Religion: Baptist Baiter

The American Mercury is a publication that comes out once a month in a frog-green cover for 50¢. Its writers push their noses against a cold mirror and squint at the mystical films their misting breaths design. They like to “show up” insipidities. They do so skillfully. But often what they tootle as an insipidity is verily the heart-belief of many honest folk.

In the last (February) issue of this cynical periodical, under the fishy eye of Editor Henry L. Mencken, one James D. Bernard, a “newspaper man who is now devoting himself chiefly to sociological investigation,” took it upon himself to whack nastily at the Baptists,* of whom there are some 8,000,000 in the U. S. Mr. Bernard had read through all of 250 issues of the many publications sponsored by the many Baptist organizations of the country, and from his meanderings uncoiled into print. Thus he started his paper:

“. . . they [the Baptists]are poor people, and those among them who acquire property tend, like the rich Methodists, to ooze into the Protestant Episcopal Church, which is fashionable everywhere in the Republic save in rural New England.” In such brazen tone he went his way. “The Baptists say they have 8,000,000 members in the United States. This includes 3,000,000 colored brethren, who are recognized as having souls but are not allowed to come to white churches.” Repeatedly he jabbed at foot-washing, that Baptist gesture of humility. He made phrases: “. . . the rank and file keep on whooping for Genesis. . . . The colored Baptists are all hot fundamentalists. . . . Bible and Lynching Belt [Mississippi] . . . At the slightest sign of heresy the alarm-bells are rung and the culprit is in the fire. The prevailing theology is strongly supernatural, and even shows a demoniacal element. . . . In most parts of the South a Methodist is relatively liberal and civilized; compared to a good Baptist he often seems almost an agnostic. . . .”

Of education: “Most of these high sounding institutions, of course, are of low grade, and serve chiefly the children of rustic Baptists. . . .”

Of Baptist publications: “The Baptist papers, like the churches and the ‘benevolences,’ are chronically hard up. . . . [They carry ads of] Peruna, Mrs. Winslow’s Syrup, Walker’s Prostate Specific, and other such quack remedies . . . flaming editorials praising the quackeries of the late Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco. . . . Some of the advertising, especially in the South, comes very close to the borders of the obscene. . . . Authorized Life of William Jennings Bryan . . . Prostitutes. . . . But in general the Baptists do not seem to be readers. The articles in the denominational papers, chiefly by pastors, are devoid of literary allusiveness, and are often illiterate. . . .”

Baptists are poor. They make no pretentions to wealth and power, even though they have occasional Rockefellers and Hardings and Lloyd Georges as life-long adherents to their simple, direct, Bible creed. They give their mites to charities, schools and missions. Their preachers are poorly paid, as are those in general of every creed and religion. Their pastors must work, and willingly, in professions and trades. But their calloused fingers can gently, reverently turn the Bible’s pages. Of their donations: “The Northern Baptists seem to be just as stingy [as the Southern].”

Of ritual: “The champion church of the South [for the number of baptisms] ducked 400 [the past five years] . . . So many darkies have become Baptists of late that the other evangelical denominations are growing alarmed. The Baptists’ dogmas and ceremonies appeal powerfully to the African mind, as they do to the mind of the low-caste white.”

No shocked comments so far have come from Carl Milliken, Portland, Me., President of the Northern Baptist Convention; Rev. E. Y. Mullins, Louisville, Ky., President of the Baptist World Alliance; Fred T. Field, Boston, Mass., of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, No. 276 Fifth Ave., Manhattan; President A. M. Bailey of the American Baptist Publication Society at 1701 Chestnut St.; F. W. Freeman, President of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Manhattan; Rev. C. W. Atwater, President of the Baptist Young People’s Union of America, Chicago, Ill; or from President C. D. Gray of Bates College, Lewiston, Me., who is secretary of the Baptist World Alliance.

*Next issue he will flay the Methodists.