Shall we stand by the church? a dispassionate inquiry

Front matter

jF Ph//V^

Shall we stand by the

church?

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Introduction: The Present Crisis . . . 1

II Do We Need the Church? 8

Chapter One

introduction: the present crisis

The epoch that has begun with the termination of the Great War is to be a period of reconstruction. Industrial, political, international institutions are being scrutinized, and subjected to a criticism more searching than ever before. Education, art, literature, marriage, the press, the courts — there is loose in the world the spirit that would prove all things, in order to hold fast only to that which is good. It is clear that the Church cannot escape its pitiless search-light.

Indeed, we must face the fact that many critics — and by no means merely the temperamental scoffers, the worldly minded, and the disgruntled — have already returned their verdict that the Church is, on the whole, a menace to our society, or at least a futile and hopeless cumberer of the ground. A considerable hostility to the Church has arisen among the masses, and among the " intellectuals " ; there is widespread sneering at its pretensions and impatience at its lack of leadership in the moral crisis of the age. Furthermore, many of the gentlest of our people, many of our most useful citizens, remain outside its ministrations, in spite of continued efforts to bring them into the fold. There are some fifty million peopie in the United States — about half the population — who are not identified with any church. The annual increase in membership is far less than it used to be; and in 1919 there is said to have been actually a slight decrease. Attendance at service has fallen off, in proportion to the population, more rapidly than membership. These signs point at least to a widespread dissatisfaction, and presumably to some fault in an institution which, like all others, exists to meet and satisfy a human need.

To aid in a clearer apprehension of this crisis in the life of the Church, it will be useful to cite a few representative statements chosen almost at random from contemporary utterances unfavorable to its claims.

Professor J. S. Schapiro, writing in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1920, declares that " the intellectual . . . does not pay the church the compliment of being hostile to her ... he simply ignores it as a force incapable of good or evil.'^

Another writer, in the August, 1920, number of this same periodical (by no means a radical or anti-clerical publication ! ) , in picturing the attitude of contemporaries to the Church, makes one speaker say, " The day was, when the ^ world ' was full of darkness and the Church full of light, but now the ^ world ' has a clearer moral vision than the Church." Another speaker says, " To tell you the truth, I don't think I ever met a man before who cared what a parson says."

The historian, in H. B. Mitchell's Talks on Religion, puts it thus : " One rarely treats a pulpit utterance seriously in these days. You take it as part of the ceremony, part of w^hat is expected, and so without significance, like the formal inanities of social intercourse. ... It would seem to me that the pulpit

INTRODUCTION: THE PRESENT CRISIS 3

would be the last place in the world from which to start a genuine reform, and that the Church must be more of a hindrance than a help."

Mr. H. G. Wells, in God, the Invisible King, wrote : " The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation in dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by robes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom Christ detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of a Church.'' And in his Italy, Frayice and Britain at War he surveyed the situation in these lands and reached this conclusion : ^' What I conceive to be the reality of the religious revival is to be found in quarters remote from the religious professionals."

Bernard Shaw is more specific in his criticism: u rpj^^ religious bodies . . . are a sort of auxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with coals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the victims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another world when the process of working them to death in the service of the rich is complete in this." {Preface to Major Barbara. )

The Communist Party in the United States makes a similar indictment, in its official platform, denouncing the Church as an institution that " befuddles the minds of the masses and defends the capitalistic order." Similar criticisms are found passim in the literature of all the radical political groups, and barely escaped being incorporated into the platform of the Socialist Party in the spring of 1920.

A writer in the New Repuhlic recently declared that " there are already large numbers of people to whom the ecclesiastical system is a vexation and an offense." He speaks in particular of " its economic inefficiency, its aimlessness of programme, the hosts of agents employed in inconsequential effort, its veritable army of retainers riding on the governmentadministered thoroughfares at half the tariff rates paid by the people, its enormous accumulations of wealth invested in massive structures standing often absolutely unused for any purpose during all but three or four hours in the week." And — to close this list of indictments — a valuable book lately published by Henry Sturt, called The Idea of a Free Church J begins its opening chapter as follows : " The task which the present book proposes is to suggest a religion and a church more satisfactory than the Christian. It is inspired by the conviction that our established religion is now utterly insufficient to satisfy a thoughtful mind, and, that all progress, moral and intellectual, demands that Christianity should be given up and replaced by something better."

