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Show Religion on Personality Important Past Unsound Uses of Bible, Says Professor, Need Not Be Cause of Overlooking Its Vital Force. Absence of a sense of guilt is "ominous," Prof. F. Ernest Johnson declared in an address on "Religion in Education in the Postwar World," delivered before an All-College Conference Con-ference on Education held in Horace Mann auditorium under the auspices of the Columbia University Summer session. Deploring the failure of the schools to make the English Bible a part of the cultural equipment of every generation, gen-eration, Professor Johnson said he was "amazed that the studies of personality per-sonality and personal adjustment, of fixation and complexes, of traumas and neuroses, make so little of the demonstrated significance of religion reli-gion as an organizing principle in personality." "The psychiatrists," he added, t have rightly noted the disturbing effects ef-fects of religious fears and doubts and the paralyzing influence of an abnormal sense of guilt. But I make bold to say that much of the extant literature .of personality development de-velopment runs to the treatment of symptoms: Is there in this person a sense of guilt? Then the first thing to do is to get rid of it! The norm of personality is a frictionless interior an untroubled mind. Not so. "With no end of respect to psychiatrists, I nevertheless believe be-lieve and 1 think the more profound pro-found of them recognizee that a sense of fruilt is more often een- uine than phony. And the only way to get rid of such a sense-of sense-of guilt is to remove the guilt. In this exploitive world the absence ab-sence of a sense of guilt is often the most ominous sign a personality per-sonality can show. Organizing Effect of Faith. "Undoubtedly a morbid religious consciousness has disordered many a Jife. But a healthy religious faith and discipline is a powerful organizing organiz-ing force. It brings man into a conscious con-scious and willing obedience to the highest law of life. It enables him to discount the trivial, to escape from self-centeredness, to 'see life steadily and see it whole.' One of our greatest educational needs is to explore the resources of religion in personal counseling." "That the Bible has been put to wholly unsound uses in religious education may be freely admitted. That its true significance as a cultural cul-tural resource has often been misconceived mis-conceived by the church is not open to question. "But is public education so destitute des-titute of resourcefulness and courage that it cannot lay hold in its own way on this matchless match-less treasure of poetry and drama and ethical prophecy in which the immemorial spiritual quest of the race is recorded for our guidance, for our solace, and for the strengthening of our hopes? "Religion is man's effort, individual indi-vidual and collective, to come to terms with his universe or, as one of our great contemporary Catholic scholars has put it, to come to terms with his situation of finiteness and freedom. Has this long struggle anywhere .else been so abundantly documented as in the annals of Israel?" |