list at end of this chapter. 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 67 
 
 of the past with the less obvious need of training 
 girls for citizenship, and the fact that they are less 
 gregarious and democratic than boys, has made the 
 movement somewhat more modest in scope than 
 that of the Boy Scouts of America. The camp 
 fire movement, however, while observing the 
 differentiation that should obtain in the training 
 of boys and girls respectively, has done more than 
 any other organized effort to restore to girls the 
 paradise of the open coimtry and to interpret in 
 terms of beauty and service a woman's duty to 
 home and cormnunity. 
 
 The Camp Fire Girls now number upward of 
 100,000 and are increasing at the rate of about 
 3,000 new members per month. This organiza- 
 tion, like that of the scouts, gets its chief civic 
 value in organizing and standardizing conduct in 
 the home and in society. The value of such an 
 institution, which is both a dynamo for good 
 deeds and a court for their recognition, is almost 
 inestimable. The lamentable efforts of school 
 methods, which have become almost wholly 
 ideational and physically passive, are offset by a 
 vigorous action program attached to the full round 
 of the child's daily life. 
 
 Space does not permit a full description of the 
 organization and ritual of the Camp Fire Girls. 
 Each group is composed of six or more girls over 
 twelve years of age, with a guardian who must be 
 
68 The Church School or Citizenship 
 
 at least eighteen years old. The symbolism is 
 built up about fire as the mystic center of home life 
 and the camp as typical of free life and com- 
 petency in the great out-of-doors. The watch- 
 word, "Wohelo," is a composite of work, health, 
 and love, which describe the three cardinal aims 
 of the order. There are three progressive classes 
 of members: Wood Gatherer, Fire Maker, and 
 Torch Bearer. The applicant for admission to the 
 order, beginning with the class of Wood Gatherer, 
 declares her desire to obey the law of the camp 
 fire, which is "/o seek beauty, give service, pursue 
 knowledge, he trustworthy, hold on to health, glorify 
 work, he happy.''^ If in the course of two months 
 she has performed the seven specified requirements 
 she is admitted and given the camp fire ring to 
 wear. At thirteen she may apply for admission 
 to the Fire Maker class, stating the following ideal 
 as her desire: ^^ As fuel is brought to the fire, so I 
 purpose to bring my strength, my ambition, my 
 hearts desire, my joy, and my sorrow to the fire of 
 human kind. For I will tend as my fathers have 
 tended, and my father^s fathers, since time began, 
 the fire that is called the love of man for man, the love 
 of man for God." A score or more of elective 
 honors showing very practical and worthy achieve- 
 ment must have been secured before admission 
 will be granted. At fifteen, if the girl has won 
 sufficient honors and has shown powers of steady 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 69 
 
 leadership qualifying her as an assistant to the 
 guardian, she may become a torch bearer. Her 
 statement of purpose is: '' That light which has been 
 given to me I desire to pass undimmed to others." 
 
 Honors are granted in seven departments as 
 follows: Home Craft, Health Craft, Camp Craft, 
 Hand Craft, Nature Lore, Business, Patriotism. 
 The book of the Camp Fire Girls lists some three 
 hundred and fifty of these practical accomplish- 
 ments by which the member may secure promotion. 
 A few, selected at random, are as follows: 
 
 Make bread in two ways, and two kinds of cake. 
 
 Gather two quarts of wild berries or fruits and make them 
 into a dessert. 
 
 Pick, dress, and cook a fowl. 
 
 Air and make one bed a day for two months. 
 
 Sleep out of doors or with wide-open windows for two 
 consecutive months between October and April. 
 
 Swim one hundred yards. 
 
 Walk forty miles in any ten days. 
 
 Make a dress. 
 
 Identify and describe twenty wild birds. 
 
 Raise a crop of sweet corn, pop corn, or potatoes. 
 
 Save 10 per cent of your allowance for three months. 
 
 Describe the work of three organizations interested in 
 labor conditions of women. 
 
 Prepare plans designed to improve the conditions under 
 which girls work in your community. 
 
 Dr. Luther H. Gulick, the president of the 
 organization, says, ''Camp Fire Girls exist pri- 
 marily to serve the community — all of it, boys 
 
70 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 and girls, men and women — by means of that 
 'applied personal affection' which is their field of 
 chief superiority," and, "This is the patriotism 
 of Camp Fire Girls: to serve their country and 
 their times by consecrating to it the most precious 
 quality of womanhood; to bring about more 
 sympathy and love in the world; to make daily 
 living more wholesome and happy and large; to 
 convert temptation toward evil into opportunity 
 for righteousness." 
 
 The organization has enlisted its membership 
 in food conservation and in various forms of war 
 aid and is highly commended by President Wilson. 
 The church school of citizenship could do nothing 
 better for the civic training of girls in this period 
 than to require camp fire membership and to recom- 
 mend its choicest young women for appointment 
 as guardians. 
 
 In view of the fact that at the age of fourteen 
 boys and girls may leave school and go to work, 
 and of the certainty that very many will be 
 employed at sixteen years of age, it would be well 
 to give some attention to the vocational interest 
 in the period under consideration. While the 
 assumption that young people of this age are 
 socially competent is indefensible and the economic 
 policy that thrusts them into industry is unprofit- 
 able, yet the church, while working for larger 
 reforms, must strive to conserve the character 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 71 
 
 value and civic worth of those who are prematurely 
 drafted for the world's work. 
 
 So very much depends upon the selection of a 
 suitable type of work and upon physical and moral 
 safety in the place of employment, and so many 
 can be kept in school for better equipment if only 
 wise counsel and personal help are given, that the 
 subject can hardly be avoided in a class that claims 
 to deal with life. The investment of a life is a 
 sufficiently sacred matter to the individual and a 
 sufficiently important concern to the state that 
 the church school need make no apology for its 
 consideration. 
 
 For society's highest welfare both girls and 
 boys should plan and prepare for self-support and 
 economic independence. Representative leaders 
 in the various occupations open to young men and 
 young women should be invited to address their 
 respective classes for the purpose of interpreting 
 at least the standard forms of work available in 
 the community, or possibly in the coimtry at large. 
 For the most part these young persons know neither 
 themselves nor the available positions in any ade- 
 quate way; and as for the social significance or 
 Christian service inhering in the various trades 
 and professions, no very sympathetic or illuminat- 
 ing analysis has ever been made. Christian 
 representatives from the inside can perhaps 
 supply the rising generation with those ideals 
 
72 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 which, although hitherto slender and overgrown 
 by "business first" and rank industrialism, must 
 yet prevail if democracy is to progress from a 
 shibboleth to the full emancipation of life. 
 
 It may be that some of these rash young idealists 
 will really believe that life is greater than wealth 
 and will in time make those demonstrations of 
 equity and brotherly love which will do more to 
 Christianize the world of affairs than the preaching 
 of many sermons. Nothing could be more fatal 
 for good citizenship than that these beginners 
 should enter into work, or finally attain position, 
 with only that gloss of religion which guarantees 
 respectability and without the revolutionary pur- 
 pose of Jesus. 
 
 It will be somewhat easier to clarify the civic 
 aspects of the standard professions than to socialize 
 industry and business. Law, medicine, teaching, 
 preaching, and journalism are more readily con- 
 ceived as public service, and a relatively large 
 number of church young people will be so protected 
 from the economic demand that they may take 
 time to prepare for one or another of these profes- 
 sions. To learn something of the exact nature of 
 these "callings" and to consider them as ways of 
 serving the pubhc, to study their codes of honor 
 and to become acquainted with a first-rate Chris- 
 tian representative of each may be a great aid in 
 awakening a vocational interest and in giving it 
 intelligent direction when awakened. 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 73 
 
 For the industrial, commercial, and professional 
 fields alike the teacher will do well to conduct class 
 visits to the plants, stores, offices, hospitals, courts, 
 and other places where the various forms of work 
 are in process. It is a good plan also to have each 
 pupil make an honest inventory of himself some- 
 what after the pattern to be found in Parsons' 
 Choosing a Vocation or that of the "Find Yourself 
 Campaign" of the Y.M.C.A. The real question 
 is not, "How can I make money?" but, "How can 
 I best serve my fellow-men ?" 
 
 In addition to such an inventory each pupil 
 might make out a personal-expense account show- 
 ing his cost to society to date and his return thereon. 
 This is fascinating and often produces new moral 
 attitudes that make for good citizensTiip. When 
 the youth realizes from his own calculation what 
 portion of society's wealth he has used up in food, 
 clothing, education, medical care, recreation, and 
 in all the service rendered him, he is much more 
 likely to resolve upon the only self-respecting 
 course open to him- — that of giving a full return 
 for value received. The avenues of this contribu- 
 tion, such as family, school, city, state, and 
 nation, become more real to him, and the real 
 character of the slacker or grafter who is content 
 to receive these benefits without gratitude and 
 the full purpose and effort to bring a return with 
 profit to the society that has nurtured him is clearly 
 seen. 
 
74 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 The importance of bringing home this lesson of 
 costs cannot be overemphasized, for the disposition 
 to take all the benefits of society for granted and 
 to consider one's future wholly one's own affair is 
 very marked in American life. The ingrate can- 
 not become a good citizen. Moreover, such a 
 canvass brings into moral review one's personal 
 budget, revealing any tendencies toward extrava- 
 gance and curbing the indulgence in luxury at 
 other people's expense. The good citizen must 
 be a producer of some form of wealth, material or 
 spiritual, in excess of society's expenditure on him. 
 
 The class should also be encouraged in a wide 
 range of observation and experiment in civic 
 affairs, with descriptions and reports that afford 
 material for class discussion. All that can be 
 learned relative to the community's health depart- 
 ment, water supply, housing, fire department, 
 court system, taxation, streets, police, etc., should 
 be brought in for discussion under the general idea 
 of what kind of a community we should have if 
 it were entirely Christian. Experience has shown 
 that the boys in particular will respond to a study 
 of the police and fire departments, and in addition 
 to detailed information about the systems will 
 delight in writing up the heroes of the force. We 
 have reached the time when there is just as much 
 that interests the girls in other departments of 
 local government and when in preparation for 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 75 
 
 their place in women's clubs and as fully quali- 
 fied citizens their training is considered of equal 
 importance. 
 
 This is the age for group g^mes, and probably 
 interest and participation in athletic contests are 
 now at their height. A little later there will be 
 less time for play, and the more serious concerns 
 of life will be claiming more attention. In addi- 
 tion to work or vocational preparation social inter- 
 est between the sexes will be breaking up the gang 
 formations of this period. Much, therefore, should 
 be made of the solid group formation of the athletic 
 team in order that the cardinal virtues of successful 
 group behavior may become second nature. 
 
 The organized game is probably the most social 
 and adaptable means of laying the civic foundations 
 of square dealing, strenuous effort, decision, and 
 self-control. The church school that has no con- 
 cern for the play life of these boys and girls is for- 
 feiting half of its civic opportunity so far as they 
 are concerned. To be ignorant of the behavior of 
 one's pupils in the great excitement and character- 
 revealing tests of organized athletics is much the 
 same as for a blind man to practice marksmanship. 
 Sometimes your most accommodating and suave 
 class member is the object of scorn and a discredit 
 to religion because his associates, having seen his 
 moral nature stripped in play, know him for what 
 he is. 
 
76 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 First among the civic benefits of play is the safe 
 discharge of the surplus energy and hilarity which 
 otherwise register against the peace and order 
 of society. The wave movement of young life 
 with foaming crests of enthusiasm and troughs of 
 despond is pretty well known, and the value of 
 play consists in offering wholesome impact for the 
 surge of life, and attractive, objective interest for 
 its intermittent ebb. The group effect of this 
 swing of youth runs far beyond the individual's 
 range. He is caught up, energized, intoxicated. 
 Youth amazes itself as well as the community by 
 what it will do collectively every now and again 
 through sheer animal spirits. Such occasions as 
 the Fourth of July, Halloween, New Year's Eve, 
 and even Saturday night may result in very bad 
 civic conduct if adequate provision to meet these 
 situations has not been made in organized recrea- 
 tion and play. Later on the misdirected spree 
 proclivities will find expression in debauch, and he 
 who has been uneducated in the use of leisure will 
 contribute more to the saloon than to his home and 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Another civic value of an adequate play program 
 is the creation of aggressive virtue. So much good- 
 ness lacks power of attack. It plays safe, avoids 
 scandal, keeps out of jail, and is distinguished by 
 what it does not do. Strenuous games promote 
 athletic goodness, an appreciation of issues, and a 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 77 
 
 disposition to fight hard in a good cause. They 
 who have fought it out so often in the field of sport, 
 who have done their best against whatever odds, 
 will, other things being equal, make the best 
 citizens. They put effort in place of fatalism, and 
 self -expenditure over against the onset of evil. 
 
 Play also teaches abandon, the ability to deliver 
 one's self heartily and wholly in a given direction. 
 It is a great thing for a community or nation to 
 have citizens of this sort. So many public move- 
 ments, clearly beneficial, languish for want of that 
 out-and-out support which is the psychology of 
 public success; and situations which are very 
 dangerous for those who dally with them are 
 resolved into epochs of advance by those who go 
 full steam ahead. A lethargic citizenship along 
 with that which, for whatever reason of self- 
 concern or intellectual subtleties, cannot take 
 firm ground on clear moral issues is a constant 
 menace to progressive democracy. 
 
 Closely allied to this phase of civic virtue is the 
 power of decision. Every move of the athletic 
 game, every new situation created, demands deci- 
 sion. Unwavering attention, quick judgment, 
 execution — these are the inexorable demands of 
 the game. In the good player the whole action 
 comes to- have the ease and rapidity of a reflex. 
 Now it is true that citizenship calls for the reflective 
 rather than the emotional judgment of the voter, 
 
78 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 but it is equally true that those who watch the 
 political game with alertness and whose partisan- 
 ship is ardently and steadily with righteousness 
 can and do decide their own moves with speed and 
 effectiveness. The political trickery with which 
 the public is afflicted is sprung before the opposi- 
 tion is organized. The alertness of the good citizen 
 and of those who seek righteousness in public 
 affairs is quite as important as good intentions. 
 
 America cannot pride herself on obedience to 
 law. There may be many excuses, such as the 
 bewildering multiplicity of laws, the "foreign 
 element," and all that sort of thing, but the fact 
 remains that we are a notably lawless people. We 
 have lawless children who develop into lawless 
 citizens, and the native-born are among the worst. 
 Prompt obedience is almost an unknown experience 
 to many boys and girls. Sometimes despairing 
 parents try boarding or military schools, and those 
 who have no means try the juvenile court and the 
 reformatory. It would be a good thing if all would 
 try the organized game. 
 
 Here is one of these whimsical, indulged, and 
 therefore antisocial boys. The slight requirements 
 of co-operation in the city home or the for- 
 lorn limitations of the slums, the absentee or pre- 
 occupied parents, and numberless other reasons 
 have deprived him of the old-fashioned discipline 
 of obedience. He has had a very soft time in that 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 79 
 
 respect. He has found that blufif will work and 
 that threats are empty. 
 
 Let us take him into our basket-ball team for 
 his and the country's good. Give him the posi- 
 tion of guard. Let him wear the uniform and feel 
 the pressure of the expectation and judgment of 
 his peers in play. If the opposing forward tries 
 to pass the ball or to throw a goal it is his business 
 to block it. He cannot say "I don't feel like it," 
 or trust to luck that his opponent will fail. He 
 must be on the spot. He must do his duty. The 
 penalty for neglect or for anything less than prompt 
 obedience to the demands of the situation is the 
 censure of those whose judgment for the time 
 being is the only fearful thing that can reach his 
 soul. He dare not discredit his team and lose his 
 position. The demand upon him makes him 
 obedient. With this social pressure upon him 
 he goes through the act of prompt obedience thou- 
 sands of times and up to the very point of exhaus- 
 tion. Indeed he calls up reserves of strength not 
 hitherto used in order to render this obedience. 
 
 Is it too great a strain upon faith to believe that 
 such drill in social obedience in the consuming 
 interest of play may under wise guidance be carried 
 over to other social situations where instead of the 
 indolent and whimsical citizen and the selfishly 
 disobedient we shall have the man who can be 
 depended upon to do his duty ? 
 
8o The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 It is especially desirable also that under party 
 government with its rough-and-tumble campaigns 
 we maintain the best features of true sportsman- 
 ship. The false idea that one's opponent must be 
 not only defeated but also disgraced comes over 
 from the neglected and unsupervised play life of 
 the community, where what might have been true 
 sport under right leadership and standards has 
 become the ruthless win-at-any-price encounter 
 with all the attendant trickery, bluff, vulgarity, 
 profanity, and abuse of the umpire. The civic 
 value of play for this age of group games and 
 strenuous contests depends wholly upon good 
 organization and clean standards. Otherwise the 
 ascendancy of the bully favors the might-makes- 
 right policy, and meanness and cheating come to 
 be adopted as the approved method of getting 
 ahead. It is a very important part of the respon- 
 sibility of those who will shape citizenship to see 
 to it that the community's play is education in 
 getting along with opponent and colleague and 
 in obedience to the rules. 
 
