"Unfinished tasks" of the Southern Presbyterian Church

Front matter

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C.OEXRIGKT DEPOSIT.

Contents

Introductory Statement. 6

I. Home Mission Objectives 9

II. Laying Foundations 31

Chapter I. Home Mission Objectives

Population of the United States 105,708,771

Protestant Church membership 26,205,039

Roman Catholics, including children 15,721,815

Under 25 years, not in Sunday school 27,274,210

Over 10 years, not members of church 50,696,890

Under 10 years, not members of church. . . 7,413,240

Total not members of church 58,110,130

"If you would point to the weakest spot in the Protestant Church you would put your finger on the army of 27,000,000 children and youth in our land who are growing up in spiritual illiteracy, and 16,000,000 other Protestant American children whose religious instruction is limited to a brief half hour once a week, often sandwiched in between a delayed preaching service and an American Sunday dinner. Let it be burned into the minds of the leaders of the Church that A CHURCH WHICH CANNOT SAVE ITS OWN CHIL- DREN CAN NEVER SAVE THE WORLD.

"We are fast drifting into a cultured paganism and unless the Church takes important steps to stem the present tide of indifference, luxury, and commercial greed this country will soon cease to be a Christian nation — if, indeed, a country in which three out of four of its citizens are without active church relations can be said to be a Christian country now." — Dr. W. S. Athearn.

I

Home Missions is the enterprise through which the combined force of Protestant Christianity is projected on the spiritual destitution of our own land. Its purpose is to bring all people into the right relation to Jesus Christ as Saviour and the acknowledgment of his claim to their obedience and service, and bring the redemptive power of the gospel to bear upon the life of the nation in all its phases.

The Old Home Missions and the New. In the early days of our country the Home Mission task in contrast wuth the present was a very simple undertaking. It was largely the work of caring for our own people as they moved into new communities that were without gospel privileges, and assisting them to support ministers and secure houses of worship. The Home Missionary followed the expanding frontier lines as evangelist, church builder, pastor and teacher. He was the pioneer who went forth in the advance of civilization, planting the church and the school, and calling the people to a higher intelligence and faith in God. His ministry had to do largely with a people of a single race and tongue. The value of this service to the Church and the nation cannot be estimated. In it all the great denominations had their beginning. The thousands of churches that bless the nation with their conserving and uplifting influence and the majority of the educational institutions are the fruits of this work. Leave the Home Mission enterprise out of the past century of our nation's history and the terms "dark" and "benighted" which are now applied to many other lands might justly be applied to our own.

The new Home Missions is multiplied and complex. America is a growing, changing and expanding country. Every ten years there is a new America with its peculiar problems and perplexities. New frontiers are emerging, no longer frontiers of geography, but frontiers of need and opportunity. Vast areas of spiritual waste and destitution challenge the Church's zeal and consecration. The present Home Mission enterprise has to do with all the problems of evangelization represented in a population of many races, divers tongues and different faiths.

Facts to Face. There are certain outstanding facts in connection with America's religious need that must be stated and restated again and again if the Church is to be brought to a full realization of the magnitude and the far-reaching importance of the Home Mission undertaking. Never in the history of the Church in America has there been a time when there was needed a fuller knowledge of the conditions and a more liberal support for the task confronting the Christian forces in this country than in this day of unparalleled need and opportunity for service.

Our country's religious needs have been presented in this striking statement:

"The United States of America has been invaded by three enemy armies which threaten our national existence: First, there is within our borders an army of five and one-half million illiterates above nine years of age; Second, there is an army of more than fifty million people above nine years of age who are not identified with any church — Jewish, Catholic or Protestant; Third, there is an army of twenty-seven million Protestant children and youth, under twenty-five years of age, who are not enrolled in any Sunday school or other institution for religious training.

"If these three armies should form in double column, three feet apart, they would reach one and one-fifths times around the globe at the equator. If they should march in review before the President of the United States, moving double column at the rate of twenty-five miles a day, it would take the three armies three years and five months to pass the President.

"These three interlocking armies constitute a triple alliance which threatens the . life of our democracy. Patriotism demands that every loyal American enlist for service and wage three great campaigns — a campaign of Americanization, a campaign of Adult Evangelism, and a campaign for the Spiritual Nurture of Childhood."*

In the Home Mission program there are four great objectives:

1. The Salvation of the Individual. This is the supreme purpose of all mission work. All other results wait on this. It was for the salvation of the lost that Christ, looking out over the waiting and yearning multitudes, said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is plenteous but the laborers are few ... go your ways." It is for the salvation of the lost that missionaries, exemplifying the spirit of the Master, have gone to every land, nation and tribe, enduring hardships, privations and pain, that they "might by all means save some."

