ALONE WITH GOD     

Do We Need Christian Unity?

    Unfortunately we often want a good many things that we do not need; and doubtless it would not be too difficult to prove that we need, at times, things which we do not want. I have tried to show that Christian unity is a desirable thing, or at the least that it is not an undesirable thing; let us now attempt to determine if it is merely that alone, or something more. Is it a spiritual luxury about which we may day-dream and indulge wish fancies, or is it one of the imperative necessities of the times?

And let us not forget that there are some necessities which we can possibly get along without. To be free of slavery would be counted a necessity of the utmost importance by the most materialistic intellectual in America today—that is, if it referred to himself personally; otherwise it might be a mere academic question; although freedom is not a material thing which can be weighed and measured—it is a thing of the spirit. But the Negro race got along in America without freedom for over two hundred years. However, just because they managed to exist without freedom is no reason why we should deny that freedom is a real necessity.

Just so, Christians have got along in a divided Christendom for a long time—so long that many regard the idea of unity as a mere chimera of the imagination. But the fact that they have sustained existence without unity is no argument to prove that unity is not a real necessity of the Christian church, and never more so than now. May we now examine some of the reasons why unity is a necessity.

For convenience in looking over our subject let us take the least important one first—although doubtless many persons would count it the most important. I refer to the economic argument against denominational division.

And just at this point let me say that it is in no spirit of niggardly haggling over pennies that I would study the question of waste in the Lord's vineyard. The writer of this is one who gives regularly a tithe of his income to the Lord; and he constantly urges upon all Christians to do the same. I do not deplore the waste in Christian resources either to save one penny more for myself or for others. If I had my way we would save millions more by rigid economy of operation and give millions more by the practice of giving the tenth to God. This is our bounder duty as persons charged by our Lord with the tremendous responsibilities of going into all the world with his gospel.

Let us not then as grasping misers, but as Christian statesmen, survey the field of Christian activities and regard every cent squandered therein or uselessly spent as a form of treason against the great Head of the church.

During the World War many of us remember reading of how the Russian army of the old regime was honeycombed with graft and hobbled with inefficiency. I remember one story of how crates of soldiers' uniforms were shipped to the front; when the crates were opened the uniforms were found to have sleeves not over four inches long. This was an indication that cloth had been spared in order to save money for the contractors, who had doubtless given part of their cruel gains as graft to higher officers to insure the placing of the proper inspection stamp.

The loss to the nation which one or two such frauds involved was doubtless adjudged a trivial thing by the higher ups benefiting by the transaction; but how they suffered for such wastefulness—both they and the whole nation that winked at it—is now a matter of history.

I do not accuse the denominational officials of graft or dishonest administration of funds entrusted to their care. I believe that so far as common honesty is concerned church business is the most honestly and efficiently managed business in America to day, bar none. The church is getting finer talent for less money than any other business. And the loss of a church dollar through dishonesty is a thing that almost never happens.

I am not thinking for one moment about money lost through dishonest or inefficient administration; but I am thinking of the money lost through senseless duplication of effort. I am thinking of a host of little denominational colleges where there ought to be one large one with the strength and prestige to challenge the materialism of the State university. I am thinking of the four or five churches in the little crossroads town, fighting each other and disgusting the public, when there ought to be only one commanding the respect of the countryside for miles around. I am thinking—but one's head grows dizzy thinking such thoughts, especially if he has not the mathematician's or the statistician's head for figures. But while I am no statistician I cannot help but wonder what is the amount of the loss involved to the cause of Christ by the duplication of church houses, parsonages, automobiles, connectional officers, and all the necessary equipment for the maintenance of religious ministry in America today.

Whatever it is I feel sure that it would be enough to go a long way—if not all the way—toward discharging America's duty in the fulfillment of Christ's command to go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature.

If this be true—if our failure to reach the heathen world with the gospel is due to the duplication and waste of our factionalism and our denominationalism—then is this waste seen to be a very serious thing in the eyes of the head of the church.

Doubtless someone will say that if the church were in unity there would be no place for all the preachers in America today. It is quite possible that there are some preachers who are following the ministry merely as a profession, as a career. Now, of all the pitiable persons in the world it is the minister who is not in the ministry because God has called him but because he had supposed that was a good way to make a living. I used to condemn such persons very severely: now I merely pity them. For I feel that there are probably a number of good men who are following the ministry without a divine calling because they have not known or felt that such a calling is necessary. They are doing the best they can—and probably often doing good as sincere Christian men. But they are in the hardest business in the world for an insufficient reason. Whenever by some accident such a man gets free of the ministry he experiences such a relief that he generally has no more desire to return.

