Winning the War in the Churches

American Unitarian Association.

Winning the War in the Churches.

At the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Association on December 11 the following timely and practical resolution was adopted:—

“Whereas it is desirable that the churches should at this time set an example of economy in the use of men and money,–

“Resolved, That the Directors of the Association recommend that the churches give careful consideration to the possibilities of federation and combination for the winter or for the duration of the war. Experience in the federation of churches of similar or even different traditions has demonstrated that it is possible to reconcile denominational loyalty with local unity, efficiency and economy.”

When good people in a town of five thousand souls show me their twelve churches as the evidence of the town’s respectability and religious vitality, I demur. They seem to me rather to represent the presence and power of Satan. I remember Father Taylor’s prayer:

“O Lord, deliver us from bigotry and bad rum; Thou knowest which is worse, I don’t.”

Let me use some borrowed analogies. If the trade of that town of five thousand souls and twelve churches were conducted in the way its religious interests are administered there would be a dozen grocery stores where three are enough, and every store would have a cheap and adulterated stock and be upon the brink of bankruptcy. If the public education of the town were managed upon that principle there would be twelve schoolhouses where there are now but four, -one where the teachers were all Baptists or Prohibitionists, another where the metric system was taught instead of our system of weights and measures, and another where all the girls wore checked aprons. The result would be “a lot of ill-constructed buildings occupied by ill-instructed teachers, where the children were trained in the eccentricities rather than the essentials of knowledge.”

The waste involved in superfluous churches is obvious. Overlapping churches are inevitably poor, shabby, incompetently manned, socially inefficient, spiritually inert. They cost the people for the maintenance of unnecessary buildings and salaries. They cost the ministers, who, because of the duplication, must serve for starvation wages and preach to a mere handful of people. They waste moral power, for the effort which now goes into supporting a superfluous church is diverted from the work of making a better community. The people need to be brought together, but the competing churches keep them apart. The town drifts steadily toward paganism. The churches have crowded out Christianity.

There are one hundred and forty-five Christian sects in the United States. For a lot of them the devil appears to be chiefly responsible, but there are legitimate reasons for some of the varieties,—differences in race, in language, in interpretations of Scripture, in forms of church organization or of public worship. I do not believe that it is expedient for churches of utterly different traditions and practices to try to worship together except on special occasions. People who are accustomed to free congregational forms of worship and people who prefer liturgical usages are not altogether happy when they try to go to church together. The combinations that the Directors have in mind in their recommendation are, first, temporary mergers of adjacent, non-liturgical churches of similar traditions but of different allegiances; and, second, the union of neighboring Unitarian churches in the employment of one minister where two are now meagrely sustained.

Several illustrations of the first kind of combination may be taken from Massachusetts. At Taunton the Orthodox Congregational church is uniting this winter in worship with the Unitarian church. The services are held in the two churches during alternate months, with the Unitarian minister in charge. At Uxbridge there is a similar combination between the Unitarian Congregational and the Trinitarian Congregational churches. The services are held in the Unitarian church under the charge of the Congregational minister. At Peabody three churches have combined, the Congregational, Universalist, and Unitarian. The services are held successively in the meeting-houses of the three societies, the ministers preaching in turn. A similar federation exists between the three churches of the town of Berlin, and a like arrangement is pending at Pepperell. In Danvers the Unitarian and Universalist churches are holding union services in the Unitarian meeting-house.

Recent illustrations of the second form of combination can be found at the other extremity of the country. In California the minister at San José also happily serves the church at Alameda, and the minister at Long Beach effectively serves the church at Santa Ana. The churches thus combining their resources are obviously able to secure a stronger minister than if each one tried to support a minister of its own.

