PCA HISTORICAL CENTER
|
|||||||||||||||
Historic Documents in American Presbyterian History THE NECESSITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
by Dr. J. Gresham Machen,
The Christian school is to be favored for two reasons.
In the first place, it is important for American liberty; in the second
place, it is important for the propagation of the Christian religion.
These two reasons are not equally important; indeed, the latter includes
the former as it includes every other legitimate human interest. But I
want to speak of these two reasons in turn.
In the presence of this apparent collapse of free democracy,
any descendant of the liberty-loving races of mankind may well stand dismayed;
and to those liberty-loving races no doubt most of my hearers tonight
belong. I am of the Anglo-Saxon race; many of you belong to a race whose
part in the history of human freedom is if anything still more glorious;
and as we all contemplate the struggle of our fathers in the winning of
that freedom which their descendants seem now to be so willing to give
up, we are impressed anew with the fact that it is far easier to destroy
than to create. It took many centuries of struggle -- much blood and many
tears -- to establish the fundamental principles of our civil and religious
liberty; but one made generation is sufficient to throw them all away.
It is true that no one of these measures is in force at
the present time. The Lusk Laws were repealed, largely through the efforts
of Governor Alfred E. Smith. The Oregon School Law and the Nebraska Language
Law were declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court,
and Justice McReynolds in the decision in the latter case gave expression
to the great principle that in America the child is not the mere creature
of the State.
One of these is the mis-named "child labor amendment"
to the Constitution of the United States. That amendment masquerades under
the cloak of humanitarianism; it is supposed to be intended to prevent
sweat-shop conditions or the like. As a matter of fact, it is just about
as heartless a piece of proposed legislation as could possibly be conceived.
Many persons who glibly favor this amendment seem never to have read it
for themselves. They have a vague notion that it merely gives power to
regulate the gainful employment of children. Not at all. The word "labor"
was expressly insisted on in the wording of the amendment as over against
the word "employment". The amendment gives power to Congress
to enter right into your home and regulate or control or prevent altogether
the helpful work of your children without which there can be no normal
development of human character and no ordinary possibility of true happiness
for mankind.
This so-called child labor amendment was originally submitted to the states a number of years ago. It was in process of being rushed right through without any more examination than other amendments received. But then fortunately some patriotic citizens in Massachusetts, especially in the organization called "the Sentinels of the Republic", informed the people of the state what was really involved in this vicious measure. Massachusetts had a strict child labor law; it might have been expected, therefore, in accordance with the customary specious argument, to need protection against states where the child labor laws are less strict. Yet in a referendum the amendment was rejected by an overwhelming vote. Other states followed suit, and it looked as though this attack upon American institutions and the decencies of the American home had been repelled. But we are living now in another period of hysteria, a period even worse than that which was found at the time of the war. So the so-called child labor amendment has been revived. State after state has adopted it, to a total number, I believe, of fourteen. It looks as though the enemies of American institutions might soon have their will, and as though the childhood and youth of our country might be turned over after all to the tender mercies of Washington bureaus. That disastrous result can only be prevented if there is an earnest effort of those who still think the preservation of the American home to be worth while.
Another line of attack upon liberty has appeared in the
advocacy of a Federal department of education. Repeatedly this vicious
proposal has been introduced in Congress. It has been consistently favored
by that powerful organization, the National Education Association. Now
without being familiar with the internal workings of that Association
I venture to doubt whether its unfortunate political activities really
represent in any adequate way the rank and file of its members or the
rank and file of the public-school teachers of this country. When I appeared
at a joint hearing before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor
and the House Committee on Education in 1926, Mr. Lowrey of the House
Committee asked me how it was that the resolution favoring the Federal
department of education was passed unanimously by the National Education
Association although he had discovered that many members of that Association
were saying that they were opposed to it. Neither Mr. Lowrey nor I seemed
to be able to give any very good explanation of this fact. At any rate,
I desire to pay the warmest possible tribute to many thousands of conscientious
men and women who are teachers in the public schools in this country.
I do not believe that in the entire government aspect of education these
teachers have any really effective representation.
But that is perhaps something like a digression. Let us return to the "educators" and their general demand either for a Federal department of education or for Federal aid to the states. Such demands are in the interests of uniformity in the sphere of education. There should be, it is said, a powerful coordinating agency in education, to set up standards and encourage the production of something like a system. But what shall we say of such an aim? I have no hesitation, for my part, in saying that I am dead opposed to it. Uniformity in education, it seems to me, is one of the worst calamities into which any people can fall. There are, it is true, some spheres in which uniformity is a good thing. It is a good thing, for example, in the making of Ford cars. In the making of a Ford car, uniformity is the great end of the activity. That end is, indeed, not always fully attained. Sometimes a Ford car possesses entirely too much individuality. My observation was, in the heroic days before the invention of self-starters, when a Ford was still a Ford, that sometimes a Ford car would start and sometimes it would not start; and if it would not start there was no use whatever in giving it any encouraging advice. But although uniformity was not always perfectly attained, the aim, at least, was to attain it; the purpose of the whole activity was that one Ford car should be just as much like every other Ford car as it could possibly be made. But what is good for a Ford car is not always good for a human being, for the simple reason that a Ford car is a machine while a human being is a person. Our modern pedagogic experts seem to deny the distinction, and that is one place where our quarrel with them comes in. When you are dealing with human beings, standardization is the last thing you ought to seek. Uniformity of education under one central governmental department would be a very great calamity indeed.
We are constantly told, it is true, that there ought to be an equal opportunity for all the children in the United States; therefore, it is said, Federal aid ought to be given to backward states. But what shall we say about this business of "equal opportunity?" I will tell you what I say about it; I am entirely opposed to it. One thing is perfectly clear -- if all the children in the United States have equal opportunity, no child will have an opportunity that is worth very much. If parents cannot have the great incentives of providing high and special educational advantages for their own children, then we shall in this country a drab and soul-killing uniformity, and there will be scarcely any opportunity for anyone to get out of the miserable rut. The thing is really quite clear. Every lover of human freedom ought to oppose with all his might the giving of Federal aid to the schools of this country; for Federal aid in the long run inevitably means Federal control, and Federal control means control by a centralized and irresponsible bureaucracy, and control by such a bureaucracy means the death of everything that might make this country great. Against this soul-killing collectivism in education, the Christian school, like the private school, stands as an emphatic protest. In doing so, it is no real enemy of the public schools. On the contrary, the only way in which a state-controlled school can be kept even relatively healthy is through the absolutely free possibility of competition by private schools and church schools; if it once becomes monopolistic, it is the most effective engine of tyranny and intellectual stagnation that has yet been devised.
That is one reason why I favor the Christian school. I favor it in the interests of American liberty. But the other reason is vastly more important. I favor it, in the second place, because it is necessary to the propagation of the Christian Faith. Thoughtful people, even many who are not Christians, have become impressed with the shortcomings of our secularized schools. We have provided technical education, which may make the youth of our country better able to make use of the advances of natural science; but natural science, with its command over the physical world, is not all that there is in human life. There are also the moral interests of mankind; and without cultivation of these moral interests a technically trained man is only given more power to do harm. By this purely secular, non-moral and non-religious, training we produce not a real human being but a horrible Frankenstein, and we are beginning to shrink back from the product of our own hands. The educational experts, in their conduct of their state-controlled schools, are trying to repair this defect and in doing so are seeking the cooperation of Christian people. I want to show you -- and I do not think I shall have much difficulty in showing this particular audience -- why such cooperation cannot be given.
In the first place, we find proposed to us today what is called "character education" or "character-building". Character, we are told, is one thing about which men of all faiths are agreed. Let us, therefore, build character in common, as good citizens, and then welcome from the various religious faiths whatever additional aid they can severally bring. Let us first appeal to the children on a "civilization basis" -- to use what I believe is the most recent terminology -- and then let the various faiths appeal to whatever additional motives they may be able to adduce. What surprises me about this program is not that its advocates propose it; for it is only too well in accord with the spirit of the age. But what really surprises me about it is that the advocates of it seem to think that a Christian can support it without ceasing at that point to be Christian. In the first place, when this program of character-education is examined, it will be found, I think, to base character upon human experience; it will be found to represent maxims of conduct as being based upon the collective experience of the race. But how can they be based upon the collective experience of the race and at the same time, as the Christian must hold, be based upon the law of God? By this experiential morality the reverence for the law of God is being broken down. It cannot be said that the results -- even judged by "civilization" standards (if I may borrow the terminology of my opponents for a moment) -- is impressive. The raging tides of passion cannot successfully be kept back by the flimsy mud-embankments of an appeal to human experience. It is a feeble morality that can say nothing better for itself than that it works well.