 Much is being said of loyalty, without which the 
 community or nation cannot survive. But next 
 to home experience the greatest lessons in loyalty 
 are learned in team play. There is some fallacy 
 in the doctrine of universal, undifferentiated 
 benevolence. It is unfocused, a blank stare into 
 infinity. The proving-ground upon which right 
 relations with all people must begin needs definite 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 8i 
 
 boundaries. These may be widened with the 
 extension of experience, but at first adjustment to 
 the concrete group is essential. The team which 
 represents church or neighborhood, wears the com- 
 mon uniform, subordinates its individual members 
 to group achievement, apportions praise or blame, 
 and holds together through thick and thin gives 
 intensive training in loyalty. 
 
 The assignment of position on the basis of group 
 efficiency rather than on that of the player's per- 
 sonal glory, and the acceptance of that method, 
 develop a loyalty whose cost is keenly felt and 
 whose worth is correspondingly real. There can 
 be no finer discipline for democracy. To sub- 
 stitute the useful for the spectacular, to convert 
 personal competition into united group action, to 
 do your best for the common cause wherever as- 
 signed, to learn that the total eflfect in such har- 
 mony is more than the sum of individual effort, 
 and to know that the united body is something 
 other and more than its constituent members, that 
 it carries over a spirit and power of its own — this 
 is insight into the meaning of state and nation. 
 
 There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night — 
 Ten to make and the match to win — 
 A bumping pitch and a Winding light, 
 An hour to play and the last man in. 
 And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat 
 Or the selfish hope of a season's fame, 
 But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote: 
 "Play up! play up! and play the game ! " 
 
82 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 The sand of the desert is sodden red — 
 Red with the wreck of a square that broke — 
 The GatUng's jammed and the colonel dead 
 And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. 
 The river of death has brimmed his banks 
 And England's far, and Honor a name, 
 But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, 
 "Play up! play up! and play the game!"' 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1. Discuss organized play as training for citizenship. 
 
 2. Canvass the vocational interests of your pupils and 
 make a report on these interests. 
 
 3. Make a plan for having certain vocations presented 
 by competent representatives. 
 
 4. Conduct the experiment of the personal-expense 
 budget and keep record of the facts and of the moral 
 reactions, if any. 
 
 5. Describe the effects of scouting on boys under your 
 own observation. 
 
 6. Do the same for Camp Fire Girls. 
 
 7. Make a Hst of ten different kinds of "good turns" 
 reported by your boys. 
 
 8. Do the same for a class of girls. 
 
 9. Ascertain what members of your class use the public 
 library and what books they have drawn in the past month. 
 
 ID. Keep a record showing how much time per month 
 you devote to your pupils outside the actual class session. 
 
 1 1 . Outline a preparatory course for camp fire guardians. 
 
 12. Do the same for scout masters. 
 
 13. Review chapter ii and indicate what activities and 
 methods you would carry over into this period. 
 
 ' Henry Newbolt, Vitai lampada. 
 
Civic Training for Early Adolescence 83 
 
 14. Upon the basis of class discussion make a list of 
 heroes and heroines that have validity for this age. 
 
 15. Plan some piece of constructive work for the good 
 of the class, school, or church, and have it executed by your 
 class. Keep a full record of the experiment. 
 
 16. Assign your class to street and sidewalk duty for a 
 week. File the individual reports. 
 
 17. Assign waste prevention for a week. File reports. 
 
 18. Assign public safety for a week. File reports. 
 
 19. Explain the emotional instabiUty of this adolescent 
 period. 
 
 20. Ascertain how many of your pupils expect to finish 
 high school. If any intend to drop out, find the reason why. 
 
 21. Devote a given session to outlining the community's 
 local government, and at the session next following have the 
 pupils write their description of it. Correct and return 
 the papers. 
 
 22. Have the children draft a set of rules for the public- 
 school playground. 
 
 23. Arrange for a scout and camp fire evening with 
 demonstrations of first aid and other specialties by the boys 
 and girls. 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 FOR THE PUPIL 
 
 Barton, Clara. History of the Red Cross. 
 Bloomfield, Hazard, and Lamprey. A Civic Reader for New 
 Americans. 
 Published for immigrants attending the Boston evening 
 schools, but useful alike for our young citizens of American birth. 
 
 Bolton, S. K. Lives of Famous Women {The Children's 
 
 Hour, Vol. VIII). 
 Kelly, H. A. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever. 
 
84 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 The Book of the Camp Fire Girls (fifth or subsequent 
 editions). 
 
 The Boy Scout Handbook (fifteenth or subsequent editions). 
 
 The entire Macmillan series entitled True Stories of Great 
 Americans. These cost but fifty cents per volume, and 
 the following volumes have appeared: Columbus, 
 Franklin, Boone, Crockett, Penn, Grant, Lincoln, 
 Lafayette, LaSalle, Washington, Custer, Lee, Houston, 
 John Paul Jones, Captain John Smith, Nathan Hale, 
 Fulton, and Edison. 
 
 FOR THE TEACHER 
 
 Barnard, Carrier, Dunn, and Kingsley. The Teaching of 
 Community Civics. (United States Bureau of Educa- 
 tion Bulletin, 191 5, No. 23) 
 
 Hill, Mabel. The Teaching of Civics. 
 
 Lapp, John A. Our America. 
 
 Scouting (a semimonthly magazine for workers with boys). 
 
 Wohelo (a monthly magazine for girls). 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 CIVIC TRAINING FOR LATER ADOLESCENCE 
 
 Usually at about sixteen years of age young 
 people are confronted with the necessity of some 
 measure of intellectual reconstruction. Whether 
 as a result of their high-school course, then in 
 progress, or as a derivative from their early experi- 
 ence at work, a certain process of sophistication 
 sets in. Authorities hitherto unquestioned are 
 curtly challenged, dictation is intolerable, physical 
 restraint impossible, and the very axioms of human 
 wisdom are wholly debatable. There is danger of 
 anarchy, and wherever ideals are rudely shattered 
 and childhood's dreams ridiculed the greater dan- 
 ger of cynicism is incurred. 
 
 This venture is in the direction of a free and 
 independent personality and is a claim for the right 
 of private judgment. It looks toward that com- 
 petency which citizens in a democracy must have 
 and exercise. No good can come from any auto- 
 cratic attempt to restrict this freedom of thought 
 and to stifle this first philosophic joy of formulating 
 for one's self a world-attitude. No matter how 
 many beaten paths or prosaic highways pierce the 
 forest and cross the mountain, it is well for youth 
 
 85 
 
86 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to have a few strenuous days in the underbrush and 
 among the rocks with the charm of discovery and 
 self-direction, even if in the end he comes out on 
 or very near the traveled road. 
 
 This tendency, mixed as it is with pardonable 
 conceit, affords a rich opportunity for civic training. 
 It marks the golden age for debate. Social con- 
 ceptions, whether of Plato, Spencer, Jefferson, or 
 Kossuth, are none too big for these citizens of 
 tomorrow; and the problems of our own govern- 
 ment, local, national, and international, will be 
 taken up with great zest and seriousness. 
 
 It is rather doubtful whether much of benefit 
 can be accomplished by attempting to teach the 
 exact nature and function of various govern- 
 mental bodies prior to this age. Moreover, if 
 one takes into account the rank and file of 
 young people rather than the small percentage 
 who will finish high school and go to college, 
 the age of sixteen will appear as a distinct 
 division point in youth's journey. It is at about 
 that time that employment may profitably be 
 undertaken, since most reputable concerns, both 
 because of legal restrictions and for the sake of 
 business efficiency, do not care to employ younger 
 children. 
 
 The church school should keep in mind the fact 
 that at this time an increased share of the educa- 
 tional burden falls to her, and that the agencies 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 87 
 
 which will pilot youth from this age to the time of 
 full, legal citizenship are few indeed. 
 
 It would be difi&cult to draw an exact line sepa- 
 rating the studies more suitable for adults over 
 twenty-one years of age from those adapted to the 
 period with which we are now dealing. Wherever 
 there is a doubt in the matter one should incline 
 toward the earlier use both because of the pupil's 
 greater teachableness and because of the fact 
 that he is not as yet intrenched in the social ethics 
 of our imperfect economic system. Those whose 
 business success, profits, and holdings argue for the 
 status quo can only with great effort become ardent 
 students of fundamental reform. The church 
 school of citizenship should aim as far as possible 
 to get a righteous verdict from youth prior to that 
 unconscious closing of the mind which success and 
 prosperity so often bring. 
 
 In view of youth's proclivity for discussion, and 
 as testimony to vital interest, it would be well to 
 provide for the most earnest of the Sunday-school- 
 class members and for others who may not attend 
 that session some other outlet for their contending 
 civic ideas. A regular Saturday night meeting of 
 the group as a debating society will produce excel- 
 lent results in the most industrious investigation 
 of government reports, local conditions bearing 
 upon the issue, and standard sources wherever 
 found. Now and again a public debate with some 
 
88 The Church School oe Citizenship 
 
 well-known and respected local official presiding 
 and prominent persons for judges will stimulate 
 the society, develop confidence in public speaking, 
 and provide a pleasant social occasion. 
 
 However, the rather common practice of assign- 
 ing debaters to their respective sides regardless of 
 personal conviction and for drill in argumentation 
 is vicious and destroys the civic value of this 
 kind of training. It is to be feared that most 
 young Americans are already quite proficient in 
 bluffing, having had ample practice in school 
 recitation — not to mention other instances — so 
 that what we need for democracy is not smartness 
 but the ability to sustain conviction on public 
 matters and by fair reasoning to augment a minor- 
 ity which is right to a majority which rules. This 
 is imperative for social advance, and the mere 
 ability to make the worse appear the better argu- 
 ment is a tawdry accomplishment and a danger- 
 ous civic liability. 
 
 A serious consideration of important issues is 
 greatly needed by our young people. The pre- 
 cocious social pace which they now set and the 
 *' movie-mind" with its surface titillation which 
 they develop justify the fear that the essential dig- 
 nity and moral earnestness to be found in grap- 
 pling with great questions of civic import will be 
 overlooked. A sort of pleasure ideal, a hfe of the 
 senses, a ffitting here and there for manufactured 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 89 
 
 sensation instead of the sobriety of elemental 
 moral issues, seriously threaten our citizenship 
 now in the making. Some never so much as 
 awaken to any vocational interest until it is too 
 late, and very many fail entirely of any glimpse 
 of those major questions of public concern which 
 have drawn into their wake and illumined such 
 characters as Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln. 
 To suppose that American youth is decadent might 
 only be equivalent to confessing that we ourselves 
 are no longer young, but what with the urbanizing 
 of so many and the tendency of leaders and teachers 
 to underplay or avoid the great moral issues for 
 fear of giving offense there is considerable danger 
 of superficiality. 
 
 A ragtime youth with Charlie Chaplin manners 
 and Mutt and Jeff mentality gives no great promise 
 for the stability of the state. If church young 
 people cherish the idea that being up to date and 
 competent in such vulgar claptrap is the sign 
 manual of the cult of youth and are rather ashamed 
 of being posted on, or concerned with, the socio- 
 moral issues of the day, what is to be expected of 
 those who have had no connection with this agency 
 whose very burden and purpose is the establish- 
 ment of a perfect social order ? 
 
 The maximum benefit of debate will be realized 
 when the questions under discussion parallel the 
 topics which are being considered in the Sunday 
 
9© The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 class session. For example, if the class is making 
 study of child protection as based on the teaching 
 of Jesus and exemplified in community organiza- 
 tion and effort, then in the week-night meeting as 
 a debating club such questions as the following 
 might be threshed out: 
 
 Resolved, That insurance should be compulsory. 
 
 Resolved, That mothers' pensions impede social advance. 
 
 Resolved, That compulsory education should apply to all 
 persons under eighteen years of age. 
 
 Resolved, That the community's play should be admin- 
 istered as part of the school system. 
 
 Resolved, That minors be prohibited from engaging in any 
 of the street trades, etc. 
 
 Therefore, although debate may not be made 
 attractive to all the young people, it will have 
 great civic value in developing prospective leaders, 
 in stimulating the study of public questions, in 
 training for public speaking, and in teaching self- 
 possession, courtesy, and fairness in discussion. 
 Most of all it will turn to good account the 
 normal skepticism of this period. 
 
 Another helpful device for later adolescence 
 consists in the organization and conduct of govern- 
 mental bodies. The class or department may 
 become a city council, or board of county com- 
 missioners, or a miniature legislature. Organiza- 
 tion and procedure must be identical with that of 
 these legally constituted bodies, and the policies, 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 91 
 
 appropriations, and other matters engaging the 
 people's representatives should be taken up and 
 disposed of after the fashion of responsible agents. 
 A great deal of the play spirit will enter into this, 
 while at the same time valuable information on 
 how the people's business is transacted will be 
 obtained. 
 
 One of the most humorous of these combinations 
 of play and civic education is the mock trial. No 
 difficulty will be experienced in securing a local 
 judge or attorney to coach the participants and 
 none whatever in securing a full courtroom of 
 amused citizens when the trial comes off. Along 
 with the fun, wit, and caricature incident to the 
 trial the young people will learn something of 
 how a court trial is held. Those who have visited 
 real courtrooms to any extent will agree that the 
 hypothetical dignity of bench and bar will not be 
 seriously injured at the hands of these jolly litigants 
 and functionaries. 
 
 In some such ways as these and at about this 
 time interest in the structural side of government 
 may be augmented. The church school can under- 
 take only a limited part of the formal task of defin- 
 ing the methods and purposes of the legislative, 
 executive, and judicial departments of govern- 
 ment. Public education will have covered the 
 ground, but often so far in advance of the child's 
 possible interest in such matters that the facts 
 
92 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 remain meaningless until enacted in some such way 
 as is here proposed for the church group. Per- 
 haps Our America,^ by James A. Lapp, although 
 suited to juveniles in some respects, is as good as 
 any for this purpose. 
 
 Attention should be given to the use of these 
 young people as leaders. Prior to this period they 
 have not been qualified and subsequent to it they 
 will have less leisure and enthusiasm for such 
 service. Probably the maximum possibilities of 
 volunteer effort will be found in these years from 
 sixteen to twenty-one. With good supervision an 
 immense amount of work can be accomphshed, 
 as is evidenced by the young people's societies, 
 organized classes, and boys' and girls' clubs, con- 
 ducted by those who are in the first flush of respon- 
 sible leadership. 
 
 In the organization of music for patriotic service, 
 in working up dramatic presentations of national 
 themes, and in promoting a commimity pageant 
 these young enthusiasts will be unsurpassed. In 
 the matter of the music alone one cannot but regret 
 the serious loss to the democratic spirit and to the 
 emotional side of group effort that has come from 
 the operatic trend within the church. To teach 
 all of the children to sing, to bring all of our young 
 people through the refining and unifying discipline 
 of music, and to have congregations whose spirit 
 
 ' Published by the Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 93 
 
 is blended and uplifted in rendering praise is far 
 more beneficial to democracy than the common 
 practice of paying a few professionals to sing for or 
 to us. 
 
 Young people between the ages of sixteen and 
 twenty-one can render valuable service in commu- 
 nity survey and investigation. Barring the social 
 evil, saloons, and public dance halls as fields for 
 their endeavor, they can do a great deal in ascer- 
 taining the conditions which prevail in nickel 
 shows, public playgrounds and bathing beaches, 
 amusement parks, and poolrooms. They will 
 need wise leadership on the part of someone who 
 knows the channels through which the informa- 
 tion should be cleared, and will need to be indi- 
 vidually restrained so that any action taken will 
 be after deliberation and agreement on the part of 
 the leaders and the whole group. 
 
 In most cities the complaints of individuals 
 about abuses practiced by money-making amuse- 
 ments are lightly regarded by callous officials, so 
 that it becomes necessary both to be very certain 
 of the facts and to bring complaint through the 
 recognized organization working on the prob- 
 lem in question. Resolutions, sweeping accusa- 
 tions, and publicity first are to be carefully avoided. 
 Subsequent inspection to ascertain whether the 
 improvement forced or promised is maintained is 
 quite as important as the initial discovery. One 
 
94 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 of the most prevalent errors of young reformers is 
 the idea that social gains once made are permanent, 
 and it may be said that in social action the church 
 is generally spasmodic and needs to steady down 
 to that eternal vigilance which is the price of 
 liberty. 
 
 Parish surveys to give the locations and dimen- 
 sions of the constructive and destructive agencies, 
 the principal industries, the schools, libraries, 
 playgrounds, hospitals, churches, clubs, saloons, 
 theaters, dance halls, and poolrooms will have some 
 value in visualizing the church's task, and along 
 with investigation will give a more vivid idea of 
 the magnitude of the struggle in which the young 
 person is enlisted. 
 
