59. Chapter 54: The Church Faces Modern Problems

CHAPTER 54 The Church Faces Modern Problems

1. Wealth Influences the Church From 1880 on the wealth of the American people increased greatly. This had its effect on the life of the churches.

Revivalism continued, and throughout the eighties and nine­ties the churches held their annual series of revival meetings, usually during the winter months. Camp meetings were still held in the rural districts, especially in the South. But here and there changes were noticeable. The camp meeting grounds on Lake Chautauqua in New York showed signs of the increased pros­perity: Cottages replaced tents. The meetings that had always been held out under the trees now took place in a large frame tabernacle. In 1874 lectures and entertainment began to take the place of revival sermons.

Lake Chautauqua became widely known for its summer programs, and similar projects combining ed­ucation and entertainment became popular on camp meeting grounds in other parts of the country. They were known as chautauquas.

Revivalism received another set­back when, in 1902, a book entitled Primitive Traits in Religious Re­vivals, by Frederick Morgan Dav­enport, came off the press. It was a sharp criticism of Revivalism. With the new industrial age churches began to place great em­phasis on business efficiency. Suc­cessful businessmen were given places on the financial boards of the churches. The increase in wealth brought with it also a desire for more op­portunities in education. Denomi­national colleges increased in num­ber, and their enrollments and incomes multiplied as never before. College presidents became business administrators, and their great aim became the securing of large gifts of money for their schools.

Captains of industry gave gener­ously to educational institutions and established many new schools. It was during this period that wealthy men founded, in various parts of the country, the Univer­sity of Chicago, McCormick Semi­nary, Cornell and Leland Stanford universities, and four women’s col­leges — Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr. Many of these centers of learning were estab­lished as Christian institutions, by men who realized that they were only stewards of the wealth God had given them.

2. The Church Emphasizes Social Problems

During the period of industrial growth and increasing national wealth many churches came to lay great emphasis on social work in the community.

Since the eighties there had been a great movement of population from the country to the cities. Im­migration from Europe continuing on a large scale added its numbers to those already in the cities. Thus there arose crowded conditions. Slum areas developed, and many persons were affected by the cramped, unhealthy conditions. To meet the problems arising from these conditions the so-called insti­tutional church was developed. The originator of the institution­al church was the Episcopal clergy­man William A. Muhlenberg, great-grandson of the organizer of Amer­ican Lutheranism. From 1846 to 1858 he was rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City. Under his inspiration his church sponsored certain social agencies, such as the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion and St. Luke’s Hospital.

Thomas K. Beecher, a son of Lyman Beecher and pastor of the First Congregational Church of El­mira, New York, in 1872 equipped his church building with a gymna­sium, lecture rooms, and a library. St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York made a great success with its institutional features, at least from the standpoint of num­bers. When it introduced these fea­tures in 1882 it had 75 communi­cants; in 1897 it had a membership of more than 4,000. Russell H. Conwell in 1891 introduced institu­tional features in his Baptist Tem­ple in Philadelphia. In addition to social clubs he introduced sewing classes, reading rooms, a gymnasi­um, and a night school where volun­teer teachers taught the working people. This night school grew in­to Temple University.

Other leaders who stressed the social gospel were Washington Gladden and Josiah Strong, both Congregational ministers in Ohio, and Walter Rauschenbusch, a pro­fessor in Rochester Theological Seminary.

Courses in Christian sociology and in social service were offered in many of the seminaries. In 1908 the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America adopted the Social Creed of the Churches.

All this activity in the realm of social service had the tendency to make the churches forget their main purpose. In their eagerness to fulfill Christ’s command to do good to their fellow men, they be­gan to neglect the pure gospel of salvation through faith.

Social service is a necessity, and Christians must be active in caring for their fellow men. But the cen­tral work of the Church is the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. These should never be neglected or given second place.

3. Steps Are Taken to Improve Re­ligious Education

One of the most striking fea­tures of the history of the churches in America since 1880 is the grow­ing preoccupation of those church­es with the problem of religious education. At the beginning of the present century many leaders in various Protestant churches were becom­ing uneasy over the lack of reli­gious education in the public school. Religion had been an important part of all education in colonial days. But gradually the religious content had been removed. Many leaders saw in this a grave danger to the welfare of our nation. And they began to realize that the home and the Sunday School were falling far short of making up for this lack.

Some attempts had been made to improve the Sunday School. A sys­tem of Uniform Sunday School Lessons had been adopted in 1872, so that pupils in all the Sunday Schools in our nation would study the same Bible lesson at the same time. A rich variety of Sunday School "lesson helps" were pub­lished. Some churches put up spe­cial buildings especially planned for Sunday School work. Teacher training courses were given. As a result new enthusiasm was aroused, and the Sunday School enjoyed a remarkable growth. But in spite of all the efforts to bring about improvement, the work of the Sun­day School remained unsatisfac­tory.

