ARTICLE 2

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

Jared R. Stallones California State Polytechnic University

The period between 1850 and 1950 was a tumultuous time for religion and education. Both experienced explosive growtb in tbe numbers of people tbey served and in the new ideas, approaches, and concepts with which they had to contend. Likewise, individuals who came of age in this period had to find ways to navigate the rapid changes in both realms. Tbis study describes tbree typologies tbat progressive educators displayed as they made the transition between tbeir traditional religious upbringings and the modern secular worlds of their adulthoods and careers. The educators are categorized as Integrators, Reinterpreters, or Deniers, depending on how they chose to deal with youthful religious experiences once they reached adulthood. Those religious experiences took place witbin diverse religious communities in far-flung spots on tbe globe, but the figures here shared a common struggle witb the faith tbey met in cbildhood and how to make peace witb it in their adult professional lives. Tbe struggle took many years for some
Jared R. Stallones, Coffegc of Education and fnlcgrativc Studies, Cafilbinia State I'olytccfinic Univci-sily, 3801 WestTempfc Avenue, f'omona, CA9I768, (T) 9()9-869-i;()86, (F) )()9-869-482, fimaif: jrstaffones@csupomona.edu. Ammcan Eduailitmal History Journal Volume 38, Number 1, 20f 1, pp. 21-35 Copyright 2011 by Information Age Pubfisbing Aff rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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2 2 J. R. STALLONES

and a relatively short time for others, but in all cases, it left its mark through their contributions to progressive education in the United States.
GROWTH AND CHANGE IN RELIGION

Religion experienced unprecedented gtowth in the century or so in which these figures lived. In 1820, there was one Christian chutch for evet7 eight hundred twenty-five tesidents of the United States. From 1860-1906, one new Ptotestant chutch was opened in the United States for every increase in population of thtee hundred fifty By the First World War the ratio was one chutch for evety four hundred thirty residents (Schaller 1991, 14-26). So, in loughly eighty yeats, the number of churches per capita nearly doubled dut ing a titne of enormous population increase. The presence of chut ches had its effect on the people. In 1776, seventeen percent of the U.S. population was described as "religious adherents." By 1916, the number had teached fifty-three percent (Finke and Stark 1992, 16). While dealing with this unprecedented growth, the Church found its ttaditional worldview under assault. Scientific geology challenged longstanding assumptions about the age of the earth. Charles Darwin's theoties of biological evolution challenged religious beliefs about the origins of life. Biblical Higher Criticism, a Cerman hetmeneutical innovation, deconstructed sacted texts by subjecting them to standatd techniques of Iiterat7 criticistTt. All the while, industrialization, utbanization, and tnodernism in genetal served to et ode the certainties of traditional belief systetns.
GROWTH AND CHANGE IN EDUCATION

Education undet went similar strains. Between 1870 and 1956, total school entolltTtent grew nearly three hundred percent, ftotn fifty-seven percent of the school age population to eighty-four petcent. However, increased student enrolltnent is only part of the story. Profound changes occutted in the nature of schooling and the resulting levels of education in the genetal population. During these years, education became increasingly a public endeavor, with student enrollment in public schools far outpacing that in pt ivate schools. The length of the school year grew as well, ft om an average of one hundred thirty-two days in 1870 to 178 days by 1956. Pethaps mote telling, the avetage number of days each pupil attended school, regardless of the official school tetm, rose from seventy-eight in 1870 to one hut> dted fifty-nine in 1956. Einally, the number of high school graduates gtew ftotTt just two petcent of the population in 1870 to over sixty-two percent in 1956. So, during the period under study, the number of pitpils set ved by

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 23

the schools grew, the school year and the portion of that year daat students actually attended class increased, and the level of education available rose. Schooling became more widespread, more public, and more academically rigorous {U.S. Bureau of the Census 1960, 207-214). Like the Church, schools had to deal with an influx of new ideas at the same time as explosive growth. The work of Friedrich Froebel and Wilhelm Wundt, to name just two, raised interest in child development and scientific psychology. Maria Montessori and others pioneered educational methodologies that applied these new ideas to schooling. These ideas and methods migrated to the United States and profoundly changed the nature of schools here. The Church and the school experienced these challenges in parallel, and the progressive educators profiled here embody the resulting transformations in each institution.

