Part 5

If I had to choose between this bitterness and the blandness of many pulpiteers I would, of course, choose the former. Better a warrior’s grimness than the childish sentimentalities of people who are too ignorant or too selfish to bear the burdens of the world. There are too many men in the pulpit who look and act for all the world like cute little altar boys who have no idea that the mass in which they are participating is a dramatization of tragedy.

Yet there seems to be no reason why a warrior ought not maintain his effectiveness and yet overcome his bitterness, particularly if he is a warrior who is fighting “not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The one certain cure for a bitter spirit seems to me a realization that the critic is himself involved in the sins which he castigates. Man is imperialistic and even parasitic in his nature. He lives his life at the expense of other lives. By both outer compulsion and inner restraint, his expansive desires are brought under sufficient discipline to make social life possible.

But there is no social life, not even in the family, which does not illustrate this native imperialism in life. Look at all these professional people, preachers, professors and doctors! Even in the moment in which they declare their superiority over the commercial world, where life is more frankly selfish and more obviously brutal, they illustrate the common human frailty by some petty jockeying for position, or some jealous depreciation of the success of others, or some childish ego-assertion.

The pessimist might draw the conclusion from this fact that we can make progress only by a reorganization of society and never by a reformation of human nature. But that conclusion does not seem to me to follow from the facts. We do need a constant reorganization of social processes and systems, so that society will not aggravate but mitigate the native imperialistic impulses of man. The greed of modern civilization is partly an expression of a universal human tendency and partly a vice peculiar to a civilization with our kind of productive process.

But meanwhile we can not afford to leave the capacities of man out of the picture. There seems to me no reason why we can not cure people of greed by making them conscious of both the nature and the consequences of their expansive tendencies. Only we ought to realize, while we are doing it, that our own life reveals some refined form of the sin which we abhor. That will make it possible to undertake the task of world regeneration with a spirit of patience and humility.

The modern pulpit does not face this problem because it is not really preaching repentance. Its estimate of human nature is too romantic to give people any appreciation of the brutalities of life which are frequently most real where they are most covert--in the lives of the respectable classes. But whenever a prophet is born, either inside or outside of the church, he does face the problem of preaching repentance without bitterness and of criticising without spiritual pride.

It is a real problem. Mr. ---- is effective, after a fashion, because he is an itinerant. We only have to hear him once in so many years. But think of sitting Sunday after Sunday under some professional holy man who is constantly asserting his egotism by criticising yours. I would rebel if I were a layman. A spiritual leader who has too many illusions is useless. One who has lost his illusions about mankind and retains his illusions about himself is insufferable. Let the process of disillusionment continue until the self is included. At that point, of course, only religion can save from the enervation of despair. But it is at that point that true religion is born.

_1926_

Preachers who are in danger of degenerating into common scolds might learn a great deal from H----’s preaching style. I am not thinking now of the wealth of scholarship which enriches his utterances but of his technique in uniting religious emotion with aspiration rather than with duty. If he wants to convict Detroit of her sins he preaches a sermon on “the City of God,” and lets all the limitations of this get-rich-quick metropolis emerge by implication. If he wants to flay the denominationalism of the churches he speaks on some topic which gives him the chance to delineate the ideal and inclusive church.

On the whole, people do not achieve great moral heights out of a sense of duty. You may be able to compel them to maintain certain minimum standards by stressing duty, but the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push but upon a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness. The language of aspiration rather than that of criticism and command is the proper pulpit language. Of course it has its limitations. In every congregation there are a few perverse sinners who can go into emotional ecstasies about the “City of God” and yet not see how they are helping to make their city a hell-hole.

It is not a good thing to convict sin only by implication. Sometimes the cruel word of censure must be uttered. “Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” was spoken by one who incarnated tenderness. The language of aspiration is always in danger of becoming soft; but it is possible to avoid that pitfall and yet not sink into a habit of cheap scolding. I like the way H---- does it.

_1926_

Cynics sometimes insinuate that you can love people only if you don’t know them too well; that a too intimate contact with the foibles and idiosyncrasies of men will tempt one to be a misanthrope. I have not found it so. I save myself from cynicism by knowing individuals, and knowing them intimately. If I viewed humanity only from some distant and high perspective I could not save myself from misanthropy. I think the reason is simply that people are not as decent in their larger relationship as in their more intimate contacts.

