The Church and the Press. The Public Significance of Preaching. (Cont.)

The Bible is read obligatorily in public schools. The invocation of God is considered obligatory in every oath in court and even upon taking one or another administrative office, and the very holding of office is conditioned by a known religious test. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Constitution requires that a candidate for public office sign a confession that he believes in God and in retribution in the future life. The Constitution of the state of Maryland grants rights of religious conscience only to those who believe in God. In many states there are laws which prosecute all blasphemy. In the majority of states civil laws protect the sanctity of Sunday. In 1880 a court rejected the recognition of the obligation to pay a debt which had been made on a Sunday, and a certain traveler, wounded on a railroad, was denied monetary compensation for his injury on the grounds that he should not have traveled on the Lord’s Day. Finally, not to enumerate further, the State exempts from all taxes any real property serving religious purposes, as well as all professions having a religious character. As a result, when the government of the state of Illinois recently imposed a patent of three hundred dollars on each spiritualist medium (of which there have become far too many), the spiritualists raised an outcry about the restriction of religious conscience, arguing that the mediums in their assemblies perform the same functions as pastors in Christian assemblies.

Such facts could be increased to infinity if there were a need for that; but the facts presented are entirely sufficient to confirm the thought we are proving—that the separation of Church and State in America is only a special form of their internal interaction. We have examined this side of the matter in detail because it is least known to us, and consequently in society and in the periodical press one can hear the most perverted and tendentious views. Thus, only recently we had occasion to meet with an opinion which is evidently based on an unclear understanding of the general relationship between Church and State in America—namely, the opinion that the American school is completely secularized and religion has no place in it. This opinion is evidently based on an unclear understanding of the condition of the American school and stems solely from an abstract understanding of the term “secularization.” It is quite true that the school in America is secularized, that is, there is no formal teaching of the Law of God in it as in our educational institutions. But this secularization must be understood in exactly the same sense as the principle of separation of Church and State. Religious teaching is excluded from schools solely on the same ground as the Church is separated from the State—that is, due to the practical impossibility of satisfying children of different faiths, representatives of all possible kinds and shades of confessional distinction. But with the exception of formal instruction in religious subjects, the American school nevertheless retains the religious element to a significant degree, which strongly pervades the entire school atmosphere. Thus in schools a chapter from the Bible is read daily before the opening of classes, Christian hymns not having a confessional character are sung; at school celebrations speeches are made, for which in the majority of cases representatives of the clergy and local preachers are invited, naturally giving these speeches a religious-moral character, and so forth. Finally, religious education has a whole supplementary system in the excellently organized Sunday school, which not only fills the gap of the public school but through its close relationship with the Church and the family decidedly obtains dominant influence on the general spiritual disposition of children. In personal observation we have often been simply amazed at the extent of the religious knowledge of American children, especially in the area of familiarity with biblical history and the very text of the Bible itself. And as regards the depth of religious education, this is evidenced by the prevailing disposition even in adult young people. It may seem to us almost incredible, for example, such a fact as that several young people who set out on a hunt or gathered to spend a pleasant summer time somewhere on the shore of a poetic lake or picturesque Hudson, in the evenings fill the surroundings with choral singing—do not think of it as dashing or even erotic songs, no—of sacred hymns, deeply imprinted in their memory since their school days. And these religious hymns, which are studied in great number in school, are already sung by heart by five- and six-year-old children, and some of them enjoy such broad distribution and popularity that one can positively hear them at every turn. In view of this, to speak of the absence of religious education in the American school means to deny tangible facts. The opinion about the lack of religiosity in the American school was formed under the influence of Roman Catholic press, which is dissatisfied with this school and does not hesitate to call it even godless; but this dissatisfaction is entirely explained by the fact that the religious-moral element in the public school has a Protestant character, which for Roman Catholicism is hardly worse than unbelief itself, and therefore in Roman Catholic journalism there is a constant struggle, for example, against the reading of Protestant translations of the Bible in schools, with the direct assertion that it is better not to read the Bible in schools at all than to read it in the editions of the Bible Society.

