Religious Education Association

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION: An organization effected in 1903 aiming so to unite workers in religious and educational fields that the religious shall permeate the educational and the educational shall permeate the religious forces at work in the country. The stimulus came from the late William R,. Harper, and the executive offices are in Chicago. The membership is composed of four classes—active, sustaining, life, and corresponding or honorary members, the last class limited to fifty who are not residents of America and pay no dues. Members receive without further charge than the dues the volumes containing the proceedings of the annual conventions, as well as Religious Education, the bimonthly of the association. The general officers are a president and sixteen vice-presidents elected yearly, treasurer, recording secretary, and general secretary; the last-named is the active executive, upon whom devolves the oversight of the issue of printed matter and extensive travel in the interests of the association, as well as the arrangements for the general conventions. There is a board of directors consisting of forty-seven members, one representing each state, territory, and province which has twenty-five members in the association; twenty members are chosen at large; this board decides where the meetings of the association are to be held. Annual conventions have been held at Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Rochester, and Washington, at each of which about 100 addresses were delivered by leaders in religion and education. More than 200 local conferences have been held under the auspices of the association. The executive board is the corporate body and manages the finances. Besides the bimonthly named above and the Proceedings, many pamphlets upon special subjects are issued, as well as bulletins, programs, plans, and the like. Up to 1908 over $65,000 has been expended in behalf of education.

The departments of work are: the council of religious education, universities, and colleges, theological seminaries, churches and pastors, Sunday-schools, secondary schools, elementary schools, fraternal and social service, training of teachers, Christian associations, young people's societies, the home, libraries, the press, foreign mission schools, summer assemblies, and religious art and music—seventeen in all. Each department has an executive committee, consisting of president, a recording and an executive secretary, and from three to seven other members, the executive secretary being the responsible officer. Departments often have special meetings, but the annual assemblies of the departments furnish the most important feature of the great conventions. Departmental action becomes action of the association when approved by the executive board, which publishes special researches and papers prepared by departmental experts. Other departments than the council obtain their membership by special registration of members of the association, who choose their department of work. The council has sixty members, half elected by the executive board and half by its own members. Its functions are to reach and to disseminate sound thinking upon all general subjects relating to education in religion and morality; to initiate, conduct, and guide investigation of important educational questions within the scope of the association. It is thus the brain center of the association, and its meetings are more numerous than those of any other department, and include summer conferences. It has prepared and issued an address to the higher educational institutions upon the necessity of courses for training leaders in religious and educational science, for workers in Sunday-schools, and for teachers and skilled workers in industrial and social reconstruction. It has also arranged for the publication of a bibliography of religious education, with editor and editorial board. The department of Sunday-schools has organized a bureau of information for the compiling of statistics, and a committee of twenty-one experts to formulate a Sunday-school curriculum; it has also begun a bibliography for Sunday-school teachers, and has furnished an exhibit, which is being constantly increased, of Sunday-school literature.

Interest in the work is being manifested in foreign lands, the general secretary having received invitations to organize associations in Japan, India, and Norway, and to speak in several other countries.

Richard Morse Hodge.