The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 35

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34.

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

The Debt of the Church to the Child.

Somebody has called this debt “the debt eter-
nal,” thereby indicating its immensity. The Church
owes its own children a true and efficient religious
nurture, and it should seek to furnish all children
and young people the satisfactory answer to the all-
important question: “What must I do to be saved ?”
The Church must apply itself to this problem un-
ceasingly and without diminution of earnestness
and zeal. That the growth of the Church has not
kept pace with the increase in population during
the last decade in our country is due no doubt in
a great measure to the fact that it has lost sight
of its obligations of its own youth and the youth of
the whole land.

Churches and individual congregations, as a
whole, have in only too many instances failed in
a deplorable degree to provide adequate religious
training for their own children; and they have
been far from showing a burning desire to reach
the childhood outside the pale of outward Christen-
dom, as they should have done. The religious
education afforded by churches and congregations
to children is, as far as efficiency is concerned, in
most instances by no means on a plane with the
education of the secular schools, and schools of re-
ligious training have not reached half the enrol-
ment of secular institutions of learning.

Those who have given serious thought to the
matter of spiritual values, will agree that the proper
religious training of the child is the most important
task of every congregation, since upon the correct
rearing of the childhood of to-day rests in a great
measure the existence and welfare of the Church of
to-morrow. But how lamentably short of meeting
its obligations to the child the Church falls! While
it may be going too far to say what a Presbyterian
author has said, namely, that “the teaching pro-
gram of the Protestant Church has been an approzi-
mate failure,” it. cannot be successfully denied that
the-Church, the Protestant Church, — also our Lu-
theran Church, — has shown a most deplorable lack
of interest in the spiritual rearing of its own chil-
dren and those of the country at large. How little
time is devoted to the religious instruction of the
young! How poorly equipped are many of those to
whom the spiritual training of the children is en-
trusted! How poor and unsatisfactory is the whole

_ equipment of the churches for religious teaching of
their own children! How small is the amount many
of our churches invest in the religious training of

‘their youth! For the secular training of our chil-
dren we provide buildings and rooms conforming
in every detail to the requirements of convenience
and health; but the religious education of our
children we expect to be given in auditoriums that
are crowded with dozens of classes and where a
bedlam of noise makes it almost impossible for
teachers to understand their pupils and for pupils
to follow the instruction of their teachers, or in
dark and damp basements, drafty halls, and even
kitchens! Is this fair to the children? Do we, by
thus treating our children, show that we recognize
the eternal debt which maturity owes to childhood
in that matter which exceeds all other things in
importance? Can we expect our children to attach
a high value to their spiritual training when it is
given them under such adverse circumstances and
unfavorable conditions and with such seeming in-
difference on our part? If practically all the time
and money we spend for education is spent for the
secular training of our children and this secular
education monopolizes almost all their time, can we
be surprised if our children despise their religious
training and no longer see the force and cogency of
the Lord’s words: “What is a man profited if he
shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?”
As long as we devote to the religious education of
our children only the time when they are fatigued
and their recreation time; as long as we entrust to
any person the religious training of our offspring,
as long as we put our schools for religious training
into dark and damp and drafty and noisy rooms
and halls and auditoriums, so long we are surely
not taking an attitude which would indicate that
we appreciate and value the preciousness of that
knowledge and wisdom which the Church is obli-
gated to impart to its youth, and so long we cannot
expect the youth properly to evaluate the price-
lessness of this instruction and training.

Now, if the Church places such a low value upon
the spiritual training of its own children, what can
we expect it to do in regard to those children and
youth who are ouside the pale of nominal Christen-
dom? It is stated upon very high authority that
there are 15,000,000 children in our fair land who
receive no religious guidance whatever. Among the
very best minds of our nation there are those who
are spending their time upon finding ways and
means of improving the secular education of the
youth of the land. Five hundred thousand teachers
—most of them trained in their profession — are
giving their best efforts to the secular training of