If the church were able to release all such persons from the pulpit to other forms of Christian service, such as Sunday school and other church work, instead of having a grievance these men would be glad to get free; and the pastor who was left would have sufficient support to maintain his family in decent comfort, so that his children would not grow up hating the church for robbing their innocent childhood by ecclesiastical serfdom and poverty.

Some who really had a divine call would find sufficient funds released to support them as missionaries on the foreign field. This is a career which, in spite of its hardships, seems more desirable to the average minister than any other—a career from which the most of them are kept through sheer inability to go, for, make no mistake about it, the average minister loves the cause of Christ with a true devotion.

We need Christian unity in order to exert the proper Christian influence upon the social order of our time. In saying this I am perfectly well aware that the question of the "social gospel" is still a subject of the keenest controversy between devout and earnest Christians. Therefore I have used the expression—" to exert the proper Christian influence upon the social order"—instead of saying "to Christianize the social order," as the zealous advocate of the "social gospel" would say; for I desire to avoid all controversy upon this point.

Conservatives have often been repulsed from the "social gospel" because it seemed to be another gospel; and to stress political means and ends more than the salvation of the soul through the blood of Christ. Again, there is a difference of opinion among Christians as to what degree it is possible to influence the social order. Many Christians, nowadays, believe it is possible and feasible to Christianize the social order quite completely; others regard that as impossible and nothing less than a denial of God's plan of dealing with the human race.

My contention is that it is not necessary to resolve this conflict in order to maintain our thesis; for even if it be impossible to Christianize the social order completely, surely it is not wrong for us as citizens to make as powerful an impact as possible upon the society of our time—to do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, to as many people as we can. Indeed I think it is possible to prove this assertion to conservative, orthodox Christians by direct appeal to the authority of Holy Scripture; for the Word of God says, "He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence" (Rom. 12: 8). In this country every citizen is legally empowered with the responsibility of rule through the ballot box. To the extent of his opportunity, therefore, it is his Christian duty diligently to rule the government so as to benefit society as much as possible. This he is obligated to do whatever may be his doctrine as to the limit of possible extension of the principles of Christ in modern society.

Probably a majority of all Christians can agree with me that it is our duty as citizens, if possible, to remove the temptations and dangers of alcoholic liquor—and especially the commercial trade therein— from their fellow citizens.

Intelligent and thoughtful Christians everywhere are distressed at the spectacle of millions of prospective American citizens growing up in educational institutions from which all references to Christianity or even to any religion are carefully excluded. From the kindergarten to the university some of our Christian teachers are as straitly forbidden to name Christ's name to their charges or to enforce his precepts as if they were in a Hindu or Mohammedan land. In fact it is said that Gandhi—who is not a Christian, but a Hindu—gave a course in New Testament history to one of his classes in India. But many a Christian teacher could not do that in a public school in America. He would be liable to prosecution for doing so. It would be against the law—at least in very very many places.

Be sure this barring God and the Bible from our schools is having its effect. It is not without cause that our country has the highest homicide rate in the world, with the fewest convictions. Mechanistic philosophy runs rampant, honeycombing all society and eating into the vitals of the church itself. It is not wild sensationalism to assert calmly and soberly that the root and spring of all this trouble is the fact that children in America are brought up under a form of secularistic teaching that leads many of them to believe that religion is an unimportant, if not a fraudulent thing. As the child sees it, it is clearly not a plain, matter of fact truth such as arithmetic or geography. Subconsciously he reasons that it is left out of the school curricula because it is not a certain truth but merely a form of ancient folklore, such as fairy tales and other fanciful legends.

In reality, however, religion is not left out of our schools because the best minds of the world regard it as of doubtful truth. Plainly, it must be said that the division among Christian people is the reason why religious training is denied to the vast majority of future American citizens in the public schools of the land. In fear lest they might get the teaching of some sect other than our own, we deny them the privilege of having any religious teaching at all.

