n e w c h u r c h l i f e : j u ly / au g u s t 2 0 1 3
One of those grateful readers is Donald C. Fitzpatrick, retired New Church
professor and scholar, who recently pointed out one of these editorial classics,
Education and the Good Life, (page 32), written 60 years ago is still fresh.
It is also particularly timely for this issue which includes news from the
Bryn Athyn College graduation and the commencement address by the Rev.
Eric H. Carswell. The Academy College, as it was then known, was primarily
housed on the second floor of Benade Hall, but it was no less significant in its
vision and purpose than it is now – and hopefully will be in another 60 years.
Consider just these few excerpted paragraphs:
“Higher education claims to be concerned with the good life, and to have
as its goal the development of the good and useful man. But religion is no
longer the keystone of the educational arch. In modern universities, and in
society, some think that God exists, others that He does not, and some that it
cannot be proved. But the inference that it does not matter is gaining ground,
and indifference stems mainly from the assumption that religion is not relevant
to the problems of the modern world, for which reason there is no point in
giving it serious consideration.
“The existence of an absolute good and truth is denied; sin is regarded
as a medieval concept of the theologians; and the overall suggestion is that
the completely good life can be attained without religion. Thus the essentials
for entering into the good life – the acknowledgment of the Lord and the
shunning of evils as sins against Him – are lacking; and the only good that
can be developed is natural good, which is interiorly evil – not the good of the
natural, which is spiritual.
“Here we may see, with brilliant clarity, the vital need for New Church
education, especially on the college level. When we speak of that education
as ‘religious’ we are not thinking of a system of belief or a special experience
but of a complete life. The truly religious life is one in which man acts from
spiritual motives, and by means of a truly rational intelligence, in all private,
domestic, forensic, civil, moral and spiritual affairs; and in which spiritual
ideals form his conception of his relation and responsibility to his fellow man,
his country, his church, and his God. And it is the life which binds man back
to God by bringing him into consociation with angels and conjunction with
the Lord.
“…The good of life is that of truth in act, of the spiritual truth of the Word
rationally understood and applied to every phase of life with conviction. And
it is the aim of New Church education, as of no other, to prepare for that life by
developing from its essentials.”
(BMH)
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