CONFESSIONS OF A CHURCHGOER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18857, 9 May 1923, Page 5

CONFESSIONS OF A CHURCHGOER.

If cm© were to compile a list of the questions of to-day under the general title of “What’s Wrong?”., selecting. the contents of the list on the basis, of .frequency of utterance, it is probable that “.What’s wrong with the churches?” would head the ticket. I am a regular Protestant church member. Because of habit or of weakness, or perhaps because I have never taken up golf, I attend some service of worship once, and even twice, a Sunday. I am a friend, almost a lover, of the Church. Knowing the state of my feelings towards the institution, my friends have thrown at my head for several years their inquiries as to what is wrong with the Church, half contemptuous'y, half amusedly hearing my defences. As I have defended and apologised,' my eyes have been active and my ears awake as I’ve sat in tha sacred precincts, and my. heart has grown weaker end weaker within me, until I too have become somewhat cynical and sceptical, and have joined my friends inwardly. Looking about on tire conditions in tha Church as they present themselves to tha limited view of one churchgoer who is a highly average layman and inexpert hut sincere, it seems to me that the crucial shortcoming is in the state of the message. When all the clubs are organised, all the “ programmes set up,” and all the other peripheral social activities of the Church scrutinised, it appears to me that it exists not for these things, but as a repository and as a broadcasting station for “ the Word.” I have asked myself again, and again, prodded by the raillery of my sceptical friends, “Why do I belong to the Church?” Is it. that I may attend the dinners? Is it that I may go out and canvass the community for funds-every December? Is it to bo instructed in ■ the Einstein theory ? Is it to hear the soloists who gave a concert every month? Is it for any one, or all, of a dozen other reasons, many of which might ba summed up as “social expression,” or even by the popular shibboleth “service"? : I have had to answer all of these self inquiries negatively. reason for being in a pew each Sunday morning, if X articulate it accurately, is in order that my life may come to grips with a power which it needs in order that it may ba at its finest and best during the ensuing week. That may be a neolithic, indefensible reason, but it seems to bo mine. What ia more to the point, it has grown less and less tenable, because the, message I have listened to Sunday after Sunday and in church after church has not been a transmitter of the power which I have tried ta hook up with. I don’t know any theology, I have pot been in search of any particular brand of religious interpretations. . I ami not really interested in controversial questions as to whether Christ .was 10 per cent. God or 100 per cent.; whether Isaiah was written by one or by three hands; whether the first three Gospels are synoptic or synthetic. I have looked for bread upon which my better nature could feed, and! the pulpit has handed mo the stone of “problems.” I have heard that word used until it gives me acute nausea. I have ‘ listened in vain for affirmations. The everlasting yea seems to have totally disappeared. Most of the sermons I have heard begin with a questionmark and end the same way. I have heard books reviewed, labour conditions discussed, education defined, psychology extolled, and “economic point of view” advocated, and all sorts of similar matters rehashed. I have gone to forums in the church, where halt a dozen cranks arose and aired their formulas for setting all things right by first knocking them into a cocked hat.

The negative tone of the preaching is bad salesmanship. Even the newsboy has dropped the “Which paper, mister?”, in favour of “Buy the Evening News!” Retail clerks are educated never to close their dealings with a customer by saying, “Nothing more, I suppose?” No salesman is worth his salt unless he has confidence and assurance that what he is offering is worth buying, which state of mind may be .imparted to his prospect. Yet the pulpit is in a chronic state of disbelief and passes its state of mind along. To me,-a regular pew-holder, what the preacher believes is 'not as important as -that he does believe something, and hard. If he would keep his doubts to himself and display only hi convictions in my face, I ■ believe I would be inclined to “buy” his message more readily. If my reading of the prophets is correct, they were men who presented solutions, and not problems alone. They seem to have had unlimited capacity for asseveration, without quibbles or reservations. My question, to myself and to the church, resolves itself into an inquiry as to when this prophetic state of mind is going to be regained by those .whom the, church picks as her spokesmen.

Many of us churchgoers—for I know that there are a few others who have my point of view—are craving some evidences of authority from these men of the Protestant clergy. Protestantism was bom out of a new concept of authority. Will not her next rebirth come about from another redefinition? Not merely intellectual authority, but an authority of life, of personality, of conviction, of fire, dr however it may be characterised. People said of Christ that Ho spoke with authority. Of how many of His preachers can you say that to-day ? Certain branches of religion say what’s what and do not make any bones about it. When is Protestantism not only going to-redefine authority, but show us that its message, and its mouthpieces- have some, and that there is not only a question mark in religion, but an answer ?

Take the subject of sin; not theologically, but I have, faults, lots of themCall them sinsp'just' for the sake of argument. I have ’ shopped around in church after church, Sunday after Sunday, without hearing the matter mentioned. Yet it is one of the most important questions in my life—coupled with how to ’get rid of my faults. It would appear as though we in the pews no longer had sins worth talking abmit. Wo have mental complexes, distorted points of view, and all that sort of thing, but as for the Garden of Eden variety of sins, it seems to be as, scarce among us as the dodo. Occasionally an evangelist appears amid clouds of sawdust, trumpeting about the sins of people in yellow journalese. They say some of the so-called Fundamentalists talk about sin, and that among certain other “ schools of .thought ” long since decadent it is an accepted subject. Perhaps it is, but it’s a shame that such an expresivo word should he confined to tha vocabulary of controversy, and not used in the field' of practical living. I, for one, yearn to be “cussed out”; to be drawn over the coals; to hear the sort of direct talk which called forth from one of a Scotch congregation who was listening to his pastor the enthusiastic exclamation, “Hand ’em owe- tlv* pit, Meenister; haud ’em ower thq pit.” They tell us of lots of things wrong with the social order; but who composes the social order if not a lot of us fellows down in the pews? If the ministers convince enough of us of what’s wrong with us, and “ sell ” us thoroughly on the way to put it right, there will be slight need to worry about social order or disorder.

But it would be more than presumption to try and suggest subject material for tho preachers. The important thing is that seme of us in the pews are not gripped, stirred, remotivated, by what they say. Wo go to church to get a certain power, and we coino away empty harried. The rapid life of business rushes us along day after day. We have no time for doctrinal decisions. We cannot stop to work out all the world’s problems. Our lives have , certain definite impacts. The message of the Church can help us make them right by putting power and spirit into us. This is not done by a long string of negatives. I shall continue to feel that tho question “What’s wrong with the churches?” ia justifiable until I begin to hear the voice which comes from lips touched by live coals from oS the altar of affirmation. I think tho preachers have "passed the buck” to me long enough. I’m going to pass it back to them, /and keep praying.—George A. Moore, in New York Outlook.