In the vast and varied Home Mission fields the Church

*The World Survey.

is confronted with the greatest missionary opportunity that has come to any people since the days of the apostles. Of the fifty millions over nine years of age out of church in America, twenty-one million are in the bounds of the Southern Presbyterian Church. Of the twenty-seven million young people out of the Sabbath school, thirteen millions are in the Southern States. Of the five and a half million illiterates, three million are in the South. Is this not a need, vast and appealing? The fact that there are many churches and ministers and mission workers does not in the least relieve our Church of her responsibility, nor rob her of her opportunity for saving these millions. The fact that these people live in America in no sense makes better their condition. It is not a question of residence, but of spiritual destitution. The fact is they are our neighbors, and they are not being reached for Christ. The gospel must be carried to the cities and hamlets and the places where the people are. The command is, "Into every city and place."

2. The Security of Our Country. To the nation as to the man, to be without God is to be without hope. The moral and spiritual progress of the nation must keep pace with its material development. The Church has made America what it is, and only an enlargement of the Church can make it better. The Church is the salt of the earth. Salt is the thing that saves. If Sodom had contained a church of ten members that great city would have been spared. No one can estimate the power of the church in the development and preservation of American life. The Church has been the most important factor in bringing America to its present position of influence among the nations. It is the one institution that stands for everything that is right and is opposed to everything that is wrong.

There was never greater need for the Church and the things for which it stands than at the present time. Many dangers are threatening our national security. R. H. Edmonds says:

"It would be folly to shut our eyes to the possibilities of evil which surround us. We are too prone, ostrichlike, to close our eyes to the dangers about us. We lay unto ourselves the flattering unction that America is different from other lands and that we shall never have to face the dangers which have brought chaos in many parts of Europe. We are constantly saying to ourselves, 'It is impossible that the things which have happened in Europe should happen in America.' But that which seems impossible often becomes the possible.

"In the early summer of 1914 it would have seemed absolutely impossible that within a few months all of Europe would be one vast slaughter house and that millions and tens of millions of men would be engaged in the greatest death grapple in human history. Even then it would have seemed impossible, beyond the dreams of the wildest visionary, that two million American soldiers would have to fight on the battlefields of France to save civilization from the destructive powers of barbarians and atheists. From the beginning of human history the impossible is the thing that has become a reality.''*

The enemy was never more active nor were there ever so many forces of evil at work to undermine the foundations of our national greatness.

(a) The Bible is Discredited. The Bible is the Magna Charta of all free people. It is the foundation on which

*Manufacturers Record.

our nation was built, and America will be strong and prosperous as the teachings of God's Word are received, believed and obeyed. In all our cities and in many country places there is an insidious campaign against the integrity of the Scriptures. This attack upon the authority of the Bible began in Germany. It is one of the many crimes for which she must answer. In the last analysis it is an attack upon the deity of Christ. To question God's Book is to question the author. To doubt God is to doubt His Son. Christ stood across the pathway of German conquest. Thus would German philosophy and German militarism put Christ, whose teachings convicted and condemned their evil purpose, out of the way.

Germany is an illustration of the truth that what you would put in your nation you must put in your schools. For three generations the children and youth of the German Empire were taught a pagan political philosophy, void of God, Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule. In 1914 sixty-seven million German people were ready to go forth at the command of their Kaiser to conquer the world. The full fruit of the seed sown in the schools of that nation is seen in the devastations of Belgium and France. The war is over, but the teaching that caused the war is not over. To quote again from R. H. Edmonds:

1 'There is spreading over our land the accursed atheistic teaching of German philosophy, more powerful for evil than were all Germany's armies and navies, and if America does not give heed to this menace its downfall will be as certain as was Germany's."

If America is to be a fit place in which to live and is to fulfill her divinely-appointed service to the world, the Bible principles of truth and righteousness must be wrought into the warp and woof of our country's life. But Protestant Christianity has looked on with careless indifference, while the Catholic and the Jew have joined with the infidel and the atheist in the effort to keep the Bible out of the public schools. Millions of American children, the future leaders of the State and nation, are allowed to grow to manhood with no knowledge of God or righteousness or a judgment to come. Whoever would keep the Bible from the people or weaken their faith in its authority is the herald of a decadent civilization, the prophet of national disaster and the forerunner of a reign of lawlessness. The nation that banishes God's Holy Word has written its own doom.