 However, it is a mistake to allow these young 
 people to do slumming, which is usually actuated 
 by curiosity rather than by the desire or ability to 
 render aid, and as for visiting indiscriminately to 
 ask all manner of questions of the poor — one feels 
 that the poor are already sufficiently afflicted. It 
 is better that certain dependent families already 
 under the care of the church, or such as may be 
 designated by the charity worker, be adopted 
 by the organized class with the purpose to stand by 
 and minister until they are again on their feet. 
 Unless such work is taken up in some systematic 
 and permanent way the sending of visitors hither 
 and thither, sometimes only to get material for a 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 95 
 
 paper or speech or to indulge in sentimentalism, 
 will be mistaken for social service. Some church 
 people seem to think that even the young children 
 of the Sunday school should visit the needy homes 
 and should report to the class or to the whole school 
 what they see and do ; but the soundness of such a 
 policy, considered either as relief or as moral 
 education, is to be seriously questioned. 
 
 One of the best ways for the young people to 
 become acquainted with these problems in a legiti- 
 mate, helpful way is by voluntary service in social 
 settlements and with the estabUshed agencies of 
 the city. By virtue of group leadership and the 
 friendship developed therein and under the super- 
 vision of trained workers the further task of 
 pushing back into the home may be more deli- 
 cately and intelligently performed. Young people 
 should not be turned loose in the very vague 
 and much-lauded field of social service with the 
 thought that they will either derive or render 
 much good unless properly organized and well 
 directed. 
 
 A current-events club so organized as to secure 
 ofl&cial pamphlets and government reports and 
 based on the weekly news reviews of the stand- 
 ard magazines might have considerable value for 
 civic training. It could build up a library of 
 information on the momentous affairs of the 
 hour and would stimulate profitable reading. The 
 
96 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 underwritten premise of all such work is the 
 attempt to relate individual and collective conduct 
 to the ideals of Jesus. 
 
 In connection with current problems it would 
 be well to invite speakers of exceptional informa- 
 tion and standing, so that the inner difficulties, 
 usually unknown to inexperienced young people, 
 might be sympathetically appreciated. Personal 
 observation and report on the part of club mem- 
 bers should be encouraged. 
 
 Biography is still in place. It can be more 
 thorough and philosophic than for the preceding 
 period. Possibly the life of the Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury throws more light on the social gains of the 
 nineteenth century than any other biography. 
 It also grips the imagination of youth and shows 
 the nature of the task of a Christian statesman. 
 In the preceding period the biography will have 
 more to do with the conquest of nature, in this it 
 will rather emphasize society's struggle for human 
 rights. 
 
 As the young people near their majority much 
 should be made of preparation for the franchise. 
 The present general neglect of this phase of civic 
 education must give place to conscientious and 
 thorough training. Great values are lost and 
 democracy is endangered by allowing our young 
 people simply to drift into possession of our only 
 recognized form of sovereign power, the vote. 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 97 
 
 We have the right and duty of training our sover- 
 eign. He is as good or as bad, as intelligent or as 
 stupid, as we make him. The outcry against the 
 inefficiency or crookedness of the government is 
 never more than an indictment of ourselves; and 
 we should be reminded in passing that the average 
 of honor and faithfulness in public life is on a par 
 with that found in domestic or business life. Pub- 
 lic servants are but samples of what we really are, 
 and they are servants of our choosing. 
 
 The concern which from now on will be given 
 to fitting the foreign-born for American citizen- 
 ship needs to be applied equally to all who are about 
 to enter that great partnership which constitutes 
 the republic. Enfranchisement should be made a 
 spiritual experience. To receive this responsi- 
 bility thoughtlessly and without preparation, or- 
 with the small party politician as tutor and personal 
 gain as reward for party loyalty, is nothing short 
 of a calamity. The industry of the precinct com- 
 mitteeman in rounding up the new vote must be 
 excelled by those who will deliver to the state a 
 free and intelligent citizen. 
 
 The vast expenditures for public education and 
 the total expense of society in bringing her wards 
 to their majority, with all the accumulated advan- 
 tages that constitute American civilization, forbid 
 turning over the keys of the citadel to the thought- 
 less or selfish. Since young people who are about 
 
qS The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 to enter citizenship have been for some time 
 beyond the reach of public education, it becomes 
 the more important that voluntary agencies do 
 all they can to supplement the earlier school train- 
 ing, to illumine and solemnize the goal that ends 
 dependency and marks full citizenship, and to 
 hasten the time when the state will pay more 
 attention to this phase of education so vital to her 
 well-being. 
 
 Among the voluntary agencies which must, for 
 the present, try to meet the need there is none 
 more promising than the church. Her presence 
 in every community and the essentially religious 
 nature of the experience by which one's life is 
 bound into the legal solidarity of the body politic 
 qualify her pre-eminently for this educational 
 task. 
 
 Naturally all that the church school has done 
 in civic education through the successive grades 
 will coimt toward the crowning experience, the 
 commencement day, when with her full blessing 
 and suitable ceremony her youth will be formally 
 given to the service of the state. As immediate 
 preparation for this event there should be a first- 
 voters' class to include all persons twenty years 
 of age, and miless their number is sufficient to 
 warrant a separate class all those who are pre- 
 paring for naturalization. Such studies as throw 
 light on the long struggle for religious liberty, 
 
Civic Training for Later Adolescence 99 
 
 common rights, and universal franchise should 
 be taken up, together with the very important 
 matter of the existing election laws and the exact 
 method of registering and voting. Probably a 
 study of taxation might also be made, so that 
 the financial nature of the partnership about to 
 be assumed might be seriously accepted. 
 
 As a climax to all that has been done in the 
 lower grades and in this special class it would be 
 well to hold a religious service, say early in Novem- 
 ber of each year, in which all who had come into 
 their franchise during the year would receive public 
 recognition and the spiritual support of such an 
 address and such a ceremony as would gird them 
 for the full and noble discharge of their duties. 
 In the same week some social celebration of the 
 occasion might be given by one or another of the 
 societies of the church. 
 
 If in some such ways as these the idealism and 
 loyalty of youth can be confirmed in noble citizen- 
 ship it will not be long before our public life will 
 show an upward trend. Furthermore it is to be 
 expected that such an instruction in Christian 
 citizenship will tend to retain in the membership 
 of the church school many who would otherwise 
 drop out. A vital curriculum which gives orderly 
 consideration to the elements of social living and 
 grapples with the very problems at hand will not 
 be spurned by these alert young people. 
 
loo The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1. Make a record of the skeptical tendencies which you 
 have actually observed in young people sixteen and seven- 
 teen years of age. 
 
 2. Compare young men and young women in this respect. 
 
 3. Make plans in full for five debates on civic questions. 
 
 4. Indicate why the church school carries an extra 
 responsibility for young people from sixteen to twenty-one 
 years of age. 
 
 5. Make a list of the available public officials of high 
 character whom you might secure to address your class. 
 
 6. Make a similar list of social workers. 
 
 7. Ascertain aU the forms of social or pubUc service being 
 rendered by members of your class and post the information 
 in suitable fashion. 
 
 8. Outline a program of social occasions for the organized 
 class or classes or for the young people's society. 
 
 9. Rate your pupils in the order of what seems to be 
 their power of leadership. 
 
 10. Discover if possible the most cherished ambition of 
 each member of your class. 
 
 11. Undertake the experiment of a mock trial and report 
 in full to the teachers' study-group. 
 
 12. What serious reading have your pupils done during 
 the past month ? 
 
 13. What advice would you give your pupils regarding 
 the plays now showing in your community ? 
 
 14. Prepare and present for criticism a lesson on " School 
 Teaching as Public Service." 
 
 15. Do the same for Y.M.C.A. work. 
 
 16. For Y.W.C.A. work. 
 
 17. For the ministry. 
 
 18. For nursing. 
 
Civic Teaining for Later Adolescence ioi 
 
 19. For organized charities. 
 
 20. For one or all of the departments of your city 
 government. 
 
 21. What should a community survey conducted by 
 volunteer young people be expected to cover ? 
 
 22. Enumerate the facilities for wholesome social inter- 
 course between young men and young women in your com- 
 munity. 
 
 23. Discuss the relative merits of the following period- 
 icals as text for a current-events club: the Outlook, the 
 Independent, the Literary Digest, the New Republic. 
 
 24. What minimxun of civic knowledge would you require 
 for enfranchisement ? 
 
 25. What should an oath or statement of purpose on 
 receipt of the franchise include ? 
 
 26. Prepare a recognition service for first voters. 
 
 27. What service is your class rendering the foreign- 
 born ? What service could it render ? 
 
 28. How many young women in your church are camp 
 fire guardians ? 
 
 29. How many young men in your church are training 
 to become scout masters at twenty-one years of age ? 
 
 30. What average net expense to society do the members 
 of your class represent ? 
 
 3 1 . Outline a plan whereby representatives of the various 
 departments of your city government may inform the 
 church young people as to the respective functions of each 
 of these departments. 
 
 32. What reports, city, county, state, and federal, are 
 in your Sunday-school library ? 
 
 33. What degree of co-operation is practiced between 
 your Sunday-school and the public library ? 
 
 34. What co-operation exists between your secondary 
 department and the public high school ? 
 
I02 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. 
 
 . The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. 
 
 Ashley, R. L. The New Civics. 
 
 Ashworth, R. A. The Union of Christian Forces. 
 
 Bulletins of the American Unitarian Association. 
 
 GiUette, G. M. The Family and Society. 
 
 Henderson, C. R. Social Duties from the Christian Point 
 
 of View. 
 
 . The Cause and Cure of Crime. 
 
 Hodder, Edwin. Life a?id Work of the Seventh Earl of 
 
 Shaftesbury. 
 Jenks, J. W. The Political and Social Significance of the 
 
 Life and Teachings of Jesus. 
 Johnson, F. W. The Problems of Boyhood. 
 Kent and Jenks. The Making of a Nation. 
 
 . The Testing of a Nation's Ideals. 
 
 Lessons in Community and National Life. United States 
 
 Bureau of Education, Section A, Lessons i, 3, 5, 6, 
 
 and 7. 
 Rauschenbusch, W. The Social Principles of Jesus. 
 Soares, T. G. The Social Institutions and Ideals of the Bible. 
 Strong, Josiah. The Challenge of the City. 
 Studies in Social Progress. The monthly publication of the 
 
 American Institute of Social Service. 
 Tillebrown, C. R. Taxation. 
 Ward, Harry F. Social Creed of the Churches. 
 
 . The Church and Social Service. 
 
 Wright, H. C. The American City. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 CIVICS IN THE RURAL CHURCH SCHOOL 
 
 While many of the suggestions offered in the 
 preceding chapters are as appKcable to the rural 
 as to the city situation, nevertheless it is the latter 
 that has been most in mind. Consequently it may 
 not be amiss to give separate attention to the civic 
 possibilities of the rural church school. 
 
 If the country districts are to have capable and 
 enlightened leaders they must be furnished from 
 among country people. Any attempt of the out- 
 sider who thinks of farm people as a separate 
 species and who imagines that certain benefits 
 should be imposed upon them is bound to fail. It 
 is far better to work from within and to believe 
 that those who are industrious, capable, sane, and 
 increasingly well-to-do can both develop leadership 
 and finance their own progress. 
 
 The boys and girls who are now on the farms 
 should be the leaders of tomorrow. They are 
 already furnished with the very thought-forms of 
 farm life. They know the values that have grown 
 up in terms of crops, weather, roads, stock, and 
 what not, and they are in the midst of a wonderful 
 transformation that is supplanting mere drudgery 
 
 103 
 
I04 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 with fulness of life. Very many of these boys and 
 girls are to be found in the little Sunday schools that 
 dot almost every township and are the original and 
 most prevalent social centers of rural life. 
 
 The basal conception of the church's function 
 will determine what she may undertake for rural 
 citizenship. If she is to carry no obligation and 
 exert no conscious influence beyond the few 
 activities of her own organization as such, then her 
 civic value will be correspondingly slight. But if 
 she is the champion of all that makes for abundant 
 life and is eager for the realization of the Kingdom 
 of God through all the co-operating agencies which 
 serve, or may serve, that purpose, then she will 
 be free from all jealousy of school and grange, 
 lodge and club, and will seek earnestly to bring 
 them to their highest excellence in the service of 
 the people. 
 
 The tendency to make the school the social 
 center is very reasonable and logical, and if people 
 of various nationalities and faiths can best express 
 their democratic unity there, then the church will 
 exert her full strength to secure civic gains through 
 that avenue. There is no platform upon which 
 all may stand in hearty unison like that of good 
 citizenship. It is the best mobilization ground for 
 moral advance, and the church sins against herself 
 and society whenever she deliberately ignores this 
 opportunity. 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 105 
 
 The strategic advantage of the church, however, 
 in providing rural leadership is little appreciated. 
 Yet by comparison with the school teacher the 
 country pastor ranks very well in education, out- 
 look upon the world, experience, aim, and tenure 
 of position. Historically the country church and 
 Sunday school have filled the place of social center 
 for the countryside rather better than any other 
 institution. Imperfect and halting as church 
 leadership is by lack of community-wide ideals 
 and by sectarian division, nevertheless it is to be 
 doubted whether at any place in the social struc- 
 ture of America ability of the same order as that 
 of the country minister is being retained at so little 
 cost. 
 
 What village or settlement established by the 
 westward trend of population does not bear testi- 
 mony to these unnamed outriders of civilization ? 
 They sleep beside the pioneers, the Indian fighters, 
 and the cowboys, but what they did remains as 
 a social inheritance of untold value. Now that the 
 life of village and settlement has become more 
 static, may we not hope that their successors, who 
 still love God's open country and the plain folk of 
 the farm, will measure up to the old leadership and 
 serve their day in the same spirit ? 
 
 One of the first duties of the church school is to 
 make the children aware of their great good fortune 
 in being in the country, and a second is to make 
 
io6 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 them aware of what the country really is. There 
 is no reason why they should feel in any respect 
 less fortunate than their city cousins. Let them 
 canvass their situation and make a statement of 
 why they are glad to live in the country. The 
 cheap delusion that happiness and life are identical 
 with the glare and clamor of cities needs to be 
 dispelled from the start. From the first the chil- 
 dren of the country should be its advocates. 
 Legitimate pride of this sort, based on values that 
 are not fictitious, is a factor in good citizenship. 
 
 It is equally important that the country chil- 
 dren be taught to observe closely the good things 
 that lie all about them. The tragedy of some 
 country folk is their blindness. Spend some of 
 the class-period in listening to the children's 
 accounts of what they saw on the way to school. 
 Flowers, trees, birds, crops, cattle, buildings, roads, 
 weather conditions, yards, machinery, fences, 
 brooks, bridges, telephone posts and wires, motors, 
 insects, and every item of the child's environment 
 when actually observed become material for 
 religious education and civic training in the care 
 and upkeep of the countryside. In the degree in 
 which the country child is aware of his surround- 
 ings, in that degree is he already religious. 
 
 The invitation of the rural environment to 
 improve pedagogy by the direct use of the source 
 material of education is almost irresistible, and its 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 107 
 
 frank acceptance would bring both teacher and 
 pupil more nearly into the Master's way of Hving 
 and teaching. Moreover the biblical literature 
 as a whole is so distinctly rural that many com- 
 parisons and interesting studies are possible. By 
 a concurrent reading of the great book of Nature, 
 ever open and always before the country child, and 
 of the biblical record of man's spiritual experience 
 through many ages and in interplay with the same 
 natural order the child is bound to get new and 
 valid appreciations of his relationship to the 
 Creator and to His co-workers in the art of life. 
 
 As a rule, and even without much formal teach- 
 ing, the country child will be found sensitive to the 
 concept of God simply because he lives in the midst 
 of the creative process and is consciously dependent 
 upon a power outside himself. His life-premise 
 cannot possibly be that of cosmic anarchy. The 
 natural order says, "Obey and prosper," and the 
 process is so simple, immediate, and sure that 
 the voice of God is all but audible and his hand 
 almost seen. Hence the observation of all living 
 things, the miracles of reproduction and growth, 
 beauty and majesty, favor that fear of the Lord 
 which is the beginning of wisdom. 
 
 All of this calls for elucidation on the part of the 
 teacher who will use the child's material and the 
 parallel biblical literature for the purpose of laying 
 deep the spiritual foundation of good citizenship, 
 
io8 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 namely, belief in, and accountability to, God. 
 The city child in his more mechanistic situation 
 cannot so easily find God. Recently an eighth- 
 grade boy in a Chicago school said to the principal, 
 ''Where is the factory that makes the seeds?" 
 
