been unprecedented, there have been here and there expressions of
denominational rivalries. It is not an inspiring spectacle when a
few--and fortunately only a few--bigoted denominationalists are seen
storming certain camps, not because the religious welfare of the
soldiers is not being amply cared for, but because the accredited
purveyor of their ecclesiastical shibboleth is not teaching his patois
and peddling his wares. Neither our best laymen nor our wisest
religious leaders have either patience or sympathy with modern
denominational Pharisees. They recognize temperamental, psychological
and national differences among fellow Christians, and are content that
Quaker and High Churchman, shouting Methodist and dignified Scotch
Presbyterian, Salvation Army lassie and devout Romanist should choose
their own liturgy and polity, and go to heaven each in his own way.
But to their minds, in everyday life usually and in camp life always,
sectarian squabbling and doctrinal hair-splitting are merely rocks of
stumbling and stones of offense; and whenever they witness, especially
in war time, such wrangling in the porch of the sanctuary, they
discount the utterances and even the calling of the minister, and,
instead of entering the edifice and joining in the service, pass by on
the other side.
Still more damning will be the accusation, made even by loyal sons
of the church's own household, that not only has the ministry failed
to prevent war, but that it neglected to mass its forces and measure
its might in the great task. To reply to the charge in its
undiscriminating, blunderbuss form is easy. Many ministers gave up
their lives to the cause, notably in the various forms of the peace
movement. Others proclaimed and urged a cure, which the laity
declined to put into operation and the governments ignored. The
prevention of war should have been the work of the educator, the
lawyer, the scientist, the promoters of commerce and the prophets of
international socialism as well as of the minister. If he is
blameworthy, so are they. Men who love to sit in the seat of the
scornful and jeer at Christianity should enlarge the scope of their
humor. If, as G. K. Chesterton puts it, "Christianity has not been
tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried,"
it is equally true that the ministry has not been trusted and found
incompetent; it has been the herald of an unwelcome message and
ignored. No one class in the community could work the miracle of a
world-peace; it could be wrought only through the faith and works of
all. To attribute to the ministers the failure to achieve it is in
part fair; some of them are guilty. As Dean Hodges said of the
much-discussed article, "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself," the
charges are richly deserved by those by whom they are deserved. In
part, however, it is manifestly unfair; multitudes honestly tried.
In part it is one of the greatest compliments ever paid them; for it
suggests their power, acknowledges their leadership, and honors
their task as the constructive statesmen of the world. No one ever
before hinted that the clergy ought to have stopped the wars of
Charlemagne or of Napoleon. During the Civil War neither the
conflict nor the cause was laid at the minister's door. But in our
day many clamor for priests after the order of Joshua as well as of
Moses, men at the head of great bodies of Christian soldiers, who
shall participate vigorously in domestic politics and international
relations, until they actually bring in the reign of righteousness
and of love and truth among men. As ministers we accept the
compliment while we confess our sins and shortcomings. The burthen
of having done the things we ought not to have done and of having
left undone the things which we ought to have done is one that we
carry shamefacedly but not exclusively. It is shared by all mankind.
But if the war kills some and discredits others, the credit page in
the ledger looms large. The experiences and tasks of the present can
hardly fail to make the manliest among us still more virile and
vigorous. They will purge the leaders in every profession of all
softness and sentimentalism, and lift them above a great danger in
peace times, that of living a
ghastly, smooth life, dead at heart.