Look at the industrial enterprise anywhere and you find criminal indifference on the part of the strong to the fate of the weak. The lust for power and the greed for gain are the dominant note in business. An industrial overlord will not share his power with his workers until he is forced to do so by tremendous pressure. The middle classes, with the exception of a small minority of intelligentsia, do not aid the worker in exerting this pressure. He must fight alone.

The middle classes are in fact quite incapable of any high degree of social imagination. Their experience is too limited to give them a clear picture of the real issues in modern industrial life. Non-union mines may organize in West Virginia and reduce miners to a starvation wage without challenging the conscience of a great middle class nation. If the children of strikers are starving it is more difficult to find support for them than to win contributors for the missions of the church. America may arouse the resentment of the world by its greed and all the good people of the American prairie will feel nothing but injured innocence from these European and Asiatic reactions to our greed.

Men are clearly not very lovely in the mass. One can maintain confidence in them only by viewing them at close range. Then one may see the moral nobility of unselfish parenthood, the pathetic eagerness of father and mother to give their children more of life than they enjoyed; the faithfulness of wives to their erring husbands; the grateful respect of mature children for their old parents; the effort of this and that courageous soul to maintain personal integrity in a world which continually tempts to dishonesty, and the noble aspirations of hearts that must seem quite unheroic to the unheeding world.

The same middle classes which seem so blind to the larger moral problems of society have, after all, the most wholesome family life of any group in society.

_1926_

Here is a preacher whom I have suspected of cowardice for years because he never deviated by a hair’s breadth from the economic prejudices of his wealthy congregation. I thought he knew better but was simply afraid to speak out and seek to qualify the arch-conservatism of his complacent crowd with a little Christian idealism. But I was mistaken. I have just heard that he recently included in his sermon a tirade against women who smoke cigarettes and lost almost a hundred of his fashionable parishioners. He is evidently not lacking courage in matters upon which he has deep convictions. Nobody, for that matter, lacks courage when convictions are strong. Courage is simply the rigorous devotion to one set of values against other values and interests.

Protestantism’s present impotence in qualifying the economic and social life of the nation is due not so much to the pusillanimity of the clerical leaders as to its individualistic traditions. The church honestly regards it of greater moment to prevent women from smoking cigarettes than to establish more Christian standards in industrial enterprise. A minister who tries to prevent fashionable women from smoking cigarettes is simply trying to enforce a code of personal habit established in the middle classes of the nineteenth century upon the plutocratic classes of the twentieth century. The effort is not only vain but has little to do with essential Christianity.

I would not deny that some real values may be at stake in such questions of personal habits. But they affect the dominant motives which determine the spirituality or sensuality of character but slightly. The church does not seem to realize how unethical a conventionally respectable life may be.

_1926_

Some of these young business men in the congregation would compare favorably with any leaders who grace the pulpits of our churches. Their family relations seem to be almost ideal. They are trying honestly to live a Christian life in their business relations. Lack of power sometimes means that they cannot go as far in experimenting with Christian values as they would like. But they are not complacent. They are eager to learn, and are fair and careful in their judgments. Their virtues are acquired with less self-conscious effort than those of more studious people. They think and plan, but they do not stop the adventure of life to meditate upon its difficulties and inadequacies.

Extravert people are on the whole happier and more wholesome than the introverts. If they do not act too unreflectively, they are able to define their goals fairly accurately and they certainly pursue them with more robust energy than do the moody intellectuals.

It is surprising, too, how considerate and generous they are in their relations with one another and with me. They take my impetuosities for granted and exhibit little pettiness in their dealings with one another. The women do not get along quite so well together. They are too new at playing the game of life with others. But I will not belabor that point. I may be exhibiting bachelor prejudices in making it. At any rate I am willing to compare this group of young men who bear the burdens of our church with any faculty group in the country. They can teach you nothing about philosophy, but they do teach you much about life and they reënforce your confidence in human nature.

_1926_

After Attending a Jewish-Christian Conference

Fellowship with peoples of other religious groups always results in the grateful experience of discovering unsuspected treasuries of common sentiment and conviction. More contact between enlightened Jews and Christians would change the emphasis in many a Christian homily. This conference was rewarding in many ways. But at one point I fail absolutely to understand my Jewish friends. All of them, high and low, intelligent and those who are less so, insist that the story of the crucifixion is the real root of all or of most antisemitism, and they seem to have some vain hope that broadminded Christians will be able and willing to erase the story of the cross from the gospel record. The least they expect is that the odium of the cross be placed upon the Romans rather than the Jews.