PROGRESSIVISM AS SECULARIZED RELIGION

In his book. Ministers of Reform, historian Robert Crunden described progressivism as a secularized version of fundamentally religious impulses. Analyzing the lives of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, author and politician Brand Whidock, and social scientist Richard Ely, Crunden theorized that many reformers were subject to powerful religious influences in their youths, but were unable as adults to adhere to the theological tenets held by their parents or grandparents. Instead, progressives secularized their religious impulses and devoted themselves to social and political reform. Crunden wrote that many reformers "found that settlement work, higher education, law, and journalism all offered possibilities for preaching without pulpits" (Crunden 1982, 15). Gertrude Himmelfarb (1991) coined the phrase 'secularized evangelicalism' to describe the progressive drive to do good apart from religious doctrine. Religious sentiment served as a driving force behind the progressive movement in education, as well. Indeed, many educational progressives pursued their theories and reform agendas with what C.A. Bowers characterized in religious terms as "a sense of mission" and an "evangelistic approach" (Bowers 1969, 48). However, a closer look at the lives of educational progressives reveals a more complicated process at work than simply secularizing religious sentiments. Many saw a conflict between their youthful religious experiences and modern secular ideologies as they entered the more complicated worid of adulthood, and the various ways in which they worked through these conflicts influenced their landmark contributions to edtication.

2 4 J. R. STALLONES THE SOUL: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE EXAMINED

Some view religious experience as an artifact of social evolution. In this view, religious impulses may be genetically encoded traits that have aided the development of human community, and thus, human survival. Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (2002) argues that a common religion unifies social groups, allowing more cooperation within the community. More cooperation usually produces more efficient hunting, gathering, and farming resulting in better-fed, healthier people who are more likely to reproduce. Religions that provide frameworks for stable social organization and more disciplined lifestyles enhance the odds that their adherents will survive and transmit their genetic material through time and space. Critics of this view argue that religions consume essential resources. Devotees build religious structures of litde practical use to a community, create liturgical implements rather than industrial tools, and invest creative energy in sacred art instead of more pragmatic pursuits. Indeed, religion even robs societies of genetic richness by fomenting wars and encouraging celibacy (Dawkins 2006). Despite these critiques, religion's persistence in human cultures would seem to support the view that it is an adaptational advantage, and not a hindrance. Some biologists cite scientific studies to argue that religion is a trait that is hard-wired in humans. Thomas Bouchard of the University of Minnesota studied both identical and non-identical twins who had been separated at birth, as was once customary in adoptions in the United States. He found that identical twins tended to share religious impulses. That is, if one twin exhibited religious tendencies in thought or behavior, as measured by a personality profile, the other twin tended to exhibit the same. This result persisted whether or not the twins were raised in religious households. Likewise, if one twin lacked religious sentiments, the other was likely to as well. These similarities did not follow for the non-identical twins in Bouchard's study (Winston 2005). The precise genetic structure that may be handed down has not been identified, but those that control the neurotransmitter dopamine may be involved. Dopamine produces feelings of pleasure and well-being. It may also produce a sense of peace that some report in connection with spiritual experiences. In particular, variations in DRD4, the dopamine D4 receptor gene, may help explain why some people have strong religious impulses while others do not. The receptor mechanism appears to be more active in some people than in others due to slight variations in the controlling gene (Scott, et al. 2006, 10789-10795). In addition. Professor Robert Winston noted in his book The Human Mind (2004) that particular regions of the brain associated with pleasure and reward become activated when people engage in cooperative activities and experience empathy or forgiveness. Since religion

