In the year 1906 the Young Men's Christian Association of Pittsburgh,
in Pennsylvania, rejected the application of an actor for membership
on the ground that one of his profession could not be a moral
person. Viewing the action as a slur cast on the whole theatrical
profession, Mr. Henry E. Dixey, the well-known actor, offered to give
one thousand dollars to charity if it could be shown that actors,
man for man, were not as good as ministers of the gospel. No champion
of the cloth appearing to claim Mr. Dixey's money on that proposition,
he went further and offered another thousand dollars if there could not
be found a minister in jail for every state in the Union. This second
challenge was likewise ignored by the clergy and the association
which had provoked it, but Mr. Dixey made a few inquiries as to
the proportion of ministers to actors among convicts. His research,
which was far short of being thorough, discovered 43 ministers and
19 actors in jail. The investigation, so far as the ministers were
concerned, could have touched only the fringe of the matter, for in
eight months of the year 1914 the publishers of this work counted
more than seventy reported offenses of preachers for which they were
or deserved to be imprisoned, and of course the count included only
those cases reported in newspapers that reached the office through
an agency which scans only the more important ones. There had been
nothing like a systematic reading of the press of the country for
these cases. Judged by 1914, the clerical convicts in 1906 must have
far exceeded the number developed by Mr. Dixey's census.
The foregoing incident is introduced here to explain the nature of
this work, "Crimes of Preachers," which, like Mr. Dixey's challenge
to the clergy in behalf of his profession, is the reply we have to
make to the preachers in behalf of the unbelievers in their religion.
The clergy assume to be the teachers and guardians of morality, and
assert not only that belief in their astonishing creeds is necessary
to an upright life, but, by implication, that a profession of faith
is in a sense a guarantee of morality. It has become traditionary
with them to assume that the non-Christian man is an immoral man;
that the sincere believer is the exemplar of the higher life, while
the "Infidel," the unbeliever, illustrates the opposite; and that
whatever of morality the civilized world enjoys today it owes to the
profession and practice of Christianity.
Now, it is wholly legitimate that systems should be judged by the
correspondence between the claims made for them and their actual
performances. When Mrs. Eddy, for an instance, rose up and asserted
that Christian Science was the key to health, investigation into the
health of persons professing and practicing Christian Science became
at once a proper inquiry. And so, when ministers exalt the belief
and practice of Christianity as the one highway to the moral life of
individuals and nations, it is equally germane to observe with some
care whether or not the clergy make good their claims in their own
persons. The inquiry would be of great interest and permissible even
were Christianity offered only for our free acceptance or rejection;
but the investigation assumes the binding nature of a civic duty
when, on the strength of these clerical pretensions, the preachers of
Christianity claim and are allowed to enjoy privileges and immunities
from the state that are not granted to other citizens. There are many
"benefits of the clergy" besides those bestowed on them personally
in the shape of half-fares, freedom from civic and military duties,
and the license under the papal decree which forbids that any priest
shall be brought into a civil or criminal court without the approval
of his ecclesiastical superior. In the United States church property
valued at a billion and a half dollars escapes taxation on the
plea that it is devoted to improving the morals of the community,
and the ministers have a virtual monopoly of the first day of the
week, commonly called Sunday, on the strength of the same unproved
theory. The plea is questioned and denied by the publishers of this
book, who quote the evidences in disproof, among these being the fact
of the immorality of the clergy themselves. If the religion they spend
their lives in expounding does not keep the ministers straight, it
is almost useless to ask how much restraining influence that religion
has on the laity who only listen once a week.
It is admitted that just as the upright life of a professed Christian
is no evidence whatever of the truth of Christian doctrine and history,
so the moral delinquency of a believer is no disproof of those
things which it is necessary to accept in order to be orthodox. The
creation story, the flood story, the story of Jonah and the whale,
the virgin birth and the other miracles of the Old and New Testaments
are not affected by anything a believer in them may do, either good
or bad. Therefore we have been asked of what value a list of the
crimes of preachers can be to the cause of Freethought and mental
liberty. The reply, couched in the language of an editorial article in
"The Truth Seeker," is as follows:
"Christianity, as interpreted by its preachers, affirms a
fundamental relation between belief and morals. It claims that its
system of morals is revealed and perfect; and not only this, but
also that good morals are out of the question unless we believe
in the Christian religion.
"There are Christian ministers, and they are of the class who have
the widest hearing, because they are 'sensational' ones, who will
tell you that unbelief is synonymous with immorality; that men are
wicked because they are Infidels, and are Infidels because they are
wicked. They argue that as religion cannot countenance anything
that is wrong, the wrongdoer must justify his course by denying
the authority of religion, and hence becomes an unbeliever in order
that his creed may not conflict with his conduct. Who has not heard
that Infidels deny the existence of hell to relieve their minds of
the uncertainty of going there when they die; that they put the
Bible aside because it will not permit their indulgences in sin,
and that a reform in conduct will be accompanied by a renunciation
of their Infidelity and a reacceptance of religion and the Bible?
"The preachers who promulgate these principles often proceed from
the general to the particular. Having asserted the correlation of
unbelief with moral turpitude, they give pretended illustrative
instances, and they do not seem to understand that the force of
their argument is lessened by the fact that they are obliged to
invent cases and to deal with imaginary characters. Some, of
course, prefer to libel known and representative Freethinkers
instead of exercising the faculty of invention and defaming
unbelievers who are pure myths.
"A list of ministers, guilty of crimes and immoralities, though of
unimpeached orthodoxy, is the answer to this class of falsifying
preachers, which any court must accept as historical and lawful
evidence against the pretense that good conduct grows out of
belief in Christianity. It shows that the very apostles of that
religion go wrong, that its ministers are profligate, and that
in these the theory is condemned before we come to its mere lay
exponents who less perfectly understand it.
