Institutional Church

INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH, the name generally applied both in the British Isles and in America to a type of church which supplements its ordinary work by identifying itself in various ways with the secular interests of those whom it seeks to influence. The idea of such extension of function grew out of the recognition of the fact that the normal activities of church work entirely failed to retain the interest of a large class of the population to whom the ritual formality of ordinary services was unacceptable. Various attempts were made to overcome this deficiency, e.g. by modifying the form of service or of some services, by the addition to the ordinary services of more or less informal meetings (e.g. the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon services), by specially excusing persons from wearing the normal church-going attire in holiday resorts, and by holding services out of doors. The principle underlying all these changes is systematized in the Institutional Church which, in addition to its main building for however, no easy task. We ought to be able to adduce cases in which, where the incidence of natural selection is excluded, acquired habits do not become instinctive. But it is difficult to do so. It seems, however, that in young chicks drinking from still water is a habit acquired through imitation of the acts of the hen-mother. The presentation of such water to sight does not evoke the appropriate instinctive response, while the presentation of water taken into the bill does at once evoke a characteristic response. Now it would. seem that in the former case, since the hen "teaches" all her chicks to peck at the water, she shields them from the incidence of natural selection. But though the hen can lead her young to peck at the water, she cannot "teach" them how to perform the complex movements of mouth, throat and head required for actual drinking. In this matter they are not shielded from the incidence of natural selection. Thus it would seem that, where natural selection is excluded, the habit has not become congenitally linked with a visual stimulus; but where natural selection is in operation, the response has been thus linked with the stimulus of water in the bill.

If this interpretation be correct we have here an example of the manner in which imitation plays an important part in the formation of habits which though oft-repeated are lapsed; while others, which he termed "blended," were partly due to natural selection and partly resulted from the inheritance of acquired habit. There has been a prolonged controversy between the school of interpretation, commonly spoken of as Lamarckian, which advocates a belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and the school, with Weismann as their leader, which questions the evidence for, or the probability of, such inheritance. The trend of modern opinion appears to be in the direction of the Weismannian interpretation. And it must be regarded as questionable, if not improbable, that instinctive modes of behaviour are in any degree directly due to the inheritance of habits intelligently acquired. That intelligent habits may secure the survival of those organisms whose germ-plasm bears the seeds of favourable congenital variations is not improbable. But in that case intelligent procedure only contributes to the survival and not to the origin of hereditary variations.

To test the hypothesis that natural selection is an essential condition to the genesis of instinctive behaviour it should be the aim of investigation to find crucial cases. This is, specific :fly religious services, provides other rooms or buildings which during the week are open for the use of members and friends. Lectures, concerts, debates and social gatherings are organized; there are reading rooms, gymnasiums and other recreations rooms; various clubs (cycling, cricket, football) are formed. The organization of the whole is subdivided into special departments managed by committees. By these various means many persons are attracted into the atmosphere of the church's work who could not be induced to attend the formal services.

This expansion of normal church work may be traced back in England to at least as early as 1840, but the full development of the Institutional Church belongs only to the latter years of the 19th century. The chief example in England is Whitefield's Central Mission in Tottenham Court Road, London, a church which, in addition to an elaborate organization on the lines above described, has an official journal. In the United States the movement may be said to date from about 1880. The name "Institutional" was first applied to Berkeley Temple, Boston, by Dr William Jewett Tucker, then president of Dartmouth College. The obvious criticism that this epithet emphasizes the administrative and secular side to the exclusion of the spiritual led to the tentative adoption of other titles, e.g. the "Open Church," the "Free Church," the former of which is the more commonly used. In 1894 was formed the "Open and Institutional Church League" at New York, which held a number of conventions and served as a headquarters for the numerous separate churches. In connexion with this league was formed the "National Federation of Churches and Christian Workers," which held a convention in 1905.

See C. Silvester Horne, The Institutional Church (London, 1906); G. W. Mead, Modern Methods in Church Work (New York, 1897); R. A. Woods, English Social Movements (New York0891).

Categories: I-IOL