vastly important in its effects. He is easily approachable, if rightly
approached. Alien accessibility makes home mission possibility. The
approach may not at first be on the distinctively religious side, but
there is a way of access on some side. A living gospel incarnated in a
living, loving man or woman is the "open sesame" to confidence first and
conversion afterward. Make the foreigner feel that you are interested
in him as a man, and the door is open beyond the power of priestcraft to
shut it. The priest may for a time keep the Catholic immigrant away from
the Protestant church but not from the Protestant cordiality and
sympathy; and if these be shown it will not be long before the
immigrant, learning rapidly to think for himself, will settle the
church-going according to his own notion. A kind word has more
attractive power than a cathedral. You will never win an Italian as long
as you call him or think of him as "dago," nor a Jew while you nickname
him "sheeny." The immigrant wants neither charity nor contempt, but a
man's recognition and rights, and when American Christians give him
these he will believe in their Christianity and be apt to accept it for
himself.
[Sidenote: The First Touch]
Home mission work of a distinctive character should and does begin at
the point of landing in the New World. At Ellis Island, for example,
there are now some thirty missionaries, representing the leading
Christian denominations. This gives proof of the partial awakening of
the Churches to the importance of this work. It is only of late years
that any special attention has been paid to the welfare of the incomers,
either by State or Church. Now both are seeking to throw safeguards
around the immigrants and secure them a fair start. A large room is set
apart for the missionaries in the receiving building at Ellis Island,
and they perform a service of great good both to the aliens and the
country. First impressions count tremendously, and happy is it for the
immigrant who gets this initial impression from contact with a Christian
missionary instead of a street sharper. Once put the touch of human
kindness upon the immigrant and he is not likely to forget it. The hour
of homesickness, of strangeness in a strange land, of perplexity and
trouble, is the hour of hours when sympathy and help come most
gratefully. The missionaries are on hand at this critical juncture.
Thousands of immigrants are saved from falling into bad hands and evil
associations through their zealous efforts. Thousands are supplied with
copies of the Testament, the sick and sorrowful are comforted, the
rejected are tenderly ministered to in their distress, and the gospel is
preached in the practical way that makes it a living remembrance. This
is one way in which a true and enduring assimilation is begun.
[Sidenote: The Fruit of Kindness]
Here is a single illustration of the unexpected results of this first
Christian touch in the new world. One of the women missionaries was very
kind to a Bohemian family, helping the father find his destination and
get settled. At parting, the missionary gave him a Testament and asked
him to read it when in trouble. He thanked her for all her kindness to
him and his family, and said he would keep the book for her sake. He
put it away and forgot all about it. One day his little girl got the
book and tore a leaf out. When he learned what she had done he was very
angry, and punished her for tearing the book, saying that the kind lady
at Ellis Island had given it to him, and he had promised to keep it. He
threatened the child with severe punishment if she touched it again.
"What is the book, papa?" she asked. He said he did not know what it
was, but the lady gave it to him, and that was enough.
[Sidenote: The Gospel's Power]
The little girl kept asking about it until at length his curiosity was
aroused, and he took the Testament to find out for himself. As he began
to read the story of Jesus he became interested, and presently had his
wife reading it also. Such wonderful things he had never heard of
before, and he thought he would tell the priest about it, for if the
priest knew about it he would surely tell the people. The priest forbade
him to look into the book again, saying that it was a bad book and would
cost him his soul if he read it. This only ended the influence of the
priest, for the immigrant said such a good person as Jesus could not do
anybody any harm, he was sure of that. He decided to go back to Ellis
Island and ask the kind lady about it. The light came, and he and his
family are earnest members of a Christian church, showing their
gratitude by trying with true missionary spirit to bring others of
their race to the Master.[92]
[Sidenote: Immigrant Headquarters]
This missionary work, coming at the critical time, needs to be extended
and dignified. It should be so enlarged that it would be possible to
reach in some way the great mass of the newcomers, where now it touches
comparatively few. There should be a great interdenominational
headquarters building, thoroughly equipped for every kind of helpful
service. A large force of trained workers of different nationalities
should be employed, so that all kinds of needs might be met. It is
entirely possible to establish a center that would powerfully impress
the immigrants with the worth and importance of the Christian religion.
But no small affair will do. Our great denominations have the money in
plenty, and certainly have the talent to organize such a work as the
world has never yet seen. And what a chance for personal service such an
institution would afford. This would be a living object lesson of
Christianity helping the world, that might fitly stand beside the statue
of "Liberty enlightening the world."
_III. Protestantism and the Alien_
[Sidenote: Present Work for the Foreigners]
How are the evangelical denominations meeting their imperative
obligation to evangelize the multitudes brought to their very doors?