No sane and unprejudiced mind, possessing first-hand knowledge of the
ministry, accepts as a representative of the profession the clergyman
of the stage comedy and the popular novel. He may be a "sport," in the
biological sense; but it would be equally easy to find as ludicrous
and despicable examples in law, medicine or business. So far as the
average, normal type is concerned, this popular clerical clown is a
wretched caricature, possessing humor because endowed with the
exaggeration and distortion of a political cartoon. But removing all
such weaklings from the discussion, and granting that there are no
more lax fellows, lolling through life, in the ministry than in any
other profession, there is, as Donald Hankey points out, a certain
directness and sternness in camp and military life which is singularly
invigorating and even Christ-like. It stiffens a man's back to
shoulder heavy burdens, trains the eye to face steadily and without
flinching disagreeable and terrifying duties. It tenses muscles with
great and glorious resolves. It girds up the loins for a race the
issues of which are life and death, throttles any idea of sneaking
sinuously through the world avoiding large and costly obligations, and
at the end of the day's labor demands visible and tangible results. If
any minister was in danger of becoming what Horace Greeley called "a
pretty man," or what Holmes described as "a wailing poitrinaire," his
experience as chaplain and as soldier will effectually cure him. We
should have more prophets after the order of Amos as well as of Hosea
when the men who have been under fire come home.
Such men will increasingly merit and possess the respect of laymen and
of soldiers. Their lives have been knit together in the fellowship of
suffering. Their bodies are inured to the same hardships, their faces
lined with the same grim marks of dangers laughed at and of conquered
pain. In the democracy of the trenches the sons of the Pilgrims and
the immigrant sons of the slums have come to know and to understand
one another. The pagan, illiterate dock-hand has fought shoulder to
shoulder with the teacher of religion, trained in the first
universities of our own and other lands. When such laymen attend plays
like "The Hypocrites" or read novels like "The Pastor's Wife," they
will never be persuaded that the clerical cartoons represent reality.
Each will recall days in the dugouts and nights in the hospitals, when
they came to know a different type of minister, a "beloved captain,"
who marched through the mire with song and laughter, and crept with
them through the darkness and shadow of death in No Man's Land. An
almost irresistible attraction will draw them to the churches of such
ministers. To their leadership they will be inclined to render
obedience; to their messages they will listen with respect. No
scoffing jests at the minister will be allowed to go by them
unchallenged. For the first time in their lives they have been brought
into touch with the preachers of religion, and their hearts have
burned within them while they talked with these disciples of Jesus by
the way.
Furthermore, they will seek them out in the intercourse of ordinary
fellowship. For the ministers have shown themselves friendly,
approachable--no wan ascetics, no unhuman monks or superstitious
other-worldlings, but jolly good fellows in camp life, sane and
wholesome counsellors in times of perplexity, comforters in the hours
of sorrow, efficient and tireless fellow workers; in brief, the best
type of men among men. With such a minister there will be no social
uneasiness, no camouflaged conversation during a pastoral visit or
upon his entrance into the club. When he opens the front door, the
father will not be so apt to call, "Mother, the dominie has come to
see you!" It will be no longer the pastor who wishes to meet and to
know the male parishioner; the male parishioner will be equally eager
to meet and to know the pastor. One soldier phrased the difference in
this way: "Well, sir, I like our services out here, and the church is
all right; but our parson at home, sir--! You couldn't go to church or
have anything to do with him!" All this will come to the minister as a
reward for having realized the picture as painted by an English
chaplain. "I like to think of the parish priest as fulfilling the
Shakespearean stage direction--'Scene: a public place. Enter First
Citizen';--for his ministry should mostly be spent neither in church
nor in the homes of the faithful, but in public places; and he should
be the First Citizen of his parish, sufficiently well known to all to
be absolutely at home with each.... And so the word 'parson' will
revert to its old proud meaning of 'persona,' and the priest will take
in his parish a position analogous to that of the best chaplains in
the army." That is the gift which true ministers have always coveted.
Many have already won it, turning from the fascination of their
studies "to waste time wisely in the market-place, gossiping like
Socrates with all comers." After the war many more will possess it,
having gladly paid the price.
