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Ali rights reserved, including that of translation inte foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States of America First Edition Printed February, 1926 Reprinted March, 1926 CONTENTS PAGE PIWERODUCTION! foo iiatvadetinsdescmiesuwesSmeugue ° OUR UNITY OF PURPOSE IN THE CHURCH....... 13 TUESDAY EVENING SESSION Speakers: Miss Dorothy Gray John H. Elliott Dr. Halford E. Luccock A LOOK AT THE CHURCH—AN APPRECIATION.. 38 WEDNESDAY MORNING SESSION Speakers: Georgianna Mackay John Knox E. BE. Witcraft Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr A LOOK AT THE CHURCH: A STUDY OF THE OPPORTUNITY AND THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE CHURCH ..... mais Aik wie/piee bias cceccccesccccee OG WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION Speakers: Stanley Dowley Miss Mattie Julian Dr. Hubert Herring WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSION Speakers: Howard Becker Dr. R. E. Diffendorfer CHRISTIANIZING OUR CIVILIZATION ..0+sse0002+ 87 THURSDAY MORNING SESSION Speakers: Harold Ehrensperger Roy Burt Marian Warner Robert Weston 4. | CONTENTS THE FOREIGN MISSION PROGRAM OF THE CHURCH adil a ite etal Ele is aYal Wlelei eve wiefa acetic wie(h sip 6 oretae sana THURSDAY AFTERNOON SESSION Speakers: R. A. Doan J. Levering Evans Y. T. Wu Rachel Childrey THURSDAY EVENING SESSION Speakers: Thomas Que Harrison Howard McCluskey Dr. Ashby Jones THE COOPERATIVE WORK OF THE CHURCHES. .138 Fripay MORNING SESSION Mr. J. C. Torrance—Greetings from the United Church of Canada REPORT OF STUDENT COMMISSION ON THE COOPERATIVE WORK. OF THE CHURCHES |... 0.00 seo ceswecee cuwleueee Speakers: George EH. McCracken W. D. Matthias James Woodruff Gordon EH. Bigelow Sessions: on Findings |i) Vises sine ae siecle unas os eel ashen Report of the Student Commission on the Foreign Mis- sion Program of the Church ......cccccccncecve 19S Findings on Foreign Missions and the Church.......202 Report of the Committee on Friendly Considerations. .209 Report of the Committee on a Continuation Committee. .210 Appendix ..... Sela ake’ E sla d'e to nteeye Sawant aietats o di a's pink a INTRODUCTION THE growing concern among college students during the last few years for the application of Christianity to social and international problems had led to a rather widespread renewal of interest in the church as the agency through which the Christian solution of those problems might be found. Since the In- dianapolis Student Volunteer Convention at the end of 1923, this interest has been focused through several significant State and national denomina- tional conferences. The National Interdenomina- tional Student Conference which met in the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Evanston, Illinois, from December 29, 1925, through January 1, 1926, marks the natural development of this student in- terest in the program of the church. The Evanston Conference was first proposed by two groups of students and denominational repre- sentatives which met early in 1925 in New York and Chicago. Inquiries sent to a much larger group of students in various sections of the United States indicated a very definite desire for such a confer- ence. Accordingly, in the spring of 1925, the two informal groups which had been considering the matter met in New York and organized an Execu- tive Committee to formulate definite plans. 5 6 INTRODUCTION This Committee was greatly handicapped by lack of the funds and the promotional machinery which facilitate the organization of ordinary student con- ferences. -Furthermore, there remained but nine months in which to prepare for the meeting. Some conference technicians declared that the task was hopeless. It is indicative, however, of the wide- spread demand for such a conference that, imme- diately plans were announced, denominational lead- ers and, even more important, a great many students throughout the country volunteered to give of their time and resources to promote the undertaking. ' From the time the conference was first proposed through its concluding session the students, them- selves, carried through the major responsibility for its development. All of the conference committees were composed of students and the students repre- sented a considerable majority of the Executive Com- mittee. In the actual procedure at Evanston, more- over, final indorsement or rejection of any proposal was left to the action of the conference itself. Every item of major importance, including the details of the program itself, was decided by the vote of the conference. It is doubtful if any student conference of such size has been subject to such complete demo- cratic control. The “iron hand” so apparent at some student conferences was noticeably lacking at Evanston. The nine hundred students who gathered at — Evanston came from nearly two hundred colleges — and universities of the United States and represented INTRODUCTION i twenty Protestant denominations. They repre- sented, perhaps not a cross-section of campus life but, rather, a cross-section of campus leadership. The delegations from schools with which I am familiar contained a remarkably large number of those students who are most prominent in college activities. For the vast majority of the delegates attendance at Evanston involved a considerable personal sacrifice. Indeed, for a rather large number —including the Antioch student who walked and the South Dakota delegates who came via stock train —the sacrifice was much more than considerable. It was a distinctly church conference which finally convened. Plans for the meeting could not have progressed a single day had it not been for the active cooperation of denominational leaders in many de- nominations. The funds contributed, officially, by denominational boards constituted the major source of income. The support of denominational secre- taries and student pastors of various denominations provided the only promotional machinery available. When the conference assembled, the attendance as nonparticipating observers of some three hundred and fifty representatives of Christian—and particu- larly church—organizations revealed further that this was a church gathering. During the entire session, on the floor, the discussions were church- centered, and since the conclusion of the meeting the widespread attention which it has received in denominational periodicals indicates that Evans- ton was, in every sense, a church conference. 8 | INTRODUCTION The fact that no previous conference of this sort had been held placed it under an initial handicap and brought about a rather striking revelation. One observer declares that “Evanston was a gathering of unchurched churchmen.” The first few sessions were characterized by a good deal of floundering. Christian students—convened to discuss the chureh —revealed an unfamiliarity with the subject of their discussion. There was a vast amount of familiarity with the problems with which the church may be expected to deal, such as race and war and industrial relations. But there was very little fa- miliarity with the way in which the church actually is meeting those problems and how its machinery may more effectively be used. It appeared that the students were much more conversant with criticisms of the church than with its constructive achieve- ments. As students, apparently, they had been given considerable opportunity to discuss these problems, in the abstract, and very little opportunity to discuss the most likely organization through which they could work for their solution. The program, however, took this factor into ac- count. Prior to the conference various student com- missions made intensive studies of various aspects of the work of the church. There was a commission on foreign missions; another commission on the cooperative activities of the church; a third com- mission brought in case reports indicating what the church is actually doing in the industrial and racial fields. The reports of these commissions and the INTRODUCTION 9 discussions which brought to light a vast amount of additional evidence altered the whole tenor of the conference. Abstract criticisms gave way to a spirit of genuine inquiry. At the conclusion I think it is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority —even of the most critical—went away convinced that the church, despite its readily recognized short- comings, is actually being used in terms of to-day’s practical problems of social and international rela- tionships and that students have a major obliga- tion to see that its effectiveness is increased. Evanston demonstrated another fact which has sorely needed demonstration on the college campuses of the land, namely, that it is possible to discuss the church without being narrowly denominational. There has been a widespread feeling that to talk in terms of the Christian Church was to narrow one’s horizon. This contention was significantly re- - futed at Evanston. The discussion, from first to last, centered around the church. Not once, how- ever, did denominationalism enter into it. Neither did theological controversy flame out, despite the fact that fundamentalists and modernists had worthy representation on the floor. And throughout the sessions the problems considered were the same problems that other student conferences have consid- ered, with the significant difference that at Evans- ton this consideration got down to cases and en- deavored to relate to practical, working machinery capable of helping toward a solution. The most striking conviction that dominated the 10 INTRODUCTION conference was the determination for the organic unity of Protestantism. On the first day it was — emphasized that the person and program of Jesus provided common ground on which every delegate could stand. A realization of the fundamental na- ture of the leadership of Jesus practically obliter- ated denominational and theological differences. In that realization it was not difficult to see how the disunity of Protestantism stood as an obstacle to the efforts of organized Christianity to establish the kingdom of God on earth. And the students—non- chalantly, after the fashion of youth, but none the less earnestly—declared their willingness to assume the task of bringing Christian unity. It was apparent, in these sessions, that there is developing a new terminology and method for the religious approach to college students. The new student religious appeal, it seems to me, is no longer that of the rostrum but of the laboratory. There is less and less confidence in the validity of mass, emo- tional appeals and more and more concern for sim- ple statements and demonstrations of significant facts. Students, I believe, are little interested in life service orators, but they will go a long distance to hear a man who “knows his oil”—who can set forth evidence and state, in terms of projects, the signifi- cance for Christians of the present world situation. There is a general determination to allow the facts to constitute their own challenge. | This tendency, I believe, is altogether hopeful. But whether hopeful or not, the fact of its develop- INTRODUCTION 11 ment remains and an appreciation of the Christian loyalty of present-day college students must take cognizance of it. This laboratory outlook was very apparent at Evanston. From the outset it was demanded that whatever action came from the conference should be stated in terms of definite projects. The Con- tinuation Committee, therefore, has on its hands not a series of resolutions but a list of definite under- takings; of jobs to be done in relation to the prob- lems discussed. Future student gatherings will, I believe, place even greater emphasis upon case studies and give less consideration to the mere ex- change of opinions. The Conference appointed a Continuation Com- mittee to carry forward some of the projects pro- posed. This Committee has already undertaken its work. It is too soon to say what developments will come from this “follow up,” but it can be said that the Continuation Committee is charged with the task of maintaining, if possible, the interdenomi- national loyalties which Evanston created; and of conserving the conviction, which developed there, that students may work through the church for the solution of those problems in which, as Chris- tians, they are most interested. In conclusion, the conference and those connected with it are deeply indebted to the board of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Evanston, Illinois, to Dr. Ernest F. Tittle, the pastor, and to the local arrangements committee for their cordial 12 | INTRODUCTION hospitality in entertaining the conference, and to the citizens of Evanston for inviting the delegates into their homes. An apology needs also to be made to the speakers at the conference for the way in which their addresses have necessarily been cut down for the purposes of this book. It is felt, however, that the substance of the addresses and discussion is preserved intact. Strantpy HicuH. Our Unity of Purpose in the Church TUESDAY EVENING SESSION OPENING prayer by Marvin Harper, Yale University Divinity School: Our holy heavenly Father, we come to thee to- night in a spirit of humility; we come praying that no one of us will think more highly of himself than he ought to think. Father, we come praying that we may know thy will, that we may seek to listen to the small voice that may speak to us during these days. We pray, O Father, that we shall come to a common understanding, that no matter how many different views may be held and expressed, a spirit of love, a spirit of understanding shall reign here. Father, we pray that we may have the desire to seek the truth, that we may desire to give proper evaluation to all the matters that shall come before us, that we shall try to weigh in the balance all of the subjects that we study, that we shall not let our emotions overpower us, that we shall not be too coldly critical, but that with thy guidance and leadership we may come out into a world of light. Father, we pray that we may be willing to follow the truth wherever we may go. We pray that we may have lives of consecration to the high ideals of youth. We thank thee that we are young people 13 14 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH here together, that youth can have its dreams and see its visions. We would pray, O Father, that we would not be disobedient to any heavenly visions that may come to us. We pray for strength to fol- low where thou wouldst lead us. We pray for strength to take any steps that require the deepest of consecration. We pray that we may not be afraid to face criticism of friend or foe, but that we may be willing to go forth carrying the banner of Jesus Christ, seeking to save the world or to find a means of bringing salvation to our friends and to our col- lege students. ; Father, we pray for guidance. As we start this great convention we pray that the spirit of the lowly Man of Nazareth may be among us. We pray to seek to know the way and the truth and the life, and that where it leads us we shall follow, for in his spirit we have come together and in his spirit we will go through these days together. Amen. SPEAKERS: Dorothy Gray, student, Phillips University, Enid, Okla. John H. Elliott, student, University of Michigan. Dr. Halford E. Luccock, New York City. ADDRESS Miss Dorothy Gray : The need of achieving Christian unity is by no means a newly discovered thing. As far back as New Testament days we find the apostle Paul plead- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 15 ing with the people of the church at Corinth that there be no divisions among them. Many others before us have worked hard to bring about unity, and they have done much to lighten our task, but through all these nineteen hundred years we have not had that unity which Christ prayed for; there have been and still are divisions among his followers. I think we-go a long way toward solving the problem of a particular institution or enterprise by discovering or redefining the purpose to which such institution or enterprise is dedicated. What is the church here for? What was in the mind of its Divine Founder when he gave it its mission. in the world? I think I start on common ground when I say that with Jesus the kingdom of God meant everything. Take away the expressions “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” from his teach- ings and what were to his hearing disciples spirit and light become a senseless jumble of words. Many times in the New Testament the word “church” is made comprehensive enough to mean the Kingdom. Christ said, “I will build my church for kingdom] and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Paul satd that Jesus loved the church, or king- dom, and gave himself up for it. Hence, in view of the fact that the heart of Jesus’ message was the Kingdom, in view of the fact that he made pretentious preparations for it, taught his disciples to pray for it, and then expressly said that he came to establish the Kingdom, I think it would not be possible to make a clearer statement of the 16 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH purpose of the church than to say it is the purpose of the church to establish the kingdom of God in the world. If it is a business of the church to establish the Kingdom in the world, what do we mean by “the Kingdom”? What did Jesus mean by it? Well, take his Golden Rule and brotherly love from his teachings and you leave them barren and cold. Paul interpreted the Kingdom in terms of peace and righteousness. Hence, if it is the business of the church to bring in the Kingdom, the church will establish the kingdom of brotherhood and righteousness. If it is the business of the church to establish the kingdom of righteousness, what a Herculean task confronts her! Righteousness of individuals, right- eousness of relationships, social righteousness—ours is the most difficult task of the ages. But a divided church can never win the world to righteousness. Disunity of moral forces can never compete with the unity of immoral forces. The forces of unright- eousness will never be torn asunder until the church learns to pull together. One of the essentials to the success of any enter- prise in the world to-day is efficiency. It is no more possible for the Church of Christ to carry on its work successfully in an inefficient way than it is for any other organization to do so. The slipshod, inefficient methods we are now using are a danger to the very existence of the church. We have to-day literally hundreds of denominations of the Protes- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 17 tant faith. Each of these attempts to cover the same field, each keeps up missionary boards, publishing houses, denominational institutions, organized ma- chinery parallel to the others. This unnecessary, needless waste is responsible for inestimable loss to our church. Where there is one fine church build- ing many others are built close to it. In rural communities the same thing is true. Two or three churches in one community are unable to exist for our divisions, while in other communities there are no churches at all. In our local churches there is also much duplication and waste by such organizations as our missionary societies, ladies’ aid societies, and Christian Endeavor, each trying to cover the same field. With our wastefulness, our needless duplications and our rank inefficiency, is it any wonder that things are in the state that they are? No wonder the religious leaders of the day are working and promoting unity! No wonder students meet in con- vention to discuss unity! Efficiency in church busi- ness demands unity. The existence of the church depends on unity. At the very mention of unity some folks shake their heads and say it can’t be done. Yet much has been done along the lines of unity for many years. True, we are not one in our creeds and ordinances. We refuse to cooperate in many instances because of our different beliefs. We differ widely in our theology. Yet in a few great crises we have been known to work together in the same harness witb 18 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Christians of other religious sects. During the World War we worked hand in hand to relieve suf- fering. At the time of the Japanese earthquake we did the same. We cooperated in the efforts which | resulted in the Eighteenth Amendment. The Inter- | church World Movement is another example of united effort. The eight-hour day in the steel mills is a direct testimony as to what can be done through united effort under the banner of Christ. In the foreign field to-day there are some actual unions in educational enterprises. Christian En- deavor has also been a means of bringing a greater spirit of unity. Christian unity is not an impossibility. I think I truly represent the views of many when I say that unity must be first of all unity of spirit, churches working in harmony, publishing houses spreading the Word of God, missionary boards that can spend their money entirely for education and evangeliza- tion without waste, both at home and abroad. There is no limit to the power for good that a united Christianity could exert. Unity of spirit comes first. There can be no real unity, no actual cooperation, without it, and when we have taken this one step, the next obvious step for us to take will present itself; we have the assur- ance that the Master will show us the next step and give us the strength to take it. Tradition has it concerning the site for Jerusalem that two brothers lived side by side, one married and with a family, the other single and living alone. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 19 At harvest time each of the two brothers sat in his home thinking of the other. The married _ brother, thinking of his unmarried brother, sym- | pathizing with him because of his loneliness, de- cided that next morning he would take some sheaves from his wheat field to his brother. The unmarried | brother, sympathizing with his brother because of _ his burden in supporting a family on a small income, decided that next day he would take some of the _ sheaves from his wheat field over to his brother. Next morning each brother, as he had planned, started across the line fence and met the other. At the place where two brothers met, each with his sheaves to help the other, Jerusalem was built. When we as brothers in Christ are willing to - make manifest our love for each other-in the sacri- - fice of our divisive opinions and all those things which at present divide us, then the new Jerusalem of peace, righteousness and brotherhood will be built. | ADDRESS Mr. John Elliott The purpose of the conference this evening and the next three days, I take it, is to find out in what way the youth of America can fit into the religious program of Christ, fit into the program of religion as we want that religion to be made known, trying as best we can during these four days to fit our high ideals, our youthful inexperience, into the grooves that are already worn, already made. 20 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH To-night we are’ met as an interdenominational student gathering to delve into that religion; but before we are fairly under the surface we come across that strange phenomenon in our religion of to-day called denominationalism, and most of us, I suspect, are here to-night as representatives of our own particular denominations. I beg of you, how- ever, in the meeting of to-night and that are in those meetings that are to come to think of yourselves as the youth of the present and not tagged with the denominational emblem that signifies the system out in the world to-day. May we first glance a minute at the present sys- tem of church unity or disunity, or, at any rate, the denominational system in the United States. In the first place, we have some two hundred separate de- nominations, each one of them having its own min- isters to train, its own missionary bodies and mis- Sionaries to support, its own congregations to edu- cate along the particular orthodox line of its par- ticular faith. We have a competition in our cities and in our towns between the various denominations that is every kind of competition but the proper kind. If there were rivalry, for instance, for a depth of spiritual insight, or if the churches were com- peting for the sacrifice and the religious experience of their members, perhaps that competition would be fine, but we don’t have that kind of competition ; we find the kind of competition that surrounds the building of a new church, a material kind of com- petition that emphasizes things that certainly Christ YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 21 never emphasized, and that are hindering our prog- ress because they detract from the main purpose | of the church. We find this Methodist church installing a larger organ because the Presbyterian church across the way has just built a new manse. When we hear that the Baptist church around the corner has taken in one hundred and one and one-half new members, we discover that we have got to have more pep and zest to make ourselves the biggest men’s Bible class in town. Competition among the churches has resulted in strife and bitterness, and yet through our freedom, as we love to call it, our freedom of belief which has resulted in the organization of some two hun- dred denominations, there has failed to come any unified single religious program that affects and in- fiuences every class in the community. Let us look briefly at the organizations and agen- cies that are to-day trying to cooperate and unite the various denominations into one central religious purpose, the agencies that are trying to gather into one basket, so to speak, the scattered efforts of the denominational groups. First of all, we have the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, an organization that represents the thirteen largest denominations of the country and which, on occasion, speaks for the United Christian Church of America on problems of social and political importance. A similar group that is trying to cooperate in denominational efforts, 22 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH similar to the Federal Council of Churches, is the City Council of Churches, organized in most of the large cities of our country. Then, too, in some States—though in very few—and some counties we have groups similar to the City Councils or the Federal Council of Churches, which try especially to watch the planting of new churches and the weeding out of others in communities where it is economically inadvisable to conduct services. The function of the church and the purpose of the church have been suggested in the preceding speech. I have been brought up in a denomination. Most of us have been brought up in a particular denom- ination and have learned its history, have known of the various boards, and probably every year have had placed before us for our youthful inspection the activities of the various boards. However, I have come to the conclusion that for some reason or other denominationalism is not necessary and that it is not the God-given way of carrying on Christ’s will on earth; and if it is not necessary and if it is hindering the progress of religion in America, what is the solution for the denomina- tional strife? The purpose of the church, as I see it, in the new day is not that of the hospital. We used to think that the church was a sort of hospital where the spiritually sick or the morally lame or the reli- giously rundown could come and get a cure. I think we have about passed that into the archives of church history. The church should have as its 4 a YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 23 function, I believe, the socializing of the community or the group, the socializing in a finer and a better way, and should point out to that group with which it comes into contact the Christian message for a Christlike living in society. In other words, my ideal of the church and the church’s purpose is the working out as best it can of a plan by which human beings can better live together. Humanity’s better- ment should be the prime ideal and purpose of the churches in America. Human beings, social forces, should have their residing and abiding stimulus in the church. Let us investigate and see just how that purpose, that mission, of the churches and of the denominations has been fulfilled up to the pres- ent time. I believe that the church, first of all and primarily, should be the community center or the great com- munity concentrated effort for the creation of the standards or the formation of the patterns, the group morals. Those patterns of conduct and of morality should issue from that simple unified reli- gious body of the church. Yet I claim that the de- nominational church has failed to be effective in the social life of the communities in America. I think the denominational churches—religion as organized at present—have failed to prove themselves the united, concentrated force in the community; they have failed to show through group action, group knowledge, how best to carry on social existence. Up to the present time I think the church has been ineffective as a leader in the establishment of new 24 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH patterns in the group. I think it also has been inef- fective in establishing itself in the community as the prime and the greatest incentive for religious or spiritual life. In other words, I think the church has been ineffective in establishing itself as the great one body, the one-purposed organization to which all can look for guidance in their moral prob- lems and their religious living, and which should concentrate especially on the group idea of existence. What has been the policy of the church or of denominationalism as at present organized in its dealings with the other questions of the present day? J maintain that the church has been ineffective and has lacked courage in dealing with the industrial welfare and the industrial problems of our land. I think the church has been too content to preach its gospel of goodwill, to throw out in very cold and dignified manner the moral laws of the Bible, and for some reason has been afraid to be soiled by a somewhat sordid world in applying those laws that it has dared to preach. Industrial commissions are fine, and yet we all know that many think of the church as a capitalis- tie organization, and I suppose because many of its members are of that capitalistic group we hesitate to delve into the industrial problems; friction would be sure to follow if we did. The church has not gone into the settlement, nor has it attempted to evolve any method of industrial betterment, because the members have thought that the church’s business was to throw out the general YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 25 law and leave it to the individual for personal ap- plication. Yet I am wondering when there is a weak brother to be helped, when there is a great wrong to be remedied, and the church does not act, if it can really call itself Christian. I maintain, further, that the church as at pres- ent organized has sidestepped or has whitewashed the issue of race. I believe that the race issue, the race question in America, is something that the Church of Christ should grasp and deal with in a very forward manner. The church has organized interracial commissions; we have had exchange of pulpits between white and black, and yet at the present time the church has failed to maintain itself as an organized force for the creating of a public opinion that has had behind it Christ’s ideal of brotherliness, of brotherly kindness, of tolerance to our neighbors. Furthermore, I charge that the church has been un-Christlike in its attitude on war and interna- tional relations. I believe that the church has time after time been hypocritical in its attitude on war and militarism. I believe that the Church of Christ has been unwilling to carry through the fine ideals on which it was organized. Time after time have we heard preachments about peace and brotherly love, and yet under our denominational system at the present time we have failed to put forward a def- inite, concrete program of the united church for peace education in our country; but, on the other hand, time after time have we been organized dur- 26 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ing the wars to carry on the education for war, for murder, for hatred, because the government has maintained that such a war was a righteous one. I maintain that the church in the past, through its denominational system, has been used as a tool of the government for the creating of a warlike spirit, for the creating of an attitude toward our fellow men that is directly opposite to the teachings of Jesus. Yet how can we expect the church to be unwarlike or to have any other attiude toward inter- national relations than that it now has? If we are divided and fighting against each other in two hundred denominations, how could it be otherwise? How can we expect the church to have any other than a nationalistic ideal, a nationalistic atmos- phere, when through our denominational groupings we are cultivating in our church the same sort of a selfish, independent existence that we condemn in our government? I have been pretty free in my criti- cisms of the church. I admit that the solution of the problem is not very apparent. Yet I think that the youth of to-day have something very definite to contribute toward the Church of Christ. We have that which youth always has; that is, a great, sincere, burning passion to right a wrong, to see that justice is done, to see that our ideals are made effective; and because we have that desire and that enthusiasm and that ability, although with- out experience, to carry on that program of ideals, I think we should seriously consider a solution to- our denominational problems. | YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 27 I think that denominational lines, denominations themselves, once were created because freedom was burning in the hearts of their creators. Yet I think denominational lines do not draw distinction enough or are not on a firm enough foundation for a really effective church to exist. I think a new alignment is necessary, and an alignment founded on purpose and belief rather than on the somewhat petty and immaterial questions that most of our denomina- tions set up as their requisites to-day. I have no idea in which form this organization shall take place, but I do have a conviction that the denominational lines, because of their false basis, should be torn down to the extent that this new grouping should come along the alignment of pur- pose for the social betterment, for the carrying out of a social good, so that all classes of humanity in the community shall be touched and all processes of life shall come within the range of Christian influ- ence. ? ADDRESS Dr, Halford E, Luccock In that profound volume of theology, Alice in Wonderland, there is one place where the dormouse and Alice are sitting together listening to the in- quest that is being held over who took the cele- brated tarts that were made by the Queen of Hearts. Alice has just taken one of those little biscuits which make her grow larger or smaller alternately. This time it made her grow larger, and soon the dor- 28 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH mouse felt that he was being pushed over to the end of the bench. So he snarled out to Alice, “Quit shoving me!” “l’m not shoving you,” Alice said, “I’m growing.” “Well,” said the dormouse, “you can’t grow in here.” ; Unfortunately, that has very often been the atti- tude of the church to the expanding minds within it, and, to the infinite loss of the kingdom of God, they have had to do their growing outside. I really belong to this glorious crowd of witnesses assembled in the gallery, so that perhaps I have some right to speak for them, and on their behalf I would say that their message to this gathering is that you can grow in here, or, perhaps, to put it a little more grammatically, you may grow in here if you can grow anywhere. I think it is a profoundly significant gathering for the college, for one thing because it is a sign of ferment amid the very large expanse of complacent indifference that sets on great sections of the Ameri- can college campus like the pall of a quiet Sun- day afternoon. Before we get through this meeting we should hear, doubtless, a great deal about the conservatism and conventionality of age. I think that all of us do recognize that there is a consider- able bit of hard-shelled conservatism and conven- tionality on the American college campus, and indif- ference to the great problems of human relation- ships. It is my deepest hope and my greatest faith in this conference that here will be found