The Shepherd, April 2009
Parents must not give in to the view of the Church which holds sway in America [i.e. the West], which is foreign to the spirit of Orthodoxy. Protestants will tell us that one can only talk about religion to children of school age, because before that they are not able to understand. [The translator of this work recalls a young and committed Methodist, training to be an R.E. teacher, who told him that the policy was not to mention God to the children at primary school level because they could not understand Him at that age! I wondered at what age we could understand Him, but she had swallowed this fallacy.] If we are going to take the child’s understanding as our starting point, then what prevents us adopting the diktats of the Soviet authorities which forbade the teaching of religion until 18 years of age. The atheistic Communists understood pretty well that if children were deprived of religious impressions and understandings in their infancy, then later when young boys and girls are growing up and under different influences, it will be hard for them to accept the teachings of the Gospels or to comprehend the beauty of the church services.
We, the priests, are always pleased when we see the parents or the grandparents bringing children to church. We understand that it is difficult to bring children of different ages from distant places, but we also know what a beneficial influence churchgoing has upon them. Those who teach religious instruction in school can also clearly see which children regularly attend church and are often brought up for Holy Communion. The child, who only comes rarely to church, will often not understand even the most commonplace things; he lacks the impressions which we receive in church. The child who regularly attends church, however, is, as it were, a ploughed field, in which it only necessary to broadcast the seed of the Word of God and of churchliness. Because, and we will repeat this yet again, religious understanding comes not through a child’s mind but through his heart. This does not mean that religion contradicts reason, but only that faith, this inner faculty of the heart, is not dependent on the mind. For this reason, if we, in his early infancy, deprive a child of the holy feelings of love towards God, and of His saints; if we do not teach him to pray at home and in church, then we leave his soul open to other feelings and desires. His immature mind, not being supported by faith, might well then stray along the paths of other, inappropriate religions. Then neither books, or instruction in religious knowledge, nor even good examples will find any sympathetic response in his soul.
* Translator’s Note: Fr Shchukin’s views are understandably dated in some respects, but they are still instructive. The situations within the Western denominations, which he mentions here, have over the years changed considerably: to some extent for the better, but to a large extent for the worse. He seems particularly harsh on the Baptists, and this might surprise some readers in the West, where, today, the Baptists, as a whole, are the denomination which seems to take Scriptural truth the most seriously, even if they disagree with us on its interpretation. However, Fr Shchukin is undoubtedly referring to Russian Baptists, who were particularly militantly anti-Orthodox. Within the last generation they have been known to proselytize at Russian Orthodox churches even in the diaspora, where they themselves have only the tiniest presence.
……to be continued in the next issue with
“Religious Upbringing at School”
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