To the spiritual practitioner, moreover, will have come increased
skill in that most difficult of all arts, personal work. He will have
had daily hospital training in ministering to the souls of men. He
will speak their language, even their lingo, rather than what is to
multitudes the unintelligible patois of the seminary Canaan. He will
know not only his own theories but their difficulties and experiences
in regard to a belief in immortality and the practice of prayer. Like
Jesus at the well, he will have learned the method and value of
gaining a point of contact in teaching. Formerly it was easy to
discourse from the pulpit concerning the being and nature of God and
to champion theories of the atonement. The prophet of the regiment
will have learned what is far more difficult and more necessary--to
persuade a man to follow the teaching and to practice the friendship
of Jesus. That is his task, and he will have become efficient in its
accomplishment--so to bring modern prodigals to themselves that they
loathe the far country, and arise, and go home to their Father's
house.
Another gain will be that of a deeper appreciation of denominational
cooperation and an enlarged scope for the practice of it. Sectarian
rivalries and ecclesiastical trivialities vanish in the trenches.
Man-made walls between Christian brethren are crumbling. Petty
partisanship becomes first ridiculous and then wicked in the light of
the universal church's ambition. "We need a standard so universal,"
writes H. G. Wells, "that the plate-layer may say to the barrister or
the duchess, or the Red Indian to the Limehouse sailor, or the Anzac
soldier to the Sinn Feiner or the Chinaman, 'What are we two doing for
it?' And to fill the place of that 'It' no other idea is great enough
or commanding enough, but only the world Kingdom of God." The same
buildings are now serving congregations of Jews, Protestants and
Romanists. Instant calls come when rabbis, priests, rectors, and
representatives of every hue in the rainbow of Protestantism minister
to men of other creeds and of no creed. Partisan politics in the field
of pure religion are seen to be essentially irreligious; and chaplains
of every ilk and kirk are working together like "Bill" and "Alf," two
cockney soldiers, one of whom had lost a right arm and the other a
left. They always sat side by side at the C. C. S. concerts "so as we
can have a clap," as "Alf" put it. "Bill puts 'is 'and out, an' I
smacks it with mine." Such men cannot come home and take part in the
heresy trials and ecclesiastical hecklings of men whom at heart they
recognize as Christian brethren. It is perfectly safe to prophesy that
there will be more of church unity, and possibly more of uniformity,
so far as this is desirable, when these apostles of hundreds of
churches come home from the war.
With this enlarged cooperation will come also an enlarged ambition.
The pastor who has been plodding along the familiar ways of an
uninspiring parish will never be content to suffer his people to
travel in the old ruts or to countenance out-worn and inefficient
methods. That way, he now knows, lies ministerial melancholia and the
present situation, something far worse than Lear's madness. His task,
and that of his people, is nothing less than to transform their
portion of the world into heaven. Singing and praying about it are
good and necessary; but in the words of the old negro spiritual, it is
perfectly patent that "Eberybody talks 'bout heaben ain't a-gwine
dah," and the work of the church is to see to it that they go. Some of
the strongest and most venturesome among the clergy, unwilling to turn
back to the safe life after the thrill of the trenches, will seek
adventure in pioneer work in our own land and abroad. Home missions
will come as a challenge to men inured to danger and hardship. Foreign
missions will have a new and poignant meaning for all the world. We
knew before that the bubonic plague in Calcutta was a menace to San
Francisco; we know now that the cult of militarism in a single group
in Germany can crucify mankind. No chaplain will ever settle down into
a parish as if it were a "pent-up Utica." No cultivation of individual
piety will atone for the failure to Christianize society, leaven
industry with the principles of Jesus, and convert from its
Machiavellian heathendom and Bismarckian brutality the diplomacy of
the old-time state. Nothing less than the ambition to take the world
and its kingdoms for Christ can ever satisfy his soldiers; not, like
the Central Powers, in order that they may be enslaved and exploited,
but that they may know the fullness of joy and of freedom, and possess
the true riches of that divine life which is life indeed.
Almost of necessity the experience at the front will simplify and
vitalize the minister's message. For many all discussion of the future
of unbaptized infants, and premillenialism, and the verbal inspiration
of the Pentateuch had long ago lost interest. In the minds of others,
matters regarded by some earnest Christians as of vital importance,
like the Virgin Birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus, had
ceased to function. To them Jesus would still be the unique Son of
God, the divine Saviour of the world, whatever the method of his human
generation; and he would still be alive, their unseen friend and
present helper, whether or not his body had remained in the tomb.