 The country child finds himself as a worker and 
 as a worker together with God. But it is equally 
 important that he become a colaborer with his 
 fellows. According to the usual criticism, the 
 farmer's civic weakness consists in his narrow indi- 
 vidualism. By virtue of his occupation he is 
 socially very independent. The major reforms of 
 rural life await his disposition to co-operate, and 
 the numerous small towns and villages of prosper- 
 ous farming districts find that the retired farmer 
 is not usually public-spirited and progressive. 
 In fact, with the high price of land and the accom- 
 panying increase in tenantry, an idle, well-to-do, 
 and unprogressive landlordism is rapidly develop- 
 ing in the United States. It becomes prematurely 
 non-productive, its social reaction is negative, and 
 on the whole it is quite as culpable and more pro- 
 vincial in terms of public welfare than are the idle 
 rich of the great cities. 
 
 Rural education for citizenship must meet and 
 overcome this prevalent tendency so deeply 
 grounded in the occupation and mind of the farmer. 
 Attempts to lift the horizon of the adult will be 
 less successful than socializing the child from the 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 109 
 
 start. The nature of living together in units larger 
 than the family will need to be emphasized. 
 Ordinarily family loyalty and co-operation on the 
 farm will excel that of the city, and the nature of 
 that intimate interdependence in terms of produc- 
 tion, consumption, and distribution will be very 
 real within this initial biological group. But this, 
 although a good foundation, is not sufficient for 
 that sort of living together which a successful com- 
 munity demands. A rigidity that defeats effec- 
 tive social action may still persist in the family 
 which is internally loyal and industrious. Field 
 and Nearing^ give a humorous instance of this in 
 the case of a rural community in New York state. 
 The school board being divided on the issue of the 
 color that the building should be painted and 
 neither side being willing to yield, the result was 
 a checkerboard pattern alternating in gray and 
 white. 
 
 The approach to this problem of bald self- 
 interest pitted against community interest must 
 be on the basis of the child's observation and must 
 take its direction from the polestar of the Golden 
 Rule. The pupil in the church school brings the 
 data with him. For example, on the side of limit- 
 ing personal hcense for community good there is 
 the farmer's treatment of weeds. What weeds 
 were noticed on the way to school ? Did you see 
 
 ' Communily Civics, p. 15. 
 
I lo The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 Canada thistle or wild mustard in the fields or 
 along the roadside ? What do they do to crops ? 
 Will they remain on the farm or by the roadside 
 where you saw them ? How does the thistle seed 
 travel? Is it fair that the man who works hard 
 to raise good crops and to keep his land clean should 
 have his work spoiled and his land damaged by 
 the neglect of a neighbor ? What should be done 
 about it ? Should he quarrel with his neighbor ? 
 Should he go to law for damages? Should we 
 have a weed law and enforce it both for field and 
 for roadside ? Show how this would be an applica- 
 tion in civics of the Golden Rule. So of hog 
 cholera, the hoof and mouth disease, tuberculosis, 
 and very many diseases and pests which involve 
 immense loss — the only way to be a good citizen 
 and to protect the whole community is to love your 
 neighbor as yourself. 
 
 On the constructive side the sources in the 
 pupil's experience are even richer. Suppose he 
 describes threshing, silo filling, irrigation, the 
 co-operative elevator, the farmers' telephone, or 
 any of the large operations in which neighbors 
 unite in effort and sometimes in the pooling of 
 capital, then the effectiveness of group action will 
 become clear and the nature of society's agreement 
 in the making and upkeep of roads, postal service, 
 and schools will be so conceived as to justify the 
 necessary tax and to stimulate a wholesome, con- 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School hi 
 
 tinuous interest in the undertakings of the com- 
 munity as a whole. 
 
 All such experience when once clarified in the 
 light of Christian ethics is bound to crystallize 
 into community sentiment. The picnics, gala 
 days, and celebrations will come to have corporate 
 rather than clannish or sectarian significance. The 
 hope of any intelligent and lasting co-operation 
 among the religious agencies of the countryside 
 depends upon drill in co-operative action touching 
 the farmer's material gains and validated at first 
 by larger financial returns. 
 
 The whole matter of yield comes up for moral 
 review and bears upon the citizen's productive 
 value to the state. The boys will be posted on the 
 ordinary yield per acre for the standard crops of the 
 neighborhood. They should be encouraged to 
 make comparisons between the best and the poorest 
 with explanations if possible. The average for the 
 township, county, and country at large should be 
 known and comparison made with one's own farm. 
 The immoral nature of any deliberate failure to 
 make the best use of God's resources as intrusted 
 to the farmer should be pointed out. Descriptions 
 of seed testing and of intensive, scientific effort on 
 experimental plots will not seem foreign either to 
 good citizenship or to religion when thus inter- 
 preted, and the corn club along with all the others 
 into which country boys and girls are being 
 
112 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 gathered to produce and conserve food will not 
 seem alien to the church school. 
 
 Such a consideration of the Christian standards 
 of farming will bear very directly on good citizen- 
 ship. The moral problems involved in the careless 
 greed which "mines" the land, or depletes the 
 soil by failure to observe the right rotation of crops, 
 or deforests great regions heedless of the rights of 
 oncoming generations and of the people at large 
 are specifically problems with which the state must 
 deal. To be guilty of these practices is to be a bad 
 citizen. To profess Christianity while following 
 such practices is at best but self-delusion. The 
 great advantage of the civic element in the rural 
 church school lies in the concreteness and imme- 
 diacy of the problems handled. Whatever may 
 have been the changing phases of Christian educa- 
 tion in past periods, it seems clear, that the crying 
 need today is that of applying our Lord's teaching 
 (such as that in the Sermon on the Mount) to the 
 actual affairs of men. 
 
 So of animal husbandry, dairying, and poultry 
 raising. The pupil who tells how he takes care of 
 his horse, cow, or poultry and comes to believe 
 that his teacher in the church school regards such 
 work well done as within the plan and purpose of 
 religious education will have discovered a way of 
 expressing his obedience to God in terms which 
 are for him perhaps more suitable than public 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 113 
 
 prayer and testimony. The kind and faithful care 
 of God's creatures may constitute no ecstatic flight 
 into the Infinite Love, but it is part of that march 
 of Hfe in which God unconsciously comes to us. 
 
 Very much should be made of the home, its 
 manners, conversation, reading, housing, water 
 supply, drainage, light, air, premises, outbuildings, 
 barns, program, hospitality, family spirit, and 
 mutual service. The attractiveness and con- 
 venience of the house can so often be improved 
 at little cost that what is most needed is not money 
 but rather the suggestions and standards which 
 the church school can persistently provide. The 
 prosperity of barns with every convenience and 
 kitchens contrived to necessitate the maximum 
 drudgery is of doubtful worth. We are hearing 
 much about the human element in industry. That 
 is well and good, but the farmer's wife is a human 
 element to whom relief comes in many cases all 
 too late or not at all. 
 
 Let the boys and girls as they become old enough 
 to do so canvass thoroughly the home situation. 
 Any ideals not applicable there are worth little for 
 religious education. Unless the prosperity of the 
 farmer is Christianized into fulness of life it will 
 not make much difference to his family what the 
 yield may be per acre or the price per bushel. The 
 automobile, which has cut one string of his purse, 
 needs to be followed by a program of Christian 
 
114 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 culture, which, although under way in many a 
 woman's club, needs the matchless gospel of self- 
 giving for the good of others. If one may use the 
 word culture to denote the spiritual values of life 
 rather than any veneer or snobbishness and mean 
 thereby the fine art of living at one's best, then it 
 becomes the task of the church school to bring this 
 culture to those whose prosperity as a class is 
 bound to push them out into something either 
 better or worse than their former state. 
 
 The ideals of farm boys and girls of the present 
 generation will conform to the cheap and glaring 
 urban type which gauges the desirable, now for the 
 first time within reach of farm people, in terms of 
 joy rides, cabarets, and amateurish forays into 
 "high life," unless the quest of romance and social 
 expression is satisfied in more ennobling ways. 
 With the present facilities of motor car, inter- 
 urban line, telephone, and labor-reducing machin- 
 ery the grip of the town is tightening upon country 
 life, and instead of the development of initiative 
 and resourcefulness in meeting the social needs of 
 the rural district there is a tendency to remain 
 atomistic on the land and to flock to the town for 
 the purchase of pleasure. The great civic virtue 
 of homemade pleasure, with its accompaniment 
 of neighborliness, is in danger of surrendering to 
 the commercialized, non-social form. One of the 
 underlying causes of the retirement of farmers to 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 115 
 
 the town, there to spend the latter third or half 
 of Hfe in idleness, is the failure of rural people to 
 organize their social life so that school and church 
 shall be adequate to meet the higher standards of 
 living that prosperity and the increased leisure of 
 the young people make possible. 
 
 While recognizing that in some respects the 
 use of the urban center is advantageous in terms 
 of efficiency and as an offset to monotonous 
 routine, it must also be borne in mind that a 
 distinct loss will be incurred unless social life is 
 maintained among the neighboring farm families 
 in any given section. What is needed is a dis- 
 criminating use of the city and also wholesome 
 social life circulating through the homes and other 
 institutions of the open country. Otherwise the 
 people on the land may become as isolated and 
 non-social as the flat dweller of the city. 
 
 It is not as if we could or would shut off com- 
 merce with the town in any of its legitimate social 
 advantages. The aim should rather be so to 
 regulate their use that initiative and social resource- 
 fulness of constructive worth should remain with 
 the young people on the land. With an alert class 
 in the church and the telephone in every home it 
 might be possible to organize the pleasure trips to 
 town in such a way as to guarantee that moral pro- 
 tection which the group affords and to make the 
 wisest and most profitable selection of the "movie" 
 
ii6 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 plays and other entertainments which the city 
 offers. The feeling that there is no possibility of 
 a "good time" at home and the loss of all power to 
 use the neighborhood homes, school, hall, or church 
 for such ends are the dangers to be avoided. 
 
 For this reason it is desirable to study the home 
 not only as a family institution but as a social 
 center. The entertainments of neighborhood clubs 
 and of musical or literary societies have a certain 
 public value, and auxiliaries of this kind fostered 
 by the church school will probably render their 
 largest social service in circulating from home to 
 home. So also the social efficiency of the homes 
 in entertaining the young people in their parties 
 and dances may offset the lure of the pernicious 
 Saturday-night public dance in the town some miles 
 away. The delusion that city boys and girls are 
 rather soiled and country boys and girls quite 
 pure is indulged by those who do not know that the 
 community's social inefficiency produces about the 
 same results in either situation. 
 
 The formulation and execution of a program of 
 better social diversion for the country will depend 
 upon individual initiative and leadership. In 
 most cities social organization has reached a stage 
 where regular provision is made for play and 
 recreation and the population is sufficient to make 
 steady use of the facilities provided at public 
 expense. But if the country is to have "a good 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 117 
 
 time" some enterprising person must go ahead and 
 bring it to pass with such voluntary aid as may be 
 offered. 
 
 Unless such effort is made, all the red-letter days 
 of the year will slip by unimproved and in dreary 
 monotony. If New Year's Day, Washington's or 
 Lincoln's Birthday, St. Patrick's Day, St. Val- 
 entine's Day, Arbor Day, May Day, Memorial 
 Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, 
 Thanksgiving, or Christmas is to contribute to 
 social and civic upbuilding, then someone must 
 assume leadership and plan and work well in ad- 
 vance of the occasion. The church should defi- 
 nitely plan to capture these opportunities for the 
 community's good ; and if, as is now quite common, 
 there are young men and young women of high- 
 school and college training in the church they 
 should be set to this kind of civic service. 
 
 There is also an opening for effective social 
 work in connection with the county fair. The 
 tendency toward commercialization and a riot of 
 side shows which defeat the social and agricultural 
 aims of the fair is very pronounced, and the church 
 group is challenged with the task of protecting and 
 developing the legitimate social, educational, and 
 recreative features of this distinctive enterprise of 
 country people. In addition to the exhibits of 
 farm produce, stock, cooking, and needlework the 
 school should be given a larger place. Not only 
 
ii8 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 samples of the children's work, but the children 
 themselves at work and engaged in song and super- 
 vised play should be present. The recreation 
 program should be more of the people's own mak- 
 ing, with sports, contests, community singing, 
 dancing, and the use of all local talent. In this 
 way they come to know themselves and their 
 neighbors and to enjoy co-operation. A certain 
 moral obligation rests upon the church group to 
 inaugurate these better methods and by the 
 impartial selection of competent helpers and thor- 
 oughly unselfish motives to demonstrate its good- 
 will in loyal service of the community. Such 
 undertakings are a curriculum of citizenship. 
 
 As part of the play revival in America another 
 very happy form of civic entertainment has found 
 favor in recent years. It is the community pa- 
 geant, in which the history of the settlement is 
 dramatized on a large scale. For every farming 
 district there is a hamlet, village, or town that 
 serves as the trading center. It is the social 
 nucleus of the district and is composed of those 
 whose interests and experiences are substantially 
 at one with the people who work the land. Every 
 such settlement has a history, some of which is a 
 matter of record and much of which is to be found 
 only in the memory of the older inhabitants. As 
 a rule it is not well known, and many items of 
 beauty, legitimate pride, hardihood, and patriot- 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 119 
 
 ism are lost to view and remain ineffective for 
 citizenship. 
 
 Sometimes the old settlers' club keeps some of 
 its traditions alive for its lineal descendants, but 
 it is very desirable that the whole population be 
 gathered into the charm and stimulation of its 
 own local history. Anyone who has noticed the 
 interest that in such communities attaches to the 
 reminiscences and gossip of the old raconteur will 
 understand the psychology which supports the 
 community pageant.^ Its civic value consists in 
 the ideal dramatization of the past running back 
 to the Indian occupants of the territory, the Lewis 
 and Clark expedition, or the prairie schooners 
 with pioneers from Vermont or "York State," 
 but even more in the enlistment of persons of all 
 
 ' The historical pageant is but one of the many possibilities. 
 There are the "Pageant of the Trees " from William Morris' poem 
 of that name, "The Moon's Silver Cloak" and "The Honest 
 Woodman" from Aesop {Children'' s Classics in Dramatic Form, 
 Book I, Houghton MifBin Co.), "The Grasshopper and the Ants" 
 {The Dramatic Festival, A. Craig), "Bearskin," "The Magic 
 Wood," "King Alfred and the Cakes" {Little Plays for Little 
 People, Hodder & Stoughton), "The Pageant of the Months" 
 from the poem by C. Rosetti, "Pandora," by Longfellow, "Fairy 
 Scenes," from Alfred Noyes's Sherwood. Harper's Book of 
 Little Plays and Historical Plays for Children by Bird and Sterling 
 will be found very useful in work with the junior population. 
 
 The success of the Little Country Theater organized a few 
 years ago by the North Dakota Agricultural College at Fargo 
 shows something of the country possibilities awaiting develop- 
 ment. This movement oflfers such plays as can be put on in the 
 
I20 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 ages and abilities in a voluntary effort that exhibits 
 and develops community intelligence and pride. 
 Everyone can help, and all who help and all who 
 come are made better citizens. It is not supposed 
 that the church group as such will do this, but here 
 again is the opportunity for initiative and leader- 
 ship, and there is the added touch of church pride 
 in the fact that every such history will find among 
 the commanding figures that shaped the new 
 settlement the circuit rider or the parish minister 
 in the first line. 
 
 So of the picnics, plowing contests, and other 
 forms of community round-up; all that is needed 
 to give them high civic value is that forethought 
 and leadership which the church can give and 
 which when lacking leaves the way open for 
 
 farm home, schoolhouse, or hall. The most elaborate city use 
 of the pageant is furnished by that of St. Louis under the direction 
 of Percy MacKaye and Thomas Wood Stevens. 
 
 The following references will be of value to the director of 
 rural and village plays: Play and Recreation for the Open Country, 
 H. S. Curtis; The Playground: the entire number of this magazine 
 for November, 1912; "The Meriden Pageant" June, 1913; "A 
 Rural Pageant," September, 1913; "Village Recreation in Leb- 
 anon, Ohio," December, 1913; "The Play Director in the Small 
 Community," and "Work for Girls in a Rural Community" 
 August, 1914; "Rural Play," December, 1914; "Roosevelt on 
 Rural Recreation," "The Rural World at Play," and "Staflford- 
 ville Junior Fair and Field Day," February, 1915; "Rural Com- 
 munities at Play," April, 1915. The Playground is published at 
 I Madison Avenue, New York. There is also valuable material 
 in every number of Rural Manhood, published by the Associated 
 Press of the Y.M.C.A. 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 121 
 
 deterioration in place of civic gain. Such events, 
 inviting, as they do, liberal contact with the people 
 and control of the social spirit, cannot be ignored 
 if the rural church is actually to engage in training 
 for citizenship. 
 
 For the purpose of revealing the social assets of 
 their vicinity the pupils should make maps locating 
 the farms within a radius of, say, six miles and 
 such public buildings as schoolhouses, meeting- 
 houses, and town halls. A list of the organiza- 
 tions represented in the district should also be 
 made. The aim should be to ascertain what 
 social opportunity is open to young people and 
 how these opportunities may be used and im- 
 proved. 
 