Some of these critics condemn not only the Church but Christianity. However, they quite universally mean by Christianity the religion as it is commonly taught by the churches and practised by church-going people. If we are to accept the point of view of the author of The Religion of Christ in the Twentieth Century, and admit that, by and large, the religion of Christ has never really been tried (Bernard Shaw has repeated this asseveration in the preface to Androcles and the Lion), we must apply their strictures not to the founder of the religion but to the institution that, if their criticisms are well founded, misrepresents his spirit and teaching. Moreover,

INTRODUCTION: THE PRESENT CRISIS 5

not only are most of the keenest critics of the Church reverent in their attitude toward Jesus, but many of them are staunch supporters of the Church, which, by candid criticism, they hope to awaken to her faults and her unused opportunities. Indeed, many of the truest Christians are most dissatisfied with the Church. To quote a writer in Harper's Magazine for August, 1920, " To-day there are perhaps more seekers for spiritual things outside the Church than in it. What is more startling is this : There are perhaps as many normal Christians outside the Church as in it.'^ In short, to be a Christian is not of necessity to approve the Church ; nor is a loyalty to her incompatible with the liveliest appreciation of her mistakes.

It is high time, then, that the churches took more seriously the defection of so many whose fathers and mothers stood in their ranks; that church people listened in a humbler spirit to the moralists and public-spirited citizens, and even to the half -inarticulate murmurs of the alienated classes, who find the Church futile or positively harmful in her influence. Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire ; where so many, of different walks and different interests, condemn, or quietly pass by on the other side, there must be something — probably a number of things — wrong. Instead of remaining obstinately sure of herself, and condemning those who flout her or plead with her or ignore her, the Church should be willing to profit by criticism, study the times, and seek to adjust her ideals and her program to the needs of the people to whom she exists to minister.

The plant of the churches in the United States represents an investment of billions of dollars. Their upkeep costs perhaps four hundred million dollars a year.

Approximately a quarter of a million men are kept from other productive work to be their ministers and priests. Probably a million other men and women give of their time and energy for their service. Surely the public has a right to scrutinize this expenditure of money and productive power. What does it accomplish? Is the accomplishment commensurate with the expenditure? Could more efficient results be attained by any reform in aims or methods? Is there some result that we could reasonably expect from this great institution that is not being adequately attained? More insistently than ever these questions are bound to be asked during the coming years ; churchmen themselves must ask them, and seek in a spirit of genuine humility and open-mindedness for the answers.

Many books are written in defence of the Church. A few are written to attack her. And many who do not care to undertake that ungracious task give oral expression to their impatience or sadness or disgust. The purpose of this little volume is neither to attack nor to defend, but to examine impartially, as befits a lifelong student of philosophy, and to seek, if it may be found, a way to avoid the pitfalls into which the churches have so often fallen, a way that shall lead straighter to the goal upon which the churches, with all their sins, have more or less steadily kept their eyes.

The Christian Church — what part is it to play in the civilization of the future? Only the future can tell. There is much in its past record that needs forgiveness; there is much in its present attitude (taking " the Church " to mean a composite photograph of the many existing churches) that arouses legitimate vexation. But there is much, very much, in its record in which to glory, and limitless potenti-

INTRODUCTION: THE PRESENT CRISIS 7

alities before it. The time ahead of us is a critical period. If the churches are content to jog along in the ruts of a past generation, they will become more and more the refuge of superstition, the support of reaction, and a source of mere selfish personal consolation to their members. If, on the other hand, they frankly welcome the vivifying breath of the new winds that are astir in the world, if they listen to the voices that are summoning them to their high calling, they may again be a mighty force for righteousness in the land, and have a future even greater than their past.

Chapter Two Do We Need The Church?

Before taking up for examination the various criticisms which are currently made of the Church, we should raise the prior question, Do we need the Church at all? Is it a necessary institution, like the school? Just what does it exist for, what is the good of it?

The traditional answer is that the Church exists to save souls. This phrase has an antique flavor about it that is repugnant to many to-day; and no wonder, in view of the smug sacramentalism, the orgiastic revivalism, and the self-seeking individualism that it so readily connotes. But if the phrase be interpreted in the spirit of modern psychology, it may well serve as a label for one aspect, and that perhaps the most important, of the work of the Church. The prime function of any church is to save each individual whom it can reach, if by any means it can save him, from the pitfalls of life, from his blindness and weakness, from the many dangerous influences that play upon him, from all sorts of false ideals and distorted conceptions of value.

