1. Kilpatrick, William Heard, “George A. Coe: Conception of Moral and Spiritual Education,” Religious Education 48 (1952): 83–86 Google Scholar.

2. On the disruption of such communities, see Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 44 Google Scholar.

3. For a helpful description of this moral crisis, as well as the competing interpretations of youth in this period, see Fass, Paula, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

4. I borrow chiefly from Robert Church and Michael Sedlak who, in their analysis of American educational history, define conservative and liberal progressivism as the two central reform impulses of the early twentieth century. Conservative progressives, according to these authors, were characterized by a desire for social efficiency, predictability, managed expertise, and a willingness to impose values on the general public. Liberal progressives prized participatory democracy, joint deliberation, and a brand of social justice that would ensure the maintenance of these values. See Church, Robert and Sedlak, Michael, Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: Free Press, 1976), 255–60Google Scholar.

5. For a helpful analysis of conservative progressive character education in these years, see McClellan, B. Edward, Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 48–55 Google Scholar. For ties to the themes of social efficiency in this movement, see Setran, David, “From Morality to Character: Conservative Progressivism and the Search for Civic Virtue, 1910–1930,” Paedagogica Historica 39 (2003): 435–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stephen Yulish, “The Search for a Civic Religion: A History of the Character Education Movement in America, 1890–1935” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1975); and Chapman, William E., Roots of Character Education: An Exploration of the American Heritage from the Decade of the 1920s (Schenectady, N.Y.: Character Research Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

6. On liberal progressive character education, see McClellan, Moral Education in America, 55–61; and Hunter, James Davison, The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 55–78 Google Scholar. Predictably, many concentrate on John Dewey, despite the fact that religious educators were far more influential in determining the scope and di rection of the liberal progressive movement. Among the best of these are James Anderson, “The Morally Educated Person: John Dewey, Richard Peters, Lawrence Kohlberg and the Aims of Moral Education” (Ed.D. diss., Harvard University, 1990); and Jo Ann Freiberg, “John Dewey: Theory and Practice of Moral Education” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1982). See also McCluskey, Neil Gerard, Public Schools and Moral Education: The Influence of Horace Mann, William Torrey Harris, and John Dewey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Pietig, Jeanne, “John Dewey and Character Education,” Journal of Moral Education 6 (May 1977): 170–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pietig, Jeanne, “Lawrence Kohlberg, John Dewey, and Moral Education,” Social Education 44 (March 1980): 238–42Google Scholar.

7. See Hartshorne, Hugh and May, Mark A., Studies in the Nature of Character: Studies in Deceit, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1928), v–vi Google Scholar. See also Hartshorne, Hugh, “A Research Extraordinary: The Character Education Inquiry at Teachers College,” Religious Education 19 (December 1924): 397–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. See Warren, Heather, “Character, Public Schooling, and Religious Education, 1920–1934,” Religion and American Culture 7 (Winter 1997): 61–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Warren's work is by far the most compelling on these themes. Warren is keenly aware of the historical and theological issues surrounding the character education debate in the 1920s and 1930s. Her work has in many ways provided a stimulus for my own.

9. For the emphasis on religion and moral education in nineteenthcentury historiography, see, for example, Jorgenson, Lloyd, The State and the Non-Public School (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Theobald, Paul, Call School: Rural Education in the Midwest to 1918 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Culver, Raymond, Horace Mann and Religion in the Massachusetts Public Schools (New York: Arno Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and Kaestle, Carl, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983)Google Scholar.

10. Specifically, important progressive ties between educators and religious educators were forged at Teachers College/Union Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Chicago/University of Chicago Divinity School.

11. On Dewey's link between the religious spirit and moral advance, see Dewey, John, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934)Google Scholar.

