Religion: Trends Jul. 9, 1923

A Gentleman’s Church. The Right Rev. Charles H. Brent, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, spoke to 200 young churchmen at the Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia. These young men are considering going into the ministry, but are not committed to it. Bishop Brent gave them the following bon-mots: ” The Protestant Episcopal Church needs a shaking up.” ” It is too closely identified with those who call themselves gentlemen.” “Don’t let society coddle you. What you are to do is to study what society is thinking and doing, and correct it in the places where it is wrong.” ” Sitting on the edge of a cloud and playing a harp does not appeal to me.” ” I protest against that patriotism which declares our country to be the greatest and always right, whether it is right or wrong.” ” The Ten Commandments should be rooted out of the Prayer Book. Too many Christians look upon them as forming the whole moral responsibility.”

Heresy Hunters, Dr. John Roach Straton and 30 other members of the Fundamentalist League of New York and vicinity descended upon the Baptist headquarters at 30th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, marched to the room of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, demanded to see the files of that office. The Board of Managers of the Mission Society (liberal to the core) held a stormy four-hour session with their Fundamentalist brethren (conservatives absolutely), and finally refused to open their files. The Board of Managers found that there were no specific, written charges against Baptist missionaries in the foreign fields, but only vague charges of unorthodoxy. Since the file contained many personal and intimate communications from missionaries, they refused to open them except to look up specific charges. Although defeated, Dr. Straton and his friends promised to return again with written and specific charges against liberal missionaries. The significance of the struggle is that the Fundamentalists, having failed to force a creed on either the Northern or Southern Baptist conventions, are now trying to capture control of missionaries, and missionary doctrine, thus assuring the future of Fundamentalism in at least one section of the Baptist Church. St. Paul journeyed to Damascus on much the same kind of a heresy hunt.

German Missionaries. For the first time since the War, German missionaries are being allowed to take up work in a British possession. The British Government has not altered its general policy of forbidding such ” hostile” missionary activity in its colonies, but is willing to consider individual cases. The Governor of the British Gold Coast, in Africa, said that one of the most disastrous results of the war, so far as West Africa was concerned, was the interruption of the excellent work which the Germans had been doing for the natives there. Three German missionaries, two with their wives, are returning to their work, which they are carrying on under the auspices of the United Free Church of Scotland.

Where Creeds Unite. The Jewish religion has had an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. It is still a vital factor in the life of the world and of the United States. Last week the Central Conference of Jewish Rabbis held its annual conference (Cape May, N. J.). Prof. Cronbach, of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, gave an address in which he compared the sociological claims of 42 different creeds, and declared that he found in all of them the same underlying principles of social justice, especially in connection with protecting women and children in industry, providing mothers’ pensions, resisting mob rule against the Negro. ” The divisions wrought by theology and excused by theology are being healed in the sunlight of social vision. Here is where Anglican agrees with Catholic, Catholic with Quaker, Quaker with Baptist, and Baptist with Jew.”

Gloomier and Gloomier. In a recent London book called The Coming Renaissance 14 British and two American writers all strike, in differing degrees, a hopeful note. One comments on the approach of church union in America; another on the new interest in education and the rebirth of religious discussion; a third on the interest in upbuilding the health of the human race. To the various writers (two of whom are women, five University professors, three bishops, two canons and two clergymen), these signs indicate another Renaissance age in religion. But to W. R. Inge, ” gloomy Dean ” of St. Paul’s, London, the conditions of such a movement seem indeed obscure. He closes his brief introduction to the book: ” If it comes, it will be very welcome.”