some of YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 29 that intelligent conscious and intense rebellion against ways which have led the world to its present state, and a real passion, and that the real passion to discover a better way for mankind will here find free and lasting expression. One of the feelings that is very widespread among undergraduates about the church is that it is con- cerned too much with the issues of a bygone age. You meet the feeling that its messages and its con- troversies too much suggest old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago. Some might be dis- posed to admit that the church is the house by the side of the road, but the road is the road to yester- day, that too often it has been occupied with the prejudices and the passions of a bygone day. It is not the things that look backward that most con- vincingly get the fervid and eager interest of youth. The second feeling (and here again I am merely trying to interpret things which have come to my ears as they have come to the ears of anyone who has them) is the feeling that about many of the great things which elicit the deepest interest of our hearts and the hearts of the world, the church has not had very much to say. Some one has put it rather graphically that it has so manipulated, per- haps unconsciously, but so used the words of Jesus that the Jesus who came to upset the world has become one sweetly solemn thought which is up- setting to nobody. _ The danger has been that instead of doing what _it might have done, the church, moving like a column 30) YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH of flame, of fire and of smoke before the moving column of humanity, guiding it into some promised land, has seemed to stop and spin around like a little merry-go-round on a highly organized round of activity. The danger of substituting that round of activity for a prophetic adventure into a new land is increased the farther on we go in a great pro- gram of church building. I don’t believe we ever faced any greater responsibilities in that direction than we face just now when the program for church building in the United States of America this year that is just closing amounts to something like $500,- 000,000. Of. course, that $500,000,000 represents in a very large way additions to the spiritual assets of the country. I would not have you forget that for a moment. We ought not to forget for a mo- ment, either, that it represents very truly and defi- nitely spiritual liabilities of a large size, for when there is that much of an investment in so many mil- lions of mortgages, the danger will be that the chief concern of the church will be to preserve the placid calm, that nothing will interfere with the orderly run of the business of the country, no matter how many injustices may be buried under that placid calm. The danger is that perfect peace will be the only anthem we will sing in regard to the industrial situation. Many of us have seen both the church and the college standing in the face of industrial situations that literally shrieked to the skies, stand- ing there as dumb as a bronze Buddha because they had too much interest in the situation. } YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ol What shall it profit a church if it gain the whole world of Gothic arches and stained-glass windows and lose its own force? The result will be the ironi- cal one that in gaining a perfectly magnificent place in which to say something we will have very little to say. One other thing that I would like to drop into your minds in view of some of these feelings that perhaps some numbers share is the responsibility that youth has for bringing to the church gifts which youth alone can give to the church. It is not merely the privilege of youth to speak, but it is the responsibility of youth to give the things that can never be given unless youth does give them, The one gift that I would mention, a gift that is desperately needed both by the world and by the church, is the gift of a fearless, honest criticism. I do not mean an irreverent criticism nor a flippant tirade against things as they are, but the gift of a perfectly open-minded and honest criticism, for youth can bring the priceless gifts to the church of a pair of fresh eyes which are not yet affected by astigmatism, and an open mind; and an open mind is a great thing to let loose in the world. It is because youth is able to bring a fair look _ at the world, an open mind that is unshackled by _ the hesitations and the fears of tradition, that it can bring these gifts of honest criticism. Without _ that redeeming criticism of fresh minds the world is hopeless. Yet do not be under any pleasant _ illusion that the world is feverishly waiting for your 32 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH criticism, because the attitude both of the world and of the church very often has been the historic attitude of the church which said to young William Carey when he offered to go to India as a mission- ary, “Young man, sit down!” Yet young men have had an irritating way of standing up. Of course the church has not got any use for a blind Samson that wants to topple over a whole structure. It is not a task for the dynamiter. It is rather a task like the remodeling of an ancient building which must be approached with reverence, with courage, with a new plan. Very often the col- lege of elder statesmen is very much afraid of courage plus a new plan. Just for one illustration, take the greatest ques- tion that is before the world to-day, the question of war. The attitude taken, sometimes very uncon- sciously, sometimes rather consciously, sometimes only implicitly, is something like this: “Of course, war is a terrible thing, it is a perfectly awful thing, but don’t do anything about it.” You may grandly begin and say, “Whereas, war is the greatest social sin of our times, Whereas, war is the negation of the spirit of Jesus,’ but you stop there, you don’t go on until you get to the “There- fore, be it resolved.” I think that the greatest social fact of our time is that an increasing company of youth are going on to the “therefore, be it resolved.” There is an old adage to the effect that he who pays the piper calls the tune. In the 10,000,000. lives laid down in the war, youth has paid a price YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 33 that is staggering and outrunning the power of the imagination of man to conceive. Youth has paid the piper and youth will call the tune. It will not be any screeching hymn of hate, but a blended chorus of voices in all languages Sinegae “Blest be the tie that binds.” Finally, there are some things that I would very swiftly mention that must be taken into account in any honest and open examination of the church. Some capacities and aptitudes and abilities of the church do seem to me, for I am frank to confess it, permanent credentials for the chureh to take leader- ship in the redemption of society. The first is that the church has always maintained a _ persistent capacity for self-criticism, and that capacity for self-criticism has been the seed of new life, it has made possible a recurring springtime within the church, so that from within, all down the years through history, there have come to the church the most penetrating and keen criticisms from the inside, and that is the sort of power which enables the chureh to right itself and find its right direc- tion in an open sea. It was one of the legacies that the church got from Jesus, for Jesus made his touch- stone the service of the church to humanity, its min- istry to the abundant life of man, and that was the touchstone of the perfectly devastating criticism of Jesus of the church of his own time. The keenest critic that the Christian Church had in the first century was not some Roman scoffer ; it was Saint Paul. And if you will turn to the ot YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH pages of the New Testament to the Epistles of Paul, you will be amazed to find out how much of it is given to criticism of tendencies in the church that came from a rich mind that went all the way from the most tender pleas to the most blistering scorn. It has been the glory of the church that all down through its history, from the time of Francis of Assisi to our own time, down to the days of Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Ward, that it has launched within it the most redeeming and uplift- ing criticism. The second is like unto it, that is the fact that the church has always been through all its history the prolific mother of ugly ducklings. Again and again in Christian history it has given birth to the most atrociously ungainly and scandalous creatures who defied its every convention and tradition and yet were undeniably its own children. And yet that has been the most glorious page in the history of the church. It simply means that in the brood o€ priests there has come again and again the prophet whose advent has been breaking up that pious calm, like the advent of Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, who comes in his time and says, “For three transgressions of Israel, yea and for four, I will not remit the pnnishment thereof, for they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes.” Ugly ducklings have blossomed into swans and after two or three centuries of wondering what to do with them the church has canonized them, recog: nizing them as prophets and saints. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 35 The other fact which must be kept in mind is the fact that in its high hours the Church of Christ has always been a youth movement. That was true in the very beginning when a company of young men under thirty stood in those Galilean hillsides and listened to another young Man under thirty, and as they came under his spell they went out to do nothing less than to turn the world upside down. That was not the only youth movement in his- tory. There has always been one. We talk about the Pilgrim Fathers. We also think of the Pilgrim Fathers as needing to open an old folks’ home the moment they got to Plymouth, but there was only one man on the Mayflower over forty-five years of age, and that was Miles Standish. William Brad- ford, so long the governor of the colony, was thirty- one years old, and Edward Winslow, foreign min- ister of the colony, was twenty-seven. | Fifty years later you can find another youth movement, the beginning of the Methodist Church in America in 1784. At that Christmas Conference at Baltimore when it was organized, there were two bishops present, one of them thirty-seven years old and the other thirty-six, and the average age of the one hundred or so members of the Conference was thirty-five. The fathers! God bless them! If there is any place under the blue dome of heaven where by every honored tradition youth has aright to speak up and be a part, it is in the Church of Jesus Christ. The last is the greatest of all. That is the per- 36 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH sistent and the perennial capacity of the church for the rediscovery of Jesus, for the rediscovery of Jesus. Perhaps you may say it is a tragedy that Jesus needs to be rediscovered. Yet that is an in- evitable process of growth. You couldn’t have growth or progress without it. I don’t have any knowledge of any surer indication of the measure- less greatness of Jesus than that he could be redis- covered in nineteen different centuries and each time loom larger before the mind and the imagina- tion of the world. Again and again the church has lifted away the debris of Western civilization which has accumu- lated and smothered the figure of Jesus, and lift- ing it away has revealed to its generation the figure of its living Master. Christ is the great credential of the church, and it is the capacity of the church to rediscover Christ and to re-present him in living terms to the age in which it exists that forms the church’s greatest credential for leadership. So it seems to me that this question that we are going to discuss, and discuss in the most open and free way that we can, “Can we use the church?” is something very like the question, “Can we use Niagara Falls?” Niagara Falls was a great spec- tacle through the years until men began to dream that it might not only be a wonderful spectacle but it might be a wonderful power, and so they har- nessed it to use it. The question of whether we can use the church is just this question to find out defi- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 37 nitely enough what it is we want to do and then run our connecting belts to this great, everpouring source of power that it may carry light, heat and power out into all the world. A Look at the Church 48 Appreciation WrpNespAy Mornine Session, Decempnr 30, 1925 SPEAKERS: Georgianna MacKay, student, Colorado Teachers College. John Know, student, Emory University, Georgia. E, EH. Witcraft, student, University of Chicago. Dr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Detroit. ADDRESS “WORSHIP—A NEED MET BY THE CHURCH” Miss MacKay Man has always been and is a worshiper. Man always needs to reach out beyond himself to some finer perfection, to something beyond which he him- self can attain, and this is in his search for God. There are three phases of worship, I think. The first one is that worship is a life, not a ceremony, it is a permanent state of consciousness where we see beauty in all things, where love casts out fear and beholds God in the face of Christ, Christ glorify- | ing and beautifying all life. Here in this phase of worship prayer verges toward companionship and 38 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 39 worship becomes a permanent state of consciousness. The second phase of worship is this: while we have this permanent state of consciousness in life then there are times when the individual conscious- ness is moved to seek formal and concrete expres- sion in its emotions toward God. Then in that time when we are alone with God, we come to realize what God is and that God is a rewarder of them that diligently search for him. The third phase of religion is the one probably in which we are most interested. It is that phase of worship concerned with the church. One of the main functions of Christian society is grouping to- gether to worship. You remember Paul told us we must not neglect the assembling of ourselves to- gether. It isn’t enough that man shall worship and that all men shall pray and that all life shall be beautiful; it isn’t enough that we must enter into a closet or into a lonely place and commune with him. We must have more than a devout conscious- ness, we must have more than these wonderful indi- vidualistic outpourings; we must be a worshiping assembly, the coming together of believers for the solemn transactions with God which shall be for memorial before the Most High, for testimony be- fore the world and for the nourishment of our bodies in Christ. Worship in the churches is not perfect, and we young people to-day are demanding something of the church which many times we do not get. Sin- clair Lewis says that most of our Protestant 40 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH churches to-day are simply mass meetings in big barns, and the only place where one can worship truly is in the Roman Catholic churches. Have the Catholics something that the Protestant churches do not have? If so, what is it? Why can they give us this atmosphere of worship which our souls crave and which we need while other churches do not do this thing? Sometimes I think it is because our churches, or many of the Prot- estant churches, are indifferent to it. They have become careless. It has become a form and they have not prepared the different elements which come into church life; they have not prepared to give us the atmosphere and the feeling which we crave and which our hearts so desire. | Another thing that is left out so much is the beau- tiful mystery of worship. We have tried to make it a science when it is truly an art. Jesus had that wonderful art of understanding, of cooperation, of harmony, of love, of brotherhood which we do not find to-day. We know it is the thing that we erave, our whole being cries out for it. What is it that Jesus had that we do not? We know Jesus went to church. It was his custom every day to go to the synagogue. I some- times think maybe the preachers weren’t so good, there were things he didn’t like, I am sure, while he was in the synagogue, the meetinghouse of God, but he found the thing which he wanted. He loved beauty, he loved the quietness in which he could find God and in which God could speak to him, and YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 41 through that speaking we know the great power that he received to do things that have never been done before. It is within our grasp, it is within our reach if we will lay hold of it, I am sure. In closing, let’s think about it this way, that the church is trying to meet this need of worship, is trying to fill this longing in our hearts, and let us go to the trysting place of God, the church, as a vessel cleansed, so that when his great love is poured out upon us, we will know; we will know what he has for us to do, we will know his will in our lives, and then when we know we will receive the power to do as he wishes. QuESTIONS FoR Miss MacKay Is not the kingdom of God something that is primarily within you, and don’t you lose a good deal of the value of the kingdom of God by trying too much to make it objective? Answer: The kingdom of God is within, but you can’t keep it within. When you have that power, it is bound to radiate out to do things. Question: Do you think that the churches wherein worship has been considered of prime importance have developed the subjective aspect of religion and forgotten the objective aspect of it? Answer: No; if it is worship in the true sense, it always pushes you out into action. In some churches where worship has become just a form they have probably made it subjective instead of objec- tive, but this is not true worship. 42 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ADDRESS “THE INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH” Mr. John Knox Let me try to suggest in just a few words what the intellectual task of the church is, and then to indicate in a few minutes some of the things the church is doing in order to meet the need, to assume the responsibility. The first task and the most obvious task of the church in an intellectual way is to interpret Christianity, of course, in intellec- tual terms that will make it possible of acceptance; more than that, effectual in the life of any particu- lar age. I think the church’s intellectual responsibility does not end with this obvious need of adjusting Christianity to the intellectual forms of the day. The church’s obligation is to recognize the rights and privileges of the intellectual life, to recognize that the laws of man’s rational experience cannot be violated. Though the process may be long and gradual, and in some cases even dangerous, surely it is true that the strivings of an emancipated intelligence will eventually bring us to the truth as surely as will the aspirations of free spirit bring us at last to God, and in no way whatever otherwise can either God or truth be realized. All right, what then is the church doing to meet this need ? In the first place, the church is maintaining YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 43 schools and colleges, universities, and so on, throughout our land where intelligent persons may feel quite at home. That hasn’t always been true, you know. Most of us, I suppose, are from denomi- national colleges and universities. I am sure you will bear out that testimony. It is maintained by scientific experts that there is a little dogmatism in our church schools. In other words, church colleges and universities have established themselves in the educational life of our land as thoroughly reliable and _ scientific. To-day the religious education policy of the church is becoming more and more intelligent. Sunday-school literature is taking into account as never before all modern information, points of view and attitudes that are being presented to our youth, and becoming more and more intellectually pos- sible. Training schools for teachers are sharing the same intellectual methods as do our other edu- cational institutions. Everywhere over our land in all denominations the tendency is very apparent to make intellectually effective Christianity. Leadership of our church is coming largely out of our schools and is more and more intelligent. Preachers are coming more and more thoroughly to recognize their intellectual responsibility and to present the gospel of Jesus in such a way as to make it effectual in the life of intelligent, well-in- formed people in our modern age. In other words, weaknesses in the church rest not in the church as such, but inhere in our humanity 44 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH as such, as was brought out last night. In fact, the most colossal and obvious example of dogma- tism that our century has seen was not an act of the church at all and a church body; it was the act of a State Legislature. There isn’t a city in our great land in which I do not hear the voice of more than one great prophet, and their number is rapidly increasing. I bring you an encouraging message. I do so not because I am assigned this subject; I do so be- cause I feel it. I do so because I feel that it is our task not to scrap the church. What are we going to put in place of it? Where are we going to find elsewhere the moral idealism that will be neces- sary to making any great step toward the kingdom of God? Where are you going to find it except in the church? They say the church is not socially minded, the church is not aware of the great in- tellectual, industrial, and social and international problems; surely, not fully. Go outside of the church and see if you can find any more awareness of those things than inside. You don’t. Any other organization that undertook the same purpose would have the same people in it, would be char- acterized by the same deficiencies and failures. [I am not here to insist the church is perfect; I am here to insist it is our task to enter into the life of the church, try to make it over, try to bring back to it the spirit and mind of Jesus and make it really effective in serving this modern age in every respect. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 45 QumsTIONS ASKED Mr. Knox Question: What right has a preacher to preach from a pulpit given him by a congregation views that are contrary to the views of the congregation? Answer: I feel that the preacher has no busi- ness to state in the pulpit any abstract truth, no matter how true it may be, unless it is going to have vital connection with the lives of those to whom he is speaking, unless it is going to mean something in their lives. Question: When is the Sunday school to be lifted intellectually out of the high-school period? . Answer: I think signs of progress are obvious in the Sunday-school literature policy of nearly all of the great denominations of our country. Question: How do you account for the fact that so many students after they have studied science and sociology find it necessary to maintain their intellectual self-respect that they must break with the church? How are we going to meet that prob- lem? Answer: I feel that nothing has been exaggerated. I feel in nearly every community there is at least one brotherhood of Christians with whom an indi- vidual of that kind would feel at home. That has been true in the cities where I have lived, at least in one or two communions such a person who is scientifically well informed might feel quite at home. Question: Would the intellectual life of the min- istry and the sermons that it produces be raised 46 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH if the sermons themselves were subject to questions from the floor of the congregation, and would that also be a means by which not only the preacher but also the congregation could take a more active part in this thing called worship? Answer: I think there is certainly ates in the church program for such an idea. Mr. WITcRAFT Mr. Witcraft continued the same theme presented by Mr. Knox. At the conclusion of, his address he was asked the following question: Do you think the laboratory method can be sub- stituted for faith in religion? | Answer: I wouldn’t say that. I would say this, however: God can just as truly be found in the test tube as he can be found in the Bible. Is that say- ing too much? If there is truth in science at all, it is Just as true as any truth you can find any- where. ADDRESS Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr It is the sorry fate of every human institution to be finally corrupted by a curious conspiracy between its critics and its friends. Its critics have the inclination usually to dissociate themselves from the community because they are overcome by the consciousness of its weaknesses, and thus they leave the institution, the fellowship in the community to its uncritical devotees who immediately corrupt, YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 4? exaggerate all of its weaknesses and multiply all of its sins. The church is in that position. That is why I would like to plead with you this morning not for loyalty nor for criticism, but for a critical loyalty to the institution of the church. Of course, if there are those who are so obsessed with the weaknesses of the church that they believe the kingdom of God can be built only by junking the church, I would like to plead with them for loyalty as well as criticism as I would like to plead with the complacent people for criticism as well as loyalty. I believe that there is something in the church that has no substitute in any other so- ciety or institution. I believe in the church because I don’t think that the gospel that we have, which is a gospel of love, can ever be adequately incar- nated in individuals, it must be incarnated in a community. I believe in this community of the church ideal. I believe in the church because I know that the greatest problem of modern man is the problem of his group life. As I see it, every group is either very much worse or very much better than the individuals who compose it. When- ever you form a group upon the basis of the com- mon hatred, the group is collectively worse than the men in it individually. Whenever you form a group on the basis of the highest aspirations, ideals, and hopes of any number of people, that is the Church of God. It is in that group that you culti- vate the antidote of the poison of group hatreds; it is in that group that you produce that quality 48 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH of self-transcendence that there must be in society. The church, judged in the light of the ideal, is a poor thing indeed. And I would like to consider with you this morning, because I believe it belongs to a critical appreciation of the church, the secret of this strange apostasy of the church from the ideal of Jesus. Here is religion, essentially simple, a religion of love which tells that. the universe is ultimately good, that above and within, beyond the chaos of its life, there is meaning and there is mean- ing essentially benevolent, that it comes from the heart of a father, that this appreciation of the uni- verse finally gives meaning to every human life, a transcended appreciation of all human beings. The gospel is as simple as all that. Out of that simple gospel we have made the sort of thing we call Protestantism. What is the secret of this strange apostasy? In the first place, the church suffered from an ill from which all institutions suffer. It was organized around an ideal, the ideal was the end of its exist- ence, but as soon as it was organized, it made its existence an end in itself. All institutions do that. The church was tempted as all communities are tempted. It should have overcome the temptation perhaps to a greater degree than other institutions, because its ideal was higher, but that is how it was tempted naturally. It is impossible to main- tain a gospel without a church. It is impossible to have any vitality in an ideal without a community to support it. Ideals are never powerful until they YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 49 are incarnate. There is the possibility of corrup- tion in every incarnation, either corruption or cruci- fixion. We generally choose corruption in prefer- ence to crucifixion. There is a natural limitation in the church as an organization in that it makes its life an end in itself. There is an absolute limitation in the very fact that religion has at its best an ambition to transform life. Religion has also at its best the instinct to transcend life, for be you well assured that happiness and peace and salvation to a cer- tain extent must finally depend not upon the trans- formation of life, but upon the transcendence of life. You cannot be altogether happy until you can say with the apostle, “I know how to be abased and I know how to abound.” You cannot have final peace if you cannot somehow or other transcend the limitations of life. This instinct of transcend- ence is a good thing in itself, but it has again and again beguiled the church into Dna eS peace and unjustified complacency. How did we get to this modern Protestantism with its easy connivance with Western civilization? I should say we got there because the church, the Christian religion conquered Western civilization and paid the price of that conquest, partial defeat. The church conquered Rome and was conquered by Rome. The church conquered Greece and was con- quered by her philosophers. The church conquered the Nordic tribes and was conquered by Nordicism. Each time she paid partial defeat for partial victory. oo YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Then came the days of manhood of northern Eurepean civilization which began with a reforma- tion. We have been assuming that the Reforma- tion was a return to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is one of the most fundamental mistakes Protestantism has made. Out of it has come our arrogance and cheap pride. For one thing, when the Protestant Reformation came, it paid the price of throwing overboard a great many fine things in Roman Catholicism that we will have to fish out of the depths of the sea again. The Protestant Reformation was a revolt of the religion of the inner life against the religion of the institution and the church, and it was good. The Protestant Reformation was more than that, it was | a Teutonic revolt against Latin civilization. You will note to this day the only people who are Protestants are Nordics. We have had essentially no success in evangelizing Slavs or south European peoples. One of the things that we will have to learn is that Protestantism is not a universal reli- gion, but it is essentially the way Nordic people have of expressing themselves religiously, and then it is the middle classes at that. We are a highly parochial religion. Out of all these limitations we are trying now to come back to something that looks like the original gospel and idealism of Jesus. We would like again te have the sacrificial pages substituted for all the imperial ambitions which we have inherited from Rome. We would like to have a spirit of love and YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 51 substitute it for the fanatic individualism which had some virtues but more vices of our north European peoples. I believe that there is some chance of our getting back to the religion of Jesus if we can have enough critically minded members of the church who can detach themselves from this Western civilization of ours and see its weaknesses and detach themselves from the church to a certain extent and see its weaknesses and realize that it has connived entirely too much with Western civil- ization. There are two reasons why I think we will be able to do something in this generation. First of all, because our Civilization is not as obviously success- ful as it once was, more obviously successful here in America than in Europe. Anybody who gets the whole picture is driven in a mood of repentance by the failure and bankruptcy of Western life. In the second place, our contacts with the Oriental world are giving us a new spirit of inde- pendence. I believe in the missionary independence not so much for the sake of Christianizing the heathen as for Christianizing the Christians. I see tremendous possibilities of going into the Orient and coming upon religious values that we despise and to which we have been indifferent. We have gone out there as proud Lady Bountifuls and dis- cover now we must be humble traders in spiritual goods, receiving for everything we give something wonderful in return, and each one of these things brings us closer to the early Palestinian gospel. 52 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH I would like to see the original naive religion of the prophets culminating in the religion of Jesus and overcoming the premature civility of our pres- ent age and our present undergraduate population which has produced premature civilities by sophisti- cation. For the sophistication of the Greek finally ran to seed and the sophistication of our own age I would like to see substituted the Palestinian gospel, if you will, or, rather, the religion of Jesus which has known how to detach itself and to act as a conscience for society. The process by which the kingdom of God is built is always to conquer a civilization, find itself en- meshed in it too much, detach itself again, conquer once more, find itself enmeshed again and detach itself once more. Upon these successive detach- ments depends all spiritual progress and for this detachment we always must depend on the new generation. Qurstions AskKED Doctor NIgBUHR ~ Question: If the speaker considers Protestantism highly parochial, I should like to know how he ac- counts for the missionary activities of Protestant- ism. Answer: In so far as the missionary entrance has been successful, it is due to the fact that Prot- estantism, which, like all other churches, has never been completely true to the Lord, has never been able altogether to deny him. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 53 DISCUSSION Miss O’Shields, Texas: “The question we are con- sidering is whether mysticism can be made con- sistent with our desire for intellectual respect- ability.” Mr. Edwards, Denver: “I say if faith is the pur- suit of an ideal in spite of the consequences and mysticism the support and production of stamina which will enable us to maintain that type of faith, then mysticism is not true mysticism without in- tellectual respectability.” Mr. Bell, Garrett: “I think I agree with the last speaker in saying you must come to some knowledge of what mysticism really is first. There are mystics and mystics. Think of Paul’s great mysticism. Think of John Wesley’s great mysticism. There are mystics who have made their impression on the life of the country and the life of their own times.” Mr. Dempster, Harvard: “I suggest that we go on to consider the dissociation of the church from Western civilization.” Mr. DeLong, Chicago University: “I don’t know that we are particularly concerned about the dis- sociation of Christianity. I think too often we connect that with the church as Christianity. It seems to me to be important that we keep Jesus in our minds. I suppose you all are doing that. Didn’t Jesus furnish a pretty good example of how far you could go in conformity to the church as it existed? That is, aren’t we to follow Jesus? That is our main idea. If this conflicts with some- By: YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH thing else, that is not worrying us particularly. As long as it is in line with something else that is perfectly all right. In other words, Jesus would go in the synagogue and worship with them. There is nothing particularly wrong in that. Out in life he is not going to say this is so and that is so and he will conform to your ideas. No, it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I say go further; in other words, let’s go further with Jesus, and if this thing interferes with that, then we haven’t any- thing to do with that, it seems to me.” | Mr. Weston, Denver: “It occurred to me that one reason why we cannot as yet do away with differ- ences in denominations or denominational organ- izations is not, as has been suggested, worship of the leaders of the past, but the property holdings of these different denominations and the desire of the leaders of the present denominations for self- glory or self-power. I mean power and fame that would be denied them in a union of these churches.” Mr. Masa, Taylor: “I am from the Philippine Islands. I think one of the greatest mistakes of the missionaries is they are trying to use Western civilization instead of Jesus Christ. In my home country, the Philippine Islands, they are observing Western civilization and we are observing the prin- ciples of Jesus Christ. I want to appeal to the American people. If you want to bring Jesus Christ to the people, you must bring him without Western civilization. Western civilization has been responsible for the student outbreak in China. If YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH DD you want to teach Jesus Christ, you must bring Jesus Christ and his blood and his resurrection rather than Western civilization.” Mr. Ingalls, Oberlin: “Mr. Chairman, I think the church has decidedly got to break from Western civilization; by that I mean I think we have got to go out ahead of it. I think the church can no longer take a cue from economists, business men, politi- cians; the church has to take a place where it will be giving views to them, where a man will come to an open forum, a service of any kind, no matter how mystical, and get something there which he can carry with him into his business. The Chris- tianity we have fits our industrial structure; it sanctions everything we do. Christianity sanctions all the evils of Western civilization. We have got to free the clergy from all restraint of power.” Summary of Discussion by Dr. Albert Parker Fitch: “There are two ideas to-day in this confer- ence. One is the notion. that there is a genuine and objective and eternal God and that men may be saved from the world in him. The other is the notion that progress within the human race is real and that mankind within itself may work out its own salvation by magnanimity. On those two ideas you are pulling backward and forward all morning. Work on those ideas some more.” A Look at the Church: A Study of the Opportunity and the Indifference of the Church © WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION SPEAKERS: ! Stanley Dowley, student, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. Miss Mattie Julian, student, DePauw University, Indiana. Dr. Hubert Herring, Ss of the Commis- sion on Social Service of the Congregational Church, Boston. ADDRESS THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY Stanley Dowley I am not representing any particular group, but, on the whole, the things that I want to say to you about the church are the things that radicals and — the labor movement are saying about the church. As I have listened to the discussions on the floor of this Conference, I have been convinced that we do have a great common ideal, the ideal of a brotherly society, the ideal of a Christian world. I 56 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH BT should certainly like to live in a truly Christian world, but where we disagree is on the means of attaining a cooperative form of society. You think that perhaps the church is the means. I think that the church has failed and is failing to bring about the cooperative form of society. If such a society is possible, the labor movement is the means of bringing it about. J think I am not unduly prejudiced against the church for the reason that for so long I have been a member of the church. Not over two years ago I was a Christian pacifist and it has been a very painful thing to me to be forced to give up the reli- gion and the faith that has meant so much in my past life. Within the last two years I have faced some of the realities of life and those realities have forced me to the radical position. Radicals base their condemnation of the church primarily upon the way they interpret history, upon the way they see society. Historically, civilizations have not been civiliza- tions of rationally and nationally unified groups, but have been civilizations divided into two main classes. There have been an upper class and a lower class and as radicals see it, organized religion and the church to-day represent the interests of the capitalist class. It reflects the idealism of the capitalist class, and that throughout history has been an instrument in the hands of the dominant class in society to suppress the working class. My first charge, then, against the church is that his- 58 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH torically the church has been a weapon in the hands of the dominant class of society to keep the workers down. History bears this out. The civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome were civiliza- tions based on the institution of slavery, and there was no conflict between the institution of slavery and the religions of those countries. During the latter days of Rome, however, there was a real attempt to solve the class problem. Jesus struck at the very root of it, and had he succeeded would have abolished classes and the conflict that they always bring about. It is very piste that Jesus failed. Martin Luther’s agitation during the Reforma- tion caused the peasants to revolt, but when the revolution left the fields of abstract theology and entered the field of concrete social relationships, Martin Luther turned against the workers, the peasants in that case, and encouraged the princes of Germany to destroy them, which they did by the hundreds. In the second place, I charge that the modern church is not interested in and does not know the facts concerning the wages and conditions of the workers. The average Christian is earnestly alarmed and wonders what the world is coming to when he hears that bricklayers are getting ten and even fourteen dollars a day, but he doesn’t take into consideration, he doesn’t know that the brick- layers work only sixty-three per cent of the possible work days in the year. I have heard the same YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 59 thing about the coal miners. My father and prac- tically all my people were coal miners in south- eastern Ohio. In the last thirty years they have missed ninety-three possible work days each year, not because they were too lazy to work, not because they didn’t want to work, but because there was no work for them. That situation was true in all the bituminous fields. In the transportation, mining, and building indus- tries the average wage is from twenty-five to thirty- five dollars per week. In all the other industries combined, excluding these three, the average wage is twenty dollars per week. Certainly this doesn’t allow for much riotous living. Compare these wages with the cost of living, and what do we get? The working families of America get more than seven hundred dollars less than the minimum standard of health and decency; they get slightly more than the minimum of subsistence. What does this mean? This means that the work- ing families of this country cannot enjoy the neces- sities and the luxuries of life that you enjoy. It means that they cannot wear the kind of clothes that you wear. It means that they cannot live in the kind of houses you live in. It means that they cannot eat the kind of food you eat. It means that they cannot have the education that you are getting. It means that they cannot enjoy the theater as you enjoy it. It means that they cannot even have the services of the dentist and doctor that you have as a matter of course, without giving a second 60 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH thought. You might come back at this by saying that the workers do enjoy these things, that they are extravagant; that some of them do is true, but remember when they do, it is always at the expense of the necessities of life. It is always at the expense of the health and education of their children, and it is because the lower class as well as the middle class does have the desire for the good things of life. - : _ These are a few of the facts, and I charge that the church does not know them. If the church does not know them, it is only to be condemned the more, for it has done nothing about them. In the third place, I charge that the chureh of to-day has no practical program; it has no solution for the class struggle; it has a delightful way of passing the buck on the issue. The average min- ister, if he recognizes it at all, dismisses it in about this fashion: “There should be a better understand- ing between capital and labor. The worker should give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” These are high-sounding phrases, but they are ab- stract, they are up in the air. How shall we get a better understanding between capital and labor? What is an honest day’s work? How much is an honest day’s pay? What answer has the church to Herrin, Illinois? What answer has the church to Logan County, West Virginia? Did the church protest when our supreme court nullified the child- labor law? Did the church protest the use of the injunction to deny the workers the exercise of those YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 61 fundamental rights, free speech and the right to assemble? In the fourth place, I charge that the church of to-day, while it is not the direct physical weapon that it has been through the Middle Ages, it is more indirect, subtle, and perhaps for that reason more dangerous as a moral weapon to keep the workers satisfied, and as such is demoralizing in its effect. In a little unorganized town near my home church services are held in a company owned building. A little over a year ago that same company built a new brick schoolhouse. Can you, can anyone imagine the workers under those conditions organ- izing and demanding the right to live as men should live? The whole theory of the ethics of the church, its whole code of morals, its whole conception of values are sO wrapped up in the present system, are so much a part of the present system that it creates an atmosphere in which it is impossible to bring about a change without making a break with it. The church is quick to condemn and slow to understand. It is quick to condemn the use of force on the part of the workers and it is slow to understand that that force is but a natural reaction to the force and violence that is being used upon the workers all the time. The church is quick to condemn the strike and sabotage, two of the best weapons that labor has at its command, and it is slow to under- stand why it is that labor has to use these weapons. The church is always an upholder of law and order, 62 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH which is to say, in the final analysis, it is an up- holder of property rights as opposed to human rights, for our laws are laws based on property and for its protection. QuESTIONS TO Mr. DOWLEY Question: Could the church have a program effec- tive in a great industrial center for meeting the problems of that center? Answer: My greatest hope for the church is that it create some kind, of machinery to find out the facts. I don’t think that the church has a program to settle the class struggle. Question: I will ask Mr. Dowley if he will state what he thinks is the greatest need of labor. Answer: I think that the greatest need is that everybody should be a laborer of one kind or an- other, whether manual laborers or intellectual laborers, nevertheless they should be laborers. | Question: Do you think the church should favor the socializing reorganization of society? Do you believe this conference should go on record favor- ing a socialist reorganization of society? Answer: Well, I don’t expect either. Of course, I wouldn’t object to either. I believe firmly that Jesus Christ would be opposed to capitalism for the reason that capitalism is based on two funda- mental reasons; one is the acquisitive impulse, instinct or whatever you might call it. I don’t believe that Jesus had that. In the second place, I think capitalism exists by the use of force, and YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 63 I don’t believe that Jesus Christ would use force as it is being used. Question: Do you object to the church as a church, or only as it is organized at present? Answer: I don’t object to the teachings of Jesus, if we had them in practice; but we do not have them, and, furthermore, we cannot have them, I think, by the means of the church and even by the means of Jesus. I think Jesus failed in his day. I think he would fail to-day. Question: I would like to ask if you think the church is the biggest factor in bringing about the present condition of the workmen. Answer: No, I do not. I think it is a natural result of classes. I can’t conceive of a Christian society when that society is made up of classes. My only conception of a Christian, cooperative, brotherly society is one without classes. I don’t blame the church for this. The church is more or less a product of it, not a cause of it. Question: Does the labor group as a group have a church which supplies perhaps the same need, fills the same need, but goes by another name? Answer: I think there is. I have gotten a better spirit of brotherhood among working groups, among the radical groups than I ever got in the many years that I was in this church. I think there is much better communion among these people, for the rea- son perhaps, although not wholly, that they do have this one great common interest which you know, taking the entire church group, it does not have. 64 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ADDRESS: THE CHURCH AND THE RACE QUESTION | Miss Mattie Julian You have asked me to join to-day that great army of men and women who raise their voices high to cite the failures of the church, the one institution that has brought struggling humanity where it is to-day, the one bright star that beckons onward and heralds the dawn of understanding, order and peace where to-day is confusion, disorder and con- flict. Let those who criticize remember that the Church of God has never failed. Man’s temple has been desecrated with selfishness; man’s church established among men has fallen a victim to nar- rowness, clannishness, and a blurred perception of values, but the Church of God still stands, its por- tals ever high, its foundations secure. My plea would be that we recognize more clearly that the interdependence of mankind is our first concern in seeking God. The author of Pilgrim’s Progress saw it clearly when, on noticing an unhappy prisoner on his way to the gallows, he cried out, “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bunyan!” What blood the church has upon its hands! Men are lynched at the door of the church while we calmly take of the holy sacrament and repeat the Apostles’ Creed. We leave to politicians a work that belongs to the church. And so the Dyer Anti- Lynching Bill, calculated to insure peace of mind and safety to thousands of God-fearing men, women, YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 65 and children, has been heralded from few pulpits in this country. It is left to politicians to defeat; and millions of our citizens have no protection from lawlessness and murder. Why is it that many a church can boast of men at its head who are Ku Klux Klansmen, anti- Semitics, or anti-Catholics, and the like, yet stanch supporters and ministers of God? It is because the church has lost its real objective. Instead of enhancing its perception of values, it has been made to fit the prejudices and comforts of man. The “Church of God” of which I spoke in the beginning still stands out there in the distance far from us, emblazoned above its portals the question and an- swer that will solve all the ills of the world: “Master, what is the Great Commandment?” “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Friends, it would be traitorous not to give you the message of the intelligent youth of my race. It Is, as I see it, just this exhortation: “Let us be honest; ‘let us either embrace the Great Commandment, or cease professing to be followers of the Christ.” Young men and women, the intolerances creep- ing into our national life must bring to us a tell- ing consciousness at one and the same time of our potentialities and our future responsibilities. The church of to-morrow will be what you and I make it. This problem of group relations is a spiritual problem, and the church is a spiritual influence. The flagrant refusal of the church to-day to assume 66 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH more definite responsibility for racial intolerance and group antipathies challenges the courage and bravery of youth. Among the demands of youth to-day is freedom from traditional shackles and hypocrisies. We demand fair play; we demand that our football players shall play the game fairly. Will we supply our church of to-morrow with sufii- cient strength and courage that it may be broader than the narrow confines of hatreds and discords, transcend the boundaries of races and nations and fearlessly advance toward that ideal of pati demanded by the true Church of God? ADDRESS: THE CHURCH AND THE MAN IN THE STREET Mr. Hubert Herring It seems to me that the criticisms of the church by the man in the street can be grouped under three main heads. First, the church is an agency for propaganda rather than a free fellowship for spir- itual exploration. Second, the church has lost it- self in institutionalism. Third, the church has lost the spirit of daring and of adventure. These are the indictments which are being talked and preached from screen and stage, in magazine arti- cles and in popular novels, and we might as well face the fact that the man on the street, whoever he is, is raising questions like these. First, the church is an agency of propaganda rather than a fellowship for free spiritual exploration. This man YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 67 in the street sees the Presbyterian Church and the Congregational Church and your church lined up on Main Street, each of them with its own par- ticular thing to sell, at least so he thinks. He comes to me and he says: “I am a free moral agent. I don’t want to be mesmerized. I want to do my own thinking, and I resent it when the church tries to get me into an atmosphere where by soft music and lovely prayers and by ritual and by sacrament and by offertory and all the rest of these things they try to create around me an atmosphere which cramps me and holds me in and which is calculated to make me believe as they believe.” On the one hand, against the effrontery of the fundamentalist who strips God of his modesty and, on the other hand, the innocuous uncertainties and negatives of the rambunctious, cantankerous liberal who knows nothing and hopes to know nothing, the man in the street cries out against all propaganda, and cries out, if for anything, for that lost radiance of the Christian religion which has liberty and which has sweep and depth and the desire to learn and the desire to explore the great areas of human understanding and of divine power. Second, “The church,” so says the man in the street, “has lost itself in institutionalism.” The lines of the indictment are clear to you. For that there have been words aplenty and just words of condemnation here. ‘Then the building of local structures, the building up of your local budget, the building of more costly and more beautiful build- 68 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ings come in. So your local church faces three things: first, the appeal of the world-wide work; second, the appeal of desire to push the church out more effectively in America, and, third, the need of strengthening the church at home. Out of that there come budgets; out of that there comes the need for men to raise budgets; there comes the building up of drives and promotions. Most of it is good, but the danger is that the man to whom the task will be given to promote this will be picked out because he is perfectly safe, because he has never said a word about the steel corporation, because he never said a word about the Anaconda Copper Company, because he never said a word about open shop or closed shop or anything else that makes any earthly difference. So I say let the church beware of the price by which it builds up institutions and organizations. Bigness is not greatness. You represent many churches here, and big churches, and churches that are able to be bigger all the time. What is the greatest church in America? If I were going to pick the greatest church on the basis of influence during the past dozen years, I would pick the small- est of the crowd, a church whose badge is a better passport in Europe to-day than any passport signed by any secretary of state—the Quakers. I bid you guard the church against the lure of bigness, against the temptation to think that by adding hundreds of thousands of members and millions of investments it can become great. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 69 The third indictment is that the church has lost the free play, the daring, the spirit of adventure. Who are the perilous element in the church? Not the fundamentalists, not the cantankerous liberals; they are only little groups, but the perilous people in the church are the kind of people in it whom you are in danger of resembling, the tired people, the weary people, the people who are con- tent. The dangerous element in the church is the people who lack buoyancy, who have no expectancy in their souls, for these are the devourers, if not of widows’ houses, of the souls of the prophets, and who are always saying: “Why worry? We are con- tent, we are rich, we have automobiles and houses in Evanston and Oak Park. Why worry? Preach the gospel and don’t go wandering around stirring up trouble” Those are the devourers of the prophets. What have you to do with it? The voice came crying, “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass and there is nothing worth while.” Again the voice came, “Cry out against the sterile barrenness of the institutionalism; cry out against the cowardice and lethargy and weakness of the church. Ory! Cry!” “But,” says somebody in the back pew, “vou may make mistakes.” Yes, but far better to make mistakes even in the direction of economic insanity, far better to make such mistakes even though you go too far than it is to make nothing. 70 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH DISCUSSION Mr. Weston, University of Denver: I want to bring a few facts from another angle which I don’t think was touched very much—the ministerial angle. It was my privilege last winter to sit in with a ministerial group in Denver, Colorado. I think it is tragic that a minister has to be afraid that his congregation will not stand for the truth. I think they will stand for a lot more than the minister believes they will. I am particularly concerned about another feature of it, ministers who can sit in a group gathering and call each other brother when they have hatred and jealousy and greed in their hearts. How can we expect any- thing of an organization whose leaders haven’t brotherly love? : Mr. Wyker, Kentucky: I am a preacher. I want to back up what Mr. Weston has just said. Last night we had pointed out to us the sin of duplica- tion, the sin of waste, like a half-dozen different churches in a town of one thousand people. I am working in such a town just now. I find there, with the exception of the young people, it is impos- sible to tackle the race problem. It is practically impossible to tackle the problem of classes. Mr. Rogers, Union: I was very much interested in what Mr. Dowley said about the fact that he had found more real spiritual experience in the radical groups than he had in his previous experience in churches. I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t precisely what is the matter with the church. Why YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 71 shouldn’t a church take it as its own duty to free these men, the Centralia Wobblies who are un- justly held in prison, or why shouldn’t the church do something definite about the fact that in hun- dreds of towns in this country compulsory military training is being put in the high schools and com- pulsory military training is being put in the col- leges? I want help, but feel we would find a great deal of new life perhaps in the church if we took it upon ourselves to see to it that the church was a fellowship for action and not merely a place of worship. Mr. Dempster, Harvard: I don’t think that the church as an institution can do anything in a large way to change the labor or industrial situation, or to solve the lay problem other than that of dissemi- nation of facts and education. The church, as I understand it, as an institution, does not work with bodies of people, it does not pass laws, does not enforce laws, does not make changes in large social groups; it is working with them, but not working as individuals. The church is an institution that brings individuals to God with their ideas in wor- ship, and then tries to transform those individuals and their personality, tries to make them realize there is a work to be done in the world for man- kind, tries to show them what work to do and to educate them as to what is to be done. Mr. Wilder, North Carolina: In talking with the president of a university for Negroes he said, in the first place, he was supported by the denomina- 72 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH tional mission board, but he could not carry on the policy which he thought was Christian and remain under that denomination, so he had to separate and try for free-lance support. I find there that now there is no color line whatsoever. The teachers and students live and eat together. I found every one as an individual and not labeled as to color of skin. I have been astonished. It has changed my view- point. Mr. Rogers, Georgia: Mr. Chairman, I live in Atlanta and happen to know of an example where the church is doing good work in spreading the brotherhood among the races. There is a minis- terial association in Atlanta which began during the race riot of 1906, I believe. Most of you know there was a terrible race riot in Atlanta and blood was shed on both sides. Ministers of the town got together with the colored ministers and formed what is now known as the Inter-Racial Council, and that council since that time has prevented two dis- turbances from growing into other riots. This work is being done actually in Atlanta in that way. I don’t see why it can’t be done in other places. Foreign Student: We foreign students have come to this great country, the greatest Christian nation, not only to get our education in your institutions of learning, but we have come to see. Remember that when we go back to our home lands we will not speak of the great institutions you have; we will not speak of the great material progress that you possess, but we will speak to our people of what you YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 73 are thinking in this country. If we speak favorably about your Christian ways of living, then we will promote peace and good will and we will see more of Christ, because we have experienced through the lives of Christian men what Christianity means. So we foreign students hope that you will show Jesus more, not only in words, but you must show us in your lives. Mr. John Gardner, Chicago: I am the student assistant in one of the four hundred thousand dol- lar churches I heard spoken of this afternoon. I have some seven hundred boys and girls in the Sunday school every Sunday morning, and in ex- amining the life of a boy and girl, I am trying to help that boy and girl to form attitudes. I believe in religious education we learn to apply our reli- gion in race, industry, and the whole of life. It is our task to gain teachers of real caliber who can help boys and girls do this, and I think we may say if we can have larger parishes in America, if we can - have in America greater institutions in which there are level-headed leaders, leaders who have had full experience, then we are going to have a forward moving religion in America. Student, Fisk University: I want to give a bit of information and ask a question.. The information I want to give is this: in Nashville we are meet- ing what is called the race problem, as evidenced by the fact that we have a student forum which meets twice every month to discuss racial and reli- gious questions, all on the basis of information and 74. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH discussion. All colleges and universities of the city are invited. During the week of Thanksgiving I attended a conference at Chattanooga, Tennessee. I think the secret of this is the fact that we no longer look upon it as a race problem or question, but we look upon the things we do and say or the things we are doing and saying as being in the spirit of Christ. There should be only this one question: Is this action or is this work Christ-like? Student: We have been considering this question from one side. All the speeches we have heard on this question have been in favor of working through the church and reforming the church. I would like to suggest if there is any student here who thinks the church ought to be scrapped and that we cannot work through the church, we would like to have him say so. Student: I think that the first thing as students we should do is to realize our responsibility to the laboring class of the world. The second thing I think we ought to do is to get acquainted with the laboring people. The third thing we ought to do is not fear poverty of material things, but poverty of the spirit. Miss Childrey, Corneil University: My sugges- tion is that we seriously stop talking about Jesus quite so much and really study him, try to see the principles behind the stories of his life, the situa- tion in which he was and the principle he enunciated in that situation and try to apply it to the situation we are facing. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 75 Mr. Kim, Korea: I don’t know whether you can understand me, but I will try to explain. First of all, I believe in a universal Christian Church. We have a Methodist Church or a Presbyterian Church, but I believe in Christ the universal church. I be- lieve that finally we will have one big Christian Church all over the world. SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION Dr. Albert Parker Fitch: As a group, if I under- stand you, you have definitely rejected Mr. Dowley’s counsel of despair, and, as I understand the group this afternoon, what has been the mental temper of it, it has been what I should call—I use the term descriptively and not evaluatively—a conservative temperament. You have been saying that while the church is not doing as well as she might do, she is, from your point of view, on the whole, doing so well you would not regard for a moment leaving her behind or getting out. You have spoken again of the divided church, and I judge the temper of this audience is very clear upon the scandal and the waste of denominational rivalries, perhaps more clear on that than on the profound temperamental differences and the need of plasticity in human organization, which to some extent justify denomi- national groups. Another thing brought out very clearly this after- noon is that you will not face any issue which says either, on the one hand, we may have a great hu- manitarian faith which shall be able through the 6 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH best of modern sociology and modern science to work from within upon curing humanity’s ills, you won't have that, on the one hand, as a sharp issue, or, on the other hand, a merely mystical church. WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSION SPEAKERS: Mr. Howard Becker, Student, Northwestern Uni- versity. Dr. R. E. Diffendorfer, Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church. ADDRESS Mr. Becker THERE is no reason why the church as we know it need remain what it- has so often been in the past, a middle-aged institution run by the middle aged for the middle aged. There is every chance in the world for a young man or woman possessed of a modicum of ability and a little horse sense to gear into the organizational machinery in a lastingly effective fashion. Look at the gallery. Here are — any number of officials of church boards and organ- izations who are forward looking and sympathetic. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be up there. I know they would be only too glad to be approached by some of you who want te work within the church in positions which they can help you obtain. Let me briefly outline the possibilities of gearing | into the machinery, either as a simple lay worker YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 7 or as One of the professionals. First of all, in the local church—your church—if you are to effect any change worth mentioning, you may have to begin by converting the minister. That is more easily said than done, but it is worth trying anyway. You may have to use strong-arm methods in the process ; but if seeing a few stars will make any of these peo- ple into children of light, let’s use the strong-arm method. Then there is the chance of teaching in what we so often laughed at, but which is a great, though neglected field for the youth movement to work in, and that is the Sunday school. In its old- fashioned form it is rapidly giving way to more effective methods and agencies, but it can be changed still more rapidly by teachers who are will- ing to put up with an antiquated machine for the purpose of building a better one. There are any number of niches that can be utilized by people who really want to act and not talk, as I am doing this evening. ADDRESS: “THE CHURCH’S WORLD-WIDE OPPORTUNITY” Doctor Diffendorfer Doctor Diffendorfer outlined the geographical extent of the church’s interest in foreign countries as listed in the Missionary Atlas. He also gave full statistics concerning the number of staff members, plants, and the amount of money spent per year. ee He continued: “That, in brief, young men and women, is the thing we are discussing to-night, and %8 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH the first point I want to make about it is that it stands as the greatest monument of a youth move- ment that the church and the world has ever known. It was founded by students! Whatever successes may have come during this last one hundred years, or whatever liabilities this enterprise carries to-day, you can just charge it up to the young men and women of the student bodies of previous genera- tions. “What was the challenge of this great movement to the students of these days in times past? As I read their lives, the lives of Adoniram Judson, William Carey, David Livingstone, and Griffith John and the rest of them down through the years, this is what I find was the thing that chal- lenged them in that world situation: first of all, there was a lost world and there wasn’t any doubt about it. They also had an equal conviction that they had a Christ who could save this world. They also had a very deep desire to share with the world the blessings of our own civilization. These con- victions called forth from them the exercise of per- fectly tremendous courage and patience. Here were the pioneers of the church’s geographical frontier and they have penetrated into every last hinterland that the world knows geographically. “TY would not have you understand that this pio- neering is done, not for one minute. I can say to you as a body of devoted students when you have made up your minds to tackle the problem of bring- ing the gospel of Jesus to the six or eight millions YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 79 of Indians in South America hitherto untouched, the chance will be yours to measure up to the courage and the devotion and the self-sacrifice of these to-night whom we honor. I want to say to you when you have determined to break the bonds of illiteracy and to banish disease and to set the house in order among the eighty millions of Negroes in the heart of Africa, some of them living yet in impenetrable forests, the spirit of David Livingstone will arise among you again. You will go out to trek for thirty thousand miles on foot through all the years of your life in order that in some dark place in Africa the light of God’s love may come; that still needs to be done. There is room for every one of you to go and preach the gospel to people » who have never heard it. “Before we dismiss the simple topic of sending men and women to tell the gospel story, the sending of men and women to teach illiterate minds, the sending of men and women to heal the bodies of men broken from disease, before we dismiss that idly in the face of this perfectly stupendous enterprise I have described to you to-night, I want to say to you as a missionary secretary that I challenge this bunch of youth here to-night to answer this call in the spirit of the men and the women who have preceded you. “But an entirely new set of problems is appear- ing as a result of what I have been describing. Therefore, we are not ashamed of them; they are the natural product of the planting here and there 80 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH throughout the world of the seeds of the light, of the story of brotherhood, the story of sacrifice and redemptive love. These problems are due, as I see it, to the increased transportation of the modern world, to increased communication in the modern world, to the development of modern education throughout the world, to the spread of the scientific spirit throughout the world, to the growth of the democratic ideals, based upon an appreciation of the sacredness of human personality. “One of the new problems is that of national- ism. It is manifesting itself, first of all, in men’s concern about their country and its destiny and its future. In other words, there is a political side to it, and it is very strong in some countries. It is rising up also in another way which is far more important and more fundamental than in the polit- ical aspect of it. It is rising up in certain social and economic movements. It is saying in some countries of the world that no longer shall men and nations, by whatever hook or crook they may use, become through law and war and through the vari- ous kinds of pressure that can be brought upon men, exploited for private gain and personalities be de- graded in the dust in order that certain nations might have gold in their coffers. The fact of the matter is men are not going to stand for that any more. You might as well give that up. Some of you are going to have very great temptations before very long when the agents of foreign business con- cerns will begin to visit your colleges and begin to YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 81 enlist you to become the foreign agents. of just such exploitation concerns at nice, fat salaries, to go to the ends of the earth to exploit private resources, to exploit public resources, to exploit natural resources and people in order that foreign trade might be built up. You are going to have to face that before very long. “Along with nationalism come race antagonisms. There were no such things, no race antagonisms particularly among a lot of ‘the early pioneers. There were strange adjustments to make, but no race antagonisms. As I see it the race problem stands to-day as a frontier that is far more difficult to penetrate than the trekking through the track- less plains and forests of an unknown continent. It is an unknown path to us yet, and there are lurk- ing along it on all sides the most difficult adjust- ments that have to be made and the most difficult misunderstandings that have to be cleared away. “May I mention another frontier that has come and will appear often here?