God-State Idea in Modern Education: Response

Extract

Professor Drake's paper begins by suggesting that more careful study of the historical relation between religion and education would help both to upgrade the teaching profession and to clarify the confusion in present-day educational policy. Many of us would, I think, agree. The footnote references in the body of the paper, however, indicate that it rests upon only three volumes dealing with the facts of educational history: John Brubacher, History of the Problems of Education; Adolph E. Meyer, The Development of Education in the Twentieth Century; and William Gellemman, The American Legion As Educator. For religious history, Professor Drake rests his case on three or four such works as Florence Simmonds, Orpheus, A History of Religions and Salo W. Baron's Modern Nationalism and Religion. The analysis of the “roots of the God-state idea,” and indeed the definition of that idea in both Biblical and historical terms seems to be drawn from Herbert Muller's Uses of the Past, George P. Grant's Philosophy in the Mass Age, and the volumes by Brubacher and Simmonds. The source documents he cites beyond Hegel's Logic are essays by the Reverend Billy Graham and the not very reverend Harold Lasswell, two items from the Congressional Record for 1960 and 1962, and a volume by J. P. Bang, published in 1917 under the title Hurrah and Hallelujah. The last he recommends as “excellent primary source material for the Protestant point of view.”