Undenominationalism

The Education controversy has been a saddening one. So little has there been of mutual understanding, so much of deep-seated, if not determined, suspicion and bitterness. Now there is a pause for a time; a pause of an uneasy and anxious character.

There are, after all, important questions at stake. There is a most serious question of religious liberty. There is even a question of fundamental theological truth. And the pause in itself seems to constitute something more than an opportunity for reviewing the principles involved. There may seem indeed to be little or no political value or meaning in any words said on the subject so far away from the din of politics, or the assumptions which men call practical. And yet it may possibly be a duty to say them.

There is no need to dwell upon the familiar data of the problem. The fact that education was voluntary before it was national: that it grew up largely from the religious motive, and under the shadow of the Church: the consequent fact that, when the State set itself to organize education as a whole, it found the field already occupied to a large extent, though by no means adequately, by denominational schools: the fact that one particular religious body, with an immemorial history, has lived in exceptional relation with the State—whether of dependence or of privilege: the fact that Christian denominations in England are sharply sundered one from another (though with very varying degrees of sharpness) in their theologies, and their ordinances, and their estimate of the value of ordinances and theologies: the fact that, in spite of all differences, the community as a whole does not desire at all to be either irreligious or non-Christian: these facts, and facts like these, may safely be rather assumed than expounded at large.