12. Contemporary conservative character educators typically point to Lawrence Kohlberg's theories of moral reasoning and Sidney Simon's values clarification techniques in the 1960s and 1970s as the key forces in destroying virtue-centered education. However, the origins of the contemporary debate over character training can actually be traced more accurately to the post- World War I character education movement. It was in this era in the United States that the liberal model of character education gained its first broad hearing as an alternative to systems based on virtues and codes of conduct. For interpretations that see the 1960s and 1970s as pivotal, see Kilpatrick, William, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 15–20 Google Scholar. See also Lickona, Thomas, Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam, 1991), 9–11 Google Scholar. To his credit, Lickona also acknowledges the importance of the 1920s, pointing to the set of research experiments conducted by Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May between 1924 and 1929 (7–8). Alan Lockwood, however, has suggested that the contemporary struggle to define character education is a “revivification of the character education movement of the 1920s.” Lockwood, Alan, “Character Education: The Ten Percent Solution,” Social Education 26 (April–May 1991): 246 Google Scholar.

13. Lippmann, Walter, A Preface to Morals (New York: Macmillan, 1929)Google Scholar. On these same themes, see Krutch, Joseph Wood, The Modern Temper: A Study and a Confession (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1929)Google Scholar.

14. On this theme, see also Susman, Warren I., Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1982)Google Scholar.

15. See Coe, George A., “My Own Little Theater,” in Religion in Transition, ed. Ferm, Vergilius (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 93 Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., 95.

17. For more on Bowne's personalism, see Hutchison, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 122–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Of Bowne, Coe later said, “He turned multitudes of minds away from the religious theological and metaphysical conventionalities toward certain of the living, dynamic, realities of experience. He always warned against merely verbal thinking. He does not intend to deduce the moral life from a theory but a theory from the moral life.” See Wilm, E. C., ed., Studies in Philosophy and Theology (New York: Abingdon, 1922), 3 Google Scholar. He later perceived that even Bowne was too devoted to theological apologetics and a belief in derived authority. See Coe, “My Own Little Theater,” 100.

19. Coe was one of many religious liberals to receive training in Berlin. Others included William Adams Brown, Henry Churchill King, and Shailer Mathews. As William Hutchison has proposed, even under a strict definition of prominence, “more than half of the most important younger contributors to liberal thought … had received part of their training in Germany.” Coe went to Germany after a brief one-year tenure as professor of philosophy at the newly created (and financially strapped) University of Southern California. See Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 122.

20. Ibid., 128–40.

21. George A. Coe, “The Relation of Pragmatism to Education,” Quarterly Bulletin (June 1908): 18, and Coe, George A., “What is Pragmatism?” Methodist Quarterly Review 57 (April 1908): 211–19Google Scholar. For a helpful perspective on how American pragmatism grew up from within American Protestantism, see Feffer, Andrew, The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 13–15 Google Scholar.

22. While at Northwestern, Coe, wrote The Spiritual Life (Chicago: F. H. Revell, 1900)Google Scholar, dealing primarily with the psychological components of religious belief. His next two works, The Religion of a Mature Mind (Chicago: F. H. Revell, 1902) and Education in Religion and Morals (Chicago: F. H. Revell, 1904), began to reveal Coe's enduring interest in the relationship between theological liberalism and the ethical demands of social living.

23. For a helpful history of this organization, see Schmidt, Stephen, A History of the Religious Education Association (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Coe's leadership was chiefly intellectual rather than administrative. Harper was the original leader. Henry Cope was general secretary of the REA from 1907 to 1923, the formative period of change. Yet, by all accounts, Coe was the force behind the expansion and intellectual shifts in the movement. Shailer Mathews, for example, noted that, in the shift from biblical to character emphases, “The outstanding figure was Professor George A. Coe of Union Theological Seminary.” See Mathews, Shailer, New Faith for Old: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 249 Google Scholar.

24. For records related to his work in this post, see George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 7, folder 56.

25. See Parker, H., Theory and Practice in Religious Education: A Case Study of the Union School of Religion, 1910–1929 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1966), 14–17 Google Scholar.