(6) The Sabbath is Desecrated. The maintenance of the Christian Sabbath lies at the root of all national morality and civil liberty. The Sabbath is the only safeguard of religion, and religion is the surest stay of the State. John Ruskin said that the thirty minutes on Sunday when the man of God stands forth to speak to ignorant and sinful men are the most important thirty minutes known to society and civilization. About one hundred and fifty years ago Voltaire prophesied that before the close of that century Christianity would have disappeared from the face of the earth. He advised his followers that if they would destroy Christianity they must begin with the Christian Sabbath. Christianity and the Sabbath stand or fall together.

"The rule is, w^here there is no church and no churchgoing there is no Sabbath, and where there is no Sabbath and no Sabbath-keeping there is no religion, and where there is no religion there is no God, and where there is no God there is no conscience, and where there is no conscience there is no respect for the rights of men, and where there is no respect for the rights of men there is no security for life or property. Now take religion, God, conscience, respect for the rights of men, and protection of life and property out of the American republic, and just how much of what is left would be worth having?"*

A reliable authority states that four million people in this country are making merchandise on the Lord's Day, and that twenty times that number spend the day in mere worldly pleasure-seeking. Well may we cry out for America, as Pope Pius said concerning France in his day: "Lose not a day, not even an hour, nor even a moment; go and tell France that if she would be saved she must return to the sanctification of the Lord's Day." When the Sabbath is gone, honesty is gone, justice is gone, and that which has been our nation's glory is gone.

(c) False Faiths Are Active. It is the teaching of history that the religion that holds the conscience of a nation will determine the civilization. The greatness and strength of America rests on Christian principles and Christian character. Yet it is a fact that countless multitudes in our land are under the sway of religious conceptions that are openly antagonistic to the Word of God and the Christian faith. These religions are all kinds and varieties. Some are imported and some are the products of our own country — Brahmans, Confucianists, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Mormons, Theosophy, Christian Science, New Thought, Atheism, e Dr. David Gregg, "Makers of the American Republic,"

Infidelity, Bolshevism. While members of Christian churches have been sitting back with a sense of security in their Christianity, the organized forces of evil are actively engaged in denying the deity and authority of Jesus Christ and attempting to overthrow the Christian Church. A writer in the Missionary Review of the World describes this campaign for the destruction of Christianity:

" Several infidel organizations in New York City are known by various titles that do not indicate their real character. Their favorite methods of attack are:

" First, aggressive outdoor meetings, at Madison Square and in all the principal thoroughfares at noon and at night whenever the weather permits. At these meetings Jesus Christ and the Bible are held up to ridicule, and many blasphemies are uttered.

" Distribution of infidel literature is a second method of attack. Books and pamphlets written by Tom Paine, Robert G. Ingersoll, Voltaire, and others are widely distributed to the young men who make up most of the audiences, and who eagerly buy almost anything that is offered in that line. A monthly magazine is also published for the purpose of 'educating the public and freeing them from the bondage of religion.'

"A third form of this Satanic activity is the debate, held sometimes at the public squares and sometimes in halls. The favorite themes at these meetings are: The Resurrection, The Virgin Birth, The Trinity, The Deity of Christ, and The Authenticity of the Bible. These debates are often carried on by educated and able men, who display considerable familiarity with the subjects. The enemy of God has able generals.

1 'Another method employed to spread infidelity is the establishment of 'Sunday-schools.' Boys and girls of the neighborhood are brought together and are taught that the Bible is not true and that Jesus Christ was either a mere man or is the mere creation of somebody's distorted imagination. What harvest must we expect from such seed-sowing?

"This aggressive infidelity and agnosticism are a challenge to the Christian Church to proclaim the gospel by word and deed to the unchurched and unsaved multitudes of men, women and children in our cities. "

Mormonism is an American disgrace and one of the most subtle and dangerous of all the enemies of our Christian civilization. It has been described as a "wolf in sheep's clothing. Calling itself a church, it is in fact an absolute monarchy and under the cloak of religion it both teaches and practices crime and treason. Pretending to be loyal to American institutions, it is in sworn disloyalty to our republic."