Belief or disbelief in such articles of faith would never transform a
demon into a saint or a saint into a demon. Even to those accepting
them, they had no visible effect upon character or upon the course of
ordinary daily life. No soldiers ever asked about such scholastic
problems as they faced going over the top on the morrow. In the
hospital they never mentioned them, as they lay lonely and fearful on
their beds of pain. But they did ask, or long to ask, had shyness not
prevented them, about the treasures for which the heart hungers and to
which religion alone holds the key.
"Dear Sir," wrote a wounded soldier to the chaplain of his battalion;
"I often used to wish that you would talk seriously and privately to
me about religion, though I never dared to ask you, and I must admit
that I seemed to be very antagonistic when you did start." "I wish
you'd tell me what you think about it, padre," said another. "Is there
anything really afterwards?... I'd like you to tell me as man to man
what you really think about it. Do we go on living afterwards in any
sort of way or--!" He struck a match to light a cigarette. A gust of
wind, which carried a gust of snow round our legs, blew the match out
again. I daresay it was that which suggested his next words: "Or do we
just go out? I know the creed," he went on. "... But that's not what I
want. I want to know what you really believe yourself, as a man, you
know."
Is there a God, and can we actually lead men to experience him and to
grow like him? Is there any power in Jesus to save a brute and a
drunkard, a selfish worldling and a contented prig, not from a hell of
fire after death from which he is snatched by some theological
transaction, but from his degradation and meanness in the present,
until he is fit to be a husband and a father, a patriot and a friend?
Are the fruits of the Christian spirit "love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, goodness, meekness, faithfulness, and self-control,"
the qualities of character which alone can make heaven anywhere, and
without which a potential Paradise would be transformed into an actual
hell? Are the wages of sin death, or does the good man simply lose a
deal of fun and prove himself to be a foolish prig and superstitious
other-worlding? Does death end all, or are there many mansions in the
Father's house? Such are the great questions; and to them Christianity
has very definite answers, capable of being tried out in experience.
In the past much of so-called religion has seemed to thoughtful minds
remote from the facts of life, unreal, a bit queer if not abnormal. If
the flames of war are purging it from such unrealities and
abnormalities, the facts which lie at the heart of the world's faith
are being saved, yet so as by fire. The Christianity of the camp is no
pious sentimentalism, no sweet dream or unvirile worship of a "gentle
Jesus." It is a living, indubitable experience, full of strength and
of joy. Men are fighting to the death a thought and a purpose in the
German armies which Prince Lichnowsky, their own ambassador to the
British Court, characterized as "perfidy and the sin against the Holy
Ghost"; and in that fight they hunger and thirst for the power of a
religion of the Spirit, which--however the battle of bodies and of
brute force may be decided--in God's good time is bound to win the
day.
The last effect of the war upon the work and message of the minister
will be to furnish it with a new dynamic. As he returns from the
battle with sin in the trenches, he will find in the same battle at
home William James' "moral equivalent for war." The call to arms has
revealed the fact, seen in the success of the Student Volunteer
Movement, that the church has not sufficiently appealed to men's
latent heroism. The ordinary individual has revealed an enthusiastic
readiness for high adventure and an almost limitless capacity for
self-sacrifice, qualities upon which the work and preaching of the
average parish made practically negligible demands. There was a
contrast as noticeable as it was lamentable between the pompous
phrases of certain militant hymns, sung chiefly by the choir, and the
lack of ethical passion and aggressive righteousness on the part of
the pews. There was too little doing of brave deeds and too much
flabby irresolution and orthodox laziness. Christianity seemed to act
as a narcotic rather than a stimulant. Any preacher might say to any
congregation with perfect safety, "Ye have not yet resisted unto
blood, striving against sin."
