Catechetics or Theory and Practise of Religious Instruction
Citation
Chicago: Wartburg Publishing House, 1918
Description
Paul I. Johnston, said of this book: “One of the great educational classics of early twentieth-century American Lutheranism was Johann Michael Reu's Catechetics, or Theory and Practice of Religious Instruction. By the time it appeared in its third edition in 1931 it was a 658-page manual on the history, theory, and practice of education in the Lutheran church. Reu's Catechetics was the first and is still the only work by an American Lutheran author which attempts to survey the whole field of sacred and secular educational theory and practice and then seeks to combine these different perspectives into a systematic, scholarly whole. First making its appearance in German in 1915, it went through three editions over the subsequent twenty-five years and was a staple in Lutheran seminaries and teacher-training institutions for two generations. Yet today this book is virtually unknown to all but a handful of historians in Lutheran circles and beyond.” Concordia Theological Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 2-3, April-July 1994, pp. 93-111.
Main headings of this classic book:
I. The Historical Development of Religious Instruction.
II. The Subject of Religious Instruction: The Pupil and His Inner LIfe.
III The Aim of the Church in Religious Instruction.
IV. The Material for Religious Instruction and Its Distribution Over the Several Educational Agencies.
V. The Method of Religious Instruction.
VI. The Close of the Religious Instruction.