"People have been taught so long that piety and morality are
interchangeable terms, that they believe it without regard to the
facts which demonstrate the contrary to be true. When an individual
of reputed orthodoxy violates the moral law they accuse him of
being a hypocrite and set his religious professions down as mere
outward pretense. But here their mental narrowness is shown, for
the immoral person may be thoroughly sincere. The more firmly
he believes, the stronger may be his confidence that no mere
human weakness on his part can deprive him of the benefits of
his religion. For according to the code we are all sinners, and
the function of religion is not so much to keep us from personal
sin as to save us from its natural consequences. One has fallen
already in Adam and is therefore totally depraved, which is the
limit of depravity. How, then, can his own sins count against
him, when he cannot be depraved beyond 'totally'? His concern is
to escape the consequences of the fall, which is accomplished by
accepting the Christian scheme of salvation. His own transgressions
can be adjusted by prayer and repentance. He conceives of divine
mercy as infinite--there is no reaching the end of it; hence with
unlimited credit he may draw on his account whenever he feels
sinfully disposed."
It is unlikely, however, that the believer performs this mental
operation before reaching a determination to do that which is
wrong. Were he capable of analyzing the plan of salvation in
that manner he might doubt it. But he is like other men in the
same environment, and, like them, when inclination prompts, he
falls. Conduct, in the last analysis, is a matter of common sense, in
which the minister and the believer are likely to be at a disadvantage
as compared with the Rationalist. In our own minds we are pretty
well convinced of the reason why ministers go wrong--they have more
opportunities and, among the faithful, are under less suspicion and
observation than the laity. Nevertheless we are not averse to hearing
other explanations of their tendency to fall.
A few years ago the Rev. Dr. Madison C. Peters, a New York clergyman,
offered a theory and remedy.
"The average minister," said Dr. Peters, "has only to preach a
twenty-minute or half-hour sermon on Sunday, and this, with a mid-week
meeting, constitutes his week's work. The rest of the days he is often
loafing, trying to kill time. Even the weekly sermon may not be his own
effort. He may be either too lazy or too ignorant to compose a sermon
of his own, so he simply treats the congregation to a rehash of some
other man's work, and for this he often receives a good salary. Do
you wonder that the worst passions of these men become inflamed by
their lives of idleness? They are only human. They eat and drink of
the choicest products of the earth; they visit only the homes of the
wealthy, where they are sumptuously entertained; they do not try to
keep the body in subjection to the spirit by any kind of restraint
or mortification, and so their carnal passion becomes the master of
their being, and they fall away from grace, shocking the community and
scandalizing the church of God. I would make all work for their money."
No doubt the indolent habits of the stall-fed clergy contribute
to their incontinence, which is recognized as their predominant
weakness. While their offenses otherwise, as these pages show, range
all the way from petty larceny to murder, yet the great majority are
such as are committed with or against women and girls. The larger
figures in the list number cases of adultery, bigamy, desertion,
elopement, and seduction.
That the immorality of the clergy is recognized as a matter that needs
explanation is shown by an article entitled "Why Ministers Go Wrong,"
extracted from the "Baptist Standard" (Chicago), in which orthodox
weekly it appeared in the latter part of the year 1913. The article,
whose author is a minister, is surprising mainly because of its
frankness and not because it tells anything not previously known or
surmised. The writer says:
"Do ministers of the churches, that is clergymen, priests and
preachers, go wrong in any greater proportion than do doctors,
lawyers or teachers? If one answers the question mathematically,
no; if one answers the question in the light of our moral standards
for ministers of the gospel, the negative answer will not be so
readily and decidedly given. There are few issues of the daily
newspaper without at least a single item narrating the fall of
a clergyman. It would be hard to find a man or a woman who has
not at some time in life become personally acquainted with a
professed exponent of religious truth and high moral ideals who
has demonstrated the depths of human depravity.
"Yet the indictment against the profession is of a much more subtle
character than that found in journalistic annals of crime or even
in personal knowledge of gross faults on the part of clergymen. It
would be folly to deny that, taken as a class, ministers live
lives as pure and as free from criminal or grossly immoral taint
as any other class of persons. The indictment takes rather the
form of a general impression, amounting almost to a conviction,
that the minister does not have the clear-cut and high standards
which the business world demands.
"Business men feel that there is something about the 'cloth'
that makes its wearer a 'doubtful proposition' when it comes to
square dealing between men. A prominent lawyer in Chicago said,
only the other day, 'I dread seeing a clergyman enter my office;
I do not want his business; he does not have the commercial honor
of the man of affairs.' He went on to give instances of ministers
who disregarded their business obligations and even ignored the
sanctity of the oath at the bar of justice.
"It is a well-known fact among houses accustomed to extend credit
that ministers are the slowest to pay, and the most difficult from
whom to collect. In the smaller towns it would be difficult to find
a grocer without an uncollected account against some minister who
had left the place. Over five years ago such a preacher boasted in
his farewell sermon that all his bills were paid in the village,
and he 'owed not any man'; he should have said that he had paid
not any man, and some of his bills are still unpaid.
"A charitable organization in Chicago allowed a minister in
a village nearby to become indebted to it. He promised to pay
the small account at a certain date; but a year from that time,
although many letters had been written, the bill was unpaid. Nor
was settlement made until this prominent minister on a good salary
was sent a sight draft for the amount.
"A struggling professor in an Eastern city consented to pick out
a few books for a preacher up State, and to have them charged
to his own account, being assured that payment would be made at
once. The books were sent, but the cash never was forthcoming,
and after a lengthy correspondence, in which many excuses were
offered, the professor had to count his loss as the price he had
paid for a lesson in trusting the 'cloth.'
"Such evidence could be extended indefinitely. The facts back
of it, with the many other instances of which these few are but
slightly indicative, have produced the decided opinion in the
business world that the minister is unreliable, and that the
ministry does not stand of necessity for admirable manliness.