I can see that there would be some advantage in ascribing a historic sin to a people who live only in history and who can therefore not be victimized by belated vindictive prejudices. But would that be history? The record is pretty plain and the fact that the Jewish elders rather than Roman soldiers were the real crucifiers is supported not only by evidence but by logic. The prophets of religion are always martyred by the religious rather than by the irreligious. The Romans, being irreligious, were not sufficiently fanatical to initiate the crucifixion.

It must be admitted that the phraseology of the Fourth Gospel may easily incite the prejudices of the ignorant. But the enlightened will find a better method to allay any antisemitic feeling which may result from the record than to ascribe the crucifixion to the Romans. They need only ascribe it to the general limitations of human nature and society. Jews are not the only people who martyr and who have martyred their prophets. The history of every nation and every people makes the crucifixion a perennial and a universal historical fact.

That is the very reason why Christians can no more afford to eliminate the cross than they can ascribe it to the fortunately extinct Romans. Anyone who incarnates the strategy of love as Jesus did meets the resistance and incites the passions of human society. The respectabilities of any human society are based upon moral compromises and every community is as anxious to defend these compromises against the prophet who presents some higher moral logic as against the criminal who imperils the structure from below.

The cross is central in the Christian religion, moreover, because it symbolizes a cosmic as well as an historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one. The price of all creativity and redemption is pain. Most modern religionists who understand the God of creation and not the God of redemption fail in understanding the latter precisely because they do not see how closely related creation and redemption are. Which simply means that they don’t understand that creation is a painful process in which the old does not give way to the new without trying to overcome it.

The cross of Jesus is truly the most adequate symbol of both the strategy and the destiny of love not only in history but in the universe. We may grant our Jewish brethren that it is not the only possible symbol of eternal verities, but it is a true one, and it cannot therefore be sacrificed.

Incidentally, I believe that Jewish people have a tendency to overestimate the religious bases of antisemitism. Racial rather than religious prejudice is the dominant factor in this social disease. All ignorant people hate or fear those who deviate from their type. Religious divergences may be as important as cultural and physical differences, but they are not dominant. The Jews could accept our religion and if they maintained their racial integrity they would still suffer from various types of social ostracism. After all the Negroes are Christian, but that hasn’t helped them much. Some Jews dislike this comparison very much. They do not like to be put upon the same basis with the Negroes. But that reveals unrealistic social analysis. The majority group is intolerant of minorities whether their culture is inferior, superior or equal.

_1926_

One is hardly tempted to lose confidence in the future after listening to a group of young people discussing the important problems of life. Of course the number who approach the future reflectively and with real appreciation for the issues involved in the readjustment of traditions to new situations is not large. There are not many such groups and even in these the number who really take part in the discussion is small.

Nevertheless their wholesomeness is impressive. I can’t always withhold a sense of pity for them. With traditions crumbling and accepted standards inundated by a sea of moral relativity, they have a desperate task on their hands to construct new standards adequate for their happiness. There is always the temptation to be too rebellious or too traditional, to be scornful of the old standard even when it preserves obvious virtues, or to flee to it for fear of being lost in the confusion of new standards. Yet the best way of avoiding these dangers is to subject them to the scrutiny of a thoughtful group which knows how to discern the limitations of any position, old or new.

On the whole the discussions of our young people at the church seem to be more wholesome than those in which I participate in the colleges. Most of these young folks have assumed responsibilities and are therefore not as inclined to be morbidly critical and sceptical as the college group. The cases cited from their own experience help to give vitality to their discussion, and they are not enervated by that extreme sophistication which imperils the college youth and tempts him to end every discussion and discount every discovery with the reflection, “This also is vanity.”

I really wonder how we are going to build a civilization sufficiently intelligent to overcome dangerous prejudices and to emancipate itself from the inadequacies of conventional morality without creating the kind of sophistication which destroys all values by its scepticism and dampens every enthusiasm by its cynicism. In America that possibility is particularly dangerous because our intellectualism is of the sophomoric type. There is no generation, or only one generation, between the pioneers who conquered the prairies and these youngsters who are trying to absorb the whole of modern culture in four years. The traditions against which they react are less adequate, less modified by experience and culture, than those which inform the peoples of Europe.