—that is war. May I mention another that ought to appear here time and again?—it is the philosophy of materialism or economic determination. That is a frontier that you have got to penetrate, and it will come pinching pretty close when we come to match up as to exactly what are the motives within us that will drive us forward into our own life-work and into our own destinies. Will it be the lure of material things, according to the ideas of this present day, or will we manifest enough power and enough spirit to rise $2 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH above it and conquer it and make them become means to a great end, the development of human personality throughout the world? “Tt was not sentiment that was back of the thou- sands who have laid down their lives to build a superstructure of God’s kingdom throughout the world. It was not a twist in the blind move they made; no. There was back of it all reason, not simply one reason, for intelligence, far-sightedness, acumen, preparation, long, long preparation were back of it. Then, somehow or another, when it was caught up on the wings of religion, and God through Christ had come into these men’s hearts, faith be- came courageous and the hero was born.” QUESTIONS ASKED DocToR DIFFENDORFER Question: “I would like to ask a question both of Doctor Diffendorfer and of the conference. I wonder whether or not this speech doesn’t contain a very terrible indictment of missions in two of the basic points in the speaker’s address. In the first place, he bases the judgment of missions upon their size and the amount of money that is invested and the numbers of people working instead of by the Spiritual results. In the second place, the primary excuse for missions is given. as an outworn gospel based on the idea that all the world is lost except us. I would like to hear some discussion on that point.” Answer: “Let’s take the second one first; it is easier. What I said was what you reiterate. The YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 83 men who endured this courage and gave this per- sonal sacrifice in former days did it because they believed the world was lost and because they be- lieved they had a Christ that could save them. I now challenge you to a rediscovery and a restate- ment of that same problem for your day and your age. The very fact that you are here and that you are finding all of these problems intimates, at least, to me that you feel there is something terribly wrong with the world. I don’t know whether it is lost or not, but there is something terrible the matter with it. In this day there is something the matter with it, and I challenge you also to find whether or not you can find a Christ that will save it. : “The second one was that it was a terrible indict- ment of missions that I should base my estimate of them on size. I did not begin to estimate nor intend to estimate the spiritual results of mission- ary enterprise. I merely said I wanted to give you its scope and its size in order that we might see what we were talking about.” Question: “What is a new motive that could be supplied for missions in this day, provided we assume the old motive has gone by the boards?” Answer: “Just one motive and that is to make known Jesus to the world. That is all.” Question: “Is it not true that all this great mis- sionary work is being carried on by different denominations for the main purpose or partial pur- pose at least, of furthering their own denomina- 84 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH tions in those countries, resulting in our having a group of different denominations within the for- eign nations? If so, what is being done to change it and make it simply Christianizing a mission field instead of denominationalizing it?” Answer: “With few exceptions—and there are some very outstanding exceptions—the spread of denominationalism does not enter in at all at the present time in the foreign missionary enterprise. No candidate that comes before our board is asked whether he will go to the field and spread Meth- odism. I can mention a dozen boards where that question is not asked. There are some exceptions. I think we are making very great progress in that matter. “Our goal now is unity and cooperation and a delimitation of our fields, so we have neither over- lapping nor conflict of any sort. It is definitely in front of us, but it is a reasonable question to ask.” Discussion Mr. Wyker, Kentucky: I think we Americans are vain and proud and haughty when we pretend to take Christ to the foreign field and do not have him ourselves. If you don’t think so, talk to our foreign students in our colleges. Do we not need to renew or build the Christ within our own lives before we promote missions? Mr. Turner, Illinois: I think the fact that we haven’t got light adequately in America is one of YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 85 the very best reasons why we need in our poor, in- | adequate, weak way to try to carry it to other nations. All of the great religions of the world in- cluding Christianity have come to us from the Orient, and we certainly need its interpretation of Christianity to-day. I for one do feel that by our- selves here in America we can never get that inter- pretation of Christianity, and we need all the help we can get from our Oriental friends. Foreign students have made valuable contributions in the last few years, and I think Orientals have much to contribute to us yet. I think it is very poor to ask them to interpret Christ themselves and not try to voice our vision of Christ to them. Mr. Harper, Yale: I would like to go to history to show that the most glorious periods of church history have been those periods where missionary enterprise has been most active. I would be in favor of a missionary enterprise in our own day as one of the means of putting new life into our church to-day. Mr. Leeper, Allegheny: With the church living in the midst of a social order that is based upon a plan of distributing rewards according to the capacity for getting money rather than the need of the individual, we go forth and bring to other peo- ple an idea of religion which holds up as its ideal a social order founded on the ideal of love and serv- ice. I challenge the students of this conference to look over their budgets or the budgets of the families 86 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH from which they come and see whether they are liv- ing off of some one else or whether they are restrict- ing themselves to that level which would give every other one an equal chance. Christianizing our Civilization THuRSDAY MoRNING, DECEMBER 31 SPEAKERS: Harold Ehrensperger, Student, Garrett Biblical Institute. Roy Burt, Rock Springs, Wyo. Marian Warner, Student, University of Ohio. Robert Weston, Student, University of Denver. ADDRESS: “UNCHURCHED MASSES AND UNCHRISTIANIZED CHURCHMEN” Mr. Ehrensperger My subject is “Unchurched America.” The ordi- nary conception of that phrase is a vast number of people who do not belong to any church. We think in terms of board secretaries, rescue missions, and people who are concerned with saving souls. I am going to talk this morning about another kind of unchurched America, an unchurched America which consists of maladjusted groups, a vast array of peo- ple who, whether they are converted or not—which doesn’t make any difference—are maladjusted and therefore need certain kinds of special treatment. I refer to the insane, the feeble-minded, the criminal, the inebriate, the deformed, the dependent, and, on the other hand, to the groups that are so intelligent that they have left the church. They are just as 87 88 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH much maladjusted as far as the church is concerned as these other groups to which I have referred. Let us look at the native stock from which the church is to recruit its membership, Only four per cent of Americans are of high-grade mentality. Thirty per cent of Americans are about as old men- tally as an eight-year-old boy. Our national mental average is 13.2 years. 7 We have agreed that the church needs intelli- gence; we have agreed from this pulpit that the church needs to stress intelligence, in other words that the top average, the four per cent of Ameri- cans, ought to be ruling the church, but at the pres- ent time that is not true. You may make morons good, but you will never make them anything else than morons by religion. Let us look at another maladjusted group, the crime group. Since 1850 the population of the United States has increased one hundred and seventy per cent, and the criminal class has in- creased four hundred and forty-five per cent. How glibly most of us who have been interested in eco- nomic things have blamed this maladjustment upon the wealth of the United States. How much we have blamed it upon our capitalistic civilization. According to Judge Olson, of the Municipal Court of Chicago, eighty-seven per cent of our criminals are not responsible. In other words, the church has been going out to save humanity, it has sent rescue missions, it has established all sorts of home missionary programs to save these people who have YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 89 been lost. But have we gone out to find out why they have been lost? Yes, the church is making a valiant attempt to rescue the perishing, but the great mistake, it seems to me, has been that the church has supposed that the church can make people good. Good people make the church; the church does not make people good. The germ plasm that produces churchgoing people is getting scarce. We must approach the matter, therefore, scientifically and intelligently. We need a church that will minister to all the needs of man, a church that will cooperate in giv- ing advice—let us say and frankly say—on birth control so we can save some of these people, actually save them, so that it will be better that a person shall not be born than that he shall be born men- tally unfit. Have we not, therefore, essentially gone at this thing in the wrong way? Is it not, therefore, the program of the church to begin a different approach, to begin the approach from the point of view of social intelligence, to begin with the idea that we are facing a situation that must be met by scien- tifically interested and alert people? Is it not true that the heads of our churches, particularly the min- isters, should be alert and aware of these situa- tions, and that our home mission boards should be more conscious of the social crises which are facing us at the present time? I said before that the germ plasm which pro- duces churchgoing people is getting scarce. I re- 90 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH peat again that the church does not make people good, but that, on the other hand, good people make the church. I think I could present nothing which you could carry away which would be of more im- portance. We need a more intelligent study, a more intelligent young crowd, we need young people who are willing to investigate facts, which, however un- fortunate they may be, must be faced by all of us and must be remedied by going at the cause ae not the effect of these social crises. ADDRESS: “A LOCAL CHURCH MEETING COMMUNITY SITUATIONS” } Mr. Roy Burt There was a time when the program of social- — ism and communism made its appeal to me. I know what it is to lie on my side in the slime and dirt of a coal mine. I know what it is to go through a strike. I know what it is to live in a family in which the father was hounded from one town to another, blackballed by every mining company be- cause he dared as a member of the Labor Council of that community to insist that the coal mines change conditions which endangered the health of the community. I have seen my father and mother put a few boiled potatoes on the table and go out in the back yard while we kids had something to eat. So communism and socialism made an appeal to me. But there came an ever-gripping conviction that the ideal about which Jesus talked of the king- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 91 dom of God with the solidarity of all mankind could not by any manner of means be based on any pro- gram of class struggle and class warfare. We are a community of about nine thousand peo- ple, located in the center of the largest soft-coal field west of the Mississippi River, a community in which there are between thirty-five and forty differ- ent racial and national groups represented. In the coal camps adjacent to this place there are about nine thousand more people, making in all about eighteen thousand people. There are two fundamental principles that are at the center of the whole program of the church in this community. In its religious-educational policy, in its pulpit ministry, in all of its activities. First is the conception of the church, that the church is simply an agency for the bringing in of the kingdom of God. The second is the abiding conviction that when Jesus was here he took the most sacred thing which the Jew had, which was his Sabbath day, and he said concerning that thing, “The Sabbath day was made for man, not man for the Sabbath ;” and I have a conviction that if Jesus were here to-day, he would take the most sacred thing which we have in our present social system, which is private property, and he would say the only value which property has is as it ministers to human personality. In our local Sunday school we have seven differ- ent nationalities with two or three races repre- sented. In my boys’ class I have ag many as seven- teen different nationalities, with the Oriental and 92 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH the Negro race, and there are no distinctions made. In our Sunday schools in some of our camps we have all sorts of nationalities represented. In our church building we have a meeting one night a week of men around thirty and past middle age, meeting in a labor institute studying sociology, economics, labor journalism, fitting themselves for leadership. There are to-day literally thousands of men who are working through the week and spend- ing from one to two nights a week with courses in economics and sociology and history, fitting them- selves for leadership. They are going to come into their leadership, and they are simply challenging young men and young women out of the college world who, by the way, are the greatest recipients of privilege and the benefits of our social order of any single group. Churches must recognize at once that they do not have a monopoly on bringing in the kingdom of God, but they must have the honesty, when they see any group that is doing a piece of work that brings in the ideals of human relationship, to help them, to go with them as far as they can go. First of all we must help those men to see that their ideals of human brotherhood and solidarity of humanity rest on the teachings of Jesus. Then we have to turn right around and interpret to our church that the phrase we so glibly praise, “Thy kingdom come,” means the transformation of human relationships to-day, and some of us are going to have to pay a price for it. | YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 93 I believe there never has been a bigger oppor- tunity in the world than is offered to-day in the church for it to accept the challenge to go abso- lutely to smash in order that the ideals of the king- dom of God may be realized in terms of human re- lationship. Let me say frankly that I would rather go plumb to smash on the program of Jesus Christ and human relationship than succeed on any other basis at all. THE RACE PROBLEM ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS Marian Warner Miss Warner described the Inter-Racial Council at Ohio State University, proposed and carried through by Christian students with the cooperation of a local church. She outlined how, in the face of considerable skepticism, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and foreign students were brought together in a common fellowship to face their common problems. She continued: “Two or three very definite results that have come from this situation. One Korean boy, who later came in touch with our work and with our interna- tional forum, came to our university with the feeling that he did not want to go any place where there was a Japanese student, but he overcame that. He had been very closely mixed up in the affairs in Korea, and he said: ‘I cannot go where those men are. I want to kill them” TI have seen him this year, after a few of these meetings, sit with these Japanese boys and talk with them just as he does with any of us. He seemed to have lost that feeling entirely. 94 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH “One night I was having a committee meeting at my house. There were some colored students, some white students, and some foreign students. We were talking about the different things that had come out of this while it was even yet young. A young colored man said: ‘I came up from the South expecting to find things different here. I had been a Christian in the South, but after the treatment I got here I decided there were no Christian people anywhere, and I was about to give up Christianity until I was called into this Inter-Racial Council and realized there were a few people on the Ohio State campus who were willing to show the spirit of Jesus Christ. I have gone back to my form of belief and have strengthened my feeling that Jesus really means something.’ We have felt perhaps that was worth all the effort we have put into this. “T could tell you other instances of the same kind, but Jet me remind you that this is not yet a year old and that we have a great deal to do. It is nota perfect organization at all. It is merely a gesture in the right direction. We feel that these are the things that the church should do. We feel that this is the way Jesus wants us to go.” ADDRESS: “A CHURCH MEETING A LOCAL LABOR SITUATION” Robert Weston It is my purpose to tell you of the work of a church that has an answer to a large part of the criticism of the church that we heard yesterday. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 95 Eight years ago Grace Methodist Church of Den- ver, Colorado, was a dying church. To-day Grace Church is rated by the Rockefeller Foundation as the outstanding church in the entire region between Chicago and the Pacific Coast. Grace Church is an organization of autonomous groups. The first group is the labor college, which gives the working people of Denver an opportunity to invest their earnings in study and discussion, that gives them culture and self-development equal to that which university students are supposed to re- ceive. It trains working people in cooperation by which they may better stand by the causes which labor sponsors. It gives such courses as economics, psychology, dramatic art, English, parliamentary law, sciences, or any subject which ten or more stu- dents request. It charges a fee of two dollars a family a semester. It is responsible only to a board of directors, elected mainly by union men, and no attempt is made to curb the thought or activity of either students or professors. In addition to the classes, each night the college meets it has an hour’s forum on subjects previously chosen by a committee of students. There is an open forum which is attended by an average of about four hundred and fifty people and which meets every Sunday during the winter months. It is dedicated to the principle that what- ever is true will withstand criticism and will come. out of attack finer and purer than before. It brings outstanding men of every field of work, no matter 96 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH how radical or how conservative they may be, to Denver to present their work and their viewpoint. All religious services in Grace Community Church are devoted to the promotion of the Chris- tian mode of living and thinking. All preaching is so planned as to stimulate people to think reli- giously without dictating to them what that reli- gious thinking shall be, and to stimulate them to make their religion one of mutual help and serving others as well as self-purification. Social-recrea- tional work, such as good motion pictures, active game parties, basketball, and so forth, is provided for all people from childhood up. Printing and all other work possible is done by union men. People are reminded once in a while of the need for buying goods with the union label. Grace Church took an active part in raising three thousand dollars after a great tramway strike that a fair investigation might be made of the causes and conduct of the strike, and the results published. Grace Church is one of the few churches which threw themselves into the fight to keep Judge Ben Lindsey in his great work for the children when the predatory interests and the Ku Klux Klan recently made their supreme effort to unseat him. The young people’s society has a very complete program, dramatic, educational and religious, with a midweek forum of their own, a Christian service program ‘rendering distinct service in the com- munity and the city, social, recreational, as well as basketball and parties, and Sunday educational, in-— YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 97 spirational, and expressional meetings. Given the idea, any church can do in some measure what Grace Church is doing. It is the cooperation of working members and working people, most of them young, that has made Grace Chureh. The few rich members dropped out early in the building of the new Grace Church. Its ideals were not theirs. The working people of Denver got behind the work and made it possible. The working people of any city or town will stand with such a program as this even though it be very imperfect in its beginning. Not only did the rich members drop out when their help was most needed, but many pastors of Denver churches fought the work. Ask any of the union men who have been in the thick of the struggle for human rights and welfare what they think of the churches, and you will not get a very warm response. Ask the same kind of men in Colorado, and you will find that Grace Church has become to them a real inspiration and help. I be- lieve if we are ever going to bring the masses of people into the church, it will have to be through the methods of this church. DISCUSSION Miss Dorothy Richards, DePauw: I have gone to a church, in fact to several. churches in the cities, where the congregation depends upon the kind of clothes that are worn. A poor laboring person would not dare sit in the back of the church for fear of condemnation. Furthermore, I have been 98 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH asked if I would not cease teaching a certain Sun- day school class because it was found that I did not believe in the virgin birth of Christ. Again, I have just come from a college where the church put on a dishonest campaign for building funds. I have been dictated to as to what I should believe and as to what interpretation I should put upon religion, either admittedly in some churches or surrepti- tiously in others. I wish we could define the church. John Knox, Emory University, Georgia: The ques- tion has been asked, What is it that the church pos- sesses which qualifies it in a unique way to be the instrument through which these social ideals that we all have may become realized in our social order? There are two things at least that occur to me. One is that the church has the historical Jesus; re- gardless of what our theories about Jesus are, we have the historical Jesus; the church has him, the world has him. Then the church has an organ- ization. I believe that these two things distinctly constitute the church as the agency through which those who are interested in bringing in the kingdom of God can operate. Mr. Bennett, University of Michigan: Christ said: “Thou shalt love thy God with thy whole being. This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” When a man has lived up to those two commandments, it seems to me he is a Christian, and the great office of the church is to see to it that folks live up to them. . YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 99 Mr. Headrick, Southwestern University, Kansas: The church is a national organization owning land and buildings, and made up of the clergy, the laity, and any other officials that might work in the func- tioning units in different communities. If you call those things churches and get off of this vague idea of the mysticism of the church, we can discuss what these individual units can do. Mr. Dempster, Harvard: I think the church is an institution which exists primarily to nourish each individual who comes into it, to encourage him to devote his life to the best things that he knows; an institution that exists to increase the conviction in each individual who comes within its doors that life is worth living and that the best life he knows is worth living. I think that is the peculiar fune- tion of the church. Mr. Jenkins, Ohio State: I think we are doing a mighty bad thing here if we are locating on one side of the social-service aspect of the church, and going into the question of industry and racial prob- Jems and into war questions and attempting to solve them, while we place on the other side, completely severed, spirituality and mysticism. The two must be linked together inseparably. That is the way Christ would work it. Miss Carney, Columbia: I should like to say that last year I was in religious work in Denver, and I found that Grace Church does not have the coopera- tion or the sympathy that it should have. Facing that local situation of the pastorate being at vari- 100 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ance one with another, with no unity among the de- nominations at all or among the ministers, how can we honestly work within the church? Perhaps it is time for a new break to come, and perhaps this morning shows some signs of our waking up to some- thing of that sort. Miss Wray, Mount Holyoke: I wonder if we are not saying right here that the church assumes that there is a God. What are you going to do with a real student who will not assume anything and says he has got to find a God, if there is one, for himself? The real student will say, “I cannot belong to such an organization as that.” Suppose the student says it is a compromise for him to go into the church. Are we going to say that the church is the only organization for him to go into? Perhaps there is something else. Perhaps we should scrap the church. We are assuming too much that the church is the only thing. Mr. Kosman, Reformed Church Seminary: The point I wish to make is that the church is the natural expression of human nature and that it is ridiculous to think of scrapping the church. The church stands as the expression of man’s hunger for God and his hunger and thirst for righteousness. Those things are as fundamental in man ag the gregarious instinct. Further discussion on the subject “Christianizing Our Civilization” preceded the addresses of Thursday afternoon. Mr. Wilder, University of North Carolina: North YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 101 Carolina has some two hundred cotton mill villages and five hundred cotton mills. The people have mostly moved in from the country where competi- tion has been tremendously keen, and there is prae- tically no feeling of community unity, due largely to. sectarian churches. The cotton mill people are not going to church since they have moved into these places, except to occasional revival meetings just to let off their pent-up emotions. There is a case for missionaries, and I would like to see this conference go on record as opposed to any sectar- ianism whatsoever in small communities. Mr. Helm, Toronto: I should like to add a few words to those of the last speaker. At the present time I am acting as student pastor in three small communities, and I can say quite definitely that the church functions in those communities; there is no sectarianism. All the people go to church. Mr. Wesley, DePauw: I am in a small city, and just across the street from the place where I hap- pen to be receiving my money there is a large com- munity of socialists, they tell me. They never asso- ciate with our church. I may be ostracized for go- ing over there, but I hope that I may go over next summer and spend possibly a day or an evening a week getting acquainted with these socialists, these radicals, and form some sort of a study class for them and help them out by personal contact. Mr. McCollom, Washington State Normal: May I offer what the school I represent is doing to solve these problems? There is a required Freshman 102 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH course of one year on contemporary civilization, based on the contemporary civilization course of Columbia. The syllabus has been revised to meet the local conditions. , The school is located in a farming valley with two of the largest coal mines in the State. There are a great many outside lecturers brought into the school. One man, a Negro lecturer in the town, presented to the classes the necessity of studying the Negro problem, and they are studying it from first-hand information. Another lecturer has come in and has discussed the illiteracy problem. The county in which the school is located happens to have the lowest literacy rate of any county in the State. The students themselves are making a spe- cial attempt to look into this problem, and a great many have offered their services as teachers and a great many are at present teaching some of the illiterates of the community. Mr. Ockenga, Taylor: Concrete data have been called for. I am a working student. I left Michigan Sunday night. A labor problem had created turmoil there, and the religion of Jesus Christ transformed that church and left everything peaceful. I challenge the statement that was made this morning about the church not making good men but good men making the church. If good men make the church, I want to know how it is that a drunkard can come into a church altar and go away and drink no more. I want to know how it is that a2 woman can come in a Sinner and go away and sin YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 103 no more. How is it that the church does these things if the church does not create good men by the divine power which comes from the Son of God ? Mr. Garner, Western Theological Seminary: I had an experience some years ago in Pittsburgh at the United Mission on Bedford Avenue just above the Union Station—a settlement of all kinds of for- eigners, of all religions. We tried there the system of having classes in the evening, and we taught the foreigners English and the young people manual trades. SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION Dr. Albert Parker Fitch You are beginning to see in this conference that the best thing that you can do as a body of young men and young women who want to attack these crucial problems is to utilize, as you do not utilize, your opportunities for intellectual advancement in your colleges. You don’t know how to think very well. You have taken courses in economics, you have taken courses in political science, and you must have had courses in literature which record the feeling and the experience of the race, and you can’t discuss these things intelligently. There is something that this conference can do toward furthering the ethical reform to-day, and that is to reform the scholastic situation of undergraduates. The Foreign Mission Program of the Church / THURSDAY AFTERNOON SPEAKERS: R. A. Doan, Columbus, Ohio. J. Levering Evans, Student, Yale Divinity School. Y. T. Wu, Student, Union Theological Seminary. Rachel Childrey, Student, Cornell University. ADDRESS SHOULD THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE BE CONTINUED? Mr. R. A. Doan THIS question cannot be answered by “yes” or “no.” A vote here to-day would reveal a diversity of opin- ion which would doubtless favor the continuance of some kinds of missionary endeavor and the aban- donment of others. Suppose, without any prelimi- naries, we first recount some of the accomplish- ments of this vast movement which has for its avowed purpose the lightening of the load which all mankind is carrying. 