Most of the religious leaders felt that the solution lay in doing more of the same thing. The Religious Education Association was organ­ized to encourage the production of better Sunday School materials and the use of better methods of teaching. Unfortunately this move­ment was in the hands of Liberals. In as far as it had success it turned out to the advancement of Liberal­ism. In 1922 the Interdenominational Council of Religious Education was organized to bring about more co­operation in religious education among Protestant churches. Many of the larger and wealthier church­es appointed directors of religious education. In some states a direc­tor now has charge of the religious education for the entire state. Weekday and summer vacation church schools have been organ­ized. In many communities chil­dren have been dismissed from school for a period each week to attend Bible classes. Departments of religious education have been introduced in denominational col­leges and theological seminaries for the training of teachers. The re­sults of all this effort, however, have been disappointing. The Catholic, Lutheran, Advent­ist, and Reformed people have fol­lowed a different pathway. They are not satisfied with public school instruction for their children. They feel that one hour of religious training a week given by teachers who are more or less inexperienced, cannot offset the non-religious teaching of the public school five days a week by thoroughly trained professional teachers. They feel moreover that the salt of religion should not be given to children in separate doses, but should season all the subjects taught throughout the day. They have therefore es­tablished schools of their own, in which the children are taught five days a week, and in which all the subjects from kindergarten to uni­versity are taught in agreement with the religious doctrines of their churches.

Between the Catholic, Lutheran, and Adventist schools on the one hand and the Reformed schools on the other there is a difference in organization. The first are paro­chial or church schools. The second are not parochial or church schools, but parent schools. The Reformed groups, follow­ing in the footsteps of Dr. Abra­ham Kuyper of the Netherlands (ch. 44, sec. 8-10), believe that all of life should be controlled by the Christian religion, but they do not believe that all of life should be controlled by the Church. They be­lieve that the Church’s function is to preach the Gospel and admin­ister the sacraments. They hold that it is not the work of the Church to operate schools, but that its members as Christian parents should establish, maintain, and control their own Christian schools. Associations of Reformed parents maintain around 150 Christian grade and high schools, with over 23,000 pupils and 800 profession­ally trained teachers. From a purely educational point of view these Catholic, Lutheran, Adventist, and Reformed schools compare very favorably with the public schools.

Religious education is one of our most important national problems. Without religion a nation is headed for ruin. The American nation, no matter how strong and powerful at present, cannot, with the non-reli­gious education of the public school, escape that fate in the end. As the evil effects of the non-reli­gious education of the public school become more and more noticeable, all Christians in all other churches may well feel the need of establishing Christian schools, as the Lu­therans, Reformed, and others have done.

4. The Church Deals with Problems of Peace and War The suffering and tragedy that are a part of every war, and the ever-present danger of new wars breaking out, have led people throughout American history to band together to preserve peace. Some of these groups, though they work to guard the peace, will, in the event of unavoidable war, an­swer the call to service. Others regard all war as sinful and re­frain from entering into battle. The peace movement in America had its origin in colonial days with the coming of the Quakers, the Moravians, the Mennonites, and the Dunkers. Alongside these pacifist religious groups, there were by 1826 some fifty peace societies in various states. The members of these peace societies were mainly ministers and pious laymen. In 1828 the American Peace Society was formed; the Harbinger of Peace was its official magazine. Under the name of the Advocate of Peace it is the paper of the Peace Society today. During the 1830’s and 1840’s churches often passed resolutions in favor of in­ternational peace.

Then came the Civil War, and the peace movement subsided. But with the close of the war it revived. The peace movement was par­ticularly active after the Spanish American War (1898). New peace agencies were organized, one of them the American Association of Ministers. In 1909 the first Hague Conference was held, with twenty-six nations represented. Andrew Carnegie gave millions to promote the cause of peace, and built the Peace Palace in the Hague. More peace sermons were preached than ever before. Most Christian people in America dreamed of the new era of peace and justice that was about to dawn. Then suddenly that dream was shattered by the explosion of World War I.

How would the advocates of peace be able to hold to their posi­tion in the midst of a country and world at war? That problem was settled quite simply for most of them. The war was represented as a war to end war; and the advo­cates of peace, the American churches with their ministers and members, felt that to be consistent in promoting peace they would have to support the war with all their might.