For the chaplain fresh from the front all this will be changed. Not
only will he be the flaming apostle of a new enthusiasm; his church
will have been saved from the old lethargy and lukewarmness of
Laodicea, the minds of his people purged from the _dolce far
niente_ pietism, which dreamed sweet dreams while the wreckers of
the world prepared for war. For today religion stands revealed as the
greatest of all adventures. Christianity is history's crowning
crusade. The greed, the brutality, the imbecile and devilish
lawlessness, which have revelled in an orgy of spiritual vandalism,
are not peculiar to war. They have long been with us, in city and in
country, in the slums and on the avenue, among peoples supposed to be
civilized and enjoying the blessings of an era of prosperity and of
peace. It was an amazed world, rudely roused from its comfortable
slumbers, which found these forces organized for battle; it will be a
bloody and dishevelled but determined and aggressive world that, when
our men have laid aside their khaki, will strive to hold them in the
ranks of an equally fearless and fighting army, which will never
retreat from its trenches until these enemies of the world's peace and
happiness are driven from the field. Men who hated dirt and
discomfort, blood and vermin, have endured and laughed at them for the
sake of their cause and their country. When the call comes to carry on
the same fight in the homeland, such heroic souls will scarcely
decline to sacrifice something of their peace and comfort, or to
attack the forces entrenched in saloon and dive and political cave of
Adullam, because in the struggle they may be shorn of delights and
dollars, know the shame and agony of temporary defeat, and as victors
find themselves with mire upon their garments and blood upon their
hands. "Never was there a religion more combative than Christianity,"
wrote Bernhardi. That is false as the apostle of carnage meant it; but
it is true to the disciple of Jesus, who has heard Paul's summons to
don the full panoply of the Christian armor, and who so loves the Lord
as to hate evil with the just but terrible wrath of the Lamb. Here is
a new dynamic, an irresistible appeal, which should and must be
utilized by the minister. If the Christian Church is an army with the
greatest of fights on its hands, there will be a place for the
soldier. With the church service of the religious slacker he may be
pardoned if he declines to have anything to do.
T. R. Glover in "The Jesus of History" has said that the Christian
conquered because he out-lived and out-thought and out-died the pagan.
It is beginning to dawn upon the ministry that we must out-fight him,
if he is to be conquered in our day. The clergy have seen their
opportunity pictured in the words with which John Masefield in
"Gallipoli" has told the story of the final attack upon Suvla Bay.
"There was the storm," he writes, "there was the crisis, the one
picked hour, to which this death and agony ... had led. Then was the
hour for the casting off of self, and a setting aside of every pain
and longing and sweet affection, a giving up of all that makes a man
to the something which makes a race, and a going forth to death
resolvedly to help out their brothers high above in the shell bursts
and the blazing gorse." The thousands who are responding to that call
are the priests of today and the prophets of tomorrow. They can cry to
us, with their fellow soldiers, living and dead, in the words of
Lawrence Binyon:
O you that still have rain and sun,
Kisses of children and of wife,
And the good earth to tread upon,
And the mere sweetness that is life,
Forget not us who gave all these
For something dearer, and for you!
Think in what cause we crossed the seas!
Remember, he who fails the challenge
Fails us, too.
Now in the hour that shows the strong--
The soul no evil powers affray--
Drive straight against embattled Wrong:
Faith knows but one, the hardest, way.
Endure; the end is worth the throw.
Give, give; and dare, and again dare!
On, to the Wrong's great overthrow!
We are with you, of you; we the pain and
Victory share.
VI
THE EFFECT OF THE WAR UPON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
LUTHER ALLAN WEIGLE
The term "religious education" stands for two ideas that are
ultimately one: for the inclusion of religion in our educational
program, and for the use of educational methods in the propagation of
religion from generation to generation.
Over seventy years ago, Horace Bushnell pointed out the folly of
reliance upon the revival method of dealing with the children of
Christian homes, and urged the educational method of Christian
nurture. He did more than any other one man to determine the present
trend in religious education. Yet his work was prophetic; it took
fifty years more of "ostrich nurture," as he called it, to reveal to
Christian people generally the full truth of his position.