1. What are some of the things the enterprise we have miscalled “foreign” missions has been doing? Originally the basic motive which carried Chris- tian foreigners into other lands was the belief that 104 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 105 the messengers possessed a truth of God which would revolutionize the world spiritually. A vast number have been sent out (and a few of that kind are still going) whose conception was largely that of an invasion into lands as evangels of a great truth, seeking converts. They were to “preach the gospel” everywhere. This was commendable and they were pioneers in unselfish service and real heroism for Christ. But they failed to conceive at first that they went as seekers of truth which these other peoples possessed. Out of this beginning, however, there came slowly the realization that those of every nation had something to contribute spiritually and intellectually to every other nation. Upon this realization whatever of condescension or superiority there may have been in the original decision to go disappeared from the heart of the true missionary. As the program and the necessary support were enlarged less and less did the going of the mission- ary depend upon a personal decision only. In addi- tion to consecration there must be qualification for specific tasks. Then the enlargement of the under- taking has created a supporting body back of the missionaries that has often been dictatorial, fre- quently denominational, and almost always theo- logically harmful. To the nationals of other lands especially do I want to say that I believe the mis- sionaries, for the most part, would have attempted little that might be termed partisan had they been unhindered by their supporters. Even now we find 106 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH great boards in America instructed by their consti- tuency to enforce curtailment of liberty and to re- quire subscription on the part of their adherents to creeds or practices or ceremonies demanded by each particular body. Dogmatic legalism, which sometimes passes for Christianity, still stalks abroad in missionary work. Are we to “fence in” the intellectual and religious area beyond which love cannot go? Not soon shall I forget the agonized cry of as fine a soul as I have known in all the world when he, a deeply spiritual Latin- American Christian, said to me in Uruguay last summer, “Why don’t the denominations in America pool their resources and just send Christians down here to South America who will seek to place Christ into the Christless Christianity of this continent and who will leave their denominationalism at home!” ee Let us not minimize or forget the good done by Christian missions. I have no more right to con- demn Christianity because of some unlovely theo- logical hair-splitting Christian than I have to judge Hinduism by the Indian Sadhu at a mela in Benares who seems to me the embodiment of filthiness and repulsiveness. Rather would I know Hinduism by some of its fine, spiritually-minded followers who do not depend upon outward appearances to declare their renunciation of evil. More justly would I evaluate Christianity by the life of one who really exemplifies Christ. Another thing which must not be overlooked in an YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 107 inventory of Christian missions is the fact that we do not live in the same world that existed when the migration of Christian missionaries began. That is self-evident to those of you whose vision is world- wide. But there are many in the church to-day whose Christianity has been static through the years. That the cumbersome machinery of absentee management has failed to adjust quickly to the pro- found change of national and international ideas and outlook cannot be questioned. But it does not follow that because of this inelasticity, this failure to change quickly from the autocratic to friendly cooperation, Christianity in nations where the church is new should ignore or discard everything coming from the heritage of the old. It is true that the application of Christ’s teach- ing and life must be made to meet conditions that vary widely in each country and among different peoples. The result will not be standardized Chris- tians who will actually think and believe alike. God forbid. But surely, unless Jesus was a false teacher, there will be something deep down in the lives of his followers everywhere that will identify them as members of a common body—without refer- ence to ceremonials, or any particular catechism or creed, or any theological formula. We may safely conclude, therefore, that we are honest only when there is an open-minded acknowl- edgment that the missionary program as now pro- jected and conducted does not meet the need of the hour. Having so concluded, it remains to consider 108 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH if there are ways in which Christians in all lands may discard traditions and inconsequentials and present Jesus as the world’s Saviour. 2. What are a few of the essentials involved in the continuance of missionary endeavor? There must be an absolutely honest purpose on the part of the organizations in America and elsewhere and the missionaries who go that the latter shall become simply the assistants over there of those who represent Christ in their own countries. There must be no ecclesiastical or theological test of those who go out to aid in making the world Christ- centered. To set the limitations in advance beyond which the church shall not go in these lands where Christ is just emerging is to proclaim our belief in the incompetency of God. This means that de- nominationalism and theological partisanship must die. Last night an earnest question was asked from the floor about the dissemination of denominational- ism in what we call the foreign field. The answer from the platform was to the effect that the board here represented never asked a missionary candi- date whether he would go out and be a partisan or a propagandist for that particular denomination. But may I say to you in kindness that in spite of that statement, the truth of which I do not for a moment question, the representatives of that de- nomination do go out as flaming evangelists for that particular denominational body. I say to you from personal observation through the years, that I be- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 109 lieve denominationalism to be the greatest sin of Christendom, denominationalism as it exists to-day. Iither we must join the Christians of the world in presenting a free Christ who may work without man-made interpretations or we must compel Christ to begin anew with a broken group as he did when Judas misrepresented him. This means, then, that we have come to the hour when the expanding influ- ence of the church throughout the world is dead- locked unless we may go forward in a united way. Having concluded that all is not well in present missionary endeavor, and having suggested certain broad lines which seem absolutely essential if we are to proceed successfully, let me speak more directly of the personal responsibility of those of you assembled here in this conference. It is possible to be too impatient in these chang- ing days. May you pause long enough to observe that there is a host of us who join you in much of your dissatisfaction with things as they are and in much of your crusading spirit. May we not all counsel together in seeking to discard all which is obstructive and in salvaging that which has borne or may bear the test of time. Allow me to outline in a sentence or two the posi- tion to which I have gradually come. I hail as com- rade every lover of the truth, of whatever religion, but to me Jesus Christ is supreme. I recognize the good in every man who seeks to make a better world and I join with him as we fight together against evil, keeping clearly before me the supremacy and com- 110 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH pulsion of Christ’s life and personality. I see in him the only true Saviour, and I acknowledge no other Lord, but I believe he works through those who do not know him, as well as through those who know him much better than I, and I question no man by the way. I wish we might pledge ourselves together, with all our diversity of opinions about many unimportant matters, to give ourselves with great abandon in an effort to interpret Christ to a disheartened, discouraged, and suffering world in this hour of suspense. If we attempt to do this, we must prove him to be a tolerant, loving, yearning Christ and not a controversial zealot. That is no easy task in face of the present criticism of the church, much of which is just. Somehow I cannot help feeling that our Father looks down upon us to-day, with our sin-sickness, immaturity, incapability from all human stand- points of meeting this situation which we have out- lined here during these days, and that he would, if he could, say to us: “Give a good account of your- selves. My strength is sufficient.” ADDRESS: “WHY I AM GOING TO THE MISSION FIELD” Mr. J. Levering Evans May I speak just a minute as a member of the conference and as a member whose only qualifica- tion to speak in this capacity is as one who has an intense desire that each one of us shall in this con- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 111 ference get deeper than ever before into the reality. Therefore, just for a few moments I am going to ask us to do just a little bit of introspection. To start that, I am going to ask a question. Are we satisfied that we as individuals have done everything in our power to get as near to the source of this universe as we can, admitting that if one could get near the source of the universe, we would see better how to work in this universe? Here is where the point of my going to the for- eign field comes in. I do know that in Christ’s inter- pretation of God I have come nearer to this source than through any other method. There seemed to be something very literal in the fact that the truth Shall make you free, as Christ has presented it. You probably say, “What has this to do with foreign missions?” I can tell you just this, it is very simple. It is because there are fewer people where IT am going who can tell other individuals who are struggling for the search of truth about Christ than there are here. In regard to this contact with Western civiliza- tion, you know my primary purpose for going. The secondary purpose is to help in any way I can along any other lines. The line for which I feel myself ‘most fitted is in the line of the study of the labor problem. I feel that the industrial revolution in some measure is coming in the world, and the ques- tion is, is it coming as Christ would have it come, or is it coming without Christ in it? In the third place, I feel in regard to this inter- 112. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH national Christ that I have a very concrete example that will help you as it helped’ me. I had courses in college dealing very strongly with the question of environment and heredity, and I began to wonder whether Christ and the spiritual growth would be real to another national. I was sitting on the banks of a river that runs by Shanghai, during a chapel period talking with a friend of mine, a Chinese. fe were cutting chapel because we wanted to get together on the problems that were facing us. He had been studying the religion of his father and mother, mostly Buddhism, I believe, and he was tre- mendously in earnest and tremendously perplexed as to the relative values. I tell you frankly I don’t know what prompted me to bring up this point of Christianity, but I asked him what he thought of this: “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” He turned around and said: “I know what you mean. That’s what I have been looking for.” Then we Started in as two people on the same road, and we understood each other better than many of my American friends. We had gone through some of the same spiritual experiences and found that Christ brought us nearer to the eternal than any other agency. ADDRESS: “SOME CRITICISMS OF MISSIONS” Mr. Y. T. Wu What I am going to do now is just to summarize for you very briefly some of the criticisms that have been made on the missionary enterprise. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 113 I think I can summarize the criticisms under three heads. The first point is that the missionary move- ment in the Oriental countries has been a forced growth. Somehow Christianity has been forced on China and other Oriental countries. It has been taken to China by the point of the sword. If you compare for a moment the way that Buddhism has entered China with the way in which Christianity has entered, then you will find that the Chinese have sent missionaries to India in order to get Buddhism, but Christianity was imposed on China by force, by treaties, by special privileges which are the result of military domination of the Western nations. Another reason why we think that the missionary movement in the East is a forced growth is the way it has been established. The missionary movement has made more use of material resources than any other things. It has relied more on money, on build- ings, and has emphasized statistics more than other things which are characterized by spiritual calm. It is just numbers and size that you find as the strength of the missionary movement in the East. The second part of the criticism is that the mis- sion movement has ignored the culture of the Oriental countries. The missionaries coming from the so-called civilized countries naturally have gone to the Eastern countries with a certain degree of superiority complex. Then, again, the uniqueness of the Christian religion has made the missionary think that Christianity is the way of life, the only way under the sun in which people can be saved, 114. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH also that to know this way and to know it as the Western people do is the right thing in disregard of whatever things the Oriental people may have. I am going to suggest a few changes or ways in which this situation can be improved. First, I would like you to consider this question: Is there any real message in Christianity? After we have come into contact with these countries and know the culture and civilization, do we still believe that the message in Christianity is unique, and in what way unique? Can you still believe that nobody can be saved in the orthodox sense without knowing Christ? And how can you imagine a country like China with five thousand years of civilization, with all the great men, the great sages, who could have existed in all the peace and comfort of life without knowing Christ? I am not going te answer these questions for you, but I would have you think over them and work out your own answers. The second suggestion that I would make is this: Is our whole Christian institution on the right track? I would point out to you that it is not a right thing, even if such an institution has worked well in Western countries, to duplicate it in Oriental countries; and how much worse it is if it does not work well in your own countries! The third point that I would like to make is the faoture of the mission movement. I would venture te say that the day of the missionary movement in its original sense is gone, that a missionary going to other countries as boss and teacher is no longer YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 115 needed nor welcomed, that there are enough native leaders in the countries who could take up their own work in their own way without having the help of the missionaries. I suggest to you that instead of having our missionaries going out as they are going out now, we should exchange Christian workers. What I mean is that instead of having a one-sided process of one nation or one set of nations sending their missionaries to another set of nations, the process be made mutual, so that not only America will send the Christian workers to China, but China will send the Christian workers to help you work in America. | I have made this suggestion because I think that every nation has some contribution to make to the universal truths which we all must recognize, and that without these we cannot hope to have a uni- versalized Christian gospel which will meet the needs of all people. For myself, in spite of the anti-Christian move- ment that has been raging in China during the past three years, it is still my strong conviction that China no less than the rest of the troubled world needs the gospel of Christ, and also that without the contribution of the East and the West, the rich- ness and fullness of Christianity cannot be realized, but that the way in which Christianity should be _ expressed and lived, the institutions and organiza- tions that should be established, and the way of interpreting Christ, toward these things the foreign Christian workers can help, but the way in which 116 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH they should finally be worked out should be mies et in the hands of the Oriental people. FOREIGN MISSIONS REPORT Miss Rachel Childrey of Cornell University pre- sented the report of the Foreign Missions Commis- sion. (See Findings, p. 193.) A part of the fol- lowing discussion related to that report. Mr. Smith, Union Theological Seminary: I should like to speak as one hoping to go out as a mission- ary. Missions, whatever they may have been, are not now a youth movement; they are a middle-aged movement, and if we can find a way of increasing the influence of youth, both on the foreign boards of this country and on the other side of the water, almost all of these things which are in this report can be accomplished; and if we cannot have that, few of them can be accomplished. I think it is true that few mission boards are pre- pared at the present time to give a man any assur- ance as to the country to which he is going until he is practically at the end of his preparation. I think that a modification at that point would be of immense significance. Also, there is this rule in many boards, a very extraordinary rule in the past which actually delays the influence of young men on the mission field. They get to the mission field and for a considerable length of time they have no vote in mission organizations. I would like to speak now of the other side of the YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 117 water. I find that the main difficulty with mis- sionaries on the field is not their relationship with the Christian Church, but their relationship with the people outside. It is very difficult to persuade any group of people, either liberal or conservative, to take an active part socially with the Oriental people. I have worked at it in certain places, and it has brought certain results; but the tendency is the other way, and I am sure that if this increasing influence of youth on the other side and on this side can be brought in, much of that will be solved. Mr. Masa, Taylor University: I would suggest that you Western students, students from America, instead of taking your graduate work in Europe or in some universities in America, go to some Oriental universities and live side by side with some of the Oriental students. If you want to bring Jesus Christ into the hearts of the Oriental people, you will be more able to interpret to them the teach- ings of Jesus Christ or of Christianity in that way. J invite you American students to the Orient, to any university in Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, or India, to live side by side with us so you may be able to know our social customs and live as our Orientals live. Mr. Cranston, Union: Since the thirtieth of May many missionaries have not stood with the Chinese in their struggle for justice, but have been quite willing to side with their governments, especially one or two European governments, in upholding those governments regardless of consequences, with- 118 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH out thinking what is the thing that Christ himself would probably do under those circumstances. Christianity ought to stand against imperialism. Unquestionably there is too much truth in the state- ment that certain individual missionaries have not always done so. All of the fine pretenses in here about getting to know Oriental students and listening to them in this country would sound a great deal better in this con- vention if we had a larger number of Oriental stu- dents here. With the exception of three or four students from the Philippines, and Mr. Wu, the number of Chinese, Hindus, and Japanese here is almost negligible. When you talk about these things on the campuses of your colleges, consult the Oriental more thoroughly and see that he has a larger place in such conferences as this. We will be richly the gainers to practice what we preach in that respect. Mr. Carino, Garrett Biblical Institute: My friends, if you would only let the theological prob- lems stay in your homeland and fight among your- selves with them and let the missionaries be free to form an organization of Christianity that would be for the best, then I am sure the foreign work would be successful and that Christianity and Jesus Christ would be exalted above denominationalism. Mr. Kim, Garrett: I came to America about a year ago or a year and a half ago, and I know about the Korean missionary situation. In Korea the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Southern Meth- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH’ 119 odist Church wanted to unite. We have a union seminary between the North and South. Our Korean conference between the Northern and Southern Methodists voted to unite, and we wanted to have one union church, but your American home mis- sion board did not vote entirely for this union. We also wanted to unite between Methodists and Pres- byterians. Our Korean folks who wanted to unite did not know why they separated, but they knew Christ and they liked the idea of the union. They did not know about the sectarianism, because the Korean mission field is too young; it is only forty years old now. THURSDAY EVENING SPEAKERS: Mr. Thomas Que Harrison, New York City. Mr. Howard McCluskey, Instructor, University of Michigan. Dr. Ashby Jones, Atlanta, Georgia. ADDRESS Thomas Que Harrison We are all hunting. It does not matter whether we are Christians or non-Christians, youth to-day is hunting for a way of life. We want to know, it seems to me, a philosophy about the religion of Jesus that will satisfy our intelligence and a fellowship with Christ that will give us a self-respect and power to follow him in his program; and, we also wish to know the mind of Christ for his church in 120 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH our generation, a program that will stand the test of race and war and industry and the other denials of his way of life in our civilization to-day. I wonder if I can personally confess that since I have come to this conference I have taken stock and | I have discovered that I am not in any real and sincere way devoted to Jesus Christ. When we are in trouble we pray for help. When we are lonely or discouraged or overburdened we ask for help, and we get it. But how many of us (and I will say this for myself) are living in any spirit of devotional exercise daily, in any spirit of asking, “What would Jesus do if he walked in my steps day by day?” My friends, let us start with our own lives, let us say that we will keep fellowship with the masses of humanity by denying ourselves a standard of living which is that of luxury. Let us say that we will begin to live in the spirit of sacrifice, and that we will share with our brother, and that we will make the church open to the masses of humanity. Let us protect ourselves against that insidious temptation that chokes out the idealism of every youth of eigh- teen or twenty or twenty-five so that by the time he has got to be fifty he becomes a coward and a com- promiser because he doesn’t want to suffer or to feel that his wife and children should feel the pinch if he is thrown out of a job. I talked with a man in Baltimore who said to me, “Young man, I have seen many come before me with the flame of an ideal, and inside of a year give up the struggle and betray it; and I am wondering if YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 121 one year from now you too will have succumbed to the temptation.” if the church is going to cut out mammonism, we in the church, whether we are laity or ministers, must begin with ourselves. Then we should intro- duce a lay ministry and we should send men and women to the mission field as Paul went out. I want to say that just as soon as we try to clean mammonism out of the Church of Jesus Christ, just so soon are we going to be opposed, are we going to be burdened, are we going to be tempted to the very marrow, and that very process will drive us in upon each other and upon God. If the Christian Church dares to gird herself with the heroic task of build- ing the Kingdom on earth, she will be driven upon her God and she will find him, and in giving up riches, in giving up popularity and becoming ac- cursed and outcast and persecuted, if necessary, she will find fellowship with labor, with the masses of humanity that Jesus associated with and built the Christian Church upon. She will find fellowship with youth. There is a Rockefeller Foundation report about the youth of the Christian campuses of America. That report is this: That after thorough investiga- tion throughout this country to-day, eighty per cent of the young people who come on the college campus have lost all vital contact with the Christian Church. To-day youth is withstanding terrific temptation, moral temptation, and in some cases succumbing to 122. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH it, and youth to-day in America is being flooded with a paganism of self-indulgence, and the only way for us to get hold of youth and keep youth in the church in any vital way is to offer to youth the heroism and the courage of the program of Jesus, the kingdom of God on earth, absolutely transforming all human relationships in the spirit of brotherhood, making war and race friction and industrial conflict impos- sible, transforming society both personally and in the group, and bringing in the thing which he promised to his disciples if they would dare to at- tempt it. You heard our Chinese friend this afternoon, but suppose that we in our Christian Church and as _ citizens of America standing on a Christian plat- form absolutely stand out against race disrespect, against economic imperialism and against the war question, and then go to China and receive Chinese here as friends. If we have practiced friendship and brotherhood, we can preach Christ, but if we refuse to practice brotherhood, it is blasphemous to preach Christ. To-day, whether in the foreign field or at home, the only way we can preach Christ is to practice brotherhood in the name of Christ. ADDRESS “Mr. Howard McCluskey As your chairman has indicated, because of the fact that I am connected with one of these iniquitous institutions that you have been hearing about, a YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 123 university, I will speak as an outsider, not as a professional religionist. My job does not take me into religion as a profession. I am interested in religion as an avocation. I have been asked to evaluate the major activities of young people’s work in our churches in connec- tion with the educational viewpoint. The first suggestion I want to make is in con- nection with the program for devotional education. It seems to me that as now constituted the devo- tional program for young people’s work is not ade- quate. I do not have in mind the old type of devo- tions that we used to think of, but it seems to me that the whole devotional scheme should be reinter- preted and put upon a new basis. For instance, why wouldn’t it be possible instead of depending entirely upon the Bible for devotional literature, to use the better literatures of the world in terms which young people can understand? Why is it necessary always to have audible prayer, for instance? Wouldn’t it be better to organize devotions some- what along the lines that the Quakers organized it, along the lines of silent prayer? And why wouldn’t it be a good plan to put the social reference, the horizontal reference, aS well as the vertical refer- ence, in our devotions and try to get a mystic com- munion with the individual spark in the soul of every person as well as the soul of God? Some of you perhaps wonder what that has to do with religious education. Let me make that expla- nation. Practically all of the psychologists in the 124 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH last twenty-five years have been making a desperate attempt to try to understand human nature, and after having analyzed consciousness in many of its various aspects, they seem to get a pretty good de- scription of what goes on in a person’s mind; but the one thing that psychologists cannot understand adequately and the one thing that is constantly a mystery to all psychologists and students of human nature is to find out what it is that makes people move and do things. Let me say that it is just as much a scientific fact that the religious motive is perhaps the most dynamic force in the world as it is a fact that there is a chemical reaction when you put two chemicals together in a test tube. Furthermore, we.are begin- ning to recognize that at this tender age of youth is the preeminent time, if it ever is going to be done, when young people are taught to reach and find those greater reservoirs of strength which will enable them to carry out the program that you have heard outlined to you in speeches. Most of my evaluation of educational methods as now used will concern itself mainly with summer institutes and young people’s meetings, and con- siderable of what I will say will be somewhat pessi- mistic; but in order to avoid any misunderstand- ings I want to pay a tribute to the educational progress in summer conferences made within the past five years. The condition is not as hopeless as I perhaps will indicate in a few minutes. Whatever you do and YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 125 whatever despondency and despair you may have about the success of this conference, as a person looking in from an educational standpoint, all I can say to you is, for heaven’s sake don’t give it up. If you can’t do anything else, at least do this much. Those of us who have been following these con- ferences in the summertime have been impressed with the futility of much of this conference work. I happen to have access to one of the most interesting investigations that I know of going on with respect to the attitude of youth, the student opinion on war. I have some advance data on that investigation. One of the most striking conclusions as a result of that investigation is this point, that in the theoreti- cal aspects of that problem the youth are willing to go a long way, a surprising long way, but in the practical aspects of that problem they go not half so far as you would expect them to go. In other words, there is a wide gap between theory and prac- tice, and those of us who have followed these con- ferences from time to time have recognized that the people in these conferences are actually talking about spiritual dynamite if they ever began to apply it to common affairs. Those of us who have been anxious to see some action taken have been impressed with the futility of these conferences. Let me try to analyze why I think there is a certain amount of futility. Prac- tically every discussion and every conference ends with the question, “What are we going to do about it?” In terms of specific behavior, what are we go- 126 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ing to do about the problem of war and the press, the Negro and the labor and capital problem? The reason there is an air of futility in these discus- sions and forums is that we can’t answer that ques. tion. We don’t know what we are going to do about it in terms of specific behavior. The reasons are two: First, we have no facts, Our knowledge is pitifully inadequate. Second, we have not tried anything. No one has lived through the situations involving these problems. No one has had to suffer because of beliefs on these prob- lems. We have no precedent, we have no experience in Christian living. The reason we get no further is that no one has anything to contribute in terms of concrete daily personal experience, and we will always go just half way. We will always be nothing more than verbal acrobats, inane religious dilet- tantes. We will be nothing more than half-baked Christians until some one tries something different, until some one risks possessions and public esteem, until some one experiments with Christian life on a Christian basis. Every young people’s society, therefore, shoal be a laboratory for Christian living, and every con- ference (get this, because I think it involves a funda- mental change in technique) and meeting should be a place for the exchange of experiences and the interpretations of significant samples of life, a gathering of new facts and an assembly of a new series of realities. For instance, let’s be specific; it would be a splendid thing if an organization head- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 127 quarters would gather and promote the production of case studies in Christianity, the like of which you heard here this morning. It would be a magnificent project to accumulate instances where people have successfully overcome old grudges through the spirit of love, how misunderstandings have been overcome through exercise of the law of the second mile, how some bitterness between student and instructor or some rancor between roommates or some nasty feel- ing between fraternities or sororities or campus fac- tions was dissolved through the spirit of kindness. Why wouldn’t it be desirable to describe in some detail, as we describe in social psychology case studies, for instance, of how some white students went about securing invitations for colored students. to a college prom, or how the discrimination of a hotel proprietor against colored folks was overcome through the spirit of brotherhood, or how some warm-hearted youth thawed out the congealed prejudice of some Southern friend by putting him into sympathetic association with some fine young man of the colored race? Wouldn’t that be a de- sirable thing to accumulate a large number of samples and case studies of that nature? Why shouldn’t we have the details of instances of how a group of young folks, fearless, went home and stumped the home town during vacation against isuch things as the high school R. O. T. C.? Why shouldn’t we organize and agitate for an era of demonstrated Christianity, and why wouldn’t it be splendid for headquarters to formulate programs in 128 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH terms of jobs to be done instead of outlining the year in terms of meetings, speeches and hot-air con- tests, where everybody talks about that which he knows least of? Why not outline each year in terms of specific items of behavior? Why not have a project Christianity, as we call it in education, instead of a gas-bag Christianity? The religious educational program is not organ- ized nor conceived in project terms. Look over the programs of summer conferences. In most instances the programs are on a speech-sermon-address basis. More recently conference programs are giving place for active, widespread participation in discussions, but the art of discussion leading is still to be mastered. Furthermore, more dependence is placed upon speech-making than discussions. Finally, most of the conferences have no background of informa- tion or experience. I am not speaking of experi- ence in terms of maturity, age. I mean experience in terms of Christian living. How much reliable information and knowledge about war and the labor problem, the Negro and the immigration problem is brought out or can be brought out in a conference of a week or ten days? How much can a group of youths talk and discuss these problems when their lives have had no contact with them except through hearsay and prejudice? The limitations inherent in the very short period of the usual conference (I am beginning to get specific again; you have been cry- ing for specificity) might in part be overcome by a preconference preparation and study of the prob- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 129 lems at stake in the conference, by the circulation of literature telling about it and asking them to study it. In ail the data I have been able to collect and assemble I have found not a single instance of where the members attending the conference are expected or stimulated to make anything like a thorough preparation for the issues that are bound to occur. That is a specific suggestion. Let’s evaluate the young people’s meetings. The two major activities educationally are the institutes, conferences like this, summer and midwinter, and the young people’s meetings throughout the year. If you look over the topics of the Christian En- deavor, B. Y. P. U., and the Epworth League, you find in some cases as much attention to Methodism or denominationalism, as the case may be, as to these broad social problems. Then, again, in young people’s meetings we meet much the same difficulty that we do in the summertime, inasmuch as there is too much emphasis upon speech-making and not enough emphasis upon discussion; but much worse _ than this is the fact that the materials that are pre sented in a course of a half year of young people’s meetings are fragmentary and disconnected and oftentimes erroneous, and inasmuch as there is vir- tually no preparation nor any background of fact, no serious study of the problem, it is no wonder that the discussions are bound to be superficial and de- plorably inadequate. Furthermore, the usual technique of young peo- ple’s work as now conducted in summer conferences 130 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH and young people’s meetings disobeys what the psy- chologists call the law of exercise. Once a week at most, according to the present scheme, is given over to this type of thing. Preparation for the meeting is superficial. The outcome of the meeting involves little or no obligation in conduct. Hence, from interrupted, desultory, listless training we expect to develop a series of virile, intelligent Christian attitudes. Did Coach Hawley of Dartmouth train his foot- ball team with a perfunctory half-hour drill on late’ Saturday afternoons? Does a cross-country runner train on a half-hour’s practice when the mood strikes him favorably? Does a law student or a medic or a Ph.D. candidate pass his rigid examina- tions on a perfunctory thirty-minutes-a-week fort- nightly schedule? Can the youth of the Christian Church of America hope to contribute its share of the redemption of modern society when its present training consists of ten days’ training once every one or two years and a listless thirty minutes every week? ' When young people get in the habit of think- ing in terms of concrete realities, we will have a much better type of education than we have at the present time, and when we take the step that one of the leading men in Christian work at the present time took last year in canceling all of his speeches and devoting an entire year to study by himself in order that he might better prepare himself for his speech-making and his student contact, when we YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 131 also take the attitude of the students who go to these industrial summer experiments in these indus- trial centers like we did at Detroit with the Michigan men last year, and put our lives upon an experimental basis, then we will have a right to ask questions, then we will be equipped to get some place; and when we regard our lives as a laboratory experiment, and when we regard life as a creative adventure in aggressive good-will where we are the subject in the experiment and the spirit of love and the spirit of Christ is the control in the experiment, when we begin to conceive of life in those terms and we begin to organize the education of young people in those terms, then we will be able to answer the question, “What are we going to do about it?” We need to create new patterns of living, we need to create a new form of life in Christian life, we need to come above the stage of mere dilettantism and being mere dabblers in religion, above the Ten- Commandment level to the level of the Sermon on the Mount, and if we can regard all young people’s work as a tremendous cooperative experiment in Christian living, then we will reach the basis for a new society, then we will be performing our func- tions as Christian young people. Some one may call this a dream, but when we want to do a thing bad enough and when we have coupled with it constructive imagination and a de- -vouring passion, and when we begin to combine that with intelligence, dreams are realized under those conditions. 