 Under good leadership the older young people 
 and some of the more progressive adults may 
 undertake a rural survey. We sometimes think 
 that it is only the poor of the great cities who are 
 submerged and neglected, but it is pathetically 
 true that in prosperous farming districts where 
 short-term renters come and go without hope of 
 owning any of the expensive land there is a great 
 deal of social neglect. The church school that 
 wishes to gather all classes into its fold for the 
 enrichment of life and the building of Christian 
 citizenship needs to know who these diffident 
 people are and to carry its friendship liberally to 
 their doors. 
 
122 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 The renting class, which is on the increase and 
 for which the opportunity of cheap land grows 
 steadily less, which has no stake in the community 
 and is sensitive with respect to the landlord class 
 above it, is in a fair way to make little of social 
 life and less of good citizenship. As an expression 
 of Christian spirit and true neighborliness and as 
 part of its educational task the rural church must 
 reach the renter and his family. They must be 
 won into such social fellowship as will make life less 
 barren. 
 
 In many of the rural districts a large part of the 
 civic task will be that of assimilating the foreign- 
 born and their children. Those rehgious bodies 
 whose ministry is trained abroad and whose 
 ostensible duty has been the perpetuation of 
 foreign customs and language will either be con- 
 verted to loyalty to the United States and unques- 
 tioned support of the country that has given them 
 opportunity and freedom, or they will lose their 
 children and young people to the religious organiza- 
 tions that stand foursquare for Americanism. 
 There are localities in which the church school 
 might best further citizenship by teaching the 
 English language and explaining the fundamental 
 nature of our democratic government. At the 
 present time, when so great a strain is placed upon 
 those whose blood ties bind them to a people 
 governed by the arch enemies of democracy, it is 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 123 
 
 quite possible that the church school to which 
 their children come may by kindness and good- will 
 prevent the natural love of kin from hardening 
 into the bitter spirit of treason against this country. 
 This, however, is part of the emergency work of the 
 present crisis. If ''citizenship" had been given 
 its rightful place in secular and religious education 
 during the past fifty years much of personal heart- 
 ache and hatred and public peril would have been 
 avoided. 
 
 One task of the church school which is espe- 
 cially important for the older young people and 
 adults is to open the available avenues of informa- 
 tion which are commonly unused. It may be very 
 easy to secure the best books from nearby public 
 libraries, but this will not be done unless the matter 
 is pressed or the church becomes a library branch 
 for this very purpose. Publications of the state 
 schools of agriculture and government bulletins, 
 state and federal, are invaluable, but will not be 
 secured without similar endeavor and prepara- 
 tion. Lecturers and demonstrators with impor- 
 tant and interesting information for the material 
 and social welfare of farm people are available at 
 trifling cost, but someone must take the initiative 
 in securing their services. The older young people, 
 the men's club, or the woman's society of the church 
 may well perform civic service in inaugurating 
 this educational work. 
 
124 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 Any fair consideration of the government's con- 
 cern for rural welfare, from the Roosevelt Com- 
 mission on Country Life to the recent farm-loan 
 legislation, will certainly stimulate the patriotism 
 of farm people; and it is quite necessary for their 
 own and the country's good that they be posted 
 in all phases of this movement. Let the church 
 people promote patriotism on this solid ground of 
 service rendered rather than on the inconclusive 
 sentimental appeal. 
 
 There is a certain danger in the civic approach 
 that has been thus far suggested in this chapter. 
 It is the danger of arrest. Suppose that the 
 lessons based so obviously on self-interest and 
 immediately applicable to farm life serve only to 
 confirm rural people in personal gain and strictly 
 local improvement; that in the case of the exten- 
 sion of interest beyond the immediate family social 
 imagination halts at the township or county line; 
 that the citizen be made more fat and comfortable 
 in his provincialism. This is the fear that properly 
 possesses the souls of those who have struggled 
 with the heavy materialism of a country parish, and 
 it is the underlying basis of all opposition to placing 
 these "secular" subjects in a curriculum of religious 
 education. Why should the church teach agri- 
 culture ? Dives needs something else. The loaves 
 and fishes are always a grave problem for the 
 religious leader. 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 125 
 
 Citizenship ideals with a radius no greater than 
 farm or township will prove disappointing, while 
 religious ideals that never touch ground within 
 that area will prove useless. The latter will not 
 work, the former may be projected. Standing on 
 the sure ground of immediate interest the church 
 school of citizenship may lift the rural vision to a 
 wider outlook. Rural life needs irrigation from 
 the great waters of world-affairs. Only a tough 
 and stunted citizenship is possible without this. 
 Here it is that the imperial nature of the gospel 
 must be brought to bear. After all, it is a kind of 
 life that makes possible a world-brotherhood that 
 we are striving for, and when by the improvement 
 of reading and the encouragement of travel and all 
 forms of culture we have done our best, still if we 
 lack Christ's love of fellow-man our citizenship is 
 incomplete. Just as reciprocity between country 
 and city is essential to both, so the play of the 
 whole world upon the remote rural home is neces- 
 sary to its largest life; and how often has it hap- 
 pened that the greatest human issues have claimed 
 their coming protagonists at these humble hearths! 
 The really big problems need no condiments to 
 whet the appetite of youth, and when once they 
 strike the soul homespun and cowhide cannot keep 
 one provincial. 
 
 It is therefore highly desirable that the minister 
 bring to the country people his best thought and 
 
126 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 the latest and most accurate information on 
 national and world problems. These concern city 
 and country equally. They constitute a moral 
 burden making for unity. It is by espousal of the 
 cause of justice and brotherhood for all men that 
 we become, in some positive sense, religious. 
 
 Liberal use should be made also of the poetry 
 and other literature of country life. Such books 
 as L. H. Bailey's Outlook to Nature and his poems 
 on Wind and Weather will quicken spiritual appre- 
 ciation. The goal of all these efforts is not merely 
 the efficient farmer but men and women who live 
 richly in the mastery of nature, in the fellowship 
 of family life and neighborly relations, in glad 
 ministry to the common good, and as worthy 
 citizens in each of the widening circles of human 
 association. The Christian principle must domi- 
 nate each area and will not rest short of that 
 republic of the spirit wherein we are citizens of the 
 world and therefore truly children of God. 
 
 With these suggestions bearing upon some of the 
 distinctively rural elements in civic training the 
 church school should incorporate the bulk of what 
 has been offered in the preceding chapters. The 
 fact that the process of living together in organic 
 relation is so patent in rural life should lead us to 
 expect superior results in the attempt to teach 
 citizenship. The child and the city are eternally 
 incompatible. There the process of living to- 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 127 
 
 gether is so complex, so subordinated to com- 
 mercial ends, so artificial and arbitrary that the 
 task of orienting the child in a social order which 
 will appeal to his reason and have basis in daily 
 experience is exceedingly difficult. On the other 
 hand, childhood in the country is of itself the very 
 beginning of good citizenship. 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1. What advantages does country life offer for the 
 teaching of good citizenship ? 
 
 2. With what organizations should the rural church 
 school co-operate ? 
 
 3. What is the civic value of the community pageant ? 
 
 4. Illustrate the use of the child's observation in teaching 
 rural civics. 
 
 5. Plan a class session in which you use the weed com- 
 missioner. 
 
 6. Plan a class session in which you use the road master. 
 
 7. Plan three class sessions in which you use the county 
 agricultural expert. 
 
 8. Outline a policy for the social development of country 
 homes. 
 
 9. Outline a policy for the stimulation and improvement 
 of country reading. 
 
 10. Make a series of five lessons based on distinctly rural 
 material from the Bible and suitable for children about ten 
 years of age. 
 
 11. Plan a field day for a country district. 
 
 12. Make a list of the young people in your church who 
 have had high-school or college training and indicate what 
 church and community service each person might be 
 expected to render. 
 
128 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 13. What village improvements are desirable in your 
 locality and how could your church start and organize a 
 movement for the realization of some one of these ? 
 
 14. Is there a woman's club in your community ? What 
 is its program for the current year ? 
 
 15. Do you have a county Y.M.C.A. ? What is it 
 doing ? How does your church co-operate ? 
 
 16. What books on rural life are in your church-school 
 library? In the nearest town library? In the pubHc- 
 school library ? 
 
 17. What use are you making of the various libraries 
 and of the circulating libraries available ? 
 
 18. What religious agencies are at work in your town- 
 ship ? In what ways do they co-operate ? 
 
 19. Plan and carry out a township survey. (See Felton, 
 The Study of a Rural Parish, published by Missionary 
 Education Movement, New York.) 
 
 20. Have your pupils of about fifteen years of age write 
 brief papers covering their observations on the advantages 
 of scientific farming. 
 
 21. Have your pupils of about ten years of age write 
 a letter aimed to persuade some city friend of the advantages 
 of country life. 
 
 22. Outline plans for reading and discussion on the 
 part of a community brotherhood meeting in your 
 church. 
 
 23. What is the annual per capita cost for religious 
 education in your church school ? What improvements do 
 you need ? How might these be financed ? 
 
 24. What is your school doing to assist the nation in the 
 present war ? 
 
 25. Make a plan for presenting to your young people the 
 nature and claims of five vocations that render distinct 
 public service. 
 
Civics in the Rural Church School 129 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 Chubb, P. Festivals and Plays. 
 
 Field, J. College Women and Country Leadership. 
 
 Field and Nearing. Community Civics. 
 
 Hill, M. The Teaching of Civics. 
 
 McKeever, W. A. Farm Boys and Girls. 
 
 Vogt,.P. L. RurcU Sociology. 
 
 Wilson, W. H. The Evolution of the Country Community. 
 
 . The Church at the Center. 
 
 . The Church of the Open Country. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ADULTS IN THE CHURCH SCHOOL OF 
 CITIZENSHIP 
 
 This chapter aims to present, somewhat criti- 
 cally, the status of the church in the democratic 
 community, to indicate her civic obligations, and to 
 suggest practical methods of co-operation between 
 church and state. The problems treated have for 
 some time confronted thoughtful ministers and 
 laymen. Yet the rank and file of church members 
 have not been educated to the community point 
 of view. A program in which the church herself 
 has been the chief concern has left the great mass 
 of members with nothing to do. The objectives 
 of the church have not been big enough to make 
 the whole body a working force. Because the 
 task has not been sufficiently large and difficult the 
 appeal has fallen below the heroic possibilities of 
 mankind. Vigorous souls are disappointed when 
 they discover themselves to be, not in a campaign 
 with hazards, but in comfortable quarters now 
 and forever; while the sluggish and selfish are 
 religiously confirmed in an individual "safety- 
 first" manner of life which is theirs by faith. 
 
 This has been the tendency in so far as the 
 church has been a separate group, an end in itself, 
 
 130 
 
Adults in the Church School 131 
 
 an asylum from the world, or a safe transport to 
 the hereafter. But no church is wholly thus. 
 Beginning with propaganda for converts to even 
 the narrowest faith, some social interest is bound 
 to follow, and the extension of such effort in 
 missions of all kinds always forces some recognition 
 of a social solidarity in which many agencies, for 
 better or for worse, are at work. 
 
 Perhaps the most urgent need confronting the 
 church is that of setting herself right in the public 
 mind. There is, in all, a vast amount of criticism 
 to the effect that the church is lukewarm on civic 
 matters, undemocratic in sympathy and methods, 
 divisive where community action is needed, mediae- 
 val in thought, class-conscious in personnel, dumb 
 and inactive when confronted with the issues of 
 social justice. Her direct influence upon, or 
 control of, community life has steadily diminished 
 from Colonial days to the present time. Her 
 interest in government is negative or critical, and 
 her obligation to supply the state with servants of 
 superior ability and high moral purpose is not 
 realized and met. 
 
 Quite apart from the important matter of the 
 form of government under which a people may be 
 organized, it will be generally conceded that the 
 morality of those holding public office vitally affects 
 common welfare. Moral failure in public trust not 
 only blights the popular mind with the frost of 
 
132 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 cynicism, but allows predatory interests to rob the 
 whole people, who, for the time being, have no 
 advocate or defender other than the publicly 
 elected official. If, therefore, democracy is ever 
 to discover and retain efficient servants after the 
 fashion of private concerns, she will need the best 
 judgment and the full moral support of church 
 people. Of even greater importance is the neces- 
 sity of maintaining high moral standards in the 
 citizenship generally, so that almost any popular 
 choice may be politically safe, and that malfeasance 
 may be promptly and vigorously punished. To 
 this end the free debate of public questions in the 
 light of the highest ethics becomes imperative. 
 
 Such being the case, it is in point to ask whether 
 the church supplies such leadership to the state, 
 whether she leavens the mass with such working 
 ideals of integrity and service as will automatically 
 right governmental wrongs and guarantee pro- 
 gressive righteousness, and whether she fosters 
 the enlightened debate of public questions. The 
 minority standing of the whole church group, 
 however weakened by sectarianism, does not in 
 itself absolve the church from rendering great 
 service to the state. For the group supplying 
 leadership always exerts an influence far above the 
 ratio of its numerical strength. Hence the question 
 remains whether the church fosters such a con- 
 ception of civic duty as will impel her adherents 
 
Adults in the Church School 133 
 
 both to serve in public capacity and to do their 
 duty at the polls. Leaders in anti-saloon propa- 
 ganda report 40 to 60 per cent of the church vote 
 registered in the cities studied, so that the actual 
 church vote probably falls below half of her voting 
 strength. 
 
 The church means to be unselfish and really 
 so thinks of itself. Contributors to its equipment, 
 its ministry, its services, feel themselves to be giving 
 for a public good. They mean that religious oppor- 
 tunity shall be thus open to the community. Yet 
 in practice the matter does not work out quite so 
 simply. To the outsider the church seems to be 
 existing simply in and for itself, and the religious 
 advantages which it offers seem to be rather con- 
 descending in their character. It may be that the 
 popular, unchurched mind is too suspicious and has 
 learned in the school of hard knocks to look for the 
 revenue feature behind all movements as well as 
 to resent superimposed benefits; but certainly the 
 present organization and standard activities of the 
 church do not impress the mass with any heroic 
 proof of her unselfishness. More recent forms of 
 propaganda for the Kingdom of God through the 
 secular and organic life of the state are eliciting a 
 vast amount of unpaid service for the public good ; 
 and until very recently the church has hardly 
 recognized these heroic struggles for righteousness 
 outside her walls. 
 
134 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 Contributors to most of these reform organiza- 
 tions ask no return in comfortable pews, fine 
 music, and aesthetic solace, but only that the cause 
 of human justice be promoted. The socialist 
 believes that his cause is greater than that of the 
 church, the trade-unionist that his is more urgent, 
 and both are prepared to make sacrifices which 
 compare favorably with any similar exhibit in the 
 modern church. Similarly, most of the societies 
 working for reform and amelioration, even though 
 they be often supphed with impulse and ideal 
 through church religion, regard their propaganda 
 as more urgent than ecclesiastical effort. The 
 suspicion that sectarian leaders and local ministers 
 are animated by something other than a passion 
 for human welfare creeps into the public mind, and 
 the man of the street discounts the paid enthusiast 
 who often betrays the fact that he is working pri- 
 marily for his church and not disinterestedly for the 
 common good. The church by virtue of her long 
 history and substantial success in attracting the 
 well-to-do has become professionalized, while the 
 younger movements of the struggling classes pos- 
 sess more of the initial spirit of Christianity when 
 apostles and prophets did not work for hire; and 
 membership in these new organizations is usually 
 more conscious and vital than it is in the older body. 
 
 Again, the internal organization of the local 
 church, even when ostensibly democratic, ever 
 
Adults in the Church School 135 
 
 tends toward bureaucratic control. So far as the 
 preacher is concerned, this is due to the assumption 
 that he speaks ex cathedra and has some sort of 
 authority other than that of demonstrated truth 
 as so perceived by his hearers. But the common 
 man who is working out his economic and social 
 salvation in other bodies and who has qualified as a 
 democrat abhors a muzzled meeting. For him 
 the sanctity of the truth in the case stands above 
 consecrated buildings, personages, and dictators. 
 Furthermore, in many churches so little effort is 
 made to refer matters of policy, program, election, 
 and expenditure to the whole body for decision 
 that the people become supine in their goodness and 
 almost grateful to those who, with presumably the 
 best of intentions, nullify self-government. 
 
