Religious Education in the Family - Softcover

Cope, Henry F

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798240862595

Verlag: Danyel, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

AN INTERPRETATION OF THE FAMILY

§ 1

. TAKING THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS TERMS

The ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childless families, ir-

reverent children, and the decadence of the old type of separate home life are

signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives, and insufficient purposes. Where the

home is only an opportunity for self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap

boarding-house, a sleeping-shelf, an implement for social advantage. While

it is true that general economic developments have effected marked changes

in domestic economy, the happiness and efficiency of the family do not de-

pend wholly on the parlor, the kitchen, or the clothes closet. Rather, every-

thing depends on whether the home and family are considered in worthy

and adequate terms.

Homes are wrecked because families refuse to take home-living in religious

terms, in social terms of sacrifice and service. In such homes, organized and

conducted to satisfy personal desires rather than to meet social responsibili-

ties, these desires become ends rather than agencies and opportunities.

3 HENRY FREDERICK COPE

They who marry for lust are divorced for further lust. Selfishness, even in

its form of self-preservation, is an unstable foundation for a home. It costs

too much to maintain a home if you measure it by the personal advantages of

parents. What hope is there for useful and happy family life if the newlywed-

ded youth have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to frivolous

pleasures, and guided by ideals of success in terms of garish display? Yet

what definite program for any other training does society provide? Do the

schools and colleges, Sunday schools and churches teach youth a better way?

How else shall they be trained to take the home and family in terms that will

make for happiness and usefulness? It is high time to take seriously the task

of educating people to religious efficiency in the home.

§ 2. THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE

The family needs a religious motive. More potent for happiness than courses

in domestic economy will be training in sufficient domestic motives. It will

take much more than modern conveniences, bigger apartments, or even bet-

ter kitchens to make the new home. Essentially the problem is not one of

mechanics but of persons. What we call the home problem is more truly a

family problem. It centers in persons; the solution awaits a race with new

ideals, educated to live as more than dust, for more than dirt, for personality

rather than for possessions. We need young peoplewho establish homes, not

simply because they feel miserable when separated, nor because one needs

a place in which to board and the other needs a boarder, but because the

largest duty and joy of life is to enrich the world with other lives and to give

themselves in high love to making those other lives of the greatest possible

worth to the world.

The family must come to a recognition of social obligations. We all hope for

the coming ideal day. Everywhere men and women are answering to higher

ideals of life. But the new day waits for a new race. Modern emphasis on the

child is a part of present reaction from materialism. New social ideals are

personal. We seek a better world for the sake of a higher race. The emphasis

on child-welfare has a social rather than a sentimental basis. The family is

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Danyel
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798240862595
• Einband: Paperback
• Anzahl der Seiten: 232
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar