BV 600 .S78 1915 Strayer, Paul Moore, 1871- The reconstruction of the church with regard to its THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH WITH REGARD TO ITS MESSAGE AND PROGRAM THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE M%ic.u^,'^' RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH WITH REGARD TO ITS MESSAGE AND PROGRAM BY V PAUL MOORE STRAYER ^tka Sorb THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Cofmonr, igts By the MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up aad Elcctrotjrped. Pabluhcd Januaiy, igiS* TO MY FATHER WEBSTER MATTHEW STRAYER A devoted minister of Christ for over half a century, the teacher and pastor of my youth, and my encourager and counsellor in the Christain ministry. PREFACE The church to-day is suffering under the law of diminishing returns. More time and money, more brain and heart are invested in it than ever before, but the investment does not bring as large a return per unit of effort as a generation ago. The same is true of business. Formerly men waited for busi- ness; now it must be worked for. Advertising, traveling salesmen, show windows, free delivery, are needed, if one expects large returns. The competi- tion which has compelled these changes in method is felt everywhere because of the multitudinous and exacting demands of modern life. Many and di- vergent interests are making their appeal to the man of to-day, and the church must compete with them all. The church need have no fear, for it deals with an ineradicable religious instinct. This is not an irreligious, it is a religious age. The spirit of re- ligion, which is the mother of the church, has grown far beyond its pale. The world is full of religious feeling, of brotherly kindness, of ethical conduct, which are in no way identified with the church. A moral awakening has swept over the country and is setting new standards for politics and business and personal life; the public conscience was never so sensitive and alert as it is to-day; modern life vii VllI PREFACE is aflame with social feeling. Yet all this moral advance has not registered proportionately in a nobler and conquering church. A study of contemporary church history reveals the weakness and inadequacy of Protestant religious organization. The strength and adequacy of Roman Catholic religious organization are so much con- cerned with the organization itself that the church has a smaller part in the ethical and spiritual progress of our common life than its numbers would lead us to expect. Efficiency for organization pur- poses has reached its maximum in the Roman church, but efficiency in spiritual leadership and com- munity service has not been attained by any large number of Roman or Protestant churches, and in many cases is not even sought. The church is not making its appeal nor doing its work with in- telligence and resourcefulness, with moral earnest- ness and confidence. Hence its lack of success in the measure that it ought to succeed. The time has come when the church must either do big busi- ness, or be content with a constantly decreasing volume ; must capture the world, or stand aside and see the world pass it by. I have a resolute faith in the church. I am heartily enthusiastic over my calling, and believe that the Qiristian ministry offers the greatest oppor- tunity for moral leadership in the world to-day. I am confident that the church can be so adapted to its new tasks as to fulfill its magnificent mission, and to be attractive to all real men and women who PREFACE IX have a high purpose to serve and help. It was a passionate love for Israel and a sure trust in Je- hovah that drove the prophets to their messages of condemnation, and in this respect at least many- Christian ministers of to-day resemble the old Hebrew preachers : we are so devoted to the church that we are hurt by its defects and cannot bear to see them perpetuated. If the book here sub- mitted to the public contains criticism and even condemnation, it has none which lacks a construc- tive purpose, none from which the spirit of loving and appreciative understanding is absent, none which does not seek earnestly for ways in which the church may come to its own. The eternal spiritual message of the church needs to be reclothed to meet the demands of this new industrial age. The circle of the church ought to be widened to embrace and utilize the immense amount of unconscious and "anonymous religion" that exists outside the church. The church must be Christianized by bringing the daily life and busi- ness practices of its members into line with the law of Christ. To this task. Part I of this volume is addressed. Part II is a diagnosis of the present situation of the church in the light of this larger purpose, and with special reference to its program and method. Part III points out the directions in which reconstruction is most needed, and offers suggestions growing out of experience and a com- mon judgment for greater efficiency. In the matter of remedy I have naturally writ- X PREFACE ten with less assurance. I am an experimenter myself. No panacea is given. There is none to give. I have not attempted to draw up a standard church program, for each church must recast its own program in the light of the needs of its own community and of the forces available to meet them; but I have tried to make clear that a con- structive program for community service is abso- lutely essential if the church is to be efficient. I shall be content if I succeed in inciting local church leaders to make a careful study of their field and to plan their church program for a ministry fitted to their own community needs. With profound sympathy for those in hard, unresponsive fields, I have the utmost confidence in the outcome wherever the church grapples with its problem with enthusi- asm, courage and initiative. The position which I have tried to take is irenic. I would be an interpreter and reconciler. I covet and seek a better understanding between the old and the new, between friends of the church and its critics, between the privileged class and the toilers. But in writing these pages I have had chiefly in mind those in the church who have a sturdy faith in organized religion, who believe that the church has a real work to do in our changing social order and who are seeking the best methods by which it can fill its place ; the men in business who have a vision of what their genius for organization and production ought to mean to the whole community ; the working men whose interest in the common PREFACE XI good IS bigger than self-interest; and all optimists who, by seeing the best in others, discover the way to make the best better. In offering this book as a small contribution to a great common cause, I appeal to all who love the church to strike hands for another and mightier crusade. The call of God is loud and clear to this generation. It has become unmistakable since this sudden insanity of war has fallen upon Europe. One has a sinking of the heart when he thinks of the passions which have been set loose among our brothers across the sea. We must wait for dispassionate history to weigh in its balance the causes of this savage bloodshed and carnage, but on one point all are agreed: the claim that what we call Christendom is superior to what we speak of as Heathendom is challenged. The Christian church must meet this challenge or recall its mis- sionaries. Christianity has made less impression on our Western civilization than we thought, and unless we Christianize Christendom we must stand silent and humbled before the religions of Asia. This challenge is imperative to the church of Europe which had no sure word to speak amid the clamor of war, and to which no man turned for guidance. The challenge is equally imperative to the church of America, for the fear and distrust of man for his fellow man, the feelings of pride and prejudice, and the commercial spirit, which together gave birth to militarism and are responsible for European strife, are in great measure to be found in our own XU PREFACE social and industrial life. We have yet to Chris- tianize America. In this hour of testing the church in turn chal- lenges everyone who believes in it, to help it minister to all the people, redeem the cities from drunkenness and lust and social waste, and realize its ideals of moral and spiritual leadership. He who fails in this crisis to do his utmost to help the church perform its task, he who is indifferent or recreant now, either has no faith in the Christian church or is a traitor to the cause of humanity. It is a tremendous task, but our very recognition of it is evidence that God has given us the power to perform it. Let no man^s heart fail ! Paul Moore Stray eel Rochester, N. Y., September 20, 1914. CONTENTS Part I. A Revised Message for the Church of Today I. The Need op a Social Gospel . . . . i II. The Spiritual Possibilities of Business Life 25 (II. The Church and the Group of Toil . . .52 IV. How to Christianize a Competitive World . 86 Part II. The Church at the Parting of the Ways I. What the Church Is For 107 II. Where the Church Fails 128 III. Why the Church Has Been Halted . . .144 Part III. Reconstructing the Program I. The Efficiency Test in Church Activities . 161 n. Reorganizing the Church Services . . .174 III. A Modern Propaganda for the Old Faith . 200 Community Service 221 Advertising the Church 250 VI. The Opportunity of the Rural Church . .262 VII. The Church a Social and Recreational Center 275 VIII. Getting the Churches Together . . .289 IV. V. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH WITH REGARD TO ITS MESSAGE AND PROGRAM THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH With Regard to Its Message and Program PART I A Re:visi:d Me:ssage: i^or the: Church o^ To-day CHAPTER I THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL This is the age of a new social consciousness. Literature throbs with it. The daily press with its record of contemporary history reflects it. It has made its way into the curricula of college and university. Political parties are being re-aligned because of it. Legislators are grappling with it as with some new and mighty force with which they are unfamiliar. Not only the agitator and the demagogue but statesmen and all thoughtful citi- zens are occupied with social problems. These problems are not pushed forward by the poor, and interest in them is not confined to times of indus- I 2 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH trial depression, but they engage the attention of the rich and prosperous.* Yet few appreciate the full significance of the social forces now active throughout the world. The social reorganization taking place in Germany, Eng- land, Turkey, China, India, and America is not less than revolutionary. Evolution has been at work for centuries, and the Kingdom of God is ever among us, but evolution at some point be- comes revolutionary when the Kingdom is mightily set forward or back. The moment of birth is such a time, and to-day we are at the birth of a new social order. Far-reaching social movements are nearing their peak, and whether they be toward destruction or fulfillment is the question of most vital importance. The social revolution is on! It cannot be stopped. It may be guided. I have absolute faith in the honesty of the hu- man heart and the trustworthiness of the human reason. All that is needed are men of good will and sound judgment to keep ahead and guide things, conserving the best in the past and heading resolutely toward full justice and fairness. To such leadership the church is called, for at the basis of the social revolution is a new sense of human values. The great faith that man is more than property is driving on to a readjustment of social and industrial life. It may be called an economic movement, but the motive power behind * Samuel Plantz, "The Church and the Social Prob- lem," p. i6. THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 3 it is this sense of human values. While man was property, of course property was the main consid- eration, and the laws that sprang from that period held over. So when chattel slavery was abolished and human beings could no longer be held as property, still property rights took precedence of human rights. But to-day it is resolutely main- tained that property was made for man and not man for property. There are few who dissent from this. It is human interest which is reshap- ing our politics, remaking our laws, and reorgan- izing our social and economic institutions. Now humanity is the bottom interest of religion, and the culture and propagation of religion is the business of the church. Therefore not only is the church peculiarly adapted to take the lead in the present social reconstruction, but leadership is a responsibility laid upon it. If the reconstruction is carried forward without the guidance of religion, if with self-interest as motive the many succeed in wresting from the few their special privilege, and might constitutes right, it will be but a recrudes- cence of the jungle. But, if this reconstruction pe- riod keep for motive-power human interest and religious feeling, then will it be real progress toward liberty, equality and fraternity. While realizing that the religious motive is our main dependence for social reconstruction, there are those who feel that the church as such must stand apart from social movements, and that the 4 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH preacher should avoid all definite social instruc- tion. On the other hand there are those who feel that social effort should absorb the time and thought of the church and that what doesn't make directly for social betterment is old-fashioned and sentimental and futile. The truth lies somewhere between these two positions. The -church's deep concern is with the fruits of the Spirit, its goal is the Kingdom of God here on earth ; but the mean- ing of these great phrases, "the fruits of the Spirit" and "the Kingdom of God" is found only in the functioning of the Spirit of God through human effort for righteousness, justice, happiness and peace. Logically and naturally the first task of the church is to feed the roots of life that the desired fruits may be brought forth. The only form of Christianity worth having is "applied Christianity," but underneath and fructifying social service are faith and hope and love. Social activities are after all but branches, and cannot bear fruit if the spir- itual roots of life are dead. Clear-sighted welfare workers realize that the religious impulse is necessary to make social service effectual and permanent, and it is only the ama- teurish, half-baked social worker who leaves out of his account the religious motive. Also the open- eyed worker in the definitely religious field recog- nizes that the really vital religious questions to-day are those raised by the social order. Our most intense religious interest is the interest in social reconstruction. Social responsibility is the directest THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 5 approach to the modern conscience, and the con- science aroused to its social duty becomes naturally- more religious, for as one hand goes out to help our brother the other reaches up to find our Father. "Social responsibility is the chief sacrament of re- ligion to-day." ^ Therefore not only must the religious teacher feed the roots of life, he must also show how faith and hope and love are to operate for the bringing in of the Kingdom. We have succeeded in stimulat- ing religious emotion, in nourishing faith and hope, in creating good impulses, in inducing what may be called the "Sunday glow," but we have failed to give direction to the feelings and impulses which we have inspired. In a religious service deep emo- tions are appealed to, but persons go from church and forget, or do not know how, to turn the power of those emotions into their lives. In church one sometimes has a mysterious feeling of exaltation and power, which may actually do harm in two ways. First, one who can feel spiritual emotion may be satisfied that this makes him religious, and so neglect to apply the standards of Christ to his daily life; and, second, he may be stirred by oft- repeated appeals, but not act upon those appeals, forgetting on Monday and Tuesday the feelings of Sunday, failing to connect his emotional life with his volitional, until the emotions cease to influence conduct at all. A religious emotion to be of value * Henry Sloane Coffin in address to graduating class of Yale Divinity School, June 7, 191 1. 6 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH must register in conduct. If the feeling that comes to us under a religious appeal is a kind of spiritual intoxication which does not influence our conduct, it is not only useless but a source of peril. The church has seemed remote from the com- mon life of the people for the reason of this unre- latedness between Sunday and the weekday. We have protested that there is no difference between sacred and secular, but we have not yet permitted ourselves to discuss in the churches those problems which were once termed secular. Tradition has bound us, convention has limited us, and church canons have hindered us. The result is not insin- cerity so much as unreality; not evasion of practi- cal issues so much as failure to meet them. In the last century Thomas Carlyle said that the "beautifulest" object one sees on the earth is the man who stands in the pulpit to speak of spiritual things. 'This speaking man has indeed, in these times, wandered terribly from the point; yet at bottom, whom have we to compare with him? . . . I wish he would find the point again, this speaking one; and stick to it with tenacity and deadly en- ergy ; for there is need of him yet ! . . . Could he but find the point again, take the old spectacles off his nose, and looking up, discover almost in con- tact with him, what the real Satan and soul-devour- ing, world-devouring Devil, now is !" ^ Nearer our time a brilliant student of contempo- rary religion complains that the authorized spiritual ""Past and Present," Book IV, Ch. i. THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL / teachers of his day had so Httle Hght to throw on the social problems which pressed then as now for solution. Religion had become a thing of the indi- vidual Hfe alone. "What is wanted," he says, "is the rise of a new order of teachers whose business it would be to investigate and to teach the true relation of man to the universe and to society, the true Ideal he should worship, the course which the history of mankind has taken hitherto, in order that, upon a full view of what is possible and de- sirable, men should live and organize themselves for the future." ^ One has only to pick up any volume of sermons printed before the beginning of this century to see how little was said on social questions. There were preachers with an immense social passion, but they gave their social message through books and pam- phlets rather than in the pulpit. The work of the large majority of the church's ministers was in sharp contrast to that of the great Hebrew prophets who were mighty meddlers in politics, who had a sense of their responsibility as moral teachers, who were quick to see the sufferings of the poor and the wrongs of the weak, who sat in judgment on the social conditions of their time, who pointed out injustice wherever it was practiced, and made it their business to see that justice was done. The Christian Church has oscillated between the prophets' moral and social leadership in this pres- ent world and the priestly religion of otherworld- *Sir John Seeley in "Natural Religion." 8 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH liness, with a strong preference for the less stormy religion of otherworldliness. The historic fear that religion may become less spiritual when it deals with actual conditions on this planet and with pres- ent human needs finds classic expression in these sturdy lines of Browning: "Earthly incitements that mankind serve God For man's sole sake — not God's and therefore man's— Till at last who distinguishes the sun From a mere Druid fire on a far mount?"* But who can say when man serves God "for man's sole sake"? The poet is discriminating in that he recognizes a genuine religious impulse at the mo- tive center of this zeal for humanity, but who can discriminate between the human and divine side of a religious impulse? True, there are some social workers who disclaim any religious motive and avow that their interest in humanity is purely hu- manitarian, but by what tests do they select one motive from the other? What is it that differen- tiates the attitude of man toward man from that of man toward the beast of the field, or beasts toward one another, if it be not this consciousness, how- ever dim and inarticulate, that all humans have a peculiar significance in that they are somehow re- lated to the Invisible? All social obligation to be permanent grows out of a sense of relationship to the great unseen Spirit, although that sense of re- lationship be unrecognized. * "The Ring and the Book," The Pope. THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 9 The interdependence of personal religion and social responsibility is stated in one of the greatest words spoken by the Master of our faith, "For their sakes I sanctify myself." ^ "For their sakes" — that is the social motive. "I sanctify myself" — that is personal religion. Personal religion has been thought of as a means whereby a man got his own soul saved, and a common conception of sal- vation was that out of the wreck of this lost world the soul of a man might be rescued. But to-day the noble conception which stands out most strongly in our religious thinking is that, instead of trying to save our own souls out of the wreck of a lost world, men should devote themselves to the saving of the world. However, care for one's own life and care for the life of others are not mutually exclusive states of feeling. The blending of the social and religious motive in Christ's great saying finds a response in every mind and heart, but the prejudice of many devout souls is raised by the way in which this view of religious duty is some- times expressed to-day. Not infrequently some such remark as this is made by good and useful folk: *T am so busy trying to help those about me that I have almost forgotten that I have a soul myself." This is overstating the case, though it was Charles Kingsley to whom the remark is first credited. "For their sakes" ? yes ; but also, "I sanc- tify myself." Social responsibility is not a substitute for per- * John 17 : 19. lO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH sonal religion; it is the expansion of personal re- ligion. We can be of small use to the world of men unless there is in us a strong, loving, and aspir- ing soul; and we cannot keep our soul alive unless side by side with our personal love for God is a deep and earnest concern for the good of others. The new social conscience is the guarantee of the reality of religious feeling and each depends upon the other. The socialization of religion is really the Christianizing of religion; "For their sakes I sanctify myself." To sum up, then, social feehng to be persistent must rest upon a spiritual impulse, and a spiritual impulse to be real must function in social relation- ships. Hence while there is need for careful and thoughtful statement of the Christian position which once again is dominant, there is no more danger of an over-emphasis on social service, which is well named **the characteristic twentieth century version of the gospel," than there is that evidence can be made too strong. The effort of man to up- lift and redeem the life of men is the only evidence worth considering of a man's love for God. The reasons why Christianity has never under- taken the work of social reconstruction, as given by Prof. Rauschenbusch, are mainly, the early ex- pectation of Christ's speedy return, the limitations of primitive Christianity, otherworldliness, the as- cetic and monastic tendencies, ceremonialism, churchliness, and the union of church and state. These have practically disappeared from modern THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL II life.^ But it takes time for a great body radically to change its method. The preacher is diffident in grappling with our present social maladjustment because the problems involved are such as require the vision and insight of a prophet. The problems with which society is now face to face are vaster and more complicated than those which confronted Hebrew prophecy. Also it is much easier to dis- cuss doctrine than life, to preach on the minor mor- alities than on the sins of society. Such vision as the preacher does have often runs counter to the practice of many in his congregation, and he is not sure enough of himself to sit in judgment on others. And even if one were fully equipped to pre- scribe the cure for social injustice and economic wrong, the temptation to silence is tremendous. It is very easy to satisfy oneself that he has done his full duty when he has gibbeted the Pharisees and pronounced a philippic against the sins of Old Tes- tament times. No one objects to pulpit denuncia- tions of bad social and political conditions 3,000 years ago, and one may denounce Ahab and Jere- boam until he is blue in the face. Balaam and Achan and Herod the tetrarch and the Judaizers furnish materials for mighty sermons of wrath. Nobody takes offense at vehemence so directed and the preacher may persuade himself that he has been a faithful preacher of social justice. Thus he has the delicious feeling that he is an "exposi- * "Christianity and the Social Crisis," Ch. IV. 12 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH tory preacher" and that he draws his illustrations from the Bible, and thus also no one in the congre- gation who loves the ''hire of wrong-doing," no covetous person, no libertine, no modern Pharisee will be disturbed. It must not be thought that the preacher is con- scious of self-deception. The utterance of every public speaker is irresistibly and unconsciously modified by the opinions of those he habitually ad- dresses. One is always limited by his environment without recognizing it. Also, in many cases, the preacher intentionally adapts his teaching to the known views of his congregation. This cannot often be set down to lack of courage, but usually it is based upon sound judgment and common sense. The philosophy of teaching requires that one build upon experience.^ The successful teacher starts with the knowledge and point of view of his pupils. He goes only as fast as they can follow him. To pass from long division to calculus would violate every rule of pedagogy. And the preacher has a very delicate task in correcting the inherited ideas of a miscellaneous congregation on social questions, or on theological problems, for that matter. Tact is required not to get too far ahead of the average church-goer, for he is not a student of social prob- *"When Solon was asked," says Plutarch, "if he had given the Athenians the best possible laws, he answered that they were as good as the people could then receive." And a greater than Solon said, "I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now." THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL I3 lems and often his personal interest is involved in the existing social order. To readjust one's opin- ions as to practices long accepted is something of an undertaking, and it is tremendously aggravated by the personal equation and by financial interest. The preacher must be a leader, not a trimmer, but he must use Christian courtesy and tact. It is very easy to give offense and to lose that power to in- fluence which we all covet. Let men once feel that they are being assailed without full recognition of the difficulties under which they labor, and forth- with they become antagonistic. But the balance between expediency and faithfulness must be kept, however delicate it may be. A rapidly decreasing number of church congre- gations prefer that the minister keep to rather nar- row limits. They want him to speak of how to bear personal sorrow and loss, of patience and joy and hope. They like him, and he also likes to speak words of comfort and cheer, to sound soothing notes, to say "Peace, peace" even when there is no peace. On Sunday people want rest and quiet. They have fighting enough during the week and some of them would Hke on Sunday to be let alone. They don't want to be jostled and disturbed, so that they must revise their opinions and recast their moral judgments. Too often the demand for "the old gospel" is only a demand for the teachings that are familiar, and for the simple, unexacting appeals to which people are accustomed. As a result of all these factors, the Christian 14 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH minister has not yet assumed that leadership which properly belongs to him in shaping the moral issues of this social reconstruction. Jane Addams com- plains that even in this age of the social question it is to the theater, not the church, that men go to hear the problems of capital and labor, work and wages, class and class, seriously grappled with. Some accuse the church of spending its time in talking about the world to come and saying noth- ing about this present life; of considering this world as a place to get out of rather than to remain in and make as pleasant as possible meanwhile; of being concerned with "labeling men and women for transportation to a realm unknown," rather than with the reconstruction of society, which was the Master's concern when He spoke of the King- dom of Heaven. This of course is not true. One rarely hears a sermon on heaven these days, but we have given some excuse for such criticism. Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. Our preaching even yet has too little to do with conduct and the common problems of life. Dr. Parkhurst reckons that there is more pulpit politics on Thanksgiving Day than all the rest of the year put together. That, he says, is because Thanksgiving Day is thought to be only about one- half as holy as the Sabbath and this extra 50 per cent, of secularity permits us to forget all about heaven and say something about the nation, the government, and the industrial life of the people. Ordinarily we have confined ourselves to the prob- THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 1 5 lems of personal morality which we have solved to the satisfaction of all. Here we have little to say that is new, for Christian standards of ethics are familiar to Western people. So long as we restrict ourselves to personal morality we are say- ing nothing that the people do not know already. And that great new world of industry with its immense ethical problems, where men are losing their way for want of guidance, we moral teach- ers have scarcely entered. What is needed in the pulpit to-day is a religious interpretation of all life. Every human relation- ship raises a moral question, but to many it has never occurred that moral issues are involved in their industrial and economic and social relation- ships, or even that there is such a thing as the social problem. They have heard us speak of the reli- gious aspects of business and the moral values at stake in commerce and politics, but these are only phrases to them. We do not go far enough for average hearers. The preachment on Sunday does not relate to what they do on Saturday, because we do not relate it. Hence we have no real place in the experience of an increasing number, for our message does not grapple the actual problems which engage them most of the time. Men turn to us when sorrow comes, but have no sense of need of us in the strong working-day. Neither the toiler nor the captain of industry seems to feel that he cannot get along without us, and to both we owe a duty. l6 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH The commonest criticism of the preacher is that he does not know the world he lives in, and that he is rather sentimental and visionary. If that be true it is reason enough to keep men from seeking his guidance in the big, baffling problems of the social order. Of some men and in some part this criti- cism is true, but the fact that a man is an idealist is, too often, falsely assumed to mean that he does not know his world. The minister of to-day may not be as well qualified to decide economic and in- dustrial questions as the business man, for he hasn't the special training, but he is in a better position than the men directly concerned to pass judgment upon the moral problems involved in the commer- cial world. His relation to industrial and economic problems is academic and, when he has given them proper study and thought, his opinions are more likely to be unprejudiced and disinterested. The notion that the preacher is ignorant of what is go- ing on about him is largely given rise to by our habit and method of dealing with virtue and vice too much in the abstract. Men listen to us with the ''never hit me" air, and we must come nearer to the heart of the matter. Where we are not in- formed we must get all the evidence and weigh it carefully, for we must know our world in order to help it. The religious teacher announces certain princi- ples laid down by Jesus which are increasingly dif- ficult to apply as life becomes more complicated. When Jesus said to the four fishermen, "Follow THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 1 7 me and I will make you fishers of men," they understood. When the challenge was given they simply left their boat and went with Him to be- come learners at His side. But when Jesus says to a lawyer or merchant or manufacturer, "Follow me," it is not so simple. What does it mean to follow Christ when one has hundreds of employees dependent on him for the means of livelihood? How can one follow Christ in the industrial or economic or judicial world? How can a rich man follow Him who had not where to lay His head? That needs interpretation. The commandments of Jesus must be translated into economic and industrial and social terms for men who do not know how to do it for themselves. Most men want to know what their Christian duty is and how they may perform it. I do not believe there are many like the much-quoted church mem- ber who, when asked how he harmonized certain questionable business practices with his religious principles, replied that he didn't try to, but that he made it a study to keep his religion and his every- day behavior as far apart as possible. Most men would rather be Christian than not. They want to be consistent, but do not know how. If the church is to survive with power, if it is to continue to be the authoritative teacher of morals and religion, and much more if it is to guide and dominate life in this age, it must find terms of economic and in- dustrial relationship in which to express the good will of men and in which to impress its sanctions. l8 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH We have come to an industrial organization of the world. Industry absorbs the life of the people. If we have nothing to say about industrial right and wrong, we have little to say that matters. When the Archbishop of Canterbury announced some time since that he worked seventeen hours a day and had no time left to form an opinion as to the solution of the problem of the unemployed, Mr. Keir Hardie replied that "a religion which demands seventeen hours a day for organization, and leaves no time for a single thought about starving and despairing men and women and children, has no message for this age." It would be very simple to sum up the task of the church in one sentence and say that it will best deal with modern social conditions by making good men. Of course good men is all we need, and the church does produce good men, but the good men of the church are at a loss to know how to follow Christian principles and ideals under the present social organization. As Professor Taylor says,^ the fact seems to be that "the industrial world has outgrown our moral sense." So sudden and over- whelming has been the absorption of life by in- dustry that we have no code of morals to apply to the changed situation. Once the relation between employer and employee was personal, and personal ethics sufficed. But with the growth of the fac- tory and corporation and trust, moral problems be- came for the most part impersonal, and the major- * Merrick Lectures, 1907-8, p. 103. THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 1 9 ity of men are hopelessly at sea. And now the sanctions of religion must be translated into indus- trial and economic terms. This challenge of industry must be taken up without fear or favor, but we shall need time and study to prepare ourselves to pass judgment here. In the words of Professor Peabody, "neither ethi- cal passion nor rhetorical genius equips a preacher for economic judgments." There is danger in im- mature and unintelligent pronouncements. Every now and again we younger men tilt against some social evil of which we know little, and only break our lances. Luckily we are young and easily for- given, but we have to deal with ignorance and prejudice, and must mix the harmlessness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent. Men have been accustomed to our present industrial and so- cial order so long that they do not see how it can be changed. They are surprisingly ignorant of terms and movements outside of business. And we all need to be kind, patient, non-partisan and dispassionate. But we must have a message for an industrial age, or cease to be moral leaders. Some are afraid that in trying to interpret the rights and needs of those who toil, and to show the interest of the church in child labor and hours of employment for women, and similar social problems, the church may regain those whom it has lost but lose those it now has. The captains of industry will leave the church, they say, if the church seems to befriend the pri- 20 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH vates in the ranks of industry. I do not believe it ! For many captains of industry are Christian men, honest and fair-minded, and they want to have in- terpreted to them how the law of Christ applies to their life and work. They are in doubt as to their duty, they are troubled because there is now much that they want to do but cannot, and they will accept with gratitude any consensus of opinion which will set new standards that will permit them to follow their own hearts and their feeling of brotherliness. And those who are unwilling to apply the standards of Jesus the church is better without. The present business system is not charge- able to the kings of finance alone, though they are the main offenders. The sins of corpora- tions are shared by the lieutenants and sub- officials employed by the board of directors who usually suggest the sharp dealings and dis- honest methods, and then execute them; but their ingenuity is put to such uses to satisfy the great organizers of business, who in turn give their con- sent the more readily because they themselves do not actually do the wrong.^ In addition there are *For example, the sugar trade was controlled by the Havemeyers. The Government detected them in using short scales in weighing for customs duty, during a long period of years. For the crime some of the head officials were sent to jail and the sugar trust was required to re- fund to the Government one million dollars for unpaid duties. Mr. Havemeyer escaped because of his age and because it was not proved that he was directly in touch with the fraud. It is, however, not thinkable that those THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 21 hosts of small investors, who are incapable of per- sonal wrong-doing, but who are all the while scout- ing for investments that pay a dividend which hon- orable business is not able to return. It is the size of the dividends and their safety which are inquired into by the average investor and not the methods practiced in order to realize them. Small investors seek investments which show a high rate of inter- est, while many large investors naturally are content with less. The clamor of promoters and investors for large dividends and the demand of the purchaser for cheapness, these two coupled with unreasonable competition are responsible in great part for the injustices of industry. Hence, all along the line, people need to be shown, and I believe are ready to be shown. The atmos- phere is charged with good will. Men everywhere believe in the square deal, and the question on which they differ is as to what constitutes a square deal. Employers want those who help them to have their fair share of the products of labor, and employees do not grudge the larger share which goes to the man who supplies the capital. This good will must be precipitated and organized. And who shall do it if not the Christian minister? We must do it, we must apply the teachings of the Master to the com- plex social and economic life of to-day or be with- who received most of the benefit of the fraudulent entries could be ignorant of the dishonest practice. In the public mind the Havemeyer family were dishonored and the scandal hastened the death of the head of the house. 22 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH out a message for the age. We must form a new code of morals which will guide a man in his direc- tors' meeting as well as in his home, in his relation to his competitors and employees as well as to his friends and neighbors, at the bargain counters as well as at the tea-table.^ We are ministers of the Prince of Peace, and the task to which we are called to-day is the establish- ment of industrial peace and economic righteousness in order to make way for that social order which we know as the Kingdom of Heaven. I would not have the church turn its building into a lodging- house, its classrooms into soup-kitchens, its meet- ings for prayer into a labor lyceum. I would not have it embark on new social enterprises in order to * The apparent collapse of Christianity in Europe is a failure only of the teachers of Christianity. This un- speakable war which puts civilization to shame was pos- sible partly because of too much pulpit generalizing in Europe as in America. Those who constitute public opin- ion may be reached through the church, but the people were unprepared for this sudden crisis because they had not been trained by their spiritual leaders to hate war, or taught that nations are amenable to the same Christian ethics as individuals, or made to see clearly that it is no more right for nations to tear and kill one another than it is for neighbors to settle their disputes with clubs or fists in the backyard. Might does not make right among kings any more than among stevedores. Like Amos we must point out the universal quality of righteousness. In so far as they apply at all, the same ethical standards apply to states as to next-door neighbors, to politics and to business as to the family and the church. And the religious teacher must show definitely how they apply. THE NEED OF A SOCIAL GOSPEL 23 meet the sneer of some youthful worker or over- come the suspicion of the labor unionist. I would not have it pin its faith to social settlements and the conventional forms of social service ; these are only- palliative and, valuable as they are, do not go to the root of the matter. It is good to supply playgrounds for the children, and tenement houses with light and air and baths, but the church must give them more than this. The mission of Christianity is to furnish for rich and poor alike a solution to the riddle of existence, to kindle self-respect and hope and faith and love in the breast, and to get the inspiration of a real life purpose into lives of drudgery and lives that are empty. I would have the minister of Christ call men's attention away from the question of rights to that of duties, as Mazzini did. I would have him make plain what Christ's Golden Rule means as it applies to employer and employed, to landlord and tenant, to seller and buyer, to mistress and servant, to pro- moters and investors, and to all humans at the points where their life touches another's. I would have him teach a new kind of competition, a competition in doing right and in community service. I would have him make clear that the merchant or manu- facturer or lawyer or artisan is called to his business as the preacher to his ministering; and that Christ summons the business man as well as the apostles to follow Him and become "fishers of men," work- ers in human values and not in dead, inert, material things. To be a worker with men rather than things 24 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH makes life romantic and redeems it from monotony. The Christian conscience is staggered by how much it means to be a Christian. There is some- thing wistful in the way men and women are seeking to know the truth as to their duty to one another. Christian brotherhood has immense implications, and Christian love makes a limitless demand on the soul. Human values have emerged from the world of industry and now stand first and foremost. Men know how to deal with physical values and mechan- ical values and economic values, but not with hu- man values. And the specialist in morality must teach them. How to live together is the problem of society stated in its simplest terms. We have not yet worked it out. We have not yet invented social machinery by means of which employer and em- ployed, rich and poor, may side by side realize the best that is in them. What do love and brother- hood mean in actual life? The answer to that question is the tidings for which men are waiting. This is the Social Gospel. Woe is unto us if we learn not how to preach it ! CHAPTER II THE SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE Since the American Civil War men have given themselves to the business of wealth production to repair the waste of that cruel strife. The indus- trial expansion of the country during these years is without parallel, partly because the patriotic im- pulse found an expression in the development of our national resources, but more because the prizes of business have attracted the best brains of the nation. In less degree this is true of other nations and the industrial organization of the world is a fact which is powerfully influencing our civiliza- tion. Warfare between nations is a war of trade. The diplomatists have for their main duty the fos- tering of commerce and trade. Industry has be- come the popular arena for individual achievement as well as national advancement. Literature, art, oratory, the ministry, law, medicine and even poli- tics are fields for but a tame sort of rivalry in com- parison with business. The world of industry ab- sorbs a vast majority of humans either in the strug- gle for a livelihood or as a field of conquest. Here the strife grows keener when elsewhere men have ceased from strife. Morals are here under heav- 25 26 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH iest strain, and here religion is needed to guide and to control. What is the significance for religion of this new world order? What effect upon the nation's spir- itual development does this immense industrial ex- pansion mean? Do the occupations to which most men give most of their waking hours furnish a fair chance for the expression of the Christian ideal? Is the church to be thwarted in its task by the modern organization of business, or does busi- ness offer an opportunity for real Christian ser- vice? To begin with, the state of religion is much more healthy and robust than appears from the reports of church statisticians. Charts and graphs seem to indicate that it is passing through a period of invalidism, but most examinations have pro- ceeded on the ground that religion is a public mat- ter. The thermometer used with the patient has been church attendance; so many people in church on any given occasion, so much religion. Now this more spectacular side of religion is of the utmost value, because religion is a social mat- ter and requires some social organization for its culture, and because human nature demands some outward expression of its inward feeling. But there are other expressions of one's religious feel- ing than church attendance. The fact that a man does not go to church does not mean necessarily that he is unreligious, but may indicate that he does not understand the church, or that he has found SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 2/ that it does not meet his needs in the cultivation or the exercise of religion. The spirit of religion has grown far beyond the churches. There is a tre- mendous amount of "anonymous religion" in the world to-day. What is religion? For most men it is only a feeling; it is not a conviction or a reasoned faith, but a feeling. And it is the feeling that what is seen is not all there is. The religious man is the man who reckons into life something other than the things that are seen. He who does his work on principle, who lives with ideals, is religious. An old Greek sculptor, when asked why he finished the back of a statue which was to be against a build- ing, and so invisible, as perfectly as its front, said, "I am working for the gods." Now any man who does his work, or lives his life, "for the gods" is religious. In so far as he does a thing for the gods, not for pay, not for profit, not because his work will be seen and be lauded of men, not for reputa- tion, not to win out against other men, but for prin- ciple, for an ideal — he is religious. The religious man is the man who realizes that he is in the pres- ence of an Invisible and that his life somehow re- lates itself to the Invisible. He feels, therefore, that it is worth while to do his best to-day, because there is an invisible and eternal Being who will carry to-day over into to-morrow, who will give permanence and continuity to his life, and so make it worth while to do his best. There are few men in this modern age who do not believe that the 28 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH great conserving forces of life are to be trusted, who do not feel that what they see is not all there is. Man is a religious animal. In passing let it be said that the larger number of women in the church must not be taken to mean that the male sex is the less religious. The differ- ent kind of life women lead, the great task of ma- ternity, the frequent bearing of pain, the constant care of little children, and the responsibility of training them into worthy manhood and woman- hood call out certain religious qualities in women which men may lack. But there are religious quali- ties in which men equal and even go beyond women. Women possess in larger degree than men the softer sentiments of sympathy, generosity and self- sacrifice. They are more conventional and hence are more strongly appealed to by the forms of re- ligion. But the elementary social virtues of hon- esty, truthfulness and justice are maintained in large measure by men. Just as the life that the woman leads is responsible for her excellence in certain moral qualities, so the life that the man leads is responsible for his excellence in others. The mere fact of sex is not an adequate explana- tion of moral differences, but the different training and work and environment of men and women. Man's life is absorbed mainly in business, and the idea that business develops any moral or re- ligious qualities is contrary to the notion of a great many persons. A popular impression is that the business man is more hard pressed to wrong-doing SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 2g than any other man, that he lives to lower moral standards and that, because of the peculiar tempta- tions of his career, he is more excusable than other men. Some think of the world of business as a vast battlefield, where men are pitted against one another, fired for the fight by selfishness and greed. One has said, '*It is only the densest ethical igno- rance that talks of a Christian business life, for business is now intrinsically evil. . . . There is no such thing as an ethical bargain, . . . there are no honest goods to buy or sell; . . . the hideous in- dustrial war . . . makes the industrial system seem like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth." ^ Back of this impression there are two facts: first, the recent revelations as to some of our larg- est business systems, and second, the practices of many individuals in business. We cannot blink these facts. The insurance scandals, for example, afiford a spectacle of groups of intelligent, big men who had lost their ideals. A careful investigator of contemporary political history ^ says that behind most corrupt legislation are the big business inter- ests, and that the boss of the bosses is the money king. This is unquestionably true, and yet much of the dishonesty in big business has been devel- oped almost independently of politics. But these *G. D. Herron, quoted by Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," p. 316. ^Lincoln Steffens, in personal conversation and public address. 30 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH big interests which use corrupt methods, do so in defiance of the accepted principles of business as well as in defiance of the laws of the state and of humanity. Couple with the big interests the stock manipulators and you have named the main offend- ers in business to-day. These flagrant offenders have victimized the great body of business men who are honestly serving the public and are proof against the peculiar temptations to which their work exposes them. An unusual amount of publicity has been given in recent years to business, and is it not probable that the spirit which has forced hidden things to light and condemned them, evidences that we are morally more sensitive and not that we are more sinful than the preceding generation? Mod- ern business is immensely complicated and in a constant state of change. The corporation is a legal device to permit the organization of business on a larger scale than can be handled by an indi- vidual or firm. Before we had quite comprehended what a corporation is, we saw the invention of the holding company for the purpose of binding to- gether many corporations, and while the holding company was still a mysterious thing we have seen it broadened into the "trust." May not the very complexity of business and the inability of the average layman to fathom it, make him unduly dis- trustful? Certain it is that what has been revealed of the methods of big business, added to this in- creased moral sensitiveness and vague distrust, has SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 3 1 for many cast suspicion over the business organiza- tion as a whole. A proper estimate of the religious values in busi- ness life depends upon a true understanding of business and of the philosophy underlying it. Busi- ness began when men first realized the need of something besides food; that is clothing, utensils, weapons and houses of the simplest sort. Since the primitive man added to the length of his arm by the use of a club and to the strength of his arm by the use of the lever, and discovered the use of fire, civilization has been put forward by the manufacture and distribution of the things needed for human life. At first each made what he needed for himself, or did without. But some showed spe- cial skill in fashioning utensils and weapons, and these more cunning workmen began to manufacture for the tribe or clan while others used the utensils or hunted with the weapons. Thus began the division of labor, and thus grew up the manufacturing class as distinguished from the consumer. When men moved farther from the villages to till the soil or fish the streams they got others who were not so skilled in the use or manufacture of utensils to bring them from the village. Thus began the trader and the merchant class. All business is but the modification of these three divisions; the man who fashions the utensils, and the man who uses, and the trader. Business therefore in its inception rested upon the discovery and supply of social needs. Business 32 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH has remained that, and ever must. It depends on a social need that can be supplied. Sometimes the public is fooled and made to believe it needs what it doesn't, and sometimes it is offered a sham for supply, but the most successful forms of business are **based on the discernment of real needs and the supplying of real benefits." ^ Of course there is cruelty and greed in the motives and passions of individual business men; but the organization of a business as a whole is, as Professor Peabody says, *'a vast and complex movement of social service." Many men engaged in business are unconscious of rendering any social service, and it is true that some are doing their utmost to extract from the community all the traffic will bear. Perhaps most men would say that they are in business for the money and not for the purpose of performing so- cial service; and yet the laws of business are such that a man must render service to the community or the community will have none of him. It is "good business" to be honest, and to play fair, and to make or sell a real commodity and at least to lead the people to believe that one is in business to serve them. If one's needs are only selfish and he is thinking only of how much more he can get out of the community than he puts back, the people will soon find it out. Even through competition a moral end is reached which many do not suspect. Of course there is cruel and bloody competition, but that is * Peabody, op. cit., p. 318. SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 33 mainly on the part of the big interests which are really out of the reach of competition and are not responsive to the ordinary principles of competi- tion ; and on the part of certain individual business men who, not having brains to succeed, resort to sharp practice. These latter sooner or later go to the wall, and they make up a large percentage of the failures in business. For when competition must be considered, the underlying principle of any successful business is the power to inspire confi- dence that just value is given for value received. And there can be no establishment of confidence aside from the spirit of the Golden Rule. If a business does not serve some social need it is un- economic and useless and will soon be cast aside. There has been much confusion on this whole matter of competition, and naturally, because of the jangling voices one hears which pretend to speak with authority. Competition had become so gruelling that the trust was formed in order to restrain it. The trust is the business man's own method of checking the cruelty of competition. Competition of the killing sort ceased between members of the trust, but by thus combining these men were able the more easily to crush out smaller competitors. The trust became so powerful and so greedy that laws had to be made to restrain the trust, and court proceedings were instituted to de- stroy it. Then the men of these great combina- tions chorused in pious tones that they were being driven back to the cut- throat competition of the 34 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH jungle. No wonder the layman has been confused. Under adequate governmental regulation, com- petition not only stimulates individual effort but clears itself of abuses. Of course in the desire to get rich quick many men who cannot excel their competitors in efficiency will seek to do so by cheapening the product or forcing down the wage. True, this succeeds only temporarily, but in the interim before this sort of competition goes to the wall the public have suffered by the use of shoddy, and the wage-earner has not gotten a fair return for his toil. Unfair competition is very slow in correcting itself, and although every decade dis- honest business men are eliminated the next decade offers another crop who are just as indifferent to the true principles of competition and to human welfare, and the same waste and suffering go on. Even for successful and permanent business, competition only fixes the limits within which men may operate. The maximum wage is set for them, and where labor is scarce the minimum wage. The maximum and minimum price of raw materials is set, and the price above which the product cannot and below which it may not be sold. But a consid- erable margin remains for manipulation. By tak- ing advantage of fluctuations in the labor market one competitor may unduly inflate his profits, by private bargains and rebates he may diminish the price of his raw material and his shipping expenses, and by clever advertising he may sell an inferior article. So that governmental regulation is neces- SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 35 sary to restrain competition and to safeguard the public. Where private initiative is not a factor to be considered competition should be eliminated alto- gether. In the opinion of the writer it will be easier for the social order to be Christian when all the necessary forms of public service have been so- cialized. The whole drift of to-day is toward the socializing of life. Those forms of public service which are not profitable, such as the streets, the schools, the parks and the courts, are now owned and maintained by the community. Indications are strong that the profit-earning forms of public ser- vice, such as electricity and gas, the telephone, the telegraph, the street railways, the express service and the railroads, will be socialized too. Here we may safely stop, at least for a time. Competition in other forms of industry, if properly regulated by law, not only is not hostile to public morals but may serve as a stimulus. Competition allowed, combination allowed, and both regulated, seems to oflfer the most favorable conditions for a Christian social order. There are certain ethical qualities which are nec- essary in the business world; certain social vir- tues are maintained which otherwise were in dan- ger of growing weak in our easy and comfortable modern life. The more elaborate business be- comes, the more dependent it is upon these moral qualities. Business to-day is done not with cash but with credit, and credit is reputation. Immense 36 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH transactions are put through without the exchange of a penny. Deals are made and purchases ef- fected by men on opposite sides of the globe on the basis of the integrity of both parties. The very existence of modern business rests upon reputa- tion, and reputation is the shadow of character. It is essential that the business man have a reputa- tion for honesty and that he safeguard his credit. Col. Charteris once said to a friend, "I'd give fifty thousand pounds for your good name!" "Why so?" asked the other. "Because I should make a hundred thousand out of it," was the reply. On the side of production, human skill has been displaced by machine skill, and that is regrettable; but a more moral quality than skill remains, faithful- ness. The man who runs a machine in the modern factory loses skill, for the machine does the thinking for him, but he must be faithful. Otherwise he will smash the machine and spoil his product. In- dustry to-day depends not on the cleverness of the individual, but on honesty and faithfulness. One careless man, one dishonest piece of workmanship in one out of a hundred workmen will throw a product into the "seconds." It is better capital for the manufacturer and the merchant, the mechanic and the operative, to be moral than to be clever. One asks of a merchant with whom he wishes to do business, not "How large a fortune has he succeeded in making?" but "Is he honest ?" The question asked when a work- man is employed is not, "Is he shrewd and cun- SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 37 ning?" but, "Is he honest and sober?" The im- plication is inescapable: moral qualities have be- come elementary and essential in modern business. Business has its mean and contemptible side, of course, and there are some evils that are peculiar to business pursuits. How to escape the perils of business will be discussed in the fourth chapter, but here I will name some of them and try to indi- cate their nature and extent. Nothing is gained by minimizing them or by magnifying them, but let us take the main facts into account in order to esti- mate the spiritual possibilities of business life. The evil which stands out most conspicuously in the business world is misrepresentation. Its most insidious form is the way in which investors are frequently induced to surrender their wealth for the building up of a new corporation. Many rail- roads and industrial enterprises are promoted and capitalized in a conservative and honest fashion, but in a large number of cases the prospectus which is offered as bait for the investor has been mislead- ing and even fraudulent. Certain facts are con- cealed and others are shown in a too favorable light. In some instances where the prospectus rep- resents the honest expectations of the promoter, he nevertheless deliberately withholds certain facts which would lead a cautious investor to form less confident expectations than he himself has reached. The great sin of modern business is dishonesty; dishonesty in the organization of business, dishon- esty in the keeping of books to show larger assets 38 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and greater prosperity than actually exist, and dis- honesty in bank statements for the purpose of ob- taining larger credit or bigger loans. But it must be kept in mind that in successful business there is little occasion, and hence little temptation, to prac- tice such dishonesties. Also new moral standards are rapidly being set up and boards of directors are being held responsible by the courts for any misrepresentations in the prospectus, and thus the business man is under less pressure to wrongdoing in these directions than formerly. Apart from the promoter there is not so much misrepresentation in business as is ordinarily be- lieved. The great bulk of business to-day is be- tween parties who know what they want, so that there is little room for deception or lying. Only the retailer deals with men and women who are not experts and who know little about the quality of the goods that are offered. The retailer is under constant temptation to misrepresent his goods. His most common sin is fictitious advertising. A mer- chant's main desire is to move his goods, not to educate the taste of the public,^ but to dispose of the goods which he has on hand. In order to move the goods he is under a steady temptation to mis- *The best index of the taste of a community is the store window. The merchant displays in this most public way what in his experience will appeal to the taste of the buying public. The store window offers a better oppor- tunity for elevating the taste of the public along certain lines than an art gallery and library combined. Merchants are beginning to make use of it for this purpose. SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 39 represent through his advertisements and his sales- men, for the customer is gullible and an unintelli- gent buyer. On the part of the manufacturer or jobber there is little chance of misrepresentation as he deals with expert buyers. Also the manufacturer is changing his policy of selling as much goods as possible, regardless of the distributer's ability to dispose of them. He no longer loads up the mer- chant with more goods than he can handle, which formerly provided the temptation to fictitious ad- vertising, bargain sales, "fire sales," and such like.^ The manufacturer or jobber tries to show himself the friend of the retailer and helps him to supply the demand of his local trade. And the retailer is realizing that he must be the friend of the con- sumer and not deceive him. There are many mer- chants who scorn to juggle with price marks and to gull the purchaser with lying advertisements. "Ad. men" in their local and national organizations have taken steps to eliminate all fraudulent advertising. It is generally accepted that it is to the distributer's advantage to sell to the public just what is needed and the kind of commodity which will give perma- * Many examples showing this new policy might be cited. For illustration, a well-known firm making pickles and preserves trains its salesmen to study each local mar- ket in order to sell the merchant only those goods for which there is a demand in the locality or for which a demand can be created, and to take back at original prices all goods that have stood a long time on the shelves unsold. 40 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH nent satisfaction. Present tendencies indicate that the evil of misrepresentation will soon be practi- cally eliminated from all reputable business. A second evil of business is the abuse of power. Men at the head of great corporations have as much power as the old baron or earl with armed retainers at his back. This power has been abused, for some men are self-seeking, ambitious and cruel. But all manner of checks have been put upon abuse of power; business itself has made rules for its own protection, the state has made laws to protect the small competitor and the common man, workmen have organized for collective action, and, more po- tent than all, public opinion has changed so that no modern man will dare to say, "I shall do what I please with my business." All forms of business are being regarded as public service and the feeling is growing that in many industrial enterprises the worker and the general public must be taken into account. The signs are many and strong that we are moving toward the time when all business will be under government supervision and restraint, as well as under the control of the social conscience, as is now the case with specifically public service corporations. The industrial world is no longer looked upon by the men who really belong to this age as a field for legitimate piracy. The whole ten- dency is to make business more rather than less a form of community service. A common peril of business is preoccupation. The business man gets absorbed in the game. He SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 4I wants to succeed, will give everything to win. Once this absorption in the game led him to neglect his body. During the generation after the Civil War men forgot they had bodies and nervous break- down was common. Now this is changed, but busi- ness men are still tempted to neglect the mind and the spirit. Like the men in the parable Jesus tells, they may be engaged in very commendable enter- prises — the care of their farm, of their cattle, and of their families, which is every man's duty — ^but they let what is good separate them from what is best. Our most frequent vice is the immorality of the second-best. This, however, is not peculiar to business. All of us feel the whip and spur of modern life. All feel that it is incumbent upon us to do more work and better work every year. The demand of the world is "Not you, but yours"; not what we are, but what we can produce, is the main concern of to-day. Nothing is so popular or so exacting as work. And, if we respond to the goad of modem life, we may win for ourselves the reputation of a worker, but starve and neglect our souls. Putting our life-work before our life we will after a while have externalized ourselves, and will say with Amiel, "What is it which has always come between real life and me? What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and the posses- sion, the enjoyment, the contact of things, leaving me only the role of the looker-on?" The tragedy of many a modern man is that he is only a specta- 42 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH tor of his own life, and life for him is unreal and unsatisfying. Now religion is the quest for reality; it looks to God as the ultimate reality. Real living is religious. God's great purpose in history has been to show man what is real and satisfying, to teach him how to live a full and abundant life. The men of to-day are after the real thing, and to that extent they are religious, even though they are often mistaken as to what is reality. The pursuit of money, which seems to have absorbed so many, is in part because men thought that money could buy the things which go to make up real living. Men have said, '*Go to, I will get me gold and will fill my barns ; when they are full I will build me greater barns and fill them. When I have gotten enough I'll stop work and really live." It is life that men are after, real life. All that they want is really to live. Even the drunk- ard is seeking life, a fuller and gladder life than he knows, and he drinks because that seems a short cut to it. But to-day many men are discovering that they are not really living. They see that the thing which they have been pursuing is not really life, and that in the pursuing of it they are losing life. So that there never was a time when men were turning more wistfully to religion, because they feel that they have missed real life. The absorption of business is full of peril for religion, but it is being met in many instances by men making their business an art. The idealistic side of their nature is finding expression in the fac- SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 43 tories they are erecting, surrounded by beautiful grounds and equipped with conveniences and com- forts for all who work for them; in the quality of the product they are turning out ; and most of all in new ways of treating the human beings in their employ. Slowly but surely a new idealism is grow- ing up in business as in all modern life. And side by side with the demand for the expression through business of a man's artistic and idealistic nature stands the scientific demand for perfection, which also in some measure matches the religious demand for reality. In modern productive industry this demand for perfection is a controlling force. No less a standard than perfection has been set up by many manufacturers, and quality is the end that is sought. In many cases this demand for perfection is not utilitarian but idealistic. The maker of cheap, inferior products may get a quicker and larger return on his money, but there is an increas- ing number of men for whom business is an art. In production, in buying and selling, in the practice of law and medicine, many are finding a real outlet for the religious instinct. While on the part of the worker certain ethical qualities are maintained by modern industry, others are in jeopardy, and provision must be made for their safeguarding. We are familiar with the ap- palling list of industrial casualties and occupa- tional diseases, but no one has attempted to meas- ure the moral cost of labor-saving machinery. The discontent of the workers and the labor troubles 44 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH which have followed in its wake are contempora- neous with the modern factory system. The ma- chine and the subdivision of labor rob the opera- tive of all the joy of labor because he no longer turns out a finished product, and all that is left to him is, for long stretches of time, to go through one monotonous set of motions. The machine which grows more and more ingenious does all the thinking and leaves him no stimulus to thought and no play for the imagination. Skill is of value only in acquiring speed which is physically exhausting and mentally deadening. The operator takes no pride in his work for the machine does most of it. Discontent and revolt are the immediate result and the worker's one thought comes to be not the qual- ity of his work, but how he can receive as much pay for as little of this joyless toil as possible. To offset the moral waste of the machine and the deadening effect of the factory system, factories are being made not only safe and sanitary but pleas- ing to the eye and adapted to purposes of recrea- tion. In many cases working people return in the evening for dancing and other forms of recreation to the factories where they have toiled during the day. This new attitude toward the place of toil is of the utmost significance. However, a halt con- not yet be made. Hours of labor must be short- ened and wages increased as far as may be, that in the time of leisure the toilers may have an oppor- tunity for culture and play and social expression and that more abundant life for which the Chris- SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 45 tian religion stands. It goes without saying that economic laws must always be regarded, but the human element in industry must first of all be taken into account. If a man has a genius for business let him think of that as a call to a field of activity in which he can help many to find a larger, richer life. Any business that doesn't contribute to life, that cannot pay a living wage, that cannot return a profit without the exploitation of human beings, is uneconomic, wasteful, and inhuman, and has no reason to exist, for it takes more out of the com- munity than it puts in. If the business is needed the selling price of the product may be increased until capital earns a profit and labor receives a living wage. As price agreements are properly illegal, I know no way but one in which the employers of good will can pay what they feel the work is worth, and that is by the fixing of a minimum wage for the whole industry by an expert, non-partisan gov- ernment commission. Meanwhile, let the employer never forget that those in his employ are his brothers and sisters, with whom he must share his prosper- ity, and whom he must protect in adversity, for the strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak. It is out of the lack of personal relations between the employer and the employee that the worst evils of the present industrial struggle have grown. Once the master dealt directly with the man. Men's hearts are good and when one man deals with an- other he will naturally give fair treatment. But under our present highly organized form of indus- 46 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH try the relations between employer and employees are wholly impersonal. There is no personal con- tact between them. A multitude of superintendents and heads of departments and clerks keep them apart, and the interplay of brotherly instincts is thus interrupted. But perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of our day is the growing sense of social solidarity.^ The eighteenth century was the era of revolution, the nineteenth century was the era of political equality, and the twentieth century is the era of democracy and brotherhood. It is impossible to measure the extent and the influence of the new social feeling, but it will be easier to underestimate than to overestimate it. It has tremendously af- fected the attitude of the masters of industry toward their employees.^ What employers are do- ing for their working people is not always from expediency or even from a feeling of kindness, but often out of a real sense of justice. Many men have a keen sense of responsibility for those in their employ and frequently keep them in employ- ment when it would be profitable to let them go. A large group of employers believe that they should accept responsibility for all accidents to the *See Shailer Mathews, 'The Gospel and the Modern Man," p. 48. ' The payment of a minimum five dollars a day wage by Henry J. Ford and the care he is taking to help his employees to a wise use of this large income are a dra- matic illustration of what is taking place all along the line. SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 47 men and women in their employ, as well as to the machine, and employer's liability laws meet their fullest approval. There has been a marked growth in profit-sharing schemes and in the movement for old-age pensions. Far-sighted business men (as well as thoughtful working men are realizing that the next step in industry is to democratize it and so establish a real community of interest between the employer and the employed. How to give the workers a share in the conduct of the business as well as its profits is the problem before which the leaders of industry are sitting to-day.^ Already labor leaders have been invited to become mem- bers of Chambers of Commerce, and in a few years men from the factory will be appointed to the board of directors of all concerns employing a large number of operatives. So that the old per- sonal contact between master and man is in process of restoration, and with its establishment many of the wrongs of modern industry will be eliminated. ^ The German-American Button Company of Rochester, which has been remarkably successful in creating a com- munity of feeling between the office and the factory, among other methods used, asked its operatives for sug- gestions covering the following points: (i) Improvement in methods, (2) Saving of labor or materials, (3) Im- provement in machinery or equipment, (4) Safety ap- pliances, (5) Reducing fire hazard, (6) Conveniences, betterments, etc. They were swamped with suggestions, and for those which had merit money awards were given. Very many of the suggestions were acted upon and at considerable extra expense to the company, as few sug- gestions for economy were made. 48 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH From all of which it appears that the business world does not offer an alien and unfriendly at- mosphere for the growth of religion. The law of service is fundamental to business and the very- existence of business depends on the maintenance of certain moral principles. In a later chapter I will try to point out how the spiritual possibilities of business may be fully realized, but enough has been said, I trust, to show that they exist. The church has been too ready to excuse itself for its failure with the modern man by charging that he is unreligious and by assuming that the business career is hostile to the growth of the Spirit. The mind and heart of the business man have offered to the sower all the varieties of soil mentioned by Jesus in the parable — his life is sometimes hard from much traffic, sometimes shallow, sometimes overcrowded, and sometimes receptive to ''the word of the Kingdom" — ^but this is not peculiar to business, and here as elsewhere the good soil is on the increase. 'Tossibly the most notable change in our national life in the last decades is the deep- ening of its note," says our best American story- writer.^ "Whereas formerly attention was given largely to things of the surface, of late the mind has been directed more to those things which lie beneath." Men may be indifferent to certain ex- periences of religion but they are incurably reli- gious. They may have dropped away from the * Thomas Nelson Page in the preface of his "Land of the Spirit." SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE 49 church, but it was only because the program of the church has not been big enough and heroic enough to captivate their imagination and hold their alle- giance. In helping to shape the new social order, we must make clear the meaning of religion concerning which there exists so much confusion. Men who are doing justly and loving mercy and walking humbly before God do not know that they are in any sense religious. So that while there is need to recast the teachings of Jesus in social and economic terms, there is also need to connect the idealism of busi- ness with the idealism of Christ. It is our task and our opportunity to unite the religious spirit in man with the definite religion in the church, to give to this anonymous religion its true name in order to make it more completely Christian. Religion is imbedded in all ideal striving, in all disinterested striving, for all such striving implicates faith in Something beyond the immediate. Therefore "Whatever unifies mankind, whatever rids men of vice and misery; whatever frees them from fear and want ; whatever takes off the pressure of over- work is religion."^ The spontaneous, natural, instinctive faith in the life of to-day will be greatly increased when it is recognized as faith and identified with the glowing religion of Christ. So long as men imagine that there is a wide gulf between the good life they are living and a religious life, they renounce all thought *Prof. Simon N. Patten. 50 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH of becoming religious ; when they understand that a religious life is not something different from the good life but is just living it more abundantly/ straightway they will become more religious. Hence in revising the message of the church all the idealism of modern life should be recognized and given its full value for the Kingdom. It will be intensified by linking up this anonymous re- ligion with the more definite religion of the church. This is just what happened when the college became a university. The training of men in any form of science — medicine or agriculture, pedagogy or for- estry, the ministry or railroad building — is educa- tion. The combination of these various forms of instruction in the university gave them dignity and breadth and fineness and made them appear, what they truly are, worthy departments of culture; at the same time it strengthened the college, enlarged its place in the life of the people and fitted it to do greater work in the field of education. On the same ground I plead for a broader, more compre- hensive church. The facts of modern life need to be studied and interpreted sympathetically by the religious teacher, in order to bring together the forces that belong to- gether and to unite them in a common cause. The church should allow proper "credits" for the ideal- ism which finds expression in unfamiliar ways and for the multitudinous disinterested striving of mod- * See "The Religion of a Mature Mind," p. 249, George Albert Coe. SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS LIFE $1 ern life. It should dignify all work for the com- mon good by showing its religious quality, and should gather about its standard the men and women who are doing the kind of "church work" they are best able to do. All who have been touched by the modern spirit are, in one way or another, helping to carry out the spirit of the church and to realize its mission. The world to-day is ripe for a great moral and religious advance. CHAPTER III THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOlU Deeply imbedded in the New Testament is the fact that the ministry of Jesus was mainly with the poor and the heavy-laden and the toilers. He had friends and sympathizers among the rich, but He found readiest response among the poor. In sum- ming up the evidence of His mission, He Himself put this fact last for emphasis: *The poor have the gospel preached to them." It was the poor who heard Him gladly, a fact significant enough to be recorded. Those who gathered most eagerly about Him were the common people. From the ranks of the group of toil His disciples were drawn, and His church was later made up. But the most significant fact about modern preaching is that it is spoken mainly in the ears of those who are not poor. The shifting of the church from the toilers to the prosperous and the comfortable has gone far enough to become alarm- ing. That their absence from church has not in the majority of cases grown into actual estrange- ment and hostility somewhat lessens the alarm. It must be noted that for many working people regular church attendance is not easy. Even when they have a desire to attend they are often kept away 52 THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 53 by the exactions of their work. But whatever the reason, non-attendance becomes a habit and soon the sense of need of the church passes altogether. The larger proportion of non-churchgoers shown by working people than by people of comparative leisure has for not a few of the workers a per- fectly natural cause. In any discussion of wage-earners, several classi- fications must be kept in mind. There are first of all the "soft-handed" workers, clerks, salesmen, bookkeepers, stenographers and such like — who are to be found in large numbers in the churches. There are, second, the unorganized workers of all the trades and of no trade in the smaller towns and villages, who to a considerable extent are church- goers. The farmers, while in the main loyal to the church, do not come under this head at all; they are capitalists rather than wage-earners. Farm- hands, however, are wage-earners, and constitute a third class who are for the most part outside the church. A fourth class is made up of those factory workers in cities and towns who are not mechanics or masters of any trade, but are "specialists," and usually unorganized; these also are mainly non- churchgoers. And finally the most vital and influ- ential, if not the most numerous group of wage- earners, are the organized workers, among whom we find the smallest percentage of church attend- ance. The wage-earners who are not unionized are lacking in class-consciousness and must be consid- 54 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH ered as individuals or in small groups. True the social affinities of the *'soft-handed" workers are largely with the privileged classes and their inter- ests turn them toward those institutions in which they will come most in contact with the better-to- do, for some persons of small income affect those of larger income, while others of this class of wage- earners recognize no barrier erected by difference of fortune. The church as a place of worship and religious instruction means the same to rich and poor but some set the greater store by it because of the social opportunities it offers. In another chap- ter it is urged that the church ought to be a social center and supply the chance for folk to get ac- quainted with one another. This social interest is unworthy of the church only when people use the church to climb socially, as some do who as their income increases move to wealthier and more fash- ionable churches. However, the unorganized work- ing people who are indifferent to the church have about the same reasons for their indifference as their counterparts in the other class — the main one being a lack of interest in the kind of life for which the church stands. Many use their Sundays for rest and recreation, and are justified in so doing above those who have leisure during the week. Some have lost the church-going habit because they cannot dress after the mode of the average church- goer, and others because they feel they cannot pay their share. But unorganized wage-earners can- not be considered as a class. They may belong to THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 55 the great army who leave the church alone, but it is on the same general grounds as the others of that army who are not wage-earners. The organized workers are the only wage-earners who show group cohesion, and so can be treated as a class. They are the only ones whose attitude is ''standardized," but even here we must speak with caution. Ask representative union men what is the attitude of organized labor toward the church and they will reply that no "attitude" is taken. Many will deny that there is or has been any hos- tility to the church. But a study of their public utterances which hark back to former states of feeling — and untrained minds are liable to stereo- type and preserve earlier forms of speech — shows a smouldering bitterness toward the church. Down to some fifteen years ago there was a well-defined though unorganized effort to separate working men from the church, for industrial society was then on a war basis. Employers and employees were drawn up in two hostile camps and it was thought necessary, in order to win, to keep the prejudices of the workers inflamed. Hence the plan was per- sistently followed to alienate the workers from the church, where they would meet their employers on common ground and discover that they were not devoid of human feeling. The two parties at strife must be kept from knowing one another for, as Charles Lamb says, when you know a man you cannot hate him. This purpose might be disavowed by the older 56 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH union men, but, as I have said, it crops out in some of their utterances. However, the "labor agitator" has given place to the "labor leader" and the "walk- ing delegate" to the "business agent." The men who shape the policy of the labor movement to-day are saner, more far-sighted and reasonable than their predecessors. So, hostility to the church gave way to dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction to indiffer- ence, and now indifference is giving way to hospi- tality. The wisest labor leaders are beginning to feel the famine that may come upon the labor move- ment without the appeal to the spirit, without the appeal to the religious motive. If the gulf between the organized church and organized labor is not bridged, it is not improbable that union men will have churches of their own. This has already come to pass in England. While disclaiming any hostility to the church, la- bor unionists will in the same breath assert many and valid reasons for dissatisfaction with it. Here- tofore the workers have struggled alone. Know- ing as we do the character of the men who control the industries, it is almost incredible that until re- cently every move of the worker to better his con- dition, and every law making for the same end has been opposed by many employers of labor, and that the most of such efforts have been opposed by prac- tically all of them. It is a fact psychologically hard to explain. From organized religion also the work- ers have had little help. When Lord Shaftesbury set to work to deliver children from the mines and THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 57 cotton mills of England, few ministers dared ap- pear on the same platform with him; at first only one, says his memoirs, "and even to the last very few, so cowed were they by the overwhelming in- fluence of the cotton lords." It must be said that such men as Bright, Cobden and Gladstone also opposed his reforms, but the workers have a right to expect greater understanding and compassion from the church of Christ than from statesmen — and they do. Working people have had ample grounds for be- lieving that the church was hostile to them and friendly to the privileged class. The clergy when they have sp>oken have often given counsel to work- ing men which only strengthened their impression that the clergy maintain a servile attitude toward wealth and are Suppliants at the seat of power.^ Certainly the church has occupied a position of neutrality even where moral issues were at stake. The burdened and heavy-laden in industry have looked in vain for relief from the followers of the Nazarene. The church has stood ready to help the needy and destitute, but in the last hundred years ^W. M. Balch, in "Christianity and the Labor Move- ment," p. 24, quotes from a communication of a group of ministers to a body of strikers: "Is it reasonable to ex- pect that by attacking your employer openly and in secret and by trying to destroy his property and his business, you can best persuade him to deal generously and mag- nanimously with you?" as if self-respecting workingmen wanted "generosity" or "magnanimity" or anything but justice. 58 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH has had few words of cheer or succor for the toiler who was underpaid and overworked. This cannot be honorably explained, but may be accounted for. All have labored under the convic- tion that the fate of individual workers must be left to the law of supply and demand and to the forces of competition. It has been honestly be- lieved that when working conditions became unjust the number of persons willing to work would at once become so limited as automatically to correct those conditions in order to attract workers to fill the places. We have not taken into account that while labor conditions may be hard to endure, star- vation is harder. Hence many have done nothing in the matter, because they thought nothing could be done. Many more have done nothing because they were ignorant of the facts. When Mr. Winston Churchill returned from Uganda and said that he had seen nothing in African barbarism so distress- ing as the sordid misery of the underpaid casual labor of London, most comfortable folk thought him a mere enthusiast. It came as a blow between the eyes to discover shortly after in the great rail- way strike of England that 100,000 workmen en- gaged on railways were earning less than $5 a week, which falls 50 cents below what the most reliable social investigator said was the lowest sum on which a family could subsist in decency. A new form of industrial slavery had grown up without the knowl- edge of the church or of those not immediately con- cerned. THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 59 All this may account for the silence and indiffer- ence of the church but does not justify it. The laws of industry must be modified by the law of brotherhood. The organization which assumes re- sponsibility for moral leadership and for "instruc- tion which is in righteousness" has no right to be ignorant of the sorrows and sufferings of the poor. Until we know, we cannot help. One of the first tasks which the early Christian Church undertook was to improve the material conditions of its mem- bers and to set aside officers for that purpose. Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick. Love always finds out the miserable and ministers unto them. Christian sympathy to be genuine must mean more than a velvety disposition, and a disinterested out- look upon this tragic world of ours. The poor heard Jesus gladly because to the meanest and most forlorn He held out a hope. And we cannot won- der that, so long as the church gave no heed to the cry of the toilers, they stood sullenly aloof. As illustration of the feeling of the organized workers toward the church and of the church's failure to meet the situation let me cite at length a specific case which is significant of the whole prob- lem of the industrial worker and promises to be- come historic. The legislature of Illinois at its 1909 session passed a law Hmiting the hours of women's labor in factories, laundries and mechanical estab- lishments to a maximum of ten hours in each day of twenty-four hours. The bill was introduced by two members of the Waitresses' Union of Chicago 6o THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and the working girls were its only champions through the long weeks of the session. Five hun- dred manufacturers went down to Springfield to defeat it, five hundred strong men against two frail girls. They used every known tactic to do the bill to death, but the girls won. Being signed by the Governor the law became effective on July i, 1909. Its enforcement was vigorously begun by the chief factory inspector. At the instance of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, the W. C. Ritchie Company, manufacturers of paper boxes, filed a bill of complaint praying for an injunction to re- strain the state factory inspector and state's attor- ney of Cook County from prosecuting the com- plainant Ritchie for violations of the ten-hour law. Judge Tuthill, before whom the case was argued, decided the law unconstitutional and granted the in- junction. In enjoining the enforcement of the ten- hour law he gave as reason the kind of utterance that makes some courts deserving of contempt: "This law seeks to prohibit women from working more than ten hours a day, and I think that in that respect it deprives her of her right to exercise the right of contract which is given her by the consti- tution." His opposition to the law he said was for the sake of the women. He must have known that twenty American states and all the leading coun- tries of Europe have statutes restricting the labor of women. He must have been familiar with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in support of the Oregon ten-hour law, which held THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 6l that woman's "physical structure and a proper dis- charge of her maternal functions — having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race — justify legislation to protect her even against herself." And yet he set aside the only legislation for the protection of womanhood and motherhood which had managed to get through the Illinois legislature in fourteen years, and on the pretext that he was trying to raise the woman- hood of Illinois to a point where she would be free from legal restrictions. The newspapers flamed with indignation. And what did the churches of Illinois? Nothing! Some few preachers may have uttered a protest, but no concerted action was taken. Then the Chicago Federation of Labor appealed to the churches to help arouse public opinion. Every minister of the city was asked to raise his voice in the pulpit in the name of the motherhood of the state. When the proposition was made it was jeered at by some of the delegates, who said, "The churches are al- ways against anything the working people want." But wiser counsel prevailed. "If the preachers are sincere in seeking to do good, as I assume they are," said a printer, "surely there is nothing that can appeal more strongly than a request of this kind. There can be no higher form of religion than that which aims to protect motherhood and little children." "I think it not only proper to ask the preachers to assist us," said another, "but we should demand of them that they get in line with 62 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH US for once in their lives." "Let them show where they stand," said a painter, "whether they are on the side of humanity or the almighty dollar." The ministers responded. Resolutions were adopted by the Illinois Synod of the Presbyterian Church, the Illinois Baptist State Convention and the Ministers' Union of the Congregational Church of Chicago, endorsing the ten-hour law and prom- ising assistance and cooperation in the struggle for a shorter working day for women in mills and fac- tories. In each set of resolutions the appeal of organized labor was referred to and it was inti- mated that this action was in response to the request of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Why? Why should the moral teachers of a state wait until they are solicited before putting themselves on record as to a great social and moral question? Why should it be left to the newspapers to lead in such a crisis? Why should we Christian ministers wait until we are appealed to before announcing what God requires, and so create the impression that we are unfriendly to the workers and unmindful of justice? Why should we need the prayers of the weak and oppressed to move us to lift our voices in God's name and declare what it means "to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly before God"? I suppose that no labor leader expects the church to espouse the entire economic program of the trade union, but in so far as organized labor raises a moral issue, the church is recreant if it ignores it. Every moral question of the day challenges the THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 63 church for a judgment which we cannot fail to give without forfeiting our position as teachers of mor- als. And as Bishop Gore says, behind the more technical and political proposals of the workers "there is a fundamental appeal for justice which the Christian church cannot ignore." Certainly the protection of children workers, the shortening of hours for women, the securing of proper sanitation in factories and mills, the protection of Hfe and limb from dangerous machinery, the securing of two openings to mines, and many kindred issues of labor unions are moral questions and within the sphere of the church. Upon such questions of jus- tice between man and man we must have some- thing to say. No wonder the men of toil think the church is hopeless when we have so long remained silent where, as moral leaders, we were looked to for a judgment. No wonder they have so poor an opin- ion of us ministers when they have had almost no help from us when their cause ceased to be merely economic and became moral. At a convention of the American Federation of Labor a textile worker of Massachusetts told me that he had been working for fifteen years to secure a reduction of thirty minutes in the long working day of girls in the mills, and that he had received no assistance from any minister or any church in New England. I replied, "Did you put it up to them? Did you get them on record as to where they stood?" but as I said it I felt the emptiness of my objection. Ought 64 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the church to wait to be solicited on a moral issue ? And is not the length of the working day for girls a moral issue? Does it not cut to the heart of the social life of the community? Is not the health of the future wives and mothers of the people a prime moral concern? And has not the church made a mistake, "dangling little spotless babies over a Christian font," ^ but with nothing to say about the industrial conditions which weaken the bodies and dwarf the souls of boys and girls ? All this is in change. The inequalities of indus- try and the welfare of the worker are becoming a prime concern with the moral teacher ; the problems and ideals of organized labor are getting understood by church leaders; and on the other hand labor's distrust is passing. The interchange of fraternal delegates between labor unions and ministerial as- sociations has helped mightily. Whenever minis- ters and labor leaders have really come to know one another genuine respect and confidence have been established. The good offices of the religious teacher in labor disputes are not only welcome but solicited.^ Personally, I have found in some union *From an address by Rev. Charles S. Parkhurst, D.D., before the New York State Conference of Re- ligions, 1908, 'In a recent street-railway strike in Detroit, Mich., the names of four prominent clergymen were proposed for the committee of arbitration, a Congregational minister, an Episcopal bishop, a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi. These names were rejected by the company, which indi- cates that the former situation has been reversed. THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 65 men a kind of hopelessness as to the future of or- ganized labor, and in others a great hope springing out of the belief that the period of isolation is over and that the time of co-operation with the church and the welfare worker is at hand. For my own part I believe that labor organiza- tions have run their course unless they have the sympathy and cooperation of the other great moral agencies in the field. Tremendous advantages have been secured by the group of toil, hours of labor have been reduced, better work conditions have been secured, many reforms have been made, with- out the assistance of the church. But industrial organizations have about reached their limit single- handed. The forces organized against them are too strong for them to make further progress on a war basis. Their hope for the future is in the jus- tice of their cause backed by the moral sentiment of the community. The use of force is recognized to be a hindrance to the cause of labor because it forfeits the sympathy and moral support of the public.^ The workers' victories in the future will be won only as they can get before the people the fairness and justice of their cause. The conscience of the people is their court of appeal. They are * President Samuel Gompers of the American Federa- tion of Labor asserts that the only kind of force he ap- proves is "moral force," for "when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man's reason can a movement succeed." 66 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH helpless without popular sympathy and support; they are irresistible with it. Their cause is lost in so far as it isn't moral ; no one can withstand it if the moral values involved are widely recognized and accepted. And as the church creates and di- rects moral sentiment, the group of toil needs as never before the moral support of the church. Here then we have two great movements that need one another. The church needs the heroism, the loyalty, the spirit of sacrifice of the group of toil. It needs some of the military qualities which the workers possess, and particularly to learn from them how to fulfill the law of Christ that the strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak. The church has not done its work until it wins those who gath- ered with a strange new hope about Jesus, until it wins the hundredth man. The labor movement for its part is powerless to do more for its adher- ents without the help of the church and the moral feeling of the community. The business on both sides is to bring church and labor together. And here the church has more at stake. For the group of toil can hold what they have won and be content with that. The church can never be content so long as there is a large part of our population which it does not reach. The church will have to take the initiative. Workingmen know that whatever social emancipa- tion has been won has been won without any direct aid from the churches. They have long felt inde- pendent of the church. Often they have regarded THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 6/ the church with suspicion. They feel that the church has allied itself with the rich and turned away from the poor. They see men in high office in the church whom they believe to be unfair and oppressive in their dealings with their employees. Not a few are of the opinion that we ministers are muzzled by our rich pew-holders and dare not preach the whole Gospel. Some will say that their unions are more religious than the churches. Cer- tainly in finding work for their unemployed, in bear- ing one another's burden, in caring for the sick and burying the dead they are doing far more than the church to-day. In practical brotherhood, as is pointed out elsewhere, the church has fallen behind the lodge and union and fraternal order.^ Keir Hardie, the leader of the labor party in parliament, asserts, 'Tn the working class movement to-day, especially in the Socialist section of it, there is to be found more of the true spirit and teaching of Jesus than in most of the churches of the land." Whether this be true or not is a question which it is futile to debate. The fact to be reckoned with by the church is that many working people sincerely believe it to be true. At any rate the indifference of workingmen has become a habit. They have lost all sense of need of the church and the sense of need must be created anew. Yet some of them admit that the religion of the union, though it seems more practical and real than the religion of the church, does not satis- * Compare pages 225, 226. 68 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH fy their whole nature. The service of man with- out the belief that God has supreme claims on the soul is only a half-religion; human brotherhood without divine Fatherhood is only part of the truth. And the church with its whole truth can win men back to its worship and fellowship if it will. Work- ingmen love the Carpenter of Nazareth. All be- lieve in Christ though they distrust many modern followers of Christ. Men are essentially religious, the labor movement has many religious qualities, and it is the church and not religion which has lost its hold on the toilers. Time will be required to win their confidence and create a sense of need of the church. It will take years to remove the es- trangement as it took years to build it up. But it can be done. In England great bodies of workingmen get to- gether on Sunday afternoons in the churches, and the Brotherhood Movement, composed almost en- tirely of workingmen, is one of the strongest re- ligious forces in Great Britain. The apparent an- tagonism to religion of some of the workers is due to the lack of clear thinking : in some cases religion is confused with the organizations of religion, and in others men who have the Spirit of religion deny its name. Some of the Socialists establish Sunday Schools to teach their children that there is no God, that there is no future life, no heaven and no hell. The motive of this brand of Socialist is to turn the attention of the coming generation away from the other world that they may give their undivided THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 69 attention to the present world in order to make the life that men live on this planet more tolerable and the conditions of society more equitable. It is a blind and stupid policy, but it has been arrived at by very-much-in-earnest men who have seen the failure of the religion of other-worldliness to grap- ple seriously with the problems of this Hfe. Here is an atheism which denies itself. The Rev. R. F. Horton ventures to call it "a protest of the Spirit of Christ against a Christless Christianity." And the Socialist who is trying to bring the kingdom of God upon earth, however we may differ from him as to program, must be found a place among the servants of the King. Even the supposedly atheistic workingman is within reach of the church of Christ. With many Socialists religion amounts to a passion. This memorable statement of Mr. Keir Hardie has been heralded across the world: "My friends and com- rades, I often feel very sick at heart with politics and all that pertains thereto. If I were a thirty years younger man, with the experience I have gained during the past thirty-five years, I would, methinks, abandon house and home and wife and child, if need be, to go forth among the people to proclaim afresh and anew the full message of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth." ^ Now all this idealism of the worker, like the idealism of business, is of the same kind as the ^Quoted by R Herbert Stead in "The Constructive Quarterly," April, 1914. 70 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH idealism of the church, and they should be more closely related. The sympathetic religious teacher can link all disinterested striving together and bring all those who love and serve their fellow men into the church which is the organized Spirit of Him who said, '1 am in the midst of you as he that serveth." ^ It's the church's job, for we are commissioned to seek and save. We may not wait for the workers to come to us. We need not expect them to adapt themselves to the churches, and fall in with our ways. In any adaptation which needs to be made the church must lead off, must ''cast the net on the other side." On the face of things the people are getting on better without the church than the church is without the people. But whatever self-interest the church may have in the issue it is not half so compelling a motive as the disinterested purpose and mission of the church. We are to be as the shep- herd who left the ninety and nine safe in the fold for the one who was lost. Scolding and inviting will avail nothing. We must discover new ways of making our appeal and of reaching after the non- churchgoer. Before hoping to win the workers back to the church we must first of all break down suspicion and distrust wherever they exist. Union men have expected nothing else but harsh and unreasonable criticism from the pulpit. The minister therefore as the church's spokesman must have a sympathetic ^ Luke 22 : 27. THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 7I understanding of labor's rights and claims, and he must make it clear that no group of men are re- mote from his interest. It may be that an over- emphasis of labor's side of the argument will be needed to remove the workers' feeling that the church has taken sides with the employer. The case of the worker will without doubt have to be stressed for a while, and for this every reasonable and fair-minded employer in the church will see the necessity. There are certain great economic principles which rise clear above the realm of economics and into the field of religion. These at any rate should be presented from the pulpit. Such a statement of principles is contained in the declaration of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in Amer- ica, affirmed in 1908 and reaffirmed with some additions in 1912. Most of these declarations have reference, though not exclusively, to the industrial worker, and they are sane, reasonable and almost axiomatic. The complete utterance is as follows: "The Churches must stand: For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life. For the protection of the family, by the single standard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of marriage, and proper housing. For the fullest possible development for every child, especially by the provision of proper educa- tion and recreation. For the abolition of child labor. For such regulation of the conditions of toil for 72 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community. For the abatement and prevention of poverty. For the protection of the individual and society from the social, economic, and moral waste of the liquor traffic. For the conservation of health. For the protection of the worker from danger- ous machinery, occupational diseases, and mortal- For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-maintenance, for safeguarding this right against encroachments of every kind, and for the protection of workers from the hardships of en- forced unemployment. For suitable provision for the old age of the workers, and for those incapacitated by injury. For the right of employees and employers alike to organize for adequate means of conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes. For a release from employment one day in seven. For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condi- tion of the highest human life. For a living wage as a minimum in every indus- try, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. For a new emphasis upon the application of Christian principles to the acquisition and use of property, and for the most equitable division of the product of industry that can ultimately be devised." These declarations set forth the social creed of the churches. Like other creeds, it is not lived up to by all in the church, but no representative men THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 73 have reacted against it. Since these and similar resolutions are in the face of the practices of some of the churches' wealthy and powerful supporters, the absence of any remonstrance is very significant. An accepted standard for social endeavor has been set. It represents a consensus of opinion, the com- mon sense of the Protestant Churches of America, and is backed by powerful social convictions. Time will be required to work up to it, but to this task the church is pledged. It is of the utmost impor- tance that both the group of toil and the group of privilege become familiar with the social program to which the church is thus committed. A true un- derstanding of the end toward which the social pas- sion is leading the church would win the gratitude of the workers and be an incentive to the privileged. Of course the demand for social justice which the pulpit must sound is a demand for justice to all parties concerned. The moral teacher must know the purposes and ideals, the responsibilities and dif- ficulties of employer and employed. In order to be adjusters and arbiters between men one must have the point of view of each. One has found that the captains of industry are eager to talk about their business with an expert in morals ; they are anxious to justify themselves before the community and the bar of their own conscience. And it is very easy to get the point of view of the worker, if the min- ister is more a man than a priest. Since the ex- change of fraternal delegates was begun the labor meetings in most cities have been open to all minis- 74 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH ters who want to be present to listen and learn. No honest man will find it hard to win the confidence and sympathy of workingmen. He will not get them to his church at once — it may take another generation to do that — but, knowing both sides, he can mediate between employer and employee, can interpret one to another, can get them to sit down in conference and talk their problems out as man to man and brother to brother. And when men who are wide apart talk things over in an honest and friendly spirit, class interest will give way to community interest and men will no longer be di- vided. Even when working people lose their suspicion of the church as an institution of the privileged, they will not at once become attendants and mem- bers of the church. Appetite does not always fol- low immediately when distaste is removed. We need not be disappointed if the presentation of the church's social program and well-planned propa- gandic meetings are not followed by a movement of the workers into the churches. Their attitude must be changed before their position. Many years will be needed for the filling of the chasm and the bringing together into the church of the working and possessing classes, but sympathetic patience and persistence will achieve it, and the church can- not be truly Christian until this is done. Every- thing helps which makes for a better understanding between the church and the worker. The presence of a ministerial fraternal delegate at the union THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 75 meetings has a greater value than at once appears. For labor union men to know one minister well is to change their attitude toward the organization he represents. Likewise the attitude of church people will be greatly altered if representative union men are asked to address men's clubs and week-night gatherings and Sunday platform meetings. Thea- ter meetings and meetings in halls, which are dis- cussed in another chapter/ should not be used as veiled schemes to get wage-earners to attend church. Let all such propagandic meetings be held, and all like efforts be made, with the honest purpose to bring about a better acquaintance and understand- ing between church people and non-churchgoers. Leave it to acquaintance and understanding to do the rest. The writer is often asked of the People's Sunday Evening,^ of which he is one of the minis- ters, how many who attend the theater meeting ever come to his church. Not many. It is too much to expect, and I did not expect it. The church by its location and appointments gives one the impression that it is for the well-to-do. Out of set purpose the down-town audiences have not been invited to my church, but we have always presented the church's claim and urged them to give it another trial, mak- ing our plea for the church of their antecedents, whether Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. Very few may have been turned into the church after five years, but we have powerfully changed the attitude *Part III, Giapter 3- *See p. 214. 76 TtlE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH of thousands toward the church. Seed has been sown in soil which could not have been reached if the sowers had kept to the pulpits on the avenue and in the residence sections. Good seed can be trusted to bring a harvest. I feel very strongly that in reaching after the people it is the people who must be kept in mind rather than the church. Far better is it to get them under the permanent influence of some church or- ganization, if the church in question is able to do for them what is needed, but where churches are not suited to the task or where the gulf is such that it cannot be bridged in a few years, it must be kept in mind that to get people to church is not the end we are seeking. Folks do not exist for the church, but the church for folks. The business of the church is to change the hearts of the people, to exalt their standards, to better their lives, and to make them into followers of Christ, and not pri- marily to make them church members. I certainly believe that regular church attendance would help toward these ends, but at present many don't see it that way. Until they do, the church must be taken to them. Jesus reaffirmed the great principle that one must die to live. The church is no exception. It must lose its life to find it. That does not mean that the church has to give place to some other organization. It is equipped to do the work Christ wants done in the world, if only it is obedient to the Spirit of Christ. But the church need not be careful of its THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL "Jj life. Let it touch the lives of men with power to help and heal, and they will turn to it as plants and shrubs and trees open toward the sun. Let it be jealous only to reach all men with its message and ministry and they will find for it the life that abounds. When the worker has been brought to a better understanding of the church we must make sure that it is such a church as shall win his sympathy and keep his support. From here on the discussion of the church's ''message" must include the message of the pew as well as the pulpit. By this is meant not merely the preachment from the pulpit but the whole meaning of the church, the message of its spirit in recognition and brotherliness and good will. For there are two positions of the worker which we must be prepared to meet: "I am not wanted," and ''I do not want it." Each position is honestly and sincerely occupied by large numbers of working people. With regard to the former it must be admitted that the caste spirit has crept into the churches. This spirit negatives brotherhood. Nothing more quickly unmakes a Christian church and it must be eradicated root and branch. But the feeling of caste is created often unintentionally and frequently has no basis in fact. Many have inferred that they were not wanted, as Dr. R. F. Horton points out,^ because the social customs of other people did not * "Christianity and the Working Qasses," p. 89, edited by George Haw. 78 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH give them the kind of welcome they expected. "A difference of manners and etiquette makes people in one grade think that they are slighted or insulted by people in another. They who have never waited for an introduction to mates cannot understand the attitude of those who have been brought up never to speak to others without being introduced. What in one grade is held to be refinement seems to an- other affectation. The courtesy of one rank seems coldness to another. The warmth and geniality which in one place are welcomed elsewhere are thought to be ill-breeding." All the while church people think they are very hospitable and wonder how anyone can feel he is not welcome, a feeling that has to be met with tact and patience. It is not necessary to introduce the manners of the shop or street into the church, but there are many natural ways of making people know they are genuinely wanted and heartily wel- come.^ There is altogether too much about the church at present which acts as a constant re- minder of social distinctions. Dress is often very elaborate, frequently pews are rented according to a schedule based on their desirability, and the spirit of the place is sometimes not informal and demo- cratic. Does it not show a lack of human under- standing to expect working people to attend church when such a charge is set on the pews as either to *In some downtown churches a brief social meeting after the Sunday night service is held. A cup of tea and a wafer help mightily to bring people together. THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 79 put church attendance out of their reach or to sub- ject them to humiliation? A self-respecting poor man, who is kept standing in a half-empty church until the pew-holders are comfortably in their seats, or who strays into someone's pew and is stared out of countenance by the irate tenant, is not liable to risk a second experience of the kind. Such treat- ment quickly destroys the church-going habit, not only for him but for many acquaintances to whom he repeats the episode. This impression that he is not wanted is strength- ened by the removal of churches from the place where the worker lives. The fact that the church is transferred to the neighborhood of the rich and well-to-do implies that the religious advantages to be given any community are to be measured by the ability or disposition of that community to pay for them. Naturally churches follow their patrons, and as a matter of convenience buildings are placed where they will be accessible to those who attend the churches. But if the church is to serve the poor and the toilers it must stay where they are. Home mission boards are now bringing their forces to bear upon the centers of population, and are grap- pling with the city problem in new and efficient ways, but the most that mission boards can do isn't equal to the problem. Whenever a wealthy congre- gation moves its church edifice from a neighbor- hood that still teems with people, a well-equipped church ought to be left behind, and endowed for an effective ministry to those people. 8o THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Churches which are set to serve any community should be officered and led as far as possible by the people of that community. Absentee patrons may secure the endowment and provide the sinews of war, but they should not be the trustees and stewards and vestrymen. Working people have the feeling that they are wanted as church members, that they are welcome to the congregation to be preached at, but that there is no place for them in the administrative work of the church, or in its counsels and conferences. The Salvation Army has taught all the world a lesson, and has shown that the poorest and humblest develop powers of leadership when the responsibility is laid upon them. It is from the ranks of the unschooled and uncultured that some of the most effective preach- ers of the Army come. Lay preachers will need to be used more and more by the church. God reaches the people through the people. Men who work with their hands, who speak the same language, who share their interests and their problems, these are best fitted to preach to the people. It is the word made flesh and dwelling among them which finds its way to the hearts of men. Again, on the other hand, there are many work- ing people who say of the church, ''I do not want it." It may be rejoined that the church must lift the people to its level and not sink to theirs. True, but how can we educate the people to want the church until we at least have their ears ? And how do we know that the church as it is to-day is just THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 8l what the people need? Does not the large number of people who have no interest in it indicate that the church may not be performing its full and ade- quate function? Those of us who find the church of to-day to our liking have no right to force our ideas upon others. Every man has some concep- tion of his true wants. I have a growing respect for the average man's opinions. It is certainly the part of wisdom to find out what kind of church the people want and see if those wants cannot be sup- plied, with full loyalty to Christ. The church has always drawn new life from the people. From them come those forces that from time to time have broken down religious privilege and shaken the church loose from its grave-clothes. Christianity itself was a movement of the people. The twelve disciples were laymen and only one came from Judea, the priestly section of Palestine, and Judas was his name. Behind every reforma- tion on the continent stood a monk, and the monks were a lay order. Wycliffe, Wesley and Booth were leaders of great popular movements. Tre- mendous as is my faith in the church I cannot but re-echo the words of one who says, "I believe in the people more than I believe in the churches. The churches are but man's image of God, but the people are God's image of Himself."^ At any rate we must win folks' attention and interest before we can be of any direct service to them. How then can the church make a successful * George Haw, op. cit., p. 39- 82 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH appeal to the group of toil? By giving itself more intelligently, more resolutely, more definitely, to the task of establishing here on earth the Kingdom of God. The church must be organized for service as well as services. It must not in any wholesale fashion condemn the spirit of discontent, or coun- sel submission to unjust social conditions. Christ came, as He said, to cast a sword upon the earth, and His church must foster a righteous discontent, and guide it to the working out of a better order. It must join issue with all those forces which hurt the health and morals of the people. It must give unmistakable evidence that it exists to serve. The Hon. Arthur Henderson, M. P., one of England's foremost labor leaders and a leader in Christian work, speaks with authority as a repre- sentative of the great group to which he belongs, when he says: **We Labor men are not unmind- ful of the vast amount of effort the Churches are making : visiting the sick, clothing the naked, feed- ing the hungry, comforting the sorrowing. What we deplore is the fact that coincident with such relief the Churches have not attempted to get at the root-cause of all the evil and distress. If they would display the same amount of energy in seek- ing to eradicate from our collective life the evil it contains, that they have shown in seeking to deliver the individual life from sin, there would have been less call for their relief work. The people are long- ing as never before to be delivered from oppressive social anomalies, and if only the Churches would THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 83 bring their vast and varied machinery to operate against these evils much might be accomplished, and the gratitude and co-operation of the multitude secured." ^ Meanwhile much of the occasion for the suspi- cion that the church sides with the possessing class in industrial disputes may be removed by providing" a better way to adjust those disputes. The present method of open warfare between the interested parties must give way to the orderly procedure of court and commission. This should be the mes- sage of the church, and to the achievement of this reform every churchman should lend his influence. The outstanding principles of the labor union — the right to organize, collective bargaining and a minimum wage — are absolutely correct in princi- ple, but the methods of making those principles op- erative are out of keeping with our Christian civi- lization. The strike and boycott are war measures pure and simple. The best labor leaders deplore them but feel that they are necessary expedients. They should not be necessary. In no other depart- ment of life do we leave men who have a difference to fight it out by themselves; all disputes must be referred to the courts and a jury decides on which side justice lies. In industrial strife alone is might reckoned as right. The outcome depends on which is stronger, the workers or the employers, with hun- * "Christianity and the Working Class," edited by George Haw, p. i35> 6. 84 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH ger and want fighting on the side of the employers. Whichever wins the public suffers. All this machinery of industrial war is anti- quated, expensive, unjust and cruel. The moral forces of the community should insist on its aboli- tion, though many on both sides in the struggle prefer to be left alone. The records show that in a majority of industrial differences the employers have been opposed to arbitration. In a majority of cases arbitration has been proposed by the work- ers, and yet organized labor is on record as against compulsory arbitration. This attitude of the work- ers has been due to the suspicion that they could never get justice from the courts, but their position is becoming anomalous. They have usually been willing to trust their case to arbiters selected for the particular dispute but not to a permanent board of arbitration which would partake of the nature of a court. So both groups will need to be won over, but the public has some rights in the matter. The objection that a man's business is a private con- cern and must not be interfered with, is no longer made when the health of the community is con- cerned ; it is equally absurd when the peace and the morals of the community are concerned. Certainly if a jury can decide as to a man's guilt in all other matters, and a court can pass judgment affecting a man's liberty or life, a properly constituted com- mission could be trusted to adjust differences as to wages and hours and conditions of employment. With the establishment of such a method of ad- THE CHURCH AND THE GROUP OF TOIL 85 justing industrial disputes the objectionable war measures and the need ''to recognize the union" would pass away, and with them the bitterness of strife. Then labor organizations could give them- selves to the improvement of their crafts, like the old guilds, and to public welfare. Then the church could not be charged with taking either side, and the way would be open as it is not now for winning to the church the great working population. When the ministers of Boston asked Mr. Lincoln Steffens how they could reach the masses, he said, "Go to them on your knees." Not as to inferiors, but as to brothers must we go, not as holier-than- thou teachers, but as suppliants in the name of Christ entreating men to be reconciled to God. And it may be that from the deep, quiet life of the common people the church shall receive that new impulse and power which will make it "a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." CHAPTER IV HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD This is a competitive world, a hopefully competi- tive world. Even cooperation must have in it a competitive element, for it is competition that gives zest to life. That old poem of Genesis tells only a half-truth when it names work as a curse upon the head of man. True, work in and of itself may be a burden, and when the only incentive is to se- cure the bare conditions of subsistence it is a hard- ship. But introduce the competitive element, let one man measure himself against another, and work becomes a game. Wherever is a match, provided it is played in good spirit, there is a game, though you only match yourself against yourself or against nature. The competitive spirit under right condi- tions introduces into work the element of sport. Also competition of some sort is necessary to pro- mote individual initiative. Take away a man's chance to match himself against his fellows and he will not turn out much of a worker. An uncom- petitive world is unthinkable. But for what shall men compete? Upon that question turns the fate of society. Humanity has always been competitive and always will be, but the ground of competition has changed and must be .86 HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 87 changed more and more. Upon this change of the basis of competition, of the stake for which man plays his game, depends the socializing and Chris- tianizing of human life. Time was when the bald struggle for existence was the only form of competition. This lowest form of competition for the most food and the best parts of it gave place in time to the contest for power, the struggle of man to be superior to other men, to win against them in a matching of strength and cunning, that he might have dominion over them and make them serve him. "Dragons of the prime which tare each other in the slime, Were mellow music matched with man.'* The chief was the man who wielded the heaviest club. Afterward when man began to join his brain to his muscle, he was still superior who by cun- ning and strength was more powerful than his fel- lows. Happily the stake for which men have competed has changed for the better, but equally happily the competitive spirit remains. Every real man wants to win, whatever the game; he wants to excel, to stand out among his fellows, to be counted great and successful. A man's eminence in any age is reckoned on the basis of his achievement, but on what basis is achievement reckoned? Here is the heart of the whole matter. ^'Indeed, the world's progress may be read in the changing definition it makes for achievement," says William Allen 88 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH White.* What was it that men competed for ; what was counted success in any age; on what ground was one man held to be superior to another; what was the power and excellence which men craved? The answer to these questions will show the stage of development that had been reached. When society became organized and so long as war was considered the main business of life, the most important man was the soldier ; and men who wanted to achieve became soldiers. In the middle ages when the church was supreme, holding the reins of temporal power and controlling the oppor- tunities of culture, the priest was the influential man; and men who sought for power became priests. But with the invention of gunpowder and printing, the soldier and priest became less signifi- xant and lordship passed from them. Then the gov- ernor came into prominence, and the men who wanted to be great courted the favor of the king or entered politics. In the last century the men who could handle wisely the surplus earnings of their fellows, the so-called "wealth producers" and the wealth controllers, were considered the most important men in the state. Then the capitalist came to occupy the position of eminence and power held in turn by the soldier, the priest and the poli- tician; and men who wanted to be great entered upon the competition for gold.^ The fierce struggle for money is simply the man- * "The Old Order Changeth," p. 240. ' Idem. HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 89 old desire to be great and to excel. There are no misers to-day. Men love money not for its own sake but because of what it stands for. Money is the badge of success; it is the evidence of achievement, the mark of superiority. It means power. The man with money can do most that he wants to do. He can buy his way into most places he wants to go, he can command and be obeyed. He has servants and satellites. His wealth makes him a factor in the community to be reckoned with ; it gives him a significance which, without money, he would lack. What the chieftain and priest and monarch could do, the rich man can do in propor- tion to his wealth. There are in America to-day many aggregations of capital which are more pow- erful than a commonwealth, and rich men who have more power than state governors. This is the kind of lordship with which the pres- ent generation is familiar. Money rules to-day, and many men with the instinctive and praise- worthy desire for preeminence have sought it by the easy and popular way — by getting money, and more money. But this form of competition which is most common to-day is not calculated to develop the finest in men. The processes of money getting are so impersonal and there are so many hidden turns in the passages by which money passes out of the hands of the people into the hands of the few, that the rich man cannot know how much his wealth may have cost the community. The soldier who has hewed his way to mastery sees the blackened 90 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH fields and demolished castles, but the man who is piling up money does not see what he is doing. The advance of price by one or two cents a pound on some commodity, in order to swell profits, seems a very small matter, but coupled with similar ad- vances in other commodities it works untold hard- ship. And yet despite the meanness and cruelty which are often involved in it, so long as money is regarded as the measure of greatness in business, so long will money be the thing for which men will compete. Now one of the best possessions of mankind is this craving to achieve, to excel, to be great, to have power. The race has made progress because of its inborn love of achievement; and it has risen to higher levels as it has changed its definition of achievement, its judgment as to what is worth competing for, its estimate of the prize for which the game is to be played. The way to socialize an incurably competitive world, therefore, is to set men to competing for something better than lordship and gold. We cannot get rid of the game, and don^t want to, but we can change the rules of the game. Society is just as good as the stake for which men play. Christianize the rules of the game and the game becomes Christian. That is not so difficult as it may sound. Men are good rather than bad. Their life is controlled by three forces, self-interest, conscience and public opinion. Self-interest is restrained by conscience, and conscience is modified by public opinion which HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A "COMPETITIVE WORLD 9I is the community conscience. We have reached a point in civilization when community interest has become stronger than self-interest, when public opinion is the biggest factor in our common life. No man is untouched by it. Most men try to meas- ure up to what is expected of them. Ultimately they will conform to the requirements of their class, their community, their contemporaries. Change the rules of the game and they will play it differ- ently. Set up a new standard of excellence, a new definition of achievement, a new measure of suc- cess and men will inevitably play for the new stake. It has never been the prize that men competed for, but the joy of winning and the reputation of achiev- ing. And once let an intelligent Christian public opinion fix on some social good as the thing for which men should compete, and some social service as the measure of success, and at once the game will be socialized. We have the Christian definition of achievement and standard of success at hand, "Whosoever would become great among you," and "Whosoever would be first among you," said Jesus to His disciples. This man of immense social passion appeals to the competitive spirit. He tells those who desire great- ness how they may have their wish. He reckons with the undying aspiration of men to be first and greatest, and builds upon it as the basis for all hu- man enterprise. He sets the seal of His approval upon this desire of men to excel, but He sets for His disciples a new kind of excellence, a new defi- 92 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH nition of achievement, a new basis on which to com- pete for the first place. "Whosoever would be great among you, let him be your servant." The adoption of this rule for the game — that winning means serving — will change the game. This revolutionary measure of success has al- ready been accepted in many quarters. The soldier, the physician, the teacher, the minister, the scien- tist, the artist, the social welfare worker — these have a position of eminence in the community. They are reckoned in many cases among the first citizens. Many of them have achieved greatness. And they are great not in proportion as they amass wealth but in proportion as they render service to the community. When the physician, for example, discovers a new method of treating disease he gives it at once to the world, content with having made his contribution to the relief of pain. The soldier IS content to remain poor to the end of his life, his claim upon greatness being that he stands ready for any service to his country. The teacher re- ceives but a meager salary, and the minister is sadly underpaid ; but neither asks for pity for each rests his claim to eminence upon the service he renders to the community. The scientist seeks preeminence through service. No sooner does he unlock some secret of nature than he publishes it for all to read. There is a pathetic story of the two aspirants for the honor of the discovery of the sulphuric ether. Both of these men broke the law of their genius, entered into HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 93 vexatious and wearisome struggles in litigation to get pay and reward for themselves, and then went out like a sputtering candle. These men sought to be first "after the way of the Gentiles" and came to naught. The real scientist works for nobler ends. The artist competes with his kind in the effort more faithfully to hold up a mirror to na- ture. The poet, the philosopher, the master of fic- tion, do not work for money, but to make some contribution to the understanding of life, to render some service to the world of thought. The most dramatic modern illustration of the fact that human endeavor does not rest upon the stimulus of personal gain is furnished by the build- ers of the Panama Canal. The canal was not dug by private enterprise, and there was no thought of private profit in the whole huge undertaking, but a government put itself at the service of the world and used the men of its standing army to do a great piece of work for humanity. The head and front of the enterprise was George Washington Goethals, an engineer with the rank of colonel in the army. Associated with him were a distin- guished group of men, thus characterized by Presi- dent Wilson in presenting the medal of the National Geographic Society to Colonel Goethals : "that gal- lant and devoted soldier who gave his very life to see that the great work was done at Culebra Cut ; ^ that man who made so much of this work possible, * Lieut. Colonel David DuB. Gaillau, who died Dec. S, 1913. 94 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Surgeon General Gorgas, by knowing how to hold disease off at arm's length while these men were given leave to work ; Colonel Seibert, who built the walls of Gatun Dam and created Gatun Lake, mak- ing it look to the eyes of the beholder as if nature had done the work over which he himself presided ; and Colonel Hodges, who made the locks and the machinery by which these great things are adminis- tered." These men and the other army and navy officers who were members of the Isthmian Canal Commission drew only a modest salary over and above their army and navy pay. They won no large financial prize and they asked for no reward for doing their duty, but they carried on their work with high enthusiasm and zest and the world has bestowed upon them its admiration and gratitude. Now all of these men of science, of art, and of some of the professions are in the best sense com- peting, all seek eminence, all want to achieve, and no one of them would resent it if a grateful world enrolled his name among the immortals; but they compete for the first place after the manner of Jesus, they become great only as they are of service. Money may come to them in time and often does, but money is not the incentive which holds them to their task. The fact is, that among real men, that service is best which is freest from the money incentive. The rapid advance of preventive medi- cine in the present decade is due largely to army surgeons, to the physicians who belong to the great "institutes" and ''foundations," and to those en- HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 95 gaged in various terms of public health service. These men whose financial gain is far smaller than that of the successful general practitioner or spe- cialist in surgery, give their entire time and energy to investigation and research while the men en- gaged in private practice are under somewhat the same temptations as the business man. Our little, underpaid standing army performs its most efficient service in time of earthquake or flood or pestilence. With this standing army we must think of the police, the teachers, and all faithful servants of the public paid from public funds. To it before many years will be added, in the opinion of the writer, the vast majority of physicians and surgeons, and for the very reason that greater effi- ciency will be secured by freeing medical men from the money incentive. Also health is a public asset of the same kind as education and police protec- tion. Not only will the fight against disease be more successful but more just when physicians serve disinterestedly and without thought of private advantage. Under the present order the worker often dies and the non-producer is kept alive, be- cause the one can buy the medical attention which the other lacks. Some physicians will always be found for private practice, as there are private schools and private detectives, but the great busi- ness of sanitation and health is a state affair and will be more efficiently handled when the medical men are paid out of the public funds and so become public servants like teachers and soldiers. The sub- 96 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH stitution of this spirit of social service for the money incentive makes for efficiency and fidelity. Naturally the men who work with things rather than with ideas and principles and personalities, the men of industry whose work appeals least to the imagination, are slowest to respond to the stand- ard of Jesus, but it isn't their fault so much as the fault of all of us. The greatness of a business man we still reckon on his ability to make divi- dends. The phrase "business is business," now less heard than formerly, bears witness to the fact that business has been classed by itself and that idealism was not looked for in the field of business. Wealth is still the measure of success in commerce. He is counted first and chiefest in the business world who requires most figures to express the amount of his holdings. So the business man plays for a different stake from the artist or physician or social worker, because his rules of the game are different from theirs. Let some new mechanical contrivance be in- vented, some new article of commerce, some com- modity which all will buy because it is a conven- ience or a time-saver, and straightway it is pat- ented and someone levies on the whole community and assembles a fortune. The patent laws are among the unsocial institutions which are marked to go first. By reason of the patent one man gets control of some commodity which everyone needs, and makes the consumer pay two or three times as HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 97 much as it cost to produce — and usually it is not the inventor who collects the tax.^ A suggestion of what we may expect, when we have the same chivalry in business as in science and some of the professions, is found in the act of the Diamond Match Company which relinquished its patent on sesquisulphide and allowed its competi- tors to use this harmless substitute for the deadly phosphorus in making matches. It is a sad com- mentary on the slowness with which business has responded to the new social ideals that only two of the competitors made use of this substitute, which is a bit more expensive, until the next year when Congress to save the workers in the match industry from the "phossy jaw" passed a law against the use of phosphorous. However, we must bear in mind that the business man has been put under pressure to forget everything for profit's *A new moral standard and a new idealism in dealing with inventors was set by the Eastman Kodak Company in the summer of this year, 1914. Henry J. Gaisman dis- covered how to sign and date a film at the time the picture is taken. He is reported to have said that he would have taken $10,000 for his work, and have "jumped at" $50,000. Mr. Eastman paid him $300,000. First, Mr. Eastman fixed an adequate salary for the four years during which the inventor had worked on his device, and that amount was doubled. Then the cost of the laboratory was agreed upon, and the amount doubled. To this total enough was added to make $300,000, not on the basis of what the device cost the inventor, but of its value in expected profits to the company. This marks a new era for inventors and for business ethics. 98 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH sake, under temptation to exploit his employees and to extract more from the community than he puts back, for we have estimated his success by the money he has made. He must now be put under an equal pressure to serve the community. How may this be done? First, by pointing out to the business man that all service, all disinterested striving, has a religious meaning and value, and second, by applying to him the Christian standard of greatness. Where business is honestly organized with a fair field to all, service now is fundamental to success, but success itself has been measured not on the basis of service rendered but of profit re- turned. The same measure of success, the same basis of achievement, must apply to business as to other forms of human endeavor. The business man must be tested by the same standards as the teacher, the minister and the welfare worker. Men must be taught that business is a means of social service and be denied the reputation of true success unless they are performing a service to all. Then an industry will be pointed to with pride not be- cause it pays the biggest dividends but because it contributes to the city's welfare. Then the question, ''How much is a man worth?" will mean "How much is he worth to the community?" or "How much is he worthy of his wealth?" Then he will be accounted great and successful on the basis of the love and gratitude which he has won for service rendered, and on no other. Change the rules of the game and the game will HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD 99 be changed. Men will still compete to be first, but for a new stake, and business will become Chris- tian. The evil of business grows out of the meas- ure of achievement which the Christian community- has applied. The business man has the power to accumulate wealth rapidly and to amass a great fortune, and this is his constant peril. He is ren- dering service which the community cannot do without and has a right to collect toll for his ser- vices. But the ambition to get rich quick, to be decorated by his fellows with the badge of success, leads him to increase the toll which he exacts until business may become, and in some cases has be- come, a form of piracy. This raises a question which no one as yet is pre- pared to answer : how much toll is the business man entitled to for the service he renders? I suppose it is a principle of business that a thing is worth as much as it will bring, that a man has a right to charge for his services as much as the traffic will bear, dependent upon the law of supply and de- mand. But one sees at once to what abuses this may lead. A man or group of men may control the market or control patent rights and so levy heavily upon the consumer. Or competition may be so open and keen that one business enterprise will bring a much smaller return for services ren- dered than some other business which costs no more in effort and thought and patience. The law of supply and demand is not sufficient when lOO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH that law can be manipulated. So then, what is a thing worth to the community? From the standpoint of society, an article is worth what it costs to manufacture and distribute, plus a reasonable return to the man who makes and to the man who distributes. As to what that reasonable return is no one can say with definite- ness. There is no consensus of opinion or legis- lative judgment as to the profit which is just and fair for the manufacturer or the trader. The profit which comes to the lender of money is in many states fixed at six per cent., but money-lend- ing does not cost as much labor or perform as much service as manufacturing and merchandis- ing. Hence the manufacturer and the merchant deserve a larger return for services rendered. What that fair and reasonable return is has not been fixed, but above the fair return for their time and brains, all excess dividends represent that much more taken out of the community than is put back. When the fair return for services rendered by men of business has been decided upon, as the legal rate at which money may be loaned has been fixed by the state, then all excess dividends should be returned to the community in a larger wage and a cheaper product, of course with great care not to disturb the prosperity of business. Business now rests upon social service. Only apply the standard of Jesus and measure a man's success by the amount of service rendered and not by the amount of dividends wrung out of the busi- HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD lOI ness, and we will have in business one of the finest expressions of the Christian idea. Already business enterprises have in them much that touches the imagination if one brings to them his religious sense. Take for example the shoe business. Yonder are the cattle upon a thousand hills, yonder the deep, silent forests, yonder the mountains filled with ore, and here are feet to be shod. The maker of shoes, with the skin of the beasts, and the bark from the forests, and the ma- chine of iron, produces a covering for the human foot that protects it from thorns and stones. Yon- der is the coal in the mountain, the stored-up light and heat of the sun, and here are folk to be warmed. Man digs the coal and hauls it to the city and dumps it into the cellar, and winter be- comes as summer and the night as day. Not only does the man in business supply the needs of the hungry and the cold and the ill-clad, but in sup- plying those needs he furnishes means of employ- ment and opportunities for livelihood to hundreds of men and women, thus rendering a double ser- vice. Going and coming, buying and selling, every dollar turned over may be a means of service. The man of business knows the joy of the creator, he is a savior of the waste of life and a redeemer from human misery and want. He has a chance to be the greatest among us for, if he will, he may say with Jesus, "I am in the midst of you as he that serveth." Progress is being made toward this end, though 102 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH slowly. The old stakes for which men have played, the old prizes for which they have competed, are being tested and weighed and are not so enticing as once they were. The life of many a rich man is tragic, and even the family for whom he piled up his wealth is often torn asunder by it.^ Gen- uine love and gratitude are seldom his portion. It no longer needs an inspired Teacher to convince men that they may gain the world and lose their life, and that the world at such a cost profiteth nothing. So attention is shifting from what men can get out of life and keep for themselves to what they can put into it of permanent value, and rich men are disposing of their wealth in libraries and art collections and institutes and foundations for the benefit of humanity. A few years ago the rep- resentative man was the man who had begun a poor boy and ended a millionaire. Now a new type of hero is set up. The "interesting people" of the popular magazine are those who have done something worth while for the community; whether they are rich or poor is a matter of indif- ference, but they must have been of service. The idealism reflected in this new type of hero prizes money, which is stored-up personal energy, not as a means of luxury, but of service. Already it has been pointed out that many busi- ness men engaged in what were once thought pri- *See a striking chapter on "The Tragedy of Dives" in Prof. Rauschenbusch's "Christianizing the Social Order." p. 291. HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD IO3 vate undertakings are now looking upon their business as a form of public service.^ Real pride IS taken in the way their business is conducted and in the profit-sharing or welfare plans which are now in operation. Prizes in what may be called industrial humaneness are being competed for, and companies are vying with one another in the matter of sanitation and safety, the contentment and good will of their operatives, as well as efficiency. All this may be set down to intelligent self-interest, but there is in most cases a large element of gen- erous appreciation of the workers' faithfulness and of their needs. A larger factor than either is the desire of most men to have the gooa will of those who work with them and the good opin- ion of their fellow-men. Social restraint and in- telligent self-interest are working together to elim- inate the wrongs of industry.^ The irresistible force of the social conscience makes it possible to apply the standards of Jesus whenever we will. Another generation will see the worst of the struggle for the control of capital well finished. That does not mean that the millennium will have come. The forces which are making To-morrow are so charged with social feeling that we may say with confidence that the men who really belong to the next generation will desire wealth because it ^Page 40. 'The fact that intelHgent self-interest always leads to some social good is the strongest evidence that this uni- verse is organized for moral ends. 104 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH multiplies their personality and brings added pow- ers to serve. For them the commercial spirit will have been socialized. With equal confidence we may say that greed will not be abolished. "In all the centuries lust has not been abolished, nor an- ger, nor hate, nor envy. Yet they are in chains. It is not visionary to assume if we go forward during this century as rapidly toward the socializ- ing of steam as we went during the last century, that we may put the man who issues what the United States Supreme Court has seen fit to call 'fictitious capital,' or the man who floats bonds not based on actual valuation of property, on a foot- ing with a man who violates a home or assaults a woman. We may put the man who manufactures impure food and poisonous drinks in the same category with the fence and the gambler. We may give the trust magnate who refuses to share exor- bitant profits with his employees and his custom- ers a social status with the burglar. We may fet- ter greed as we have fettered our other human vices." ^ When a Christian public opinion has accepted the standard of Jesus and decided on this new stake, when men in business understand that to be counted great and eminent they must be in the fullest sense a servant, the game will have even keener zest. The game becomes more magnificent when selfish advantage is lost sight of altogether, and more fascinating. The truly great souls of * William Allen White, op. cit., p. 251. HOW TO CHRISTIANIZE A COMPETITIVE WORLD I05 history were indifferent to wealth and the master minds gave themselves to art, philosophy, science, literature, or to some pursuit where self-interest was not the end in view. In every age men have dared more in some unselfish endeavor, and have suf- fered and endured more in some great enterprise for mankind than ever man has for selfish ends. The highest enthusiasm and initiative and courage of the past were shown by the explorers, the scien- tists, the artists, the missionaries who were intent not upon winning gold but upon rendering some service to humanity. To make a discovery is more interesting than to make an invention; to unlock- a secret of nature for which mankind will be the richer is a more satisfying performance than to secure a patent by which to wrest for oneself a fortune. It is just as thrilling to invent some new piece of social machinery by means of which em- ployers can get along more happily with their em- ployees as it is to invent a new kind of locomotive, or an aeroplane. It is just as exciting to compete with other men in putting back into the commun- ity, in the form of a better and cheaper product or larger wages, more in proportion to the capital in- vested, as it is to compete for large profits. And that game is Christian. It joins one with Him who was the greatest among us because the servant of all. Jesus "went about doing good." His body was broken and His blood shed for humanity's sake, and the heart of man owns Him King. Our bod- I06 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH les, too, are being broken and our blood shed. The mere business of living wastes the body and robs the blood of its warmth and strength. Until we pass the meridian the repair more than balances the waste; then the waste begins to overbalance the repair. But all the time our body is being broken and our blood shed. For what? To what end are we spending our magnificent capital of body and brain and spirit, for spend it we must? Of this we can no longer deceive ourselves: the good of all is the good of each. To deny that is to deny history, to deny experience, to deny our own souls. To seek selfish ends is to forfeit the love and gratitude of men and to lose life. To win gratitude and love is to earn earth's highest award. To be truly great is to be the servant of all. To make some contribution to the common life is the only thing worth living for. For this great task the call of God to this generation is loud and clear. PART II Th^ Church at th^ Parting o^ the: Ways CHAPTER I WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR The church exists mainly for instruction in morals and religion and for purposes of worship. The Christian church combines the synagogue which was a place for instruction with the temple which was a place for worship, but is more the successor of the synagogue. It is the authorized teacher of morality and religion, authorized by tra- dition and by special equipment. As we subsidize teachers of language and mathematics and science, men and women who give their whole time to the study of these subjects and their teaching, so sub- sidized and expert teachers are needed to educate the moral sense and quicken the moral tone and deepen the religious faith of the people. The church stands on the same basis as the college and school. Historically it has preceded the school, for the religious impulse antedates the intellectual. Morality is fundamental to the welfare of any 107 I08 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH community and it is righteousness, not culture, which exalteth the nation. The use to which the church in the past turned its teaching function gives rise to the feeling on the part of many thoughtful persons that it has no great purpose in the life of to-day, although the demand for morality is more insistent than in any period of history. In the middle ages, when the church had great temporal power and domi- nated the western world, the instruction it gave in morality was practically negligible. And the "re- ligious instruction" given by the church concerned itself mainly with dogmas and sacraments and priest-made plans of salvation and the perform- ance of church rites. The Reformation and the Renaissance liberated the more original minds from such a notion, but the average Protestant view was still that religious instruction meant in- struction in theological opinions and in the facts of the Bible. These medieval ideas hold over in many minds to-day. Some oppose religious in- struction in the public schools because it signifies to them sectarian instruction. Others bemoan the fact that our public school teaching is unreligious because the facts of the Bible are not taught. The High Churchman and the Roman Catholic estab- lish parochial schools for "the teaching of religion" which is no other than instruction in sectarian ten- ets and in the particular practices of their church. If this notion were correct, then in all the min- istry of Jesus he gave no constructive religious WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR IO9 instruction. What he said about the Sabbath and other religious institutions was drawn from Him by His enemies and was in criticism of the ortho- dox teaching of His day. And yet Jesus declared Himself to be "the way and the truth and the life." He calmly assumed for Himself the great mission to show men the way to God, to bear witness to the truth and to make known what is real life. By His own claim He was a healer and restorer of the sick and lost, but His supreme claim is that He was a teacher of religion with an authority greater than that of the Sanhedrin, with a prestige above Moses and the prophets, and with a sanctity greater than the Sabbath or the Temple. He spoke with an authority which the soul of man recog- nizes, for His words find a response in the soul. And the function of the church He founded is that of a healer and restorer, but supremely that of a teacher of what it means to live a good Ufe in obedience to God's will. This is the logical or- der because the work of healer and restorer is remedial ; the work of the teacher is preventive. But when it is said that moral and religious in- struction with worship are the main purpose of the church, it must be clearly understood what such instruction embraces. The Roman and the Anglican Catholic, with this statement of the church's function, have justified the autocratic cleri- calism, the exclusiveness, the intolerance and the religious monopoly which have been the curse of the church. The Roman church may give much no THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH valuable moral instruction through its confessional, and certainly the priest has here a tremendous op- portunity and one that comes less frequently to the Protestant minister because confessions to him are purely voluntary and their frequency is modi- fied by his personality and the greater self-reliance and corresponding secretiveness of the Protestant mind. But the Roman Catholic teaching which reaches the outside community through the press, and the occasional sermon which the Protestant goes to hear, can be called religious instruction only in the narrowest ecclesiastical sense, while public instruction in morals is still at a minimum. The Romanist's common resort for religious im- pression is to the eye and the senses rather than the reason and the conscience. There are few ser- mons and these few deal largely with the dogmas of the church. In so far as purely ethical ques- tions are concerned, in so far as a clean, moral, upright life is concerned, there is comparatively little public instruction, and then mainly on the basis that thus-and-so is the teaching of the church, rather than that Jesus and the Bible require it, or that the truth is self-evidencing because finding its own authority in the heart of man. Such "reli- gious instruction" has no remotest resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount or any of the wayside teachings of Jesus, or His irresistible appeals to human experience — "if I say truth why do ye not believe me?" With the same medieval notion of religious in- WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR III struction many high churchmen and many evan- gelical Protestants have set themselves against the return to the social message of Jesus which has so long been neglected. Religious instruction, they maintain, is entirely apart from the social and in- dustrial and political problems of to-day, and even the moral instruction of the church must deal with personal morality rather than social morality. The new social activity of the church is therefore held to be at the most only incidental. A second error, growing out of the opening statement of the church's purpose, is the doctrine that the church has a virtual monopoly of religious instruction. As the main business of the church is to teach religion, and as the church ought to be best equipped to teach it, the na'ive or sinister con- clusion is drawn that the church is the only author- itative teacher of religion. The claim to monopoly in religious instruction has always been the bul- wark of ecclesiasticism. So strong a hold did this heresy have upon the Christian mind that politi- cal democracy arrived in Christendom in advance of religious democracy. For a true understanding of the church's mission as the teacher of morals and religion one need only turn to the teaching ministry of Jesus. The church has for its task to teach men how to live a right life, as Jesus did. The Christian church must teach men how to make their whole life Christian, in correspondence with the teaching and life of Jesus. Social relationships, and industrial relationships. 112 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and CIVIC relationships, as well as personal relation- ships, are, of course, included, for it is in all these relationships that man's life is lived. This involves definite instruction with regard to the relation of the personal life to the complex life of society. Nothing is foreign to moral and religious instruc- tion which has to do with those moral problems which every human relationship raises. Moral and religious instruction means to teach men how "to do justly and love kindness and walk humbly before God" in all the ranges of their life. Recognizing that the church can have no mo- nopoly of such teaching, and rejecting the infalli- ble authority of the church, as all thoughtful men must, sincere and reverent thinkers not a few ques- tion whether the church should continue to exist at all. The outcome of the whole movement of modern thought, it is said, is to show that the church knows nothing about God which anyone may not know who has a simple trust that there is goodness at the root of things, and that the whole foundation of this trust is the ethical conscious- ness which belongs to all. But while our knowl- edge of God is based on our ethical consciousness it is not limited by our individual consciousness. If we are to have any large and adequate knowl- edge of God then to our own experience must be added the experience of the race, and especially the experience of those men who lived nearest to the center of reality. This unique sense of reality possessed by the master spirits of all ages, the seers WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR II3 and sages and prophets and holy men of God, is what we call their ''inspiration." Hence the Bible, and all bibles of all peoples who sought to know God, philosophy which is the quest for God, history which is a record of experience, and all the great literature of the Spirit, are the materials from which the knowledge of God is to be arrived at. Certainly the church knows nothing about God which anyone may not know who has spiritual dis- cernment and makes use of the sources of infor- mation. But the church has a trained teaching force of the common knowledge of God and of human duty, just as the college has a trained teach- ing force of the knowledge which is accessible to all in the libraries. The college knows nothing which anyone may not know who has the thirst and capacity for knowledge, the wisdom of the ages is common property, but scholars who are freed from the necessity of earning their bread by man- ual labor, which would distract them from study and teaching, are needed to impart that knowledge and train men in wisdom. There is exactly the same justification for the church as for the college. The teaching function of the church is as real and fundamental as the function of the home and the ' school and the state and the hospital, each in its own sphere. Yet it is true that many consider the church of less importance than the school and the hospital. In his Lowell lectures Professor Royce points out the changed situation in which the church finds it- 114 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH self to-day. Religious institutions were formerly ^'supported by the whole social power of the peo- ples concerned," but to-day "stand in a much less central position in our organized social life." ^ ''Had all the temples of a typical ancient city, and had all its priests and sacred places been suddenly destroyed, so that none of the customary festivals and sacrifices could be carried on, we know how tragically the whole life of the city would have been disturbed, if not wholly paralyzed." Now on the contrary, "ii all churches and priesthoods and congregations were temporarily to suspend their public functions and their visible doings, our market-places and factories and merchants and armies would continue to go on, for the time, much as usual." This contrast is indisputable, mainly because religion was then more a matter of exter- nals, while now it is understood to be an affair of the spirit, and yet the statement would not be cor- rect without the qualification that the suspension be temporary. Without religious institutions the state of religion and morals would not for long remain the same. The spirit needs cultivation as well as the intellect, and the absence of the church, like the absence of the college, would soon be registered in the effect on the whole life of the community. The intellectual activity of our adult population might be kept up for a generation by the press, the theater, the library and the discipline of busi- * The Problem of Christianity," Vol. i, pp. 390, 391. WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR II5 ness. But the intellectual life of the people would not be put forward without the school and college and university. So the moral and religious tone of the nation might be maintained for a while with- out the church. The religious appeal is made in current literature, in the magazine, in the political speech and in the newspaper. All men who are getting a hearing to-day are preaching. Even in the yellow journal a new type of editorial has sprung up, a preaching editorial, perhaps to offset the display of vice and vulgarity in the other col- umns, for man has a strong instinctive moral sense. Men like the sound of the moral note. Therefore the yellow journal editorial discusses ethics, phi- losophy, literature and religion. It treats of the moral issues raised in politics and the industrial order. And that saves the journal. But for this saving salt men wouldn't buy. This new editorial is the only moral and intellectual stimulus for mil- lions of readers. The editor is the "shop girls' Addison"; the penny paper is the workingman's Bible. Such fugitive moral teaching is not enough. The cause of morality and religion would not long hold its own without a body of well-equipped and sym- pathetic teachers of morality and a religious or- ganization through which they may make their teaching effective. Even Renan said, "Our chil- dren have been brought up under the influence and in the shadow of Christianity, but how will it be with our grandchildren who must inherit only the Il6 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH shadow of a shadow and that very dim?" The shop-girl and the workingman are dealing with big primitive problems — hunger and cold, decency and self-respect — and they need a less commercialized moral teacher than the newspaper. Those who have the ears of the people to-day admit that they are not equipped for this task. Civilization rests ultimately on morality, and yet the conditions under which many have to live these days tend to weaken the moral fiber. Poverty on which Jesus pro- nounced blessing has become a curse, for the poor to-day are crowded into city tenements where pri- vacy is impossible and where family traditions and sacred home associations are almost out of the question. Prosperity has its perils, too. With the wide spread of wealth goes almost inevitable lux- ury. Luxury is the love of softness and always brings with it flabbiness of physical and mental and moral fiber. Our present social order and economic system have placed in the hands of men new and mighty weapons, our modern industrial organization has let loose stupendous forces, all of which may become engines of injustice unless con- trolled by religion. The goal to which the rapidly changing life of to-day is moving depends on the moral teacher. Now the preacher, as a student of the Bible and literature and an interpreter of life, is set for ^'teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- tion which is in righteousness." The strongest of men need all the help they can get right here. It WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR II7 IS very easy to become lax and indulgent in the re- quirements one makes of himself. It is very easy to let one's standards sag, to lose one's ideals. What real men want, when they think of it, is to have their minds stirred, their opinions jostled, their complacency disturbed. Their convictions may be conscientiously held but they are usually formed under the pressure of self-interest, and they need to be trued up by the teachings of Jesus. The only way to make progress in morality is to hold oneself resolutely in the presence of the best ethical teaching. Whatever else may be said of the church and its services, the things that men are led to think of at church are the things that are honorable and just and pure and lovely and of good report. There are those to whom the church's teachings are not interesting, but that criticism cuts both ways. It may be that the minister has little to say, or it may be that some persons are not interested in the kind of life which the church holds up as an ideal. One can quite understand that persons who are determined not to practice the Sermon on the Mount are not keen over hearing it, and that those who disregard the Golden Rule on week days are not made comfortable by having it sounded in their ears on Sunday. The moral instruction of the church is little sought by those whose conduct is decided by personal advantage modified and limited only by the commonly accepted ethics of their class Il8 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and by the popular standards of their trade. They who ask not "What judgment will Christ pass on my life?" but "How does my life square with the practice of my kind ?" will naturally have no inter- est in the church. But whether interested or unin- terested, the task of the church is to take to every man the whole teaching of Jesus. The second great function of the church is to create the mystical or spiritual sense and to pro- vide for its expression in worship. What differen- tiates the human from the brute is the sixth sense, the sense by which we apprehend what we cannot see, nor hear, nor feel, nor taste, nor smell. It is this spiritual faculty that gives to human life what- ever fineness it possesses, and worship and prayer are the main resources for cultivating the mystic sense. Certain acts of worship can be performed in solitude; the devout soul can find God anywhere. But there is a deep and native need in the soul for comradeship in worship. With the birth of social feeling men began to combine for the rites of wor- ship, first as families and then as tribes. On the hilltop, in the groves, and by the rivers men came together to worship their gods. Sympathy for our fellow-men and fellowship with God cannot be separated without hurt to both. As we hft our hearts to our Father we reach our hand to find the hand of our brother. Social worship meets a na- tive and genuine need of the soul. WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR II9 "Oh, sweeter than the marriage feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company; To walk together to the kirk. And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends. Old men, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay."* Whatever the present age lacks in reverence and spiritual fineness is largely due to the neglect of public worship. Many talk easily of worship with- out comprehending what it means. They stay from the church which is appointed for worship and give as a reason that they go out into the open to worship in God's first temples. Now I suppose that no one loves the out-of-doors more than I do. Something speaks to me from the woods and mountains and fields. A beautiful landscape stirs me. My spirit finds something to respond to un- der the open sky. But I recognize that the body finds more stimuli in the open than the spirit. It is my blood that courses deliciously through my veins in response to exercise, it is to my lungs that the air is sweet, it is the senses of smell and sight and hearing which are most appealed to. It is to the body mainly that the out-of-doors ministers, which is well, for the body is as sacred as the spirit. But the body must not get it all. Sunday is the day in which to restore the lost balance of *"The Ancient Mariner," Coleridge. 120 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH life. As the spirit gets least during the week the spirit should be our chief care on Sunday. And to preserve the balance between body and spirit we must resolutely give part of our Sundays to spirit- ual culture. Many have eliminated from church attendance the idea of worship. A minister in Chicago recently sent out a letter to a selected number of men, ask- ing this question, "Why is the modern man so loath to form church-going habits?" In the forty-five letters received in reply the idea of worship was referred to but once and then to say that it had very little influence in deciding the matter. One man naively said, "I go to church, to concert, to lecture, to drama to increase my stock of knowl- edge or confirm what I have accumulated." Re- cently a splendid young fellow said to me, mean- ing to be fair, that he wanted the minister to be at least his equal intellectually, and if possible his superior, or he wouldn't go to hear him. What does all this mean? That the church has become secularized in the eyes of the average man, which remark at once requires a definition. Some hold to the notion that to discuss in the pulpit the practical problems with which men have to grap- ple in their everyday life is to secularize the church. On the contrary the old Hebrew preachers dis- cussed poverty and wealth, just balances, usury, boundary lines, and politics, and it was the Proph- ets who made the religion of Israel. It isn't the themes discussed which secularize the church, if WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR 121 the purpose is to learn the mind of God concerning them. The church is secularized when one goes to its services expecting to meet a company of men and women under the same conditions that they assemble in a public hall to hear a lecture, and when one requires the minister to tell him some- thing new and original and of highly intellectual quality on the pain of his not darkening the doors again. He secularizes the church who goes to it as to business or a banquet or a social function, for what he can get out of it. This is false to the ideal of a church service. The minister should not be the chief object of at- tention. The church is greater than the minister, and the church is great only because human beings gather in it to worship God. And this demand on the minister is not fair to him. Every minister may not be intellectually the equal of every man in the congregation, but he may be superior in moral sense. There is doubtless some point in which he is superior to each and all in his congregation, as there are points in which each and all are superior to him. Any person who goes to church to wor- ship God may listen with great profit to men who, while lacking educational advantages, are men of large faith, simple hearts and a noble and unselfish outlook on life. One has gotten a real uplift in some remote country church when the poorest sort of sermon was preached. One has felt the touch of God's spirit in some European cathedral when there was no sermon at all, and when he could not 122 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH follow the Latin which was chanted and when the singing was doleful and unmusical. And the man who has no sense of awe as he bends in prayer with his fellow mortals and can hear nothing but the halting voice of the preacher lacks one of the precious elements of human life and needs to cultivate with holy perseverance that faculty which links the human spirit with God's. The great two-fold purpose of the church re- quires a much bigger program than has been sup- posed to be involved in moral and religious instruc- tion and public worship. The moral and religious quality of our life depends fundamentally upon our relation to our fellows and the service we render to the world of men; love for men and disinter- ested service is the only available evidence of love for God. The instruction which the church gives must therefore aim to show men how to meet the problems raised by all social relationships. It is for citizenship in this world that men must be equipped and this necessitates training in effective social service. The parallel between the church and college still holds. The college instructs and inspires but does not undertake as an institution actually to grapple with all the problems with which it deals. There are certain activities, like a settlement in the slums, which a college may properly undertake, but it would forfeit its free and impartial and scientific position if it should commit itself to any economic or social or political program. So the purpose of WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR 123 the church is to inspire men to right action, but the church itself can take united action only within certain limits. Such action as some reformers de- mand of the church would be foreign to its whole purpose and mission. However, to accomplish that purpose and fulfill that mission, the church should give more definite direction and more explicit training to those who draw their inspiration from it. Preaching the Gos- pel means showing what the Gospel requires in our daily living, what it signifies under our present so- cial organization. Teaching men religion means teaching them how to be religious in all their deal- ings with other men, social, political and industrial. And just as modern education resorts to manual training whenever possible, the church should give "manual training in altruism" to borrow a phrase of Professor Mathews.^ We learn by doing, but the activities of the church to-day are too few and have too narrow a range to be of much educational value for morality and religion. Also the worship- ing faculty which is very undeveloped in many can be best acquired through reverent work. The approach to God with which they are most familiar is in doing His will. They understand what it means to keep Christ's commandments and thus only can they be brought into fellowship with Him. So that both in performing its task of moral and religious instruction and in training men to wor- ship, the church will have to be more explicit in * "Biblical World," September, 1913. 124 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH its social message and to enlist men more whole- heartedly and effectively in the great business of serving. And, once more, to the extent that the church's function is a valuable one it must be performed for all. It is the purpose of the church to serve the whole of life for the whole population. In pub- lic education compulsion is possible, but the min- istry of the church cannot be gotten to men by law. The church must reach by its appeal and by creating the sense of need. How can this be done? Men are not to be interested by sounding the same sort of appeal more loudly and persistently. They who have turned from church religion of a particular type are not to be weaned back to the same thing. If a man does not like a certain kind of food it cannot be made palatable and attractive by thrusting at him more of the same sort. What appeal can we make to the non-churchgoer? How can we arouse his interest in the church? How can we create in him a sense of need of the church's moral and religious instruction and a love of its worship? Our appeal in the past was borrowed from Moses, **Come with us and we will do thee good," but men do not respond to that appeal these days. The modern man doesn't like to be done good to; he resents patronage. A real man wants to hew out his own destiny, and be at charges to none. WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR 125 All he asks is a chance to work out his own salva- tion, with such help as he can get from other real men who are working out their salvation. It is not enough to appeal to the average man to come to church to be instructed religiously, to get his soul saved, or even to worship God. Men are not drawn to church on the ground that it will be of personal advantage to them, on the plea that they need it. They have remained away from church and think they are not much the worse for it. If their ideals were carefully searched and their standards tested I believe no progress would be shown, and no progress is loss. Nevertheless they feel they are getting along fairly well without at- tending church. That is the condition with which we have to deal. Find what one manly heart responded to and you will have the key to all manly hearts. And you have only to turn back to that spot on the desert sands where originated the appeal which was as futile then as it has been impotent whenever the church has sounded it. Moses wished to hold on to his brother-in-law Hobab, who had apparently acted as pilot for the refugees from Egypt. "Come thou with us and we will do thee good," said the Jew patronizingly. "I will not go," said the free-born, self-reliant, young Bedouin, "I de- part to mine own land, and to my kindred." But Moses shifted his plea, saying, "You know the wil- derness as we do not. We need your help. Come 126 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and be eyes for this great people." And Hobab said, "I go with you." The honest desire of most men is to be of use. Their time is occupied and their life as it is is com- fortable and agreeable. It is as difficult to get them to a lecture or concert which would be in- structive and helpful as it is to get them to church. It is not enough, therefore, to represent to them that the church services are interesting or even profitable. We must make them feel that the church is engaged with a great task in which it needs help. Every true man will respond to a call for service. The more heroic it is, the more chiv- alry and courage it requires, the more imperious will be its summons. This is the appeal that will win: There is work to be done! There are many who suffer, many whose life is a burden, who are losing their way and falling out of the race ! The church here and now devotes itself to their relief! We need your help! Come and be to us for eyes and hands and feet and brains! You have something to invest in this great venture! You have strength and courage and wisdom! You are counted a success in business! We need your power of initiative, your efficiency, your daring ! For the task to which the church addresses itself with real passion is to make every land holy and every city a city of God. Is anything so worth while, any task so worthy of your time and strength? You can go back to your WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR I27 own people if you will, go back to your own small world and be comfortable. But great business is on! Will you strike hands with us? Will you help? No real man will say "No" to that. CHAPTER II WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS History is rhythmic. All life is subject to the law of ebb and flow. No human institution makes uninterrupted progress or sustains itself at an un- changing level. And to-day the churches seem to be at the ebb. But *'to-day" might be dated 19 14 or 1814. "Christianity has always seemed to its contemporaries a failure," says Coventry Patmore. This means that Christianity is a religion of ideals, and we are eternally conscious of not having reached our ideals. We are not competent to judge the churches of our day, because things need the perspective of his- tory to be seen in their true light. It must be re- membered that we are unable to do the church of this generation full justice. And one other fact needs to be borne in mind: where the churches have been long established it is not easy to com- pute what they mean to the community. We do not recognize the part played by the church in keeping men honest and clean and kind, because its presence and power have been so constant, like gravitation. It was the first institution to be planted and its influence has always been exerting itself. But often in new towns of the West, vice 128 WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS I29 and lust and crime were rampant until some Chris- tian layman or minister gathered a few true men together and organized against the forces of evil and planted a church. Even in New England we have decadent vil- lages and degenerate country settlements, and the explanation of their moral breakdown is the neg- lected church. In the spring of 1904 a New York newspaper made an exhaustive study of the condi- tion of morals in a certain New England state. It had been alleged that the state was politically cor- rupt and that its votes were regularly bought and sold at every election. On May 7, it published this conclusion: The worst towns (some of them with a few hundred inhabitants) where bribery was most persistent, where illegal liquor selling was most rampant and where immorality was most fla- grant, were those towns in which no Christian ser- vice was regularly held. For instance, in one town known as "Darkest Exeter" there were twenty years ago six churches ; four of these were in ruins at the time the investigation was made, two were occasionally used, but there was no resident min- ister. The result was a town in the heart of New England, once peopled by the sons of the Pilgrims, heir to all the noble qualities of a sturdy race, now degenerated into ''Darkest Exeter," a farming town given over to vice and immorality. This is close- at-hand evidence taken from a section of the coun- try which was formerly the home of intelligence, cleanliness, thrift and piety. 130 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH The power of the church is unnoticed in its pres- ence. But when the church is closed in village or town, and there is no longer an organized stand against the lower and more bestial forces of life, they surge up and overwhelm it. The community- value of the church can be questioned only by those who are ignorant of the facts. Its value ought to be incalculable, and where it isn't the fault lies with those who make up and direct the church and not with the idea of the church. The consid- erations upon which the doctrine of the nature and office of the Christian church is based, says Professor Royce,^ "have to do with interests which all reasonable men, whether Christian or non- Christian, more or less clearly recognize, in pro- portion as men advance to the higher stages of the art of life." ''These considerations are based upon human nature," and the idea of the church is ''simply and impressively human." But the working out of the church idea has been attended with the disasters which "attend the visi- ble embodiment of all the great ideals of human- ity." 2 The reason is not far to seek, for it lies in the very human nature which the church was or- ganized to redeem. The church has failed to sup- ply all with the kind of moral and religious instruc- tion which are needed and to create and cultivate in all the spirit of worship, but humanity needs to- day as deeply as ever to be taught how to love and *"The Problem of Christianity," Vol. i, pp. 55, 56. ' Royce, op. cit., p. 56. WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS I3I worship and serve, and a recognition of failure is a call to greater wisdom and devotion for the church on the part of every man of good will. If the church is not doing its work it must be set to doing it, for the work must be done. What is the situation of the church to-day? It is spoken of even as a spent force, and certainly it is not so conspicuously the moral leader to-day as it once was. Nothing is gained by blinking the facts. Frank criticism is always of value; con- structive criticism is needed for progress. There has always been too much unintelligent criticism of the church on the part of some, and too much fervid but unintelligent defense on the part of oth- ers. The facts should be faced as fully and fairly as we are able. It is as false to lull people's ears with the cry, "Peace, peace" when there is no peace as always to be prophesying disgrace and doom. Friendly criticism is evidence of faith in our power to realize our ideals. There is no point in criticiz- ing the church unless we believe it has possibilities of a magnificent ministry which have not yet been realized. When we know things at their worst we will make a downright effort to right them. The statistical showing of the churches is not so good as formerly, but that cuts little figure one way or another. The church is not to be measured by the number of its nominal adherents. The great movements of Christianity in America which out- run the churches are a far more satisfactory test of the church's vitality than the census reports. 132 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH However, we will quote statistics for what they are worth. Statistically the church is not holding its own. Some numerical gain is made by various denomi- nations, but in no case is it in proportion to the increase in population. "If the gain of the church on the population during the first half of the nine- teenth century is represented by 80," says Josiah Strong, "during the last half it is represented by 20, during the last twenty years it is represented by 4, and during the last ten years it is represented by I." Very liberal estimates based on the investi- gations of the church statisticians show that less than 30 per cent, of the total population of Amer- ica may be called regular attendants at church, that perhaps 20 per cent, are irregular attendants, while fully one-half never attend any church at all, Prot- estant or Romanist. The movement away from the churches is of course most noticeable in cities. In London it is estimated that only 6 per cent, of the people attend church, while in the suburbs the per- centage is 29. Probably the same percentages hold true of New York, though church attendance in England and America is on different bases. There, those who attend do so almost invariably, and those who do not attend never go ; here, more attend on special occasions, but a very small num- ber attend with the regularity of the English churchgoer. Christ would draw all men to himself, and so to God. His church must overtake the growing popu- WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS 133 lation. It IS put here to seek and to save even when but one out of a hundred is lost. That pro- portion has never been realized in Christendom. If the church were the fold, the present proportion of those within and without would be alarming. In the United States only 13 4-5 per cent, of the population are claimed by the Roman Catholic Church and 24 per cent, by the Protestant Church- es, while 60 per cent, have no church connection whatever. From this 60 per cent., however, should be subtracted a large number of adherents of whom no estimate can be made, and the many children who belong to Christian families and are on the way to church membership. But the more sturdy one's faith in the church the more he feels that it ought to be ministering to the whole people. Of all the concerns of the people morality comes first, and the church is set for instruction in right- eousness. The passion of our Lord sets for the church no less a standard than to bring all men to a knowledge of God. Turn from statistics to the tendencies and move- ments in the church which signify much more. In the large cities the church is in full retreat from the points of difficulty. The downtown church is moving out to the suburban district. Down in the city the fight for existence is too hard, and many church people aren't enough interested in the church to fight for it. They have fighting enough during the week; on Sunday they want peace and quiet, soothing music and comforting preaching. 134 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Down yonder the church was surrounded by busi- ness houses and it stood there in the midst of the strife for gain as a testimony to truth and duty and immortality, a call to God and love and fair dealing. But the city washed up around it and piled huge office buildings on every side. Then when the property became immensely Valuable, property on which taxes were never paid, it was sold for business purposes, and instead of staying down town to serve the city which made the church rich, this unearned increment, or better, community earned increment, was used to build a luxurious temple in another community. This retreat of the churches is not because there are few left to work among. The old substantial church members may have moved out, but other people have moved in. In one section of New York 40 churches have moved out and 100,000 more people have moved in, foreigners, maybe, but they are children of God and the care of the churches. The church which sends a few brave men and women as missionaries to foreign shores flees from the presence of foreigners on our own shores. Down there are the boarding houses and apartments and tenements full of people. Down there are saloons and dance halls and brothels, where God is forgot. The church moves away and makes its nest in the peaceful quiet suburbs where it is needed certainly, but not so deeply as in the thick of the city's life. Even in the suburbs and smaller cities the church WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS 135 IS only marking time. In some places it is actually losing ground.^ Among regular churchgoers the church has first place in the lives of but few. Its loose hold upon its own is shown when people move from one city to another. Frequently they drop out altogether and are lost to the church. Hundreds of thousands of church members bring to an end all connection with church life when they move to the cities. But even in the home church there is a growing tendency toward irregular at- tendance. A few years ago fair congregations were expected on pleasant Sundays and indifferent congregations on stormy Sundays. "Fair weather Christians'* was a nickname much used in the last decade. Now the situation is almost reversed; on stormy Sundays we have fair congregations, but when the weather is pleasant many of our most prominent people are absent from their places. All this means that the interests of recreation, in which I for one strongly believe, have taken precedence in the minds of many church members of the in- *In the splendid Presbyterian denomination to which the writer belongs, i,ooo churches, reported no additions by confession in 1912. Other churches which made some additions suffered a net loss through death and transfer. The whole church added to its membership on confession of faith during the year 79,432 members. But there are 40,000 Elders in the church which means less than two new members for each Elder. There are 9,000 ministers, which means less than nine new members for each minister. An army of 49,000 ministers and Elders has to show but 79,432 new recruits to the church in a whole year. 136 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH terests of the higher life so far as they are minis- tered to by the church. But most significant is the vast number of people in whose lives the church has no place at all. There are many for whom the church simply does not exist. They think of the church, if they think of it at all, as remote from the city that throbs around it, and out of touch with the problems with which men have to deal in their everyday lives. Many Socialists and workingmen are outspoken in their protest against the unrelatedness of the church to this earth life, and violent in their re- sentment that the organized spirit of Jesus does not seem to function in the life of the city. But many who do not condemn simply ignore the church. They never cross its threshold and do not reckon it into their estimate of life. So far as they are concerned the church does not exist any more than the Historical Society or the Society for Psychical Research. They are not hostile to it, but it does not come within the range of their experi- ence. The other day in New York I passed Church, on one of the west side streets in the mid- channel of the human tides that flow up through New York from the Battery. A huge sign hung over the church announcing "Everybody Wel- come." I asked myself how many of the thousands of people who pass by that church and under that sign ever see it, and upon how many does it make sufficient impression for them to remember that the church is there? This is a fair question. WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS 137 Whatever has interest and value to us will produce some reaction in the state of consciousness when brought to our attention. When we pass a beauti- ful woman or a deformed man or a shoeless child, certain nerve centers are actively stimulated. A runaway horse, a careening fire engine, a mad dog, causes an explosion of nerve cells. The reaction is proportionate to the interest awakened, but we al- ways react when an outside stimulus comes over the threshold of consciousness. Passing a library, a school, a hotel, a favorite haberdasher's, there is a distinct reaction dependent on the interest to us which each represents. If a person has no interest for us, and a building has no place in our thought and experience, they do not get within the thresh- old of our consciousness, no matter how frequently we pass them. Now the church is symbolized by the church building, and if we could know just what takes place in a man's nervous system when he passes a church edifice, if we could diagram the reaction in his state of consciousness, we would have ex- actly the place of the church in his experience. From all the data available and from questioning many who are not unfriendly to the church, I am of the opinion that this three-feet-wide church an- nouncement that all are welcome doesn't make as much impression on the average passer-by as the bushel of potatoes in front of the grocer's store at the corner. When the folk of that neighborhood want potatoes they remember the grocery. But 138 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH when they are lonely or sick or sorrowing, when they suffer for their sin, or are in any trouble where human sympathy is needed, the facts do not show that the people of the block have any remem- brance of the church two doors from the grocery. The most serious fact is that many of the folk of the city do not think of the church as existing for them, as having anything to meet their need in trouble or grief. They know what the grocery store is there for, but not what the church and the minister are there for. The minister may be break- ing his heart with care for the souls about him, and his soul is wrung because he cannot serve those who live under the shadow of his church, but the people do not know it and do not realize that the church has anything that they need. The church does not come within the field of their conscious- ness ; they do not reckon it into their thought of the city and the neighborhood and their struggle for life and decency. If they think of it at all it is to think of it as existing in a different realm from the place where they live and aspire and suffer and die. In this large number who now pass the church by are those who heard Jesus gladly. The poor and the toilers are farthest removed from the churches to-day. In England, according to Charles Booth, a careful observer, the attitude of the work- shop to the church is ''contemptuous." In Amer- ica the non-churchgoing class is made up for the most part of factory workers and immigrants. WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS 139 Many working people are in the churches, but these are chiefly unorganized working people such as you find in the store and in the small towns, and engaged in specialized occupations where trade unions are impossible. The overwhelming major- ity of men in labor organizations are out of touch with the churches.^ And finally it is the masculine mind which is less bound by convention that is in frankest revolt against the church. There are three million fewer men and* boys in the churches of America than there are women and girls. It is the men who make the moral tone of the industrial and political world and who most feel the moral strain of mod- ern competition. And yet the male membership of the Protestant churches in this country make up only 18.7 per cent, of the male population, while in the Roman Catholic church the male member- ship, including baptized children, is 13.2 per cent, of the male population. Where the church has most failed to realize its purpose is in the large city. The trying-out place of religion is the city. Here life is at its intensest. Here man deals directly and almost solely with man, for nature is reduced to subjection by the city, and all human relations raise moral questions. The city is the ganglion of the world's unrest. It paints large the social inequalities of the day, the industrial maladjustment, the contrasts of riches and poverty. This has given rise to the impres- * See Part I, Chapter 3. 140 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH sion that the city is not congenial soil for religion, and that the big centers of population are inevit- ably the last to respond to the religious appeal. I think the facts are otherwise. The great variety of interests which the city offers, and the unre- lenting demand of city activities leave smaller place for the grosser forms of temptation than the less occupied rural life. City minds may be beaten hard by much traffic like city streets, but things pass over them more quickly. The city goes about its own business with apparent indif- ference, but its heart is not bad. The city is strategic. Cities are destined to be- come bigger and bigger. The population which can find employment in the country is limited ; only certain forms of occupation are supplied by the farm and the country village. But the city with its increasing variety of industries can furnish employment for a practically unlimited population. The growth of cities will be modified only by the relation of the birth rate to the death rate. Cities are running over into the country and giving to country life the characteristics of city life. Cities will more and more dominate the country. The city is therefore strategic. Here it is that religion is put to the test and also has its greatest oppor- tunity. It was only for prudential reasons that Jesus turned from the city to the towns and country. He realized the significance of the centers of popu- lation and seats of government, and he began at WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS I4I Jesusalem, as His disciples were later bidden to do.^ But He was embarrassed by His urban popu- larity, and for the safeguarding of His total work He withdrew to the country. When the time had come, the Man of Galilee went down and joined issue with Jerusalem. Here He made His great stand and here He was done to death. But the church which claims to be the organized spirit of Jesus is not joining issue with the cities. It is beating retreat from the points of danger. The stampede of churches from the congested parts of the city would be a dismal fact to contem- plate but for this other fact: the men who touch the life of the city most potently live in the sub- urbs, and there are within reach of the church. Suburban churches are practically city churches. And the church which in the future will bear most heavily upon the city is the church in the suburbs whose men are men of large affairs and have in their keeping the well-being of a big part of the city population. Nevertheless the city is under-churched while the village and town are over-churched. The city is suffering from neglect and the religious forces of Christendom must combine for a more intelli- gent and persistent and statesmanlike handling of the city problem. First of all the church must get into the field of consciousness of the city popula- *I follow John's chronological order, which on every count seems to me historical, whatever may be said of the discourses. 142 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH tion. It must get into the same world with the man who lives in the tenement and the apartment. It must get within reach of his experience. Until then the church is of no use to the city. Of course the grocer has an immense advantage. When one is hungry he knows that he needs bread and pota- toes, l^he needs which the grocer supplies are pressing and immediate. But there is in the heart of man a need of religion, too, though we may have to interpret it. When he is lonely he knows he needs companionship; when he has suffered he needs comfort; when he has sinned he needs the assurance of forgiveness, and he needs faith. The church must not only be ready to supply those needs but must make the people in the block feel that this is what it is there for. In the large city there is no present demand for the church. It will have to be created. And we can create a demand for the church when we so reconstruct it that it will supply the religious needs of all the people. The church must take the initiative. We may throw the responsibility all upon the people, but the condition would remain unchanged. Our in- terest is not to fix the blame for the situation, but to change it. The church has a mission. We are pledged to seek until we find. We cannot leave folk to their own initiative. We must make a place for the church in the Hfe of the city. We must make it minister to the city. We must make of it an agency with which people will reckon. We WHERE THE CHURCH FAILS I43 must by some means get into the city's field of consciousness. Now the city is being successfully coped with by other agencies at work within its walls. As cities grow, the questions of housing the people, of food supply, and of transportation become in- creasingly difficult, but they are being confidently grappled with. The schools and the amusement venders meet the situation. The theatrical man is not aghast over the apartment house, nor the mer- chant in despair over the shifting population. The politician gets his appeal to the voters and the voters to the polls. The city problem is handled now. And the church can solve it, too, if we give the same sort of thought to the problem. The failure of the church has been stated with utter frankness and with no attempt to gloss it over, because one is not afraid of the facts. I am so sure of the church that I believe all that is needed is for us to realize the situation which confronts it and we will rise and meet it. "The beginning of inquiry is disease," said Bacon. Thus stimulated by the sense that something is wrong, and having discovered where the trouble lies, we who love the church will take up its problems one by one and find a solution. There is a solution. The biggest and most heroic enterprises of the church are just ahead of it. CHAPTER III WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED The first and most obvious reason for this fail- ure of the church to realize its great purpose and to touch all the life of to-day is that churches for the most part lack a program which is constructed to meet the needs of their several communities. In this unrelatedness to present conditions the church is not unique. Even in business the use of brains is modern. Much business to-day is done hap- hazard and at random. The ''cost method" for example, the only up-to-date method of conducting business, is in operation in but few establishments. A captain of industry said to the writer that he recommended the cost method to a friend whose business was always in a precarious condition,' and urged that he could know each month just where he stood. ''Good heavens!" was the reply, "it's bad enough to know once a year how poorly I am doing!" Chambers of Commerce have only recently been dealing with their problems in a scientific manner. Almost any sort of industry was formerly encour- aged to come to a city without regard to the in- dustries already there. Now a few Chambers are relating industries, and seek to group together those 144 WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED 145 industries which depend upon and supplement one another and are most likely to furnish steady em- ployment for all available workers. Our municipal machinery, too, is antiquated and expensive and inefficient. The American church is as up-to-date as the average American city government. And yet I think it is not unfair to say that many churches are drifting along without any definite plan. There are some of us ministers who do not know just what goal we are aiming at, and cer- tainly many church people who have no clear idea of what they ought to bring to pass in the com- munity. There are certain meetings to attend, but few are sure as to their purpose. It has never occurred to the minds of some church people that the church must be subjected to the efficiency test. Indefiniteness is the cause of church failure as well as of business failure. The program that is in use was inherited. For fifty years or more it has gone on with little change. The forms of public worship and of parish activi- ties remain largely unadjusted to present condi- tions. One great church, the Roman Catholic, conducts its services in a foreign tongue unfamiliar to the worshipers. And the worship of Protestant churches is usually not in the language of the peo- ple. Our hymns are nearly all hymns of medita- tion and there are few hymns of action. Our sermons hold to a conventional pattern and are frequently couched in terms that have an unfa- miliar sound. Our themes have too little to do 146 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH with the problems which men must meet daily. To a great many persons who are non-churchgoers and are unused to the phraseology of the pulpit, I am inclined to think that, should they drop in at some churches, the whole service would seem so unlike anything they are accustomed to as to be of no interest to them whatever. To arouse in- terest one must find men where they are; to teach any truth one must build on experience. The maladjustment of the church to its environ- ment is most strikingly illustrated by the fact that the church in the city conducts its public worship and parish activities after the pattern of the coun- try church. Most of our city churches are trying to meet town conditions with an "elaborated coun- try church program." A city church could be moved to some village and pursue its work almost without change; and a village church could be transported bodily to the city and continue to do business just as it did in the country town. But imagine a department store being run on the lines of the general merchandise store at the cross- roads! The church has just begun to realize that the religious problem of the city is as different from the religious problem of the country as the problem of housing the people and of lighting and water and transportation in the city differs from that in the country. The city church needs a city program. The sermon is the chief literary produc- tion of the week in many a country community, and the prayer-meeting is the most important so- WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED I47 cial gathering in many a small village, but the ser- mon and the prayer-meeting alone are not enough to appeal to the city-bred non-churchgoer. A city program is required. I have said that the city does not know the church exists for it, that folks in trouble do not turn to the church because they do not think of it as being there for the purpose of serving and comforting them. To go deeper, churches have not thought of themselves as existing for the com- munity. They have thought of themselves as exist- ing for those who attend church and not for the outsider. That's the reason why the church tears down the old building in a ganglion of population and builds in the suburbs where the churchgoers reside. That's the reason why the church has never seriously grappled with the city problem, why we have been content with the program to which we have been accustomed since childhood, why we have not adopted new methods to meet new situa- tions. "That fact is," says one ^ who conducts suc- cessful workingmen's services in London, "the church has not, as a rule, laid itself out to attract and win men." Second, the church is deficient in its method of propaganda. A highly organized and completely manned evangelistic campaign is our last thing for propagandic purposes. These campaigns have as a rule been disappointing. They have inspired * Rev. J E. Watts Ditchfield, quoted in "Christianity and the Working Class," edited by Haw, p. 24. 148 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH great hopes that cities might be stirred with new religious life, but the result has often been, accord- ing to the testimony of pastors, to break up the habit of regular church attendance and to be an interruption rather than a help. When the evan- gelists have gone they have, with a few notable ex- ceptions, left church people disinclined ever to enter upon an evangelistic enterprise again. In some cases evangelistic meetings are stimu- lating, but they seldom reach those it was hoped they would reach. The prevailing emphasis is upon personal salvation, as it must be, but too little is said of social redemption or the Kingdom of God. There has recently been some change of method, put to the fore by the Men and Religion Forward Movement of 191 1 and 1912, but the usual method still is to deal with vice rather than sin, the petty vices of individuals rather than the great sins of society. Usually a whole meeting is given to amusement, but one has often listened in vain for some deliverance on social maladjustment and in- dustrial wrong. This is not always because the evangelist does not realize that bigger issues are involved in modern life than dancing and the thea- ter, but because he is not equipped to pronounce judgment on the social order. Few ministers are. We preach mainly on personal vices and the minor moralities; the Hebrew prophet spoke of the sins of society — injustice, extortion, poverty and bribery. The pulpit's personal message has a fundamental value, there is no social sin or redemption that is WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED I49 not centered in personal relations, and the Hebrew prophets are not our final model, but nevertheless our evangel has been too individualistic, it has dealt too little with the more complex social sins over which the minds and hearts of men are baffled. It is certainly wise for all preachers to refrain from pronouncements on problems with which they are not familiar, and yet we cannot expect that men will trouble themselves to know what our Gospel has to say until they feel that it grapples with the whole of life. In getting its message to the people the church needs to employ more of the initiative, the intelli- gence and the persistence of the Socialist and the welfare worker. The comparatively small number of men in the Socialist party are succeeding in taking their propaganda to the people far beyond the great organized church. True, they have real opposition to meet, and we only indifference which summons us less loudly to action. But the church, too, is seeking a reconstructed society, and a new earth. The idea of the Kingdom of God is more captivating than that of the Socialistic state. We have a bigger, more compelling gospel than the Socialist and the welfare worker, but we must learn from them how to propagate it. We must invent new machinery for distributing our goods, for getting our message to the people, and must put into our Christian propaganda that enthusi- asm and intelligent earnestness which everywhere bring success. 150 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH And third, the church fails for want of virile leadership. This lack is most obvious in the min- istry. Young men who are qualified for the minis- try and would be expected to enter it are turned aside into other professions. Many men leave col- lege with a real social passion and with the feeling that they must justify themselves for the privilege they enjoy by making some contribution to social welfare. There are not a few whose hearts are flaming with the chivalrous desire to be of service. Wealth does not allure them, they have a fine con- tempt for idleness and softness, social prestige does not attract them, the usual road to political prefer- ment is repulsive to them, and commercial life presents to many of them a rather dull and unin- teresting aspect. They yearn for some such op- portunity for service as the ministry ought to of- fer, but they do not seek the ministry. They do not even take the ministry into account as a possi- ble life-work, and should they enter the ministry it would be contrary to the wishes of the majority of parents. Many reasons might be cited, but the one which is pertinent to this discussion is this : the church is not militant. It does not seem to offer the oppor- tunity for manly service which young men desire. The fact is highly significant that while candidates for the ministry are few, hundreds of students are volunteering for the mission field because of its more heroic call. The most militant thing about the church at home is the phraseology it uses. The WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED I5I church does not match its own announcement of itself as an "army marching on to war." A very shrewd observer has described the church as an army whose best tactics are the tactics of retreat. But whether the church is marching or counter- marching, it is time for it to join battle. It does not now appeal to the heroic and chivalric in young men looking for a life work. Men who want to undertake the very things the church ought to be engaged with do not enter the church. As a matter of fact the ministry is more attrac- tive to-day, and presents a greater opportunity for moral leadership, than in earlier days when most Christian parents wanted at least one of their sons to enter the church and when many young men sought admission to its ministry. At the very out- set a young man of parts has a better chance in the ministry than in any other profession. Many churches seek men because of their youth, while clients and patients avoid them for the same rea- son. A man will go direct from the seminary to a church which at once guarantees him a living, makes reasonable provision for his family, and leaves to him the immense privilege of disposing his time to suit himself. The church gives him a platform and a certain kind of prestige in the com- munity. Of course it can furnish only an oppor- tunity, and the minister must lead by his own right. The minister speaks in public more frequently than the lawyer and so has a chance to mold public thought, and he touches in an intimate fashion as 152 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH many young people as the teacher. Even the work which seems least interesting and valuable, his pastoral calling, may be of the utmost significance as a means of social service. The minister and physician go the same rounds. Both see the sick, though the minister continues his calls when death has followed disease. His most personal ministry is with the sorrowing, the doubting, the lonely and the troubled. His task it is to leave behind in the home, or in the individual heart, hope, courage, faith, and a saner outlook on life, than which noth- ing has a greater personal or social value. The ministry has compensations to which other professions are strangers. The minister cannot make money, but he can make what is better, he can make friends. He has more time for people than the average person, indeed his whole work is with people. He touches life at many points. His social world is larger than that of most men, for the size of a man's social world depends upon the number of different kinds of people with whom he has a point of contact. He has less hack work than those who follow other callings. The man who loves books, who loves to work with ideas and to deal with personalities rather than things, finds opportunity in the ministry for the pursuit of his tastes as in no other profession. And the min- ister has a hearing for what he may have to say, a patient, kindly, attentive hearing. There are few pleasures like that of having an opportunity to communicate oneself, to express the thoughts and WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED 1 53 feelings that are in one, and to see men's faces light up with sympathy as they follow the message. No one has so great an opportunity to shape public opinion and to make the moral tone of the com- munity as the preacher. With the increasing use of type fewer men are able to speak readily, and yet there is no point of contact so effective as the spoken word. As a trained public speaker the min- ister is in constant demand for addresses of all sorts and on all occasions. The ordinary platforms of the press, public meeting and dinner table are all open to him, and his pulpit besides. The minister also has the institution. The church is a tremendous organization and it is in the field. It has immense wealth, magnificent resources and splendid traditions. In its own field there are but two institutions which are in any sense its ri- vals, the Social Settlement and the Young Men's Christian Association. The minister has the ad- vantage over the settlement worker because the man from the settlement has to account for him- self, to explain to the people of the neighborhood why he is there, as the minister does not. The As- sociation offers a magnificent field of usefulness, but it is of narrower range than the ministry, and besides the period of usefulness is shorter, the dead line closer at hand. The community looks to the broad-gauge minister for moral leadership more than it does to the most versatile and competent Y. M. C. A. secretary. The minister's usefulness is limited only by his individual ability and per- 154 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH sonal worth. No other position offers so great an Opportunity for moral leadership as the Christian ministry. And yet few young men are looking to the min- istry for their life work. The same general reason must be operating in the mind of the young men who are fitted for the ministry but have never given it a thought, and in the mind of the Christian parents who do not want their sons to enter the ministry, and in the mind of thousands of ener- getic, enterprising laymen who have lost interest in the church — the church is too conservative and in- ert. The progressive man sees in the church the same thing that he sees in politics, "the organiza- tion." "The organization" in the church lacks en- tirely the sinister purpose of "the organization" in politics, but in either case it "stands pat" and is frankly averse to change. In the church it is made up of the more substantial members, and while etymologically "substantial" means to stand under, practically it often means to stand in front. Church traditions are adhered to and conventional forms of activity maintained. It is difficult to get any new program tried out because of the organization. Young men seeking a life work see how the newer and more productive forms of church ministry are blocked by the organization and they refuse to be so buried. And many virile young laymen with a splendid vision of the church's larger work be- come discouraged and quit the church altogether. WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED I55 because every new departure is obstructed by the standpatters. New leaders are not developed within the church because in most churches the tenure of office is practically for life. The almost inevitable result of permanence in office is conservatism and inertia. Decrepitude isn't a matter of age but of mental habits, and thought shows signs of decrepitude as soon as it becomes institutionalized. So long as the mind is free it is virile and growing, but when it is institutionalized it becomes set and fixed. In too many churches the official mind has become in- stitutionalized. Not a few church officials seem unable to realize that the new situation demands a new treatment. Men who are aggressive, resourceful and daring in their private business often become timid and fearful as soon as they are appointed to the official board of any public institution. If it be a church board it frequently has the effect of robbing men of the power of initiative. They seem to think that their business as church officials is to conserve and not to promote, to hold the church in its traditional position and not to advance. Many a minister is wearing his heart out against inert official boards. The business man is not breaking down to-day and dying young. During the last decade he has learned that he has a body and is taking care of it. Recreation is a part of his business. It is the min- ister and the social welfare worker who are wear- ing out prematurely. Both are borne down by the 156 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH magnitude of their task, and the minister is worn out also by the unreadiness of church people to adapt the program of the church to present condi- tions. Such a revised program as would meet the social and religious needs of the community would attract to the pulpit young men who are thirsting for moral leadership, and to the pews men who want to see things done. The time of the standpatters in politics is pass- ing. The old guard are giving way to younger, more virile, more hopeful men who have not yet lost their ideals. So it should be in the churches. New blood is needed, and a new point of view, in the directing of the church. This can be secured by an inflexible rule for rotation in office. No layman, however efficient, should be allowed to succeed himself when his term of office is com- plete. There are others, men of efficiency, who need to be developed. In every church there are magnificent resources that have never been touched. Give them a trial. If it be shown that the new man lacks powers of leadership he will be retired in turn and the proved man reelected. But try them all out. Blunders, of course, may be made, but blunders are not irreparable. And a blunder- ing advance is better than a retreat that is faultless. In any case men would be less radical if given a turn in office, and others less reactionary if their terms of office were not permanent. While the minister is an expert in church technique he needs the counsel and cooperation of earnest, aggressive WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED 157 men who are as anxious as he to get results. Mis- takes are not to be feared so much as inactivity, and the most common sin of the church is sloth- fulness. The efficiency of the leadership which the minis- ter can give has in very many cases been impaired by the lack of trained assistance. A well-known pastor recently resigned from his parish saying that he couldn't stand the strain. When he took charge of the church it had 200 members, when he resigned there were 800 members, but still he was the sole paid worker. In business such an increase of trade would mean more clerks, stenog- raphers or salesmen. In the church a minister is often penalized for success. For highest efficiency he should have a secretary and such trained help- ers as the situation requires. An adequate office force will release the minister from drudgery, save his time, and set him free for larger and wider leadership. Such an investment is justified by all business experience. The returns of many a church enterprise would be increased fifty per cent, by a twenty-five per cent, increase in the investment. The right sort of leadership, both lay and cleri- cal, will turn the tide and set the church of God mightily forward. If the church means business, if its leaders give themselves intelligently, devot- edly, enthusiastically to its work, it will find no difficulty in getting the hearty support of the men of to-day. For men have not turned from Christ, but from the church. The scorner may scoff at the 158 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH church, but he has the utmost admiration and rev- erence for Christ. Men who call themselves athe- ists speak of Christ as if He were a God. In his diary of a visit to Paris in 1848, Palgrave describes the wrecking of the Tuileries by the infuriated mob. Suddenly they broke into the chapel and saw looking down upon them from the altar the picture of Christ. "Someone cried that everyone should bow his head. The crowd at once did so, and knelt down whilst the picture was carried out through the utmost silence into a neighboring church. Then the suspended wave of destruction rolled on." Such is the instinctive feeling of men for Christ. On Him they pin their faith and trust. If Christ be not Lord then the soul has no master and history no goal. "God may have other Words for other worlds, But for this world the Word of God is Christ." What is needed to change defeat into victory is a real battle in the name of Christ. It is the mili- tant church which attracts red-blooded men and makes leaders. And first there must be a plan of battle. An army cannot be rallied without something to rally them to. A campaign must be laid out. A new program must be constructed for the church. It must be a real enterprise and give promise of success. It must offer something which is vital and worth doing. It is not Christianity but the church which has ceased to attract. No new gospel is needed, but a gospel adapted to present conditions. WHY THE CHURCH HAS BEEN HALTED 1 59 If the church is to bring within its circle all men of Christian feeling and Christian conduct, it must address itself with efficiency to the needs of to-day. It will preach the same old gospel, but must have a new program for carrying it into the life of the city. Men are as loyal to Christ as they ever were, but they cannot be rallied to the church without a plan of battle that gives promise of victory. Such a plan of battle would result in something like the old Crusades. PART III RECONSTRUCTING TH^ PROGRAM CHAPTER I THE EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES Efficiency is an end at which all earnest work- ers have aimed, but efficiency as a science is mod- ern. It is modern even in business. The wealth of this country was obtained during the latter part of the nineteenth century from the exploitation of nature. Forests, mines and soil were robbed of their riches, and in the process the natural re- sources were viciously wasted, for there seemed plenty and to spare. This waste could not go on forever, and during the first decade of the present century wealth had to be sought from a different quarter. It was created from the by-products of industry, from the redeeming of the waste. Of the second decade of the century the characteris- tic is scientific managament. The efficiency test is being applied to business. In some small measure it is being applied to political government, the most belated institution in the American republic. But I suppose there are many who do not quite i6i l62 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH understand what is meant by the application of the efficiency test to the church. To them it does not seem necessary to inquire whether or not the church is efficient, and if the question were raised there would be great confusion in answering it. There is for a church a popular measure of suc- cess, but not of efficiency. If it numbers many ad- herents, if the congregations are large, and par- ticularly if made up of substantial citizens, or if the lack of substantial citizens is offset by many varied activities, and if the bills are all met with- out deficit, the church is counted successful. But an enterprise may be successful without being effi- cient. To be efficient it must not only accomplish the purpose for which it is organized, but in so doing it must also get the largest results that are possible with the resources at hand. A church or a business may be so strong that without much effort or intelligent direction it will measure up to the popular standard of success, and yet at the same time may fall far short of realizing the full possibilities of its resources. Success is not effi- ciency. The trouble in most churches is that we are sat- isfied with too small a measure of success and that efficiency is not even demanded. We have splen- did resources in equipment, in manhood and wom- anhood, but too little result to show for them. The Christian church of America is an organiza- tion so powerful that were it efficient it could ac- complish anything, but with all its resources it is EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES 163 disappointing. We must now follow in the wake of business and apply the science of efficiency. Before doing so it must be understood that an institution may be venerable without being sacred. The most sacred thing is human life. Our concern is not to follow church traditions just because they are venerable and have served a noble purpose in their time, but to find ways in which the church as an institution can minister to the life of to-day. At the same time it must be realized how great is the difference between the church and the field where the science of efficiency is most completely worked out. The church and the factory are not in the same class. There is no way of estimating the cost which goes into the product of the church, or of reckoning its value when turned out. The results accomplished by it are measured only in terms of character and influence and they cannot be tabulated. Statistical estimates mean some- thing, but must be used with caution. "There are some churches fairly dropsical with statistics, and yet of no particular social efficiency," says Profes- sor Mathews, "whereas there are other churches of comparatively small membership, and to which additions are not very numerous, which are of great significance to their communities." ^ The unit of efficiency in a church is not so easy to discover as in a factory. Ordinarily in judging a church one has in mind mainly the ability of the *An address on "Scientific Management and the Church," at Sagamore Beach Conference, 191 1. 164 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH minister, and that not always in a way that is fair to the situation.^ The results that the Bible is con- cerned for — the tests of efficiency which the gospel itself presents — are summarized in a very interest- ing list as "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kind- ness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-con- trol." These fruits of the Spirit are home-grown, and the minister cannot grow them for the people. The pastor cannot love, and be joyful, meek and self -controlled for the church. These are results which the people themselves must produce, and they are not to be measured by statistics. The re- ligious teacher seeks to tell from Sunday to Sunday how one may produce these fruits of the Spirit, but the results rest with the people. Oftentimes he finds too little to show for a year's work. He says that Christianity makes men happy, but a great portion of his people are not happy. He says that Christianity makes people generous, but a great many of those who hear him from Sunday to Sun- day remain ungenerous and selfish. If he could only go through the community and invite the peo- ple, not to hear him preach, but to come and meet his congregation in whom the fruits of the Spirit are evident, come and cast in their lot with these happy, unselfish and loving folk, he would feel that, whatever the nature of his preaching, his was an efficient church. A second difficulty in the way of applying the ^See "Producing Results," by Nolan R. Best in The Continent, January 20, 191 1. EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES 165 efficiency test to the church is in the fact that the workers are for the most part volunteer and un- skilled. In industry the workers are picked and paid. Their efforts are under control. Within certain limits the superintendents and foremen can secure almost any results they desire. But the members of a church are not under orders save from their own conscience, and we have many ways of disposing of that. All depends on the willing- ness of the people in a church to cooperate. It is the minister's task to inspire willingness, but fre- quently he finds the folk indifferent and inert and unresponsive despite all he can do. The minister could wish for nothing better than that men who are at the head of business establishments could exchange places with him for a little while and know how different are the organizations which they lead. One of the aims of scientific management is to center attention upon operation rather than sales. As applied to the church, this means that the effi- cient church must clearly realize first of all the function of the church, the definite purpose for which it exists, and then must direct its operations to the accomplishment of that purpose. The church sprang up spontaneously to take care of the life in which Christianity consists and to pro- tect the work which that life has to do. Jesus left in the world a life to be lived, and the church was to cultivate and to utilize it. The church is foster mother for what we know as the Christian way l66 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH of living. It must develop and direct spiritual life in social service and community helpfulness as well as in individual character. To put it in more sim- ple terms still, the church exists as the modern school exists, for training in manhood and v^oman- hood; not to fit men and women for a distant heaven, but to fit them to live here on earth, not to train them in the service of some absentee God, but in the service of those whom God has given us to love and to serve. The methods to be employed in securing these results must change in different communities. Some churches are in neighborhoods where institu- tional work is demanded ; others where money in- vested in such work would be pure waste. The principle is this, an efficient church must first dis- cover what particular modes of operation are best adapted to secure the desired results in the neighbor- hood where it is situated. Each church must have a program for community service which is made out with special reference to its own community. A study of the community must be made not only once, but frequently, since the neighborhood is al- ways changing, and church activities must be adapted to the needs discovered. To apply the efficiency test fundamentally means to revise our whole idea of "church work." We have used the name only for the few activities within or immediately connected with the church building. The church has by some been set down as accomplishing but small results in comparison- EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES 167 with the cost of maintenance, because the church has been thought of as functioning only in those activities announced in the Sunday bulletin. Many are the meetings and societies and guilds, but the sum total of the work done by such means isn't enough to grow enthusiastic over. This is church work, but it is only a part of the work of the church. If this were all the church has to offer in the way of Christian service we would no longer wonder that it does not attract more, but rather wonder that so many stand by it with such loyalty and devotion. For years I sought to devise some work in the church which would appeal to the heroic and chivalric in young men. Long since I gave it up. Such work is not to be found within the church organizations as churches are at present made up. But, as has been happily said, the church is not the field but the force. The home, the street, the city are the field. The church is only the headquarters where work- ers are trained and where zeal is kindled. Then they must go out from the church and grapple with the city. The church needs to be taught that it is a mis- sionary enterprise; I do not mean in its foreign contributions but in its work here at home. The very life of a church depends on the reaching out to greater conquests and to continued self-sacri- fice. For many, religion has become a gratification rather than a sacrifice. They go to church on Sun- day for what they may get — to enjoy the beautiful l68 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH temple, the dignified service, the music, the preach- ing — and if they do not enjoy it they stay at home. In return for their contributions they expect so much preaching, so much music and so much pas- toral attention. Sometimes they complain that the minister spends a disproportionate amount of time in "outside work." They look upon him as holding a relation to the church similar to that of an attor- ney retained by a corporation to give all his time to its interests. Rather his position should be like that of an attorney retained by a charity organiza- tion or children's aid society who gives his time not to those who put up the money but to those who have need of his services and no money to put up. The church is a missionary enterprise and should subsidize the minister to preach and teach and be a personal counsellor and friend, and then to give such time as he can to the work of the King- dom wherever it most needs to be done. It is not only uneconomic but unchristian for a minister to be required to spend his time and strength in some form of activity that no longer serves a high and worthy purpose, when his time and strength could accomplish so much more for the Kingdom along other lines of service. And that church reflects most of the spirit of Christ which releases its min- ister from "serving tables" and encourages him to take the word to those of no parish or priest, who are as sheep not having a shepherd. It is a poorly constructed factory which requires nine-tenths of the power of its engines to keep it // EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES 169 lighted and heated and to keep in motion its shafts and belts and pulleys, leaving only one-tenth of its ' ^ power for actual work upon the raw material. But about this percentage is true of the churches. Much of our effort is just to keep the machinery going. Church societies are active raising money for current expenses and contributing to the social life of the local congregation. Pastors give their time to the preparation of sermons for people who have heard enough sermons to make them saints if they practiced one in fifty, and to visiting their own protected flocks. Churches are busy saving their lives and counting numbers and making glowing reports of their flourishing statistical condition. But little time and strength are devoted to the raw materials upon which the church is set to work, to the great "unwashed world," as we call it, to the multitudes who have no church, no minister and sometimes no God. A Christian church exists not for itself but for the community. It may not have a great variety of parish activities and its prayer meeting may not be largely attended, but if its members are engaged in community service, if they are occupied with those agencies which are devoted to social better- ment, it is an efficient church. And if they protect the time of their minister and encourage him to do the work of the Kingdom wherever it is most needed, they are following the ideal of a Christian church. There are other communities which are more destitute and other people who have more IB 170 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH need of his counsel and friendship, and when a church supports a minister and sends him out to the neglected and the lonely and friendless and poor, it fulfills its function as a missionary enter- prise. Giving its life it will find it. Of course if the church is to be a force it must be a well-organized one. An army needs drill and routine until it knows how to move compactly and strike effectively. Some ministers who have caught this vision of the church existing for the community have neglected to build up a church which is strong enough and united enough to mean very much to the community. They have gone out like knight errants to do battle with wrong, but with no or- ganized force behind them. Let them take time to build the church into a real brotherhood, fired with their leader's zeal, cemented by Christian love, and with the church back of them they can accomplish a hundred times more than if they go single- handed. The church organization must be submitted to the same standards as any other enterprise. Every institution of the church must meet the test of effi- ciency. And the principle to be applied is this : any meeting or organization in the church which re- quires more energy to keep it going than it con- tributes life and power to the church is uneconomic and should be abolished. In successful business this test is taken for granted. A department may be run at a loss be- cause it is necessary for the efficiency of the whole EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES I7I establishment, and because it attracts the purchasers for other departments. Otherwise the sole question asked is, Does it pay or can it be made to pay ? A church should be run on an equally intelligent basis. Some humdrum tasks must be performed to keep its machinery up to the standard and there must be some committees whose only reason for exist- ence is the welfare of the institution. But most meetings and societies were designed originally for the cultivation of religious feeling and its expres- sion in Christian fellowship and service, and if such a meeting or society doesn't "pay" in moral and religious values it ought to be honestly dealt with. Some traditional forms of church activity may have to be eliminated, but usefulness, not an- tiquity, is the test. We can make no general rule here. Certain kinds of activity may be of value in some communi- ties and may have lost their value in others. But why should they be perpetuated where they have ceased to be useful? What we are after is effi- ciency, not uniformity, and any effort expended in church activity which brings no return has a ten- dency to discourage all effort. It will cost a pang to give up some hallowed institutions which have ceased to be efficient, but that will hurt less than the brain-fag and heartache which it costs to gal- vanize into life what is long time dead. The application of the efficiency test should be- gin with an efficiency exhibit. Very few churches have really faced the question as to how far their 172 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH present activities are meeting the needs of the com- munity. In most cases the pastor is the only one who knows the needs, opportunities, and difficul- ties of the field, and frequently he does not. Charts, diagrams and maps showing the character of the parish and exhibiting the resources of the church with its organized efforts to serve the parish would bring the whole situation before the eye in an enlightening fashion. The fact will at once stand out that the societies of many churches, as has been said, are "like water-tight compartments, which keep it afloat, but urge it on to no port." Much overlapping and duplication and waste in church activities will certainly be revealed. On the basis of this exhibit an efficiency commission may suggest necessary changes in the program, and may plan in a large and progressive spirit for the more efficient performance of the church's task. When this constructive program for community service has been agreed upon, it must be carried out with enthusiasm. The church needs to be pro- moted in the same intelligent fashion and with the same energy and enthusiasm which we find in busi- ness and in sport. Fear of unreality and cant has made men cautious and reticent in religion. In an excess of caution some have thrown out of the window the fire that warms them. But religion is "morality touched with emotion," as Matthew Ar- nold puts it. Fervor and zeal go naturally and in- separably with the religious spirit if it is real. Religion is a public as well as a private affair. EFFICIENCY TEST IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES I73 for it is a way of living. The state of religion is as much a public interest as the condition of poli- tics or of popular education. In so far as we have outgrown superstition there is no reason for hesi- tation in discussing religious questions. Wherever two or three are gathered together, at the club, in the car, on the street, in the home, let all men of good will address themselves to the frank and ear- nest consideration of popular religion. And let the church as the organ of religion be promoted with enthusiasm. CHAPTER II REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES The appeal of the church to the community has been made regularly through two preaching ser- vices and a Bible School on Sunday and a devo- tional service of some sort on a week night. For years these have been the stated "means of grace." So hallowed are they by tradition that it seems sacrilege to raise a question concerning them. But if we are resolved on efficiency we must inquire how far each service meets the needs of the com- munity. Each must stand by itself and be tested according to the special conditions with which each has to deal. The work of a church may be classified under three heads, Christian culture, social service and Christian propaganda. The church must minister to the spiritual culture of its adherents, must fur- nish means for the expression of the Christian feel- ing which it has cultivated, and must propagate Christian truth and win recruits for the Christian way. For the first part of this task the present pro- gram of the church is adequate. In so far as there is any failure in Christian culture that failure is, 174 REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES I75 in my opinion, to be laid mainly at the door of the home. The modern home is not meeting its full responsibility in this matter. Parents do not as a rule instruct their children in the Bible, which is the textbook of the Christian life. In many homes the Bible is an unfamiliar book. Religious instruc- tion of the definite sort has been dropped from our public schools and is passing out of the home. Too much is left for the church to do, but the service it is rendering in the way of Christian cul- ture, while inadequate, is not inefficient. The preaching of to-day averages up to a higher stand- ard than in the pulpit's palmiest days. It is less theological, but not less Biblical. The modern preacher is less an orator, but more a teacher. He is in touch with life as his predecessor was not. He is less dogmatic, but speaks with greater au- thority as to the actual business of living. Criti- cisms which one hears of the church hark back to the childhood of the critic, and many of the loudest critics of the church have not attended it for fif- teen or twenty years. Their criticism is not fair even to the church of the past, for some sermon on heaven or hell heard years ago sticks in the memory, because of its picturesqueness, and bulks more largely than many sermons on forgiveness and neighborliness. Contemporary preaching cer- tainly is not "other-worldly." It addresses itself to this present Hfe. The pulpit of to-day is in many cases seriously grappling with the problems of to-day. To those who give it a patient and con- 176 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH secutive hearing it furnishes guidance and com- fort, courage and hope for right living. I do not want to appear a special pleader, being a preacher myself, but I think those who find the church unprofitable are as a rule they who attend it irregularly and indifferently. Church attendance is for them purely perfunctory. A church service ought to be a meal, but many persons do not go to it as a meal. They do not create an appetite for it by the exercise of their religious faculties. They are not hungry for what the church has to offer. They begin Sunday too late, and church comes too near to breakfast, so that to arrive at church even after the service is well under way requires hurry. The quiet and peace of the day have had no chance to find them, before they are confronted with the sermon. They reach their pews not in the spirit of worship. The preacher has first to win their attention and then create a sympathetic atmosphere and then convince and persuade. Too much is asked of the preacher when he is expected in thirty minutes to get hold of restive, preoccupied minds which for the whole week have given no thought to the deepest problems of living. It is not through any radical reconstruction of the church program that Christian culture is to be better provided for, but through a more thoughtful and persistent and reverent use of the services set apart for public worship. And the services of the church must be counted as tributary to the stimulating and hallow- ing Christian influence of the home. REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 177 There are churches where two cultural services on Sunday are necessary. Many persons in some churches may be unable to attend at one hour but can at another. But in the average church one preaching service for purposes of Christian culture is enough. Two sermons a Sunday of the same general type are not needed by the average church- goer, for there is so much preaching to-day apart from the pulpit. The magazines, the modern book, even the newspapers are preaching. Every man who has the ear of the people these days is preach- ing. And for the minister to preach to the same people two sermons a Sunday for Christian culture is a useless expenditure of effort which might be more wisely directed to other ends. Sunday af- ternoon and evening services belong mainly to the post-reformation period. Protestantism did for Sunday what the Jewish Exile did for the Sab- bath. Originally a day of cessation from toil, it became in each case exclusively a day for religious observances. The Calvinist and Puritan put the ban on all Sunday recreation and play. Walking and driving were a sin unless they took one to church. It is easy to believe that for the sake of a walk or drive on Sunday, even the three sermons which were often served up on a single day would be welcome. As late as the last generation the long, vacant Sunday of the country, with no novels, no magazines, no papers, no travel or recreation was greatly enriched by a second church service. There are some communities where this is still true. 178 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and others were the women of the working class cook the one hot dinner of the week on Sunday and can attend church only in the evening. But in the average church the whole congregation can attend the morning service, those who go to church at all are present in the morning, and the historic Sunday night service is kept going only with an effort. The energy that has to be put forth by minister and people for the Sunday night service is usually out of all proportion to the good accom- plished. It goes without saying that acts of religion should not be confined to Sunday. We go to church on Sunday rather than Monday because it is the day when we are free from the daily exac- tions of toil. We go to church on Sunday that we may be helped to keep the week-days holy. But Sunday is not merely for church-going. It is the day of the week in which to preserve the balance of life. As the spirit receives little attention dur- ing the week, Sunday is first of all for spiritual culture. If the mind has had no chance for growth, Sunday is also the day for study and good reading. If the body has grown tired, it is the day for rest and proper recreation. If one has had no time to be with his family or to see his friends, it is the home day, the day to be in the company of friends and loved ones, with careful regard for those who may be serving in the home. Sunday was made for man, the whole man. No one side of his na- ture ought to be neglected, and Sunday is to be REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 1 79 used to restore the lost balance of the week. The two institutions whose claim on the day of leisure stands foremost are the home and the church. Each should minister to the other. In many a community an early Sunday morning service .corresponding somewhat to the Roman Catholic early mass would meet a real need. There are a number of Protestant servants who cannot get to the regular church service and who do not have even Sunday evening to themselves. Also there are persons who feel they cannot take a whole day during the week for recreation who on Sunday go out into the country for a day on foot or in automobiles. Such Sunday trips are sources of great enjoyment and profit and are not wrong save as they interfere with public worship. It would be futile, if desirable, to try to keep such folk altogether from their Sunday in the country when the weather is fine and the out-of-doors is inviting. But these Sundays out-of-doors not only lack the important element of social worship but break in upon the church-going habit so that in the autumn when the people are at home once more on Sundays it takes them many weeks to get back to church, and sometimes the break becomes permanent. While a church service which closes at noon keeps persons at home for most of the day, they might be very willing to attend a brief service of worship at some earlier hour in the morning. Probably there would not be enough people in any community to require an early ser- l8o THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Vice in every Protestant church, but the churches of a neighborhood could cooperate, holding the ser- vice in one church for one month and in another for the next. By some such means all could be pro- vided an opportunity for worship and the church- going habit preserved. I am aware that some will scoff at the idea of adjusting church services so as to accommodate those who want to spend Sunday in the country, but we may as well face the facts. In many cases it is a question of whether the church will continue to minister as it can to many who need it, or lose altogether the place it has occupied in their lives, and it must be remembered once more that folk were not made for the church but the church for folk. The Sunday evening service of the average church should be specifically for purposes of prop- aganda.^ It should aim to get the ear of those who will not attend the morning service and are not yet ready for the cultural type of sermon. It should be entirely different in method and message from the morning service. Save in exceptional cases two services of the same kind are unproduc- tive and wasteful. The objective of the evening service should be to commend the Christian re- ligion to those without the church. It should be enough unlike the conventional morning service to appeal to an entirely different group, even if it be so unconventional as to repel present churchgoers. *See Chapter 3. REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES l8l Those who attend in the morning should not be put under a feeling of obligation to attend in the evening unless they come to assist. The largest latitude may be taken in this second service for it must be made to serve its purpose or should be discontinued. It is not for those who have well-formed habits of church-going, but it is for the purpose of turning to the church those who usually pass it by. Since these are not attracted by present methods, the law of efficiency requires that other methods be employed. Somehow the non-churchgoer must be reached, and the conserva- tive members of the church must either adjust themselves to all manner of innovations or agree that their church is unequal to the task of reaching the outsider. There is a feeling among ministers that to depart from conventional methods is un- professional and undignified. We have shunned what might be called sensational features lest it be considered an acknowledgment of failure. It seems to me that to persist in using a method which fails is worse than turning to another which may succeed, and one has only to look over the congre- gation at the average second service and count those who are not loyal church members, to see how far it has failed as a propagandist meeting. Isn't it better to admit a fact than to have it flaunted in one's unwilling face every Sunday night? We are tyrannized over by professional- ism. We are in unspeakable dread of being thought sensational. In our ministerial gather- l82 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH ings we have piously admonished one another not to seek the crowd. Well, that depends on whether we are self-seeking or seeking men for Christ's sake. I verily believe that many a minister is breaking his heart over not getting the ear of the people, and that it is for the souls of men he agon- izes. He walks along the crowded streets or rides in a crowded car and says to himself, "Where are all these people on Sunday? Why can't we win them for Christ and the church?" and it is love for them, not for self, which prompts him. He sees the number increasing who never hear the Christian message from a pulpit, and his spirit is troubled. Not only does he question the reality of his task, but he questions if he is carrying out the command of Christ which was to preach the gospel to every creature. The minister is kept in bondage to tradition and to the conventional notions of his people. He realizes that the present methods are not effective, but fears to change them, or his church is afraid. Have we not come to a pass where we must throw off all fear except the fear of inefficiency? If the church is not to be content just to hold its own, if we are going to keep to the church as a means of propagating the Gospel, then the masses of peo- ple must be gotten into the habit of coming to the church. There are many things not vicious in themselves which bring people together, and these should be used to get them together in the church. The line to draw is not against the unconventional REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 183 but against the ineffectual or the immoral. Within this line sensational methods are not only permissi- ble but obligatory, for the responsibility is upon us to attract the attention and arouse the interest of the people. There are methods which are color- less so far as moral values are concerned, but which do bring folk together, and not one of these should go untried. Our first task is to get the church within the field of consciousness of the masses of people, to bring it to their notice so that they will be conscious of its presence and will come once more to reckon with it as a factor in the life of the city. The alternative is inescapable: either we must get the people to church, or abandon the churches for propagandic purposes. Many churches are so situated that a purely propagandic service in the church building would be futile. The tendency to place churches in the residence districts occupied by church people is rapidly contributing to this end. In such cases the second service should be discontinued. It is far better to have one strong, adequate, well-attended service than to have a second which is unworthy of the church. If the evening service is not filling a real need, the efficiency test requires that it shouldn't be held. Let the church in the residence district discontinue the second service if it cannot adequately sustain it, and encourage the Sunday evening at home. Many a minister, released from the second ser- vice where it is only a burden to pastor and people. 184 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH could accomplish much more for the Kingdom in some other way. In those communities where Sun- day is the only evening men may be found at home with their families, if the minister were able to spend this evening in the homes of his people it would mean far more than for him to be preach- ing to a handful in the church. In rural districts and industrial neighborhoods particularly, Sunday afternoon and evening offer many points of contact between minister and people which are to be found no other day, and capital use could be made o£ them by the minister if he were freed from the present ineffectual evening service. But unless it is engaged in Christian propaganda, a church is performing only a part of its function. Should there be no occasion for it in the immediate neighborhood, some other point of contact in some other part of the city will need to be found. In not a few cases the church may be well situated to reach the non-churchgoing population, and yet through tradition or prejudice the church building may itself be a barrier. In either case the obvious thing to do is to make use of a hall or theater where people go easily and naturally. The morning service will, of course, continue to be held in the church edifice and be attended by the regular congregation, but the propagandic meeting should be held where the ear of the non-churchgoer can be had. This is not in any way to be regarded as a desertion, but rather an extension of the church. As university extension takes the university to those who cannot attend the REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 185 class room, so the church if it means business must reach those who are not touched through present agencies. Models for such meetings are at hand; but the discussion of distinctly propagandic methods is reserved for another chapter. Many churches are so situated that to give one entire service on Sunday to propaganda and only one to Christian culture would be disproportionate, as most of the people who might be reached by the church are now nominal Christians. In a large number of churches tradition is so powerful that a second service, even though not needed in its present form or as an exclusively propagandic meet- ing, will continue to be held. It may be made useful and efficient, however, as there is great need to-day for a new type of religious service. The two-fold purpose of public church meetings is Christian culture and propaganda. The element of worship has large and permanent value in spirit- ual culture and must always be provided. The other large factor is moral and religious instruc- tion, which is now given through the sermon after the lecture method employed in many undergradu- ate classrooms. But most church attendants are of post-graduate age and the seminar method is bet- ter suited to them. The standing complaint against church services is that one man does all the in- structing and that the people have no chance to ask questions or to offer a different opinion. We must have trained teachers of religion as we have spe- cialized teachers in college and university, but the l86 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH college teacher deals with the young while the teacher of religion speaks to men who are older and often wiser than he. The preacher has special train- ing and equipment for his work, but, after all, ex- perience of God is the greatest teacher,^ and a con- sensus of opinion on moral questions would come nearer the truth than the judgment of the wisest man in the group. Hence I am convinced that to give vitality and effectiveness to religious instruc- tion we must make more of the seminar method. In churches not too rigidly bound by tradition and in which but one public service is held on Sun- day, I surmise that in the next five years that ser- vice will be so reorganized as to provide for a half hour of worship, with the aid of ritual and other adjuncts that appeal to the imagination — corre- sponding broadly to the mass of the Roman church and the litany of the Anglican church — this to be followed by a half-hour of definite moral instruc- tion or religious appeal by the minister, and then a half-hour of earnest conference and discussion with regard to our common Christian duty. When the Socialists rose to ask a question or state an hon- est opinion in the churches of New York they were promptly ejected and the church-going world was properly scandalized, whereat the anti-church folk were strengthened in their conviction that the church is afraid of the truth and insists on peace and re- spectability at any cost. The methods that were used on both sides are to be deprecated, but the *I Cor. 2:10-16. REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 187 episode points out the way, if the church really wants to reconcile those who are hostile to it and get its gospel to all in a form that they will hear. By some such method as is here suggested we may create a vital interest in what we have to say from the pulpit, get at the hearts of the people, and arrive nearer to the truth ourselves. Where the Sunday morning service is too decorous to allow such an exchange of opinion, the Sunday evening service at least could be made use of in this manner. Such a service backed by a high moral purpose would have both a cultural and a propagandic value. It would give the minister an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings, new light would be thrown on phases of the subject about which there is con- fusion, and it would bring into the church many who now sincerely question its honesty and fairness and fearlessness of the truth. Those who are now hostile to the church, having uttered their protest, could be reasoned with and where they are in the wrong robbed of their protest, and made from ene- mies to friends. But perhaps most important of all, such a service would give reality to our preach- ing. The knowledge that it may be challenged would make us careful of our statements, and to know that the sermon is to be followed by discus- sion would insure the selection of themes which have a place in the thought and life of our hearers. Then we would speak more in the terms of experi- ence and be less concerned to build sermons, how- ever beautiful, around themes of remoter interest. 1 88 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH A few weeks ago I heard a really great preacher preach to a large evening audience of unspeculative people on Micah's mighty word, "What doth God require of thee?" and he spent most of his time on the verses that precede, which are of only his- torical interest, and in telling what true religion is not, leaving only a few minutes in which to speak of justice and mercy and humility before God. That's the fault of most of our sermons. They are all vestibule and no fireside, we spend too much time without and too little where folk live, we repeat over and over the generalities on which all are agreed and do not grapple with the big problems of human relationship over which men are vexing their souls. It would be a great gain if we ministers were under necessity to find themes that can be discussed, themes which would touch the hearts of men, and move them to ask a ques- tion or offer a protest.