 As any given church becomes large and pros- 
 perous there develops a tendency to remove its 
 government from the rank and file. The usurpa- 
 tion of the "ring" is not by design, but springs 
 mainly from the bother of maintaining an active 
 and therefore real democracy. In the election of 
 officials and the adoption of policies and budgets 
 there is often a cut-and-dried method which hardly 
 preserves the form of democracy, much less its 
 substance. Instances are known where members 
 in good standing have been refused information 
 as to the church's expenditures on its standard 
 activities; which, of course, implies that the 
 
136 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 contributor — and therefore, by implication, any 
 or all of the members — might be kept ignorant of 
 what the rulers do. In so far as such practices 
 obtain the spirit of democracy is violated, for self- 
 government permits no secrecy in the handling of 
 the common funds. The church must meet the 
 standards of a public which is debating, and in 
 some instances trying, the initiative, referendum, 
 and recall. 
 
 With some notable exceptions the music of the 
 church takes the same upper-class, patronizing 
 trend. Money which might have been spent to 
 educate the whole body in glorious and unifying 
 praise and in the training of large numbers of 
 children and youth to participate worthily in 
 public worship is often spent on a few imported 
 singers, who give a high-class and critical stamp 
 to the service, but seldom draw out the congrega- 
 tion in the joyful abandon of democratic praise. 
 Again the psychology is that of a superimposed, 
 although problematical, benefit, as contrasted with 
 a social achievement of the whole body. 
 
 It is perhaps iconoclastic to suggest that the 
 church needs to re-examine her meetinghouse in 
 the light of this crude and relentless spirit of 
 democracy. Is it best to occupy a distinctive 
 building or to use quarters in which other popular 
 assemblies of the people gather and express them- 
 selves? Should the place in which religion is 
 
Adults in the Church School 137 
 
 advocated possess a solemn grandeur, an awesome 
 and aesthetic worth, a crystallized tradition of the 
 might and sanctity of the historic church ? Should 
 it bow the soul in mute acceptance of a ministry 
 which it and its officials mediate, and send men 
 forth pardoned, purified, and serene to meet the 
 unceasing struggle of the outer world ? Perhaps 
 so; but if this be all, democracy remains unsatisfied. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the forward movements of 
 the church, in which it has found the people, have 
 been marked by unconventionality and extramural 
 effort. The open fields, market places, street 
 corners, town halls, schoolhouses, and rough 
 "tabernacles" have characterized the populariza- 
 tion of religion from the time of Jesus to the present 
 day. The address of man to man in forum fashion 
 as is the practice in politics is standard democratic 
 form. Aesthetic and sedative values reside in the 
 ecclesiastical treatment, but the implications of 
 the separateness of religion from common places 
 and from common life, and its failure thus to come 
 to grips with the people, as well as its shyness of 
 intellectual struggle in the open without fear or 
 favor, have made the religion of the sanctuary the 
 religion of the few. 
 
 Some maintain that America's large European 
 immigration demands the reproduction here of the 
 great symbols and bulwarks of religion as set forth 
 in the imposing cathedrals of the Old World. 
 
138 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 But those who so argue do not reckon with democ- 
 racy, lack faith in the abihty of America to work 
 out a form consonant with her spirit, and forget 
 that the immigrant himself, seeking liberty and 
 larger life, is very tired of the old patriarchal 
 system — which he regards as largely an imposition 
 — and is passing through skepticism toward a 
 religion that is popularly and intellectually based. 
 The church which seeks to serve him through the 
 old architecture of monarchical religion will prob- 
 ably have a harder task than the group which 
 seeks to meet him on the democratic level, where he 
 may be paid the compliment of working out his own 
 salvation with as much honesty and independence 
 as he exercises in his other groups, social and 
 national. 
 
 In some quarters the church is criticized for 
 condoning or fostering social stratification. It is 
 thought that the social disabilities imposed upon 
 the negro are increased by the church's policy of 
 segregation, and that the assimilation of immigrants 
 is impeded by conserving their language and 
 customs in separate church organizations. Un- 
 doubtedly the church should so specialize her 
 method as to be able to minister to newcomers in 
 their native tongues. But to erect and maintain 
 separate buildings for these people retards assimila- 
 tion and stratifies the democracy. In this way the 
 church is often working at cross-purposes with the 
 
Adults in the Church School 139 
 
 public school, and long after the children have 
 been prepared to become part and parcel of the 
 common American life the church will be found 
 accentuating by its separate buildings, organiza- 
 tions, and language those clannish factors which 
 impede a hearty and reliable democracy. 
 
 For obvious and perhaps valid reasons little 
 has been written on sectarianism as an impediment 
 to social action. Yet, with due respect to those 
 who are trying to do good according to their light 
 and ability, it must be acknowledged that in many 
 places denominationalism impedes or arrests com- 
 munity effort for social ends. The adherent of the 
 struggling church tends to shorten his radius of 
 interest to that of the invalid institution, to consider 
 its support the full measure of his benefaction, and 
 to suspect the motives of rival churches if they 
 essay anything more than a similar concern for 
 their own slender tenure of life. The higher 
 interests of the community, which might be served 
 by combined action for educational, recreational, 
 and civic improvement, are usually neglected 
 because of the heavy tax for the maintenance of 
 superfluous churches and because these serve to 
 keep people of good-will apart. 
 
 When these divisions are further accentuated by 
 strict adherence to racial lines, so that impervious 
 groups are maintained behind the barriers of for- 
 eign thought-forms and language and the church 
 
I40 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 group identifies its religion with non-participation 
 in the manners and aims of the community, then 
 the church becomes a serious obstruction to the 
 aims of the state and is morally chargeable with a 
 misuse of the privileges which the state grants. 
 The unfortunate tendency to live on the community 
 rather than for and with it is fostered, along with 
 the disability to co-operate intelligently in the 
 common task of government. 
 
 The gradual alignment of the church and the 
 well-to-do is attested by their present partnership. 
 Conversely there must have been some lack of 
 congeniality to account for the absence of the 
 struggling classes. For certainly both their social 
 hunger and their need of help were greater than 
 would be found with the "respectables," while 
 at the same time they were less competent to 
 command other outlets. Had the church been 
 democratic and socially concerned, rather than 
 ecclesiastic and self-centered, there is no reason to 
 doubt that she would have succeeded more largely 
 with the mass than with the class, or at least 
 equally with both. 
 
 Another difficult element enters into the problem 
 by virtue of the fact that the symbols and content 
 of public worship are largely the product of an 
 undemocratic age. Only in small degree as yet 
 have the hopes of the masses risen into sacred song, 
 great statements of faith, and adequate common 
 
Adults in the Church School 141 
 
 prayer. The historic agencies used by the church 
 are rich in ministries to the individual soul as 
 contrasted with the same service for the col- 
 lective life. Even in their best form they are 
 the voice of the unworthy suppliant in the pres- 
 ence of an absolute monarch. Without wholly 
 denying the validity of this aspect of religion, one 
 feels that for the democracy which has become 
 conscious there remains an unsatisfied demand, an 
 Immanuel passion as contrasted with the absentee 
 potentate. 
 
 So also the theological conceptions of the church 
 are not cast in terms which are known to the com- 
 mon man. The preacher may speak of sin as a 
 great, undifferentiated state, with explanations as 
 to how man came under sin and how the hearer may 
 himself be extricated from this state, but the 
 public mind does not think in these terms. The 
 intelligent democrat has analyzed sin more specifi- 
 cally than the appointed moral leader. To him 
 definite sins have become clearly outlined. He 
 believes that their prevention is more important 
 than their forgiveness, and that prevention is, in 
 a very large measure, possible. The point of view 
 of the churchman is theological, that of the demo- 
 crat is social. The one thinks of a state of sin, the 
 other of a condition of society that defeats the real 
 ends of life. The one seeks to change the spiritual 
 status on a basis of belief, the other to change living 
 
142 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 conditions by direct action. Both may be right, 
 but they do not understand each other. 
 
 The church says children are unregenerate 
 and need to be born anew, the democrat says 
 many of them are victims of vicious living con- 
 ditions imposed by greed and the industrial exploi- 
 tation of human rights. The church would save 
 them by the mystery of baptism or of faith, the 
 democrat thinks that they would save themselves 
 in a fair society where the hopes and possibilities 
 of the soul might reach out through normal human 
 experience to some sure sense of an Infinite 
 Love. 
 
 Similar contrasts exist all along the conscious 
 boundary between church and mass. Church 
 membership is for those who believe thus and so, 
 and who submit to a certain ritual. These are the 
 measures of excellence. But in the democracy 
 social conduct that is fair and therefore beneficial 
 to all is the sole consideration for rating and good 
 citizenship. The ecclesiastic will admit the unself- 
 ish person only on certain provisos of creed and 
 ritual, and whoever qualifies in these respects is 
 usually immune from censorship or dismissal, 
 although his social conduct may be subversive of 
 the public good, extortionate, and unjust. But 
 the standard of the outside world has to do only 
 with conduct, reckoning this or that profession as 
 neither here nor there. 
 
Adults in the Church School 143 
 
 All of this wide difference has come about in a 
 fairly traceable way. The church has undergone 
 a progressive loss of public function, as for example 
 the control of education and relief, and there has 
 crept in a subtle error, to the effect that her 
 responsibility ceased with the passing over of these 
 concerns to the state. She lacked the vision to see 
 society whole, to work for the community in its 
 totality, to shepherd all the people. Denomina- 
 tionalism favored irresponsibility. Philanthropy 
 supplanted public spirit, ambulance service got 
 more attention than generalship. Arrest was 
 inevitable, and, by the law of compensation, she 
 turned with greater diligence to her traditions 
 while the democracy marched on to meet its trying 
 problems. 
 
 As an offset to this tendency, which may become 
 pharisaic, democracy rightly expects the church 
 to make plain to all men her redemptive principle, 
 her formula for a perfect society. From democ- 
 racy's viewpoint the church is not very efficient in 
 the discharge of this duty. Her failure to make 
 her ideal ethic that of industries and nations may 
 be due to many causes. It is not enough to fall 
 back upon the weakness, inertia, and selfishness of 
 human nature. For mankind, and especially the 
 youth of the world, gives sufficient proof of an 
 illimitable ability to respond to that which is 
 difficult, hazardous, and sacrificial. Perhaps it is 
 
144 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 not too much to believe that in every normal life 
 there comes a period in which selfhood demands 
 that very thing as the crown of existence, the 
 superb assurance of causal relation to one's world. 
 Even within the church only trivial use is made of 
 this pregnant idealism. The relay of new life so 
 potential for world-betterment, coming over the 
 crest that lies between childhood and manhood, 
 dribbles down to commonplace self-interest because 
 the trumpet call is not heard and leadership in the 
 fight for human rights is lacking. The central 
 meaning of the gospel is not made plain to, nor 
 adopted by, any large number of the youth of the 
 church. 
 
 As for most of the mature and aged, the gospel 
 has no social meaning commensurate with, or 
 related to, democracy's problems. It is as if 
 Jesus spoke in another room and his articulate 
 imperatives reached the hearers only as a comfort- 
 ing lullaby, an assurance that he was near, but 
 not near enough to disturb. How else can one 
 explain the timid seclusion of church people within 
 half-empty buildings, the sterility of their summer 
 religion, their failure to find the crowd, wherever 
 it may be, and to compel attention, even if the 
 attention secured were only hostile ? So far as 
 the "outsider" is concerned, he usually does not 
 perceive what the church religionist is talking 
 about. His supposition is that someone is trying 
 
Adults in the Chitrch School 145 
 
 to make converts to the church, intends to take 
 up a collection, is earning easy money, is under- 
 pinning a top-heavy industrialism by "sawdust- 
 trail " methods, or is ranting in an unknown tongue, 
 which tongue is traditional theology. The obliga- 
 gation of the church to get the gospel to the people 
 as dynamic for achieving fulness of life, to make 
 plain its consuming righteousness for the individual 
 group, or nation, irrespective of class and privilege, 
 and to infold all men in brotherly relationship 
 is an obligation awaiting fulfilment. American 
 democracy is offering a fair field for this enterprise, 
 with her own future, if not her life, at stake. If 
 the church is not to fail in this critical issue she 
 will need to give at least as much attention to the 
 understanding of society as she gives to her sacred 
 books and her inherited doctrines. 
 
 Mastery of biblical interpretation and church 
 history is less difficult than an understanding of 
 modern society. It is easier to study the residue 
 of a past age than to measure the contending forces 
 in current life and to learn their moral significance. 
 Without this latter ability it happens that the 
 authority of the remote past, with its uninterpreted 
 ethics of the dead, is often used to halt righteous 
 reform. People in general do not know the sig- 
 nificance of historic religion for modern life, and 
 this is due to the fact that the church has confined 
 herself too exclusively to the study of tradition 
 
146 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 and has not performed a complete interpretation. 
 Democracy has a moral right to expect that inter- 
 pretation shall carry through to the active interest- 
 centers of her own life. Anything less is pedantry 
 and gets society nowhere. 
 
 It may be that a dim sense of the church's failure 
 to meet society's collective need of moral leadership 
 underlies the present demand that she confine 
 herself to the "gospel," implying thereby that the 
 gospel is concerned solely with man's relation to 
 God. And since the attempt to regulate social 
 conduct is so fraught with the danger of offending 
 church people, it is thought that a restriction of 
 the church's function as an agent of religion is 
 desirable. But the internal advantage of such a 
 course is bound to be attended with further loss 
 of influence in the democracy. The ethics of 
 society in general would then prove to be more 
 aggressive, vital, and urgent than that of the 
 church group. 
 
 Recent developments of the democratic spirit 
 will test church organization in new ways. The 
 progressive realization of woman's suffrage, growing 
 logically out of general education and the feminist 
 movement, is rapidly centering the attention and 
 effort of women about civic affairs. A competitive 
 bid is being made for the time and energy which 
 women have so generously given to the church. 
 During the past decade women have educated 
 
Adults in the Church School 147 
 
 themselves, principally in their clubs, to understand 
 and attack governmental evils which threaten 
 their own and the public's interests, especially in 
 the humanitarian field; and perhaps the bulk of 
 humanitarian legislation has been proposed and 
 urged by them. 
 
 This means that the most intelligent women and 
 those with capacity for leadership are turning 
 from relief to reform measures, from philanthropy 
 to civics; and unless the church provides scope 
 and expression for this redirected energy she will 
 suffer the loss of that active support which the 
 women have so readily given. A further implica- 
 tion of this trend is the necessity of giving women 
 a larger representation on the official boards of the 
 church. Democracy demands that representation 
 be substantially balanced or, at least, placed upon 
 a basis of merit and efficiency quite apart from 
 any consideration of sex. 
 
 From the foregoing criticisms no conclusion 
 should be drawn as to the imminent decease of the 
 church. For, while no one can reliably forecast 
 how the newer altruism of justice will clothe or 
 incorporate itself, only a poor historian would 
 predict that the church will pass away because of 
 its present maladjustment to democracy. The 
 vitality of social institutions of long standing is 
 almost unlimited, and in the case of the church 
 there is the added conviction of being divinely 
 
148 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 ordained. Because of these two facts she can 
 continue far beyond the day of her social utility 
 and can, no doubt, last long enough to make or 
 suffer the necessary adjustments. 
 
 If, however, conformity to the democratic 
 demand proves to be very slow, the experience will 
 be no different from that of the schools which have 
 had more reason to respond because supported by 
 the whole citizenship. Yet the aristocratic policy 
 of the schools — dictated by the professional class 
 through university standards — is only now reluc- 
 tantly yielding to the pressure of democracy which 
 demands a training suitable for the many as 
 against a culture limited to the few. Surely the 
 higher schools, which have shaped education, have 
 excelled the church in avoiding live issues and in 
 maintaining a decorous post-mortem interest in 
 the life of the people; and yet the whole system 
 from top to bottom is now changing and becoming 
 socially dynamic. So may it be with the church 
 as she faces the situation and becomes less occupied 
 with tradition. 
 
 Into the forum movement which is now so 
 rapidly developing within the church, many of 
 these questions will come for conscientious con- 
 sideration, with the result that the facts as set 
 forth in Sunday-evening and week-night sessions 
 will certainly stir the church to a more vigorous 
 attitude on questions of social morality and will 
 
Adults in the Church School 149 
 
 therefore re-enlist the interest of the public. The 
 abnormal fear of creating any issue will give place 
 to wholesome partisanship with the right. Not to 
 avoid issues, but to be on the right side of issues 
 and to clarify them for the popular mind, is the 
 essential of moral leadership, and in the forum 
 tendency of the present time the church is headed 
 toward that goal. 
 
 It is at this point that the function of the church 
 needs clear definition. Hers is a composite group 
 which by its very nature is incapable of class 
 propaganda. The other social groups whose 
 component members are firmly knit together by a 
 common economic interest must constitute the 
 fighting units for their respective reforms. No one 
 of these militant groups is altogether right or 
 irreproachable in the methods used, and hence the 
 church cannot be the agent of any one. Her great 
 function consists in her impartial adherence to 
 righteousness and in her provision of a composite 
 group animated by the ethics of Jesus into which 
 these contending efforts may come for frank and 
 brotherly consideration. The hope of an honorable 
 conciliation which compromises no single item of 
 righteousness rests largely with the church if she 
 can maintain this open and unfettered attitude 
 — an eagerness for the truth, plainly spoken and 
 reverently considered, in an atmosphere of broth- 
 erly love. 
 