26. As H. Shelton Smith proposed in 1940, “Religious education has two roots, one root being modern education and the other modern religion. The term ‘religious education’ is itself a reflection of this twofold parentage.” See Smith, H. Shelton, Faith and Nurture (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), 40 Google Scholar. Not all, of course, were supportive of this intermingling, and many of Coe's colleagues at Union surmised that the association with “secular” progressive education had forever tainted his religious sensibilities. President Henry Sloan Coffin wrote of Coe that his renegade style tended to alienate even his liberal colleagues. One student, reminiscing on Coe's influence in his life, noted that his father's friends had warned against sending him to Union because Coe, “the most dangerous man in Methodism,” had begun teaching there. Another alumnus called him the “real modernist” of his day. See Ward, Harry, “Social Thought and Action,” Religious Education 23 (1951): 84 Google Scholar. It was precisely because of the commitment to progressive education that the religious education movement was able to flourish in a period where liberal theology (particularly its social gospel leanings) had fallen into decline.

27. Coe, George A., A Social Theory of Religious Education (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917), 4 Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 95.

29. Obviously, within such a framework, the separation of church and state was maintained as a sacred principle of high character. The incorporation of creedal religion, in Coe's estimation, would render impossible the true religious goals of the school, and so the removal of sectarian religious practices such as Bible reading, prayer, and weekday religious education were considered positive attempts at restoring the democratic religious tenor of character education. See Coe, “My Own Little Theater,” 69.

30. Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 219. Interestingly, the educators who participated with Coe in the liberal progressive character education movement were also linked by their common association with religious controversy. At Mercer, the wildly popular William Heard Kilpatrick was accused of denying the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, and the reality of heaven and hell. Although he assured them that he sought true religious growth among his students and claimed that he would have been called a “theological mossback and conservative” at Union Theological Seminary, Mercer administrators felt it best to dismiss the young dissident. See Tenenbaum, Samuel, William Heard Kilpatrick (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951)Google Scholar. Similarly, William Clayton Bower, while at the College of the Bible in Kentucky, was accused of purveying liberal teachings and disillusioning students with unorthodox theories and methods of teaching. Although he was the subject of a long heresy investigation with two other colleagues, he maintained his teaching position until his departure to the more tolerant University of Chicago in 1926. See Bower, William Clayton, Through the Years: Personal Memoirs (Lexington, Ky.: Transylvania College Press, 1957)Google Scholar; and Kenneth Todd Lawrence, “William Clayton Bower's Theology and Philosophy of Christian Education as Related to His Theological Background” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1971). Coe himself came into deep conflict with presidents Henry Sloan Coffin and Arthur C. McGiffert at Union Seminary because of his radical views. See Kim, Younglae, Broken Knowledge: The Sway of the Scholarly Ideal at Union Theological Seminary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 143 Google Scholar.

31. See Dewey, John, Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), 246–47Google Scholar; and Dewey, , Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1920), 98–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. See Dewey, John, “My Pedagogic Creed,” in John Dewey on Education, ed. Archambault, Reginald D. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 427–39Google Scholar.

33. Coe, A Social Theory, 54. Years later, a colleague in the Religious Education Association commented that Coe “saw clearly the imperialistic, exploitative, and favoritistic assumptions implicit in the historical concept, the Kingdom of God.” Coe insisted that any idea of God, meaningful for purposes of human devotion and fellowship, should embrace an ethics of deity comparable to human moral responsibilities as conceived within the framework of social democracy. See Cole, Stewart G., Character and Christian Education (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1936), 13 Google Scholar.

34. Ibid., 135.

35. Coe, A Social Theory, 55. As Kendig Brubaker Cully recalled from his days studying religious education in the 1930s, “Salvation by education was still assumed to be a proper way to think about the Christian contribution to the world, and democracy was almost a synonym for Christianity. Professors still looked ahead to the kind of world order we should be able to construct cooperatively, and progress was construed as a kind of divine principle.” Cully, , The Search for a Christian Education—Since 1940 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1965), 14 Google Scholar.

36. Coe, A Social Theory, 176.

37. Dewey noted the link between these two forms of democratic practice: “The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity.” Dewey, John, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 87 Google Scholar.