1382 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH THURSDAY EVENING - DiIscussION Mr. Jenkins, University of Chicago: One of the speakers the other day, speaking on the question of © war, I think, hit the nail on the head when he said | that the attitude of the church largely has been that — war is a terrible thing, but for heaven’s sake don’t © do anything about it. I should like to ask a question or two here. I want to ask, for one thing, when we are going to face the question of R. O. T. C. training squarely. — I have seen something of R. O. T. C. training my- — self. I had it in high school, in summer training camp, in college. It is only recently that 1 have waked up to what it is. If there is anything on this earth that I am sure of, it is that R. O. T. C. train- ing is one of the things that leads more than almost : any other factor we have into war. I don’t think — that you can get a group of young men at the age of — ‘high-school students and give them bayonet train- a ing day after day and work them up into the frame of mind where they are encouraged to visualize a man before them when they go through the drill without getting them into the frame of mind where ‘war is a natural result. They don’t want war; they ‘appreciate how terrible war is, but their whole men- tal process is geared to a point where war is natural when the situation comes. It has frequently been defended on the ground of physical training. Thateis all bosh. There is only YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 183 one purpose, which is military training. I should like to know whether we believe what we have been saying, and whether or not we are coming to a point or will come to a point where we are not only say- ing that war is wrong, but we are willing to do something about it. Student, Northwestern: I arise to address this. convention as a Christian, and as a Christian I am mindful of the fact that there is an omnipotent God, and that God in his kind mercy has chosen to place us in a world not as he might have done, but in a world where strife and sin are. That God exemplifies Jesus Christ where we find love. I agree heartily with all that can be said against war. I as a Christian can conceive of no case in which it is not a terrible sin to go into war, but the point comes up in time whether or not it may not be a greater sin not to go to war. If the time ever comes when we must go into war to protect our institutions or see them smitten, then I say we ‘should go into that war with men who are capable : of leading other men to a fight which will not sacri- fice them needlessly as was done in the last war, and we should have our warehouses stocked with such things that will enable us to help the wounded. In the base hospitals in France in the last war they went weeks and weeks without a drop of antiseptics. I stand as a Christian gentleman, proud of the '-R. O. T. C. of our land, proud to say that if we have to face that problem again, as men of Christ we can. go in and put ourselves into a fight to win. — 184 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Mr. Ripley, Ohio State: I have seen a little of war, and no one can ever tell me that any war is_ justified. It is wrong, and nothing that you can say ean make it right. The R. O. T. C. cannot make officers, and it seems to me that this last war should certainly have taught — the folly of sending young men with a high regard for the salute and close order drill and no other knowledge of things military than that into the trenches to lead men. They can’t do it. The R. O. T. C. is wrong for this reason: It makes _ passive militarists of men. They put you in the. frame of mind which will cause you to not object to. war, in which you will say that war is inevitable and we must prepare for it. They do it in this way 4 With their pretty blue uniforms, their trick swords, | and the bayonets (out of alignment), their spurs, their parades, you get the idea that war is a pretty thing, that you parade with a band leading you. You never see the bands in war. The band is es | into litter bearers, stretcher bearers. That is why the R. O. T. C. is wrong. It makes passive militarists. Mr. Wilson, Columbia: It seems to me there are three questions which are typical of problems which we as young people face. The first is the R. O. T. C. and the military training system of the War De- partment. The second is the proposition before us of universal conscription which takes away from a man in advance his right to pass on the justice of participation in war. Third is the mobilization of mae Sal eel ie eel YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 135 industry which is now being carried on by the War Department, with preferred and secret contracts, with a guaranteed rate of profit, and all that that implies, To return just a moment to the R. O. T. C., be- cause that is the one issue which faces us most Squarely as students, what can we say of this system which intimidates students and faculties when at one university in the Middle West the colonel of the R. O. T. C. comes to the Y. M. C. A. secretary and says, “You shall not have discussions in the Y. M. C. A. on war or peace,” when in a city college the faculty voted whether compulsory military training _ should be continued, and fifty-four voted that it Should be continued, sixteen that it should not, and thirty-nine were not voting, some of the thirty-nine not wanting to vote and others not having made up their minds, and some of the fifty-four coming to the students and apologizing to them that their case was unanswerable but they could not vote with them? What sort of system have we that intimi- dates faculties to such an extent that they cannot vote as their opinions direct? It means the per- petuation of the war system, reaching down into the high schools. ADDRESS: “THE REAL DYNAMIC OF THE CHURCH” Dr. Ashby Jones It is the vogue to-day to criticize the church, and I think that nothing is quite so heartening as the 1386 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH fact that those who are members of the church are becoming our most intelligent critics. Nothing to - Ine is quite so hopeful as a gathering like this where ~ you have found out that the thunderbolts neither of God nor of the church itself would strike you if you stood up and frankly told your objections to the church. Back of all the criticisms, perchance, there is this. feeling in the minds of us all, that with the varied differences and divisions of Christianity, both as to denominations and divisions within denominations, Christianity to-day cannot deliver its full tide of strength at any given moment upon any given sub- ject. I don’t mean so much that we cannot speak. the same words. God grant that the day never shall come when we shall speak the same words or think the same thoughts or bow at the same time, but there should come a time when with a oneness of spirit and with a passion for a common purpose, we might deliver the full strength of Christianity upon some forward movement for the world. | For myself, it has seemed very significant that while Jesus never left a model creed for all of us to sign, he did leave a model prayer. I say significant because, after all, prayer is the very essence of any man’s religion, because in one’s prayer he re- veals in the address the God whom he worships, and then in the petition the dominant desire of his own heart. While churches and denominations are dif- fering in policies and rituals and creeds, all the churches repeat “Our Father who art in heaven,” YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 137 and “Thy kingdom come,” and “Thy will be done on earth.” Wherever that prayer is uttered in sincerity we have the spiritual seed concept that shall one day produce a harvest of spiritual unity in Christendom. My beloved friends, to my mind here is definitely the function of the church in the Christian world to-day and always. The church is to make a Pente- costal experience for man. So far from holding to the forms of the past, so far from insisting upon the ancient traditional vocabularies of the past, so far from defending a religious language, to my mind the highest function of the church is to translate the spirit and teaching of Jesus in every generation and in every tribe and in every tongue, the living language upon the lips of men. I have wondered sometimes if we haven’t tried to narrow the commission by making it geographical, if we haven’t thought that when we go around the physical earth in some mystical way we carry the Kingdom around. You might put a church on every hilltop and in every valley around the world, but not until the religion of Jesus had learned of the vocab- ulary, not simply of all the nations of the world but had learned to speak in terms of commercial, of po- litical, of industrial life, of racial problems, not until we had a Pentecost and until the employee could hear the employer talk, Christ’s spirit in his tongue, until men facing each other with their differences in life could find those differences melting within the Spirit of Christ because they speak the same lan- guage, would Christianity come. The Cooperative Work of the Churches F'ripAY MORNING, JANUARY 1 GREETINGS From THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA Mr. J. C. Torrance, Student of the University of Toronto Vury briefly, I want, first of all, to give you a word picture of that great, vast assemblage of people who gathered together at the consummation of Canadian Church Union. It was held in a great athletic arena in Canada. There was a great sea of eight thou- sand or nine thousand human faces sitting there, reverentially in devotion, in silence. In the calm of that hour they felt, as never before, how abso- lutely trivial had been the things that divided them and how supreme and how great were those things which united them into one common cause. Promptly at ten-thirty there emerged from the three entrances at the back of the arena three streams of delegates representing the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists. They gradually came down, merging into one stream—three great living streams merging into one real, vital living stream that was thereafter to be one corporate body for the furtherance of God’s kingdom in the coun- try. | The representatives of those three great denomina- 138 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 139 tions laid down or presented in words the offering of their respective denominations. There were the sturdy independence of Congregationalism, the dignity and love of order of Presbyterianism, and the fervor and evangelical zeal and enthusiasm of Methodism fused and united together at that great meeting. Perhaps one of the greatest moments was when those eight thousand or nine thousand de- voted people partook of the sacrament. The bread and wine were passed. In one moment every per- son there partook of the bread, and the next mo- ment every one partook of the wine. Why did we feel union was necessary? I think it was this: there was a growing conviction among Christian men and women in all denominations that the business of sectarian strife and jealousy was something we should put behind us, and go out and do the real work with a united front. A couple of real benefits of the union are these: spiritually, we have realized the fellowship that has never been realized before among our denominations in the country. We have asserted the imperative right to readjust our creeds and doctrines in the light of new revelation and in material waste. We have economized on men and money, on unnecessary duplication, May it be the sincere and the real passion of every individual here to go out from this conference into whatever field of activity they may be, with a prayer in their hearts to make real and try to fulfill that prayer of our Master, Christ, that they all may be one. 140 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH REPORT OF STUDENT COMMISSION ON THE COOPERATIVE WORK OF THE CHURCHES What we have long hoped for has been at least partially realized. The churches of America have definitely entered into the field of cooperative action for the accomplishment of the kingdom of God upon earth. The church has developed a corporate con- science within recent years that is making for an ethical and moral solidarity among the Christian forces of the nation. Many of the denominations have seen the folly of a divided counsel. They see, likewise, the futility of a divided offensive against the social unrighteousness of the present day. The urge of a common task has Jed many of the larger and more influential church bodies of America into a comradeship of cooperative action that is truly remarkable. This venture of the churches into - the realm of practical unity is known as the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Organized in 1908, the Federal Council has grown both in strength and in influence until to-day it represents one of the most promising developments of our American church life. The manner in which the Federal Council operates for the advancement of a Christian world-order will be stressed through- out this report. The Student Commission on the cooperative work of the churches, consisting of nineteen students representing nine denominations and twelve educa- tional institutions, met in New York City in the office of the Federal Council of Churches, November 20-21. There appeared before the members of this Commission the Executive officers of twelve organ- izations, and of seven commissions of the Federal Council of Churches. This report will present a very brief outline of interdenominational cooperation with respect to YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 141 international peace, industry and social service, mis- sionary activities, race relations, and education. I. INTERNATIONAL PRACE There are two organizations connected with the church which work tirelessly for a Christian inter- nationalism : 1. The Commission on International Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 2. The World Alliance for International Friend- ship Through the Churches. The Federal Council’s Commission on Interna- tional Justice and Good Will is made up in part of representatives of the various denominational peace committees. This Commission has recently ex- panded its program and now furnishes secretarial leadership for the enlistment of all ages and groups, both men and women, for the promotion and attain- ment of world peace. We desire to call the attention of the Conference to “The International Ideals of the Churches,” adopted by the Fifth Quadrennial meeting of the Federal Council, in Atlanta, Georgia, December, 1924; 1. We believe that nations no less than individuals are subject to God’s immutable laws. 2. We believe that nations achieve true welfare, great- hess, and honor only through just dealing and unselfish service. 3. We believe that nations that regard themselves as Christians have special international obligations. 4, We believe that the spirit of Christian brotherliness can remove every unjust barrier of trade, color, creed, and race. 5. We believe that Christian patriotism demands the practice of good will between nations. ’ 6. We believe that international policies should secure equal justice for all races. 142 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 7. We believe that all nations should associate them- selves permanently for world peace and good will. 8. We believe in international law and in the universal use of international courts of justice and boards of arbi- tration. 9. We believe in a sweeping reduction of armaments by all nations. 10. We believe in a warless world, and dedicate ourselves to its achievement. . We believe that these ideals represent the most advanced step yet taken by the churches in their pro- gram for world peace. We call upon our denomi- nations to cooperate faithfully with the Federal Council’s Commission on International Justice and Good Will for the universal application of those principles of world peace and brotherhood. This Commission has been active in the campaign for American adhesion to the World Court. It has labored for fair treatment of the Japanese and other Orientals. It cooperates each year with the Chau- tauqua Institute for a series of lectures on Interna- tional Relations From the Christian Viewpoint. It publishes a most valuable type of literature bearing upon all phases of the general subject of Christian internationalism. It voices the conviction of the church with respect to disarmament and the move- ment for the outlawry of war. | The World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches is an international organiza- tion of religious forces with National Councils in many countries, including America. This organiza- tion carries on a promotional type of campaign in all lands and seeks the development of a world con- science on the part of the churches against the war system. We heartily indorse the work being accomplished by these and other church agencies in behalf of. peace. Yet we do feel that there is need for a closer | YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 143 cooperation between these peace organizations and commissions, and, if possible, unification. We recommend the following specific proposals as steps toward the establishment of peace, to be under- taken by the churches in their interdenominational capacity: 1. The entrance of the United States into the World Court. 2. The entrance of the United States into the League of Nations. 3. The removal of discriminatory legislation in our immigration policies. 4, The elimination of compulsory military train- ing in our schools and colleges. 5. The elimination of the war emphasis from our school textbooks. 6. The promotion of universal disarmament. 7. The discontinuance of the so-called “Defense Day Tests.” 8. The cultivation of a Christian world-minded- hess among the adherents of our several churches. We recommend that the individual churches through the denominational agencies give loyal sup- port to these and to other endeavors in behalf of peace. We of the younger generation feel that our nation should not stand aloof from the rest of the world on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine or by virtue of a speech once made by George Washington, but should come forth whole-heartedly and make its contribution toward the solution of these inter- jnational problems. II. Inpustry anp Socian Service The Federal Council of Churches, through its Commission on the Church and Social Service, has adopted the following platform of Social Ideals: 144. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 1. Equal rights and justice for all men in all stations of life. 2. Protection of the family by the single standard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of mar- riage, proper housing. 3. The fullest possible development of every child, espe- cially by the provision of education and recreation. 4, Abolition of child labor. 5. Such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community. 6. Abatement and prevention of poverty. 7. Protection of the individual and society from the social, economic and moral waste of the liquor traffic. 8. Conservation of health. 9. Protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases and mortality. 10. The right of all men to the opportunity for self- maintenance, for safeguarding this right against encroach- ments of every kind, for the protection of workers from the hardships of enforced employment. 11. Suitable provision for the old age of the workers, and for those incapacitated by injury. 12. The right of employees and employers alike to or- ganize; and for adequate means of conciliation and arbi- tration in industrial disputes. 13. Release from employment one day in seven. 14. Gradual and reasonable reduction of hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human life. 15. A living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 16. A new emphasis upon the application of Christian principles to the acquisition and use of property, and for the most equitable division of the product of industry that can ultimately be devised. We are in hearty accord with these principles. It is our desire that the churches of America, in their various interdenominational activities, shall attempt the transformation of human society in conformity with these ideals. To this end, the Federal Council’s Commission on the Church and Social Service has been carrying on a commendable YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 145 and energetic campaign within recent years. This Commission, in voicing the indignation of Prot- estantism against the twelve-hour day in the steel industry, helped mightily in the abolition of this economic enslavement. It is interesting to note that in this matter, as in some others, there was close cooperation between the Federal Council of Churches, the National Catholic Welfare Council, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. More than 125 conferences have been held throughout the country under the auspices of this Commission, for the study of labor conditions. Both employers and employees were represented in all these industrial “get togethers.” This Commission investigates industrial condi- tions from time to time and exerts its influence for conferences and for a just. settlement of disputes. It carries on a campaign in the churches for the elimination of child labor. It is concerned with child welfare and with the problems of delinquency. It has encouraged the wide observance of “Labor Sunday” and has supplied many pulpits with speakers upon labor themes. We commend such activities and offer the fol- lowing suggestions: 1. That the Federal Council’s Commission make certain that its work is not a duplication of work already being done by other Social Service Bureaus or Commissions. 2. There is need for a study of the attitude which the American Federation of Labor now holds con- cerning the church’s interest and action in labor affairs, with the view of effecting a closer under- standing between religious and labor groups. 3. More churehes in America should conduct Forums where conditions in the economie and in- 146 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH dustrial world might be thoughtfully and fearlessly discussed. Ili. Muisstonary ACTIVITIES There are a number of interdenominational agencies that are functioning for the advancement of the church’s missionary program. Foremost among these is the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Through this body the various denominational foreign missionary bodies are able to achieve many cooperative activities. This Con- ference is an integral part of the International Mis- sionary Council, which includes in its membership the various national and continental groups. Co- operation in missionary enterprises is thus made possible on an international scale. The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America acts as the clearing house for the denominations having work in that general area. The religious life of Mexico has been greatly advanced through this interdenominational activity. The allocation of territory to the various missionary boards and the establishment of union schools for educational purposes speaks volumes for the effectiveness of this program. The Federation of Woman’s Boards of Foreign Missions of North America is composed of 23 Ameri- ean Boards, 4 Canadian Boards and 4 interdenomi- national groups. The Council of Women for Home Missions is doing a splendid piece of work in pro- © moting a follow-up service among the immigrants and in introducing them to some church of their choice in the community in which they settle. One of the greatest advance steps has been that taken by the Missionary Education Movement. This agency publishes missionary textbooks for all the denominations. It likewise promotes interdenomi- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH =§ 147 national institutes for the creation of a public opin- ion favorable to missionary enterprises. The Commission on Relations with Religious Bodies in Europe of the Federal Council of Churches is a medium through which the churches of the United States assist in the reconstruction of Euro- pean Protestantism. We believe that, in so far as the Protestant churches of Europe are concerned, the denomina- tions should be willing to work through the churches already established in this field. We strongly urge, in all foreign missionary centers, the establishment of indigenous churches. We should still cooperate financially with these native churches, but should increasingly place the responsibility of executive amd administrative leadership in native hands. We believe that there is a great need for the closer integration and possible amalgamation of all these interdenominational agencies carrying on mission- ary work. There is need also for some sort of a research and information service that could be intrusted with the task of interpreting the new science of mission- ary activity to the general public. TV. Race RELATIONS Among the peoples of the different races and reli- gions in the United States there is a decided lack of adjustment, which manifests itself in discord and conflict. Because of this situation there is exhibited social and industrial injustice that is not in keeping with the teachings of Jesus. In the presence of such a situation it is evident that the church nust take some stand. The Com- mission on the Church and Race Relations of the Federal Council of Churches has attempted to meet 148 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH this problem in the shaping of public opinion. This has been done by means of literature, interchange of pulpits, work in elementary schools, and the establishment of interracial committees. The Com- mittee on Good Will Between Jews and Christians has arranged Union Thanksgiving services, Open Forums, and Student Meetings. The Council of Church Boards of Education has secured the co- operation of Jews and Christians on matters of religious and moral education. We feel that this work is an effort in the right direction, but it is just a beginning. We believe that the church should continue to bend every effort to create harmony and good will among men. We are unconditionally opposed to the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations which have attempted to use the Protestant Church as a shield for their unchristian activity in stirring up prejudice. The work of education in such eed should be emphasized. We feel that such organizations are outgrowths of ignorance and misconception. The work of enlightenment should be carried on among the mass of the population as well as among the college students. | The Federal Council’s Commission on the Church and Race Relations has conducted in recent years a series of interracial conferences. The constructive measures adopted at these conferences by the local white and colored leaders augur well for the future. Interracial committees have been set up in many of the larger cities of the country, including Brook- lyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and Toledo. This Commission has carried on a successful cam- paign against lynching. It has inaugurated Race YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH © 149 Relations Sunday. On this day, in certain instances, White and Negro pastors exchange pul- pits and joint interracial mass meetings are held. It is especially recommended that the church remove any existing racial segregation within itself. We believe that such an act would have definite effect on the economic and political life of our country and would go far toward removing race prejudice. We believe that this program can be successfully carried out only by means of interdenominational cooperation. V. EpUcATION One of the most effective means of securing a higher standard of moral and religious education not only in the local community but also in the college center is by placing greater emphasis upon interdenominational cooperation. It is interesting to note that at the University of Iowa a school of religion has been established which has as its purpose the training of leaders for religious activity in their home communities after graduation and return from college. Prepara- tion for work in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish centers is taken into account. At the University of Missouri there has been established a student religious council which is composed of representa- tives from all of the denominational groups on the campus. In East Lansing, Michigan, the Congre- gational Church in the town has been converted into an interdenominational church and now has serving as members of its governing board Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. This church, while financially supported by these denominations, is actually being operated by the students of the several denominations. At the Uni- 150 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH versity of Pennsylvania an interesting experiment is now in operation, where each denominational repre- sentative is specializing in a particular field of activity. All of this is very fine, but it is limited to a very few isolated experimental stations, and as a result the large majority of our church population is not affected by its work. We recommend the wider use of week-day schools of religious education, based upon interdenomina- tional cooperation. In many communities the local School Board is ready and willing to cooperate with the churches in promoting week-day schools of religion. However, the various denominational groups in the locality too often are jealous of one another and are not willing to enter into an agree- ment for interdenominational religious education. The next move seems to be up to the leaders of the church in the local communities. The interdenominational Daily Vacation Bible School movement for summer programs has already proved its worth. We desire to see a further exten- sion of these schools in more cities and towns of the country. There must be a vital strengthening of the reli- gious education departments in our denominational colleges. There is also a further need for a higher type of ministerial leadership in college communi- ties. We recommend that, wherever the conditions warrant, student pastors be assigned to college centers and that they be properly recognized by the administrative authorities. The various denominations should raise the stand- ard of ministerial education. A college education or its equivalent should be a prerequisite for ad- mission to all theological seminaries. The curric- ulum should be continually changed to meet new YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 151 conditions, and field work should be given a promi- nent place in the program. We should also like to suggest that all seminaries offer a four-year course. In the schools that are now operating to prepare non-college men for the ministry we desire to see a more adequate curriculum and teaching force. It is important to note, in conclusion, that all of these suggestions can be realized only through inter- denominational cooperation. The International Council of Religious Education and the Council of Church Boards of Education are the two interde- nominational organizations working in this field. We believe that there is room for much closer co- operation between these two boards. We suggest a thorough study concerning the possibility of actual unification. GENERAL FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS We have had brought to our attention the two world movements that are now at work on the prob- lem of church union: The Universal Christian Con- ference on Life and Work and the World Conference on Faith and Order. The former hopes for a far greater unity within Christendom along lines of practical endeavor. The latter is concerned with the doctrinal aspects of reunion. The Universal Ohristian Oonference, which met in Stockholm in August, 1925, really achieved something worth while. It brought to- gether into practical fellowship the Protestant churches of America, England, and the Continent, together with the churches of the Eastern Ortho- dox faith. The Conference issued a pronouncement on social and international questions, the first inter- national declaration of its kind in the history of the Christian Church. The World Conference on Faith and Order meets in Lausanne in 1927. The divi- 152 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH sions of the church with respect to faith, doctrine, sacraments and orders strike at the very heart of the entire question of church unity. We express our hope that the Churches of Christ will be able to find some way of escape out of the ecclesiastical confusion of the present hour. Stockholm and Lausanne! The youth of America hails with genuine thanksgiving these movements toward the ultimate unity of the Christian Church. We feel that the church, in these efforts, is facing toward the future. We do not believe, however, that the time is yet ripe for the erasing of our denominational lines. We look forward to a continually growing spirit of federated cooperation, keeping ever before us the ideal of ultimate unification. Toward this end it is to be greatly desired that denominations of the same church family shall effect an organic unity among themselves as a stepping-stone in this evolu-- tionary process of church union. Even though the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Meth- odist Episcopal Church have failed in their efforts for unification, a failure which is to be deplored, yet we see in these and similar efforts a ray of hope for the future church. We look with enthusiastic interest upon the movement in Canada which has resulted in the merger of three denominations in the United Church of Canada. We deplore the present controversial condition in the Christian Church and feel that it advertises the church in the wrong light. We believe that the solu- tion of this unhappy situation is to be found through an open-minded approach to the principles of Jesus, which will result in a strong adherence to one’s Own convictions combined with a tolerant attitude toward the honest convictions of others. We commend most heartily the work of the Fed- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 153 eral Council of the Churches of Christ in America. This organization is indispensable to the religious life of America and to the progress of Christianity in our own and other lands. Its interests and activi- ties cover the whole range of our religious life, indi- vidual, social, and international. We would like to see. every denomination in America a constituent member of the Federal Council and giving it en- thusiastic support. As the natural development of this cooperative principle, we recommend the organization of State and City Federations of Churches where such insti- tutions do not already exist. We desire to see our Roman Catholic friends invited to participate in all united church programs, even though they may appear at times to be hesitant in accepting such invitations. There are too many interdenominational organ- izations. We see no reason why there should not be a general merging all along the line, for the sake both of efficiency and of economy. We look forward finally to the establishment of an International Council of Churches, which shall have as its supreme purpose the Christianization of our international relations and ‘the establish- ment of a fuller spiritual life among all people. As young people we desire to cooperate with these interdenominational agencies. We feel that we are entitled to a place on the administrative and execu- tive boards of such organizations as the Federal Council of Churches and its several commissions and committees, the Council of Church Boards of Education, the International Council of Religious Education, and the Interdenominational Mission- ary Movements. We petition the executive officers of the universal Christian Conference on Life and Work and the 154. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH World Conference on Faith and Order for repre- sentation on their respective Continuation Com- mittees. We have no desire to displace the leader- ship of our adult comrades in the faith. Not at all. But we do have the right to “sit in” with the older leaders of these movements and whenever possible to add eur word of counsel in the shaping of pro- grams and policies. For the further promotion of these interdenomi- national contacts we strongly advise the frequent convening of this particular type of student confer- ence, MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION Gorpon E. BieeLow, Union Theological Seminary Wiii1am E. Brarsrep, Brown University Harotp R. Brennan, Wesleyan University Monty CoGeEsHaLL, Vassar College Marcaret Day, Vassar College JoHN A. Decker, Union Theological Seminary JoHN W. Easton, Princeton University TILLMAN H. Henperson, Howard University Lenora Hiscock, Mount Holyoke College Carrot, H. Lone, Princeton University Epwin R. Levinn, New York University Grorce E. McCracken, Princeton University Leon R. McKetvey, Lafayette College W. D. Marutas, Union Theological Seminary Wiitiam C. Swartz, Lafayette College Berry SpPEARH, Mount Holyoke College JOHN WILLS, Massachusetts Institute of Terhnplovy Roserr OQ. WILson, Princeton University JAMES H. Wooprurr, Boston University School of Theology General Chairman Walter W. Van Kirk, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 155 In presenting various portions of the Report of the Com- mission, members of the Commission placed the following additional information before the Conference. EDUCATION AND INTERDENOMINATIONAL ACTIVITY George H. McCracken, Student, Princeton University We have working in our churches two organiza- tions which work from a joint enterprise standpoint. The first of these is the Council of Church Boards of Education. Their first business is to find facts, then to put them out at the disposal of the people who want them. Their work is further carried on in an at- tempt to unite the workers in various tax-supported institutions. They have a department that works on life service. One of their most important func- tions is to work with the various boards of educa- tion. ; The other organization in this field is the Inter- national Council of Religious Education which is a joint combination of the International Sunday School Association and the Sunday School Council of Evangelical Denominations. It has State, county, and city branches. The aim is to bring into religious education the principles of pedagogy. I want to stress the importance of work that is being done by the Council of Church Boards of Education among the universities. At the University of Pennsylvania they have united all the student workers into one council, and each student worker takes up a special depart- 156 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ment of work and is the specialist for the whole university, for all denominations on that particular subject. At East Lansing, Michigan, they have started a union church in which four big denomina- tions have representatives on the board. SocraAL SERVICE AND INTERDENOMINATIONALISM W. D. Matthias, Student, Union Theological Seminary Just what has the church accomplished thus far in industry from an interdenominational point of view? We find there are two institutions which are specially important in this regard: first the De- partment of Research and Education of the Federal Council of Churches. We find that this group is doing a great piece of work in the rural field. Again, we find that the same department has given to the public the prohibition report which has received some commendation and vice versa. Then, again, we find that the church is trying to see just what the status of union labor is to-day. These, my friends, are some of the things that that particular department of the Federal Council of Churehes is now doing. Then there is the Commission on Social Service of the Federal Council of Churches. We find it work- ing in making an investigation of the motion pic- ture industry, and some other things of like regard. Furthermore, they are cooperating with the Ameri- can Federation of Labor in attempting to determine just why labor is opposed to the church, and how 4 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 157 the church can help labor, and in turn, labor serve the best interests of the church. We find that in March a team is to go to Florida to investigate some of the real-estate propositions which are now being thrust upon the public in that State, and at the same time hold conferences as to just what ethical real-estate business should be. They are now making study courses as to what the unemployment situation is, some practical ideas of industrial democracy to-day, and also how the church and industry can get together. MISSIONS AND INTERDENOMINATIONAL Work Mr. James Woodruff, Student, Boston University Is it not significant that in that work of the church which most exemplifies the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of the dark angel of sacrifice, there came the first drawing together of the forces of the church? To-day the Foreign Missions Confer- ence of North America is an organization repre- senting the mission boards of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, with the excep- tion of the Southern Baptist. Then there is the relation with the religious body of Europe, which is a Commission of Federal Coun- cil of Churches. May I say, I think the most significant cooperative effort is the Federal Council of Churches organized in 1908, a result of this co- operative missionary effort, and now including all the departments of the church. 158 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Race RELATIONS AND INTERDENOMINATIONALISM Gordon E. Bigelow Our nation was founded on the assumption of brotherhood and yet in these latter days we find some hectic junkers at Washington slapping our Japanese brothers in the face by abrogating the Gentlemen’s Agreement. As a nation we pretend to follow Jesus, and yet scores of Americans stand by their very church doors to watch with gibing satisfaction the lynching of a Negro. Christian America, although it does not seem credible, per- mitted between 1885 and 1922, 4,154 persons, 3,120 of whom were Negroes, to be lynched by mobs. Large groups of our population will have nothing to do with Jews because they maintain that this is a land for Christians, and yet at the same time claim to be the followers of the greatest Jew who ever lived. Many individuals distrust the immigrant, saying that he is dirty, unsanitary, and the cause of much crime; and yet he is forced to live under con- ditions which of themselves produce filth, disease, and economic hardship. Some question the rights of the Roman Catholics to their religion and yet praise Roger Williams for helping to establish religious liberty. It is indeed obvious that these conditions which I have pictured are incompatible with Christianity. We are told that there are over 50,000,000 Christians in the United States to-day. Youth wants to know what is the matter with these Christians. It is encourag- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 159 ing to note that certain groups within the church have been working to right this wrong. Four years ago there was formed as a department of the Fed- eral Council of Churches of Christ in America a division called the Commission on the Church and Race Relations. Here are some of the things it is doing: It is conducting a campaign to marshal the churches against lynching, the goal being “ a lynch- less land in 1926.” It assists local committees in settling their community problems. It conducts interracial conferences. It promotes race-relations Sundays on which days white and Negro pastors and representatives of their people visit churches of races other than their own. We were astounded to learn that out of 247 Negro churches less than twenty reported that a white preacher or white person had ever paid them a visit. Just one year ago this past November the “Commission on Good Will Between Jews and Christians” was formed as a branch of the Commission on International Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. This Commission is aiming to bring the Jewish and Christian peo- ples closer together, so that between them mutual understanding and sympathetic appreciation shall prevail. | The Commission on International Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council has been actively engaged in an attempt to solve this race problem. Noteworthy among its efforts is the protest against the Japanese Exclusion Act. 160 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH On October 24 the Federal Council of Churches issued an appeal for justice to China. It was urged that China’s welfare be the chief consideration of the international conferences being held in Peking. The statement presented to Secretary Kellogg in- cluded a plea for the abolition of extraterritoriality and restoration of tariff autonomy to China. We suggest: 1. That the church can accomplish nothing in the solution of the race problem until its members them- selves are won to a belief in the efficacy of the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount, and then transcribe that belief into action. How can our so-called one hundred per cent American church members call their brothers “dagos, wops, kikes, guineas, coons, and niggers,’ when the Christ whom they claim to worship was himself a Jew and an Oriental, and the one great principle for which he lived and died was that all men are brothers? 2. Since we feel that ignorance of the facts is really at the bottom of the whole problem, we advo- cate a much more extensive campaign of education which shall disseminate the real truth concerning the races in question. We feel that altogether too few church members at the present time know what the leading anthropologists of the world have to say about the question of inferior or superior races. 3. We urge that the pulpits throughout America be used more frequently to present these facts to their congregations. 4. We feel that here is a problem upon the solu- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 161 tion of which all the churches of the community can work in united effort. In only such united endeavor will the various denominations realize their com- mon objectives, and thus foster cooperation and good will. Two methods of approach to the problem are sug- gested by contemporary society: those of force and those of mutual cooperation and good will. The method of force has been applied through the his- tory of mankind, and he who runs may read its failure. It is the feeling of our committee that this method is absolutely un-Christian. To this end we wish to voice our disapproval of all such organ- izations as the Ku Klux Klan, the American Defense Society, and the National Security League. Prob- ably the most flagrant demonstration of this spirit is found in the Ku Klux Klan. Youth feels to-day that the church should spend more time learning the lessons taught at the manger cradle of Bethlehem and less time at the tinseled altars of one-hundred-per-cent Americanism and race superiority, which a material civilization has erected in our country. Then would the song of the angels become a program of life, and in good will men might discover that peace which is essential to the establishment of God’s kingdom—a kingdom which flies no flag but the flag of universal brother- hood. DISCUSSION ON THE CHURCH AND COOPERATION Mr. Barton, Missouri: That speech and the pro- 162 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH gram opens the way to a very concrete and actual suggestion that I want to make to this conference. It has to do with our direct connection of the church as we go back to the campuses. Anybody knows that the place where we give expression is in the young people’s society. It seems to me there are possibilities of developing great cooperation in our churches. Imagine the possibilities, if you will, of a national program department which can give to the program chairmen of these young people’s so- cieties on our campuses some of these great facts and some of the material which is presented by some of the leading minds of the country, some of these commissions which give us facts, that will give us a high grade discussion on these subjects. Carry that one step further, if you will. On certain impor- tant occasions, and on important subjects, we could have all over America in every student group a simultaneous and uniform discussion of some of these great problems. The effect on the public conscience of America of such a program, it seems to me, would be tre- mendous. It would allow us as students to register our Own opinion in a way we have never been able to do before. I would suggest that this conference go on record as favoring the general idea of a higher type of program in our young people’s society, a coordi- nated approach on many of the important questions, and leave the details of definition of objective and exact organization and financing to the continua-— YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 163 tion committee of this conference which, it seems to me, ought to be appointed. Student, Friends University, Kansas: There was an excellent suggestion made about young people’s organizations. At the present time there are three of them, the Christian Endeavor, Epworth League, and B. Y. P. U. These are the outstanding ones. We could appoint a continuation committee to investigate the possibilities of amalgamation. It could have a national campaign, a national organ- ization of its own to work through the young peo- ple’s societies. If we could work out something like that, we would probably learn something about the technic of tackling national organizations. Mr. Winter, Chicago: If industrial injustice is primarily a cause of war and the unwillingness to consider property as a stewardship rather than as personal right, we want to know about it, and the place to learn about it is in the college halls where we have the facilities for scientific investigation. I think this conference should recommend several courses in our various colleges. They should be courses that are truly scientific. Mr. Dieviler, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School: At Pennsylvania we are not conscious of the struggle between the Christian associations and the individual denominations, such a struggle as is very commonly felt in other colleges. We are working together very harmoniously at Pennsylvania. The only job that isn’t held by a denominational secre- tary is that of the social service director. I don’t 164 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH know just what denomination he is. We don’t con- cern ourselves with that at Pennsylvania. Consequently, our campus has been said to be the best organized, religiously, of any in the United States. I don’t put that up as a boast. I don’t know whether it is very true or not. However, we have found the denominations work together har- moniously under such a system of dividing up the field. Mr. Wyker, Lexington, Kentucky: It is high time we young people have some organization through which we can gain expression. The Federal Coun- cil of the Churches of Christ at the present time is willing to develop a young people’s department. Mr. Veatch, Columbia: Our own campuses are split wide open by competing organizations. We have control over some of them to a certain extent. Some of those we have no control over. At any rate, — the boards of these organizations are not at all in harmony or in cooperation. There are the Y. M. C. A.’s, the Y. W. C. A.’s, the different church boards with student pastors, sometimes student houses, de- nominational houses on the campus. Here is an- | other proposition where the Federal Council can come in. I believe we want unity and Christian unity. I believe we want a student control, a cen- tral unity with all of the help the other organiza- tions can give us. Mr. West, Nebraska: It seems every time a group of students want to decide something should be done they decide to do it through an organization. I _ EE OT ey ee YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 165 wonder if we would accomplish more in carrying out the spirit by becoming a part of the Federal Council of Churches and working through that, or by going back to the campuses and attempting to put into practice the spirit that has been suggested here, the spirit of unity. That has been suggested as a solution of our problem. Very little has been said about how we should go about it. It seems to me we can do more by trying to. solve that problem than we would by doing the conventional thing of becoming part of the established organiza- tion. Mr. McFadden, DePauw: I think we need unity rather than cooperation among our young people’s societies. It seems to me that we students who are here have power enough to make a unified young people’s society, and this is a field in which we can work and really accomplish something. I think the Epworth League should go in with the Chris- tian Endeavor, because the Christian Endeavor already is a union society of several denominations. The B. Y. P. U. should disband and go for the same reason. I think we here have power enough to make a union young people’s organization, and union is what we need, and not federation or cooperation. Miss Ashworth, Barnard College, New York City: I think most of us who have attended conferences know the thing that happens at the end of the con- ference is happening here to-day. I have been at the Princeton World Court Conference. At the con- clusion we passed a resolution going on record as 166 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH formulating a permanent organization. Here we are formulating another organization. Mr. Dempster, Harvard: What we are trying to do is merge the organizations we have into one, and thereby instead of having more we will have less organizations. Mr. Smith, Union: I would like to report a cer- tain incident which I think every one here will be interested in hearing before we close at twelve o’clock. It is about race. Less than twenty-four hours ago a certain delegation here was stung open to its own negligence, and our common negligence in a certain race matter, and I know you will want to hear what it was. This delegation had invited certain other delega- tions to supper. One of the invited guests was a friend of one of our students and came from Liberia. We had made our arrangements for the supper by reserving tables. We found on visiting the restau- rant that this gentleman had been refused entrance there before, so we went to the manager of the restaurant to ask him what he could do. In a very courteous way, in a way that certainly disarmed us from attaching any blame to him, he said he was unable to allow this guest of ours to come in. He said, “There are people right here in this house eating their supper who will immediately make trouble, and make permanent trouble for me.” We walked for fifteen minutes across the city until we came to a Negro restaurant, a very nice, clean place, and the four of us had an excellent meal YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 167 and an excellent discussion on international affairs. I might add for your information, that the gentle- man in question is a man of exceptional education, and is planning to end it up with a study of anthro- pology in Berlin. That thing could happen anywhere. A_ block away from our own school we could not get entrance for a Liberian. We have been asleep on the matter. I think we have got to be all stung awake by this little incident, so we will get back and realize the difficulties. There are many Negroes in the city. Are we prepared to ask for special privileges for an African and not for an American Negro? We have much to deal with, so I would like to see this conference discuss the race matter locally, a program which will require the discovery of facts and will require action. May I add just one thing? We can begin first by finding out where our Negro students on the campuses have to go to eat. In our own college a while ago we found they had to walk or travel for one half hour in order to get to a place to eat. Mr. Veatch, Columbia: I also found this matter out last night and certainly intended to bring it up before lunch time. I made a canvass of most of the restaurants and cafeterias in town, and found there are very few who will accept Negroes. I found that it is not necessarily a matter of prejudice on the part of the restaurant keeper, but a matter of economic necessity. He would lose certain patronage if he allowed Negroes to come in. I, as 168 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH a Christian brother of Negroes, cannot eat in a place or sleep in a place where they cannot eat and sleep. I propose this noon not to go in the places where the Negroes cannot go. | | I propose that we eat in the restaurants where Negroes can go this noon and to-night, or else go to grocery stores and soda fountains and get erackers and cheese and go out on the lake-front and eat them. Mr. Schuldt, Garrett: We have been speaking a great deal about denominational cooperation, but there was one matter that seems to have slipped my mind. I don’t know what per cent of the students are from denominational schools. I am a graduate of Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa. I find that one of the things facing the church is multi- plicity. In the State of Iowa we have five Meth- odist colleges that are just bleeding the people and struggling along trying to make ends meet. We have a military academy too. SumMMarRyY OF DISCUSSION Doctor Fitch: I suppose I think about this what the man would who has been spending thirty years in teaching lovable, exasperating, and valuable undergraduates. I think the conference has shown most of the characteristics of the academic youth of this nation. It is high-hearted, eager, and gener- ous. It is somewhat superficial and irresponsible. It is inherently conservative. That is about what. I should have expected from an undergraduate body. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 169 There is one thing I want to say. You want very much to do something about certain burning issues in our day, economic issues. The issue on denominationalism is the particular one that you feel very, very keenly, largely because you feel that from inside and out. Of course you are not well acquainted with the facts. Young people, if you want to have this kind of a conference show the constructive morals and power it should, you have to lift the level of disci- pline and intelligence on your campuses. That is one of the things that nobody here has talked about. It shouldn’t be injected now, however. You show here impressions of ideas, and you show yourselves very sensitive to impressions of ideas, and you don’t show very much capacity to hold accurately the ideals themselves. - You give the impression of fine, irresponsible, dissipated minds, scattered minds. I think one of the things that is the weakness behind all this sort of conferences is coming out of the system of train- ing in the colleges, where there is too much student activity and campus activity, and too little hard, intellectual discipline. That is probably due quite as much to our forms of education and the men teaching as it is to your own intellectual deficien- cies. I believe that it is due to both of those things. If this body of youth could show as much intellec- tual conscience as it shows moral conscience, it would do wonders. 170 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH DISCUSSION Mr. Wise, Ohio Wesleyan: I cannot help but raise my voice in denunciation of another organization which we as students are backing and supporting and belonging to. It is not an organization, but a system which is un-Christian from the very root of things, although in some ways it does a great work; yet it is un- Christian. I believe there is a remedy for the un- Christian elements. I believe another organization can be put in place of this, which would remove the un-Christian elements, namely, selfishness, class distinction, raising up distinction between men and women, groups and individuals, and throwing up barriers. The organization which I speak of is a Greek letter fraternity system. In Ohio Wesleyan University we have put in mo- tion a movement not to displace that system, not to oppose it, but we have built up a system based on pure brotherhood. We call it “The Student Body of Ohio.” Our constitution reads, “Any man shall belong to this organization who is a member, who is a student in Ohio Wesleyan University.” Mr. Steiner, Ohio Wesleyan: What Mr. Wise has told you is true. He has brought to surface some- — thing that is very real to us. At Ohio Wesleyan © we have one thousand eight hundred students, about half of whom are men. The university does not — provide a single accommodation for these men. Four hundred and fifty of us men are living in Delaware, © Ohio, doing the best we can. The fraternities are YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 171 only providing for four hundred and fifty. The Same condition prevails in many other Ohio col- leges. Mr. Fallon, Allegheny: I, for one, am in favor of the proposition that has just been stated. I had the privilege of joining a fraternity, but I did not believe it was Christian. Mr. Wilder, North Carolina: May I make a sug- gestion for maintaining the pep of this convention on our campus back home? I would suggest that the names be turned into the Continuation Com- mittee of all those who have made New Year’s reso- lutions to do something about this, when we get back on our home campuses, and then that the Con- tinuation Committee send out about the first of February questionnaires or requests for a report of what we have done up to that time; these reports to be turned in before a certain date and published and distributed as they see fit. SESSIONS ON FINDINGS Fripay AFTERNOON AND EVENING Miscellaneous Resolutions Mr. Hoyt, Upper Iowa University: The discus- Sions in this conference have centered around ques- tions of war, industry, and race, and the church opportunities concerning these questions. These problems are the problems of the rural people as well as of the urban people, but the rural people ask for understanding and for sympathy, and for 172 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH help from the leaders, primarily interested in war, race, and industrial questions. I move that a committee be appointed by the Continuation Com- mittee to study conditions in relation to the church, and suggest specific lines of action both for churches and students through the church. Passed. Mr. Thomas, Columbia: We all remember the excellent speech by Mr. Ehrensperger the other day. In connection with this, may I offer the following resolution? I think most of us have thought suffi- ciently about this to require no extended discussion. This is the resolution : “Resolved, That the Interdenominational Student Conference go on record as favoring the adoption by our country and the church of a modified program of eugenics, consisting of these recommendations: “1. The legalizing of the dissemination of infor- mation concerning contraception, or birth control; 2. By the means of segregation and sterilization to progressively eliminate those who are, by heredity, mentally unfit.” I believe these recommendations are in accord with the spirit of Jesus, who came that we might have abundant life, which means the possibility of everyone living up to the best and fullest of his power, and not flooding the country with the vastly superfluous number of undereducated and under- | fed children, who have an exceedingly small chance of becoming anything but economic and social bur- | dens. Carried. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 173 FINDINGS An APPRECIATION OF THE CHURCH This report was adopted as an interpretation of the session which discussed this subject rather than as a line of procedure. . Chairman of Findings on this Subject, John Wilkin, Boston University “With full appreciation of inconsistency and faults within the institution, ever mindful of per- versions from the original spirit which gave it birth, we nevertheless express our appreciation of the ex- tent to which the Christian Church has fulfilled its true mission. “The church has had a responsibility in main- taining adequate worship, the communion of God, with man, and man with God. There is conflict and intelligent demand for social service. The largest Opinion seemed to be that that is not a question of either, but both. The fullest expression of Chris- _tianity demands three, God and two humans. __ “The question was raised as to whether or not the church should detach itself from Western civiliza- tion. Certainly, Christianity should be free from _the taint and coloring of any particular civilization, but the civilization in which it has been deposited Should have the backbone to combat existing social ills. The church also has responsibility in meet- ing the demands of the intellect. Religion is a mat- ter of intellect, as well as a matter of emotion and will. Only partially has it met this need; yet in some respects it has made a decided contribution. First, it has established and maintained colleges and universities; secondly, it is rapidly improving its religious education; thirdly, with partial guc- cess it has trained its paid workers. 174. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH “There is still, however, intellect bondage because of the influence of traditional beliefs. From this bondage we must free ourselves. Although given over to the consideration of appreciation of a church, the Wednesday morning session showed some decidedly critical expressions. 3 “J, Denominations are organized around ances- tral worship. “2 The church was born in an atmosphere of autocracy and has fostered same. “3. Its passion for service has given over to passion for power. “4. Tt has chosen corruption to crucifixion. “In conclusion, the greatest need is a critical loyalty to the church as the best channel through — which to express our ideas. Unselfish, intelligent service, steeped in the purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ and dedicated to sacrifice, is the only method of combating the sullen and persistent dangers of — institutionalism.” FINDINGS Tue Casp AGAINST THE CHURCH Chairman of Committee, E. W. Stimpson, Washington University, St. Louis Report adopted as an interpretation of the ses-— sion on this subject, rather than as a line of pro-— cedure: { I. Tse CHurcH AND LaABor A. Stanley Dowley, a labor radical, held forth little hope for the solution of the laborer’s” problem by the application of the prin- ciples of Jesus in industry through the, church. He based his pessimism upon the following grounds: " 1. The church is controlled by the domi- nant class and reflects its interests. © YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 175 2. The church is indifferent and does not know the facts concerning labor’s true condition. . The church has no practical program to offer to solve the problem. . The church is a subtle moral weapon to keep the worker satisfied and servile. . The church is traditionally opposed to radicalism. . The conference was more optimistic than the speaker but is agreed that 1. The church has been saturated with the philosophy and ideals of the dominant class, and has sacrificed the social teachings of Jesus for a conscious or- unconscious acceptance of our modern materialism. This situation can be im-. proved by a. A greater emphasis on the vital and dynamic expression of Christianity and far less stress upon the material aspect—mere numbers, wealth, and institutional buildings. b. Giving ministers more freedom ‘to preach their convictions on contro- versial subjects, in regard to the so- cial application of Christianity. c. Divorcing the ministry from the subtle pressure of capitalism. . The conference is agreed that the church knows far too little concerning the facts im contemporary industrial situations. The group felt that the church could act as a fact-finding agency in labor ques- tions, doing work similar to that of the research of the Social Service Bulletin If. ITl. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH of the Federal Council of Churches, but on a much larger and more intensive scale. Here there was a difference of opin- ion. Some maintained that fact-finding was as far as the church should go. Others felt keenly that the church should take definite and specific action in labor controversies, and wherever there is a demand for social justice. 3. The conference is agreed that the pro- gram of the church with regard to labor problems has been weak and ineffectual. (At this session little was suggested as remedial for this condition.) Tue CHURCH AND RACE A. The following criticisms of the church from the point of view of race were raised. 1. The church has often stood for the most bigoted kind of racial discrimination. 2. Such intolerant organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholic groups and anti-Semitics, have been tolerated and fostered by leaders in the Christian Church. B. The conference vigorously opposed the Ku Klux Klan, and all like organizations, and believes that every church should do the Same. Tour CHURCH AND THE SO-CALLED “MAN OF THR © STREET” Dr. Hubert Herring pointed out the fol- lowing typical and often heard criticisms of the church: 1. The church is an agency for propaganda : : } : . ¢ YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH — 177 rather than a fellowship for free spir- itual exploration. 2. The church is lost in institutionalism. 3. The church has lost the spirit of daring and adventure. B. The conference is agreed that 1. The church should limit the dogmatism of the pulpit, and that at least some portion of the church services should be given to open discussion and ques- tioning of the speaker. We _ should never be content with any doctrine as final truth. 2. It is the feeling of the conference that institutionalism of the church has been aggravated by denominational competi- tion and by professional jealousy and politics among the church leaders. 3. If there is a loss of the spirit of adven- ture, it is partially the result of our own complacency and indifference. The conference suggests that from within the church we use the experimental at- tack on all problems. FINDINGS CHRISTIANIZING Our CtvitizATION! Chairman of Findings Committee, Dale W. Stump, Ohio State University I. The Church and War 1. We believe the church through its churches Should excommunicate war, dissociate itself from * At the suggestion of Mr. Roy Veatch, of Columbia Uni- versity, a standing vote was taken showing the attitude of students on one aspect of the war question. One hundred eighty-one delegates voted that in the event of a future 178 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH the war system, and refuse henceforth to allow the use of the church as a medium of preparation for, or prosecution of, war. 2. Because we favor a positive education for peace, and because we believe that the present mili- tary training program of the War Department in high schools and colleges gives war an ultimate sanction, perpetuates the war system, delays dis- armament, intimidates students and faculty, and inhibits free discussion, we suggest: a. Abolition of military training in church and denominational schools. b. Abolition of military training in high schools. ec. Abolition of military training in colleges and universities, including immediate abolition of its compulsory features in land grant institutions. 