And the teachers who guide them into the world of new knowledge are frequently themselves so recently emancipated that they try to obscure their cultural, religious and moral heritages by extreme iconoclasm. It is difficult to be patient with one of these smart aleck Ph.D.s on a western campus who imagines that he can impress the world with his learning by being scornful of everything that was thought or done before this century.

_1926_

A letter from Hyde brings the sad news that C---- has lost his pastorate. I am not surprised. He is courageous but tactless. Undoubtedly he will regard himself as one of the Lord’s martyrs. Perhaps he is. Perhaps loyalty to principle will always appear as tactlessness from the perspective of those who don’t agree with you. But I agree with C---- and still think him wanting in common sense. At least he is pedagogically very awkward.

You can’t rush into a congregation which has been fed from its very infancy on the individualistic ethic of Protestantism and which is immersed in a civilization where ethical individualism runs riot, and expect to develop a social conscience among the people in two weeks. Nor have you a right to insinuate that they are all hypocrites just because they don’t see what you see.

Of course it is not easy to speak the truth in love without losing a part of the truth, and therefore one ought not be too critical of those who put their emphasis on the truth rather than on love. But if a man is not willing to try, at least, to be pedagogical, and if in addition he suffers from a martyr complex, he has no place in the ministry. Undoubtedly there are more ministers who violate their conscience than such as suffer for conscience sake. But that is no reason why those who have a robust conscience should not try to master the pedagogical art. Perhaps if they would learn nothing else but to be less emotional and challenging in the pulpit and more informative and educational not only in the pulpit but in their work with smaller groups, they could really begin to change the viewpoints and perspectives of their people.

_1926_

Spoke tonight to the Churchmen’s Club of ----. The good Bishop who introduced me was careful to disavow all my opinions before I uttered them. He assured the brethren, however, that I would make them think. I am getting tired of these introductions which are intended to impress the speaker with the Christian virtue of the audience and its willingness to listen to other then conventional opinions. The chairman declares in effect, “Here is a hairbrained fellow who talks nonsense. But we are Christian gentlemen who can listen with patience and sympathy to even the most impossible opinions.” It is just a device to destroy the force of a message and to protect the sensitive souls who might be rudely shocked by a religious message which came in conflict with their interests and prejudices.

There is something pathetic about the timidity of the religious leader who is always afraid of what an honest message on controversial issues might do to his organization. I often wonder when I read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews in which faith and courage are practically identified whether it is psychologically correct to assume that the one flows from the other. Courage is a rare human achievement. If it seems to me that preachers are more cowardly than other groups; that may be because I know myself. But I must confess that I haven’t discovered much courage in the ministry. The average parson is characterized by suavity and circumspection rather than by any robust fortitude. I do not intend to be mean in my criticism because I am a coward myself and find it tremendously difficult to run counter to general opinion. Yet religion has always produced some martyrs and heroes.

I suppose religion in its most vital form does make men indifferent to popular approval. The apostle Paul averred that it was a small thing to be judged of men because he was seeking the approval of God. In a genuinely religious soul faith does seem to operate in that way. Issues are regarded _sub specie aeternitatis_ and the judgment of contemporaries becomes insignificant. But the average man fashions his standards in the light of prevailing customs and opinions. It could hardly be expected that every religious leader would be filled with prophetic ardor and heedless courage. Many good men are naturally cautious. But it does seem that the unique resource of religion ought to give at least a touch of daring to the religious community and the religious leader.

_1926_

The excitement about the Federation of Labor convention in Detroit has subsided, but there are echoes of the event in various magazines. Several ministers have been commended for “courage” because they permitted labor leaders to speak in their churches who represented pretty much their own convictions and said pretty much what they had been saying for years.

It does seem pretty bad to have the churches lined up so solidly against labor and for the open shop policy of the town. The ministers are hardly to blame, except if they are to be condemned for not bringing out the meaning of Christianity for industrial relations more clearly in their ministry previous to the moment of crisis. As it was, few of the churches were sufficiently liberal to be able to risk an heretical voice in their pulpits. The idea that these A. F. of L. leaders are dangerous heretics is itself a rather illuminating clue to the mind of Detroit. I attended several sessions of the convention and the men impressed me as having about the same amount of daring and imagination as a group of village bankers.