For that reason, character-building, as practiced in our public schools, may well prove to be character-destruction. But suppose it were free from the defect that I have just mentioned. I do not see how it can possibly be free from it, if it remains, as it must necessarily remain, secular; but just suppose it were free from it. Just suppose we could have moral instruction in our public schools that should be based not upon human experience but upon something that might be conceived of as a law of God. Could a Christian consistently support even such a program as that? We answer that question in the negative, but we do not want to answer it in the negative in any hasty way. It is perfectly true that the law of God is over all. There is not one law of God for the Christian and another law of God for the non-Christian. May not, therefore the law be proclaimed to men of all faiths; and may it not, if it is so proclaimed, serve as a restraint against the most blatant forms of evil through the common grace of God; may it not even become a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ? The answer is that if the law of God is proclaimed in public schools, to people of different faiths, it is bound, in the very nature of the case, to be proclaimed with optimism; and if it is proclaimed with optimism it is proclaimed in a way radically opposed to the Christian doctrine of sin. By hypothesis it is regarded as all that good citizens imperatively need to know; they may perhaps profitably know other things, but the fundamental notion is that if they know this they know all that is absolutely essential. But is not a law that is proclaimed to unredeemed persons with such optimism at best only an imperfect, garbled law? Is it not very different from the true and majestic law of God with its awful pronouncements of eternal death upon sinful man? The answer to these questions is only too plain. A proclamation of morality which regards itself as all that is necessary -- which regards itself as being capable at the most of non-essential supplementation by additional motives to be provided by Christianity or other faiths -- is very different from that true proclamation of the law of God which may be a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It is not merely insufficient, but it is false; and I do not see how a consistent Christian can possibly regard it as providing any part of that nurture and admonition of the Lord which it is the duty of every Christian parent to give to his children.
What other solution, then, has the public school to offer
for the problem which we are considering just now? Well, many people tell
us that the reading of the Bible can be put into the public schools. Every
educated man, we are told, ought to know something about the Bible; and
no intelligent, broad-minded person, whether a Christian or not, ought
to object to the bare reading of this great religious classic. So in many
places we find the Bible being read in public schools. What shall we say
about that? For my part, I have no hesitation in saying that I am strongly opposed to it. I think I am just about as strongly opposed to the reading of the Bible in state-controlled schools as any atheist could be. For one thing, the reading of the Bible is very difficult to separate from propaganda about the Bible. I remember, for example, a book of selections from the Bible for school reading, which was placed in my hands some time ago. Whether it is used now I do not know, but it is typical of what will inevitably occur if the Bible is read in public schools. Under the guise of being a book of selections for Bible-reading, it really presupposed the current naturalistic view of the Old Testament Scriptures. But even where such errors are avoided, even where the Bible itself is read, and not in one of the mistranslations but in the Authorized Version, the Bible still may be so read as to obscure and even contradict its true message. When, for example, the great and glorious promises of the Bible to the redeemed children of God are read as though they belonged of right to man as man, have we not an attack upon the very heart and core of the Bible's teaching? What could be more terrible, for example, from the Christian point of view, than the reading of the Lord's Prayer to non-Christian children, as though they could use it without becoming Christians, as though persons who have never been purchased by the blood of Christ could possibly say to God, "Our Father, which art in Heaven"? The truth is that a garbled Bible may be a falsified Bible; and when any hope is held out to lost humanity from the so-called ethical portions of the Bible apart from its great redemptive core, then the Bible is represented as saying the direct opposite of what it really says.