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 25

often encourages such experiences, some individuals may reap a greater biochemical reward from religious activities and experiences than do others. Some psychologists and neurologists, intrigtied by the pervasiveness of religious experience across human history, hypothesized that brain strttctures common to all humans might be responsible. Using powerful imaging tools, this new field of study, neurotheology, has increasingly focttsed on the parietal lobes of the brain. These brain structures organize the sense of a physically delimited body, the self, and help to orient that body in space. Brain imaging reveals that sensory input to these areas can be blocked duting periods of intense concentration, such as prayer or meditation. When this occurs, distinctions between the self and non-self disappear and a feeling of transcendence results (Newburg, D'Aquili, and Rause, 2001). In addition, psychologist David Wulff has identified differences in the intensity of these experiences among individuals, possibly accounting for varying degrees of spirituality (Wulff 2000, 397-440). University of Pennsylvania neurologist Dr. Andrew Newburg is quick to decry any misapplication of this research. Interviewed in Newsweek magazine, Newburg warned, "the fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neutal activity does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere neurological illusions ... there is no way to determine whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience mean that the brain is causing those experiences ... or is instead perceiving a spiritual reality" (Begley 2001, 56). Indeed, it is unfair to religion to treat all religiotis experience as if it is solely a biological, social, or psychological phenomenon. Religion should be allowed to speak for itself. Philosopher Wan en Nord (1995) argtied that religion must be taken seriously as a phenomenon, and to be fair, religion mtist be taken on its own terms. Some religious people see science, with its materialistic philosophical base, as an insufficient tool to sttidy the spiritual elements of life, because those elements transcend the physical realm. However, religious people also must explain religious impulse and why some people seem to experience it more powerfully than others. Most of the progressive erafiguresdepicted here would have learned in their youth that some people are empowered by God to respond to religious yearnings and others are not. Puritan author Jonathan Edwards (2007) even distingtiished between religious affections and expressions that are energized by God and those that are generated solely by the individual himself. Those who deny religious experience often report that whatever religious sentiments they have Ceel selfgenerated. Perhaps this feeling persuades them that religious experience is not real in the same way that a sense of the sublime reinforces the convictions of religious adherents. Whether religious experience is primarily a biological, psychological, cultural, or spiritual phenomenon, or a complex combination of these, it was a force thatfiveprogressive educators had to contend with.

2 6 J. R. STALLONES THE TYPOLOGIES

The Integrators, represented bere by Jerry Voorhis and Felix Adler, deliberately incorporated their faitb, in Adler's case a secularized faith, into tbeir educational work. Tbe Reinterpreters, embodied by John Dewey, used religious concepts and terminology, but gave tbem new meanings to suit educational applications. Tbe Deniers, exemplified bere by William Heard Kilpatrick and John L. Cbilds, took pains to keep tbeir religious experiences and tbeir professional lives separate. Some denied their religious upbringing entirely while others maintained religious elements in tbeir private lives. Regardless of the many ways in which tbese men mediated their youthful religious experiences and tbeir adult careers, tbeir struggles profoundly affected their contributions to education.

THE INTEGRATORS

The Integrators are tbose scbolars and school people wbo held firm religious beliefs and actively incorporated tbeir beliefs into tbeir educational thougbt and practice. Progressive education owes mucb of its bumane cbaracter and its crusading zeal to the Integrators, and no figures better embody tbe cbaracteristics of an Integrator than Jerry Voorbis of California and Felix Adler of New York City. Jerry Voorbis was a scboolmaster and, later, a United States Representative from California. Raised as the only child in a privileged bome, be absorbed tbe compassionate humanism of his parents and tbeir progressive Episcopalian Church. Voorhis' benevolent imptilses were fueled by a religious fervor that developed into deep conviction over time (Stallones 2004). As a student at Yale University, he engaged in charity work through tbe Y.M.C.A. and tbe Yale Hope Mission, often concealing his identity to develop greater solidarity witb tbe poor of New Haven, Connecticut. After college, Voorbis found bis way into educational social work as a teacber and guardian of orpbaned boys. This work reached its pinnacle in tbe Voorhis Scbool for Boys in San Dimas, California. From 1928 to 1938, the scbool sbowered its underprivileged charges with a rich combination of progressive religion, progressive politics and progressive education. Twin losses forced the school's closure. In 1936, Jerry Voorhis was elected to represent California's Twelfth District in the United States Congress. Nobody could be found witb sufficient vision, cbarisma, and energy to replace bim as the scbool's leader. The Great Depression also reduced the value of tbe scbool's endowment, as well as the elder Voorhis' ability to make up any budgetary shortfalls from his dwindling personal fortune. So, in 1938 the scbool closed its doors and vras deeded to the State. How-