"There are many exceptions. The manly, four-square ministers are
the more noticeable because they are exceptional. There are still
more ministers who are warmly admired by their congregations,
but they are admired rather for professional traits and pulpit
graces than for the rugged virtues that count on the street and
in the store and office. On the whole, men of honor feel that
today it is no honor to be entitled 'Reverend'; the average man
looks somewhat askance at the clergyman.
"Perhaps this is nowhere better illustrated than when a minister
leaves his profession and desires to enter business. He finds
there a strong prejudice against his past; it is regarded as
unfitting him for work. When such a man goes into an office,
experience shows that he is likely to lack the qualities that
make for trustworthiness in details in the individual and for
harmony in a large force of employees.
"Now, if the business of the minister is to teach the people
how to live, he ought at least to know how to do it himself. His
principles are valueless if they will not stand the wear of daily
life. Is the trouble with the teachings, with the message, or is
it with the man himself?
"The first reason ministers go wrong is because they are men. They
are not angels; they are not the reincarnated ideal saints
that the sisters and the sisterly brethren like to think they
are. Because they are men they have human frailties. But, while
that does account for the fact that ministers steal and break the
express commandments the same as other men, it does not account
for the fact that they are held below par in commercial esteem.
"As a profession the ministry seems to offer a premium on the
pretender, the impostor, the hypocrite. So long as there are the
intentional pretenders and the unconscious hypocrites in the church
they will enjoy the ministry of the pretender and hypocrite. So
long as the churches say, 'There's nothing either good or ill
but seeming makes it so,' the man who can succeed in fooling the
people with appearances of virtues, with saintly air and pious
phrase will be the man who reaches the top of his profession.
"Then no mortal being can stand for long the fawning and adulation
which the preacher is likely to receive, especially from foolish
and emotional women. He is sure to come to believe that he is
a superior being, one who either can do no wrong or can do only
right. Steady feeding on flattery unfits him for sound counsel
regarding his shortcomings; he gets into the habit of judging
his own actions, not by any undeviating principles, but by the
measure of praise they receive.
"There are peculiar temptations incident to the work of any man
who appears to weak minds as a demi-god on occasions, whose work
makes unusual demands on his nerve forces, and who is obliged
to work almost exclusively with women. There is not only the
temptation to license in personal virtue coupled with opportunity
in pastoral visitation; there is the tendency to conformity to
feminine standards, so that the man becomes womanly and usually
a poor kind of an old woman at that.
"Mere preaching puts a tremendous strain on a man's moral fibre. It
is the habitual statement of duties and ideals which the preacher
knows he does not reach and do. It is the expression of the
phrases of character, not necessarily accompanied with their
expression in living and doing. It results in the mental habit
of considering a duty done as soon as it is declared. It exhausts
the moral impetus in phrases. It makes the man act the lie.
"Intellectual dishonesty results from habitual standing as a
special pleader; as the defender of ground which has not been
honestly, candidly examined. The preacher seldom goes back to the
evidence; he argues from the conclusions of others. He stands as
an authority in that in which he frequently has made no original,
unprejudicial examination.
"Intellectual dishonesty comes as a result of cowardice in
regard to the declaration of his own honest convictions. He is
perhaps unconsciously persuaded to teach what the church teaches
rather than what he would teach if he gave himself a chance to
think. Creeds may be small matters, after all, but the teaching
of a creed in which we do not believe is no small matter in its
effects on the teacher. There are many potent reasons for fearing
a heresy trial--often the thought of his children's hungry mouths
and bare backs is one reason. It is a good deal easier to admire
the men who went to the stake for a conviction than it is to
follow them. The truth is, no minister who is honest with himself
and who declares what he fully believes will have any reason to
fear. The church may cast him out, but he will find a thousand
voices and hearts to echo to any honest truth in his own.
"Often the preacher is so dead sure that his motive is right,
that he does not stop to examine sufficiently his method. He wants
to save souls, and if he can do it, as it seems to him, by crooked
means more quickly than by straight ones, then he takes the crooked
way. He wants to build a church--if he can build it quicker by
misrepresentation, by double dealing, by beating any one, he thinks
only of the church, and that overweighs any other consideration.
"Take the matter of ministers (and others, too) lying in the
stories and illustrations they tell. We have all heard preachers
tell as happening to them some incident which we read when we were
boys; perhaps before they were born. The man is so carried away
with desire to impress the truth on you that he consents to lie
to make the illustration more personal and forceful. That makes
it none the less a lie; but after he has told it that way a few
times, he forgets that it is a lie.
"One of the principal reasons for the disrespect in which the
preacher is often regarded by the business world lies in the
shamefully unbusinesslike manner in which the preacher has been
treated in regard to compensation for his work. If his work
is worthless, why not say so and tell him to get out, and do
something worth while? If it is worth doing, then he ought to be
paid sufficient for a living without being compelled to become
a cadger and a pauper.
"The old donation party may have had a good beginning, but it
has had a bad effect on the minister's character. Add to the
moral results of being compelled to digest frozen potatoes,
wooden turnips and other donation specimens, the experience of
being forced into the attitude, at least annually, of a beggar,
and one will begin to appreciate the difficulty the preacher has
in maintaining his self-respect. When one makes it hard for a
man to respect himself, how long is one likely to respect him?
"When the man in the pulpit is dependent for his daily bread on
the tolerance and good will of the man in the pew; when he feels
that he may get butter on his bread or even a little cake now and
then if he can only get in the good graces of that smug old sinner
sitting down there, it is easy to see how he has been tempted to
fawn on him, how he has been tempted to speak of the old humbug's
robbery of the widow and the orphan as one of the achievements
of modern commerce and civilization. It has always been 'hard
hitting the devil over the back if you are feeding his belly.'
"The preacher in the country and in the old days could get along
very well between the neighborly gifts he received and the produce
of his little farm or garden when these were added to his small
salary. But when, without increase of salary, that same man is
placed in the city in our days of swollen prices for necessities,
he is hard put to it to keep out of debt and remain honest in
the ministry. Under the pressure some men have turned to crooked
schemes, to selling mining stocks and other bogus investments,
and some have gone out of the ministry. But the greater number
have stayed in and are working hard to make ends meet and to
stay straight.