When the immigrant has passed through the gates, what attention is paid
to him? Take it in the centers of population, where the mass of the
immigrants go, and the showing is not very imposing as yet.
[Sidenote: Abandoned Fields]
The truth is that as the foreigners have moved into down-town New York
the old-time Protestant churches have moved out, in great measure
abandoning the field, on the assumption that there was no constituency
to maintain an American church. It did not seem to dawn upon the rich
churches which moved up town that the new population needed
evangelization and could be evangelized. The result is that the
immigrant accustomed to imposing churches and splendid architecture and
impressive ritual, sees little to impress him with the existence of
Protestant Christianity. Go through that teeming East Side in New York,
and here and there you will find a mission supported in desultory
fashion by some church or city mission society or mission board, and in
quarters conducive to anything but worship or respect. There is nothing
to make the new arrival feel the presence and power of the religious
faith that created this free Republic and still predominates in its best
life. So it is wherever you go. The home mission work is in its
beginnings, and these are manifestly feeble and inadequate.
[Sidenote: An Example]
The Roman Catholics teach us some practical lessons. They build large
and impressive churches for the immigrants. They abandon no fields, and
immediately occupy those left by Protestants. They expend money where it
will go furthest. The Protestants of New York should have been
far-sighted enough to plant strong evangelistic and philanthropic
institutions in the fields from which they withdrew their churches.
Valuable ground has been lost for want of this missionary insight and
impulse.
[Sidenote: Need of an Awakening]
The conditions in New York are symptomatic of those obtaining generally,
in country as well as city. The Protestant churches, not recognizing the
supreme home mission opportunity to Christianize the immigrants, have in
many cases become weak where a zealous evangelism would have kept them
strong. Too many of the American Churches have been satisfied with their
own prosperity and unmindful of the growing need of the gospel all
around them. As a missionary worker says:[93] "There are plenty of
Christians who believe that the gospel is the power of God unto
salvation in a vague and general way; but there are not enough people
who clearly believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation
to the Italian working on the railroad, or the Hungarian in the shops,
or the German on the farm. Too many of us have no faith at all in
foreign missions at home."
[Sidenote: Reasons for Present Conditions]
It is impossible to enter into details of what has been undertaken by
the different evangelical denominations. Reference to the tables
furnished by various Home Mission Boards[94] will indicate, as far as
bald figures can do so, the extent of the work among the various
peoples. The statistics show that in the country, especially in the
West, missions among the earlier type of immigrants--the German and
Scandinavian--have long been maintained with success. There are hundreds
of strong and prosperous churches among these peoples. For the later
immigrants less has been done, although the need is far greater. Some of
the reasons for the small proportions of this work are manifest. In
order to reach the Slavs and Italians there must be native missionaries,
and these cannot be found offhand. After converts are made, those who
are fitted to preach and teach must be trained, and schools must be
provided for the training.[95] The difficulties of language must first
be overcome. The process requires time and patience and large resources.
Missions cannot be imposed upon these foreign peoples from without.
Force cannot be used. Access must be found, and the gospel seed be sown
as opportunity occurs. There must be a natural development in a work
like this, which deals with individuals, and that by persuasion. The
present work must not be judged too harshly, therefore, as reflecting
upon the churches. Only of late has the need been recognized by the
leaders in Christian effort. Dr. Thompson puts the situation in true
light, when he says:
[Sidenote: The Point for a New Departure]
"It goes without saying that the church has not so far taken its full
share of the responsibility. She has not realized the gravity of the
situation. Indeed, only in late years has it emerged in its full
significance. Consequently the work of the various Christian bodies has
been sporadic, rather than systematic and persistent. There has been no
serious endeavor to deal with it as a problem and to try to compass it.
All the Churches have worked among the foreigners, but it has been
determined by local conditions and needs which have appealed to
Christian people here and there; that, however, is very different from
an intelligent view of the whole situation and a campaign intended and
adapted to solve the whole problem. We have reached a point in the
immigration problem where it must be solved broadly, philosophically,
and by the combination of all forces--civic, social, moral, and
religious--to bring about the healthy assimilation of all foreign
elements into the life of the body politic."[96]
[Sidenote: Success of Earnest Effort]
We have said the foreigner is accessible. How true this is, when earnest
and genuine effort is made, is shown by the tent work in many cities.
Take it among the Italians in New York, for example. A tent worker tells
the results:[97]
"New York City within a year will hold a half million Italians. What is
the Church of America to do with them? Will they listen to the gospel?
Who has tried to reach them?
