Our national parks.

How your school promotes the love for beauty.

How your school could be made more beautiful.

How you and your schoolmates could make your school more beautiful.

What impression a stranger would get of your community from its appearance.

The features in the appearance of your community of which you are proud.  Those of which you are ashamed.

Agencies that exist in your community to promote its beauty

Ways in which you can participate in making your community more beautiful.

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND AGENCIES

GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION

In some countries church and state are inseparably bound together.  Before the recent war the Russian Czar was also the head of the Russian church.  In our own country in colonial times, no citizen was permitted to vote in the New England town meeting who did not belong to the Puritan church of the community.  This religious qualification for participation in government was in the course of time dispensed with, and one of the fundamental principles of our democracy is that every citizen shall have complete liberty of religious belief.  Our government exercises no control over the religious life of the people other than to guarantee this liberty.  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (United States Constitution, Amendment I).  State constitutions contain similar guarantees.  To prevent government interference with religion, religious institutions are exempt from taxation.

RELIGION A MEANS OF CONTROL

On the other hand, the church and other religious institutions are an important means of community control.  They do not exercise this control through government, but through the influence of their own beliefs and organization upon the conduct of their members.  If everybody should live in accordance with the Golden Rule, there would be no need for government as a means of repression, but only as a means of performing service.

RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES AN OBSTACLE TO TEAM WORK

One of the unfortunate things about the church has been the fact that more or less important differences in religious belief have tended to break up the community into numerous religious groups, or churches.  This may be necessary in purely religious matters, but it has too often happened that the people have allowed their religious differences to prevent united action in other matters of common interest to the entire community.  In some cases communities have been broken up into rival, or even hostile, factions because of this.  There is, however, a growing tolerance of one religious sect or denomination by others, which is in accord with the Christian spirit, and is necessary if community life is to be well developed.  It often happens that there are more churches of the same denomination in a community than it can support.  In such cases, at least, there is need for church consolidation similar to the consolidation of schools, and for the same reason.