And dearly are we paying for our mutual intolerance in this regard. Already the Protestant churches have come to the most discouraging epoch, possibly, in their whole history. Secularism and indifference are eating the heart out of thousands of congregations everywhere today. Some blame the automobile,others the radio; but back of it all is the mutual jealousy and distrust of the sects which dooms millions of helpless little ones to grow up under secularistic teaching which sometimes ranges openly into atheism.

If the Christian church were in unity in our land we could put Christian education into our public schools and within a generation we would produce such a change as should stem the fierce, dark tide of crime and atheism and improve the moral complexion of society in America. But this unity might involve our eating the Lord's Supper with Christians who doubt or ignore some ancient creed written before any of us were born.

Let us suppose that the door bell rings and we go to the door. Perhaps it is a bitter cold day; and there stands a man before us with all the tragedy of the ages, its shame and its pain, graven on his face. Haltingly he tells us that he has a wife and four children at home who are starving. He has been out of work for months, meanwhile haunting the employment offices with that pathetically troubled face. What are we going to do?

It avails nothing to say the man may be a faker. Maybe he is, but millions of them are real—their stories are true. I am not a Socialist; but while I was in England a few years ago I saw good Christian brethren who were out of work and were being supported by the government. That struck me as the Christian thing to do under the circumstances; for here is not a theory but a condition. Millions of these people are driven out of work through what is euphemistically called technological employment, which means that machines have displaced them. Here is a condition which grips millions of men, like the iron hand of Fate. Even if all the factories ran full blast there would not be work for all workers, owing to the advance of invention in producing machines which displace men.

What are we as Christians to do about it? Shall we idly wash our hands of the matter because it is not the work of preaching the gospel? Jesus Christ fed the hungry multitudes; and every Christian as a director in the great corporation of America is duty bound to bestir himself to see that while science and industry are making the necessary adjustments —which may take many long years—these people do not starve in the meantime.

Likewise, it is our duty to make provision for the care of the sick and the aged. It is not right to leave this merely to charity, for two reasons: First, an old person who has worked all his life deserves something better than mere charity. Second, in charity only those give who feel generous, and it is rarely sufficient, and often accompanied by humiliating restrictions. It is our duty as directors of the national corporation to levy on the national wealth which these have helped create to care for them in sickness and old age.

A church in unity is needed to make such a system effective in our land. Split into hundreds of sects and at cross purposes with each other, our hope of accomplishing this needed reform is at least not as promising as it ought to be.

Foreign missions is not a mere whim born of some idle brain. The many millions poured out by the Christians of America to this work are not given merely because America is so rich she has to have some outlet for her money, even if she has to give it away. As a matter of fact perhaps the greater part of the money given for foreign missions among us is given by poor people to whom the gift represents a real sacrifice. Foreign missions is the answer of redeemed humanity to a Redeemer who has commanded us to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

It is only recently that the average Christian of the homeland has become dimly aware that there is something like a crisis developing in the work of foreign missions. The work seems to falter at home and abroad. If the facts were only understood it would be realized that the division among Christians is at the root of the troubles of the missionary work.

When the old time missionaries went out in most cases they found a people so ignorant and childlike in their lack of knowledge of the world that the state of Christendom at home did not appear upon the horizon of their thought. If the missionary was the representative of a given denomination these people were unaware that there was any different denomination in the world. They looked up to the missionary like children to their father and took what he said with the utmost naivete.

But that day has passed in nearly every mission station of the world. And to check the sneer of the cynic let me say that it was the work of the missionary himself that caused it to pass. Working in the spirit of John the Baptist, who said, "He must increase, but I must decrease, " they educated their charges until they developed into persons of culture with a wide knowledge of the world. In this way it has come to pass that some of the most cultured people and keenest thinkers in the world today are on the mission fields.

In addition, spurred by the example of the missionaries, the governments of the mission lands have themselves instituted schools; and in these schools they have given an education sometimes hostile to Christianity.

The net result has been that Christianity never has been anywhere nor at any time so keenly analyzed and dissected as in those very mission fields where the Protestant churches are trying to win converts from the ancient ethnic faiths.

It would do any self-satisfied and egotistic American Christian good to know how these non-Christian peoples search out our weakness with unerring precision. They have censured the unemployment brutally ignored by us. Our bootlegging and crime are noted by them, as well as our prostitution and graft. The grave eyes of Oriental philosophers gaze critically into inhuman prison conditions about which we never take the trouble to inquire at all. They wonder why people who profess to love and serve a Lord who taught that visiting those sick and in prison was a part of his service—they wonder why such people can be so oblivious of the fate of the prisoner. In short, Oriental critics of Christianity know our social and religious shortcomings much better than we do ourselves.