^ So much has been written about the reorganized Bible School that little needs to be added here. The results accomplished in the Sunday School compare very favorably with those of the public school when we take into account the fact that teachers in the former are volunteers and untrained, that ^A good substitute for such a service is a quiz club after the sermon. Let the congregation be asked to re- main and discuss what has been said. Then the minister can say much in an intimate fashion that he could not say in the sermon, and answer questions. The result will be a better understanding and closer sympathy between the preacher and the people. REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 189 they have but a bare half -hour a week v^Ith their classes, and that they haven't the cooperation of the parents as have the day school teachers. But there is yet much to be desired in the direction of effi- ciency. In some parts of the country the children are given the worst hour of the day, from twelve to one, an hour when no classes are held in the public schools or the college. The church may be spending from two to four thousand dollars a year for music, but should a salaried superintendent or trained teachers be asked for it would be set down as extravagance. The most certain way of reaching the masses of people outside of the church is through the children. Let the children be reached and interested and the church problem for the next generation is solved. A less niggardly policy must certainly be adopted, and the Bible School must have trained and efficient leadership. As school children have Saturday for rest the time of the Sunday School might very properly be increased to an hour and a half or two hours in the after- noon and the session made to produce consecutive and permanent impressions on the life of the child. The week-night meeting is the most difficult prob- lem to deal with because its function is less clearly defined. The Sunday morning service is for Chris- tian culture, with its main dependence upon social worship and the sermon which should be both edu- cational and inspirational. The Sunday School is also cultural by way of Bible study. The Sunday evening service is for purposes of propaganda. But 190 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the purpose of the week-night meeting is rather vague and uncertain. In most Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches provision is made for certain week-day services. These are for prayer and praise and though at- tended by few the service is not as a result im- paired, as the priests and choir are the chief par- ticipants. In most Protestant churches in America of the type known as evangelical, week-night meet- ings of a very different character are held. Origi- nally they were mainly for prayer in which the minister was only the leader and guide, but to-day it is the exceptional church in which such a service can be held week after week with profit. The prayer meeting had its origin in a revival. It was adapted for the expression of spiritual forces set in motion under revival conditions. When the time of revival passed the church retained the form of meeting which had been found useful in revival times. The prayer meeting became institutionalized. In many quarters the institution has lost its spantaneity and reality, and the efficiency test requires an examina- tion of its present value. The question here raised is not, however, a new one. Years ago Dr. John Hall, addressing the New York Ministerial Association in the old Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, said: "The prayer meeting is an effort, a praiseworthy effort, yet, I think, a futile effort, to maintain in ordinary times an atmosphere that would be normal only in re- vival times. It professes to speak for religion on REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES I9I the emotional side. If men are deeply and strongly emotional by nature, and if, being of that tem- perament, they have just been consciously and soundly converted from sin, then it would be nat- ural for them to testify, to speak out of a full heart. All of us would rejoice in this, but unfortu- nately, these conditions are not precisely met in the average church prayer meeting. Those who take part are not usually recent converts, and their Christian life, while it may be sincere, humble and tender, is not a deeply emotional life. And the ef- fort to make it appear such is really fraught with spiritual peril." ^ In the young church of Korea and Africa the prayer meeting has the power and efficiency which characterized it under revival con- ditions here at home, for there the atmosphere is appropriate. But in many churches here at home we are striving vainly for a product without the conditions which produce it. The average week- night service is a cross between a college lecture, a preaching service and a prayer meeting proper, and it is often far from edifying. Some ministers recognize that they are failures in the conduct of a week-night meeting, and some congregations frankly will not attend or participate in such a meet- ing in any worthy fashion. The facts ought to be honestly faced. If the prayer meeting requires more energy to keep it going than it contributes *This comment of Dr. Hall is quoted from memory by the Rev. J. S. Riggs, to whom I am indebted for the refer- ence. 192 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH life to the church, it is uneconomic and should be abandoned. If it is dreary, perfunctory, cold and lifeless, and if pastor and people cannot make it otherwise, its continuance is belittling to the whole church. To relinquish the week-night meeting is not to acknowledge defeat. At any rate it is better to recognize that a church is not adapted to this spe- cial kind of activity than to spend time and strength in a futile effort to do the impossible. Here again we are in bondage, and this time to a phrase. We cower under the saying that the prayer meeting is "the spiritual pulse of the church." It is not! There are many churches of great value to the com- munity whose week-night meeting is not short of pathetic, and in every church of which I know anything, some of the most devoted and dependable and efficient members cannot be made to attend the prayer meeting. Where the life and energy of a church can more easily and naturally express itself in some other way, it is the part of wisdom to find that other way. A week-night meeting which is perpetuated because of custom and tradition, though it fills no present need, is a positive source of weakness in the church. First of all, we must free ourselves from this feeling that the mere fact that a prayer meeting is held has any essential value. The value consists wholly in the contribution it makes to the life of the church. That depends upon the kind of meeting that is held and upon the special characteristics of each church. In some churches REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES I93 the week-night meeting serves a large purpose, in others none. In many communities it is more effec- tive to separate the sexes when the minister wishes to come into more close and intimate touch with his people. In mixed meetings there is an em- barrassment or conventionalism which disappears when men and women meet separately. In their own societies women speak out and one knows what they think. At a gathering of men only there is reality and straightforwardness, and one has the chance to make a religious impression which is lack- ing in the mixed gathering. In churches where the prayer meeting is not a factor in the church life, it should without hesitation be displaced by some- thing more efficient. In some churches it is better, outside of the services for public worship, for men and women to work apart and without any attempt to maintain a weekly meeting attended by both sexes. Second, where the week-night meeting is main- tained we must find for it a place that is intrinsic to the life of the church. The feeling that it must be held every week, whether it meets any need or not, goes far toward taking the heart out of it. The mere holding of a week-night meeting at irreg- ular intervals, whenever the occasion may suggest it, would tend to give it spontaneity and genuine- ness. If also it could be planned to meet some present demand, the week-night meeting would be- come vital. But to preempt one evening each week for the same small group and for the same kind 194 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH of meeting throughout the year is out of all pro- portion. In a factory there are times of the year to prepare samples, times to send out salesmen and times to crowd the plant to its full capacity. Could not similar seasonal requirements be regarded in the week-night meeting ? There are times when the people need to assemble for united prayer, as dur- ing Lent. There are times for conference and plan- ning, as at the beginning of the church year. There are times for thanksgiving, times for confession, times for study, times for the cultivation of socia- bility. If the week-night meeting could be made to serve an immediate purpose, to meet a contempo- rary need, it would be far more sincere. The assembling of the people during the week for some specific and appropriate purpose is a real gain. To concentrate upon one night of the week, and as far as possible to move to this night all the activities which should interest the whole church is an immense advantage. All meetings are religious which bring the people together for mutual acquain- tance and uplift. A church social, a church supper, a business meeting of the congregation, should be as religious as a prayer meeting. By holding such meetings as these on the Church Night it would be made the rallying point for all the interests of the church. Variety would be assured if Church Night were used to express the whole range of the church's interests and needs. One week a church supper would be held. Another week the great missionary REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES IQS enterprise would be presented by the men's mis- sionary committee, by an outside speaker, or by the women's missionary society. One night would be given to Bible study in a larger way than is possible in Sunday School. Another week a real social gathering of the church would take place. The next week-night would be set apart for the study of social conditions and a better understand- ing of the city's life. Another would bring a lec- ture, or an old-fashioned prayer meeting, or an entertainment, or preparatory sermon for the com- munion, and so on. This plan would bring dif- ferent groups of people to church of a week night, which is an advantage, for it would bind a larger number more intimately to the church. By con- centrating all such activities into one evening, every week of the month might be used, but when the actual needs of the congregation have been met, no eflfort should be made to hold every week in the year a week-night meeting just for the sake of having a meeting. Church Night must not be gal- vanic. If it cannot be given an intrinsic value the week-night meeting were better given up. Any in- stitution of the church impairs the church's useful- ness which does not meet the test of efficiency. If it is really needed it can be made efficient. In most congregations there is a vital need for a greater familiarity with the Bible. Where it is not necessary to appeal to such varied interests as above suggested in order to get the people to attend, the week-night meeting could best be used for care- 196 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH fully planned courses of Bible study. To make the work of the Bible School more efficient the teachers should be given some assistance in the preparation of the lesson, and in churches that do not have a weekly teachers' meeting this might be done at the regular week-night gathering. As it is out of all proportion to give two entire services each week to the study of the few verses of Scripture chosen for the Bible School lesson, the best plan is to spend fifteen minutes at the week-night meeting for the preparation of the lesson and thirty minutes in some independent course of Bible study, the whole to be preceded or followed by fifteen minutes of devotion. To understand the position here taken with ref- erence to the prayer meeting requires in the reader considerable openness of mind; and understanding does not mean agreement. The writer realizes that there is a singular loyalty and disloyalty toward this historic meeting of the church. When, in order to bring the matter to an issue in his congregation, he asked for a discussion and vote as to whether the prayer meeting be continued or discontinued, many of those who were most sure that it should be continued were persons who never attend them- selves. He knows that in writing what you have just read, some will feel that he has laid rude hands on the ark of the covenant. It is just this feeling that he would like to help dispel. The week-night meeting, no matter how fortified by tradition and walled about by custom, must meet the efficiency test. What I have written has been written to REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES 197 rescue ministers and churches from feeling that they are a failure when their week-night meeting does not come up to expectations. I believe profoundly that the people of a church ought to meet as a church at other times than on Sunday. The Sunday services are too formal to serve as a medium of expression for all the life of the church. We liken non-episcopal churches to a family and speak of the church as our church home, but the Sunday services of public worship corre- spond to nothing in the family life — not even the family altar which is still set up in some homes. A properly conducted week-night meeting is the near- est approach to the intimate and reciprocal life of the family. Public worship is too impersonal. The congregation may become somewhat acquainted with the soul of the minister on Sunday, for the pulpit is the preachers' confessional, but there is little chance for spiritual comradeship with one an- other. I know that we find it increasingly difficult to talk with one another about the things of the spirit, because of a growing dislike for insincerity and cant. There have been some hypocrisy and assumption of superiority and spiritual immodesty in the prayer meeting. Things have been said that weren't true or, if true, shouldn't have been said, and prayers which were known not to be the ex- pression of a devoted life have deterred others from public prayer. The dread of cant has led many actually to disguise their feelings. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we are greatly the losers because 198 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH we are such strangers to one another In the things of the spirit. Most of our conversation is about commonplace themes. Malachi could not say to- day : "They that feared the Lord spoke often one to another.*' ^ We do not speak to one another out of our experience of God. We Christians are a bit ashamed of God, as the Mohammedan, for ex- ample, is not. Very seldom do we talk about God and of what He desires of us. Real conversation, which is a great commerce of soul with soul, is almost a lost art. On the common levels we talk readily enough; on the high levels we walk silent and alone. Our best friends are spiritually strangers to us. We know each other after the flesh but not after the spirit. Now this is a sad loss, for all need sympathy and understanding and comradeship in the big things of life. We must therefore domesticate religion, humanize It. We ought to talk more about the things of God. An old rabbi said: "If two sit together and speak not of the law then they are a company of mockers of whom it is said, 'Sit not where the mockers sit' ; but If two sit together and speak of the law then Is the Sheklnah present with them." In ordinary conversation we ought to speak easily and naturally of the things of the spirit, but certainly in the church there should be real religious fellowship. The week-night gathering is the time par excellence for the cultivation of religious fel- lowship. And if we have no great experience of * Malachi 3:16. REORGANIZING THE CHURCH SERVICES I99 which we can talk, then through the practice of prayer and the study of the Bible — the great litera- ture of the spirit — and the culture of our own souls, we should learn that *'fear of the Lord" out of which we may "speak often one to another." CHAPTER III A MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH The psychology which lies back of the revival idea is absolutely correct. Conversion is the break- ing of old life habits and the forming of new and better ones. A man's relation to Christ depends on moral considerations rather than intellectual ones, and to become a Christian means not to think differently so much as to live differently. There are few men who do not in their hearts believe that the Christian way of living is the best, who do not really mean some day to commit them- selves to it. But many are like a ship outside the harbor which draws too much water to get over the sandbar. Something keeps them from a definite de- cision. A high tide of religious feeling is often need- ed to lift them over the difficulty. This impetus is supplied in a revival meeting where feeling runs higher than usual and it is certainly legitimate to make use of these waves of feeling since the decision is in the right direction. Under emotional stress men arrive at the decision which they have desired to make but were kept from by timidity or evil habits or inertia. That revival experiences have in them an element of suddenness is what the psychologist expects. 200 MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 201 This element of suddenness belongs to every spirit- ual rebirth, as to every physical birth; there is a moment at which the new being is, before which it was not. The soul does not expand by arith- metical or geometrical progression. For long stretches in the life of the soul there seems to be no change, and then under the right sort of stimulus it makes a plunge forward; a new resolution is formed, a new choice arrived at, a new ideal set up, and a new era entered upon. The religious life is just as natural as the in- tellectual and develops by growth, but both the religious and the intellectual life have their new beginnings in a definite decision. If the intellectual life is to grow beyond what we may call natural culture, that is the culture which one acquires inci- dentally in the very business of living, it must start with a decision. If one is to be an educated man he must first make up his mind to be such, and he is greatly helped by making a "profession" to that end, that is by enrolling as a student and matriculating in some school or college. So en- trance into a vitally religious life depends upon definite volition. One must "strive" to enter into the Kingdom of heaven as into the kingdom of culture. But if the break with the past is to be permanent, one must be carried beyond the point of decision. For the forming of new life habits Professor James lays down this as the first and most important maxim : launch yourself with "as strong and decided 202 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH an initiative as possible." Here is the psychological principle upon which the revival is based. By defi- nite and repeated emphasis and by holding an idea long enough before the attention, a decision is won, a resolution is formed. The impression made must then be set, the resolution must be fixed. The new impulse will carry one farther if it is expressed in some act. So the evangelist gets men on their feet or into an inquirers' room, or to do anything which will translate the decision into an action. It is of the utmost importance to get the man who would break with his past to commit himself irre- trievably to the Christian way. He must reinforce his resolution by some act that will lay on him the necessity to do more. He is more sure not to retreat from his purpose if, like Caesar in Gaul, he burns his bridges behind him. The revival meeting, like the political campaign, is not only for the winning of new recruits ; it is to increase the interest and heighten the loyalty of those who already ''belong." Those who have grown sluggish and indifferent must be stimulated. The evangelistic campaign is as necessary for both purposes as the political campaign. All this to show how heartily the writer believes in the principle of the revival. But the revival as it is to-day serves but the one purpose, to stimulate church-goers. As a method of propaganda the revival has come to be a failure. Even the highly organized evangelistic campaigns of the present time do not reach those MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 20^ they are intended to reach. To get the ear of the "unconverted" requires a man of almost hypnotic powers Hke Dwight L. Moody, or of great eccen- tricity like Sam Jones or Billy Sunday. But Moodys are few and imitations of Jones or Sunday are caricatures. The average evangelist spends his time calling the righteous to repentance. Many of them are in sad enough need of repentance, but he does not know what it means for "the righteous" to repent. His training does not fit him to lead in the great movement for social readjustment. His message does not stir the social conscience and deepen the sense of civic responsibility in those he gets together, and the revival method has almost collapsed. So inadequate is the method that the noble word "evangelism" has fallen into disrepute. Most church men will throw up their hands helplessly when asked to take part in evangelistic work. We need not only a new method but a new terminology. A convenient and suitable word appears at the head of this chapter, Propaganda. It is a popular term. Its meaning is clear. It isn't used in the narrow sense in which the far grander word evan- gelism has come to be used. It does not suggest to the church worker what seems to him an impos- sible task and strikes no resentment from the breast of the unevangelized. Our propaganda work has already taken us out- side the churches. If the people will not come to church the Gospel message must be carried to 204 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH them. Shop-meetings held at the noon hour when the men and women have had their lunch, are the latest development. I have spoken with some satis- faction at shop-meetings and I know the devotion of shop-workers. But it is bad psychology to carry on a propaganda after this method. The shop speaker has to overcome mental hostility in his audience. The question at once arises in the mind of the workmen, Why is he here? Who invited him? Who sent him? The audience will be cour- teous and respectful and the speaker may have their attention and interest, but he will have to win it. Certainly no shop-meeting should be held unless the request for it come from the workmen them- selves. It may be necessary to put it up to the men indirectly, but they should apparently take the initiative. No meeting should be held in a factory solely by permission of the proprietor or superin- tendent. It takes a very adroit speaker to overcome the handicap of a meeting in a shop. The men and women are in their working clothes, and working clothes are the badge of a class. Before they go on the street they lay off their overalls and remove all marks of toil, which shows that they meet the out- sider more easily when they aren't dressed in over- alls. In America the worker prefers to have on street garb when he meets others than his factory mates. My best friends among the craftsmen seem a little embarrassed when I run across them in their working clothes, just as no woman likes to MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 205 be seen by callers when dressed for the kitchen. If it were put to a vote whether any visitors should be shown through the factory or not, the opera- tives would always vote against it. Much less do they want visitors at the place where they work who come to preach to them and to do them good. We must go to the people, must find them where they are, but it is much better psychology to go to them on the streets, in the parks, or at public re- sorts, even though we may have to compete with more noise or greater distractions. They are at a disadvantage in the factory. They aren't dressed as we are. They can't get away. They are under constraint as unwilling hosts. They haven't time to answer back. They probably have the feeling that they are being treated as a class, that they are victims of a benevolent hold-up, that they are be- ing talked down to. On the street, in a public park or hall they are not classified. They meet their fellows as equals. And they can run if they want to. Therefore they are much more ready to listen with an open mind. Every propaganda depends for its success on its ability to create the impression that it is disinter- ested, and this is where most propagandists fail. Chambers of Commerce to-day are working for the well-being of the whole community, realizing that the interests of the employer and employee are at bottom one, but the workers are incredulous. Al- most every effort of these organizations made up largely of business men is by the laboring people 206 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH received with suspicion, and they are popularly- dubbed "Chambers of Horrors." Many of the working group are inhospitable even to the "safety first" crusade and are slow to cooperate, because they think of it as primarily for the purpose of pro- tecting the employer who is now being made liable for accidents. A new banner was borne in the Labor Day parades of the year 1914 with this de- vice, "We object to physical examinations." Most of the men in line were fit and could stand any physical test, but they object to what seems to them a new means for the elimination of the less fit from industry and the consequent increase of non-em- ployment. Nor does the church escape the same suspicion of having self-interest at stake. We are flatly charged with the commercial spirit and it is said that our first concern is to build up an organization and swell our revenues. Those we want to reach with our propaganda do not understand us and even if they give us a hearing they are not easily to be per- suaded. Our first problem is to convince men that we are disinterested. Not since the Civil War were men so serious and solemn as now, and our evan- gelism will succeed if we make folks understand that its object is to conserve human life and char- acter and to improve the morality and the general well-being of the community. Our good news must be told as if it were valuable to those who hear and not as if their acceptance of our message might prove of value to the church we represent. MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 207 The gospel which all the welfare agencies and the "safety first" crusaders are preaching will be heard and heeded if they make men realize their disinterestedness. If therefore all the welfare agen- cies, with their genuine zeal for human conservation and their various contributions to the "way of sal- vation," if all the forces for the prevention and re- demption of human waste were to combine for propagandic purposes, they would help one another to be understood. To link together the propaganda of the physician, the dentist, the social worker, the Chamber of Commerce and the church would con- stitute an evangelism which would be statesmanlike, constructive and effective.^ The noon-hour in the shop could be made use of for such a campaign without the psychological ob- jections above mentioned, if on successive days men would speak of tuberculosis, religion, venereal dis- ease, the care of the teeth, the menace of the fly, the loan-shark evil, domestic art and such like. It would be very easy to interest the men of one or two shops in shop meetings of such general char- acter and soon all the shops would be demanding them. The result would be, in my judgment, that the larger and better shops would have special physicians whose business it is to examine all the employees, to see that they are given the kind of employment which will not aggravate some present physical weakness and to safeguard their health, as is now the case in some factories. Also I believe ^This program is now being tried out in Rochester. 208 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH that in many shops the men would select some min- ister to be the counsellor and friend of the shop, to whom they could go for help in their personal and family problems. But without some such al- liance of all the better forces of the community, gospel shop meetings will be successful only in spots. Our evangelism must differ from these other forms of evangelism in the degree of the passion back of it. The dentist cares, the man fighting con- tagious disease cares, the safety-first worker cares, the social purity crusader cares ; we must care more. In so far as a healthy soul is more important than a sound body and an unclean spirit is more to be dreaded than tuberculosis, in so far must we be more passionately in earnest than they. The churches must make men feel that they care. Many persons, especially among the poor, fancy that the church doesn't care, and there is but one thing which can change their feeling: men and women in the church whose hearts ache with love and understand- ing and sympathy for every brother man and sister woman, even the drunkard and the woman of the street. We can win for God those for whom we care as Jesus did. It is passion that reaches the human heart and saves the world. The best opportunity for people's meetings is the place which they have come to of their own voli- tion and can leave at will. The church must resort to street preaching if it would reach the masses, and the success of such meetings will be assured if com- bined with similar meetings by other welfare work- MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 20g ers. It is not enough for one or two ministers to use this method, for they will be penalized by that desperate epithet "sensational"; all the ministers must be at it. To do the work effectively we need twice as many lay-preachers as ordained, but the ordained men must be used in order to show that the church itself has entered upon a determined campaign of propaganda. The Socialists are more intelligent propagandists than we churchmen. They hold noon meetings in connection with shops, as do other political parties, but never inside. The men come and Hsten on their own volition. The most successful propaganda work of the socialists is not through meetings ; it is by the use of literature and by personal appeal. Tons of literature are sent through the mails and handed out in person and left under front doors. Literature is distributed in shops at noon when the men have a few minutes to read it, but they do not feel invaded, for they can throw it away when the propagandist has turned his back. In the political campaign of 191 2, all parties distributed their litera- ture in trains and steamboats, and the travelers be- ing at leisure almost always looked the leaflets over with care. The old-fashioned, sentimental "tract" would be useless for propagandic purposes, but liter- ature could be prepared that would be thought-com- pelling and convincing. An admirable object lesson in propaganda is that of the child welfare workers. In New York and Chicago and other large cities exhibits have been 210 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH given showing conditions under which children are born and brought up, and are forced to earn their daily bread. In actual portrayals, in pictures and charts and diagrams the evangel of child welfare was set before the eye. Two hundred thousand people sometimes went through those exhibits in a single day. The propaganda was brought home to the people, and in a convincing, unforgetable way. What lectures and books could not do the exhibit succeeded in doing. That is scientific propaganda. Some such machinery, modern and efficient, must be invented to propagate the message of the church. The nearest approach to it is the missionary exhibit brought to America from England. This is the most effective piece of machinery used by the church since the morality play. It gets the mission- ary propaganda to people who do not hear sermons or read books. When it comes to personal work even greater wisdom is needed. Few persons are fitted to ap- proach a man on religion, and a bungler here will do incalculable harm. It is only a specialized kind of personal work that the average person can do. While it is a matter of considerable delicacy to speak to another about his relation to God, anyone can speak about the church, and this must be the basis of most individual effort. Religion is a mat- ter about which we ought to talk as familiarly and easily as any other, but save with their nearest friends it is difficult for some to speak of these more intimate things. But there is no embarrassment in MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 211 Speaking of the church. Therefore the personal work which all Christians can do is to get people under the influence of the church. A persistent campaign of invitation will turn thousands to the churches, and then if they are made to feel gen- uinely welcome they will stay. In one church where "The Invitation Plan" has been well worked/ the Men's Club has been quadrupled and over two hun- dred men have united with the church in less than three years. In the case of churches so situated that there is no opportunity for a propagandic meeting, a hall or theater will have to be resorted to. The fact is that in most cases any other place of public meeting is better for propaganda than a church. Many per- sons will stop and listen to street preaching, or will *This is how the plan operates: The Invitation Com- mittee of the Men's Club meets with its chairman and pastor for luncheon regularly one day in each week. At the luncheon a list of men living in the neighborhood and not attending any church or seldom attending this church is read over and the names of two or three on the list are allotted to each member of the committee. Before the next weekly luncheon each member of the committee calls upon the men thus assigned to him, gets into per- sonal touch with them and invites them to attend the next meeting of the Club and the Sunday evening service. The utmost care is exercised by the committee always to extend a warm and cordial welcome at the church to the men who respond to the invitation. Particular care is taken by each member of the committee to encourage "his men" to affiliate with some branch of the church activities toward which their interests naturally turn. 212 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH go into a hall or theater, who will not attend church. It may seem a pity to hire a hall for meet- ings when the church building stands idle, but that depends on how much we desire to get the ear of the people. We must take things as they are. And if we really want to do business with the people we must use methods that will get the business. A number of successful undertakings may be pointed to as models for propagandic purposes.^ The Sunday Evening Meeting in the famous audi- torium in Cooper Union was a pioneer. It isn't exactly a church service and departs considerably from the conventional forms, but it is a means of uplift to those who attend. The first half hour is given to music, vocal and instrumental, the congre- gation singing carefully selected hymns. A lecture is give.n by some invited speaker, who is then sub- jected to questions from the audience. Formerly the address was followed by an open discussion from the floor, but so many irrelevant speeches were made and the cranks were so monotonous that it was thought of more value to confine the floor to questions. This is also the method in the Ford Hall meetings of Boston, where it is handled even better. When the speaker is a recognized authority or where persons are liable to abuse the privilege, the ^A pamphlet entitled "The Churches Outside the Church," by George W. Coleman, describes several of these undertakings. Published by The American Baptist Publication Society. MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 213 audience may wisely be limited to the asking of questions, but wherever possible free discussion is better. What the people want is a chance to talk back. Some stay away from church because they must stay and be preached at. They crave the op- portunity to express themselves, and it is good for them to do so. Often it tries the mettle of the leader, but it gives vitality and sincerity to the meet- ings. The people at least understand that those in charge of the meetings are not afraid. This wil- lingness to have the other side presented creates confidence and is of the utmost value for any propa- ganda. The People's Sunday Evening of Roches- ter has followed this method with great success, and during the five years of its history there has been almost no unpleasant episode. In this propagandic meeting, in order to catch the attention of the non-churchgoer, radical meth- ods should be used. The public forum with a dis- cussion from the floor has been proved by experi- ence to be the method of most permanent interest and value and one which can be used in most places. People will talk if the subject is within the field of their experience, into which religion should always be brought. The stereopticon, the moving picture machine, the orchestra and band — these usually serve to catch attention, and it is better to have fif- teen minutes in which to talk to people about the problems of life and conduct than not to have their ears at all. But experience has shown that "attractions" are 214 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH not necessary, and that you can have the people's ear as long as you wish. What people want is speaking. The only attraction that needs to be offered is a theme in which they are vitally inter- ested or about which there is an honest difference of opinion. Debate is an unfailing attraction. It was the method used by the earliest Christian propa- gandists ; the apostles held disputations in the syna- gogues and in the market-places.^ Audiences in a hall or theater will listen to preaching for an hour or an hour and a half, particularly if different opin- ions are expressed and if they have a chance at preaching themselves, whereas in a church thirty minutes is about the limit of a sermon. Some further suggestions from the Rochester People's Sunday Evening may be helpful. It has three ministers, a Baptist theological professor, an Episcopal rector and a Presbyterian pastor.^ These are backed by a Committee of Fifteen, made up of business and professional men and trade unionists; fire of them are labor leaders and two are Roman Catholics. The meetings are advertised for non- churchgoers and are held in a downtown theater for from fifteen to twenty Sunday nights in the winter. An offering is received each evening, which pro- vides for about one-third of the total expense, the rest being received from private contributors. In- strumental and vocal music come first and a few * Acts 17: 17. *Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch, Rev. James Bishop Thomas, Ph.D., and the writer. MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 21 5 songs are sung by the audience. A variety of songs is used, but the congregational singing is poor be- cause it is a crowd unaccustomed to singing to- gether. Sometimes there is a Bible story in modern dress and usually a simple informal prayer at the point in the meeting which most suggests it. Most of the evening is spent in speaking, sometimes by an out-of-town man, but generally by the ministers or other "home talent." Our usual practice is to have the subject divided between several speakers, or to have two or three related themes presented the same evening. Then follows the general dis- cussion from the floor. Perhaps the greatest in- terest has been centered in debates on such themes as "Who Can Do More for Society, a Religious or a Materialistic Socialist?" and "Resolved, That on Economic Grounds It Is to the Best Interest of the Worker to Oppose the Liquor Business." I am frequently asked as to the results of the enterprise, but they are not such as are reportable by statistics. Many of the P. S. E. fraternity re- gard the writer as their pastor and turn to him in sickness or at death. A very few have come to his church, notwithstanding the fact that he never ex- pected them to come to his church; it is too far from where they live and it is on the handsomest avenue in the city, where unfortunately they would not feel at home. But we have prepared the way for the church and broken down much of the preju- dice that stood against it. We meet frankly and squarely the criticisms which are made against the 2l6 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH church, denying nothing that is true, but trying to clear up misunderstandings and to make the critics into friends of the church. We point out that many changes have taken place in the church during the past decade and urge the people to go back to the church of their antecedents and give it another trial, Jewish, Roman Catholic or Protestant. But getting well acquainted with at least three ministers they have become more hospitable to organized religion as a whole and more sympathetic as to the work the church is seeking to do. We have helped them to think more clearly and kindly and more in the spirit of Christ. We have gotten the gospel to them in the simplest and broadest terms, but definitely linked to economic and industrial and social and moral problems as it should be. We have had to trust the seed we sow to get its own harvest, and we are not afraid to, any more than we are in a church service where we can only sow but not reap.^ One by-product of such meetings would be the tonic effect upon ministers who have become addict- ed to conventional sermonic methods. Standing be- fore an audience of non-churchgoers who are ready to thrust questions at him and are alert to talk back, the preacher will soon shed whatever pious tone and clerical manner he may have unconsciously acquired. The minister has too few opportunities of meeting men on a free platform where he must *A more elaborate and most successful enterprise is the Sunday Night Club of Chicago. Information may be had from its founder and president, Rev. Qifford W. Barnes. MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 217 talk to them on a level, and with the knowledge that he will be under fire as soon as he has fin- ished. Such a meeting for propaganda means the outlay of money, but if we really are going to do business it will cost money. It may appear to some bad economy to leave our church plants after the morn- ing service and hire another meeting-place. But economy is secured in two ways, either by keeping down running expenses or by doing a larger busi- ness per unit of expense. It is not uneconomic to increase the expense account by thirty per cent, if the volume of business done increases forty per cent. And there is no question that by present methods the church isn't entering new territory or creating a new market for its goods and enlarging its business. It is usually the wealthy church which is so situ- ated as to be out of touch with the masses of the people, or is erected by prejudice into a barrier against using its building for propagandic purposes. Most churches which need to find some other point of contact can afford to do so. It may mean a less expensive quartet or less luxurious church appoint- ments, but that is to choose the more important rather than the less. The churches which cannot afford to rent a hall or theater are as a rule those which may with every chance of success use their own building for the propagandic meeting. It would be wise to begin in smaller communi- ties with a union forum once a month to learn how. 2l8 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Announce that the experiment is to be made for a definite time, so that its discontinuance would not appear as failure while its continuance beyond the time specified would appear more markedly a suc- cess. The experiment proving successful, all the churches might unite for a central propagandic meeting each week, during some limited period, urging their own people to stay at home when the audience begins to fill the building. In larger cities three or four such meetings could be held in differ- ent parts of the city. In all such cases they should be as unlike church meetings as possible, and the more unconventional and informal the better. The themes discussed should be religious in the broad- est sense. They should come near to the life and problems of the people. Nothing remote from their interest and foreign to their thought should be in- troduced, for the purpose is to reach those who are indifferent to the church. Questions or remarks from the floor should always be included. In these theater meetings it is wise never to "draw the net." When an avowedly evangelistic meeting is held in a hall or theater because no church is large enough to house the crowd, or when the propagandic meeting is held in a church, it is another matter. But people go to the hall who are timid and hesitant about going to church, and, if they know they will never be cornered, they will attend more freely and naturally. The political propagandist never draws the net. Cards are never passed for people to promise they MODERN PROPAGANDA FOR THE OLD FAITH 2ig Will vote for the party which has presented its case. The speakers do their best but then leave the audi- ence to follow its own conscience and judgment. Ideas are trusted to get results. Names of voters are never secured at these public meetings but in more personal ways through the ward organiza- tions. The public meeting is for the sowing of seed. It is the part of wisdom to conduct our religious propaganda in the same way. First we must get men to hear the Christian message as it applies to the problems which they are forced day by day to consider. When we have gotten them to listen and to think, the leaven has been set to work. Any attempt on the spot to get their names or profession of faith would defeat its own purpose. The aim should be not to line them up with the church, but to get them to reorganize their life according to the teachings of Jesus. At other times and places they may be put on record, but this kind of propa- gandic meeting is for seed-sowing. Let the people be strongly and convincingly shown that the church is an efficient agency to help them in Christian liv- ing, but in these free-for-all meetings on the street or in the theater it is a tactical blunder to try to register results. The gospel we preach has power to convince and win. It must be preached "to every creature," in our own cities as well as in distant lands. It is a message which the people will hear gladly when once we get their ears. Our problem is the prob- lem of distribution. The church of Christ is en- 220 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH trusted with that which the heart of man needs, and wants, when it is understood. The church cannot keep it. Without it the people perish. If our pres- ent methods of distribution do not serve, we must find those that will serve. And we can if we will. CHAPTER IV COMMUNITY SERVICE It is only as a phrase that social service is new, as a fact it is as old as society. When man first realized that he had duties and responsibihties to his fellow-man and began to render some service which others needed, then was the beginning of so- ciety. What drew men together and established community of interest was a sense of need of one another and the feeling that together their needs might be supplied. As already pointed out, all hon- est business is the discovery and supply of social needs,^ and religion finds its expression mainly in service.^ The Christian interpretation of life is that we are to live for one another and not for self alone. All that is done for human welfare is em- braced in the phrase social service, although it has specific reference to those activities which are or- ganized, consecutive and hence effective. The church distinctively is a social service enter- prise. Service is as much its function as spiritual culture, for love is the mainspring of religion and love means serving. Everything the church does * Page 32. ' Page 10. 221 222 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH for the bettering of human life is social service. The business of evangelism comes under this head, for the saving of a man is the main social service that can be rendered him. Missions, of course, are included, for the aim of Christian missions is the uplift of the total community life. Indeed the church's foreign mission enterprise is the most com- prehensive program of social service known to the modern world ; it labors for better education, bet- ter care for the sick, and better industrial, economic and social conditions, as well as moral instruction and spiritual culture. It is in mission lands that the social passion of the church is most clearly seen to-day. At home many of its functions have been turned over to other agencies. All the good work of the community was originally done by the church, the education of the young, the care of the sick, the relief of the needy. But society has been so Christianized that the state performs many of the social tasks which once belonged to the church. This taking over of the church's functions is evi- dence of its success, not of its failure. Yet it is true that, having delegated its old tasks, the church has not yet addressed itself to new problems or adjusted itself to new tasks. In consequence the social welfare workers have in large numbers dropped away from the church, a result which works harm to the church and to the other agencies for social uplift. This gradual drift of the welfare workers from the church is both unreasonable and near-sighted, and the larger COMMUNITY SERVICE 223 the number involved the more is the issue clouded. Some^ earnest workers who spend most of their time in service and have little left for reflection, haying quit the church, fancy they are through with religion. ^ Unthinkingly they confuse the church with religion, and even when they are carrying out the spirit of religion they deny its name and lose its comfort; while on the other hand some church people with even less insight accept this separation from the church as evidence that the uplifters are unreligious. Most of the men who have turned from organized religion are appealing all the time to religious truths and motives, and while the church is being displaced in their thought they remain loyal to that for which the church exists. The church has this stake in the situation: it cannot permit the impression to continue that so- cial service is something apart from its task, be- cause the religious impulse dies unless it functions in social relationships and because it is only in service that personal religion can find adequate ex- pression. The welfare worker has this at stake: the church is the greatest organization in the field to-day, and its members have in large numbers been infected by the new social feeling and are ready to be brought into action. Immense social forces are in readiness in the church, and social welfare would in the long run be most profoundly pro- moted if the welfare workers turned from their immediate task and for five years gave their time 224 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH and strength to organizing and directing the social service resources of the church. So, on every ground this confusion and misunderstanding ought to be removed. There are still many smaller communities where, apart from state institutions, the church is the only agency organized for social service. There are larger communities where the church has vast re- sources of Christian personality which are not em- ployed in existing agencies. In either case there should be a new emphasis on social service, and an earnest effort to meet the church's opportunity and responsibility. With all that is being done, the needs of society are not yet provided for, and there are cogent reasons why the church should be more diligent and intelligent in serving the community. First, as has been said, the church for many lacks credentials. They do not know what it is here for. They are not aware that the church exists for the community — a fact which some in the church seem to have forgotten. The church has for large sections of our cities' population dropped out of the field of consciousness. More brilliant preachers would not bring it to the attention of the masses of non-churchgoers ; for them, our most distinguished divines are not even a name. Magnificent buildings will not attract them; for many in New York, the new library, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, does not exist. Fine music would be useless for the purpose ; for many more, the Metro- politan Opera House has no existence, and would COMMUNITY SERVICE 225 not have were it as free as the library. The church must undertake some new enterprise if it would be even taken into account by the bulk of people in our large cities. Of course if Christian folk were truly Christian — if they were unselfish and glad and single-heart- ed as Jesus was — they could not escape notice. Like the infant church in Jerusalem, such a group of Christians would find "favor with all the peo- ple." Real religion is its own advertisement and credential. But religion is a spirit, not a program, and I am discussing the church's program. I am convinced that next to the Spirit of Christ nothing will so completely and convincingly bring the church into the world where the people Hve and struggle and die as an adequate program of com- munity service. Let the church demonstrate that it exists not for itself but for the community and the people will at once begin to reckon with it. So far as the organization goes, the church made its great blunder when it relinquished its fraternal character and left the matter of practical helpful- ness to the lodge or labor union or philanthropic society. It means too little for a man to be a mem- ber of the church nowadays. The old charge that men joined the church for selfish reasons is re- versed to-day. Usually one prefers a lawyer or merchant or milkman who is not in his church, for every new social relationship complicates business relations. When one is in financial trouble he goes by preference to some person not connected with 226 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH his church, for he doesn't want his trouble known by the social circle with whom he worships. For some kinds of distress they do not even go to their pastor, because he belongs to the same social group. In their personal grief, when sickness or death come to their family they make use of the minister, but in the case of private sin or business trouble, or any matter in which they are to blame, they are too apt to stay away. Outsiders come to him at such times more easily than his own parishioners. On this account the Protestant minister is at a great disadvantage as compared with the Roman Catholic priest. Without any fault of his own he is a victim of the social quality the church has taken on. Men now turn to the fraternal order for help. In trouble they go to their brother in the se- cret society or labor union ; and where their help is there will their heart be also. So some people have come to set more store by the fraternity than by the church. It is not society they want but friend- ship, not acquaintances but brothers. The most effective organization in the country is Tammany Hall. What is the secret of its power? The fact that it puts men under the feeling of obli- gation for service rendered in some time of need. It began as a charitable society, a fraternal organi- zation. No man in trouble ever went to Tammany Hall in vain. It willingly does a good turn for whoever has need. It asks for no credentials and says nothing of pay. It lends a helping hand and leaves the return to every man's sense of obliga- COMMUNITY SERVICE 227 tion. So men are bound body and soul to Tam- many Hall by a feeling of gratitude and honor. Now suppose that the church of Christ should do disinterestedly and for humanity's sake what Tam- many Hall does for sinister reasons ! Suppose that in every city and town there were an institution, founded and supported in the name of the church, which advertised after this fashion: "Open day and night, to help any person, in any kind of trou- ble." How long would it be before the miserable, the suffering, the friendless, and even the under- world would be reckoning in the church as one of the assets of the community's life ! How long would it be before the unconcerned and heedless would be taking account of it! The church would leap into the very center of the field of consciousness for many who had forgotten its existence.^ Even if the church could get back into the field of consciousness of the non-churchgoer without a program for community service, what could such a church do for those who most need the way of liv- ing it is set to teach ? Many of those to whom the church ought to be an inspiration and comfort and guide are living and working under conditions which negative the church's message and appeal. *It takes very little in the way of community interest to make a church talked about. A church in Newark, N. J., opened one of its rooms for the girls of a near-by factory during the noon hour. That church at once be- came a marked church throughout the great industrial population of the city. 22S THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH With its present program the church could operate upon them for only an hour or two each week, while the debasing and destructive forces of life are op- erating upon them every hour of the week, while they sleep and wake. Of what value are sermons and anthems to those who live in a slum and work in a sweatshop ? Here is the second of the reasons that are driving the church into more definite social service. At last we are realizing the immense moral ef- fects of social conditions. Religion has its physio- logical side. The psychical and the physical are nearly akin. Our spiritual condition is immediately modified by our bodily conditions. There is a vital connection between pure air that is undefiled and pure and undefiled religion. Holiness is difficult without oxygen. We do not expect the finest types of morality among men and women who have to breathe poisoned air within the reeking walls of overcrowded tenements. We do not look for the beauty of holiness amid squalor and filth. The odds are against it. Make a man clean and self-respecting and un- afraid, give the human in him a chance, if you want the divine in him to have a chance. Rescue him from the fear that his children may go hungry, give him permanent employment, decent work condi- tions, wholesome housing conditions, and leisure for self-culture and play, if you want him to live the life of a child of God. Improved social condi- tions may not inspire the higher life, but they open COMMUNITY SERVICE 229 the way to it. Impressed by the practical side of religion, Rothe the German theologian declares that "Christ would be more interested in our political developments than in our so-called church move- ments," and ''that the discovery of the steam en- gine and railways was of more value to His King- dom than the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon." These things are axiomatic, for in our thought of the human body we have gotten back to Jesus and Paul, giving the body its proper place, subordinate to the spirit, but its true organ and medium. The "new psychology" is the study of mind by way of the brain, of the soul by way of the body. It treats the body as the temple of the spirit. If a man care not for the body which is seen how can he care for the soul which is not seen? Booker T. Wash- ington says that he has found the toothbrush to be the forerunner of civilization, and the vermin which infested Thomas a'Becket's hairshirt would no longer be considered an additional proof of his sanctity. At every point soul and body are recog- nized to work together in most intimate harmony. The housing of the poor, the lighting of the streets, the cleansing of the cities, the extermination of dirt-diseases, the elimination of fatigue poison, the closing of the saloon, the abolishing of prostitution, and the total bettering of physical environment, is the work for the modern John Baptist who would cast up the highway for the coming of the Lord. There is no break between the new evangel and the old. Men must be born from above, but the 230 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH "holy city . . . coming down out of heaven from God" hastens the spiritual rebirth of the individual and assists in keeping his spirit in life and health. A heaven-born man helps to change bad social con- ditions, but changed social conditions help to trans- form the man whose spiritual growth is retarded by an immoral environment. The evangel of the church must be that of Jesus : "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captive, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at Hberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."* The acceptable year of the Lord is a time of release to all who are bound, whether by poverty or disease or vice. The church like Jesus must not only proclaim it, but be diligently at work to bring it in. A third and less important consideration is that some new undertaking in the way of community service is necessary to stimulate and maintain the flagging interest of those now in the churches. It is going to be increasingly difficult to raise church budgets if church activities are confined to preach- ing services and a week-night meeting. There is plenty of money for any enterprise that gets worth- while results, but these days men are looking upon a gift more in the light of an investment. Gifts of * Luke 4 : 18, 19. COMMUNITY SERVICE 23 1 money must get returns for the community, and high-priced music and scholarly preaching are not return enough for the investment represented in most church enterprises. The church must do more business if it is to keep the enthusiastic support of its adherents. In the fourth place, the field of social service offers opportunity for employment to the army of unemployed in all the churches. "Learn by doing" is the new maxim of education. Christian disciples have too little to do. There is nothing within the church organization for the vast majority of Chris- tians to do and they lack initiative to discover tasks for themselves. People want to be of use, and mul- titudes are really looking for a job. Jobs a-plenty are to be found in every community — real jobs — but people do not know how to connect with them. The church must revise its program in order to train its own people to become effective Christian work- ers. "There is a true church," says Ruskin, "wher- ever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the only holy and Mother Church which ever was or ever shall be." Finally, the obligation of the church to serve the community is made unmistakable by the example and precept of Christ. Only a part of his time was spent in teaching. Some of his finest work was with individuals, but He was concerned with their bodies and minds and social conditions, as well as their spirits, and because of what physical and men- tal and social health mean for spiritual wholeness. 