"Ministers have gone wrong because they have not been trained
right in their professional schools; they have been educated only
for oratorical labor, and that with the intent of persuading men
to certain things by dint of their eloquence. What seminaries are
giving courses corresponding to those in other professional schools
on professional ethics? They have gone wrong in instances because
their employers, the people, have not treated them right, have not
given them a fair chance to live right; they have paid them, and
are paying them less than we pay mechanics and clerks, and yet they
expect the minister to live according to their social standards.
"When the people who employ the ministers will give them an
honest return for their work, when they will also encourage
them to be honest in their preaching and teaching, there will be
fewer unworthy ministers. When the theological schools get out
of their shells and into the cities, and the preachers get out
of their cloth and among folk, when they take off their garments
of sanctimoniousness and get busy helping and leading others to
better living, and to making this world a better place to live in,
the ministers will be a good many notches higher in the world's
esteem. It is needless to say there are a great many ministers
who have made good in these ways."
We have thus a view of the clerical profession from the inside, the
writer having turned state's evidence. In the closing paragraph there
is an intimation that liberal preaching, or "honest" preaching, with a
discarding of the cloak of sanctimoniousness, will react on clerical
morality and thus raise the preachers in the world's esteem. That
view is borne out by the figures showing that the ministers of the
liberal sects are the best behaved.
The editor of the "Baptist Standard," commenting on the article
which he prints and which we have quoted, attributes the clergy's
poor reputation for morality to the "yellow journal," which he says
"will get twice as black in the face as it will over any other person
of equal prominence." The Baptist editor complains because--
"A cross-roads clergyman who runs away with his organist will
get more attention than a congressman who goes off with his
stenographer. The senile philanderings of a former United States
senator did not get a front-page position so often as did a
comparatively obscure clergyman who a few years ago failed to
get gold out of sea-water, but did get it out of the purses of
customers who thought they had a 'good thing.' Why? The answer
throws a flood of light upon the question at issue. Because out
of tens of thousands of ministers, all of them working under the
obvious limitations and temptations to which the article makes
reference, those who go wrong are so few that, when such instances
occur, they are played up, because they are news. When a lawyer
or a physician, or a bank president, or a commercial traveler
is found with the broken fragments of the seventh commandment on
his person, it is no news, at least relatively speaking, and it
is given an inside page. This is an unconscious tribute of the
sensational press to the high estimate in which the clerical
profession is in general held."
The theory of the religious editor might account for the notoriety
given a delinquent minister, but no amount of publicity could create
the fact of his delinquency. He has to run off with his organist before
the yellow journal chronicles the event. And if more publicity is given
him than is received by the lawyer, physician and bank president when
the facts come out, the notoriety in known cases is more than offset
by the secrecy preserved by the minister's congregation and friends
in nine cases out of ten, so that the papers never get hold of the
matter at all.
But the defense based on extraordinary notoriety breaks down when we
remember that the preacher who wrote the article we reproduce does not
depend on the press for his knowledge of the clerical character. He has
first-hand information of his own, and makes the assertion, moreover,
that "it would be hard to find a man or a woman who has not at some
time in life become personally acquainted with a professed exponent of
religious truth and high moral ideals who has demonstrated the depths
of human depravity." This may or may not be an exaggeration; it agrees,
however, with the testimony of purchasers of the previous editions of
this pamphlet, who generally fail to find in its pages certain cases of
clerical depravity they have individually met. And we do not suppose
that one act of immorality in a thousand committed by clergymen is
ever known to anyone but himself. Not regarding ministers as worse
than other men in this respect, we may yet reasonably conclude that
they practice the customary male reserve, and therefore are no more
given to relating all the incidents of their lives--the only way such
incidents could become known--than members of the laity.
The indictment really is not against the ministers as men--it is
against their religion and their profession. There is so close a
relation between religious emotion and what is called desire, that
scientific men have written treatises and books on the correlation
of religion and lust. The more fervent the preacher is godward, the
more ardent is he womanward--and piety works the same way with the
sisters. Our preacher who has turned state's evidence blames among
other things the pastoral visit and the emotional women who place
temptation before the man of God. He is concerned only with the
minister, but the minister is as often a tempter as a victim. He
improves the opportunities the pastoral visit affords, and makes
his share of the advances. It may be that only men without mental
honesty--men who are willing to profess to believe and to teach what
they feel is false--are entering the ministry. In that case the worst
is to be expected, and their conduct is accounted for by their lack of
principle. The "Standard's" contributor offers the novel excuse that
the minister uses up so much of his virtue in phrasing and uttering
moral precepts that he has no strength left for applying them. The
proposition is worth the notice of the churches; for if true it means
that the vocation of a preacher devitalizes a man of his moral stamina.
The religious editor and his contributor disagree on an important
point. The editor holds that the fuss made over one minister who goes
wrong with his organist is a tribute to the high estimate in which
the profession is held. On the other hand, the contributor represents
that most ministers are moral skates, and that any high estimate the
profession enjoys is due to the few decent exceptions. The distinction
is vital.
The orthodox religious standards to which a minister is supposed to
measure up are admittedly responsible for much moral laxity. Besides
the sincerely orthodox preacher (whose religious austerity never
prevents him from erring sexually), there are thousands of ministers
who live a mental or intellectual lie by remaining in the church
and preaching the creeds they do not believe. And the church does
not trouble itself about the minister's doubts so long as he keeps
them to himself. What can the church expect, then, from the religious
hypocrite in the pulpit except that he will be a moral hypocrite out
of it? Is he going to be dishonest as a preacher and honest as a man?
The Baptist paper's contributor puts the query: "Do ministers of
the churches, that is, clergymen, priests and preachers, go wrong
in any greater proportion than do doctors, lawyers or teachers?" He
gives a negative answer, "mathematically," but the very asking of the
question proves that an affirmative reply was not unexpected. Had he
included editors in his list it could have been given. The literary
and editorial professions are very poorly represented in our prisons,
and even printers are exceedingly scarce.