The Mormon Church is not yet a century old. It was organized in 1830 in New York State with six members, and in 1920 had multiplied these by one hundred thousand. Its missionaries to the number of four thousand go about this country visiting at least three million homes annually and, according to its own claims, added eighty thousand converts in one year, and all from evangelical churches. Mormonism is literally a "robber of churches." The first theft occurred when Joseph Smith, its founder, converted four members of his family who were members of the Presbyterian Church. From Atlanta, the Southeastern headquarters, hordes of missionaries go out all over the South, not only men but good-looking young ladies as well. Its missionaries creep into the Sunday-schools, into church choirs, and even into the pulpits of evangelical churches, secretly spreading its doctrine in ever-widening circles. Frequently its women missionaries get into the homes, schools and Bible classes. It is time that Christian peopie who love the Church and the home were aroused to this danger which threatens the very foundations of the republic.

(d) The Growth of the City. The movement of population cityward is one of the most striking facts in the progress of modern civilization. America is rapidly becoming a nation of cities. From town and country and beyond the sea there is a resistless stream. Large cities are becoming larger. Great cities are becoming greater. If the rate of the movement of population from country to city which prevailed from 1900 to 1910 continues until 1940, there will then be in the United States twenty-one million more people in our cities than outside of them. In the cities are massed the

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"WHERE CROSS THE CROWDED WAYS OF LIFE"

forces that rule, the educational, social, political and financial powers. If the nation is to be saved the citv must be saved. Missionary effort has not increased with the population. The cities are relatively unchurched. In many of them there are fewer churches than there were ten years ago. Population grows faster than Protestant membership. It has been pointed out that in two score and more of our largest cities the Church has grown less than two-thirds as rapidly as the population, and the larger the city the fewer are the proportionate number of churches.

"If every church of every kind in New York City were crowded to the doors on Sabbath morning, and all the people had started to church, there would be three million of people on the street who could not secure an entrance to a house of worship.

"If you take all the Protestant population of New York City and add to it all the Roman Catholics, the Greeks and the Christians of every nation in it, you have less than one-third of the entire population. Nearly one-third is Hebrew and more than one-third is atheist, infidel or nothing at all. There are 100,000 nominal Protestants in the city with no church connection whatever. Only about eight per cent of the population are members of Protestant churches."*

In 1910 thirty-three of our largest cities were more, foreign than American — if by American we mean American-born ancestry. We are told by those who claim to know that the American city is the worst governed in the world. Vice and sin and crime abound. The cry of darkest London that broke the heart of William Booth is not more pathetic in its appeal than the

*Stelzle, "American Social and Religious Conditions."

cry that comes from the submerged millions in our own cities.

"I could tell how Alexander Duff, who certainly knew the abysses of vice in vice-ridden India, if any observer might be said to know — I could tell how Duff came to this fair land in 1854 and, after a visit to the slums of Philadelphia, left this testimony on record: 'Anything worse I have never seen. Such vileness, such debasement, such drunkenness, such beastliness, such unblushing shamelessness, such glorying in their criminality, such God-defying blasphemousness, in short, such hellishness, I never saw surpassed in any land, and I hope* I never shall. Indeed, out of perdition, it is not conceivable how worse could be."*

If the city is to be saved it must be saved by the Church. Legislation will not cleanse. Libraries will not redeem. Social programs will not meet the need. Only the gospel of Christ can do this.

(e) Disloyal Propaganda. The following statements are taken from an address by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis on "Alienating Americans from America":

"All patriots now realize that the German spark has kindled a world conflagration. The attempted revolution in Seattle, the war made by the Bolshevists of Centralia, Washington, upon their returned soldiers, the organization in Detroit of a normal school for the training of Bolshevist orators and organizers, the discovery of hundreds of Soviets in our great American cities, the sudden increase of radical newspapers, the seizure of pistols, rifles, bombshells, in various I. W. W. headquarters, and the adoption of this watchword by the radicals, 'Down with God, government and property,' represent events and forces big w T ith peril. Plainly

*Dr. J. E. McAfee, "Missions Striking Home."

an invisible enemy is carrying on a secret battle against our institutions.

"The Department of Justice has warned the American people that there are at least 300,000 people in our country who hate the republic, and are seeking to overthrow its free institutions.

"The real gravity of the situation is revealed by the fact that there is an organized propaganda for the alienation of Americans from America. In every industrial center of every State the Radicals are engaged in the systematic teaching of revolution. Multitudes of young soldiers, newly returned from France, have been made the subjects of special efforts by Radicals who were trying to undermine the patriotism of our young men. One event and experience will illustrate many. In an oil town in West Virginia a young soldier recently returned from France and employed as assistant to an oil well expert in West Virginia took advantage of a lull in the conversation as to the state of this country, saying, 'Never again for me! Never again for me! The next time the plutocrats can pull their own chestnuts out of the fire!' Further questioning developed the fact that the head man was a radical Socialist, and a soap-box orator, and only incidentally an oil well expert. The older man had spent his evenings, for three months, filling the mind of the young soldier with his pet theories. Slowly he had killed patriotism in that boy's soul. One of the latter's friends said that since his return from France, and becoming an assistant to the well digger, he had become a changed man. Washington thought that the white flower of patriotism was the sweetest blossom in the garden of the soul, but some influence had descended like a black frost upon this flower, and slain it forever.

