Читать книгу Religious Education in the Family - Henry Frederick Cope - Страница 27

The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a new institution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but as controlled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of the home and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He did not give formal rules for the regulation of homes; rather he made a spiritual ideal of family life the basic thought of all his teaching. He said more about the family than concerning any other human institution, yet he established no family life of his own. He is called the founder of the church, yet he scarcely mentions that institution, while he frequently teaches concerning home duties and family relations. He glorifies the relations of the family by making them the figure by which men may understand the highest relations of life. He speaks more of fatherhood and sonship than of any other relations. He gives direction for living, using the family terms of brotherhood. He points forward to ideal living in a home beyond this life. He teaches men when they think of God and when they address him to take the family attitude and call him Father.

If we sum up all the teachings of Jesus and separate them from our preconceptions of their theological content, we cannot but be impressed with the facts that he seized upon the family life as the best expression of the highest relationships; that he pointed to a purified family life, in which spiritual aims would dominate, as the best expression of ideal relationships among his followers; and that he glorified marriage and really made the family the great, divine, sacramental institution of human society.

We can hardly overestimate the importance of such teaching to the character of the family. The early Christians not only accepted Jesus as their teacher and savior; they took their family life as the opportunity to show what the Kingdom of God, the ideal society, was like. Family life was consecrated. Men and women belonged to the new order with their whole households. Religion became largely a family matter. The worship that had been confined to the temple now made an altar in every home and a holy of holies in the midst of every family. The scriptures that belonged to the synagogue now belonged in the home. Above all, this family existed for the purposes taught by Jesus, that men might grow in brotherhood toward the likeness of the divine Fatherhood. It was an institution, not for economic purpose of food and shelter, not for personal ends of passion or pride, but for spiritual purpose, for the growth of persons, especially the young in the home, in character, into "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Christianity is essentially a religion of ideal family life. It conceives of human society, not in terms of a monarchy with a king and subjects, but in terms of a family with a great all-Father and his children, who live in brotherhood, who take life as their opportunity for those family joys of service and sacrifice. It hopes to solve the world's ills, not by external regulations, but by bringing all men into a new family life, a birth into this new family life with God, so securing a new personal environment, a new personality as the center and root of all social betterment. He who would come into this new social order must come into the divine family, must humble himself and become as a little child, must know his Father and love his brothers.

Christianity, then, not only seeks an ideal family; it makes the family the ideal social institution and order. It makes family life holy, sacramental, religious in its very nature. This fact gives added importance to the preservation and development of the ideals of family life for the sake of their religious significance and influence. It not only makes religion a part of the life of the home but makes a religious purpose the very reason for the existence of the Christian type of home. It makes our homes essentially religious institutions, to be judged by religious products.

I. References for Study

G. A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals, chap. xvi. Revell, $1.35.

Article on "The Family," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

II. Further Reading

On the educational function of the family: A. J. Todd, The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency. Putnam, $2.00.

On the religious place of the family: C. F. and C. B. Thwing, The Family. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.60.

I. J. Peritz, "Biblical Ideal of the Home," Religious Education, VI, 322.

H. Hanson, The Function of the Family. American Baptist Publication Society, $0.15.

W. Becker, Christian Education, or the Duties of Parents. Herder, $1.00. A striking presentation of the Roman Catholic view; could be read to advantage by all parents.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. What place did religion hold in the primitive family? What reference or allusion do we find in the Old Testament to the place of religion in the family (Deut. 6:7–9, 20–25)? What in the New Testament?

2. What has been the effect of purity of family life on the Jewish race?

3. What place did the family hold in the teachings of Jesus?

4. What shall we think of the relations of the church and family as to their comparative rights and our duty to them?

5. Do you agree that the family is the most important religious institution?

7 For a brief statement see Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, Lecture 4, § 7; also Todd, The Family as an Educational Agency.

8 See Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, chaps. i, ii.

9 On the place of the family in different religious systems see the fine article under "Family" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

10 See Lecky, History of European Morals, chap. ii.

11 Quoted by Lofthouse in Ethics and the Family, p. 8, from W. Hall, in Progress (London), April, 1907.