This compilation, periodically revised and enlarged, has been before
the public in its nine successive editions since 1881, as is stated in
one of its prefaces; and considering that its information is based on
newspaper reports, the number of corrections demanded by the ministers
whose names are herein enrolled is small. The following is the only
threat of action with which the publishers have been menaced. We
follow the style of the clerical gentleman, who writes:
"BLUFFTON O.--5-12/1905.
"The Truth Seeker Co., No. 28 Lafayette Place, New York, N. Y.
"Sirs I notice you have published a Book The title of which is
Crimes of Preachers in U. S. and Canada In which you have the
name of Shelter, of McClure O. Now sirs, if the Copies of that
Book is not called in and DESTROYED AND ITS PUBLICATION CEAS at
once and the same notice bein given in your paper so published
by your Co. in side of 20 days, ACTION will be taken against
YOU immediately for blackmailing. The above name used by you is
the untruth,
"Trusting to heare from you early. Yours.
"J. Shelter."
Mr. J. Shelter heard from the publishers early, but not only did he
fail to keep up the correspondence, but apparently abandoned altogether
his contemplated action. The charge against the Rev. John Shelter,
of the United Brethren church, is that in 1890, at McClure, Ohio, he
sold liquor without a license. All we can gather from his apparent
denial is that the name used by us is not the true one. However,
he does not take the trouble to correct it.
Another correction was personally solicited. In the ninth edition
appeared an entry condensed from the following newspaper clipping,
dated at a Connecticut town:
"If the Rev. ---- ----. ----, the ---- minister who eloped with
Mrs. ---- ----. ----, of ----, and who is being sued for divorce by
his wife on the ground of intolerable cruelty, had been publicly
drummed out, his expulsion from the Methodist church could not
have been more emphatic and humiliating. This afternoon, after
more than an hour's debate in executive session, the New York East
Conference of the Methodist church voted, practically unanimously,
to allow him to withdraw 'under complaints.'"
Our entry, above mentioned, concerning this preacher, recorded:
"Eloped with a married woman; cruelty to wife; expelled from the
ministry." The entry should now be: "Personally appeared before
us the reverend gentleman whose name is suppressed and requested
the removal of the aforesaid entry, on the ground that there was no
elopement." While acceding to the request, we have the feeling that
with his name left out the book does not quite justify its title. The
preacher whom the New York East Conference of the Methodist church
got rid of in the emphatic and humiliating manner described by the
clipping is now a Presbyterian clergyman and doctor of divinity. The
names of more deserving men are very likely retained, for the gentleman
showed himself so lacking in loyalty to his class that he voluntarily
gave information regarding other Methodist ministers, including a
well-known editor, which could have been used to their hurt.
An act of favoritism on our part which we might prefer to commit would
be in the case of the reverend president of a Southern college who
came to Philadelphia for some unremembered purpose, and was found dead
in the house of a woman with whom he had made an assignation. This
book would be kinder to his family than were the public prints at
the time of the tragedy if it would do any good to the survivors. One
toward whom we have not felt that any especial consideration is due
is a minister of Jamestown, N. Y., who disappeared from a steamer
on the Sound in circumstances pointing to suicide, leaving with his
effects a note in which he said: "Let not those 'insane babblers' or
Infidels get hold of this for their miserable, God-dishonoring yearly
book on the crimes of preachers." We cannot see that it dishonors God
to print what God permits his preachers to do. The man in this case
wished his wife and relatives to regard him as dead because he had
another woman in view, and was shortly found living with her in Albany.
Some amusing uses have been made of this volume. In 1909 the opponents
of a bill before the legislature of California cited, to its prejudice,
the fact that members of the clerical profession were against its
passage. The gentleman who appeared before the legislative committee
in behalf of the bill offered this list of reverend delinquents
and inquired whether these were included among the ministers whose
opposition was allowed to weigh with the committee. Ministers
who undertake legislative work and pose as "Reformers" are often
unfortunate in their moral character. There has been a singular series
of mishaps among the conspicuous maintainers of the sanctity of the
Sabbath who have allied themselves with organizations to promote
Sunday observance by the saloon-keepers. The following list of them
gathered in a single state is taken from a Detroit newspaper called
"Truth" in 1905:
The Rev. R. G. Malone, superintendent of the Grand Traverse
district, arrested for licentious conduct; fled the state; now
in employ of Minnesota League.
The Rev. George Kulp, League orator, Grand Rapids, arrested
for adultery.
The Rev. Ralph Baldwin, League in Saginaw, fled after being
exposed in a liaison with a Detroit woman.
The Rev. John M. Wright, an organizer and orator for the League
from Muskegon, proven guilty of perjury in a divorce case.
The Rev. Orson D. Taylor, a Saginaw League organizer and orator,
sent to House of Correction for thefts.
The Rev. E. I. Waldorf, another Saginaw League worker, sent to
House of Correction for thefts.
The Rev. C. E. Lee, a prominent League worker and orator in Grand
Rapids, expelled from his church for licentiousness.
The Rev. J. Printer, a Branch county League organizer, fled the
state to escape arrest for bigamy.
The Rev. Charles Kirchner, St. Clair county League organizer and
orator, betrayed his foster daughter.
The Rev. Jos. St. Johns, Pontiac member of the League's force of
workers, serving a term for assaulting a colored girl.
The Rev. J. R. Andrews, a Lansing League orator, expelled from
church and arrested for blackmail.
The Rev. S. A. Northrop, one of the League's most gifted orators
at Owosso, expelled from his church for undue intimacy with women
of the congregation.
The Rev. John Smith, a Grand Rapids League orator and ardent
supporter, eloped with one of the women of his church.
The Rev. Dr. J. G. Holiday, Manistee county organizer, expelled
from his church for swindling.
