THE DRIFT TOWARDS SECULARISATION.
IT was with great regret that we read the letter of Lord Hugh Cecil to the Times of Friday, February 2nd. If the spirit in which that letter is conceived is to govern the action of the majority of Churchmen, there is, we fear, a great danger of religious instruction being banished from our schools, and of the country adopting what, in truth, only a minute portion of the population really desire,—namely, secular education. The notion that the education of children in religious principles is not, and cannot be, a concern of the State in any shape or form, and that its business is solely with such material things as reading, writing, and arithmetic, is to us altogether hateful, and we mean, as laymen concerned with the essential welfare of the nation, to protest against it with all our strength. The true object of education is the production of the good citizen. But unless religion is part of education we shall never succeed in producing character, which is the essential of good citizenship. No doubt in theory the State might promote religious education by taking care that every child received instruction in the religious tenets of its parents. In practice, however, the adoption of that principle, and of that principle alone, would leave no inconsiderable portion of the population without religious instruction, for there are plenty of parents who would not take the trouble of declaring what particular sect should deal with the religious education of their children. The children of these • indifferent parents would either be left to grow up without any religious instruction at all, or else they would become the battleground of contending religious factions. It seems to us, therefore, that it is absolutely necessary for the State to concern itself with religious instruction, and to see to it that the funda- mentals of the Christian religion shall be .taught in all schools as part of the regular course, provided that there is an ample Conscience Clause under which parents may withdraw their children from such instruction. We do not believe it to be impossible to arrange for such a system of instruction in funda- mental Christianity ; indeed, it is already arranged for in the majority of our schools. We are convinced, however, that unless moderate men of all shades of opinion insist on keeping religious instruction in our schools, we shall, as we have said, drift against the real will of the nation into secularisation. A few enthusiastic people may imagine that if we adopted the secular system, and if the State abandoned all concern with religious instruction, the religious element would be adequately supplied by voluntary effort. We believe this to be a delusion. In certain places and for a short time a good deal, no doubt, might be done in this respect ; but in the long run the position of religious instruction would become precarious, and an increasing body of children would grow to manhood and womanhood without any religious education.
In these circumstances, we welcome the excellent letters which have been appearing in the Times and in our own columns from Churchmen who repudiate the notion that the teaching of fundamental Christianity is impossible, or, at any rate, not worth having. In our opinion, Bishop Welldon speaks nothing less than the truth when he says that the country stands at the parting of the ways, and that two educational policies are open to us,—one which includes the teaching of elementary Christian truths to all children whose parents are not unwilling that they should receive it, and the other the policy of pure secularisation. " But," he goes on, " when I reflect how impotent the Church and the other Christian communities are to ensure by any means at their command that all, or nearly all, the children in elementary schools will week after week volun- tarily attend religious lessons, and how grave an evil it would be that many thousands of these children should go out into the world without having heard anything of God and Christ, I cannot but hope the Church will throw her weight into the scale of such common religious teaching as is practicable, although' it may not be all that she would desire. It should be her object, I think, not to secularise the education which the State provides, but to claim facilities for supplementing it." Another admirable letter is that of the Dean of Carlisle in Tuesday's Times. With great good sense, he asks Lord Hugh Cecil whether it is quite fair " to refuse to see any good in a system because we do not, and cannot, think it is ideal." Undenominational teaching in elementary schools, he continues, is better than none, and is better than secular education. That, be insists, is what we must come to if we follow Lord Hugh Cecil's advice, and " as a Church reject absolutely any system of religious teaching which falls short of what we want to have." The Dean of Carlisle goes on to point out that the experience which we have had of the uudenomi- national system in Board or provided schools cannot be condemned as hopelessly bad. Three-fourths of the London children have attended Board-schools, and yet the Church has not lost her influence over those so brought up, or those who are still at school. It seems to us that the Dean is also on sure ground when he declares that such religious teaching as was given " so well and con- scientiously by the teachers under the London School Board, incomplete as it doubtless must be, is a very useful foundation upon which to build up the superstructure of Church teaching and training." Such fundamental or undenominational teaching, call it by either name, is, in our opinion, not merely essential as a foundation upon which the Church and other religious bodies can build, but is also an essential foundation upon which the character of the nation is to be built up.
If, as part of their daily education, we familiarise prac- tically the whole of the children of the nation with the words of Christ and the teachings of the New Testament, we provide a soil in which more detailed religious con- victions can spring up. If the State neglects to do that, it may soon find itself face to face with a generation which has ceased to be familiar with what we are old-fashioned enough to speak of as " Gospel light," and old-fashioned enough also to value, even though it may never have been supplemented by more dogmatic Christianity. We are fully aware that our protest against the secularisation of education as the supreme danger will be regarded with unfriendly eyes by extremists in the Church, and by a considerable portion of the clergy, many of whom are, we fear, inclined, with Lord Hugh Cecil, to " reject abso- Iutely- any scheme which prefers undenominationalism,' or fundamental Christianity,' or our common religion' to the teaching of any denomination." We are convinced, however, that by the vast majority of lay Churchmen our appeal will not pass unregarded if only they will think the matter out for themselves, and not imagine that they must in this case stand blindly by what they assume to be the view of " the Church." Let them remember that it is they themselves who are the Church, and that they have as great a right and as great a duty to direct the policy of the Church in the matter of religious education as a section of the clergy. We do not for a moment ask them to adopt an attitude of hostility towards the clergy, but merely not to assume without consideration that it is their duty to endorse any policy which is labelled in sufficiently large letters as the policy of the Church. The proposal to agree to the secularisation of education is emphatically a case for the exercise of the right of private judgment. To us it seems that the true duty of the Church is to insist, even at some prejudice to her narrower and more selfish interests, that religion and education shall not be divorced from each other. It is the boast—and the rightful boast—of the Church of England that she led the way in providing education for the poor, an education in which the teaching of the Bible and of fundamental Christianity went hand in hand with the teaching of secular subjects. In this she conferred a great benefit upon the nation. If she will now make it her business to prevent secularisation, she will have acquired one more claim to the gratitude of the country as a whole.
Before we leave the subject of education we must note the excellent letter dealing with " passive resistance " addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mr. Talbot, in which he deals with the question of what action 'Churchmen should take supposing that an Act were to be passed which traversed their conscientious convictions,— whether, in fact, they should adopt an attitude similar to that of the " passive resisters." We note with great satis- faction that the Archbishop expresses his emphatic opinion that in no circumstances within the range of practical politics would such action. on the part of Churchmen be justifiable :—" Should we in spite of all our efforts be called upon to endure the enactment of a law which violates our conscientious convictions as to what, in the highest interests of the children, is educationally right and fair, we must set ourselves with strenuous perseverance to get it mended. But at least while it remains the law, constitutionally enacted and constitutionally applied, loyal Churchmen will act as law-abiding citizens of a Christian country." We trust, after these wise words from the Archbishop, that we shall hear no more wild talk from Churchmen of any refusal to accept the law of the land. It will be their duty to set a good, not to follow a bad, example.
Previous page