Even more strongly does the religious element in America stand out in secondary and higher education, in the so-called colleges and universities. With regard to public education, the American State holds a completely different system than, for example, in our country or in the states of Western Europe. It considers itself responsible only for general public education, ensuring the conscious use of civil rights in the country. With this aim it maintains an excellent system of public schools, the course of which approximately equals our gymnasia. On this school it spends enormous sums of money and concerns itself so that all the population—both male and female—passes through it. But with this its concern for education ends. The American State knows no higher school funded by the state. All existing colleges and universities in America are entirely public institutions; the State has nothing to do with them; they are founded by private individuals, supported by donations from individual devotees of higher education, and therefore manage themselves independently of the government. But in view of the fact that these institutions have a completely public character, the religious-moral spirit which distinguishes American society could more vividly express itself in them. And indeed, American colleges and universities do have a stronger religious imprint than State institutions. By their very origin they in the majority grew out of simple church schools founded by various religious societies at a time when confessional disagreement was not smoothed over by the state principle of religious toleration. Consequently, they even now in the majority bear this confessional imprint and each of the principal universities of the country is in the exclusive direction of one or another religious community. For example, Cambridge University near Boston is under the supervision of the Unitarian community, Columbia College in New York belongs to the Episcopal Church, Yale University is in the hands of the Presbyterian community, and so forth. It is understood that their organization has a corresponding character, and at their head ordinarily stand rectors from members of the clergy of one or another community, naturally strictly watching over the interests not only of religion generally but of their confessions in particular. Upon becoming acquainted with this system of American higher education, we have more than once been struck by the involuntary thought of what horror would seize the culture-bearers if they were told that into our higher schools one needed to introduce even part of those dreadful “clerical” arrangements under which the highest science in the country of the most free-thinking people in the world contentedly lives!.. And how powerful this so-called “clericalism” is in American universities can be shown by a self-evident fact that once in a Presbyterian college there arose a whole storm of indignation against one professor because he placed the works of Spencer and Bain at the foundation of his teaching of philosophical sciences—those very thinkers whose ideas were taught among us almost in theological seminaries! And it goes without saying to what a degree absurd and false were all those references to America which were intended artificially to sustain in us a known movement toward the emancipation of women and the introduction of higher women’s education. The very character of the system of higher education we have described excludes the possibility of such emancipatory ideas, and America in this regard stands far behind us: it knows neither women’s universities nor close-cropped young ladies, and to what degree the very idea of the necessity of university education for women is little developed there can be seen from the fact that the so-called Annex, that is, the supplementary class especially for women, opened at the medical faculty of Harvard University, was almost subjected to closure solely because male medical students firmly refused to work together with them in the anatomical museum—simply from a sense of moral delicacy inherent in them. As for the religious-moral condition of the higher schools properly speaking, one can judge this from the fact that in these very schools Revivals, or specifically American movements of religious feeling, most often begin. The younger generation, as the most sensitive and responsive to spiritual needs, is the first to be seized by a wave of religious enthusiasm, and from there it spreads to the surrounding areas.

In view of such a relationship of the centers of higher education to the Church, it is not surprising that the entire intellectual and literary life of American society is pervaded with a strong religious element. In this regard, America presents a most instructive example. By its intellectual character, it is preeminently a country of positive knowledge. Physics and technological sciences occupy the foremost position, and it is in these very spheres of knowledge that American scholars chiefly acquire worldwide renown. And yet, in spite of this, knowledge there coexists in remarkable harmony with faith, science with religion. Not only that, owing to the dominion of the religious element in the general worldview, scientific theories themselves acquire a religious character. This has even happened to Darwin’s very theory, or the so-called “theory of evolution” as developed by Spencer. It must be said that by its technical structure it pleased the technical American mind and enjoys considerable popularity. But a remarkable thing is that to the American mind it is far from identified with crude materialism, as happened, for example, in our country, where the press pointed out its mechanical aspects with special malice, as if excluding the possibility of everything spiritual and moral, and preached almost with relish the “axiom” of man’s descent from the ape. On the contrary, in America the “theory of evolution” merely gave occasion for the highest religious-moral speculations; in it they found the key to better understand the orderly world-order prevailing in the universe, a new step toward grasping that, in Spencer’s expression, unknown force which leads the world toward higher perfection through wonderfully purposeful laws. Under the influence of this theory, there even formed a special “religion of evolution” which sees in this theory the solution of the greatest philosophical problems about the relation between freedom and necessity, the reconciliation of the principle of love with the dominion of law in the governance of the universe. This of course does not mean that in the theological respect such speculations find correct application. On the contrary, owing to the dominant sectarian principle of religious life in America, they often lead to hazy, sectarian-tinged sophistry. But we speak of the power of religious influence in the intellectual life of the American people, and this is entirely confirmed by the fact presented.

The same influence stands out sharply in American literature generally and periodical literature in particular. In this regard, first of all it must be said that the classical book which exerts the greatest influence on American literature is the Bible. In studying the religious-moral life of the American people, nothing struck us so much as the degree to which the holy book has become incarnate in the entire structure of intellectual and social life. It is not merely a reference book—in our sense—but is constantly in the hands, thoughts, and heart of the people. Not to mention that you will find it before any other book not only in every house but in every hotel and restaurant, you will note that texts from it are written on visiting cards, on doors, you will find them even in newspaper advertisements. The younger generation, having passed through the American secularized school, amazes one with tremendous knowledge of biblical texts by heart. Biblical texts alongside typical phrases from classical poets and writers of the English race are constantly used in literature and even in newspaper editorials. In view of this, any event related to the Bible acquires the significance of a major public event. We shall never forget the public excitement which occurred upon the occasion of the appearance in 1881 of a new translation of the Bible into English. Already two weeks before its publication, in both newspapers and in society, there was talk only of this translation. And these were not empty rumors. On the very first day of its sale in New York, 300,000 copies were sold, on the next day 200,000, and so on. One newspaper in Chicago, situated two thousand versts from New York, in order more quickly to acquaint its numerous readers with this translation, printed the entire Gospel of Matthew by telegraph as a correspondent’s report, and in the next Sunday issue printed the entire New Testament in half a million copies, which were sold in the course of one day at five cents per copy. The newspaper press spent two weeks analyzing this translation, and some particular lovers of precision even recalculated the number of words and letters in the new translation, in order to derive various conclusions from the comparison of the numbers obtained with such data from the old translation. At that very time we could not help but be struck by the sad contrast between this all-consuming interest and the indifference with which the Russian translation of the Bible was received among us.