The Rev. William P. Squires, Bay City organizer and orator for
the League, expelled from his church for falsehood and swindling.
The Rev. A. C. Marshall, from Amboy, Hillsdale county,
League worker and orator at Corunna, expelled from church for
licentiousness.
There have been a number of clerical reformers in the East whose
records cannot be cited to their advantage. One went against the
Sabbath breakers in Brooklyn, was arrested for blackmail and forfeited
his bond. One in West Virginia fought the theaters and Sunday trains,
but he turned out a gallows bird, a bigamist, and the thief of his
children's inheritance. One went to combat license in Brattleboro,
Vermont, but turned up too drunk to go on with the lecture. One in New
Jersey railed against Sunday liberty, but beat his wife and eloped with
a choir singer. One of Boston stood in the pulpit with the blood of a
girl seduced and murdered on his hands and demanded legal suppression
of Sunday baseball. The "phrasing of morality," thus becoming a habit
with the clergy, does not conflict with their other vices.
Wherever a reform is attacked by the clergy on moral grounds
the usefulness of this work is appreciable. In Pittsburgh, Pa.,
the secretary of a Socialist group was debating with a prominent
Presbyterian minister, when the preacher incautiously asserted that
Socialism would break up the home, and paraded the horrible example
of a Socialist professor who had been divorced by his wife. The
proponent of Socialism, expressing his regrets that so irrelevant a
matter had been brought into the argument, produced a copy of "Crimes
of Preachers" to show how the home had fared at the hands of men of
his opponent's profession.
Incidentals to the downfall of the preachers are sometimes
dramatic. One exhorted his congregation to confession and repentance,
whereupon his contrite landlady, much moved, made public the
fact that she had been living with him in adultery, and asked for
prayers. Another, having worked his hearers to the proper condition,
said: "Let us all lay our sins upon the altar." A young woman with
an infant in her arms came forward and, handing him the baby, said:
"Here's yours." It appeared that he was the father of the child,
though not married to the mother.
Reference has been made to the papal decree, which of late years
has shown renewed capacity for mischief, protecting a priest from
prosecution by any Catholic without a bishop or other superior's
consent. It is a survival of the "benefit of clergy" law under which
the church claimed the right to try the cases of clerical offenders,
instead of letting them go before the civil courts. The working of this
decree was illustrated in New York recently when a priest attempted
an immoral act with an eight or ten-year-old girl. The mother of the
girl, unmindful of the prohibition, reported the case to the police,
and caused the lecherous clergyman's arrest, but later, having been
advised by one of the higher clergy of the diocese, withdrew the charge
and declined to testify against the accused, who appears to have been
liberated after a reprimand by the court. It must be obvious that
with this rule in force, all but the most serious offenses of the
Catholic clergy will escape public notice. When in 1913 the murder
of Anna Aumuller had been traced to the Rev. Hans Schmidt, a priest
of a New York church, the police arrested and the courts convicted
the reverend criminal; yet the Rev. Hans Schmidt had committed other
crimes previous to this, and was known by his Catholic acquaintances to
be a man of immoral life. He enjoyed, however, the benefit of clergy,
and was protected by it from the exposure that would have come earlier
but for the Catholic ban on "scandal," and that would not have come
at all but for his sensational crime. With this wall of secrecy thrown
about the priestly life, we know not what immoralities and crimes take
place among the clergy and never come to light. While this edition of
"Crimes of Preachers" is in preparation a Chicago Catholic priest,
in line for distinguished honors from his church, takes an automobile
"joy ride," visits a saloon in the suburbs and ends the outing by
stabbing a station agent to the heart. The published offenses of the
priests are such, usually, as in the nature of things cannot be covered
up. For them there is no such offense as conduct unbecoming a priest,
carrying the penalty of deposition and exposure.
In this edition an attempt has been made to shorten the list of
terms by which the offenses of the preachers have hitherto been
described. Now such breaches of good morals as were variously named
"Beecherism," "immoralities," "lascivious conduct," "lechery,"
"scandalous conduct," "unministerial conduct," and the like have
been brought under the head of "Immoralities with women and girls
miscellaneously and variously described," which is as definite as
the previously used terms, and saves space.
It will be observed that the total number of offenses charged is
considerably greater than the total number of ministers involved. This
results from the complicated character of some of the delinquencies
of the reverends. A married minister betrays a young woman, thereby
committing seduction and adultery. There may be a child and a charge of
bastardy. He may run away with her, adding elopement and desertion of
wife and family, and often divorce. Elopements are numerous, and they
are mentioned here only when complicated with adultery or desertion,
since the unmarried parson is entitled to his romance, and not to be
censured above other men if he makes a runaway match of it--the woman
concerned having reached or survived the ages of discretion without
any matrimonial alliance at present existing. So the adulteries,
seductions, etc., are all enlarged, while only one name is added to
the number of ministers.
In only about two-thirds of the cases are the denominations of the
clerical law-breakers known, that detail being often omitted by rural
reporters or correspondents in whom the news sense is but imperfectly
developed. The instances in which the communion is supplied give the
Methodists first place, Baptists second, and Catholics third. The
number of each is not disproportionate to the total number of clergy
of the given denominations. Nothing appears to show that there is any
great disparity between sects or between Protestants and Catholics
in point of morality. There are, say, 170,000 ministers in the
United States, 15,000 of them Catholic. That is ten parsons to one
priest. Of the 3,795 ministers in this directory, 325 are Catholics,
or about 1 priest to 10 non-Catholic clergymen.
Catholics do not have so many clergymen in proportion to their
communicants as the Protestant sects. With them one priest has to
serve a thousand adherents (provided they have the sixteen million
communicants they claim), while the Baptists, with less than six
million communicants, have nearly forty-three thousand ministers, and
the Methodists, with seven million members, report upwards of forty-one
thousand ministers. With such a multiplication of pulpiteers and a
low standard of qualification for the ministry, the bad preeminence
of the Methodist parsons is explained. It has been noticed already
that priests are not publicly exposed in such peccadilloes as might
cost a Protestant minister his pulpit or a layman his standing in
the community.