But playing safe is, after all, a poor ideal for a man or woman of spirit. Why not put the mission of the Church in more positive terms? The Church exists to show men how to live, and to furnish them the dynamic. There is a Way that saves, a solution for the baffling problem of human life; a Way that gives life meaning, worth, scope, the highest usefulness, freedom and power. The Church exists to hold up to men that ideal, that vision, to mould the undirected, or misdirected, energies of men, to actualize their dormant potentialities of good, to stir in them a best which they might not otherwise have known was in them. It exists to rouse men continually out of their torpor, to keep alive in them the sense of the importance of common duties, and make them care to keep true.

Now this is not all that the Church exists to do. But surely this is enough, if the Church can do it with any measurable success, to justify its existence. The one thing above all else that will save this nation and the world is that men shall be trained to have a conscience and an unselfish intent. No other widespread institution exists to this end. It is, at least in our western civilization, the prime duty and privilege of the Christian Church to undertake this supreme task.

There is, however, we must be clear-sighted and candid enough to admit, a great blunder that has beset this task of spiritualization, and done much to negative the value of the Church. That is the error of letting men suppose that salvation can be effected by some magical rite or ceremony, or mere profession of belief ; and that once salvation is effected they can congratulate themselves and feel safe. This expectation of miracle, and complacency of status, we must vigorously combat. Salvation is not so lightly attained, or retained. It implies an attainment of character, a purification of the will, which normally requires earnest effort and long perseverance in well-doing ; and though it be true that it is the power of God that saves, we must remember that God helps those who help themselves — or rather, God helps men through their helping themselves.

Moreover, salvation, observably, is a matter of degree. No one is enough saved. The traditional dichotomy — sheep on one side of the fence, goats on the other — is unreal ; it is not only inconsonant with the spirit of democracy and fair play, it is hopelessly out of touch with psychology, or, for that matter, with everyday observation. There is no privileged caste of the elect. No one can tell when his feet may lead him into the paths of sin. However safe from stumbling we may feel ourselves, we must not slacken our effort ; eternal vigilance is the price of salvation.

We cannot, then, too bluntly say that there is no intrmsic value in baptism, in joining the Church and partaking of its communion, in confessing Christ, saying one's prayers, or attending services. These are but so many means to the end of cleansing and strengthening the will, and valuable only if and in so far as they actually serve that end. It is of no use for a church to point to the number of its communicants, or to a large attendance at worship ; the only ultimate test of its success is — what kind of people is it making out of these? Many who perform these rites and ceremonies are not thereby saved, either from making a sorry mess of their own lives or from helping to 'make a mess of our corporate life. Hence we must beware of all things most, the substitution of unction in churchmanship for unselfishness and purity of conduct in the week-day life. The task of the Church is not to get memhers, it is to Christianize them. And except as it succeeds in actually making them live in the Christian Way, it has failed in its job.

As a matter of fact, it is much to be doubted if any of the means above referred to are sufficient for the actual Christianizing of most people. Most people never have been Christianized. We must, therefore, begin our detailed criticism of the work of the Church by considering what means are available for what we have variously called the saving, the Christianizing, or the spiritual inspiration and guidance of men. But before taking up that chief aspect of the Church's task, let us complete our preliminary conspectus of the functions of the Church.

If we call what we have been discussing the Spiritualizing Function of the Church, we may say that it has also, in practice, an Educational Function. The Church exists, we are told, to teach men the truth about religion and kindred matters. This is, no doubt, a less important function of the Church than in the day before we had so many books and periodicals, the day when the minister was almost the only educated man in the community, and the Church, for the mass of people, almost the sole educational institution. But even now the schools are not free to teach along these lines, and there are many who read little. For millions, the Church is the chief source of ideas on the ultimate problems of human life.

The Church must certainly beware of supposing that correct theological beliefs are anything like as important as right conduct. However interesting and absorbing are the questions concerning the origin and governance of the universe, the nature of God, the person of Christ, or the destiny of the human soul, these matters are not, after all, of prime practical importance. One can be as good a Christian without so much as giving them a thought ; they have no actual bearing upon the question, What is the best way to live? What is more, too much emphasis upon them tends to crowd out the main thing, which is to Hve aright. Convictions we must, indeed, have ; light, intelligence, insight, as well as inspiration. But the important convictions are convictions about what we ought to do. We can safely let the universe run itself and concern ourselves with running properly our own little lives. So when we speak of the educational function of the Church we should have in mind primarily her work in spreading insight into the true values in human life.