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 27

ever, the school's progressive philosophy lived on in the lives of the boys it touched and in the mission of its succeeding institution, the California State Polytechnic University. Like Voorhis, Felix Adler was raised in a household concerned with issues of social justice. However, Adler's religious upbringing was in Reform Judaism, not Protestantism. Nonetheless, Adler absorbed the progressivism of the late nineteenth century Manhattan intelligentsia and embraced it passionately Adler differs from Voorhis, too, in that he did not follow the religious tradition of his parents, but struck out on his own. Crowing increasingly disillusioned with established religious conventions and what he perceived as Cod's silence, in 1876 he officially transferred his religious affections from Reform Judaism to a 'secular religion' of his own design, the Society for Ethical Culture (Stallones 2009). Ethical Culture centered on Kant's Moral Imperative that all people be treated as ends rather than means. In practical terms, this meant that members pursue self-improvement and engage in charitable work designed to improve the lives of others, similar to the outworkings of Reform Judaism. From its eariiest days, the Society established schools to implement its two-pronged mission and Adler was integrally involved in the Society's educational work. Adler insisted that teachers treat students kindly and that students demonstrate their sense of social conscience through service to others. These approaches were in line with progressive educational innovations, but they also hark back to traditional rabbinical ways of teaching and learning (Barclay 1974). So, like Voorhis, Adler integrated the religious impulses and practices he learned as a child into his life and work in adulthood.

THE REINTERPRETERS

The Reinterpreters are those scholars and school people who converted their religious energies into educational pursuits. They often held on to religious terms, but gave them new meanings. Progressive education owes much of its quasi-religious aura to the Reinterpreters. John Dewey represents this group. Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 20,1859. His father, Archibald Sprague Dewey seems to have been a somewhat distant figure while his mother, Lucina Rich Dewey closely superintended the spiritual lives of John and his brothers. Trying to adhere to her strict, introspective Calvinism set up a cognitive dissonance for Dewey and his biographers make much of Dewey's decades-long struggle with religious belief. Neil Coughlan wrote that "until he was almost thirty years old, the greater part of Dewey's intellectual life was concerned with mediating between that core

28 J. R. STALLONES

of evangelicalism that his mother had given him and life as men lived it" (Coughlan 1975,5). However, Dewey did eventually gain emancipation from the religious forces of his childhood through the study of philosophy Thotnas C. Dalton wrote that reading Hegel provided Dewey "a way to transform his mother's spiritual idealism into a novel philosophy of social reconstruction" (Dalton 2002, 27). Dewey himself explained his attainment of inner peace in more mystical teims. One evening while serving as a teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, Dewey was engaged in his typical religious self-examination when suddenly he was overwhelmed by a sense of oneness with the universe. This transcendent experience was accompanied by a comforting sense that his personal concerns about his faith did not matter. He later explained, "I've never had any doubts since then, nor any beliefs. To me faith means not woriying... I claim I've got religion and I got it that night in Oil City" (Eastman 1941,673). Despite Dewey's sense of peace, many religious people would take issue with his definitions of "faith" and "got religion." He ultimately reinterpreted his religious experience in purely secular terms and gave new secularized meanings to traditional religious words and phrases. This process of reinterpretation shaped Dewey's thought and impacted his contributions to education, but the core tenets of Dewey's educational philosophy derived as much from his Christian heritage as from his reformulations of traditional religious concepts (Stallones 2006).
THE DENIERS

The Deniers are those scholars and school people who rejected religious experience in their educational pursuits, but not necessarily in their personal lives. Progressive education owes much of its scientific character to the Deniers. William Heard Kilpatrick and John Lawrence Childs exemplify the major characteristics of this group. Kilpatrick was raised in an intensely religious Southern Baptist household in rural Georgia. Religious doubt began to surface in his mind as he pursued higher education at Mercer College and Johns Hopkins University Kilpatrick became an accomplished and beloved teacher, but his growing doubt and liberal theological constructs ran afoul of the rising fundamentalism in turn of the century Georgia. The gulf between Kilpatrick's changing beliefs and ttaditional evangelical orthodoxy ptovided the opportunity for a jealotis enemy to drive him from his position at Mercer College, and the devastating loss of his wife caused Kilpatrick to make a clean break with his previous life.