So I am opposed to the reading of the Bible in public schools. As for any presentation of general principles of what is called "religion", supposed to be exemplified in various positive religions, including Christianity, it is quite unnecessary for me to say in this company that such presentation is opposed to the Christian religion at its very heart. The relation between the Christian way of salvation and other ways is not a relation between the adequate and the inadequate or between the perfect and the imperfect, but it is a relation between the true and the false. The minute a professing Christian admits that he can find neutral ground with non-Christians in the study of "religion" in general, he has given up the battle, and has really, if he knows what he is doing, made common cause with that syncretism which is today, as it was in the first century of our era, the deadliest enemy of the Christian Faith. What, then, should the Christian do in communities where there are no Christian schools? What policy should be advocated for the public schools? I think there is no harm in advocating the release of public-school children at convenient hours during the week for any religious instruction which their parents may provide. Even at this point, indeed, danger lurks at the door. If the State undertakes to exercise any control whatever over the use by the children of this time which is left vacant, even by way of barely requiring them to attend upon some kind of instruction in these hours, and still more clearly if it undertakes to give public-school credits for such religious instruction, then it violates fundamental principles and will inevitably in the long run seek to control the content of the instruction in the interests of the current syncretism. But if -- as is, it must be admitted, very difficult -- it can be kept free from these evils, then the arrangement of the public-school schedule in such manner that convenient hours shall be left free for such religious instruction as the parents, entirely at their individual discretion, shall provide, is, I think, unobjectionable, and it may under certain circumstances be productive of some relative good.
But what miserable makeshifts all such measures, even
at the best, are! Underlying them is the notion that religion embraces
only one particular part of human life. Let the public schools take care
of the rest of life -- such seems to be the notion -- and one or two hours
during the week will be sufficient to fill the gap which they leave. But
as a matter of fact the religion of the Christian man embraces the whole
of his life. Without Christ he was dead in trespasses and sins, but he
has now been made alive by the Spirit of God; he was formerly alien from
the household of God, but has now been made a member of God's covenant
people. Can this new relationship to God be regarded as concerning only
one part, and apparently a small part, of his life? No, it concerns all
his life; and everything that he does he should do now as a child of God. I believe that the Christian school deserves to have a
good report from those who are without; I believe that even those of our
fellow citizens who are not Christians may, if they really love human
freedom and the noble traditions of our people, be induced to defend the
Christian school against the assaults of its adversaries and to cherish
it as a true bulwark of the State. But for Christian people its appeal
is far deeper. I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity
which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of the
earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to
a cold and unbelieving secularism. If, indeed, the Christian school were
in any sort of competition with the Christian family, if it were trying
to do what the home ought to do, then I could never favor it. But one
of its marked characteristics, in sharp distinction from the secular education
of today, is that it exalts the family as a blessed divine institution
and treats the scholars in its classes as children of the covenant to
be brought up above all things in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I cannot bring this little address to a close without trying to pay some sort of tribute to you who have so wonderfully maintained the Christian schools. Some of you, no doubt, are serving as teachers on salaries necessarily small. What words can I possibly find to celebrate the heroism and unselfishness of such service? Others of you are maintaining the schools by your gifts, in the midst of many burdens and despite the present poverty and distress. When I think of such true Christian heroism as yours, I count everything that I ever tried to do in my life to be pitifully unworthy. I can only say that I stand reverently in your presence as in the presence of brethren to whom God has given richly of His grace. You deserve the gratitude of your country. In a time of spiritual and intellectual and political decadence, you have given us in America something that is truly healthy; you are to our country something like a precious salt that may check the ravages of decay. May that salt never lose its savor! May the distinctiveness of your Christian schools never be lost; may it never give place, by a false "Americanization", to a drab uniformity which is the most un-American thing that could possibly be conceived! But if you deserve the gratitude of every American patriot, how much more do you deserve the gratitude of Christian men and women! You have set an example for the whole Christian world; you have done a thing which has elsewhere been neglected, and the neglect of which is everywhere bringing disaster. You are set like a city set on a hill; and may that city never be hid! May the example of your Christian schools be heeded everywhere in the Church! Above all, may our God richly bless you, and of His grace give you a reward with which all the rewards of earth are not for one moment worthy to be compared! |