The danger, however, lies not merely in diverting interest from moral-spiritual valuations to historicalcosmological theories, but in teaching these theories as if they were unquestionable verities. The old notion that we have a sure, revealed deposit of truth, of which the Church is the custodian, must be definitely abandoned. Doctrines are merely some one's personal opinions, handed down to us, and accepted by the majority in a church. They are only theories, conjectures, attempts to express and explain what has largely lain beyond men's comprehension. The teaching of theology should, therefore, be not propaganda, not indoctrination, but study, discussion, a tentative, humble, seeking after truth.

Here we touch upon what is perhaps the Church's greatest sin — the sin of encouraging the closed mind instead of urging open-mind edness and the critical spirit. Men have been asked to believe thus and so simply because such was the inherited teaching of the Church. This is putting shackles on the mind. In so far as the Church has encouraged people to give their assent, without searching inquiry, to doctrines whose truth is sincerely questioned by any considerable number of intelligent men, she has done a grave disservice to our democracy. But not only has she taught questionable opinions as certain, she has attempted to inoculate her members with such an assurance with regard to them that they shall be immune to opposing arguments. By emotional influences she has stifled the murmurings of the intellect. The result is that the whole course of modern thought has been confused, and few, if any, modern philosophers have attained to the intellectual clarity of the Greeks. The fact that a man belongs to a church is widely taken to show that he has an uncritical mind.

To '' teach the truth " is, in short, too presumptuous a phrase. The Church must get a humbler conception of her mission, and be content to try, by open discussion and scholarly study, to lead men gradually nearer and nearer to the truth. With this revision of her claims, the educational function of the Church may be said to be valuable and important.

There remains to be emphasized what we may call the Social Function of the Church. Christianity is, above everything else, the religion of service. This concern for one's own soul, that has flgured so much in ecclesiastical discussion, is, after all, but a sublimated form of self-seeking. The true Christian is concerned not so much with saving himself as with saving the world. It is far more Christian an activity to be opposing political graft or the inhumane treatment of employees, to be standing hard against the spirit of greed in business, the spirit of violence and lawlessness, or the wanton luxury of the rich, to be seeking to root out wrongs and improve social relationships, than to be repeating the Apostles' Creed or singing hymns.

The social work of the Church must not, of course, displace its inspirational and educational work. It must not degenerate into a mere giving of good times to people. But certainly the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself demands that the Church be a center for every sort of needed service. Should it not, indeed, be the greatest of all forces making for that regenerated social order wherein God's will is to be fully expressed, which it has steadily looked forward to under the name of the Kingdom of God on earth?

To sum up, then, the Church should be a great educational institution, giving the great mass of common people insight, as it can find it, into the meaning and mystery of life, and a clear apprehension of their real needs and duties. It should patiently, week by week, train its members in the performance of these duties. It should be a center for friendship and human sympathy, a means of ministry to the community, a standing rebuke to the sins of the world, and a lever for attack upon all forms of sin and wrong.

The critics of the Church say that these tasks are not being adequately performed; that the Church is hugging to itself an antiquated mass of superstition, is lost in the performance of mere rites and ceremonies, is not making a great, sustained effort to realize the Christian ideal either in the more personal or in the more widely social relationships of life. But certainly the emphasis has shifted in recent years. Religions tend to pass through three stages — from an emphasis upon cult to an emphasis upon belief, and thence, finally, to an emphasis upon conduct. So at least it is with our Church. Her traditional rites and ceremonies have their value as symbols, clothing the simple aspirations and duties of the Christian life with solemnity, and giving them historical background. Her creeds are stepping-stones on the long road to truth. But the criterion of her usefulness is more and more coming to be recognized as the degree in which she permeates with Christian idealism the personal and social life of the world about her.

To be sure, we might approve this aim, but think other means adequate, and perhaps better, for its attainment. There are many roads outside the Church that lead toward this same goal. A man may cultivate his religious life by reading inspirational books, by solitar}^ prayer and meditation, by wellchosen friendships, or by other ad hoc organizations. These methods offer the great advantage that the man can choose what best helps him, instead of being obliged to listen to pulpit-utterances that perhaps bore and perhaps annoy him; he can pick his own time for spiritual converse, instead of following the clock.