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 2 9

Landing in New York City in 1907 to pursue doctoral studies at Columbia University, Kilpatrick made a clean break with his religious past, as well. He initially attended an Episcopal church, but even that soon lost its allure as he poured his energies into study with John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, and others. For the rest of his life he denied any religious belief, yet employed religious ceremony in all the milestone events of his life. He criticized religion harshly, yet peppered his speeches and writings with Biblical texts (Stallones 2007). John Lawrence Childs' break from organized religion was more absolute. Childs was raised in a Midwestern Methodist home. He attended the University of Wisconsin where Richard Ely and John Commons showed him how he could integrate his religious feelings with his passion for social justice. In Madison, also, he met the charismatic leader of the Student Volunteer Movement, John Mott. Mott inspired Childs to devote his energies to religious service through the Young Men's Christian Association. Childs eventually spent the years 1916 to 1927 as a YM.C.A. missionary in China. In China, Childs experienced an increasing gulf between his commitment to social justice and the aims of the more traditional Christian establishment. After he encountered John Dewey's experimentalism during his M.A. studies at Columbia University, Childs became increasingly harsh in his criticism of the work missionaries performed in China. He finally left the YM.C.A. for doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia, and a long career as a philosophy professor there. He did not return to the Church until he was an old man, and even then it was to a Unitarian congregation. Even so, Childs retained elements of his religious heritage in his philosophical and educational work. Although his break with traditional Christianity was more absolute than Kilpatrick's, both he and Kilpatrick drew heavily on Judeo-Christian concepts for their personal and professional ethical positions (Stallones 2010). In the end, religious experience is too powerful a force to be ignored in the lives of educators.

DIFFERENCES

The progressive educators profiled here stand on a continuum from smooth integration of religion and education, through a necessary reinterpretation of religious ideas into secular forms, to outright denial of any role for religion in education, but what factors account for the differences among Integrators, Reinterpreters, and Deniers? One key may lie in the differences among their childhood environments. The nurturing Episcopalianism ofJerry Voorhis and the tolerant Reform Judaism of Felix Adler are worids apart from the self-critical introspection of John Dewey's Calvinism and the austere fundamentalism of William Heard Kilpatrick's Southern

3 0 J. R. STALLONES

Baptist upbringing. Perhaps social and theological environments whose broad boundaries allow young people to engage in open-minded exploration are more conducive to integration of faith and work in adulthood while those traditions with more constrained intellectual boundaries make such integration difficult for restless minds. Lucy Sprague Mitchell seemed to say as much when she wrote admiringly of her husband's upbringing in an atmosphere of ideological tolerance. She attributed the ease with which Wesley Clair Mitchell approached the large questions of life to that nurturing environment (Mitchell 1953, 548-549). Likewise, the intellectual settings in which the subjects of this study pursued their careers may have affected how they made peace with religion. The active practitioners, the schoolmasters and teachers, were more likely to be Integrators, while the university professors were more likely to be Reinterpreters or Deniers. George Marsden's 1994 study of spirituality in academia suggests that the secularizing influence of the modern university may have played a role in how these men dealt with faith. Perhaps religiously oriented young people felt pressure to disavow their religious tipbringing or suppress religious belief in order to conform to the expectations of the academy. Consequently, integration of religious belief with scholarly work in education may have not been a viable option for ambitious young professors. Physical setting may have played a role, as well. Most of the figures in this study spent the majority of their careers in New York City, the most urban environment in America. Kilpatrick's diaries reveal that, even for a young man making a clean break with his past, the city could be an alienating and isolating place. The personal adjustment required for such a move must have impacted the educational thought of the young men who came there from the religious and rural Midwest, Northeast, and South. Much has been written about the debates between the Teachers College progressives and their counterparts in the Midwest. Perhaps the quantum difference between New York City and Midwestern urban centers like Urbana, Illinois or Columbus, Ohio may help explain differences among the educational thought that grew in each place. The complex interactions among religion, industrialization, and urbanization in the growth of progressive education bear more scrutiny than they have received to date. Finally, personal dispositions must be considered in accounting for individual differences in mediating between youthful religious experience and adult career pursuits. John Dewey was described as painfully shy in childhood, and displayed no remarkable compassion or empathy. Jerry Voorhis, on the other hand, was gregarious and compassionate to a fault. As adults, these personality traits revealed themselves in Dewey's stark intellectualism and boring lecture style set against Voorhis' empathy for workers and orphans. Perhaps a "warmer" personality is more likely to validate youthful

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 31

religious experiences by integrating religion and career, wbile tbe "cooler" type seeks to intellectualize experience. On the otber hand, Ceorge Counts sbared a mid-western Methodist upbringing and comminent to political and social Justice witb Jobn Childs. Counts was the "warmer" and Childs the "cooler" personality. Yet, wbile Cbilds, true to type, intellectualized bis youthful religious experiences. Counts seemed to neitber struggle witb bis nor seek to integrate tbem into bis educational tbougbt. He merely denied tbem. Lawrence Dennis reports that, "Wben asked Just a few weeks befte bis death wbat bis thougbts were on religion he denied tbat he had any. It appeared to be a topic totally witbout interest to him" (Dennis 1989, 16). Perhaps tbese different approacbes are attributable to brain cbemistry as neurotbeology suggests. Employing personality and neural development tbeories to analyze progressive educators promises to enricb ottr ttnderstanding of tbe interaction between religious and educadonal tbougbt.

