Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of ReminiscencesRussell, George William Erskine
History
Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of Reminiscences
Russell, George William Erskine
Great Britain -- Biography
Who are they? Speaking generally, parents, ministers of religion,
and teachers who are themselves convinced of what they teach; but
I must narrow my ground. To-day I am writing as a Churchman for
those Churchmen whom my previous articles disturbed; and I have
only space to set forth some of the grounds on which we Churchmen
should support the "secular solution."
A Churchman is bound by his baptismal vows to "believe all the
articles of the Christian Faith." These, according to his catechism,
are summed up in the Apostles' Creed. He cannot, therefore, be
satisfied with any religious instruction which is not based on
that formula; and yet such instruction cannot rightly be enforced
in schools which belong as much to unbelievers as to Christians.
A Churchman's religious faith is not derived primarily from the
Bible, but from the teaching of the Christian Church, who is older
than the oldest of her documents. There was a Church before the
New Testament was written, and that Church transmitted the faith
by oral tradition. "From the very first the rule has been, as a
matter of fact, that the Church should teach the truth, and then
should appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching."
For a Churchman, religious instruction must be the teaching of the
Church, tested by the Bible. The two cannot be separated. Hence it
follows that, while the State is bound to respect the convictions
of those who adhere to all manner of beliefs and disbeliefs, the
Churchman cannot recognize religious teaching imparted under such
conditions as being that which his own conscience demands.
And, further, supposing that some contrivance could be discovered
whereby the State might authorize the teaching of the Church's
doctrine, the Churchman could not conscientiously be a party to
it; for, according to his theory, there is only one Body divinely
commissioned to decide what is to be taught--and that Body is not
the State, but the Church; and there is only one set of persons
qualified to teach it--viz., those who are duly authorized by the
Church, and are fully persuaded as to the truth of what they teach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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