Those who dared openly to oppose the war were mistreated. In some cases where ministers continued to preach peace, audiences walked out on them. A good many ministers had to resign under pressure. Some were mobbed, whipped, or tarred and feathered. The house of one minister was painted yellow be­cause he refused to participate in a Liberty Loan drive. Fifty-five ministers of various denominations were arrested. One was sentenced to twenty years in prison. A con­vention of Christian pacifists in Los Angeles was broken up by a mob, and three of the leading pacifists were arrested, tried, fined, and jailed.

5. Modernism in Recent Years The years of World War I and those immediately following were boom years in the United States. Business thrived and money was plentiful. Men of wealth gave large gifts of money to their churches, and many costly and beautiful houses of worship were built. Two of the outstanding ex­amples are the Riverside Drive Baptist Church and the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, both in New York City. In keeping with the beauty of the new buildings, worship was made more formal. The preachers put on gowns and the choir mem­bers wore robes. A more dignified type of church music was intro­duced, together with processionals and recessionals, music responses and chorals.

While the church service was thus made more elaborate, church attendance was declining, for in many cases the preaching of God’s Word was disappearing. The heart had been removed from the service. The churches had lost sight of their central purpose, to preach the Gos­pel. A liberal theology and a social gospel had taken its place. The Liberalism of the present day, often called Modernism, has led thousands of worshippers toward a vague, unfounded, and unsatisfying faith. Because in its teachings many fine sentiments are included it is apt to be attractive to those who are not well grounded in Scriptural truth.

Present day Modernism stands in reverent awe before the eternal mysteries. It has profound respect for Christ as a unique religious genius. It admires the books of the Bible as a marvelous collection of sublime literature. But Modernism denies the virgin birth and the deity of Jesus Christ. It denies the truth that man is al­together sinful, and that Christ died on the cross to atone for man’s sin. The present day Modernist denies practically all the funda­mental doctrines of the Bible. At the bottom of this lies the fact that he does not believe that the Bible is divinely inspired—that it speaks to man with divine, absolute, and final authority. To the Modernist it is simply the record of the reli­gious thoughts, emotions, and ex­periences of the ancient Israelites. The Modernists believe that there is no one certain authority in mat­ters of faith. They have no use for the great creeds of the Church. They differ much among them­selves. They say that every man is entitled to his own opinions. But today Modernists are not so sure of themselves as they used to be. History itself has of late dis­proved some of their favorite ideas. They had placed man in the center instead of God. Under the influ­ence of the theory of evolution they believed that the human race could in time develop to a state of ideal goodness and usefulness and hap­piness. All their hopes were pinned on man. Man had within himself the power to live the good life and to build a better world.

Then came the financial crash of 1929, and later World War II with all its horrors and cruelties. It was plain to see that the human race was as sinful and imperfect as it ever had been and was not making steady progress toward a better world.

6. The Effect of Modernism on Missions The War with Spain in 1898 opened up the Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico to Protestant mis­sions. The churches that engaged in mission work on these islands did so in a co-operative spirit, mak­ing an agreement as to the field in which each church would work.

Since 1886 the Student Volun­teer Movement had been lending its enthusiasm and support to the cause of missions. John R. Mott became its great leader. In 1906 the Laymen’s Missionary Move­ment was organized. Foreign mis­sion work was going forward among many peoples of the world.

Home mission work in the far western states and in Alaska con­tinued to be pushed by all the great churches. The most famous home missionary of these years was a Presbyterian minister, Sheldon Jackson, who traveled many thou­sands of miles and brought about the establishment of hundreds of churches in the Rocky Mountain states. But while missions were extend­ing the Church to the west and in foreign lands, Modernism was seeping in and spreading.

You will remember that at the close of Part IV, Modernism was mentioned as one of the great obstacles in the work of evangeliza­tion. The gospel of Modernism is another gospel than that of the Bible. Modernism cuts the very heart out of the true Gospel: man’s need of salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It destroys the one true and great purpose of Christian missions — to bring the message of this salvation. The only purpose left to the modernist missionary is to bring our western civilization to Africa and the Orient. But the people of India, China, and Japan have a wonderful civilization of their own. And our western civilization is be­ginning to show serious faults. As a result of Modernism in the churches the supply of money and men for missions began to drop at an alarming rate. The Student Vol­unteer Bands, which once flour­ished in all the colleges, disap­peared. John R. Mott’s ideal of the "Evangelization of the World in This Generation" lost its meaning. By 1930 it became clear that the whole missionary enterprise had reached a crisis. A commission of fourteen mem­bers representing seven denomina­tions made a thorough study of missions. The results of this study were published in 1932 in a report entitled, Rethinking Missions. This report recommended that foreign missions be continued and strength­ened; but the purposes and methods were to be in agreement with the ideas of liberalism.