LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[In view of the paper shortage it is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of letters, but unless they are shorter they must be fewer. Writers are urged to study the art of compression.—Ed., " The Spectator "J CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
Snt,—The statement and appeal on Christian education, recently issued by the Archbishops, has once again focused attention on this vital matter: is is warmly to be welcomed, and if acted upon promptly it will go far to retrieve a situation which may well become desperate. There is, however, one aspect of the subject with which the statement does not deal, and which has, indeed, received less attention than it deserves in the discussions which have taken place. It is the para- mount need of an active Christian community both as a setting and as a focus for Christian teaching. Many boys and girls find such teaching dull and unreal: their other subjects all have some reference to the life of a community—history, for example, to the life of the nation ; science to a more limited community in which there is a living to be made ; modern languages, perhaps, to the business world ; Arithmetic to the household, and so on. But religious teach- ing is often completely in vacut •: it has no particular relevance to a life to be lived in a certain clearly defined and effective companion- ship. In the old days, of course, this was not so: the Church was the community, and the teaching of religion meant everything for the life of that community, which was a serious business. It is significant, too, that there is a reality about religious teaching in a good home, which does not obtain elsewhere: but there, too, you have a community to which it applies—the nearest approach, indeed, to the Kingdom of Heaven, which we experience on earth. But outside the good homes (and they are rare enough) there is no community today which on the one hand at once demands and interprets Christian teaching, and on the other hand makes itself felt every day as an effective community with a life of its own that matters.
How is the gap to be filled? It can be filled to some extent by the school, and particularly by the boarding school: there is a peculiar responsibility on public schools in this connexion. But it should be primarily the business and the opportunity of the Church. How this opportunity is being taken is set out in a small book recently published by the Religious Education Press (Manor Road, Wallington, Surrey). In this volume, The Family Church in Principle and Practice, the Rev. H. A. Hamilton shows how the Church can become a meaningful community to boys and girls from their earliest years, as significant as the family (" How can we make the home more truly a church, and the Church more truly a home? ") in which Christian teaching, converging always on the Christian festivals (the birthdays, commemoration days, " Empire days " of the community), takes on a new relevance and value. Experiments along these lines have been carried out for three years, with striking results : both as an educational and as a religious movement the proposals are worth serious consideration, and if widely known and widely adopted in the Anglican and Free Churches alike may well open the door to an important advance in the spiritual life of the nation. It is for this reason that I venture to bring the matter to the
notice of your readers.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully, M. L. JACKS. University of Oxford, Department of Education, is Norham Gardens, Oxford.
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