"In a single high school its principal found that one-third of the students in this boys' high school believe that the political institutions of our country should be overthrown and replaced by an economic Socialist government in Washington. In the hands of these boys were the Soviet catechism, written by a thoroughly discredited American correspondent who had spent a few weeks in Petrograd and Moscow.

"Life's critical years are from eight to fifteen. Then the child is wax to receive and steel to hold. Melt your crimson glass, and while it is hot the chaff and straw will stick, but when it cools, no hand can cleanse the ruby glass. If these enemies of society succeed in drilling their anarchistic principles into our boys and girls, the future will be lost before the battle begins."

(/) Decline in Family Religion. The nation has no greater peril than this. If Christian people were loyal to their duty as Christians and as citizens, the dangers that threaten our national well-being would soon disappear. But thousands of people brought up in Christian homes have forsaken the Church and are living in practical neglect of the claims of Christ to their influence and service. A life of religious indifference is a blow at our best American ideals. Our government was established in the name of God by God-fearing men. The sessions of the Continental Convention in Philadelphia were, upon motion of Benjamin Franklin, opened with religious exercises and prayer to God. If we depart from the spirit and practice of our forefathers we do so at our own and our country's peril.

Henry W. Grady was passing the White House in Washington with a friend. He said, "That is the home of my nation." After spending a few days as a guest on a Southern plantation where the Bible was read and the family and servants gathered for morning and evening prayer, he said, "I was mistaken when I said that glistening pile of marble in Washington is the home of my nation. The home of my nation is that home where the Bible is read; where Jesus is loved; and where children are taught to pray." In these days of rush and hurry family worship is almost a thing of the past. A representative of one of the great denominations states that not five per cent of its members have family worship in any form, and even the blessing at the table is rapidly disappearing. The Chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Sabbath and Family Religion estimates that not over twelve per cent of the homes in our Church have the family altar. This modern and efficient age in which we live smiles at the time when "the family altar stood as the opening and closing gates of the day." But the Wall Street Journal says that what America needs is just that. It is not a better banking system that will save us, nor a higher tariff, nor better laws; but a revival of the old-fashion religion which never thought of omitting family worship even in the rush of harvest. Few law-breakers come from homes like that. The glory of the nation is the character of its homes. The homes that make a nation great and strong are the homes where the Bible is read and Christ is honored.

He is not a super-patriot who makes patriotic speeches and says fulsome things about the flag. The greatest patriot is he who seeks to cast out all the evils and vices that injure and weaken and to secure for his country everything that is noblest and best. Patriotism and Christianity unite in the Home Mission appeal. If the Church is to win its battle for the conservation of the nation's ideals and morals, it must have the loyal and enthusiastic support of every man who calls himself a Christian. Religion is the only defense against ungodliness and immorality. "Our country for Christ" is the only worthy motto of every true Christian.

i. The Growth of the Denomination. Home Missions is the life of the Church. This fact finds abundant illustrations in the history of every denomination that exists to-day, or that has ceased to be. In proportion as churches have stressed the work of Home Missions have they grown in numbers and increased in strength ; as they have neglected the work of expansion have their numbers lessened and their resources diminished. When a church ceases to go forward it begins to go backward. It is either advance or retreat. "For unto everyone that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." It is addition or subtraction, and this principle is as true in the life of the Church as in the life of the individual.

The present position of power and influence which our Church holds among the great religious forces in this country has been attained through its Home Mission agencies. When the Southern Presbyterian Church began its existence as a separate denomination, the congregations were few in number with not many members. As near as can be ascertained the total did not reach more than eleven hundred churches, with about seventy thousand members. In the regions west of the Mississippi River there were considerably less than five thousand communicants in one hundred and twenty weak and scattered congregations. After sixty years of Home Mission endeavor the churches east of the Mississippi River have multiplied many fold, and west of it through the same agency have been developed the great Synods of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, among the strongest and most influential in the Assembly, having more members than there were in the whole Church sixty years ago.