They might forgive us some things, however, but they cannot overlook the fact that we are split into hundreds of divisions which used to be called "warring sects," but which have lately come upon a more or less well-observed truce.

And thus it is that while the old time missionary taught a people who were unaware of our divisions, the modern missionary attempts to teach a people who understand the matter too well by far for the prestige and influence of his message.

We have not let the matter stay at home where only the upper classes could come and find out about it. We have exported our sectarianism so that the peasant in the rice fields of China and the savage in the wilds of Africa is called upon to decide between the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, and hundreds of others; and sometimes he must also decide whether he wants his religion marked North or South, which of course means north or south of the Ohio River in America sixty five years ago.

The politicians have cured the breach between North and South in the nation long ago, and now have no North nor South, but one united nation; but the ecclesiastics cannot forgive so easily, but ask heathen and savages to decide anew the old questions which were decided for us as a nation at the time of the Civil War. When I was a boy a familiar gibe among the rustic wits was to say that a person did not know that the War was over yet—meaning the Civil War of 1861-65. Some of our ecclesiastics seem also not to have learned that historic fact.

It has now come to the pass where denominational divisions are a stumblingblock to the efficacy of the gospel among the heathen. There are three hundred and eighty different missionary societies in the world, operating on the mission fields. In some cases one denomination may have and does have more than one society, and they all work in harmony; but in a very real sense this large array represents very graphically the sad division of the forces of Protestant Christianity. Take China, for instance: there are one hundred and thirty-eight different missionary societies in China alone. Even little Japan has fifty-three separate missionary societies.

And then think of the little country of Palestine— the cradle of ancient Christianity. This is a district about ninety-five miles long and the same in width. In this little district about the size of two average counties in America there are seventeen separate and distinct Protestant missionary societies, besides the missions of the Greek Catholic and the Roman Catholic Churches. In addition to these there are also several Oriental churches. Does it take much imagination to wonder if the eyes of the Son of Man grow clouded with sorrow at this exhibition of disunity among his followers in the very land where he prayed that "they all may be one. "

Protestantism does not have to go beyond the seas to meet its critics. It can find them right here at home—and within its own fold. For it the time has come when a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Much of this criticism is unreasoning and unreasonable. It springs from depraved hearts who do not wish to subject themselves to the moral discipline which Protestantism imposes. Others have a financial interest in the perpetuation of evils and abuses which Protestantism opposes. Thus for one reason or another much of this criticism may be discounted entirely.

But Protestantism cannot discount the fact that some of its best friends, and some of the soberest and sincerest thinkers of the time, are saying that its divisions are a grievous hindrance to the spread of the gospel in our home land.

These thinkers say—and rightly I think—that a divided church is at a decided disadvantage in meeting the present widespread unbelief and the appalling lowering of morals that has resulted therefrom. Not bootlegging alone, but all forms of criminal activity abound as never before. Our cities are honey combed with graft and the foulest corruption. It no longer occasions surprise to hear that even a judge on the bench is leagued with gangs of murderers and criminals of the vilest type.

Lying, dishonesty, and sexual immorality abound widely. Many people hoot at such statements and point out the complaints of contemporaries to the morals of every age in turn, averring that all have been about alike. However a retrospective view of history shows that this is not the case. Clearly some ages have been much worse than others; and the verdict of history will undoubtedly be that this is one of the most corrupt and godless of all time.

Even Mr. H. G. Wells is a witness. Referring to the rise of the doctrine of evolution and the consequent strife, he says: "The immediate effect of this great dispute upon the ideas and methods of people in the prosperous and influential classes throughout the Westernized world was very detrimental indeed" (the Outline of History, vol. II, p. 422). He then goes on to argue that what he calls a misunderstanding of Darwinism created a state of mind which lowered the moral tone of modern society. He is convinced that the spread of these ideas has engendered a general state of doubt concerning the fundamentals of religion to the extent that there was a much higher percentage of people among the well to do in the seventeenth century who tried to do the right thing than there was at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. This is a reasonable conclusion. And one might add that the progress of the present century has only served to scatter these godless ideas and doctrines and their consequent moral behavior among the whole mass of the common people more widely than ever before.