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Dear Dr. Tillich (Details anzeigen)^a:

I want to thank you personally for the address which you gave last Wednesday at the headquarters of the Child Study Association. Your description of the vital core to be found in all sincere and sustaining religion was impressive and stimulating.

Although I have long realized that you have not felt completely sympathetic with the philosophy and expression of religious education which you understood that I represented, yet I have long had, what I might call an intuition, that there was a fundamental insight which we shared in common. After listening to you last Wednesday I decided that my feelings had been confirmed. Without your knowing it, you actually stated in general terms the philosophy upon which I have been basing my work with children for a number of years. Our exposing children to a dozen or more creation myths from as many different cultures, for example, together with an appreciative look a the modern scientists' story of the beginnings of earth and sky and life and death, is based upon this realization that in so doing we are helping children to dig deeper than they would do if we exposed them only to one tradition – until they feel and understand this common element that has been and always will be in religion. Our experience, especially during the last five years, has brought abundant evidence that we have been following a fertile lead.

I left your lecture wishing that we might better understand each other's terms, and believing that if we did, we might be surprised to find ourselves so congenial in our philosophies. Your use of the term „education“ is a case in point. May I illustrate?

You pointed out, for example, that it was your belief that the process of „education“ could not be relied upon to bring about the religious results we desire. The substitute process which you described as being more promising was, as I understood you, a process of free and intimate exchange of thoughts and feelings between parent and child such as you could have at intervals with your son.|

Now it seems to me, that your making such a statement is due to your use of the word „education“ in a different sense from the way in which we in the Department of Religious Education use the term. You seem to be using the word „education“ in an old, formal and academic sense. We, too, protest against such education because of its sterility[.] One of the important reasons why so-called progressive educators have stood for greater freedom and informality and democracy in all the relationships between students and teachers is in order to create and maintain an atmosphere where intimate and sincere exchange of thoughts and feelings is possible. Such an experience as you described with your son we would characterize as an „educational“ experience. Sometimes such moments of religious insight come to children in groups – and not necessarily in our services of worship, but in a variety of conditions of activity. We would measure the efficacy of our educational processes by the frequency and the depth of such moments of insight.

Again, you stated that the main trouble with religious educations was that it was not religious. Here again, it seems to me, a misunderstanding of terms is involved. When you make such a statement in the Seminary circles, the students receive the impression that you think that the staff in the department of religious education do not have religion. I can not believ that you mean to give such an impressio[n.] That some so-called „religious education“ has lack this element we would all agree, but it is quite unfari to say that the kind of religious education we are endeavoring to encourage lacks this element [.]

Again, you expressed yourself regarding the methodology to use in dealing with children and said that you thot that the study of the history of religion should come as the forth step in the process and should be so studied that it did not have a vital bearing upon the „grounds and depth“ of the child's own religious experience. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but it seems to me that again you are thinking of the teaching of history in an academic way. One of the important insights which our great educators have brought us is that nothing out of the past should come to children as something unrelated to real experience. The great effort has been centered around this – to make whatever children may study real and vital to them – The only justification of studying the past at all is to give insight into the present[.] Consequently our handling of history – and the history of religion – has been fundamentally changed in order that it may come alive a real and dynamic human experience with which children may have sympathy and from which their own religious experience may become more enlightened and enriched. |

I hope you will understand my reason for writing you at such great length, and that you will know that I am not seeking to convert you to our philosophy of education. My concern is that we should understand each other and know at what levels our difference of point of view lie. Someday perhaps you will give me the opportunity and privilege of talking with you face to face more fully about these things.

Again I wish to thank you for giving us much to think about out of the depths of your own experience.