THE POWER OF THE LAITY IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. W E have
a belief, a strong belief, that when the , Education Bill has been in operation for a very ',la. years the amendment proposed by Colonel Kenyon- Janey on Friday week. and defended is well as accepted °I Mr. Balfour, will be recognised as a most important and beneficial improvement. The words of the amend- ment are :—" Religious instruction shall be given in a school not provided by the local education authority in accordance with the tenor of the provisions (if any) of the trust deed relating thereto, and shall be under the control of the managers." The simplicity of these words, as may possibly be pointed out when the Bill reaches the Lords, quite conceals the great extent of their range. They will be found in practice to override any school trust deeds which may have been drawn in a restrictively clerical sense, and to transfer the general direction of religious in- struction to the laity, who must always form the majority of the managers. Nine times out of ten, of course, that will make no difference in the management of a school district. The great majority of English clergymen are sensible and moderate men, brought into unusually close contact with great varieties of opinion, devoted to their work, and desirous as regards education only that its total effect should be in the fullest sense Christian, and that the children brought to the schools should at least be instructed in the general principles of their faith. The laity under- stand them very well, discount a few of their utterances as professional, and are content, in consideration of their assiduity and managing skill, to leave a great deal of what is really very harassing and time-consuming supervision in their hands. This tolerance has, nevertheless, some sharp limits. The laity do not believe that only one Church can possibly " save souls," or that a clergyman, as such, can have miraculous powers, or that ordination, though highly ex- pedient as a setting apart of candidates for a noble pro- fession, can convey any supernatural gifts. A small section of the clergy, however—as is natural in a Church so widely comprehensive—not only hold those ideas, but are disposed to press them as if they were vital to Christianity; and they sometimes—not always, for the English mind judges men rather by conduct than opinion—create an antipathy which renders their easy control of parish work almost impossible. These are the men who give to Non- conformity its occasional character of "martyrdom," who are the despair of the abler Bishops, and who upon the graveyard question have been known to cause most regret- table riots. The English people are most reverential in their treatment of the dead, they are most anxious that the dead should not be disturbed, and they are willing to a quitecurious extent that the religious ceremonies which accompany burial should be conducted by the clergyman appointed by the State. But they do not believe in the least in the possi- bility of any spiritual value belonging to a particular piece of ground, and when that idea is pressed against some =baptised corpse or the like they grow angry, and even furious. These extreme clerics are the men also who make all projects of " reunion " or comprehension in a large sense so difficult, and who have at last brought down upon themselves from a Conservative Premier a scathing rebuke, with every word of which we, who aro warm friends of the Church of England, most fully agree. "I would ask," said Mr. Balfour on Friday week, "one question of my hon. friends who object to this amend- ment. What is it, I would put it to them, that has raised almost all the difficulties in the public mind con- nected with religious teaching in their schools ? It is the abuse here and there, very rarely I admit, by the clergyman of the parish of the powers given him by the trust. The harm that that has done to the whole cause of religious education in their public elementary schools is, in my mind, not to be measured in words. I meet it at every turn and on every occasion. The follies and indiscretions of a single individual are multiplied by public rumour till they almost stand up as a great public danger." These extreme men are bridled by the Kenyon-Slaney amend- ment. They must yield to the majority, and the majority of managers will of necessity be laymen, with the lay con- victions, and wholly indisposed to do injustice or incur unpopularity for the sake of what they regard as ecclesiastical formulas. They ask sense as well as piety in the clergyman, and when they do not find it will, under this clause in the Bill, strongly restrain his action. There may, of course, be a case now and then when an extreme rector or vicar is backed by a territorial magnate of ecclesiastical proclivities ; but even he will not take pre- cisely the clerical view, and will greatly dislike the idea, of quarrelling on religious grounds with the two managers chosen by the local authority. The managers, in short, will form a small Committee of educated English laymen—of whom in Church schools a two-thirds majority will neces- sarily be Churchmen—sitting in private to do business, and if they cannot do it in a reasonable and generally accept- able way, then the whole system of political management current in this country is proved to be inept. The Cabinet of the school district will be sensible enough.
We are very glad to see this small beginning of responsible lay influence in ecclesiastical affairs. It will not enfeeble the clergy, as we see by the operation of the system in Scotland, but rather strengthen them, and it will make their opinions a little less strictly professional. They are among the very best people in our varied com- munity; but their " snare " is liability to get out of touch with that community's latent, and therefore immovable, ideas. They will reply, we doubt not, that they hear plenty of those ideas, not to say too much of them ; but is not the truth that they are rather plagued by their con- gregations than counselled by them ? The advice a man will give when he is responsible for it, as a manager will be, and has to reflect upon its probable effect, is often very different from his criticism when he is not responsible, but only provoked or pleased. It will be graver at least, and weighted by conflict or agreement with other opinions, and especially with those of the two managers chosen by the local authority, who, if any care is exercised in selecting them, and they are not merely sent to contradict their colleagues, will weigh among the managers much more than their numerical weight. In a country like ours, accustomed to representation, and governed by representa- tives at every turn, it is not quite so easy to override their opinions, even in a school Committee, as some Noncon- formists appear to imagine. They will quite possibly be more constantly present than their colleagues, and it would not surprise us in the least if in a vast number of school districts, while substantial authority were found to reside permanently in the clergyman, the managers chosen by the local authority were to possess a marked and special influence. We believe, in short, that much of the sincere opposition to the Bill is a result of nervous- ness, and that when it has passed the community will as usual contrive to get very much its own way. And its way in all ecclesiastical matters is to regard the clergy with great respect and liking, but to preserve the right of the laity to a voice on all religious matters. Under the Bill the "one-man power" of the clergy in religious education goes, and the laity of the Church of England are given a position of great power and influence. When the clergyman—as in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he is—is worthy of trust as regards religious teaching, little intervention on the part of the laity will take place or be needed. In the few cases where it will be needed, the laity of the Church of England will be accorded the power and influence that are their due.
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