It cannot be inappropriate to quote the following comment on an excuse
offered for the two delegates to the Methodist conference of 1912,
who were caught with the broken fragments of the seventh commandment
on their person, or rather almost in the act of breaking them:
"The fact that two of the ministers who attended the late
Methodist conference in Indianapolis committed the statutory
offense before they went home led Pastor Dinsmore of the Baptist
church of Anderson, Ind., to which state one of the delinquents
belonged, to deliver a discourse on the theme, 'How Preachers
Go Wrong.' Viewing the matter historically, as was his duty,
the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore found that the going wrong of a preacher
is by no means a modern innovation; for did not Micah, David,
Eli, and Abiathar prove false to the trust imposed in them? The
preacher blamed society for protecting the preacher in his sin,
and for not giving him away. But the first cause, he says, why
a preacher falls is that he is 'human,' and the devil works for
mastery over him as over other souls. And the second cause of the
preacher's fall, we are told, is the woman (nothing said about
her being also 'human'). The religious woman who has missed her
man finds him in Jesus and takes the parson as his deputy. The
women tempt the preacher also by the cut of their clothes, says the
Rev. Mr. Dinsmore. They wear and let their daughters wear gowns so
low in the neck and so short in the skirt that when a man looks at
them 'hell is stirred up' in his breast. And so on. Of course some
of it is true; the minister is exposed to temptation, but if he
cannot resist what the Infidel has to, what is his religion for?"
The light sentences, if any, imposed upon clergymen in many instances
having been alluded to, we may allege a concrete case. It occurred
at the time when a nation-wide attempt was being made to fasten the
crime of white slavery, with its penalties, on two laymen who had
taken two women with their consent into an adjoining state and there
cohabited with them. The clerical case was as follows (we quote an
editorial paragraph in "The Truth Seeker" for July 19, 1913):
"In the state of Michigan, town of St. Johns, in the middle of
last month, a Baptist clergyman, the Rev. J. T. Gregory, being
arraigned for the crime of rape committed upon a girl 11 years
old, pleaded guilty and was 'sentenced to serve from one to
ten years at the Ionia reformatory with a recommendation of two
years by Judge Searl.' What extreme penalty the law of Michigan
imposes for outraging an infant we do not know; the terms of
the sentence named in this case show it is at least ten years,
and here is a man of God getting off with a sentence of from one
up, and recommended by the court to be let loose again upon the
community in two years! The report of the case, printed in the
Grand Rapids 'Press,' is exasperating to any one who believes
that the law should be administered without favor. Every courtesy
was shown the clerical violator of childhood. 'The sentence,' we
read, 'was dealt out by a special arrangement with the judge,'
as court would not convene for a week, and the minister 'was
desirous of pleading guilty and beginning his term in prison as
soon as possible.' The judge carried his consideration for the
clerical rapist so far as to grant the latter's request 'for
a day to clear up his personal affairs.' All this favoritism,
as the reporter innocently puts it, because the Rev. Mr. Gregory
is 'highly respected as the pastor of the Baptist church.' That
is benefit of the clergy with the lid off! Now we would like to
inquire why there is no public excitement about this miscarriage of
justice. The man is married and has three daughters, two of them
school teachers, and one a high school graduate, and is hence a
middle-aged man who has not the excuse of youthful ardor for his
crime. The girls in the California case were old enough to marry or
to consent without marriage. The minister's victim is eleven years
old. If the laymen had money and political influence, which they
haven't, to protect them from prosecution on a charge of which
on the face of it they are not guilty, it still would not be as
base for them to avail themselves of that advantage as it is for
a court to consider the alleged 'holy calling' of a minister and
withhold adequate punishment for an atrocious crime he confesses
that he committed. Men possessed of a nature that permits them to
attack female children are among the most dangerous persons in
any community, because they only want the opportunity to repeat
the offense. The motive is always with them. The are like the
Chicago priest who saw a 'stimulation to lust' in Chabas' picture,
'September Morn.' No young girl is safe in the power or presence of
that kind of degenerates; and hence when one of them gets into the
clutches of the law he should be kept there as long as the statute
will permit. Had the Rev. Gregory been anything but a priest and
the court anything but a boneheaded truckler to hypocritical piety,
he would have got a determinate sentence of at least ten years."
In one year, recently, seventeen Chicago ministers were criminally or
civilly prosecuted. It is difficult to believe that this number of
offenses does not raise the percentage of criminal preachers above
the average of all Chicago citizens. In six months of the same year
(1912) Kokomo, Indiana, had four clerical scandals. We again quote:
"Is there some sinister element in the atmosphere of Kokomo,
Indiana, inimical to clerical morals? After relating under
the heading 'Parson and Widow Out on a Little Lark,' how 'the
Rev. G. W. Alley, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal church at
Royal Center and an active member in the North Indiana conference,
was arrested at a boarding house at Kokomo shortly before midnight
Tuesday night in company with Mrs. Wendling, a widow of Walton,
and both were hustled off to jail where they still remain,'
the Hartford City (Ind.) 'Times-Gazette' of August 6 remarks:
'This is the fourth scandal in Kokomo within the past six months in
which a preacher has been involved.' Surely there must be something
unfavorable to ministerial morals in the Kokomo atmosphere--some
such element as that affirmed by one of the infallible popes who,
finding himself and many of his priests disabled by a mysterious
malady, laid it to 'a certain malignity in the constitution
of the air.' The constitution of the air in Kokomo, Indiana,
is obviously malign and contraindicated for ministers."
Four delinquents in six months is eight a year in a community of
12,000 souls, the church-going portion of which could be adequately
served by a dozen ministers.
