The Teacher as Prophet of the True God: Dewey's Religious Faith and its Problems

Dewey declares that the teacher's calling is to be 'the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God'. This apparently religious declaration seems inconsistent with Dewey's philosophical position. An examination of Dewey's writings on religious issues reveals that his religious faith is a secular belief in democratic ideals, and that his teacher's alleged religious mission is in fact a worldly one. This article claims that Dewey's religious conception is a pragmatic conception designed to answer the social needs of American society in the 1930s, and that it presents no adequate solution to the problems of our contemporary world.