38. On released time religious education in schools, see Davis, Mary Dabney, “Weekday Religious Instruction,” U.S. Office of Education Pamphlet 36 (1933)Google Scholar; Keesecker, Ward, “Laws Relating to the Releasing of Pupils from Public Schools for Religious Instruction,” U.S. Office of Education Pamphlet 39 (1933)Google Scholar; and Davis, Mary Dabney, “Weekday Classes in Religious Education Conducted on Released School Time for Public School Pupils,” U.S. Office of Education Bulle tin 3 (1941)Google Scholar. See also Donald Gorham, “A Study of the Status of Weekday Church Schools in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1935).

39. Character Education: A Conference of Superintendents of Schools at the Columbus Convention of the National Education Association (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, June 30, 1930), 1.

40. Setran, “From Morality to Character.” 41. George A. Coe, “Our Changing Morals,” The Christian Century, July 16, 1925, 920.

42. Coe, George A., Educating for Citizenship (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), 67 Google Scholar.

43. George A. Coe, “Report of the State Conference on Character Education” (Indianapolis: State Department of Public Instruction, 1926), 2. George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 5, folder 41.

44. Coe, Educating for Citizenship, 25.

45. Ibid.

46. See Coe, , “Shifting the National Mind-Set,” Religious Education 19 (October 1924): 318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also George A. Coe, “What Education for Peace Could Accomplish,” International Journal of Religious Education (November 1937): 15.

47. In addition to the public schools, Coe lambasted Sunday schools and other youth organizations for fueling war sentiment through the use of martial hymns and Old Testament combat passages. For Coe, the issue originated with children: “What shall we do, then, about the fighting attitude? … An obviously good step would be to stop absolutely the teaching of martial hymns to children. Think of what it means that when soldiers in the World War desired to sing their way to slaughter, one of the few appropriate songs already known to many of them was ‘Onward, Christian soldiers!’ The individual church member would be justified, I believe, in refusing henceforth to join in the singing of any hymn that expresses divine things in Satan's language.” George A. Coe, “A Christian Use for the Fighting Instinct?” World Tomorrow (November 1925): 717. George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 5, folder 41.

48. For Coe's analysis of the Citizens Military Training Camps, see “Training Citizens—For What?” World Tomorrow (October 1926): 151–54. George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 5, folder 41.

49. Coe, “Shifting the National Mind-Set,” 318. Coe also sent out a survey to professors of secondary education at universities and teachers colleges. When asked about the character education benefits of military training, all but a handful claimed that military training did nothing for the development of real character. Most disapproved because of the authoritarian pedagogy resting beneath military training. See Coe, George A., “What Do Professors of Secondary Education Think of Military Training in High Schools?” School and Society 26 (August 6, 1927): 174–78Google Scholar.

50. Coe, Educating for Citizenship, 35.

51. Coe, George A., “The Next Step, and What It Will Cost,” Religious Education 14 (October 1919): 302 Google Scholar. This point is also brought out in detail in Coe's attack on the philosophy of CCC camps in the 1930s. See Coe, George A., “What Sort of School Is a CCC Camp?” Social Frontier 1 (May 1935): 24–26 Google Scholar. Coe was distraught that the training of such camps had fallen into the hands of military leaders rather than educators. For a helpful discussion of this conflict between military and educational aims, see Cremin, Lawrence, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education (New York: Knopf, 1961)Google Scholar.

52. On moral schizophrenia, see especially Coe, Educating for Citizenship, 24–25.

53. Coe, George A., Law and Freedom in the School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 88 Google Scholar.

54. Coe, George A., The Motives of Men (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928), 16 Google Scholar.

55. Kilpatrick, William H., Education for a Changing Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1926), 41 Google Scholar.

56. Coe, Law and Freedom, 79.

57. As Coe pointed out in his discussion of curricular approaches to liberal progressive moral education, history and biography were to be read as lists of problems yet to be solved by great individuals: “How different all this is from the so-called teaching of history that culminates in the conviction that the really great problems are already solved and that what we now have to do is to keep in motion the machinery we have inherited.” Coe, Law and Freedom, 92.