It would be interesting, if practicable, to compare the morality of
the American clergy with that of other countries, but the data are
meager. Here, however, is an informing paragraph retained from a
previous edition of this book:
"In England, from October, 1891, to October, 1892, 12 ministers
committed suicide, 14 broke the marriage promise, 17 committed
various crimes, 18 misused animals, 109 violated women, 121 were
indicted for drunkenness (habitual), 254 cheated their creditors,
and 18 committed minor offenses. That is 2.75 per cent. of the
English ministry, says the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' who were in one
year in trouble with the law."
Since the revision of this work was undertaken, late in the fall of
1914, the clergy have not ceased to furnish fresh material for its
pages, but as each additional name must cause a revision of totals,
the later cases, which perhaps number two dozen, must await the next
round-up. The following table condenses the crimes, offenses, etc.,
with which the ministers have been charged:
Abduction 22
Abortion and attempts to procure 19
Abusive language 22
Adultery 676
Alienation of affections 17
Arson 62
Assault with intent to murder 61
Assault with intent to rape 50
Assault with intent to do great harm 26
Assault and battery 66
Attempted suicide 15
Bastardy 77
Bigamy, attempted and accomplished 144
Breach of promise to marry 27
Burglary 17
Cheating, swindling, grafting, malversation,
misappropriation, etc. 288
"Conduct unbecoming a minister of the gospel" 44
Conspiracy 11
Contempt of court 13
Counterfeiting 16
Cruelty to wife or children 130
Debauchery 52
Desertion or non-support of wife or children 207
Disorderly conduct 44
Divorced or sued 56
Drunkenness 202
Elopement, attempted or accomplished 163
Embezzlement, fraud, defalcation, etc 162
Enticing women and young girls 15
False impersonation 13
Fighting 51
Forgery 123
"Fornication" 14
Gambling 19
Grave robbery 1
Gross immorality 40
Horse stealing 19
Illicit distilling 12
Illicit liquor selling 15
Immoralities with women and girls, miscellaneous and
variously described 223
Larceny 181
Libel 50
Lying and deceit 138
Malicious destruction of property and malicious mischief 22
Manslaughter 14
Murder generally 119
Murder of child 12
Murder of wife 27
Obscene language 16
Obscene print, circulation of 14
Obtaining money or property under false pretenses 65
Perjury or subornation of 12
Plagiarism or literary piracy 14
Praying for death of neighbor, who died 1
Profanity 11
Quarreling 19
Rape in general 43
Rape of girls under age of consent or puberty 76
Seduction in general 273
Seduction of girls under fifteen 28
Slander 109
Sodomy or unnatural crime 67
Stealing religious funds or property 23
Suicide 117
Threatening life 16
Violation of postal laws 17
White slavery and pandering 15
Wife or woman beating 57
Breaking up the home of another man, defamation of character, illegal
marrying, violation of game laws, 9 each; blackmail and extortion and
breaking jail, 8 each; breach of hospitality, homicide, and pension
frauds, 7 each; criminal neglect, cruelty to animals, and kidnapping,
6 each; dueling, administering poison, and fraudulent divorce,
5 each; bribery, nuisance, shoplifting, trespass, and speeding,
4 each; carrying concealed weapons, compounding of felony, and
false arrest, 3 each; bankwrecking, beggary, breach of trust, cattle
stealing, illegal voting, lynching and incitement to, prize-fighting,
profanity, quackery, receiving stolen goods, smuggling, violation
of revenue law, election frauds, extortion, and "felony," 2 each;
assisting prisoner to escape, attempted trainwrecking, coercion of
the dying, criminal carelessness, cruelty to prisoners, desertion
from the army, dynamiting, illegal practice of medicine, illicit
manufacture of cigars, keeping disorderly house, lottery running,
malicious prosecution, mutilating public records, praying for death
of neighbor (who died), selling vote and influence, slave-holding
(by a missionary), teaching boys to steal, vagrancy, violation of
articles of war, violation of drug law, violation of Sunday law,
jury fixing, undue influence, "corrupting morals of young girl,"
and obstructing justice, 1 each. The whole number is approximately
five thousand, from actual count, 4,987.
Denomination of ministers so far as known:
Methodist 728
Baptist 492
Catholic 325
Presbyterian 187
Episcopalian 164
Evangelist 136
Congregational 120
Christian (or Campbellite) 101
Lutheran 100
United Brethren 38
Jewish 18
Adventist 17
Reformed 16
Holiness 12
Church of God 8
Disciples 9
Missionary 8
Dunkard 7
Greek Catholic 7
Universalist 7
Church of Christ 6
Sanctificationist 5
Unitarian 5
Mennonite 4
Friend (Quaker) 3
Mormon 3
Armenian 2
Independent 2
Moravian 2
Pentecost 2
Millennialist 2
The following minor denominations are represented by 1 each: Absolute
Life, Apostolic, Amish, Christian Union, Christian Catholic, Come
Outer, Do Right, German Evangelical, Gift of Thomas, Gospel Mission,
Heliga, Holy Ghost Household Faithful, New Jerusalem, Nazarene,
New Thought, Shaker, Straight Edge, Syrian, and True Reformer (20).
The whole number of ministers whose names are recorded here is
3,795. Their denomination is given in 2,556 cases; unknown in 1,239.
In explanation of the varying typographical arrangement of dates,
names, etc., and of faults of pagination, it may be said that the older
portions of the book, covering cases occurring prior to 1899, have
been left as they formerly stood, except that the periodical comments
and recapitulations accompanying fresh editions have been eliminated,
and the available matter thrown into the general introduction to the
volume. Cases that have occurred since the close of the list in the
former style of composition have been rearranged and reset in one
alphabetical list. The book, then, contains six alphabetical lists,
beginning, in the first part, on page 10 (circa 1875-81); page 50 (to
1883); page 102 (to 1893); page 125 (to 1895); page 140 (to 1898);
page 139, Part II. (to 1914). The rearrangement condenses, without
omitting anything of permanent value, a volume which was becoming
too large to be economically produced and distributed.