Religion: Brothers & Sisters

We believe in the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments as verbally inspired by God . . . supreme and final authority on faith and life. In this belief last week assembled the 15th annual convention ol the World’s Christian FundamentalsAssociation, in Columbus, Ohio. Brothers and sisters they call one another— Christianized Jews, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, all sects represented but the Roman Catholic. The sisters out number the brothers. We believe in that blessed hope,” the personal, pre-millemal and imminent return of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. At the door of big Columbus Memorial Hall, stacks ol pamphlets: “Shall We Longer Tolerate the Teaching of Evolution?” “The Doom of Democracy.” On the platform, speak ers and officers, addressing the brothers & sisters eight times a day. “Ours is a labor of love.” We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust. . . . The Cleveland Colored Quintet sings “The Monkey’s No Relation of Mine : Brother Eldon Farrar blows sweetly on a trombone. The everlasting blessedness of the saved. … On the hard seats children fall asleep. A man bench,” and a girl repenting sit their on “the sins. Later there would be more. And the everlasting, conscious punishment of the lost. Brother Paul William Rood, 43, pastor of Beulah Tabernacle. Turlock, Calif. pens a meeting. He is red-faced, friendly oratorical, shakes your hand warmly with is soft one. He has been president of the Fundamentalists for three years. His church is the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America, but he says: might be a Mason or anything else, would make no difference.” The brothers & sisters listen quietly as he tells them hat the “antediluvian conditions” of Noah’s time are repeated today. Jesus Christ is coming. But “men today are deifying man and humanizing God. Modernism is the religion of Cain.” among the members of the Fundamentals Association are Mrs. Finley Johnson (Helen Gould) Shepard, Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly of Johns Hopkins (TIME. April 25), Dr. Mark Allison Matthews, famed Seattle pastor, Board Chairman Henry Parsons Crowell of Quaker Oats Co. They were not present in Columbus last week, but the following were : Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of the late Suffraget Emmeline Pankhurst. Said she-“The world crisis is pointing to nearness of His coming because it fulfills closely His prediction of a crisis to precede His coming.” William Bell Riley, 71, executive secretary and co-founder of the Fundamentals Association. Patriarchal, resonant, he has debated many a time on Evolution. Proud is he that Clarence Darrow backed down” when he offered him $500 to debate in Denver. Rev. Louis Entzminger of Fort Worth, Tex “Sunday School Expert.’ Large, eagle-beaked Brother Entzminger says he is a realist. “I knocked the face off the last man who called me a son-of-a-bitch. That has been since I have been a pastor. I don’t live in the millenium, I live in Texas.” For his “unChristian” attitude Brother Entzminger was censured from the platform. Back to their churchly muttons went the Fundamentalists last week, after organizing for Ohio their 7th state organization, planning a World Bible Conference and revival campaign for Chicago during the World’s Fair next year, and laying the groundwork for an organization of European fundamentalists. One fundamentalist they may have missed last week but could read about in the newspapers. He was Noah Cooper, a lean gaunt lawyer of Nashville, Tenn. He had been busy petitioning the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington to require railroads to discontinue operations on Sunday. Six days a week does Lawyer Cooper labor. On Sunday he rests and he believes the rest of the world should, too He succeeded in having the sale of gasoline prohibited in Nashville on Sunday, fought unsuccessfully against the operation of street cars. Once he began a movement to bar Sunday newspapers but learned they are printed Saturday night. Though Monday’s papers are printed on Sunday, Lawyer Cooper felt he could not do without them. Seeking election to the State Senate, he stumped—string tie. high celluloid collar— with a Bible under one arm and a water-gourd given him by the W. C. T. U. under the other. He was overwhelmingly defeated. No minister is Lawyer Cooper but he calls himself the “Voice of Southern Methodism ” In his petition to the I. C.C. he said that all U. S. railroad troubles stem from violations of divine command. The Pennsylvania Railroad objected that I. C. C. is without authority to “enforce the Ten Commandments or any one of them.” Last week I. C. C. agreed.