Apologia for 'Accent on Youth'

One of the difficulties in writing “Current Religious Thought” is that six of us contribute in alternation, which means that twelve weeks elapse between columns by any one author. This makes it almost impossible to maintain any continuity. It also makes it difficult to respond adequately in a column to those who have taken exception to one’s previous contribution. Irritations among the readers must be allowed to lie and perhaps ferment.

I am probably being more than usually presumptuous in thinking that those who are reading this also read the column I called “Accent on Youth” (December 3), that those who wrote letters care to read ever again anything I write, or that I am in any way responding to the issue that has been most troublesome.

Nevertheless I feel under some obligation to write, and to start from the easy popular sense of the word apologia, that is, an apology. I knew perfectly well that I would touch a few live wires, but it seems to have been worse than that: I seem to have crossed a few wires, judging from the fact that a great many fuses were blown. Letters poured in on me, far more than I ever received before. Although 80 per cent were favorable and most of the critical ones were rather gentle and polite, an amazing number were shocking in their sarcasm and bitterness.

First, then, I must apologize, because I hurt peoples’ feelings. A professor at a meeting recently singled me out to have a few words about all this. “I’m afraid you over-reacted,” he said. And I am afraid I did. Sam Johnson warned that one should “write in haste and correct in phlegm.” I simply wrote in haste, and as I read again (and again) what I wrote, I see all kinds of things that I should not have said or should have said better. Another kind writer pointed out that I had been entirely too negative. The article lacked balance, which means that it needed more careful thought.

I heard somewhere that Billy Graham will not answer “personal” criticisms, and Graham Greene instructed his secretary never to allow him to read negative book reviews because they unfitted him for his work. Well, I walked around for a couple of days with a little black cloud over my head because some of the criticisms were very personal and very harsh. I can only conclude that what I wrote or what these critics read hurt them or insulted them or irritated them greatly, and that they were led to respond in kind. I am sorry to have initiated this kind of exchange, and I therefore apologize.

Now comes the apologia, that is, the defense of my thesis. One thing is certain in my own mind: I was not attacking youth nor indeed youth programs as such. I know better. For nineteen straight summers I worked in private boys’ camps where in order to survive in the job you not only had to follow the program—you had to make the boys like it and like you or you were not rehired. After that I directed a large church conference program, five weeks of which were given over to young people. I have seriously lectured to serious groups on youth programs. I know that I caricatured some youth leaders, and I did so because I know the temptations to popularity and the “personality plus” approach.

I have spent all my adult years on college and seminary campuses. You may think I am now “over the hill”; let me say that if this appears to be so as you observe me objectively, it is apparent to me viscerally. Nevertheless I lectured last year to five colleges on three-or four-day assignments with much counseling time in the interstices. I have two like assignments this year. In the last two years I have spoken four times to student groups at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Wellesley. When my office door is open here, I am constantly in the counseling business. The “generation gap” is a cliché: one does or does not do well regardless of age.

But more seriously now, the Bible is an adult book, there are no youth programs in the Bible (or programs for church picnics, for that matter) and it is true that adults do palm off on youth programs what ought to be very serious concerns about themselves. The approach of the Bible is, I think, by way of the family, and I know good men and good churches that are experimenting successfully with this approach. Meanwhile there are thousands and thousands of young people who are touched only by youth programs, and great work is being done.

But again, simply to have a youth program won’t do. My first-grade teacher, Miss Watt, identified beautifully with us as I recall, but only because she was readying us for the second grade. Youth work is not the end of the matter. Whatever identification we practice to get rapport, we must not give them the false impression that what they do is satisfactory just because they are young. You play in the minor leagues first before you are worth watching in the big leagues; you practice the scales assiduously long before you appear for a violin concert. There is nothing in just being young that prepares one to dictate a curriculum or run a college or make decisions on international affairs.

And the problem is still with the elders: they sentimentalize the whole procedure; they sublet a world religion to junior; they accept carelessness, poor preparation, and blasphemy just because the kids are off the streets and in the sanctuary. And so we neglect to teach them the grandeur and the majesty and the truth that makes free in our most holy faith.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

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