[Sidenote: Tent Work Results in a Church]
"During the past summer a company of earnest workers for God and man
tested the problem of saving men to save New York. They started an
open-air and tent campaign. They proceeded on the simple hypothesis that
'Nothing will elevate the man, no matter how good he is morally, except
the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it alone is the power of God to change
the whole man and save him eternally.' They drove their tent-stakes into
the ground in an Italian quarter and began to preach and to sing the
gospel of grace triumphant into the ears and hearts of Roman Catholic
Italians. Except when the weather was exceptionally bad, from five to
six hundred persons were there nightly. They were met just as the
foreign missionary would meet them. Not one among them, perhaps,
Christian from a purely evangelistic standpoint, and yet, what was the
result? In less than one year they expect to have a permanent church
building to cost $60,000; something like two hundred are ready to enter
and form a Protestant church."
[Sidenote: An Ingenious Italian Expedient]
Is this a hopeful work, this effort to evangelize the foreigners? Let
the following unique instance give its answer, and illustrate also the
intertwinings of the home and foreign work. In a quarry at Monson,
Massachusetts, where over three hundred Italians are employed, there was
among the number a man who had been converted in Italy, through the
faithful efforts of an American missionary. When this convert reached
the Massachusetts quarry, his heart burned within him as he realized the
spiritual condition of his countrymen, who were living without any
religious services. He labored so effectively for their salvation that
in a few months seventeen of the workmen were converted, and they held
regular meetings for prayer and study of the Bible. At length they sent
a message, signed by every convert, to a state missionary society: "In
God's name, send us a missionary." A missionary was sent to organize
them into a church. They had no meeting-place, and in this emergency
one of the converts proposed that a room be built on the roof of his
cottage. This was done by the little band, and there they worshiped
until the place was too small. Then the first story was extended in the
rear, giving space for a comfortable chapel, and the family occupied the
second story or roof-room. This indicates the ingenuity as well as the
generous and self-sacrificing spirit of these Italian Christians, who
maintain a regular pastor and full services. How many of our American
churches, with much larger resources, could show a better record? What
American Christian would have thought of building a meeting-house on his
home roof, or would have been willing to do it if he had thought of it?
In devotion and liberality the converted aliens often set noble examples
for American Christians.[98]
_IV. The Call to Great Things_
[Sidenote: How to Save Our American Churches]
[Sidenote: Missionary Effort the Solution]
Missionaries have been surprised at the eagerness with which they were
received by the Italians, Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians,
and others commonly regarded as most hopeless. The Bohemians have a
large number of freethinkers--over 300 societies of them--who have
sought to draw their people away from Christianity or any form of
religion; but they also have a large number of earnest and devoted
Christian converts, who know the power of the gospel to save, and are
preaching and teaching it. In Pennsylvania, among the Slav peoples,
simple-hearted native workers who have found the way of life are making
that way known to others, and local churches in many places are becoming
revived through their active work for these foreigners. Many churches
now extinct would be alive if they had seen their opportunity. If those
churches that have lost most of their old-time membership could be
filled with missionary zeal, and be sustained as evangelistic centers,
the church life of the mining regions would become a different thing
once more. The only way to save these American churches is for them to
save the immigrants. The same thing is true in all country sections
where the foreigners have become numerous. The need everywhere is for
money to plant and equip thoroughly, and maintain efficiently, these
evangelizing churches in every community. These institutions must be
more than meeting-houses, open a few times a week.
[Sidenote: A Great Mission Enterprise]
The institutional church always open, with something to meet every
legitimate need of old and young, so that the evangelical center shall
be the center of community life, can alone meet the requirement. A great
force of workers must be raised up, and this means training schools. No
more important educational work can be done in our country in the
present emergency. These schools might be interdenominational, with
special classes where required for the specific denominational training,
and thus a united Protestantism could be rallied to their support, and
make them of size sufficient to impress all with the real consequence of
the work.
[Sidenote: Church Federation for Service]
In this work the interdenominational comity and coöperation represented
in the federation of evangelical churches would secure the best covering
of the whole field, in the true fraternal and Christian spirit. What all
desire supremely is the salvation of the immigrants. And only a united
Protestantism can present such a massive front as to impress the world.
This work must be large enough to be self-respecting. At present it is
extremely doubtful if there is enough of it to make individual members
of the churches feel its worth and importance. There should be a mighty
advance movement, calling for millions of money and thousands of
missionaries, and reaching into a multitude of places now destitute of
gospel influences. Then the alien in America would realize the American
spirit and purpose and interest in him, and the birth of a new
citizenship would begin.