150 The Chuech School of Citizenship 
 
 This being the case, it is probable that the 
 advocates of radical reform will continue to be 
 dissatisfied with the church. She will at best 
 serve chiefly to conserve the gains made in social 
 morality and to sanction certain reforms which 
 she cannot directly undertake. The social creed 
 of American Protestantism as formulated by the 
 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
 America is an index of this conserving and sanction- 
 ing function. Therein the major humanitarian 
 reforms of our time are commended and a publi- 
 city bureau for the church conscience is created. 
 Through the Anti-Saloon League the church is 
 vigorously in the field for temperance reform. 
 This must serve as good training and as intro- 
 duction to the treatment of other problems which 
 result from the same commercialism. For, al- 
 though the abolition of the saloon will undoubtedly 
 diminish misery and vice, there will remain other 
 social causes which the church cannot long over- 
 look. Already special days are dedicated to the 
 consideration of labor, child welfare, prison reform, 
 and the prevention of disease, the method being 
 identical with that of the temperance propaganda, 
 viz., sanction within the church body and func- 
 tion through other agencies. Furthermore the 
 Sunday schools are rapidly organizing classes in 
 welfare courses, which must lead to civics, and 
 which in themselves provide some training in self- 
 government. 
 
Adults in the Church School 151 
 
 No doubt much of the criticism of the church is 
 just. Many honestly question the wisdom of 
 diverting so much social energy into this channel 
 when direct action seems to promise more imme- 
 diate benefit. Yet for society to despair of so 
 great a dynamic as the religious sanction in the 
 hearts of those who would conserve its welfare or 
 cure its ills is deliberately to use less than the full 
 and normal dynamic for human betterment. 
 Church people are awakening slowly because they 
 are comfortable. It takes some time to grasp 
 what religious living means in this twentieth 
 century. Their attention has long been diverted 
 elsewhere. When they behold the cause of human 
 justice in the present order as something more 
 than the concern of mortals, as being, indeed, the 
 cause of God, they will respond with that peculiar 
 totality of self which inheres in religion. 
 
 The state has consistently recognized this 
 potentiahty and has uniformly acknowledged the 
 religious body as its spiritual partner in social 
 control. But on the principle of democracy, the 
 church, comprising but a part of the people, is 
 answerable in certain respects to the common- 
 wealth, composed of all the people. Democracy 
 has a moral right to demand reasonable returns 
 for the privilege and protection guaranteed the re- 
 ligious body. Churches in the United States enjoy 
 great liberty in matters of faith and of propa- 
 ganda; they are usually tax-exempt, and in many 
 
152 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 communities the meetinghouse is protected against 
 the near encroachment of competitive amusements, 
 such as saloons and theaters. The value of the 
 church in conserving morals and public order is 
 thus recognized. Her ritual in solemnizing mar- 
 riage and burial, in identifying the best mores with 
 the will of God, her frequent challenge to better 
 living, and her distribution of helps, spiritual and 
 material, constitute an aid to government; while 
 her training of the young in the knowledge and 
 attitudes of religion is explicitly part of her public 
 task. 
 
 Such service is not calculable in severe statistical 
 form and seldom rises to conscious appreciation 
 in the public mind. But it is noteworthy that 
 few people will choose to live in a churchless com- 
 munity. Perhaps if the thinking of today were 
 less mechanistic and not so shortly tethered to the 
 ego-economic stake, there might also be a larger 
 appreciation of the value to public welfare in the 
 church's perennial ministry to the deepest emo- 
 tional needs of the citizen, and in her bold but 
 imperfect attempt to give to life some unifying 
 philosophy and some meaning commensurate with 
 the soul's demand. The nation forgets that need; 
 industry ignores it; but the church, even when 
 captured by nationalism and drugged by indus- 
 trialism, still pleads the everlasting rights of 
 the individual soul. The nation says "might," the 
 
Adults in the Church School 153 
 
 industry "wealth," and the church "love." The 
 pursuit of unmitigated self-interest on the part 
 of men and nations is certainly that "broad road 
 that leadeth to destruction; and many be they 
 that go in thereat." It may seem fantastic and 
 conceited, but, in the main, the church tries to 
 save society from chaos by interposing steadily the 
 basal principle of Jewish and Christian ethics — 
 the doctrine of brotherly love. She is champion 
 of the community of good-will, knit together by 
 spiritual bonds and dedicated to the realization 
 of the normal family relationship throughout the 
 world. 
 
 Granting, then, that as an agency of social 
 control and human welfare the church holds in 
 fact some such place as is indicated by the govern- 
 mental attitude toward her, the question remains 
 as to what assurance the government, or all the 
 people, may demand of the church that she is 
 adequately performing those functions for which 
 she holds the people's tacit or explicit franchise. 
 To put it more concretely: if, from the viewpoint 
 of democracy, the church is a public utility col- 
 lecting large sums of money and aiming to render 
 services from which the state deliberately refrains, 
 has the state the right to demand anything by way 
 of the standardization or efficiency of those services 
 and to expect a wise and reasonable use of the 
 money solicited from the citizens ? In other words, 
 
154 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 is the state bound to see to it that the agency of 
 reHgion gives the community a just return for value 
 received ? 
 
 One point of approach to such a consideration 
 is the important matter of the qualifications of 
 the professional ministrant of religion. In the 
 professions of law and medicine the duty of the 
 state to protect its citizens by requiring a certain 
 minimum standard of training for practitioners is 
 generally accepted as sound and reasonable public 
 policy. In fact, the state is no longer negative in 
 this task. For, in addition to restricting the 
 personal liberty of incompetent would-be prac- 
 titioners, she undertakes increasingly to provide 
 that the health service needful to the community 
 be furnished by the medical profession. Medicine 
 is rapidly passing from a private concern, living 
 upon the fees of unfortunate patients, to a social 
 service of vast sweep and fine morale. Pure-food 
 legislation is but the application of the same 
 principle to less professional concerns. 
 
 Reasons for the greater laxity in setting mini- 
 mum educational standards for accredited special- 
 ists in the care of individual souls and in the shaping 
 of social morality must be found either in the 
 nature of religion itself, as bearing no necessary 
 relation to intellectual training and scientific fact, 
 or in the practical impossibility of defining what 
 constitutes religious leadership. Undoubtedly the 
 
Adults in the Church School 155 
 
 present method of leaving ordination requirements 
 wholly to the sect or to the local congregation, 
 whatever it may accomplish in the mobility, local 
 color, and numerical strength of the ministry, 
 leaves the people at large without sufficient 
 guaranty of the educational fitness of ordained 
 preachers. 
 
 Just why social control remains incoherent at 
 this point is rather difficult to discover. The 
 general opinion seems to be that any tampering 
 with "liberty of soul" would result in more harm 
 than good. The principle involved, even if abused, 
 is too sacred to be sharply challenged. It may 
 also be that the accepted laissez faire in religious 
 competition finds foundation in the common belief 
 in "revelation" as a past, fixed, and ended achieve- 
 ment. If the body of religious truth has been 
 given, inerrant and endued with a divine right 
 per se, and is so recorded that all may read, then 
 the qualification of the religious leader is a matter 
 of biblical rather than of social training. He is 
 answerable, not to the world of facts, but to the 
 God of "revelation." 
 
 The right of the government to prevent wasteful 
 duplication of public and semipublic service in the 
 interest of all the people is by no means clearly 
 defined; and, for example, while a dozen milk 
 wagons rattle back and forth over a route that 
 might be served by one delivery, and a common 
 
156 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 commodity necessary to every family and already 
 subject to municipal inspection is carried about 
 by silly competition at great cost to the consuming 
 public, it would be premature to expect a much 
 more rational method among the vendors of a 
 commodity so optional and variable as church re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Yet it is possible to forecast a time when public 
 opinion, which is becoming increasingly sensitive 
 to the inutility and costliness of a ministry over- 
 crowded by those who are unfit and therefore 
 obstructive to united community effort for good, 
 will demand, perhaps by law, a more adequate 
 education for the professional religious leader. 
 Such insistence upon a minimum, although not 
 uniform, education for the professional who lives 
 by religion would not necessarily violate the prin- 
 ciple of religious liberty for the individual. It 
 would only enforce the fact that the assumption 
 of a social task as a life-calling must not be the 
 presumption of ignorance or weak sentimentality, 
 but the rational service of an enlightened and 
 trained mind. 
 
 A public policy of this sort requiring a minimum 
 of general education equivalent to a Bachelor's 
 degree would bear upon the church's discharge of 
 her just functions as a public institution in yet 
 another way. For the professional specialties still 
 reserved to the denominational theological semi- 
 
Adults in the Church School 157 
 
 nary would be saved from narrowness by the 
 preceding liberal education, since the college man, 
 grounded in empirical and historical method and 
 awakened by the social sciences, swings from 
 sectarianism to community interest, from competi- 
 tion with variant believers to a campaign for 
 moral objectives. The man who in motive and 
 character is fit to enter the ministry would by 
 virtue of such training seek to align and unify the 
 religious forces of a parish so as best to serve the 
 community life. 
 
 It seems highly imperative in the present state 
 of American democracy that the bonds which 
 make for coherence and unity be greatly strength- 
 ened and that some cause more compelling than 
 the residuary nationalism of the immigrant or 
 its revival in the native-born be brought to the 
 fore. Socialism has served somewhat in this 
 capacity, but it is quite possible that a serious 
 acceptance of the Christian teaching of human 
 brotherhood and the application of the family ideal 
 to the entire community of men and nations is 
 the only solution for class and race divisiveness. 
 Something more commanding and idealistic than 
 the appeal to party and national symbols is 
 necessary in order that the citizen may rise from 
 impulsive response to secondary motives to moral 
 response to an end so exalted as to carry the value 
 of religion. The salvation of a democracy which 
 
158 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 shall cherish the well-being of all mankind as it 
 does that of its own citizens rests with religion. 
 
 Despite the fact that religious organizations are 
 often, wittingly or unwittingly, recruited to un- 
 christian national ambition, the fact remains that 
 for both internal and international brotherhood the 
 world depends chiefly upon the religious prophet 
 and the exercise of Christlike altruism. Practically 
 the only international strands holding in the war- 
 rent world of today are those of the Red Cross and 
 of the equally valiant service of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association with the armies and in the 
 prison camps of Europe. These testify that the 
 so-called moratorium of Christianity is by no 
 means complete. 
 
 Now, whether one looks out upon this vast field 
 or confines his attention to the most ordinary 
 community, he is forced to the conclusion that the 
 hope of survival of any human society worthy of 
 the name rests with this doctrine of love. The 
 machinery of government, even when carried to 
 the highest point of efficiency, will not guarantee 
 that human beings will live together as befits man. 
 The spirit infusing the process determines success 
 or failure. The kind of living itself is the real 
 reward. In the last analysis the achievement of 
 democracy is not measured in things, but in fulness 
 of life; and when fair discount has been made, 
 does not the church, taken as a whole, stand for 
 
Adults in the Church School 159 
 
 that abundant life which the founder of Christianity 
 proclaimed as his mission to the world ? 
 
 It is therefore, perhaps, a tribute to an idealism, 
 like unto her own at its best, that democracy 
 fosters the church, believing that in an organization 
 whose selective principle is the teaching of Jesus 
 there is the greatest likelihood that the highest 
 life-values attainable in any society will be demon- 
 strated. Hence the church carries a certain self- 
 imposed obligation as being a proving-ground 
 for the finest possibilities of human association. 
 Within the biblical concept of the church, as in its 
 sacred status defined by theologians, there is this 
 rich and positive consciousness, explaining and 
 mitigating somewhat a separateness which has at 
 times seemed aloof and non-social to the outsider. 
 
 Turning to the distinctly educational task of 
 the church we find that the attempt to domineer 
 knowledge so that scientific findings shall be in line 
 with tradition is obsolescent. But there emerges 
 from the futile and broken defenses of the church 
 in this quarter a more glorious and positive task. 
 It is not enough that opposition give way to con- 
 cession. Concession must become indorsement and 
 eager support. In order most largely to serve 
 mankind the church must stand for unfettered 
 research. Only by so doing may she hope to 
 command for human service the findings of the 
 most patient and accurate scholarship. Her 
 
i6o The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 religious education is not an attempt to keep 
 knowledge in line with tradition, but rather to 
 enforce her imperative of brotherly love in every 
 application of the growing power of knowledge 
 freely pursued. All processes of knowledge are 
 imfettered, but every finding is, by her philosophy 
 of life, dedicated to human service. Thus she 
 makes education religious by hallowing its objec- 
 tive. Inventions and discoveries are for the 
 realization of her ideal of a perfect society. The 
 unsocial conception of personal profit from superior 
 or advanced knowledge is transmuted into a 
 proportionate obligation to benefit mankind. To 
 Christianize the use of knowledge and that other 
 form of power, wealth, would mean almost a 
 complete realization of the highest conceivable 
 democracy. No agency in society today is held 
 more clearly responsible for the effective presenta- 
 tion of this ideal than is the Christian church. 
 
 In religious education of the more technical 
 sort a mutual obligation to get together rests upon 
 church and state alike; the state being responsible, 
 in its school system, for the granting of time and 
 opportunity for religious training and the church 
 being responsible for the organization and use of 
 such time and opportunity. The deadlock occa- 
 sioned by sectarianism and resulting in the 
 exclusion of formal religion from public education 
 must be broken by a more sensible view of team 
 
Adults in the Church School i6i 
 
 work and a right division of labor. Provisions 
 whereby various reUgious bodies may undertake 
 the religious nurture of their children in periods 
 designated by the school authorities seem to be 
 meeting with favor and success. The church is 
 under obligation to use these growing opportunities 
 efficiently and to warrant democracy's gradual 
 recognition, in the public-school system, of the fact 
 that the moral life grounded in religion is no mean 
 asset to the state. The utter silence of the public 
 school, implying the non-existence or negligibility 
 of the religious interest, may yet be corrected in 
 this way, with proper respect and great gain to 
 all concerned. The raw materialism and bald 
 self-interest, couched in the specious garb of 
 "efficiency," may yet learn a great deal from this 
 co-operation of the most distinctly altruistic and 
 soul-respecting group in our midst. Until the 
 state is prepared heartily to recognize this fact and 
 to welcome such co-operation, she cannot justly 
 criticize the church for failing to make her full 
 contribution toward righteous citizenship. 
 
 Another function which democracy expects of 
 the church is that of bridging the gulf between the 
 law-abiding and the criminal classes. The church 
 is the chief exponent of forgiveness and moral 
 reform for the individual. Her religion is one of 
 hope for those who have fallen into vice and crime. 
 The bonds of fatalism and the crushing judgment 
 
i62 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 of society which enthrall and depress the offender 
 have never paralyzed her practical faith in the 
 moral resources of the individual and the power of 
 recovery which may be found in divine help. The 
 actual results of rescue work constitute evidence 
 which no fair mind can wholly reject. Quite apart 
 from difference of opinion as to any transcendental 
 element involved, it is true that the message and 
 ministry of religion have served to reconstruct 
 many a broken life and, in an emotion running 
 deeper than the grooves of evil habit, to weld the 
 broken parts into new and masterful personality. 
 No other set of people competes for this particular 
 work. 
 
 However, something needs to be added to the 
 more spectacular and occasional transformations 
 thus wrought. The pitfalls and injustice resulting 
 in crime must be removed, and the vengeance 
 theory with which society blinds itself to these 
 must give place to humane and reformatory 
 effort. Here, as in the case of the public schools, 
 the church has been too much left out of the reckon- 
 ing. Possibly she has not pressed forward as an 
 eager partner of the state in the understanding and 
 treatment of the criminal. Her representatives 
 have not been close enough to court and jail and 
 prison to undertake a fair share of the difficult task 
 of saving the culprit to his better self and to society. 
 The complexity of the machinery, the vast pro- 
 
Adults in the Church School 163 
 
 portions of crime in our great cities, and the 
 fragmentary nature of Protestant effort have made 
 the religious counselor too often an absentee in the 
 case of men and families passing through the 
 dreadful ordeal of broken law. 
 
 Not only so, but in all probationary methods 
 whereby the offender, young or old, is being coached 
 back into ways of integrity and social behavior, 
 there is almost no co-operation between church 
 and state. If pains were taken to connect the 
 paroled prisoner or the reformatory graduate with 
 the pastor of his persuasion in the locality to which 
 he goes, much might be done to make this experi- 
 ment in faith more largely successful. So also in 
 the genesis of crime, and more particularly in the 
 first outer oppings of juvenile delinquency, it would 
 be a considerable asset if police and probation 
 ofl&cers and judges would refer these cases at once 
 to the local pastor representing the religious affili- 
 ation of the person or family concerned. The 
 church could add her support to the best efforts of 
 the state. It is interesting and pertinent to know 
 that almost no family considers itself isolated from 
 every religious group. The strands of connection 
 may be tenuous or chiefly imaginary but the court 
 records show an almost constant claim of relation- 
 ship to some religious fold. If ever the church has 
 opportunity to render superb service it is at this 
 very time when the famil)' is face to face with the 
 
164 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 probable humiliation and loss of one of its members; 
 and because it can render distinctive help not 
 offered by any other agency in this crisis it should 
 be an acknowledged and welcome partner of the 
 state. 
 