232 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH 1 He had compassion on the hungry, the sick, the sorrowing, and ministered to them. It was thus He gave body and convincingness to His Good News. And thus He showed us how we are to please God and do His will. Whenever Jesus gave any account of what it means to be religious, He did it in a story which is really a program of social service. I need cite but two of these stories, one the parable of the Good Samaritan,^ like whom we are commanded to be and to do. The story grew out of the question, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" and we would expect the answer to be a somewhat comprehensive statement of right living, an account of the kind of life which is like God's afid is worthy of immortality — what in theologic phrase is called the plan of salvation. And what is His answer? He reaffirms the two great commandments, 'Thou Shalt love the Lord thy God" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor." These two command- ments stand together and alone, the second being "like unto" the first. The commandments thus singled out and identified set personal religion and social responsibility side by side, and Jesus makes clear that the absence of the latter leaves the former imperfect and ungrown. The parable, which is only an amplification of the twin commandments, is a matchless statement of social obligation, and an ar- raignment of all religious folk who are lacking in social feeling and a sense of responsibility for other ^Luke 10:25-37. COMMUNITY SERVICE 233 folk. The priest, it may be believed, was not a brutish man, but a conventionally religious person who on this particular day was intent on the per- formance of certain ecclesiastical functions, with which the time and trouble needed to rescue the unfortunate traveler would interfere. He was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, to officiate perhaps at some important religious service, and he closed his eyes to the need with which he was confronted, not because he had no sense of his religious duty, but because of an incorrect understanding of it. The Levite, also a churchman, represents the person who looks on but does nothing, who realizes that there is a need to be met, but has no immediately compelling sense of obligation in the matter. Such a man is interested in human need as a social prob- lem but not as a religious duty. He will write papers and pass resolutions and eat big dinners in the cause of human betterment, and content himself with that. But the Samaritan, moved with compas- sion, saw an immediate human duty, and his re- ligious opinions and business undertakings had to be readjusted to give place for this pressing piece of social service.^ This man we are to follow, and not * "Nothing can describe with more precision," says Pro- fessor Peabody, "the exact program which scientific charity has by degrees worked out to guide the visitation of the poor — first friendly compassion, then the relief of temporary necessity, then the transfer of the case to restorative conditions, finally the use of money, not as alms for the helpless, but to maintain continuity of re- lief." 234 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the others. From all of which Jesus leads us to in- fer that all other functions of the Christian church are to be considered secondary and contributory to the service of humanity and the meeting of social need. It is a command : ^'Go and do thou likewise." The other story of Jesus which weighs heaviest on this point is the so-called Parable of the Last Judgment/ which is in reality not so much a pic- ture of the great assize as a defense of humanity. In effect Jesus says that every human is of such worth that whatever is done for man is done for God. Summarizing the grounds on which folks are ^'blessed of My Father" and the reasons for which they become inheritors of the Kingdom prepared for them, He gives a specific program of social ser- vice : ''I was hungry, and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." The purpose of the parable was to help His disciples to understand what kind of earth-life is most to be sought because in essence it is heavenly, to set before all men the kind of life which has value for the universe and so in its very nature is eternal. Such is a life of service to human need. Jesus could not have been more definite. Those honest and loyal Christians who are dis- quieted by the new emphasis on social service will, I am sure, be less fearful if they remind themselves that the new social passion follows Jesus. He says ^ Matthew 25 : 31-46. COMMUNITY SERVICE 235 clearly that whatever makes earth brighter makes heaven gladder ; that every real service to man helps God. Service of our fellow man is the most re- ligious act we can perform, if it springs out of the feeling that all are alike God's children and the creatures of His love and care. That man is living a godly life who ministers in love to his fellow men, but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that social service to be Christian must grow out of and be performed in the spirit of love and sympathy and understanding. A cup of cold water is a sacrament to our God if behind it is love and sympathy for the thirsty. Jesus says very little about our responsibility for the souls of men in the narrow sense in which we have been accustomed to understand the phrase. He keeps us on more familiar and easy ground. He tells us in detail of a ministry that all can per- form who have any human feeling and good will; he tells us what God wants us to do, in His spirit of love, for the poor, the unfortunate, the sorrow- ing, the erring and all the miserable of the earth. The only definite word He speaks about our rela- tion to sin in the theological sense is "Whose soever sins ye forgive they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" ;^ by which He means that the great God is more loving and forgiving than any of His children, and that if we can find some excuse and pardon for the sin of any human we may be sure God does, and therefore ^John 20:23, compare Matthew 16:19; 18:18. 236 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH we have a right to assure the sinner of forgiveness. This, in fact, is all we can do toward the saving of a soul. Salvation is the work of God's Spirit, and we can only be a channel for His Spirit. To know God through Christ is eternal life, but usually men know God through Christ through some fellow man. The soul of man turns from sin whenever he gets a powerful enough conception of God's love and mercy. That conception comes historically and directly through the life and suffering of Christ; it comes practically and mediately through some Christlike man or woman. By our love and sym- pathy, by unselfish service to the needy and the miserable and the sinful, we help them to an under- standing of the Father's love. Thus, and thus only, can we become soul savers. The remedial work of the church is of course not limited by these exquisite stories to single souls who may now and then be rescued from misfor- tune and misery. The phrase most on Jesus* lips was the Kingdom of God. A kingdom is made up of individuals, but those individuals constitute a social order. Jesus had in mind both the individual and society. He sought to change society by trans- forming the individual, but He said that these transformed individuals were to be salt, and light, and leaven, which points to the preserving and il- luminating and transforming of the common life. So Christ is working in the community to-day. The movement to abolish poverty is the fulfilling of His "good tidings to the poor." The workers COMMUNITY SERVICE 237 for prison reform are in a very real sense proclaim- ing " release to the captive." The fight against dis- ease and alcoholism and social impurity; the new- sense of human values in industry; the committees of family rehabilitation and the friendly family visitor; the campaigns for better housing condi- tions, for pure milk and for "safety first"; the in- vestigations of the standard of living to learn the actual budget on which a family can be maintained with decency and self-respect; these and many other modern activities mean "sight to the blind" and liberty for "them that are bruised" and the bringing in of the "acceptable year of the Lord." The church of Christ is committed by its found- er to a full salvation and a complete redemption for the world of men. Salvation means safety, and the environment of many men has to be changed if we are to keep them saved. Redemption includes pre- vention as a corollary, and these parables of Jesus, which were faithful to the life of His time, have an added meaning to-day and require the policing of the road, protection against all kinds of exploitation, the amelioration of human need and the bettering of the community life. The program of the church must express its care for the whole life of man as does the life of Christ and the providence of God.^ * Professor Clarence A. Beckwith thus summarizes the church's present task and duty: "Not until it rediscovers in the new social environment and consciously defines and dedicates itself to its task will it compel the allegiance both of its own members and of the community in which 238 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH There is as much need for social service in the rural church as in the city church. A popular medi- cal writer points out that in healthfulness the city is overtaking the country ; the milk supply is purer, water is better, typhoid is less common, and in our two largest cities the death rate is now lower than in the country as a whole.^ Many of the unsocial conditions of the city are found in rural communi- ties. Poverty is not so frequent, but more sordid. Slum conditions may be discovered in many a vil- lage, whole families cooking, eating, living in a single, dirty, unventilated room with a world of air and light shut out. Drunkenness is greater per capita in communities of less than 2,500 where the saloon has not been banished, than in cities. But even more important than the fight against disease or vice is it that rural churches organize to promote community spirit, to provide means of recreation, and to improve social ideals. This will be discussed in later chapters. it is placed. Its task may be different or simpler in one community than in another — ^here religious, there educa- tional, elsewhere social, or all of these in various com- binations and degrees. Its only justification for its exist- ence even lies in the words of Jesus, *I am among you as He that serveth.' All over our land are deserted church buildings which tell their own tragic tale; because they ceased to serve, they ceased to live. And not long will a community care for a church which cares little or nothing for it." "The Church, the People and the Age," edited by Scott & Gilmore, p. 505. ^Dr. Woods Hutchinson in The American Magazine for March, 1913. COMMUNITY SERVICE 239 Some churches are kept from organized com- munity service because it seems to involve a too formidable undertaking. But a social program for the church consists simply in this : the addition of scientific knowledge and an intelligent constructive method to its ancient love for men. The church has human feeling and spiritual power which needs only a program along which to operate for a better community life. Each church must formulate its own program, for community needs differ. In city or country the first and indispensable step is a sur- vey of the field. A careful study of the needs of the community must be made, the agencies avail- able for the supply of those needs must be meas- ured, the science underlying a correct ministry to the needs must be known. Then let the wisest people in the church decide what is to be done. While a standardized program cannot be given, a few suggestions besides those found elsewhere in the book may be made: A social service group, made up of men and women most full of the social passion, should be organized in each church. This will be the nucleus for investigation and study and the directing force in community activities. The social service groups in the various churches should be organized into one compact group and where possible a social service expert should be employed as executive secretary to lead the work and keep all the forces applied.^ The men and women of the *The Presbyterian churches of Buffalo have done ex- cellent work in this direction. 240 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH churches should be enlisted In those social service agencies already existing in which they can be of most use. When such agencies are lacking, church people should establish them or do the work them- selves.^ These are some of the pressing social needs of every city which should be supplied where lacking: A community conscience and civic pride. A city lunch club as a forum to create public opinion. 2 A united charities and joint registration bureau and confidential exchange as a clearing house for social service agencies. A remedial loan association to combat the loan shark.^ An efficient employment bureau conducted along scientific lines. Free visiting nurses connected with hospitals and the public schools. Public comfort stations for men and women. Industrial and vocational training in the public schools. As substitutes for the saloon: the use of school buildings and church buildings as social centers, supervised dance halls and pool rooms, censored * The Survey of New York is an invaluable publication for all social service workers. ^The best model known to the writer is the City Club of Rochester. * These associations are run as a business enterprise and are everywhere successful. Write Arthur H. Ham, Rus- sell Sage Foundation, New York city. COMMUNITY SERVICE 24I picture shows, and amusement palaces for all sorts of indoor recreation without the sale of liquor. Greater publicity as to the social evil and the effi- cient teaching of sex hygiene to young and old. Homes for the aged of both sexes and homes for aged married couples. Wherever these and other such agencies are needed the church should make the first move j toward securing them. In towns and villages it is the churches that should lead the agitation for civic I betterment and town beautifying, as they have led in the great temperance reform. But while the| churches should stimulate public spirit and direct! public sentiment it is a mistake to organize a pri- vate agency to do the work which should be done by the city or town. Let all church men get behind faithful public officials and get after the incompe- tent and corrupt. Do not organize another society if there is one in existence that could do the work if only properly supported. It is better to make use of a trained expert than to trust wholly to volunteers. A community is not greatly bettered by spasmodic efforts however well meaning. So- cial service is a business that requires patience, in- telligence and perseverance as well as good will. No church program is complete without some well-considered and effective plan for dealing with the social evil.^ Driven by what Jane Addams calls *The amount of space ^ven in this chapter to the so- cial evil is from several reasons: the enormity of the evil, the fact that it is rarely discussed frankly in such 242 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH a "new conscience" the church must make holy war against the "ancient evil" of prostitution and sex vice. Prudishness has allowed this evil to flour- ish unchecked. False modesty has permitted us to say nothing in public of venereal disease, of all dis- eases most fatal to health and morals. Even the medical profession has been browbeaten into si- lence. The churches have been most recreant, and the churches assume responsibility for moral train- ing. A stupid and cruel conspiracy of silence has prevented any effective crusade against social vice, but the time for plain speech and for frank discus- sion of the problem has arrived. Back of sex vice is a great biological law that must be reckoned with. Sex attraction is responsi- ble for sex indulgence. Sex attraction is a power- ful force, operative in both sexes but more persis- tent in the male, and upon this great primitive in- stinct depends in large measure the preservation of the race and the maintenance of the home and the family. It is therefore a beneficent force when properly controlled. The sex instinct of men has been falsely de- scribed as uncontrollable. The shameful statement is made that no woman would be safe in the streets if there were not professionals to whom men could resort. But the evidence of history is to the con- trary. Sex attraction has from the beginning of organized society been under social control and the works as this, and because other forms of social service are treated in other chapters. COMMUNITY SERVICE 243 mating instinct has been regulated by public opin- ion.^ Men have taken to wife women of their own tribe or women captured or purchased from an- other, according to the prevailing social judgment; men have secured a bride by exchanging her for a sister, or have married the woman selected for them by their parents; they have married or re- fused to marry their sisters-in-law, and have fallen in love with their cousins or refrained from so do- ing, according as social custom decided. But men have declined to hold themselves to the same chas- tity which they require in their wives because a double standard of morality is accepted by society, the women often being the first to apply it. A man of notoriously irregular life has little difficulty in getting some woman to marry him, and she may have a measure of pride in thinking he has at last anchored his incontinent heart to her; while the man would scorn to take as wife a woman who was known to have had improper relations with other men. All these sex questions, so far as men even are concerned, rest upon social judgment, just as social judgment in some ancient tribes decided that one man might have a plurality of wives while in others one woman might have a plurality of husbands. The power of this social control over women is far greater, as is evidenced by the fact that with all their ignorance and their hunger for affection and their desire for a home and children and their * See Jane Addams, "A New Conscience and an An- cient Evil," p. 207. 244 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH faith in the men who betray them and the economic pressure under which many are placed and the ostracism which follows an innocent misstep, a highly organized commercial enterprise, insidious and cunning, is needed to supply the traffic with girls. The sex instinct is amenable to social con- trol; "in spite of many rebellious individuals, the mass of men have lived according to the dictates of the church, the legal requirements of the state, and the surveillance of the comrhunity, if only because they feared social ostracism." ^ Complete control of this great primitive instinct is to be reached only through the combined power of religion, knowledge and social judgment. The appeal to the moral nature is not enough where the moral quality of the act in question depends on the single fact of marriage. A single standard of mo- rality for men and women will never be effectively operative, save among persons of high religious cul- ture, for nature herself does not visit the same judgment on both — it is the woman who bears the child while the man escapes unnoticed. Sex attrac- tion is too insistent and specious to be easily con- trolled. Social control must be reinforced by edu- cation and publicity. Children must be instructed as to their sex life, and young men and women as to the far and desperate reach of venereal disease. The first duty is the parents', but many parents are hopeless. The majority do not and for another generation will not prepare their children for the * "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil," p. 209. COMMUNITY SERVICE 245 safeguarding of their life; many lack the knowl- edge themselves. Therefore sex instruction should be given through the church and by properly equipped persons in the public schools. It seems strange that in our teaching of physiol- ogy the most significant facts of the body should be ignored. Many people are not yet ready for such instruction as a part of the child's education.^ But we must go further than this if we are to overtake the ancient evil. Venereal diseases must be dragged from privacy. They must be made reportable to the health office like measles and diphtheria and other contagious diseases. Prof. Finger says that we shall never make progress in the treatment of syphilis and gonorrhea until the public is made to understand that instead of being ashamed of and not afraid of these diseases, they should not be ashamed of but fear them.^ Quarantine could be *The Roman Catholic Church, which in its confessional comes nearest to the parental function, is most backward in the fight against sex ignorance. Charts prepared by the Health Bureau of Rochester for a Child Welfare Ex- hibit in 1913, showing the ravages of venereal disease, had to be removed because of the protest of the priests. The Bishop of the diocese declined to cooperate with the ministers and physicians even in a preliminary considera- tion of the advisability of physical examination before marriage. *In Norway, Sweden and Denmark a hundred years ago conditions were appalling. With methods of pub- licity there is a steady decrease of venereal disease. The laws of Norway are generally regarded as the most effi- cient yet devised. They are briefly as follows: 246 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH made effective only in case of marriage, as is now done in some places.^ Medical examination should "Venereal diseases must be reported like all other con- tagious diseases, but with initials of the patient instead of the full name. The probable source of the infection, if ascertainable, must be given on the notification blank, and whether male or female, the individual alleged to be the source of the infection is summoned to appear before the sanitary police officer. Informed that he or she is suffering from a contagious disease, he is asked to submit to an examination by the physician of the department. This examination cannot be insisted on. If accepted and venereal disease is found, free treatment is furnished if the individual desires. If the examination is refused, the individual is directed to bring a certificate from an ap- proved physician that he is well or under treatment. This demand must be complied with, and if a venereal disease is reported the subject must sign a form running as follows: " 'Dr. N. has told me that I am suffering from (name of disease) a contagious disease; he has fully explained to me the dangers of this disease with regard to myself and my associates, and its probable duration, and has made it clear to me that I must remain under treatment until he gives me a certificate to bring to this office that I am well and no longer a possible source of contagion. I know that if I have sexual intercourse during this time, whether I transmit the disease or not, I am liable to be punished under Section of the Laws of Norway.' " — ^Dr. Lawrence Litchfield, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Feb. 26, 1910, p. 692. ^Utah was the pioneer state with a law which requires that this infection be reported and controlled as are other contagious maladies. The California legislature of 1913 passed an act requiring all male applicants for marriage licenses to show health certificates, and similar legislation has been introduced in other states. COMMUNITY SERVICE 247 be required before marriage in order to protect the innocent, the unborn, and those whom sexual dis- ease keeps from ever being conceived.^ In all these preventive measures the church instead of being reluctant should be most energetic.^ In the matter of marriage the church has a peculiar responsibil- ity. Marriage is a function of the state, but to sol- emnize it and secure for it a higher moral character the church is allowed to perform the ceremony. Some churches call it a sacrament. The powers that control marriage, control in large measure the forces of reproduction and the future of the race. The church must therefore make every effort to protect those it joins together and not give its sanc- tion to wedlock between uncleanness and purity, and doom the innocent to disease and childlessness. Such wedlock cannot be "holy." Full instruction as to the wages of such sin, in connection with the religious appeal, will in another generation greatly reduce sex immorality. As to the present treatment of prostitution, vice commissions agree. The method of segregation has broken down in Paris and Berlin, where it has been fol- lowed most scientifically. The only way to treat prostitution is to fight it — with education, with * Childlessness and what the Germans call "one-child sterility" are not so much the result of unwillingness to bear children as of venereal disease. Warbasse, ''Medi- cal Sociology" p. 74. 'In summing up the forces which are in action against the social evil, Miss Addams omits the church and clergy. Op. cit, pp. 5, 186. 248 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH moral appeal and with all the weapons of the law.^ But the women involved in the traffic are more sinned against than sinning. All such women should be offered a chance for a better life. If ill they must be provided with medical care, if they have become weak-minded they must be placed in an institution. They must be trained for honest serv- ice, restored to their relatives or found a home. This is the only Christian thing to do. "Neither do I condemn thee," said Jesus, but He would con- demn the society that excuses prostitution and tol- erates "white slavery." I am aware that such treatment of the sex problem is too advanced for many and that the views I have just stated may prejudice the more conservative and conventional against the whole chapter. A devout but narrow-minded minister re- marked with regard to a survey of the social and religious needs of a certain city, that if anything were said of houses of prositution he would have nothing to do with it. Some took offense that Jesus went to lodge with a Publican and were scandalized that He let a harlot anoint His feet. Jesus over- stepped many of the conventions of His day but the event shows that He was wiser than the Pharisee. May it not be thaj: some of our conventions and some of our traditions are mistaken? May it not ^In Atlanta the "red light" district was extinguished by the use of skillful advertisements in the public press. It was an aftermath of the Men and Religion Forward Movement. Two business men saw it through. COMMUNITY SERVICE 249 be that our prejudices should be reconsidered and our opinions revised if we are to rescue this world from sin and bring in the Kingdom of God? It is a Kingdom that needs to be sought with might and main and intelligent resource. Stones which the builders have rejected may be needed for its foundations. Wherever failure was made, some new method or agency must be tried. Initia- tive, energy and perseverance are necessary, but its walls must be set up. The city in which we live is our Holy City. It is the church's business to make it a true City of God. CHAPTER V ADVERTISING THE CHURCH It has twice been noted that the church has dropped out of the field of consciousness of many in our large centers of population. This is partly because the church has not been kept before their attention. Other interests crowd us more and more. Our eyes are assailed by advertisements set- ting forth the merits of a host of things for which our interest is wanted. We are not allowed to look at nothing. Always before our gaze, turn it where we may, looms up the inexorable billboard or electric sign. There is no let-up in the appeal made to our attention. The modern mind is beaten hard, like the wayside, by the tramp of a multitude of ideas and sensations. Who would arrest attention must be importunate, insistent, inescapable. In its missionary periods the church forced itself upon the notice of the people. It challenged them to stop and consider. And it won its way. But of late years the church has stood aside and let the people pass it by. It has been too modest. We have built our churches and waited for the people to find us out. They haven't found us out. They aren't hostile to the church, but simply do 250 ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 25I not take us into account. Other claims have been made more successfully upon them. They have fogotten the church. Now, to seek and to save is our commission. The initiative we have to take. There is no moral law requiring people to attend church, but the church must commend itself to the people. It must make ^^ its way into their consciousness, find for itself a place in their life. It must get its message before their attention as the politician does his theories of government and the merchant his wares. It must win attention and then convince and persuade. While the neglect of many is to be explained on the ground that they do not even reckon with the church, there are still many who while taking ac- count of it think they are not wanted. Some in- stance of neglect to a stranger, and the more if he happens to be a poor man, some lack of considera- tion — real or imaginary — is talked of and exag- gerated, and many actually have gotten the notion that the church has a welcome only for the privi- leged and well-to-do. Many self-respecting people of small income stay away from church because they are able to contribute but little for its support. By some means, whatever acts as a barrier to church attendance must be removed. The poor must be made to feel at home in the family church as in the cathedral. That isn't easy, but the church organization or church building must not longer be allowed to keep any away from the fellowship of Christians. Somehow the church must get back 252 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH into the consciousness of those for whom it has ceased to exist. Somehow the church must chal- lenge the attention of the whole people. Somehow the claim of the church must be put up to every man so strongly that he will have to say yes or no to church. When thus challenged few will say no. The right kind of publicity will help. This is the day of advertising. True, it may be overdone. Much money is wasted in advertising. We might be spared thousands of dollars worth of billboards and no one would be the worse. Mere volume of advertising does not count. Nevertheless a good article, an article which the people need, has only to be well advertised to insure a market. The church has a good article. Its message as to God and duty and destiny meets the need of the human heart. It has good grounds for advertising its wares. An immediately available form of publicity is for each church to keep the people of its own neighborhood informed as to what it is doing. Every church's card index should include the names of those in the community who are not known to be church attendants. How to get these names and addresses must be left to the ingenuity of each con- gregation. With this mailing list the minister, or much better the publicity committee, can send out from time to time post card announcements that will catch the attention of non-churchgoers. Even though the minister is gifted in the phrasing of such announcements it is better that the copy be pre- ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 253 pared by a publicity committee or by some adver- tising man. The post cards may be mimeographed and sent through the mails in time to be delivered by Friday. When these announcements have been fired at a man several times he will begin to think the church means business. All such up-to-date methods involve the help of an adequate office force. The minister of a church that is growing or that expects to grow ought to have a secretary, and where necessary more than one, to care for the details of church organization. The "follow-up system" is as important in a church enterprise as in a commercial enterprise, and church officials show poor business judgment who do not supply the minister with sufficient office help to make it effective. In very large cities it is practically out of the question for the church to get the ear or the eye of the people through any direct method. An unknown caller at the apartment house does not gain admittance, and a mailing list is not to be had. But the newspaper goes into every home and it is through the newspaper mainly that the church's appeal has to be made. And yet newspaper adver- tising must be of the right kind if it is to be of value. It is not to be imagined that the use of sev- eral more columns in newspapers would remove the indifference of many to the church. As much space might be given to the church as to baseball and still for many it would not become as popular as baseball. The church is an old institution, carry- 254 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH ing on its work in a rather familiar, conventional fashion. There are few sensational plays as on the baseball diamond, and religious news could not be spiced with the newest slang of the sporting page. The best preaching is not reportable. The news- paper wants news that is new. Those sermons which deal with the passing hour, with current events, are reportable, but not a sermon on the eternals. Not in America, I mean. Nevertheless an expert newspaper man could report the church in a fashion to get the attention of the great army of newspaper readers. The av- erage pastor is not qualified for such work, nor has he time. Also, he is the leader and central per- sonality of his church. His relation to the church is different from that of a manufacturer or a merchant to his business. The newspaper world is prejudiced, it is said, against giving greater publicity to church matters because of the personal ambition of some ministers who are anxious to advertise themselves rather than their work. A manufacturer only wants his goods known and sold, we are told, and cares nothing for his own name and fame. But a manufacturer's success de- pends on the quality of the product he has to sell, while the minister's success depends not on some impersonal product but on his own personality. It is impossible to dissociate a minister from his church as a manufacturer may be dissociated from his business. To advertise a minister's work is to advertise the man back of it. The minister is in ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 255 the same class with the lawyer and physician in the matter of advertising. Each church, therefore, should have its press agent or publicity committee. Modesty would nat- urally prevent the minister from using the methods of publicity by which trade and all modern busi- ness thrives, and it would be bad form, as in the case of the physician and lawyer. If he were to resort to them he would only excite contempt. Ad- vertising is not his job. In addition to the local publicity secretary there should be in every large community a permanent publicity bureau in charge of a thoroughly capable newspaper man who would keep in touch with the religious organizations of the city and cooperate with the local press agents. This would avoid the impression that the churches are in competition with one another, an impression that is deadly to the growth of the church. To facilitate the work of this paid force there should be a confer- ence of church leaders and the leaders of the press in the community to bring about sympathetic rela- tions between the newspapers and the churches. No groups of men could be more mutually helpful than preachers and newspaper men. Such conferences would open the way to new and efficient ways of community service. While the editors will give more free space than at present, there needs to be considerable paid ad- vertising. In a city of 50,000 and over there should be a full-page advertisement once a week by 256 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH yearly contract in at least one leading daily paper. In display type some phase of church life should each week be set forth. The value of social wor- ship, of the Bible school, of the church as a medium for fellowship, and of the community service ren- dered by the church should be stated in the most telling and persuasive manner. If the church hasn't anything of interest to display, that fact will call its attention to the need for new enterprises and for actual social service to which it can point with honest satisfaction. "Talking points" for the church should be mar- shaled by the wisest church leaders for use in these display advertisements. Many are at a loss to know how to commend the church. They haven't formu- lated their own reasons for church attendance. They could not give a convincing answer to the objection, "Why should I go to church?" Just as the most efficient sales departments have schools of salesmanship and train their agents, so we need to give help and direction to those who would win recruits for the church. Great wisdom should be used in selecting the best medium. A yellow journal in New York sent out a solicitor to secure the paid pulpit notices which are printed on Saturday. He returned with word that the ministers refused to place the advertise- ment because his paper was not read by church- goers. The publisher replied, "Go back and say to them : 'Whom do you advertise for, those with whom you already do business, or those you want ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 257 to do business with ?' " That got them all. We advertise to catch the attention of the uninterested, to enlarge the volume of business done, to attract new customers, to enlist new recruits. The newspaper is not the only medium, though it is the best. No advertisement in the street-car misses the eye that is not poring over a newspaper. The motion-picture house offers a splendid oppor- tunity also. The whole attention of the thousands who daily attend these shows is riveted on the canvas, and a well worded slide run in the intervals when the rolls are being changed would make a lasting impression on the memory. Billboards and "sky signs" were used effectively at the time of the Christian Conservation Congress of the Men and Religion Forward Movement. They bore the simple invitation of the church or stated the self-evident claims of religion. These are samples : "Not to Allay but to Help Satisfy Social Unrest Is One Aim of Present Day Chris- tianity. Think Things Through and You Will Go to Church" ; and "Sport Is Pleasure— But It Is Not Pleasure Enough for a Well-Rounded Man. Man Has a Body, but He Is a Living Spirit." In all advertising, when space allows, it is of the utmost importance to emphasize that the church cares for the people and exists to serve them. Many do not realize what the church is for. Hence such an announcement as this should be run again and again, "When sick or in trouble apply to any of the city's ministers." 258 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Of course this means expense. In a large city a high-grade advertising man would command five to ten thousand dollars a year. He would need five to fifteen thousand more to conduct the office and buy advertising space. A good publicity bureau would mean a budget of from ten to twenty thou- sand a year, which is about what is paid for music in the three wealthiest churches of the city. If the church wants to enlarge the volume of its business, to reach the non-churchgoer, such a publicity cam- paign would be worth as much as a hundred quartet choirs. Some churchgoers are so respectable and con- ventional that they shrink from the idea of church advertising. It seems to imply that the church is losing ground and has the effect to cheapen the church. There is no use in blinking the facts — the church is losing ground. With a growing number of people the church seems less significant than it once did and many have no sense of need for it or of duty to it, which means that it is already cheapened in their eyes. Aggressive, per- sistent advertising would impress the public that the church is in dead earnest.^ That would help to win back the prestige which has been lost, and it * Specimens might be given of skillful advertising done by the churches in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Grand Rapids and other cities. But church publicity is a new field, and even these admirable experiments will be improved upon in a few years. The main thing is to realize the necessity for pubHcity, to be willing to put money into it, and to engage the right sort of publicity man to handle it. ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 259 would have the effect of stimulating the present membership of the church. For they v^ould try to measure up to the expectations aroused. Like the business house, the church v^^ould see that its goods v^ere "as advertised." The unusual publicity given to the church during the Men and Religion campaign raised just this question. Editorials discussed the efficiency of the church organization and earnestly pointed out how it could better fulfill its mission. "Is the church as broad and interested and helpful as these adver- tisements intimate?" was their reply to us. Our challenge to the world means a challenge to our- selves. If there is any honor in us we will try to make the church match the standards we set up for it where all may read. Anyone can imagine the reflex influence on the church of such an adver- tisement as this : "Christianity Is For All Men and For All of a Man; Go to Church Next Sunday and Find Out." The amount of publicity given to religious news by the daily press would at once be increased if the editors were made to feel that their readers wanted it. The business of editors is to meet the public demand, and they will respond instantly to the wishes of the public. The place which is given to the church in the columns of the newspapers would be greatly enlarged if Christian readers were interested enough to express their opinions to their editors. If some local church movement is not ade- quately reported, or some great national meeting 26o THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH is omitted altogether, letters to the managing edi- tor would quickly eflfect a change. Instructions would be given the city editor and the Associated Press would be called up to see that the like did not happen again. We get what we want if we want it badly enough. When all is said and done the best publicity for any concern comes from its present patrons. '*We are advertised by our loving friends." It is high time for the criticism of the church on the part of its own members to cease. Such criticism is a criticism of the critics. If the church is not what it ought to be the fault is ours who make up the church. If we are at fault, let's not whine over it but remedy it. ^'Don't knock, push !" was the sign on an office door ; and it is a good motto for church members. A pastorate which was notable for its efficiency and length — covering fifty years — brought great discouragement to the minister during its early years. He wrote to a friend in an adjoining city that he was a failure, and his friend suggested an exchange. On the Sunday of the exchange the visiting minister called the leading members of the church together after the sermon. *'How do you like your minister?" he asked. ''Immensely," was the reply. "What kind of work is he doing here ?" "Splendid," all agreed. "Then," said the wise friend, "tell him so. Tell everybody. Begin to talk of the great service being rendered by this church." His counsel was followed with a will, and the result ADVERTISING THE CHURCH 261 is one of the largest and most influential churches in the whole country. The church needs boosting. Every friend of the church should go into the advertising business. Talk up the church. Get it into current conversa- tion. Talk church at the club, on the street car, in the home circle. Speak well of it. And then see that it deserves to be well spoken of. CHAPTER VI THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH Even when the country-to-city movement was at its height the rural church played a great part, for it was the training school of the most virile ele- ment in the city's population. The leaders in all walks of life were for the most part country bred. The farm develops an initiative and resourceful- ness which make the leader. Among the really significant men of the last half-century the large ma- jority spent their boyhood on the farm. Certainly the churches of the city are kept replenished by those who were reared in the country. It is the country church and school to which all these look back for the ideals that have guided them through life. With the present country-ward movement the rural church occupies a yet more important posi- tion. Many of the more energetic young men are still going from the farm to the city, and what the country church means to them will be of immense moment in all their future. But an increasing num- ber of city-bred lads are studying agriculture and are taking up farms. Many men who have accumu- lated a competence are returning to the land. It 262 THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 263 is easy for persons moving from the country to the city to be lost to the church, and thousands drop out every year in the process. Far easier is it for those moving from the city to the country to fall away from the church since they are less ready to share in the social life of the new community. The country man is eager to get into touch with the community life of the city, but it is only the broader-minded city folk who seek to identify them- selves with the people among whom they have taken up land. The country church must be an institu- tion to reckon with if it is to command the respect and support of the migrators from the city. The opportunity of the country pastor is little understood now and little appreciated. Young men from the seminaries want a city church. A third- rate church in the city is preferred to a first-rate church in the country. This is not because the young minister is unwilling to make sacrifices and wants a pleasant berth. He is willing to endure hardship if only it is to some purpose. He is ready for sacrifice if he can see the good of it. What he wants is a chance to be of the widest use, and the city seems to him a larger field than the country. It sounds like a contradiction, but the greater the number of people among whom the average minister works the smaller the number to whom he ministers. In the great city he ministers only to the few hundreds who attend his church. He may get into fairly intimate contact with these, but out- 264 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH side of that small circle he doesn't exist. Not even the people in the neighborhood of his church know him, but only the few who are members of the church. In the metropolis there are but one or two ministers who are personalities outside of their own congregations. Of other vocations the same is true; there are few men in business or politics in New York who are personalities beyond a narrow circle. In the town the minister's personality reaches a larger number, and in the village or the country it reaches the whole community. The city minister preaches to a small group of people on Sunday and only to them, but the rural pastor is not so limited, for his personality preaches for him day and night. What a man stands for, if he is minister in a rural community, is known by the people of other churches than his own and by the people of no church connection. The minister who touches three hundred souls in the city might touch three thousand souls in the town. In the country the church is a more marked in- stitution than in the city. It is the dominating fea- ture in the village. Even in the most progressive towns only two buildings are in the same class with it, the high school and the court house. It has direct and immediate access to all the life of the community. It is easy to keep in the very center of the field of consciousness of the town as it is not easy in the city. There is no community inter- est, no moral agency, no social force, which the minister cannot touch if he will. He can use all THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 265 the capital of his personality, invest all his resources and put into practice all his gifts. With these great advantages a country pastorate has equally great disadvantages. The first is the lack of stimulus to the preacher. While his per- sonality preaches for him all the time and to the whole community, there are few who come to hear his sermons. Not only are his audiences small but they are without variety. The preacher lacks the spur which comes from seeing new faces in his audience from Sunday to Sunday. He and his peo- ple know one another so intimately that they do not challenge him to his best. It takes a really great spirit to keep up to his highest standard of preaching without an outside stimulus. Very few of us are big enough to be our own stimulus year after year. How can the country church be reor- ganized so as to supply this lack? The stimulus of new personalities and new situa- tions could be supplied by associating the rural church wherever possible with some urban church. The city church and village church could be formed into a kind of circuit, each preserving its local autonomy and each responsible for its own ex- penses. Better still would it be if the official boards of the two churches could occasionally meet to- gether to decide the problems of each and to unite in the closest possible way the life of both. City and country are now so accessible to one another that such conferences could be easily arranged. At any rate the ministers should combine forces for 266 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the working of the two fields. Each could educate the other as to the problems of widely differing communities, and they could work them out to- gether. They could frequently preach in one an- other's pulpits and share the responsibility of the two parishes. If any church be unwilling to ex- change now and then its minister with another church, that church isn't yet Christian and isn't ready to do the business of the Kingdom in a large-minded, unselfish and energetic way. The greatest disadvantage to a country pastorate is the inadequate financial support which it entails. Though the minister is in many cases isolated and is removed from much that he loves — music, libra- ries, art galleries, lectures and other intellectual stimuli — this would be in part compensated for, if he had the means to buy books and the opportunity to travel. His income is often so meager that these are denied him. The complaint is sometimes made that the minister has no message, that the preacher has nothing vital to say, and that this is the reason men do not go to church. What is to be expected of the minister who receives but a few hundred dollars a year? He may have had good preparation for the pulpit, but he must keep abreast of the times, he must be a constant student and a wide reader of the best literature. His mind must be kept enriched if it is to remain fresh and creative. But many a minister, particularly the minister of a country church, receives so little that he has all he can do to buy food and clothing for THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 267 his body and his family, though his mind is hungry and famishing. Rural pastorates are always unworthy of a man's best efforts where there are six churches in a community which would be better served by one. The minister of a whole community, not having five others to divide up the territory with him, would feel that he had a real task. The one-in-six minister, with only a handful of people who call him pastor, feels that he hasn't a man's job, and he spends most of his time planning to get away. He fails to see the opportunities for service that do exist and thinks of his position as one to be endured only until he can find another church. Rural churches suffer because men go to them as a makeshift until they can get settled in the city. One has known a minister who accepted the call of a church but did not unpack his books. There are many cases where ministers do not unpack their minds. They regard the church not as a field but as a perch. And perhaps the most pa- thetic spectacle conceivable is that of ministers anchored unwillingly in the country, staying on only because they cannot go elsewhere. Such ministers and the churches they serve are sunk in profound discouragement and depression. This multiplication of churches and the scant support which the policy means for each will be treated more at length in a later chapter. Let me here state one factor in the situation because it points to the task to be undertaken immediately: 26S THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the country has lagged behind the city in the process of socializing the life of its people. The city has light and water and parks and means of trans- portation which all use together. The city has a multitude of interests that do away with provincial- ism and obscure competition. The farmer's life cen- ters largely in his own farm. He has little concern for community welfare. Until recently he objected to being taxed for good roads, which, with the pub- lic school, is the only thing in the country used in common. He is the natural competitor of all other farmers. There is ''no common socializing experience," as Dr. Wilson, a discerning student of country conditions, points out.^ Men in the country have no natural meeting places, since the passing of the country store remote from the railroad. On Saturday afternoon, their only leisure time, they drive into town where all are in a measure aliens and each goes his own way. This competitive spirit has been carried over into the church. The very life of the church is thought to depend upon it. Some honestly hold the view that if the Methodist Church were taken out of a neighborhood the Presbyterian Church would languish, and vice versa. In fact there are men in most rural communities whose only apparent attach- ment to the church grows out of the desire to see their church outstrip that of their neighbor. The first duty of the rural church is therefore to * Warren H. Wilson, Ph.D., "The Church of the Open Country," p. 178. THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 269 develop the community spirit. Its program must be reorganized with a view to community salvation. The test of any church is found, as Dr. Gladden says, in the social conditions of the community to which it ministers. No church becomes decadent so long as it serves the community. The country church has been slower than the church in the city to adjust itself to the changing needs of the com- munity. It has been content with the narrowest range of ministry. It has had no wide vision for its task. It has been content with a preaching service and a Sunday School and has not grappled with the community problems which are in crying need of solving. An opportunity for socializing the life of the community lies ready to the hand of the church in its religious festivals. Not only Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter are occasions for bringing all the neighborhood together, but the church should take the lead in a "safe and sane Fourth" and in other patriotic demonstrations. Nothing has greater possibilities for rejuvenating a community than Old Home Week when all who have gone out from a community are brought back home. If Ihey cannot come in person they should be asked to send a letter and a contribution to some community im- provement.^ People moving to the city usually re- *A reunion of the little, disheartened Plum Creek Church in Pennsylvania revealed the fact that former members of the church had come into possession of fif- teen millions of dollars. 