[Sidenote: Planning Large Things]
This is the day of large enterprises. The home mission movement for the
evangelization of the foreign peoples in America ought to be in the
forefront of the great enterprises. The real hope of America lies in the
success of this work. The best brain of the Christian laity should be
engaged in this business.
[Sidenote: A Million a Year in New York]
In New York City alone the Christian denominations ought to raise and
expend at least a million dollars a year for the next ten years for city
foreign evangelization, and this would be only a start in a work bound
to extend indefinitely. The demand is imperative. The fields are ripe
for harvest. We have seen that the old religious ties are not only
weakened by the Atlantic voyage, but often broken altogether. In some
nationalities this tie is strong, in most of them not very binding. The
great bulk of the new immigration is Roman or Greek Catholic. Thousands
of these nominal church members drift into open infidelity or schools of
atheism, or else into nothingism. Their former Church does not keep
them, and Protestantism does not get them. It is a question whether
their new condition is better or worse, religiously, than it was in the
old country. We should remove that question by surrounding them with
such Christian influences and institutions as will make it impossible
for them to escape the Americanizing and evangelizing environment. Why
should not Christian philanthropy, for instance, build a block of model
tenement-houses in the Italian district, and give the income from
rentals as a permanent endowment for Italian mission work? This would be
a double blessing.
[Sidenote: How to Use Wealth for Country]
There is a magnificent opportunity, an opportunity to fire the heart of
the men who have means to carry out whatever they devise. The
evangelical denominations should establish in the heart of the East
Side, where are gathered a dozen little nationalities, not simply one
great establishment of distinctively religious and educational
character, but a number of such institutional churches, costing anywhere
from a million to a million and a half each, and sustained in a
thoroughly business-like way. Christianity should permeate the entire
work. We ought to be working for to-day and for the future. The Home
Mission Boards in coöperation should be asked to lead forward in this,
the greatest task of the twentieth century. There is nothing sentimental
or impracticable about these suggestions.
[Sidenote: A Work for United Protestantism]
Here is a work that demands the moral strength of Protestant union. Let
us seek to make the foreigners Christian, give them the Bible, and set
them an example of the brotherhood of believers. Then the immigrants
will become believers and join the brotherhood.
[Sidenote: What the Local Church Can Do]
In addition to this organized work done through the missionary bodies,
there is a large work for local churches to do. In some denominations,
which report little organized effort, there is much mission work done by
local parishes. And in all denominations there are many churches that
study their community and apply themselves to its needs. The Chinese
Sunday-school work has been chiefly done by the local churches, and
therefore it is not easy to learn the extent of the work, since reports
are not made to central boards. This form of service is especially
desirable when it draws the members of the churches to any extent into
personal contact with the foreign element, and it should be fostered.
_V. The Individual Duty_
[Sidenote: What You Can Do]
This brings us to the heart of the whole matter--the personal equation.
The trouble is that the alien and the American do not know each other.
Aversion on the one side is met by suspicion on the other. Shut away
from intercourse, the alien becomes more alienated, and the American
more opinionated, with results that may easily breed trouble. The
antidote for prejudice is knowledge. Immigration has made it
possible--and in this case possibility is duty--for the consecrated
Christian, in this day and land of marvelous opportunity, to be a
missionary--not by proxy but in person.
[Sidenote: Be a Home Missionary]
Here is the foreigner in every community. You meet him in a hundred
places where the personal contact is possible. Did it ever occur to you
that you could do something directly for the evangelization of the Greek
or Italian fruit vender or bootblack or laborer? Have you ever felt any
responsibility for the salvation of these commonly despised foreigners?
Have you laughed at them, or shown your contempt and dislike for them as
they have crowded the public places? The evangelization of the
foreigners in America must be effected by the direct missionary effort
of the masses of American Christians. That is the foundation truth. The
work cannot be delegated to Home Mission Boards or any other agencies,
no matter how good and strong in their place.
[Sidenote: A Personal Service]
Hence, let all emphasis be put here upon personal responsibility and
opportunity. Be a missionary yourself. Reach and teach some one of these
newcomers, and you will do your part. Do not begin with talking about
religion. Make the chance to get acquainted; then after you have shown
genuine human interest, and won confidence, the way will be open for the
gospel that has already been felt in human helpfulness. As a result of
this study, which has taught you to discriminate and to be charitable to
all peoples, the new attitude and sympathy will enable you to approach
those who have been brought within your sphere of influence. There is a
field of magnificent breadth open to our young people. Once engaged in
this personal service, and aware of its blessed effects, there will be
no lack of a missionary zeal that will embrace the world-wide kingdom.
[Sidenote: A Shining Example of Personal Effort]