CONTINUING IMPACT ON EDUCATION

Despite tbe different ways tbe figures described bere dealt witb faitb and work, their youtbful religious experiences exert a continuing impact on education. Many of Dewey's followers pursued experimentalism as a way to develop knowledge and values apart from tbe epistemological autboritai ianism of religion. However, tbe experimentalists may bave unconsciously drawn on their earlier religious experiences. Dewey, Kilpatrick, and Childs eacb had extensive religious education and experience. Peihaps Biblical texts such as Psalm 34:8 and Malachi 3:10 that invite an experimental approacb to faitb, learned in tbeir youtb, informed tbeir tbeoretical fot mulations in adulthood. Questions of what constitutes real knowledge and how it develops remain at the heart of debates over standards-based curriculum and tbe accountability movement. Experimentalism led the progressives to adopt some Judeo-Cbristian moral ideas while labeling tbem simply as pragmatic, as wbat woiks in the universe that is. Many religiotis thinkers would agree tbat tbe universe exists in sucb a way tbat some moral ideas work and some do not, tbat a certain moral pbysics prevails. Public scbools continue to struggle witb how to develop the moral lives of children without resordng to religious indoctrination. One principle that set progressive education apart from its more traditional predecessors is its focused attention on the learner, its child-centeredness. This value arose from a conviction each child has dignity, which in turn has its roots in the theological concept of imago dei, tbat people bave intrinsic value because tbey bear tbe image of Cod. Likewise, tbe progressive innovation tbat learning is socially mediated and tbat tbe scbool is a

32 J. R. STALLONES

community derives from the ecclesiological idea that the Church is actually an expression of the Body of Christ, with all of the human interconnections that that belief implies. The value of the individual and the role of the community in learning form the basis of the collaborative teaching methodologies, the small schools movement, and the professional learning communities currently in vogue in the schools. And certainly the role of the schools in preparing the next generation of citizens for the community, education for democracy, is a frequent topic of current debate.
NEED FOR FURTHER STUDY

Other areas of fruitful study exist in the interactions of religion and progressive education. The figures chosen for this study are not broadly representative, and intriguing questions surround some key figures. For instance, C. Stanley Hall was caught up in a revival movement while in college and described his experience with some fervency at the time (Ross 1972, 16-17). He later denounced his experience, writing, "As I look back upon this I cannot think that it made any great change in my life... I do not think that my emotional experiences were very deep. If they were, I do not remember them" (Hall 1977,163). However, late in life he devoted considerable intellectual energy to a lengthy 1917 work entitled/e^tw, the Christ, In the Light of Psychology. Had he been thinking about Jesus all those years? Was he seeking to make peace with his earlier religious experience by reinterpreting its focal point? Perhaps he was a Reinterpreter in the style of Dewey Or consider Paul Hanna, a key figure in the development of the social studies, who seemed to lead an active religious life but managed to keep it separate from his professional career. Hanna began his career at Teachers College, Columbia University, but left for an opportunity at Stanford University in 1935. He worried over that decision for years afterward, but perhaps the distance between him and his Denier and Reinterpreter mentors in New York City allowed him greater freedom to be religious. The study of religion's role in progressive education would also benefit from attention to race and gender. Marietta Johnson founded the Organic School in Fairbope, Alabama, profiled in John and Evelyn Dewey's Schools of To-Morrow (1915). Johnson was also a founder of the Progressive Education Association and bad very definite views on the deleterious effects of religious belief on children. Yet, she felt that Bible stories and religious ritual could be beneficial for young children, and insisted that her pupils recite a school prayer (Johnson 1929). Surely, women's experiences with religion during progressivism's formative era were different from those of men. Studies indicate that females display a greater level of religious feel-