270 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH tain their membership in the home church, for no institution has a more tenacious hold upon its mem- bers. This sentimental attachment should be taken advantage of and turned to some practical purpose. Old Home Week, if it accomplish nothing more, will make for community self-respect and pride when it shows the contribution made by the com- munity to the big world. A kind of community enterprise which would mean much for rural sections is cooperative buying and selling. Cooperative stores have never been a success in America, but in a country where the combine and trust have reached such a stage of perfection and power, there is no reason why the average man shouldn't combine with his fellows for the advantage of all. Our intelligent farming class have been slow to realize how much more they could get out of the soil with better market facilities, and how much less their supplies would cost them if they eliminated a small army of middlemen. Now produce is shipped to the great city, and by a circuitous route it reaches the con- sumer, worth much less but bought at two or three times the price the farmer gets for it. Now farm products are railroaded to the distant city and then returned for distribution to the town or village but a few miles distant from where they were raised. Now the farmer buys his tools and machinery and seed in the most expensive market, whereas he might have them direct from the producer with but one profit to pay. The capable minister who taught THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 2/1 the theory of cooperative buying and selling, and organized the practice, would make a real contribu- tion to community spirit and would render a real service in the way of fraternity, economy and efficiency. A wave of civic pride is now sweeping over the country. A new community consciousness is being developed. Even the smaller towns are organizing civic betterment societies. The beautifying of towns and villages, the improvement of transportation facilities, the securing of better roads, better water, better light, better sewage disposal, — these are the absorbing new interests of the whole country. In this movement for community salvation the church should take a leading part. In early New England communities the church was the place for the town meeting and the center of the community life, and the church was a power in the community. Only as the church puts itself at the service of the community will it regain that central place. Many far-seeing men are saying that the coun- try minister ought to have special training for his parish. It is urged that the divinity curriculum should be augmented by courses in scientific farm- ing so that the minister could touch intelligently and constructively the industrial life of his parish, for the more intimately a minister can identify himself with the interests of his people the greater his chance of usefulness. But even if such special training has not been received, the minister can equip himself to be in every sense the leader and 2^2 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH guide of the country community. He has a trained brain, he has time for study and observation, and abundant literature is available. He can get help from the Department of Agriculture, lecturers will be furnished by the agricultural colleges, and the minister can prepare himself without great difficulty to speak intelligently and suggestively on such mat- ters as intensive farming, fruit culture, the fertiliza- tion of the soil, and the selection of the most pro- ductive crops. What better use could be made of the Sunday evening service than to have such themes presented, the opening address to be fol- lowed by free discussion from the floor? In some country churches the evening service is attended only by a handful of people and the preacher frets his soul over it. Either let the useless service be discontinued or made use of in some way to interest the community. In many notable instances the country minister has remolded the social and industrial life of a com- munity as well as its religious life. Let me refer to but one. When the minister to whom this book is dedicated was in the prime of life he took his children who were still young to the country, spend- ing six years on the central farm of the old planta- tion where their mother was born. It was in a little pocket in the slave-holding section of southern Maryland. Both white and colored were more im- poverished than during slave days. The same crops were raised as before the war, and antiquated methods of farming were still in practice. It was a THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE RURAL CHURCH 273 belated, hopeless community. But this minister who had never before lived on a farm became at once the community leader. He called the farmers to- gether, organized them, inspired them, introduced new crops, new machinery, new methods of fer- tilization, new breeds of cattle, and new social cus- toms. In six years, under his leadership, the old, run-down farms were recuperated and the entire community life transformed. Those earlier condi- tions are to be found to-day in only the most re- mote neighborhoods, but there are few communities where such constructive leadership is not needed. In forming a program for community service the same rule holds in the country as in the city. First let a careful study of the community be made to discover what its needs are. Rural communities are not like one another any more than urban commu- nities. When the minister and his wisest laymen and women have learned by means of a survey how best the community may be served, let the church's program be reorganized to the end that it may most efficiently render that service. Tradi- tion and custom must be set aside. No other con- sideration should apply but this: How can this church be of the largest service to this community in this day? The condition of the country church is directly involved in the condition of country life generally. Whatever tends to raise the standard of living in the country immediately enlarges the ministry of the church. But the rural church not only reflects S274 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH the economic and social condition of the country, it is a most important factor in the movement to improve country life. Its power of leadership is greater and more immediate than that of the city church. A new program for social service is both the supreme opportunity and the immediate duty of the church in the country. City churches can hold their own without a social program longer than the country church, for in the city many social forces are already at work. The very existence of the country church depends on its being in vital touch with the community and its making some definite effort to help the com- munity. Here also church cooperation, without which any efficient service of the community is im- possible, is more imperative than in the city where the church is less conspicuous and its blunders and weaknesses are less obvious. If church union is not yet feasible, church cooperation is indispensable. And after church cooperation in small communities there will follow in quick succession, county-wide and then state-wide organization of the churches to promote the general social welfare. The country church has led the way in temper- ance reform and it may be the pioneer in church federation and community service. It may and it must if it is to continue the great dominating, up- lifting influence of the rural community. Necessity is laid upon it. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER The gregarious instinct in men must be reckoned with by every institution that would minister to humanity. Why do folks live together? At first it was for safety that men lived in camps and vil- lages. For the same reason they built them cities surrounded by walls in which they slept secure, going forth in the morning to till the soil outside. Much later, when war ceased to be the chief busi- ness of life and when manufacturing and trading employed more people than agriculture, men moved into town to find a means of livelihood. Later still convenience was the motive; the convenience of schools, stores, light, water and easy transporta- tion, — things that go to make up a comfortable life. But life in the country to-day is as safe and con- venient as life in the city and economically more independent. It is the gregarious instinct chiefly which now turns people into the city. The social feelings have always been a factor and are at pres- ent the determining factor. In the colonial days when the best people lived in the country and when the social life of the country was more beautiful, 275 276 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH more chivalrous, more satisfying than that of the city, the pull of the city was unfelt. Let the country become once more a place where the instinct for comradeship and social expression can be satisfied, and people will no longer move to the city. The lure of the city is the love of folks. It is the dearth of social life in the country which loosens its hold upon its children. And yet one may live in the city and have fewer points of contact with his kind than in the country. The isolation of the country is not so hard to bear as the solitude of the city. No loneliness is so dreary as the loneliness of the teeming street. So upon arriving in the city the country bred lad be- gins to look about for means to gratify the strong social impulse which drew him to the city. The most available resources are the street, the show and the saloon. Much of the time they are the only available resources. Boys and girls from the country make their ac- quaintances mainly on the street or in the theater. Now and then one picks up an acquaintance who is not immoral, but the chances are the other way. At any rate a girl who allows herself to be "picked up" in this fashion oversteps a convention which she regarded in the country, and when one begins an acquaintance by disregarding conventions there is always danger. The Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. rooms do not entirely meet the case even for the limited number they can accommodate, because they do not furnish the companionship of the opposite CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 2'J'J sex for which every normal person has a longing. Where the ^'sitting room" of saloons furnishes the meeting place, harm is the certain result for alco- holic liquor lessens the moral and rational control over the sex instinct. The movement against the saloon will be inef- fectual so long as there is nothing to take its place. What attracts to the saloon is its social atmosphere. Few young men are the prey of appetite. To escape from the city's loneliness they are forced to the saloons for their society. As Jack London says in "John Barleycorn," "It isn't chemical attraction that leads men to drink but the accessibility of drink and the omnipresence of the saloon. Wherever a man turns he is confronted by an open saloon which bids him enter. For a large group of men all roads lead into the saloon, — their business, so- cial, fraternal interests draw them thither." Sa- loons are the "poor men's clubs." There are no initiation fees or dues but the price of a drink. A man is always welcome, and if he "stands treat" in his turn he is on equal footing with the rest. Homeless young men must go somewhere of eve- nings. They cannot always go to the theater, for they want to talk and tell stories and sing them- selves. They have no place to go except to a saloon or grill room where they must pay their way by buying drinks. They don't want the drink but will not be dead-beats. Here then the opportunity of the church and its duty are obvious. Whatever the country church can 278 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH do to enrich the social life of the community will hold people to the soil and forestall the evils of over-congestion. And the city church in so far as it is a social center provides that for which the country boy and girl have left their homes. This craving for the society of one's kind is a natural and often a religious instinct, and the Christian church should supply it. The church was once a brotherhood. The early church was rich in what to-day it is poorest — fellowship. The most chivalrous venture of the church was communism. It did not last but nevertheless the early Christians thought of themselves as brothers. Frequent social meals, known as agapae or Love Feasts, were held, followed by the Lord's Supper. When the church became a world power it lost its family character. The real spirit of fraternity has never been recov- ered and to-day the church is a brotherhood in name only. The great word "brother" is no longer heard in the church but in the labor union and the fraternal order. During this present generation while the church has been declining the lodge has been in- creasingly successful in reaching and holding men. The lodge is a social center. It is democratic. A feeling of equality exists among its members. The fraternal spirit is much more real and pervasive in the lodge than in the church. The ceremony of in- itiation impresses the significance of membership in the brotherhood. For many the lodge has displaced the church. CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 279 The fraternal spirit of a church seems to diminish as it becomes rich and respectable. Here the chief offenders are they who are otherwise the churches main support — the women. By education and train- ing women are not democratic. Their life is made up of many small things. They have need to pro- tect themselves by convention and tradition. There are fewer objective tests of their worth and hence social standing, an arbitrary standard, has come to mean more to them than to men. Those who are uncertain of their social position always hold them- selves apart. Since these things mean more to her than to men a woman may deliberately stand aloof from strangers when a man would be kept back only by unintentional diffidence. But in a Christian brotherhood there is no place for social distinctions and lack of fellowship is lack of rehgion. A church's equipment helps mightily in creating the family atmosphere, though it is more a matter of spirit than of equipment. Some very badly ap- pointed churches are rich in fellowship. Few churches are situated in a neighborhood suitable for what is known as "institutional work." Most are family churches located among the homes of the comfortable and well-to-do. All that is needed to make such churches into social centers are the fea- tures one would find in the individual home, only on a larger cooperative scale. The family church must be built not merely with the Sunday congregation in mind but also the social activities of the week. There should be adequate Sunday School rooms, S8o THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH parlors, dining room and kitchen, so that the church may be a real center of the social life of the people. The city church must meet the social needs of non- churchgoing folk if it would minister to their re- ligious needs. The church ought to be made once more a real brotherhood because the world needs brothering. The more we crowd into cities the mightier will be the longing for those personal contacts and human relationships which were so much easier in the towns. In the home town each has an immediate community influence. He has a place in the church, a part in the social activities of the town, and has the exhilarating sense that he is needed. In the city he is merely a job-holder with no community feeling and no points of contact with the city's life save as he touches it in business and as he goes to its commercialized places of amusement. He is welcome to attend church but he does not get ac- quainted with its members and he finds no work to do in the church. Such church attendance is so unlike church attendance in the old home where he knew everybody and where he felt he was of some service, that he soon wearies of it and quits the church altogether. The leakage here is tremendous. If the church is ever to hold its own, it must dis- cover ways to touch in a more intimate fashion the life of the community and means by which it may satisfy the craving for human fellowship and offer an opportunity for service, to the thousand.^ of CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 281 eager young men and women who are just making a home for themselves in the city. In the city only a small part of the social life of the city bred will center in the church, but in the country the church must be a community center or nothing. Here its accomplishment is much easier. Country folk live practically on the same social plane and they can come together more readily as one large family. They have more things in com- mon than city folk although less community spirit. There are many fewer interests pulling at them and in some quarters there is a great dearth of interests. The unelaborate social activities of the church and the simple entertainments and diversions it can afford do not find a jaded appetite as in the city. With all the functions it has delegated to school, hospital, fraternal order and charity organizations, the church as a social institution has left as its best opportunity, to organize the leisure of the people. This is a task of the utmost importance. Play has an ethical character for it is purely voluntary. Preference has to be exercised, which makes play highly moral. When Goethe would study the Ger- man people he studied them on their holidays, for what a man does in his leisure shows what he at bottom is. At work a person's life is marked out for him, but in his leisure hours he chooses for himself, and it is choice that gives the set to the soul. A Christian society should make easy the choice of the best. Recreation of some sort is as necessary as food. 282 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH "The thing that needs most to be understood about play is that it is not a luxury but a necessity," says Mr. Joseph Lee, the father of the playground move- ment in this country; "it is not something a child likes to have, it is something he must have if he is to grow up. It is more than an essential part of his education ; it is an essential part of his growth, of the process by which he becomes a man at all." Equally true is it that the normal adult mind needs diversion and recreation. Hence the play spirit has established itself in America as it does among every people who have outgrown pioneer conditions. The church has an immense opportunity in direct- ing the play spirit and in organizing leisure. All too rapidly the play spirit has become commercial- ized. The appetite for amusement is never bad, but the way in which it is satisfied often is. The trouble is right here; people have forgotten how to amuse themselves, and amusement is supplied for them. The character of the amusement furnished may be good or bad but the fact that it has to be furnished is bad. Uncommercialized amusement must be restored; people must be given means of amusing themselves. Some equivalent of the singing school and spelling match and apple paring and husking bee and the debating club and dramatic society must be found. The average city church cannot afford the recre- ational equipment necessary to compete with com- mercialized places of amusement. But experts in boys' work affirm that the best work with boys CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 283 done in a church is the non-equipment type. A leader of the right spirit can do without apparatus, and without the right spirit of leadership apparatus is worthless. Billiard tables and perhaps a bowling alley for the men and women as well as boys and girls is the utmost to which the average family church need go. But the church can influence the play spirit of the city if Christian business men would erect amusement palaces for all sorts of indoor recreation without the sale of liquor, which would keep young people away from the saloon and out of harm's way. This can be done and is done at a profit as a business proposition. An interesting illustration of what can be done in the country is the Amenia Field Day which has been described as "an experiment in cooperative recreation," ^ To quote from its program, "The Amenia Field Day offers, as a substitute for the commercialized fair, a free day of wholesome en- joyment, supported by the united efforts of the whole community. One day a year the people of Amenia invite the whole countryside to such a day of clean and simple recreation, without gamblers, fakers, intoxicating liquors, or vulgar sideshows. Admission to our festival is free to all." A variety of games and entertainment that will take in every- one, young and old, of both sexes, is provided. On every program these principles are printed: ^Amenia is a little town in Dutchess County, N. Y. For a fuller account see "The Survey," September 13, 1913. 284 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH "You have got to make the country as attractive socially as the city if you want to keep the young folks on the farms. "There^s a good deal of work in the country, but most of our boys and girls have forgotten how to play. "Baseball is a splendid game, but it isn't the only one. Every healthy boy should be interested in at least half a dozen others. Don't merely watch oth- ers play games ; play them yourself. "You can't drink strong drink and be an athlete. Get your boys interested in honest and healthy sports, and save them from drink and dissipation. "Contests and competitions are not the main thing. The strong compete and grow stronger; the weak look on and grow weaker.' The main thing is play. Learn the great lesson that play is just as necessary for your sons as work. "The community should help to run its own recre- ations. Its festivals should be, not only for the people, but of and by the people." The country church is confronted by an imme- diate opportunity and obligation in providing for the leisure time of the people. The long hours, the isolation and the hard work of the farm call as loudly for play as the dull monotony of the factory, but in many towns and hamlets to-day there are no recreational facilities save those provided by nature. In winter skating and coasting are the only re- sources and in most places the chance for these sports is small. At night there is no place for the boys to go and nothing to do but to congregate at the saloon, the barber shop, or the poolroom which is usually of bad repute. In many towns CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 285 the saloon has been voted out and the Christian men of the place think that when they have voted it out they have done all they can to safeguard the boys. You cannot shut the door of the saloon and keep it shut unless you open some other door. Boys must meet their kind. They must have something to do. They cannot be kept at home sitting on a haircloth chair in the parlor — unless they are milk- sops. Nothing ought so justly to excite indignation as the stupidity with which the church people of the average town treat the boy. They leave him unprovided for in his leisure, supply him with no means to amuse himself, and then wonder that he goes to the devil. There is more vice in the town than in the city, more in the village than in the town, and more in the country than in the village, because in each case there is less to do. The village church must at once address itself to the task of filling up the leisure time of boys and girls and men and women with wholesome recreation and diversion.^ Where the town is large enough a Y. M. C. A. man or some trained organizer of play should be employed to direct recreation and to develop community spirit. In many towns such a man is now employed and *The Mormon church has shown great wisdom in this regard. There is scarce a town or hamlet in Utah with- out its hall for dancing, amateur theatricals and other forms of recreation. What the young people will have anyway, often with moral risk, the church provides them. 286 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH IS at work without a building and with no equip- ment but an office and a stenographer. He is the official "mixer" of the town, the steerer and or- ganizer of all the interests of young men and boys. In some places he is by appointment a member of the police force and thus has back of him the authority of the law as well as the good will of the churches. He is in short a Christian policeman turned loose on the community. Such a plan can be followed in most places. Any group of business men would readily see the value of such a man and could easily finance him. Where such a specialist may not be had the ministers and the church men themselves should undertake the work. In summer, swimming is an unfailing source of joy, and many villages could have swimming baths at small cost by taking ad- vantage of natural water supplies. Winter and summer, in city and country, the Boy Scout organi- zation ^ is an immense resource. The instruction given in this organization is an excellent supplement to instruction in the Bible School. There are few churches that couldn't afford to put a billard table and other interesting games in their Sunday School rooms, or the prayer meeting room, where of an evening the young people could play under the lead of some man who hasn't for- gotten that he was a boy. I am very sure that the wise God would be as much pleased to see a *Full information may be had by addressing the Boy Scouts of America, 200 Fifth Avenue, New York City. CHURCH A SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL CENTER 287 group of boys playing at billiards in some room of the church or parish house on Monday night as to see a few godly fathers and mothers at prayer in that same room on Wednesday night while their boys are hanging around a disreputable poolroom. If any do not read the mind of God in such fashion, and if they could not adjust their minds to a prayer meeting in a room with a billiard table, then let the village poolrooms be redeemed. Let the men of the church say to the barber with whose shop the poolroom is connected that if he will run a clean place and forbid profanity and foul stories they will patronize it. If a number of the best men of the community would take this matter in hand they could transform the poolrooms and social clubs and dance-halls and make them as safe as the ball field or the ice pond. For the boys' sake and God's let us do something besides condemn their amuse- ments. The unreasoning prejudice of some church peo- ple against amusements needs to be reconsidered. Few amusements and fewer games are harmful in themselves. Games that are played with a stick and a ball — tennis, croquet, baseball, bowling, billiards, hockey and such like — are games of skill with the element of chance reduced to a minimum, and are hence clean, pure sport. What is harmful is the conditions under which they sometimes have to be played. If we who are the moral leaders of the community do not make it possible for boys and girls to play under wholesome surroundings the 288 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH blame for their downfall will rest upon our heads — for play they must and will. The leisure time is the time of greatest moral peril as well as opportunity. When people's leisure is provided for, when they find some expression for the social instincts and some outlet for the instinct of play, then are they saved from those things that destroy the soul and devastate the life of the com- munity. And salvation is the church's business. CHAPTER VIII GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER Protestantism makes for democracy, but it has given opportunity to intellectual egotism and the pride of opinion. It grew out of a medieval church where it was held that different ideas could not exist side by side in the same organization. Each new idea was supposed to need the clothing of a new church organization, a supposition disproved by the endless variety of theological views found in any growing church to-day. So denominations have been multiplied until we face a situation which is insufferable. In many communities there are a number of small, inefficient churches where one worthy church would be better. These churches are too weak to do anything but barely to live. The struggle for existence gives rise to a spirit of competition far removed from Christian. The extremity to which this rivalry will go is shown in the remark of an inhabitant of Indiana where a religious survey was recently made, "If the Methodist church were on fire and if I should happen to pass by, and if there were a bucket of water standing near I would kick the bucket over.'* These rivalries and contentions not only negative the Christian spirit in church peo- 289 290 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH pie but create a feeling of disgust and religious in- difference in the extra-church community. The city is under-churched, but the country is over-churched.^ Seventy-five per cent, of the churches of the United States are in towns and districts of 2,500 or less. Many of these village churches have no justification for their existence. Let me select one community out of thousands, a railroad center in New England.^ It has a few under 2,800 inhabitants. Of these 1,100 are Romanists who are ministered to by one church. For the 1,700 nominal Protestants there are five churches with a property investment of $59,000. The total running expense is $5,775, of which the five ministers receive $4,400. The total morning attendance on a fine Sunday was 286, about as many as attended the Catholic church at the same hour. If there were but one Protestant church the same current expense budget would provide an efficient minister at $2,500 ; an expert in religious education, social service, work for boys, etc., at $1,200; and leave $2,075 for music, running expenses and benev- olent work outside of the town. And it is safe to predict that not 80 per cent, of the Protestant population would then as now remain outside the church. *It is computed that country towns have one church to 80 people, while cities have one to 3,000. *The town of Ayer, Mass., carefully investigated by Waite Beardsley and reported in The Congregationalist and Christian World for April 27, 191 1. GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 2gi The notion has persisted that the more churches there are the more people will go to church. The facts are otherwise.^ Multiplication of church plants means greater expense for maintaining them, more appeals for money and keener competition, all of which are dissuaders from church attendance. A church partly filled means a dispirited service which will discourage the attendance of any but the most loyal. Roman Catholics attend church better than Protestants, and they do not multiply church buildings in order to get people to church. In this country as a whole the Romanists have 2}^ com- municants for every sitting while Protestants have 2^ sittings for every communicant. In a well-or- ganized New England community like Providence the Romanists provide 20,000 sittings for a popu- lation of 102,000 and the Protestants 50,000 sittings for a population of 86,000 with an average attend- ance of 13,000. In Bogard Township, Davies County, Indiana, there is a Protestant population of 1,393, with 9 church buildings, 491 church mem- bers and no resident minister since no church can afford to keep one; the 300 Catholics have one beautiful building in the township and a resident priest. Overlapping and waste in some communities ^The conclusions of Charles Otis Gill and Gifford Pinchot in "The Country Church" are that "the more nu- merous the churches the greater the loss in attendance in the last twenty years." 292 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH means neglect in others. In a town of four hun- dred people in Colorado there are four churches, all supported by home mission boards, and there are many other towns in like condition. On the other hand, in the same state there are one hun- dred and thirty-three communities, ranging in pop- ulation from one hundred and fifty to one thou- sand souls, without Protestant churches of any kind, one hundred of them being also without a Roman Catholic church. The Neglected Fields Survey in fifteen western states by the Home Mis- sions Committee of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America shows that in one state seventy-five thousand people reside five miles or more from any church. A rich valley with a population of five thousand, capable of supporting fifty thousand people, had but one church. In an- other state fourteen counties had but three perma- nent places in each for worship. Because of this subdivision of churches, ministers are underpaid and are unable to secure that equip- ment which is necessary for their intellectual stim- ulus and mental growth. Outside of the 125 largest cities in the United States the average salary of ministers is $636 a year. In one denomination the average salary is $334. The wage of a common laborer is $460 a year, and the better maid servants in the cities receive from $300 to $500 with board. According to the Department of Labor the average income of stablemen is $689, of pumpmen $685, of GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 293 blacksmiths $537.^ The highest average salary for a minister shown by any denomination is $1,221. The largest Protestant denomination, excluding the big cities, shows an average of $608. Two-thirds of the ministers are not receiving a living wage. Half of them are serving churches which are so small because of denominational duplication that they cannot pay a living wage. Not only are the majority of ministers underpaid but many of them are subjected to the humiliation of collecting their own meager salaries. It is just because churches are so foolishly multiplied, so feeble and small- minded and inefficient that few of our best young men go into the ministry. The sacrifice demanded is of the unheroic sort for it accomplishes so little good. No red-blooded young man wants to wear himself out in the miserable business of church competition when there are so many big causes to fight and die for. The multiplication of churches produces all- round failure in church efficiency. Lake Township, Wayne County, Pa., for example, has a population of 1,200. There are 10 churches and two other congregations meeting in school houses, with an av- erage membership of 29 ; $4,180 are raised by these churches each year with $500 sent in by mission boards; ten ministers are engaged in preaching, 40 is the average attendance ; $750 is the highest salary and it is received by the only man with both col- *The union scale of wages for skilled trades is very much higher. 294 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH lege and theological training, while 7 of the minis- ters have little more than high school training. In Missouri the average membership of the country church is 53. In 23 villages averaging 241 persons to a village there are 56 churches. Four villages have four churches each and two of them have less than 225 inhabitants.^ These half-dead rural churches have no men's organizations, and under- take no community service. The districts are desti- tute of facilities for recreation and amusement, the land is growing poorer, and the people are in every way belated. In a recent survey of three counties in Indiana the surprising discovery was made that a very much larger percentage of teachers than of minis- ters have received training beyond a common school course — 91 per cent, as compared with 63 per cent. That is, the teachers provided to instruct little children in elementary schools are of higher grade than the men set for instruction in morality and for leadership in community service. It is obvious that a neighborhood which can afford well paid school teachers could afford adequate religious teachers. But there are so many churches that if every soul in the community went to church there would be only a handful in each, and only a small salary can be paid under the circumstances. The multiplication of little sectarian churches means absentee pastors which is the crux of the * These figures are quoted from Rev. Joseph H. Odell in Munsey's Magazine, 1912. GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 295 rural church problem in the South and West. In Ohio three out of ten of the owners of farms are absentees, but of the preachers in the churches nine out of ten are absentees. In the Presbyterian de- nomination 3,323 country churches on any Sunday of the year are not open for the preaching of the Gospel, because the rural preacher divides his time among a number of churches, or because the little fraction of a congregation cannot afford a preacher. The missionary secretary of a large Southern com- munion says that on each Sunday of the year 6,000 churches of his denomination will be found closed, while the secretary of another says that the same is true of 10,000 church buildings of his denomina- tion.^ If the churches were united the fragmentary work of the minister could be assembled into pas- torates and each man could reside among his peo- ple, serving as a potent community influence and bringing the churches of the country up to the standard. Here is the vicious circle: Men have to be se- cured for these churches who are untrained for *In a Missouri Conference a minister said, "I live in the town of Louisiana, where I do not preach. On the first Sabbath of the month I preach nine miles from Louisi- ana; on the second Sabbath, twenty-five miles in another direction, passing on my way to this church several Bap- tist churches; on the third Sabbath of the month I preach forty-one miles from Louisiana, and on the fourth Sab- bath of the month sixty from Louisiana." Quoted by Dr. Warren H. Wilson in "The Herald and Presbyter," Sept. 6, 1913. 296 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH their work and unequal to moral leadership. The minister cannot afford books, his diminutive con- gregation furnishes no stimulus, he has no money to travel, and he is more than human if he main- tains any intellectual vigor and spiritual power. A dispirited, impoverished preacher reacts on his church and the congregation dwindles. The church reacts on him, and so on to the killing of man and church. This vicious circle must be broken. A single church in the community could afford a strong man for minister. The opportunity for moral leadership offered by such a church would attract into the ministry men qualified for leader- ship. Waste would be saved and community spirit would be created. Denominationalism is still defended on the ground that more effective work and better dis- cipline are thus secured. The evidence is all to the contrary. Nothing could be more extravagant, unbusinesslike and inefficient than the present over- lapping of churches. No corporation would main- tain several plants in the same community with different office force and advertising' bureaus. We do not educate our children by such methods, but each school takes care of the neighborhood in which it is situated. Each state has certain powers of government, but they are local. Suppose the New York state government extended to all persons in any part of the country who wanted to be counted citizens of the Empire State, and that Indiana^s jurisdiction reached all who wanted to be reckoned GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 297 Hoosiers, and so on. What confusion and govern- mental inefficiency would result! This is just the situation among Protestant churches. In some cities one or two churches of a denomination stand alone, entirely remote from fellowship with any churches of the same denomination. Denomina- tionalism means to them isolation and alienation. But it is said that in every community there are persons of different temperaments and that these temperamental differences need different types of churches to express the religious life. That again is not supported by the facts. In towns where there is the greatest variety of denominations, a type for every temperament, the majority of people fail to find any church home whatever. The multiplication of churches creates human differences instead of human differences demanding multiplicity. Churches are not selected from temperatmental, but from personal or social considerations.* What is needed to-day is not a host of differing churches but a standardized church, combining the best fea- tures of all existing types. Once more we are assured that we may have church unity even with the present splitting up of churches and that unity is the main thing, not union. *The church of which the writer is minister is a kind of half-way house for persons of many denominations. They have not betrayed temperamental differences to match their former connections. Usually persons are in a particular church simply because they .were born in it or have some personal interest in some of its members or its minister. 298 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH This is a wholly specious plea, and it can no longer soothe us into complaisance over the present status. When churches are so multiplied we may secure unity of spirit perhaps, but not even "perhaps"* where that multiplication means for each a struggle to exist. Many communities are so overchurched that the churches have only strength enough to offer resistance to each other and none to oppose their common foe. Christian unity is in the air, we are told, but it has the unfortunate way of staying there. Christian unity will never be a fact so long as the church is divided into so many denominations, for these are the visible expression of discord. Also the almost inevitable result of denominational divi- sions is the magnifying of non-essentials. What excuse for being can be given by a Baptist and Presbyterian and Methodist and Congregational church in a community where one church could take care of the religious needs of the whole com- munity, unless each keeps before its handful of members its unimportant differences? If in such a community Christian unity were actually realized, nothing could prevent the struggling churches from actually getting together. The spirit of unity when- ever it becomes strong enough will sweep aside the petty differences that separate us into so many detached communions. The only thing that stands in the way of church union is the lack of Christian unity. Given unity and naturally and inevitably union will follow. GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 299 But even with unity of spirit we can, under the present partition, secure little unity of action of church forces, and action is of first importance just now. Even in cities which have a church federation and where there is a maximum of fra- ternity and spiritual unity, the churches have not been able to put through any big program for community service, because they are divided. Most of the social activities while inspired by the church are outside the churches, because they are divided. No adequate scheme for publicity can be under- taken, because the churches are divided. The church has no standing in politics and strikes no fear into organized evil and federated vice, because the churches are divided. The saddest waste to-day is the waste of religious enthusiasm and spiritual impulse which are dissi- pated and lost because they cannot be concentrated upon any adequate plan of social betterment. In the face of the church's social task, our sectarian dif- ferences seem insignificant. That task is driving us along toward union. We have been hampered and retarded by denominationalism until it is un- endurable, and the great throbbing social passion which is now felt throughout the church not only makes our differences contemptible but is pointing out the way for us to unite. We have a new program on which to combine. Here we step off the old ground where differences of opinion are sure to arise, and here necessity is laid upon us to join forces if we would meet the need of social service. 300 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH When we really accept the belief that the churches exist for the community and break with the notion that the community exists for the church, straight- way we will get together in order to render to the community the most effective service. Efficiency and economy require the uniting of the churches, first of those groups whose policy, ritual and doctrine more or less agree, and ulti- mately of all Protestant denominations. Not only in foreign and home mission fields but in older Christian communities, the next step must be toward corporate church union. In villages where there is so much overlapping immediate action is absolutely imperative. Some difficulties in the way to church union exist, but they are nothing compared to the difficulty of keeping many useless churches alive. Such stupidity and wastefulness and inefficiency as have characterized church operations in the past are intolerable. "We have passed out of the epoch of polemic denominationalism into the glorious epoch of co- operative denominationalism." ^ In church gather- ings every suggestion of union is applauded to the echo, and some wonder why nothing comes of it. But it is always necessary to create sentiment before action, and after years of discussion and conference ideas fuse suddenly. The fusing point has almost arrived. It can be hastened if those communities * Prof. Shailer Mathews in address of acceptance as President of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1912. GETTING THE CHURCHES TCXJETHER 3OI where the pressure is most keen would take some action looking toward union. The ministers of town and village churches should undertake enterprises in common and work to- gether in most intimate harmony, eradicating the last vestige of the competitive spirit. They should unite if necessary to engage a stenographer who would serve as secretary to each in turn. They should meet frequently to advise with one another over their common problems. They should be close friends and set an example to all Christian people. The exchange of pulpits and the now familiar union services help to strengthen the get-together spirit. Many forms of cooperation readily suggest them- selves wherever the spirit of unity exists. Instead of a number of languishing prayer meetings in a community let one building be heated and lighted and the people of all the churches unite in a large, enthusiastic meeting for prayer and conference led by the ministers in turn. An Everybody-at-Church Sunday with all the churches working together in canvassing the district is a splendid start for the year's campaign. For all enterprises common to all the churches there should be impartial publicity, the same advertising material used, and no attempt to favor one church above another. But let church societies go further. If all are agreed that there are too many churches in the community, let the members of those churches get together and decide which of the buildings are best adapted to the needs of the community. Then let 302 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH them agree to unite, using the most adequate church edifices and discontinuing the use of the others for public worship. The buildings thus released might be turned into a public library or a community house or a recreation center. If there is no need for such use of the buildings, or if they could not be adapted to such uses, they should be sold or torn down and the site turned into a playground or public park. Small church bodies can act more readily than the larger ones, and all that is now needed is to get things started. Such unions are not a theory but already in many places a fact. Churches have been successfully and happily united, the united church being affiliated with some na- tional church organization, and the benevolences divided between the boards of the several denomi- nations represented.^ Only a united church can lift up Christ so as to draw all men unto Him. Uniting the churches would have immense apologetic value. This is Christ's own plea. Knowing the pride of opinion and anticipating schism and division His reiterated prayer is that all who believe on Him might be one, even as the Father and Son are one. He wanted them to be one "that the world may believe that *A good illustration is the Presbyterian Union Church of Owego, N. Y., where the Presbyterian edifice and Congregational parsonage are retained for church pur- poses, while the Presbyterian manse is rented and the Congregational church building was deeded to all the people of the town as a community center. GETTING THE CHURCHES TOGETHER 303 Thou didst send Me." Twice He gives this reason for His prayer. Jesus dared to rest and risk His commission on the unity of His disciples. It was as if He had said, **If I cannot take out of your hearts all that is divisive, if I cannot break down selfish- ness, lift you above littleness and prejudice, and knit your hearts into a loving brotherhood, the world will not beHeve that I came from God." His- tory seconds this plea of Jesus. Christianity has never made real progress by dividing the body of Christ. The mightiest of Christian evidences is Christian unity. The revival of religion first needed in Christen- dom to-day is a movement toward the uniting of the churches, for Christian unity will never be secured without church union. Talk about unity without union has taken on the nature of cant. Anyway the time for talk is past. The time for action is here. The whole distance cannot be traveled at once, but let the first steps be taken. The big work of evan- gelism and social regeneration to which Christ has summoned us, in Asia and Africa and in America and Europe as well, can be done only by a united church. INDEX Prepared by Miss Hattie L. Webber. Achievement, love of desirable, 90; Christian definition, 91; objects of, 105. Addams, Jane, 14, 243, 244. Advertising, honesty in, 39; the church, 250. Amenia Field Day, 283-4. American Federation of Labor, 63. Arbitration, 84. Arnold, Matthew, 172. Atheism of workingmen, 69. Bacon, Lord, 143- Balch, W. M., 57. Beckwith, Clarence A., 238. Best, Nolan R., 164. Bible,' study of at week-night meetings, 196. Bible school, 188-89. Booth, Charles, 138. Brotherhood, 67-8, 226; move- ment in England, 68; of church, 77, 278, 280. Browning, Robert, 8. Business, spiritual possibilities of, 25; modem, 18, 29-30, 144; absorption of, 28-29; offenders, 30; beginnings of, 31; and social service, 32, 100; morahty necessary for, 35; evils of, 37-8; as an art, 43-4, 91; chivalry in, 97; Christianization of, 99; finan- cial return of, 99-100; imag- ination in, loi. Canterbury, Archbishop of, 18. Carlyle, Thomas, 6. Charteris, Col., 36.^ Child welfare exhibit, 209-10. Christianity, applied, 4; and social reconstruction, 10; common desire for, 17; mis- sion of, 23; a people's move- ment, 81; its inclusiveness, 111-2. Church, the Christian, what for, 107; where it fails, 128; why halted, 144; advertising it, 250; union, 289; moral leadership of, 3, 274; leader- ship in, 81, 150, 156-7; its real work, 3, 4, 18, 49, 62-3, 70,76,82-3,109,110,118,165- 6, 207-8, 229, 237, 251; and industry, 19-20, 66-7 ; not to be content with palliative measures, 23; attendance, 26, 290; of men and women, 28; lack of, 52-3, 120, 135; lack of preparation for, 176; indifference to, 54, 67, 74; attitude of "labor" to, 55, 75, 138; and "labor" mutu- ally necessary, 66; caste in, 77-8; down-town, 79, 134; purpose of, 107; as teacher, 112; and college, a parallel, 113, 122; secularized, 120-1; its appeal, 124-7; its value in community, 130; its failure, 130-1; retreat of, 134; non- 30s 3o6 INDEX existent for many, 136-8, 183, 224, 250; and city life, 139-43; and efl&ciency, 145, 157, 161,163-4, 169, 1 70; mal- adjustment of , 146; organiza- tion conservative, 155; mili- tancy, 150-1, 158; program adaptable, i66; what is "Church work," 167; a mis- si|[nary enterprise, 167-8; promotion of, 173; church work classified, 174; criticism of, 175, 260; Sunday services of, 177-8, 179-81, 183-4; and social service, 221 fif; and welfare workers, 222-3; and social evil, 241-2; reorganiz- ing services of, 174; public- ity, 250; should be boosted by members, 260; rural, 262; a social center, 279-80; equipment, 279, 282-3, 286; unity and union, 298-303. Churchill, Winston, 58. City, the church in, 139; its lure, 276. Coe, George Albert, 50. Coffin, Henry Sloane, 5. Coleridge, 119. Competition, 32-5, 86; a new kind, 23; for what men have competed, 105; in rural dis- tricts, 268. Cooper Union, 212. Cooperative buying, 270. Country, social conditions in, 238; church, importance to community, 264, 281; mul- tiplication of, 267, 289-90, 293-5, 297-8; and civic bet- terment, 271; and social service, 274, 284. Culture, Christian, 174, 176-7. Democracy, growth of, 46, 47, III, 289. Denominationalism, 296 Diamond Match Co., 97. Ditchfield, J. E. W., 147. Eastman Kodak Co., new treatment of inventors, 97. Efficiency, 161; of church, 145, i57» 159; ^ modern science, 161; biblical test of, 164; testing church institutions, 170; exhibit, 172, Emotion, religious, 5. Evangelistic meetings, 148, Fair dealing, 21-2, 23, 46. Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, principles of, 71-72. Fellowship, cultivating reli- gious, 197-9. German- American Button Co., 47. Gill, Charles Otis, 291. Gompers, Samuel, 65. Good Samaritan, 232. Good will, 2; universality of, 20, 23; of employees sought, 103. Gore, Bishop, 63. Gospel, the demand for the old, 13; what is the social, 24. Hall, John, 191, Hardie, Keir, 18, 67, 69. Haw, George, 81. Henderson, Arthur, 82. Herron, G. D., 29. Horton, R. F., 69, 77. Humanity, the bottom interest of religion, 3 ; value of, in in- dustry, 23. Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, 238. INDEX 307 Idealism, in business, 42-3, 105; must be recognized linked with the church, 50-1, 69-70. Illinois labor law, 59. Industry, the church and men of, 19-20; as an art, 42-3. Industrial, organization of world, 18; expansion, 25; dis- putes, 83. Jesus Christ, applying His principles, 16-7, 23; mission to poor, 52, 59; belief in, 68; His idea of greatness, 91; a teacher of religion, 109; His work, 231; His social pro- gram, 234. Kingdom of God, 2, 4, 14, 22, 236. Lamb, Charles, 55. Labor, and the church, 55-9, 70-1, 139; limit of organized, 65-6; fraternal delegates to unions, 64, 73, 74-5. Lee, Joseph, 282. London, Jack, 277. Machine, work, 36; moral cost of, 43- Marriage, 247. Mathews, Shailer, 46, 123, 163, 300. Ministry, Christian, not attrac- tive to some, 150; its attrac- tions, 1 5 1-3; opportimities and disadvantages of coun- try, 263-5, 272-3; training for country, 271. Missions, 222. Money, the modem measure of success, 89; given to get re- sults, 230-31. , Moral, instincts of men and women compared, 28; in- stincts necessary in business, 35-6; issues and the church, 62-3; teacher, necessity for, 1 14-16; leadership of minis- ter, 154, 156; efifects of social and physical conditions, 228. Mystic sense, 118. Newspapers, as moral teachers, 115. Page, Thomas Nelson, 48. Palgrave, 158. Panama Canal, 93. Parkhurst, Dr. Charles S., 14, 64. Patents, unsocial character of, 96. PatmoFe, Coventry, 128. Patten, Simon W., 49. Peabody, Prof., 19, 32, 233. People's Sunday Evening, 75, 213-16. Personal work, 210. Pinchot, Gififord, 291. Plantz, Samuel, 2. Power, abuse of, 40. Practical suggestions, church mailing-list, 252; cooperative advertising, 255; debates, 214; early Sunday service, 179; invitations, 211; meth- ods for rural church, 269, 301; organized group, 239; picture theaters and bill- boards, 257; pressing social needs, 240; publicity bureau, 258; shop-meetings, 204-7; street preaching, 208; Sun- day calls, 184; survey of field necessary, 239, 273; "talking points," 256; thea- ter-meetings, 211-15, 218- 3o8 INDEX 19; village boys, 285-6; weeknight meetings, 193-5. Prayer-meetings, 189-196. Preaching, one way to secure reality in, 187-8. Propaganda, 200; meetings for, 75; methods of, deficient, 147; in Sunday night service, 180; scientific, 210, Prophets, their methods of preaching, 7, 120, 148. Preacher, 7; limitations of, 12, 13, 182; criticisms of, 16; as interpreter, 16-17, 50; mis- sion of, 22, 23, 70-1, 116; modem, 175, 177; longing for souls, 182; and non-ch\u:ch- going audience, 216-17. Prostitution, 247-8. Publicity, press agent, 255; cost of, 258. Quiz Club, following preaching service, 188. Rauschenbusch, Walter, 10, 102. Recreation, 275; necessary, 281-2; organizing the peo- ple's leisure, 285-6. Religion, and social service, 5, 9; state of, 26, 173; "Anony- mous," 27, 49-50; what it is, 27, 42, 49; apparent antago- nism to, 68; subsidized teachers of, 107; Jesus a teacher of, 109; and physiol- ogy, 228. Religious instruction, 108-9, III, 112. Renan, 115. Responsibility of employers, 46-7. Revivals, 148, 190, 200, 202-3. Roman Catholic church, reli- gious teaching, 109-10; and sex problems, 245. Rotation in office, 156. Rothe, 229. Royce, Prof., 113, 130. Rural church, 262. Ruskin, 231. Sagamore Beach, 163. Saloon, 277, 285. Seeley, Sir John, 7. Seminar method, discussion of sermon, 186. Service, a measure of great- ness, 92-3. Sex relations, 242. Sin, how to save from, 235-6. Social,consciousness,prevalence of, i; service and religion, 4, 221; responsibility, 9-10; gospel, the need of, i ; service and business, 31-2; creed of church, 72; distinctions in church, 78; service of profes- sions, 94-5; list of social needs, 240-41; vice, 241; opportunity of rural church, 269, 273; attraction of sa- loon, 277; service, 221; cen- ter, 275. Socialists, anti-religioue teach- ings of, 68; methods of, 149, 209. Society, changes in, 88, 103-4. Solon, 12. Spiritual, culture necessary, 120; rebirth, 201. Statistics, of church growth, 132, 135; of church member- ship, 139; not all-important, 131, 163; of churches, 290, 291; of salaries and wages, 292-3. Steffens, Lincoln, 29, 85. Strong, Josiah, 132. INDEX 309 Success, modem measure of, 91-2, 96; Christian standard, 98; not eflSciency, 162. Sunday, 119, 177-9. Sunday Night Club, 216. Tammany Hall, 226. Taylor, Prof., 18. Teacher, Jesus as, 109; church as, 111-12; newspapers as, "S- Trusts, 30, 33. Union^and unity of church, 298-302. Vice, social, 242; laws against, 246; where greatest, 285. Wage-earners, classification of, S3- Wages in England, 58. War, failure of church's teach- ing, 22. Warbasse, 247. Weeknight meetings, 189-195. White, William Allen, 88, 104. Wilson, Warren H., 268, 295. Workers, 52. Worship, comradeship in, 118; training for, 123. 'T^HE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects NEW BOOKS ON RELIGION The Rise of Modem Religious Ideas By ARTHUR C. McGIFFERT Clothy i2mo This volume is based upon the Earl Lectures given before the Pacific Theological Seminary, but the original material has been enlarged, entirely rewritten and the lecture form abandoned. The work is wholly historical in character and supplements the author's Protestant Thought before Kant. 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PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY <64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Date Due a||WHrtjB5CT\ 1 m^:L _ \ ' ■ 1— - — ,*Wi'° — ijjj • ^ 1 " T''^olo9ical Seminary-Speer Lil 1101 2 01009 3476 ss»^ ^:':