Is not sectarian exclusiveness peculiarly repulsive in these days? Should we not, while stoutly maintaining our special loyalties, make cordial recognition of the merits of our neighbors and seek to promote a generous interest in each other’s motives and purposes? It is not controversy that is characteristic of the divisions of Protestantism to-day so much as mutual ignorance, inherited prejudices, provincial partisanship, sterile isolation. Most people do not take their religion seriously enough nowadays to be fanatical about it. Our sectarian divisions often survive only because neighboring churches know so little of each other. There are many churches that have no vital issues to debate, and yet they remain as far apart as if they were fighting over grave differences in truth or principle.

Surely we can guard our religious integrity and preserve our loyalty to our own traditions while at the same time promoting fellowship. Bigotry is inexpressibly silly in these days. In many places the old animosities have ceased not only to be vital but even to be remembered.  The differences which separate churches of the Congregational inheritance are now so remote from the thought and interest of the people, or of so obscure a character, that it is safe to affirm that a majority of intelligent churchgoers are unable to give any accurate account of them. Let it be clearly understood that what the Directors of the Association are suggesting is not amalgamation or absorption. We do not commend a combination like that of the lion and the lamb, where the lion swallows the lamb. We do not want a church based on compromises or contradictions, but should we not at this time seek to promote mutual intercourse and common worship? Shall we not emphasize the agreements rather than the disagreements? No wise man condemns real diversities. We are not made alike; we do not look alike; we cannot all think alike. Uniformity is not only utterly stupid, but it is forbidden by the nature of truth and the nature of man. Union by submission to one creed or one form or one ecclesiastical law is morally impossible. The co-operation and federation suggested by the Directors of the Association is not only practical but it is possible to-morrow.

The arguments for federation are at all times cogent, but they are especially emphasized by the exigencies of this war winter. The obligation to save coal ought alone to constrain neighboring churches to seriously consider uniting in the use of one meeting-house. In New England it is the Unitarian church, which is ordinarily the First Parish or the First Congregational Society, which ought to take the initiative and invite the daughter and sister churches to return for a time to the old family hearth. Such co-operation in a season of common solicitude will develop a community spirit which will not only help the people to bear the burden of the foreboding days, but also make their patriotic endeavors more efficient.

And what of economy of man power? In normal times the accessions to the Unitarian ministry just about equal the losses by death and withdrawal. Last year there were twenty-two names added to the List of Ministers in the Year Book and nineteen names were dropped. In the preceding Year Book twenty names were added and twenty-six were dropped. But this year, besides the normal losses by death and withdrawal, a dozen or more ministers have left their parishes to enter some branch of the National Service and several have withdrawn because their pacifist sentiments have put them out of tune with their congregations. On the other hand, the recruiting of the ministry has almost stopped. There is not to-day a single student preparing for the Unitarian ministry at the Harvard Divinity School. That can be said proudly, because every Unitarian who was at the School last year is to-day in the National Service. Never in our history has there been such a shortage of ministers available for parish service.

The chief difficulty in arranging to have one minister serve two neighboring churches is that both congregations not unnaturally desire his presence at the morning service. This obstacle must be recognized, but it is impossible to believe that Christian people are really able to worship God together only at the hour of eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. With modern facilities of transportation a parish covering two neighboring towns is geographically no larger than many a single town parish in olden days, and too often the united numbers of the Unitarian churches of adjoining towns are not numerically in excess of many a single city parish. I can think of a score of places where such a combination as is suggested would free a minister for the service of one of the churches that must otherwise close its doors, give the minister of the combined parishes a more adequate compensation, and illustrate the capacity of Unitarian churches to forego at such a time as this the luxury of having each its own parish minister, and their ability to join with their neighbors in fraternal co-operation. Can we not take this opportunity to get away from the curse of parochial selfishness that too often afflicts us?

Can we not recognize that now is the time to remember and to practise the democratic doctrine of “each for all and all for each”? Let each church be self-reliant and self-sustaining, but let it not therefore be supposed that it is sufficient unto itself or that it can think only of itself. The best way to learn fraternity is to practise it.

SAMUEL A. ELIOT.

Source: The Christian Register found in Google Books December 20, 1917, Volume 97, Page 1204 ()