Religious Experience and Progressive Education 33

ing than males (Winston 2005). If so, how did those differences shape their religious thought and impact their work in education? Likewise, how did progressivism express itself in racially separate contexts? Laura Bragg's color-blind educational work throtigh the Charieston Museum sheds light on the question. Was her work in South Carolina motivated by her Methodist upbringing, her own disability, or a sense of "noblesse oblige"? Louise Anderson Allen's excellent 2001 biography of Bragg is a start, but more work must be done on religion and progressive education in minority settings, especially the highly Christianized AfricanAmerican communities in the South. Fruitful study remains, also, in the impact of other religious traditions on progressive education. Historians have pointed to the connection between the American Protestant revival movements of the nineteenth century and the progressive movement that followed. However, Adler, for one, demonstrates that the religious underpinnings of progressive education go far beyond American Protestantism. What was the experience of Roman Catholic progressives and those from more exotic religious traditions? Stanwood Cobb was a founder of the Progressive Education Association and the progressive Chevy Chase Country Day School. Intriguingly, he was also an early leader of the Baha'i movement in the United States and many of his written works seek to harmonize progressive education with Baha'ism. This study argues that progressive education arose from the Judeo-Christian ctiltural consensus, but the ease with which Cobb blended progressivism with eastern religious traditions, not to mention the worldwide popularity of Dewey's educational theories, suggests that progressive education's appeal is quite broad. The intersection of Western progressive traditions with Eastern religious thought would make an interesting line of inquiry. All of these and many other questions bear scrutiny in the search to understand the complex interaction of religious experience and progressive education.
CONCLUSION: WHY IT MATTERS

These questions and conflicts endure because of the curious American dichotomy of a religious people seeking to live in pluralistic democracy Americans are overwhelmingly religious. A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life revealed that fully eighty-four percent of Americans identify themselves as adherents of a specific religion. Eightyeight percent are absolutely or fairly certain of the existence of God or a universal spirit, including fifteen percent of self-identified atheists. Eightytwo percent of the population considers religion to be very or somewhat important in their lives, and seventy-five percent of Americans, including ten percent of atheists, prayed at least once per week (Pew Forum on Reli-

34 J. R. STALLONES

gion and Public Life). It is no wonder, then, that issues in public education are often viewed through religious lenses. It is also no wonder, given the dizzying array of religious traditions represented by the clients of the public schools, that the schools have attempted to maintain neutrality by adopting a secular epistemology, although such a stance is anything but religiously neutral. Religion and education have been wedded in western culture for as long as schools have existed, and as long as religious diversity and democratic decision-making endure in American society, then struggles between and about religion and education will continue in American schools.

REFERENCES Allen, L. A. 2001. A bluestocking in Charleston: The life and career of Laura Bragg. Columbia: U of South Carolina Press. Barclay, William. 1974. Educational ideals in the ancien I world. Grand Rapids, Ml: Baker Book Hou.sc. Bcglcy, S. Your brain on religion: Mystic visions or brain circuits al work? Nerusweek, May 7, 2001. Bowers, C.A. 19()9. The progressive educator and the depression: The radical years. New York: Random House. Coiighlan, N. 1975. Young fohn Dewey: An. essay in American intellectual history. C^hicago: U of Chicago Press. Criindcn, R. M. 1982. Ministers of reform: The progressives' achievement in American civiiaation, 1889-1920. New York: Basic Books. Dallon, T. C. 2002. Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a philosopher and naturalist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dawkins, R. 2006. The god delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Dennis, L. [. 1989. George S. Counts and Charles A. Beard: Collaborators for change Albany: SUNY Press. Dcwcy, J. and E. Dcwcy. 1915. Schools oftomorroxu. New York: Wiley. Eastman, M. 1941. John Dcwcy. Atlantic Monthly, December. Edwards, ). 2007. A treatise concerning religious affections (originally published in 1754). New York: Cosimo Classics. Finkc, R. and R. Stark. 1992. The churching of America 1776-1990. New Brimswick: Rulgcrs. Hall, G. S. 1977. Life and confessions of a psychologist (originally published in 1923). New York: Arno Press. Himmellarb, G. 1991. Poverty and compassion: The moral imagination of the late Victorians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Johnson, M. 1929. Youth in a luorld of men: The child, the parent and the teacher. New York: John Day Co. Marsdcn, G. 1994. The soul of the American university: From protestant establishment to established nmihellef New York: Oxiord University Press. Mitchell, L. S. 1953. Two lives, the story Wesley Clair Mitchell and myself New York:

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