58. Historian Paula Fass has described Coe as a representative progressive with regard to the youth problems of the 1920s. See Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 15. I share Fass's basic rationale for calling Coe a “progressive.” She notes, “Perhaps to call these analysts ‘progressives’ is to extend the term beyond its historical limits. Yet in a real sense it is appropriate, for it conveys their sense of excitement and orientation toward a reformed and regenerated future…. Certainly, progressivism as a reform package did not dominate national programs or foreign policies during the twenties. But progressivism as an angle of vision, as an optimistic approach to social problems, was very much alive” (30). In this sense, “progressive” implies a spirit of approach to character issues, marked by experimentation, creativity, and disdain for static verities, and social reform, marked by a greater or lesser degree of social radicalism.

59. For example, see Coe, George A., What Ails Our Youth? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), 25 Google Scholar.

60. Coe, , “What is Religious Education?” Religious Education 18, no. 2 (April 1923): 93 Google Scholar.

61. Coe, What Ails Our Youth? 82. In light of this position, few could doubt the sincerity of his dedication at the front of the book: “An old teacher gratefully dedicates this book to those of his students who questioned his teachings.”

62. Coe, “What Ails the Parents?” Congregationalist (June 18, 1925): 776–77. George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 5, folder 41.

63. George A. Coe, “The Children's Republic: A Christmas Story for Grown-Ups,” Association Monthly (December 1921): 474–75; George A. Coe Papers, Record Group no. 36, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, box 5, folder 39.

64. Coe, What Ails Our Youth? 59.

65. Coe, Motives of Men, 212.

66. Coe, Law and Freedom, 213.

67. Ibid., 94.

68. Coe, Educating for Citizenship, 58.

69. Ibid., 65.

70. On this theme, see also Dewey, John, The Quest for Certainty (New York: Minton, Balch, 1929)Google Scholar.

71. Coe, A Social Theory, 194.

72. Hartshorne, Hugh, Character in Human Relations (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932), 265 Google Scholar.

73. Coe, George A., What Is Christian Education? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), 151–52Google Scholar.

74. As Goodwin Watson concurred, “Instead of thinking of character as that which makes people want to do the right, we tend to think much more accurately of character as that which helped an individual to discover what the right line of conduct is.” See Watson, Goodwin, “Virtues Versus Virtue,” School and Society 26 (1927): 288 Google Scholar.

75. Coe, What Is Christian Education? 137.

76. Ibid. See also Coe, Motives of Men, 230–35.

77. Coe, George A., “Shall We Indoctrinate?” Progressive Education 11 (1934): 143 Google Scholar.

78. Coe, George A., “Shall We Teach Children Our Social Ideals?” World Tomorrow (September 1924): 278 Google Scholar.

79. Coe, Motives of Men, 243.

80. Coe, “Shifting the National Mind-Set,” 320.

81. Ibid., 322.

82. Coe, Motives of Men.

83. Kohn, Alfie, “How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education,” Phi Delta Kappan 78 (February 1997): 429–39Google Scholar. A shorter version of Kohn's critique can be found in Kohn, Alfie, “The Trouble with Character Education,” in The Construction of Children's Character, ed. Molnar, Alex (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 154–62Google Scholar.

84. Kohn, “How Not to Teach Values,” 430.

85. Coe, A Social Theory, 200.

86. Coe, George A., “Virtue and the Virtues: A Study of Method in the Teaching of Morals,” Religious Education 9 (1912): 138 Google Scholar.

87. Ibid., 203.

88. Feinberg, Walter, “Dewey and Democracy at the End of the Twentieth Century,” Educational Theory 43 (1993): 187 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Mustafa Emirbayer, “Moral Education in America, 1830–1990: A Contribution to the Sociology of Moral Culture” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1989), 226.

90. Coe, “Shall We Indoctrinate?” 143.

91. John Patrick Diggins makes this very argument when he maintains, “A scientific community could take on social issues and turn to the public for guidance, as Dewey advised, only to discover that the consensus of ex pert opinion must yield to the prejudices of a democratic majority. Scientific method may succumb to the unscientific pressures of a democratic society, rendering inquiry adaptive where it should be adventurous, timid where it should be bold.” See Diggins, , The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 237 Google Scholar.

92. Coe, Educating for Citizenship, 30.

93. Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy (1908; repr., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 53 Google Scholar.

94. McClellan, Moral Education in America, 60.