 Such partnership reaches out into many fields, 
 including among others the drunkard, the profli- 
 gate, and the erring woman. The hope of the 
 state to cure by legal barriers alone those crimes 
 which are grounded in appetite, passion, and lust 
 is heavily discounted by experience. While some 
 improvement of conditions will result from strict 
 laws vigilantly enforced, the recovery of an inner 
 control which wills and does what is right depends 
 most frequently upon the dynamic which religion 
 supplies. Furthermore, the establishment of a 
 public opinion favorable to social recovery rests 
 upon the successful promulgation of the doctrine 
 of brotherly love, which opens an upward way for 
 the unfortunate and erring. Remove this religious 
 temper from society, and the offender, whose 
 experience at the hands of the law usually creates 
 or confirms his antisocial grudge, will be but an 
 animal in a cage; or, if he gets loose, his main joy 
 will be in retaliation against a merciless social order. 
 The church, rightly understood and actually 
 functioning in this setting, is a door of hope which 
 society greatly needs and should more generously 
 use. The emotionalism of the appeal that has 
 
Adults in the Church School 165 
 
 proved effective with the flagrantly unsocial should 
 not blind very proper persons to the fact that 
 revolution is not a drawing-room nicety. One 
 should reflect also that the dearth of legitimate 
 emotion is so constant in our mechanistic society, 
 that nickel shows, ball games, and theatrical bom- 
 bast are thronged by those who seek some sort of 
 reaction to testify that they are alive. The church 
 may legitimately use for moral ends and society's 
 good some of the water that is splashing over the 
 artificial dam. She may save many citizens from 
 the horrible sense of life's inutility and give another 
 chance to those who might only be a nuisance to 
 themselves and a plague upon society. 
 
 The health interest of the people also offers 
 opportunity for the church to assist in public 
 service. The fact that church congregations are 
 in aggregate and regularity of attendance and in 
 average ability unsurpassed by any other meetings 
 in the community indicates an opportunity to 
 serve the state by the presentation of such subjects 
 as public health, hygiene, sanitation, and health 
 insurance. The proportion of the gospel devoted 
 to this interest is remarkable, and the church is 
 in true alignment with her mission when she acts 
 as partner with the state in the spread of life- 
 saving information. Hence, through pulpit, class 
 instruction, and exhibit, the publicity side of health 
 propaganda may be aided, while the financial 
 
1 66 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 support given to volunteer agencies that anticipate 
 and lead public effort in combating sickness is no 
 small part of the church's service. So also in the 
 full or partial support of visiting nurses, church 
 hospitals, orphanages, homes for the aged, etc., 
 the church is rendering, in all, a very considerable 
 aid to the state, and ideally, at least, infuses such 
 service with a spirit of personal concern that tends 
 to disappear from state agencies when they become 
 perfunctory or fall a prey to spoils politics. Any- 
 how, in addition to the prosaic warmth of the iron 
 radiator, these recipients of public care, being 
 human, need the cheer of love's lire on the open 
 hearth. Democracy expects such service to radi- 
 ate from the church and is disappointed only 
 when religion is content with her philanthropic 
 ministry to the ills flowing from social imperfection 
 and injustice and fails to attack the underlying 
 economic causes. 
 
 Also in the matter of providing wholesome 
 opportunity for sociability the church does much 
 and is expected to do more. The popularity of the 
 saloon and the public dance hall indicates, among 
 other things, a shortage of suitable provision for 
 social exchange. The physical equipment of the 
 church to relieve this pressure and to direct it 
 into happy experience often surpasses her willing- 
 ness to undertake the task. Certain negative or 
 anemic views of life, together with some fear of 
 
Adults in the Church School 167 
 
 becoming ''worldly," impede a vigorous social 
 policy. Hence youth's quest for social romance is 
 needlessly exploited by greed and often debased in 
 the process. Furthermore, a vast number of the 
 more timid, including adults, will go along with 
 almost no group experience outside the family, 
 imless the church provides outlet, inducement, 
 and direction. It is no small benefit to the common 
 life to have this process of socialization and neigh- 
 borliness fostered by the church. The forced 
 isolation of city dwellers not only induces social 
 irresponsibility, which means poor citizenship, but 
 precipitates many into wrongdoing which would 
 have been impossible under the friendly surveil- 
 lance of local acquaintance and neighborliness. 
 Taken all in all, there is probably no social agency 
 that is doing more than the church in contributing 
 to this defensive friendliness, which in turn is 
 a necessary ingredient in good citizenship. The 
 democratic experience of the mass and other forms 
 of public worship, augumented by a generous 
 program of sociability, means a large contribution 
 to public welfare. 
 
 In times past ecclesiastical architecture has 
 adorned the state. The church holds a conviction 
 that goodness and beauty are destined to coincide. 
 Her doctrine of grace, conception of heaven, music, 
 painting, and architecture testify to this conviction 
 and for the most part enrich the cultural wealth 
 
1 68 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 of the state. That the aesthetic may be overdone 
 and hence call for crude reactions to discover 
 human values has been indicated above. How- 
 ever, when aesthetics does not divert righteousness 
 to the land of the lotus it is innocent, and when it 
 gives fairer fighting form to a just cause it is 
 dynamic. Whatever adornment it has given the 
 state in times when democracy's present problems 
 were not conscious issues, it now happens that 
 nothing but a full humanization of aesthetics will 
 satisfy popular judgment. The house of the Lord 
 should be decent; so should the homes of the poor. 
 Beautiful lives and equality of opportunity to 
 realize them takes precedence over beautiful 
 buildings, boulevards, and what not, whenever the 
 two conflict. An equitable distribution of wealth 
 gives some promise of the beautiful life; an inequi- 
 table distribution has too often been the foundation 
 of an aesthetics veering toward luxury and sug- 
 gesting privilege. The church must discriminate. 
 She is dedicated to beauty of life and in this is 
 of one spirit with democracy. Beauty of things 
 engages her attention only as means to this end; 
 and, while poverty, disease, and other unsubdued 
 vandals profane and wreck the human temple, 
 lavishness is forbidden in her less holy enter- 
 prise. The sanctity of human values comes first 
 and is the sole condition of sanctifying all other 
 means. 
 
Adults in the Church School 169 
 
 This brings us around to the ever-recurring fact 
 that nothing can take the place of righteousness. 
 No service to the state can compare with the 
 outspoken demand for justice. Let this fail, and 
 the very palliatives of religion may help betray 
 democracy. The "Get right with God!" gospel 
 taken alone leads to self-deception or hypocrisy. 
 How can anyone know conditions at the unseen 
 end of that relationship? "Do right by man!" 
 That is as old as Micah. "Treat him as thyself!" 
 It is very ancient. On this empirical basis one 
 both needs and dares to reach out after the Infinite. 
 As the church demands justice at whatever cost to 
 business and the established "system," she will 
 contribute her largest, and no doubt her most 
 sacrificial, gift to democracy. 
 
 QUESTIONS, INVESTIGATIONS, EXPERIMENTS 
 
 1 . What are the most democratic features of church life ? 
 
 2. What are the least democratic features of church life ? 
 
 3. What practical steps could be taken further to democ- 
 ratize the local church ? 
 
 4. Describe in detail your church work for offenders. 
 
 5. Do the same for dependents. 
 
 6. For public health. 
 
 7. For recreation. 
 
 8. For education. 
 
 9. For local improvement. 
 
 10. For social justice in industry, commerce, and finance. 
 
 11. With what private welfare agencies does your church 
 co-operate ? How and to what extent in each case ? 
 
lyo The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 12. With what governmental agencies does your church 
 co-operate ? How and to what extent in each case ? 
 
 13. To what degree is church federation practiced in your 
 community ? 
 
 14. What practical tasks call for further federated effort ? 
 
 15. What public questions have been discussed in the 
 regular meetings of the church or in the meetings of its 
 auxiUaries during the past six months ? 
 
 16. What is the Forum Movement? (See Democracy in 
 the Making, by George W. Coleman. Little, Brown & Co.) 
 
 17. What is the duty of church people with respect to 
 poverty ? (See Poverty the Challenge to the Church, by J. Sj 
 Penman. The Pilgrim Press.) 
 
 18. What public offices are held by members of your 
 church ? 
 
 19. What percentage of your enfranchised members 
 voted at the last election ? 
 
 20. Has any survey been made of your community? 
 If so, what use is being made of it ? (See The Community 
 Survey in Relation to Church Efficiency, by Charles E. 
 Carroll. The Abingdon Press.) 
 
 21. Work out a civic directory to be posted in the church 
 building for the use of church people and to cover the 
 following items: ambulances, hospitals, civic bureaus, 
 charities, churches, schools, clubs, courts and jails, employ- 
 ment bureaus, police, fire, libraries, dependent institutions, 
 improvement associations, social settlements, labor unions, 
 business men's clubs, newspapers, aldermen, inspectors, 
 health officials, playgrounds, etc., as the case may require. 
 
 22. What is the annual budget for religion in your 
 community ? 
 
 23. What for education and for recreation ? 
 
 24. Give five reasons for your adherence to democracy. 
 
Adults in the Church School 171 
 
 25. Write a paper on Old Testament Laws relative to 
 land tenure or to the treatment of slaves. (See Israel's 
 Laws and Legal Precedents, by C. F. Kent. Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons. See also Social Institutions and Ideals of the 
 Bible, by T. G. Soares. Abingdon Press.) 
 
 26. What sayings and deeds of Jesus serve as moral 
 dynamic for democracy ? 
 
 27. Make a three months' civic program for a church 
 discussion club composed of adults. 
 
 READING RECOMMENDED 
 
 Abbott, Grace. The Immigrant and the Community. 
 Cutting, R. F. The Church and Society. 
 Hodges and Richert. The Institutional Church. 
 Peabody, F. G. The Religious Education of an American 
 
 Citizen. 
 Penman, J. S. Poverty the Challenge to the Church. 
 Rauschenbusch, W. Christianizing the Social Order. 
 Strayer, P. M. The Reconstruction of the Church. 
 Ward, H. F. Social Creed of the Churches. 
 Williams, Charles D. The Christian Ministry and Social 
 
 Problems. 
 
 Note. — The religious leader or teacher will find the 
 Survey, 112 East 19th Street, New York City, the best 
 weekly periodical on social work. The information which 
 it affords on current problems and methods and on the 
 literature and agencies of social amelioration is indispensable 
 to the church in her community service. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aesthetics, 43, 137, 167 f. 
 Amusement, commercialized, 
 
 93, 114, 166 
 Anti-Saloon League, 150 
 Arbor Day, 117 
 Athletics, 41, 75 ff. 
 
 Bible, a rural book, 107 
 Biography, 65, 96. 
 Boy Scouts of America, 58 S. 
 Boys, Handbook for, 57 ff. 
 Boys' Life, 65 
 
 Camp Fire Girls, 67 ff. 
 
 Cause and effect, 41 f. 
 
 Child: duties, 24; in the coun- 
 try, 127 
 
 Children, protection of, 24, 90 
 
 China, 19 
 
 Choosing a vocation, 73 
 
 Christian ethics, 117 
 
 Church: democracy in, 131, 
 134 ff., 140, 159, 169; 
 grounds, 44; rural, 103 ff. 
 
 Citizenship, elements of good, 
 
 2,3 
 
 Class: distinction, 43, 121, 138, 
 
 14s; organized, 55 
 Collective living, 38 
 Collective sin, 13, 141 
 Country church, 103 ff. 
 Country minister, 105, 125 
 County fair, 117 
 Criminal, 161 ff. 
 
 Cromwell, 14 
 
 Cuba, 19 
 
 Current Events Club, 95 
 
 Debate, 86 ff. 
 
 Democracy, 7, 10; in play, 81; 
 in the church, 131, 134 ff., 
 140, 159, 169; in the home, 
 25 
 
 Discipline, 56 
 
 Dow, Neal, 53 
 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, 96 
 Elwood, Charles A., quoted, 17 
 Ethics, Christian, 117 
 Every Boy's Library, 66 
 
 Festivals, national, 24, 76, 117 
 "Find Yourself Campaign," 73 
 Fire department, study of, 34, 
 
 74 
 Fireman, ^;^ 
 Flag, 23, 60 
 Forum, 148 
 
 Fourth of July, 76, 117 
 Franchise service, 99 
 
 Gang, 55 
 
 Gardening, 39 ff. 
 
 God the Creator, 107 f. 
 
 Golden Rule, no 
 
 Good citizenship: elements of, 
 
 2,3- 
 
 Good manners, 29, 30, 46, 59 
 Gough, John B., 53 
 
 17s 
 
176 The Church School of Citizenship 
 
 Government, study of, 86, 90, 
 
 Grounds, church, 44 
 
 Halloween, 76, 117 
 Handbook for Boys, 57 ff. 
 Hay, John, 19 
 
 Health: officer, 33; public, 165 
 Home, 25, 28, 66, 113, 116 
 
 Idealism, 72, 114, 159 
 Immigrant, 45, 97, 121 f., 137 f. 
 Individualism, 16, 27, 108 
 Intellectual reconstruction, 85 
 
 Juvenile delinquency, 163 
 
 Kindergarten, 29 
 Kindness, 62, 113 
 Kingdom of God, 6, 8, 104, 133 
 
 Labor Day, 117 
 Landlordism, 108 
 Lane, Franklin K., quoted, 2 
 Lessons in Community and 
 
 National Life, 54 
 Life Questions of High-School 
 
 Boys, 54 
 Lincoln, 14, 117 
 
 Majority, attainment of, 96, 99 
 Manual training, 42 
 May Day, 117 
 Memorial Day, 117 
 Ministerial training, state regu- 
 lation of, 153 ff. 
 Mischief, 27 
 Mock trial, 91 
 Moral order, 42 
 Moving pictures, 24, 88, 115 
 Music, 92, 118, 136 
 
 Nature worship of children, 44 
 Neighborliness, 114, 167 
 New Year's Eve, 76, 117 
 
 Obedience, 38, 78, 107, 112 
 Old Settlers' Club, 119 
 Organized class, 55 
 Our America, 92 
 Outlook to Nature, 126 
 
 Pageant, 92, 118 
 
 Pathological treatment of civ- 
 ics, 18 
 
 Patriotism, 23, 58, 60, 70, 124 
 
 Personal: expense account, 
 73 f.; ownership, 27; piety, 
 9ff. 
 
 Philanthropy, 8 f., 16, 26, 40, 
 143, 166 
 
 Piety, personal, 9 ff. 
 
 Policeman, 31 f., 74 
 
 Politics as vocation, 19 
 
 Postman, 32 
 
 Protection of children, 24, 90 
 
 Public: control of activities, 
 15; library, 127; schools, 16, 
 34 f., 106, 117, 148, 160 f. 
 
 Quarantine, ^:i 
 
 Race prejudice, 45 
 
 Red Cross, 158 
 
 Reverence, 22 
 
 Roosevelt Commission on 
 
 Country Life, 124 
 Rural: church, 103 ff.; life, 40, 
 
 103 ff. 
 
 Sacrifice, 37, 72 
 St. Patrick's Day, 117 
 St. Valentine's Day, 117 
 Saloon, 76, 93, 133, 150, 166 
 
Index 
 
 177 
 
 Scout masters, 66 
 Scribner Lesson Series, 53 f. 
 Sectarianism, 132, 139, 160 
 Self-government, 55 f. 
 Self-inventory, 73 
 Sentimentalism, 95 
 Sermon on the Mount, 112 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 96 
 Sin, collective, 13, 141 
 Slumming, 94 
 Social service, 95 
 Soldierly virtues, 38 
 Street, 31, 35 
 Summer program, 39 
 Sunday-school lessons, 21, 22, 
 
 53 
 Survey, community, 93 f., 121 
 Symbols, 23 
 
 Taft, William H., quoted, 30 
 Taxation, 99 
 
 Temperance, 22 
 Tenant, 108 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 40, 117 
 Thrift, 36, 38, 63, 69 
 
 Vilai lampada, quoted, 81 f. 
 Vocational interest, 40, 70 f. 
 Vote, 96 
 
 War, 37 
 
 Washington, Booker T., 14 
 Washington's Birthday, 117 
 Waste, 36, 43, 70, 74 
 Wind and Weather, 126 
 Women's clubs, 114, 147 
 World: brotherhood, 125, 158; 
 peace, 19 
 
 Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation, 158 
 Youth, 14, S3 ff-, 144