But the first question to ask is, Will he really do these things? Here and there a man, or a woman, will. Such a one can perhaps get on well enough without the Church. But few there are who, in the rush of affairs, in the midst of the seductive richness of modern life, will attend, of their own volition, regularly and at sufficient length to the needs of the spirit. How many people who do not go to church make a practice of reading religious books, or of daily prayer? Cultivating spirituality takes time ; and unless regular, definite hours are reserved for it, the chances are almost overwhelming that presently no time at all will be given. Religion easily becomes choked and crowded out of the heart, like Darwin's love of poetry. That preacher had a true insight, though an uncertain command of metaphor, who prayed, " If there is a spark of religion in any halfbelieving heart, Avater it, O Lord, water it."

Moreover, there are few people who can find the springs of spirituality when b}^ themselves. For most men there is inspiration in numbers ; they need to feel themselves part of a great movement. The crowd-impulse is a tremendous dynamic, as we see in the case of patriotism, or, in an evil way, in the case of lynchings; it should be utilized to the full for religion. Even if a man is unconscious of this social influence bearing upon him, it is there; and if the churches should disappear, the most solitary saint would feel the loss.

Then, quite apart from the abstract argument, there is the fact that the Church actually has a tremendous hold upon masses of people. Far the larger part of the aspiration and upward-pushing forces of the western world for the last nineteen hundred years have been enrolled under her banner. This historic continuity, this roll-call of heroes and martyrs, gives background and atmosphere to our spiritual life — " an hereditary foundation of revered memories, ideas, habits, sentiments, associations, deep-rooted in the heart." Just as an artist turns to the Old Masters for inspiration, we need to turn to the great masters of the spiritual life. And, obviously, for effective social ministry, there must be organization.

For many of those who go gladly to church it is, indeed, more for the social pleasure than for any serious purpose. One meets there one's friends, there are warm hand-clasps, there is music, and rest ; it is a welcome break in the week's routine. But even for those who go in this spirit there is a chance that they will catch some higher spirit from those who come there to seek and express it. Most people who have discovered in themselves spiritual aspirations have caught them at some church-service somewhere. And for those who have found springs elsewhere, there are few but can profit also from the fellowship of the Church. The Church is the great force that brings men together in common aspiration and common service. There at least they need not be shamefaced to talk of spiritual things; there they can feel that others are caring for them too and endeavoring to put them into practice. A man should come out of her hallowed precincts with his own resolves redoubled and his weakness put to shame from the sight of the earnestness and consecration of others.

There are many, probably, who w^ould never have dreamed of the possibility of a better life had the Church not summoned them to it with her patient insistence; there are surely many more who would become too distracted by the pressure of practical affairs, or by the lure of the immediate and the j)leasurable, to realize outwardly their private dreams, were it not for her continual reminders. There are hidden reservoirs of power, latent aspirations and possibilities, in most of us that are never discovered or drawn upon ; no man but is a potential hero if you can touch the right spring in his nature; and even the criminal would have done some splendid service if his interest had been early turned in the right direction and his energies rightly guided.

Men are suggestible creatures ; they are the prey of a thousand influences that stream from the people they meet, the newspapers they read, the words they hear. The Church at its best is a powerful source of suggestion drawing them toward the highest things. The w^ords of the preacher, who has given his life to the study of the human heart and its needs, bringing to his hearers well-w^orn ideas, perhaps, but put in new ways and applied to current problems, the joining in prayer and song — the whole atmosphere of the Church is a strong counterweight to the many downward-dragging influences of their daily environment.

If this is so, is there not strong reason in it for believing that when a man thinks he does not need the influence of some church, that man is wrapped in the cloak of his own conceit? Honest he may be, of the strictest integrity, and actuated by the most unselfish motives; but is it not likely that there are depths in his nature that he has never sounded, secret faults that he does not know? If he can walk so well unaided, how much more could he not attain when moved by the faith and enthusiasm of others! This is not to say that he could find the help he needs in any actual church within his reach. But it is to say that a church, some church, to do what we have indicated, is a necessary and important part of the social structure. It is conceivable that the Christian Church should disappear; but if so, something will arise to take its place. Whatever we may call it, there will always be a need of some organization to do for men w^hat the Christian Church, blunderingly and more or less blindly, but still often with great effectiveness, has done.