3. Every local church should guard and guaran-— tee the right of an individual to follow the guidance of his own conscience when that conscience advises | against participation in war. 4. Because war is a negation of the value of hu man personality we condemn any attempt to impose — universal conscription of manhood on the United : } States, such as the proposed legislation before Con-_ gress. 5. We believe the United States should take a leading share in promoting and participating in any international organization fostering good will and cooperation between nations. In particular we urge the immediate ratification of the Protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, participation of the United States in formu- war they felt that they must absolutely refuse to partici- pate. Sixty-five felt that their duty in the event of war would lie in fighting. Two hundred fifteen felt that they had not thought the matter through to a definite decision. The total membership of the Conference was nearly 900. 1 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 179 lating plans for the projected disarmament confer- ence, and entry into the League of Nations. We urge the churches to continue their efforts along these lines. Discussion CONCERNING THE FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH AND War Mr. McCallum: It seems to me we are going the other way and not being tolerant, when we say “abolition of military training.” It seems to me we should state the abolition of compulsory military training, and permit those whose views are opposite ours to have it. _ Mr. Paige, Hamline University: Why take the teeth out of one of the best things we have gotten in the conference? Mr. Nowlen, Denver: We speak of toleration. If we mean toleration of sin, that is what we mean. When we speak of toleration in any form of war, it is toleration of sin. I would like to find out this fact. Even if military training in high school is not compulsory, it is made to appear so attractive, so patriotic in a way that high-school students can- not understand that it is taken up, and is just as popular as if it were compulsory. I think we would be taking all the vitality out of this resolution if we put the word “compulsory” in it. I think we would be tolerating sin. : Student, Cole, Iowa: I come from an R. O. T. C. institution. I realize there are a great many who believe in the R. O. T. C. movement. We have to take that into consideration. Not every one be lieves the R. O. T. C. should be entirely eliminated. If we are to take the first step, we must take it Tightly. Mr. Ewing, Western Seminary: This report of the committee seems to me to be inadequate in one 180 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH respect. I am heartily in favor of it as far as it goes. After a good deal of thought about war and peace, it seems war cannot be abolished by the action of the officials of one country. Therefore, I wish to propose an addition to the motion, without making any change in the committee report: “5. We believe the United States should take a leading share in promoting and participating in any international organization fostering good will and cooperation between nations. In particular, we urge the immediate ratification of the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, participation of the United States in formulating plans for the projected disarmament conference, and entry into the League of Nations. We urge the churches to continue their efforts along these lines.” Carried. (See Findings, p. 177.) — Miss Speare, Mount Holyoke: I would like to sug- gest that the vote just taken be sent to the Senate and President Coolidge, that they may know of our indorsement of President Coolidge’s indorsement of the disarmament conference, and also that the Senate may know of our feelings in regard to the © World Court and League of Nations. | Mr. Jenkins, Ohio State: When we go back to © our schools, President Coolidge and the Senate of the United States won’t send us personal letters and tell us to continue our efforts in the schools to get rid of the militarization of the mind of youth. All the State universities that are land grant universi- ties will still keep on drilling year after year unless each one takes the responsibility to go back on the © campus and stump the campus with the idea that — we are for the abolition of these different things. II. The Church and Education 3 Since we conceive life to be a creative experiment — in aggressive good will, we recommend the educa- — YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 181 tional approach to the solution of human problems facing the church, involving a careful survey of the facts, freedom of expression, consideration of all viewpoints, thorough experimentation, and as far as possible living contacts with immediate com- munity needs. We recommend that programs be organized in terms of Christian projects to be done instead of meetings to be held. We recommend the introduction of courses in denominational schools and universities designed to search for a Christian solution of social problems embodying a careful survey of the facts, freedom of expression, consideration of all viewpoints, thorough experimentation, and as far as possible liv- ing contacts with immediate community needs. - EXPLANATION OF BACKGROUND OF FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION Mr. Howard McCluskey: In order to utilize this time and make it just as concrete as possible, let me give you some of the things I had in mind that I was not able to give last night. First of all, I want to emphasize the experimental viewpoint. I have in mind such projects as the industrial sum- mer projects for students. They work in the large industrial plants and have weekly or biweekly meet- ings and discuss experiences. It embodies the prin- ciple of experimentation and the principles of ex- perience, which are absolutely fundamental. I would like to start out with this thesis. We do not know (get this) in terms of specific behavior _ what the Christian life means. We do know we 182 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH should not kill or steal, and some of those simple things. In view of the complexed society, in order to create the new life, we havea to experiment. Therefore, there is the necessity of sae erage the experimental attitude. Emphasizing the careful survey of all the facts is very, very important. As I indicated, one great leader in the new viewpoint has utilized the past year in getting new points, refreshing his back- ground so he can come to these problems with the better view. I would suggest that it be a pre- requisite of your conference that no one should speak unless he knows absolutely what he is talking about, and although he may not be an expert on the subject, at least have the advice and consultation of the experts. I would also suggest that you do not allow any one to speak in the young people’s meetings unless they have had contact with the problem with which they are dealing, either in terms of research or in terms of living experience. For instance, if you are going to have a meeting in one of your young -people’s groups on the race problem, I suggest be- fore you have that meeting, say, two weeks before- hand, that you appoint a committee to go out and make friends with some college students on the campus, and get their viewpoint, and make a sur- vey of the restaurants where they are discriminated — against, where they do not get fair play, and find — all the details they can. Furthermore, I wish it were possible to have an — > ny YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 183 adult educational program in the church like we have in the labor union and other fields. I wish. there were enough older people in the church who were enough concerned with the problem that they were willing to spend nights during the week study- ing these things instead of playing bridge. Let me suggest this concrete thing. The B. Y. P. U., Epworth League, Christian Endeavor and Luther League should be unified. The home offices Should be the pooling ground for the experience of the young folks all over the country. We, there- fore, would have a cooperative enterprise in Chris- tian living. Whenever you folks come up against any practical problem in your own community, you send a report of that problem to the home office. They send back bulletins to you, and you will have a unified approach of the whole thing, and you will be approaching it entirely upon the demonstration basis. I see absolutely no reason in the world why all of these organizations shouldn’t get together and work together in a unified scheme. If you would do that for five years or for one generation, the question of denominationalism would solve it- self, FINDINGS Tue CHURCH AND RACE We believe that present relationships between races are inconsistent with the mind and teachings of Jesus concerning brotherhood; and since we, as students, now face a real problem on our campuses 184 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH in the relations of the students of the various races and creeds, hence: We suggest that we give ourselves to an unbiased study of the races in an effort to find a solid basis for relationships of equality and mutuality and to gain an appreciation of the distinctive contribu- tion and capacity of each race. That the Cosmopolitan Clubs and other associa- tions of similar purpose and scope be given all pos- sible moral and material encouragement by the churches, the young people’s societies, and the homes in the communities concerned. That we work to remove discrimination against Negroes, in matters of grades and self-expression in classrooms, honorary fraternities, transportation facilities, hotels, restaurants, and places of amuse- ment. That we especially commend the work of the Inter- racial Council at the Ohio State University and recommend that such agencies be established on every campus and in every community where there -is a mixed population, with the end in view of dis- covering the causes of racial discrimination and obtaining an attitude of mind which will promote better cooperation and understanding. That we indorse the Dyer anti-lynching bill and inform Congress to that effect. DISCUSSION CONCERNING FINDINGS ON CHURCH AND RACE Miss Pennypacker, Fisk University: I want to : YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 185 draw attention to another evil that is facing us to- day. I am not a member of the Negro race or a despised race, but I am a human being with the same ideals, the same aspirations, the same pas- sions, the same thoughts that you have. Some may say that there is no need for this to be brought up or discussed because things are improving so rapidly. That is true. We recognize it, but I think that there is a need, as far as Christian churches are concerned, to discuss it, as long as they are not allowed to come in and sit where they please and voice their sentiments. We need to bring attention to it so long as a dying child is refused the privilege of being prayed over because she happens to be black. We need to bring attention to it so long as a blind man shuffling into a church is thrown out because his skin is black. I am not asking you to become a social outcast, i am not asking you to receive Negro students as your friends and your best pals, but I am asking that you give them a chance to do what they can. I am not asking that you go out in your community to become a suffering martyr, but I am asking that you create a sentiment whereby if you are not will- ing to help or give them a hand, for God’s sake, get out of their way and let them go on as best they know how. Mr. Bolton, Clark University: This is a perennial problem because it is so interwoven in our national life that we cannot escape it. It is a perennial problem, because I cannot see where America can w 186 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH dictate world peace, when she has shown herself utterly unable to deal justly with her own subjects. You probably saw this morning in the Tribune that there were eighteen Negroes lynched in the United States last year. Mississippi led with six. Mississippi was the highest. I would call attention to two specific cases. In the State of Mississippi one colored man was accused of a crime. He was tried. A jury of twelve white men sat upon his ease. A white jurist presided. He was shown to be innocent of the crime charged against him, yet when that man stepped from the courtroom, ac- quitted by a white jury, he was lynched. That is the sixth case that has happened in Mississippi this year. I might tell of another case in Florida. A young colored fellow was accused of the killing of a white man. A friend of mine said: “I would hate to be there. Some colored man is going to be killed.” In _ jess than twenty-four hours an innocent man was killed, because the angry mob was unable to find | the colored man who had committed the crime. When America shows her inability to restrain the savage impulses, and mobs and roasts her citizens, she cannot dictate world peace. In the State of Tennessee, the State that passed © the anti-evolution bill, the State that so zealously © guarded the Bible as the Word of God, I saw more than five thousand people lynch, roast, and burn a ~ colored citizen. I saw men carry a piece of the man’s clothing in their pockets. Right within the YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 187 shadow of the capital of that State, a young colored youth, about sixteen years old, was lynched. Yet that was the State that so zealously safeguarded the Bible. There are just a few suggestions I would like to make, and I appreciate this opportunity. I would suggest that you young people use your own influ- ence in learning something about the contribution and cultural achievements of other races as a means of saying whether other races are inferior or su- . perior; while the psychologists make such contri- butions, yet I feel in the present state of intelligence tests, it is dangerous propaganda for psychologists _ to spread the idea that the inferiority of races is _ upon the basis of psychological tests. _ I have a motion to put a little teeth into that recommendation. I move that the students of the interdenominational conference go on record as _ recommending to Congress the passage of the Dyer _ Antilynching Bill. { do not speak in defense of the colored race. I have no selfish interests, because I am a colored man. I rather assure you I speak in defense of en- lightened humanity. I speak in defense of the ideas upon which this government was founded. I speak in defense of the assumed place of leadership which the American nation has assumed among the rest of the great and powerful nations of the world. Miss Ownbey, Columbia University: I am opposed to the students taking upon our shoulders the recom- mending of such a bill, when we are unable to hear 188 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH all sides of the question, in particular the side of the taxpayers who will be affected by this bill. Although a native of the North, I have lived in the South, and I wish to say that the white race in the South has not been wholly to blame for these lynch- ings. If you will investigate, you will find that some of the cases show that such mob attacks have grown out of injustice put over on the white people of the South in localities where the colored people greatly outnumbered the white race. Up here in the North we don’t hear of the South- ern problems in the way the Southerners have to face them. We don’t hear of the terrible crimes perpetrated, for which no one is punished because of the majority of colored people in the community in which he is tried. The South has just as good, sincere, intelligent, Christian people of the white race as you find North of the Mason-Dixon Line. The only thing is that we think we understand their problems so much better than they who have faced them for years. I think we have taken a great deal upon our shoulders when we attempt to teil the people of the South how to deal with a problem which we have never experienced to any degree. Miss Pennypacker, Fisk: I want to appeal to this © body. You know “anti” means against, and you — know the idea that lynching carries with it. I per-— sonally am a Southerner. I was born, reared, have — lived, and will stay in Texas. Evidently, that is” South. lam not trying to give debate for any group 4 of men to take upon their shoulders the respon-— | YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 189 sibility to decide what is to be given as a punish- ment. Is it ever right under any conditions to take human life, and let no man be punished for it? (The Findings on Church and Race were adopted, p. 176.) LV: FINDINGS Tae CyHurcH anp INDUSTRY We believe that the modern industrial system as now organized on a competitive basis with produc- tion for profit rather than use, is the prolific source of the major evils such as war, class distinctions, and economic inequality. We therefore suggest the following as typical measures by Christian students for betterment of industrial and social relations. 1. Study of local labor problems and conditions in the immediate community. 2. Participation where possible in the local labor activities or organizations. 3. That the Christian exemplify in his expendi- ture of money a simple standard of living and view his income as a social obligation justi- - fiable only in so far as he renders a service to society in return. 4. We commend the endeavor on the part of the churches to share the responsibility and aspi- rations of labor and trade unions in all instances where justice and brotherhood are the ends sought, and commend their indorse- ment of collective bargaining. 5. We further recommend that a conference be held specifically on the Christian student and industry. 199 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Mr. Mathias, Union: I make the following sug- gestions in the form of a recommendation to be added to the report: “We, as a conference, urge that the voice of the chureh, concerning industry, shall be, first, a recog- nition of the worth of personality; secondly, an atti- tude of brotherhood as between all in industry; third, the promotion of the motive of service. I make this as a motion at this time as the attitude of the quorum.” Carried. Mr. Mathias: I have another suggestion which 1 would like to have added to the report. It is that we as a conference urge the research and educa- tional department of the Federal Council of Churches to immediately get in touch with the American Federation of Labor, in an honest effort to make a survey of labor, as to why they are op- posed to the church, as such, and for them to make suggestions as to how the church can be of service to them. Carried. DISCUSSION CONCERNING FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY Mr. Wilkin, Boston: It seems to me the general © impression of this report is distinction in one class. We have acted a good deal against the evils of capitalism and imperialism. If we go to the other extreme and state in the resolution that we only favor labor, it seems to me we are just causing class” distinction. The thing we should do is show in> YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 191 our report that we stand for the rights of both. I believe there must be a change in heart on both sides to solve this question by economic principles. There should be a change in attitude especially on the side of capital. I believe, therefore, in this report summary we should recommend that the pul- pits of the country flame out a little bit on religious and social righteousness. This goes back to the function of the church. I think the function of the church is to afford a place where Christians can worship God. I think if we can make Christians and send them out in the world, these problems will solve themselves. Student, Northwestern: In my estimation this is the best piece of work this conference has done. If we table the resolution on industry that has been presented, and substitute a very mild and very inefficient substitution, namely, that we favor the Golden Rule in industry, I think we have lost a great deal that we have accomplished at this con- ference. Miss Lewis, Taylor University: I wish to bring to our minds the fact that there are two sides to this question. Capital is necessary to labor in order that laborers may work, and labor is necessary in order that capital may be developed, and both are interdependent. Let us have that principle of Christ behind us, and let us have the power of Christ in our minds, that we may follow the principle of Christ, whether we be laborers or capitalists. Mr. Dowley, Ohio University: I should like to 192 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH point out that there are three elements that enter into production. There is land, which is a natural resource; there is labor, which is a personal ele- ment, and there is capital which is the result of labor expended upon natural resources. Labor is the only personal element that enters into produc- tion. Labor has no dependence on capital as a class. Mr. Stimpson, Washington University: There is a fourth element, which is the element of manage- ment. For that reason we have two personal ele- ments in this controvery. _ Mr. Jenkins, Chicago: The subject brought up in regard to management is right, but management is one kind of labor, and the wages for management come under the same heading as the wages for labor, and are quite a different thing from profit result- ing from the investment of capital. Mr. Chandler, McCormick: I believe it is right. If-we must take one side or the other, we had better defend the laboring man, because he needs defense. Capitalists already have enough defending them, and don’t need any help. Mr. Juvinall, Northwestern: I lived in a railroad center for four years and have seen the strikes. Some strikes are unjustifiable, and it is justifiable in certain cases for students to help in breaking up the strike, and in some cases acting as scabs and taking the place of union labor. Mr. Dowley: It may be true that some strikes — are unjustifiable, but, on the whole, the reason men strike is because of their families, because of their YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 193 children, because of hunger, because of cold, because of all the necessities and good things of life. J can’t imagine Jesus going in and breaking up such a strike. REPORT OF THE STUDENT COMMISSION ON THE FOREIGN MISSION PROGRAM OF THE CHURCH Presented by Miss Rachel Childrey, Cornell University Introduction: In presenting this report the Com- mission takes into consideration several facts: 1. The prevailing strong criticisms of missions. 2. The indifference toward the present mission- ary program of the church displayed by American students. 3. The conviction that there is a basis for a mis- sionary program in the future. 4. And a belief that that basis may be found through the church and may involve a reinterpreta- tion of the missionary program. Therefore the commission presents in Part I criticisms of missions, and in Part IT recommenda- tions as to the principles upon which the program of the future is to be based in regard to: (1) The Formulation of the Program. (2) The Training of Workers. (3) The Application of the Program. (4) The Student’s Part in the Program. Parr I: The following are some of the criticisms of missions to-day presented before the Commission by foreign students, Christian and non-Christian, missionaries and board representatives. Criticisms of Missions of More or Less Recog- mized Validity: 1. Christian nations exploit the lands where they are sending missionaries. Their 194 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH nationals are discriminated against and treated as inferiors in the United States by Christians. 2. Too many missionaries are ignorant of the cul- ture of the people among whom they work and fail to appreciate and assimilate the good in other cul- tures and religions. 3. Missionaries have frequently lacked the ability, skill, and intellectual training to understand the psychology of the people and to use the best methods in their field work. 4. Many missionaries, even with a high degree of training, have lacked the spirit of real friendship toward the people. Many of them live upon a plane too widely separated from that of the people, and do not associate socially with them. 5. Few missionaries have entirely rid them- selves of an attitude of superiority as to their own race and civilization. Many have had attitudes of intolerance and patronage without willingness to receive and learn. 6. Missions have in many instances decultural- ized, even Americanized, nationals both in schools and churches. 7. Missionaries have failed to develop many rl leaders among nationals. Training for leaders has too often produced men who will carry out their ideas. In their over-anxienty for certain results they have been unwilling to trust the leadership of nationals. Graduates of Christian schools have thus turned to other fields of work. 8. Missions have forced Western sectarian and denominational divisions upon peoples to whom they mean nothing. 9. Mission work in some countries has been based upon Western governmental protection, backed by armed forces, or upon rights gained in forced treaties. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 195 10. Missionaries have been the occasion of large indemnities. They have rights and privileges not possessed by nationals and are backed by the mili- tary force of Western nations on land and sea. 11. Many missionaries have created false impres- Sions of mission lands for the sake of raising money. Missionary talks on education have frequently pro- duced pity and condescension rather than apprecia- tion and true understanding. 12. The church in America is largely unwilling to aid Christian work in the East except as con- trolled by Americans and American ideas of Chris- tianity and of the church. 13. Many missionaries in a scientific age are un- scientific in their methods of interpreting the Bible. Criticisms of Missions of Doubtful Validity: 1. There is nothing absolutely unique in Chris- tianity to warrant its propagation where other reli- gions, revitalized, are meeting the needs of people. 2. Christianity is a Western religion unsuitable for Eastern peoples. 3. Missionaries are to withdraw from countries where Christianity is well implanted and so allow it to grow naturally. 4. America should solve its own problems before exporting Christianity. 9. Christianity does not accomplish what it claims. Its power to make the nations and the peo- ples of the West like Christ is not evident. 6. Christianity is a spiritual arm, or a cover for Western imperialism, and missionaries are govern- ment agents. THE REINTERPRETATION OF THE MIssIONARY PROGRAM I. What Is the Program? A. The Postulates of the Program 1, Christianity is unique among religions in the 196 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH person of Jesus Christ and the expression of the character of God in Christ. 2. Fellowship with God through Christ furnishes a unique dynamic to live in accord with universal truths wherever found, whether in Christianity or in other religions. 3. Taking the life of Jesus Christ as its ideal, the program of Christianity is to make available for all men the power which comes through knowing him to grow toward that ideal. 4, The foreign missionary program is an integral and essential part of the whole Christian enterprise to carry this unique dynamic through every area of life, the responsibility for which is shared by Christians in every land. B. The Objectives of the Program Are 1. To make available for all men the power to grow toward the ideals of Christ which comes through knowing him. 2. To provide spiritual cooperation which alone can solve the increasing common problems caused by the growing material interdependence of peo- ples; the establishment of world fellowship, world peace, and a new social order. 3. To contribute to the development of Christian- ity through its fresh interpretation at the hands of new people. 4. To quicken the world to spiritual development by revitalizing the spiritual values in other reli- gions. C. Some Concrete Applications of These Objectives in the Policy of the Churches and Their Boards 1. Preaching of the gospel of Christ at home and abroad in order that his ideals and the power of his life may be made available to all men. 2. Willingness to modify and reinterpret the mis- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 197 sionary program in view of changing world con- ditions. 5. The recognition of responsibility toward polit- ical and economic life. (a) The missionary program should declare its independence from political and militaristic sup- port such as is afforded by: (1) The unequal treaties, (2) Extraterritorial rights, (3) Presence of gunboats, as directly contradictory to the principles of Chris- tianity. (b) The missionary program should stand di- rectly opposed to all unjust economic exploitation and encourage economic development along lines which recognize the value of personality. (c) Insofar as social and national movements are an expression of the attempt to realize the prin- ciples of Christianity the missionary program should support them to the best of its ability. 4. Recognition of the place and worth of na- tionals. (a) The nationals should be allowed a complete expression of their national life and culture in all matters whether of interpretation, organization, or external expression of Christianity. -(b) The administration should be turned over to nationals as rapidly as possible and the emphasis should be laid upon helping them to develop their leaders. 7 (c) The mission program should do everything it can to develop an indigenous and financially inde- pendent church. (d) The nationals should be given greater au- thority in the selection of missionaries. _ (1) One or more nationals should be given a voice either by representation on the candidate committee 198 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH or as a reference in the selection of candidates be- © fore they are sent out. (2) In regions where the Christian movement is well developed the nationals should be given a controlling voice in determining whether or not a paraeaieid should continue his work. 5. Recognition of a unity of purpose behind dif- fein theological opinions. (a) The missionary program should lay less emphasis on the definitions that divide and more on the essentials which unite. (b) Consolidation and unification of Christian effort actually should take place both at home and abroad for the development of the essential objec- tives of Christianity. Il. What Kind of Preparation Is Needed by the Workers Who Are to Carry Out This Program? A. The Intellectual Preparation 1. The missionary should have a broad academic education and a thorough training in that specialty for which he is best fitted. 2. He should have the ability to relate his inter- pretation of religion to modern developments in science. ». He should have a knowledge and appreciation of the culture of the land to which he goes. (a) The mission boards should provide greater opportunity for extending this knowledge and ap- preciation for the culture of the land in which he works, both here and on the field. B. The Preparation in Spirit 1. Every missionary should think through and test for himself the uniqueness of Christianity. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 199 2. He should be able to see and appreciate truth wherever it is found. 3. He should eradicate all tendencies toward superiority and exclusiveness in his life such as may be found in fraternal orders, assertive denomina- tionalism, individual and group racial discrimina- tions, industrial organizations, social classes, and wherever else they are found. Ill. How Shall This Program Be Applied by the Missionary ? A. The Attitude and Spirit of the Missionary 1. He should recognize the essential unity of the human race in spite of differences of race, color and creed, and work with all as brothers. 2. He should be fraternal rather than paternal in his work with the nationals. 3. He should take a firm and unequivocal stand on economic and social problems vital to the welfare of the people with whom he lives. 4. The missionary should be tolerant and willing to learn. d). The missionary should be liberal toward those with whom he disagrees in theology or religion. _ 6. The missionary should adapt his personal habits and customs to the life of the people with whom he works, to the end that he may be accepted as an integral part of their society. B. The Method of the Missionary 1. He should go not to teach a system, but to share his Christian experience through personal contact. 2. He should help the people work out their own expression of Christianity. 200 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH C. We Commend the Statement of Gandhi That missionaries should ‘accept the high challenge to put in practice the principles of Jesus without adul- teration or toning them down.” IV. What Is the Christian Student’s Part in This Program? A. As an Individual Student 1. He should develop friendly contacts, and may I say also friendships, which are a little more than friendly contacts, with the foreign students who offer an exceptional opportunity for a sharing of ideals and culture. May J say that this Christian student’s part of the program is not primarily in- tended to mean only student volunteers and those who are planning to go to the foreign field? It means every single Christian student. 2. He should bear his share of the missionary pro- gram: to carry the ideals and power of Christianity into every area of life throughout the world by carrying them into his own life and social rela- tions whether in business or in the church, at nome or abroad. B. As a Member of Society 1. He should oppose anti-Christian legislation such as the section of the Immigration Act which discriminates against Asiatics; unequal treaties in China; and practices which discriminate against © Negroes or other races in this country. 2. He should actively combat the increasing eco- nomic imperialism and exploitation backed by mili- tarism in the United States. | 3. He should recognize that there is a loyalty to- humanity and Christian idealism which should — always take precedence wherever it comes in con- flict with lesser loyalties such as those to state, — church, or social class. : YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 201 C. Asa Member of the Church 1. He should foster the consciousness that the church as well as the individual is a member of society and as such should give its corporate sup- port to the convictions of its members, 2. He is obligated to take his share in the mission- ary program of the church and to help the church to an intelligent adaptation of its program to the present needs of the world. (a) By working in local churches throughout the country for a presentation of missions adequate to the demands of the present time. (b) By enlisting their active support for progres- Sive board and missionary policies, which we find exhibited in many boards and churches, and which we find sadly unsupported by many, many other churches. (ec) By educating the church in this program, by giving: (1) A fair and unbiased picture of national cul- tures and ambitions. (2) A feeling of mutual sharing in the realiza- tion of the ideals of humanity. (d) By urging foreign students in this country to associate with and to become active workers in the church. In other words, to begin at once to be missionaries from China to America. Strupent CoMMISSION ON ForrIGN Mission Program OF THE CHURCH Newell S. Booth, Boston University School of Theology John St. John, Union Theological Seminary Katherine Dieffendorf, Mount Holyoke College Donald McConnell, Union Theological Seminary Logan H. Roots, Harvard University Dorothy Post, Vassar College 202 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Mary Lichliter, Wellesley College Ruth Drake, Wellesley College George B. Leeder, Princeton University Anita Harris, Elmira College Martin De Wolfe, Hartford Seminary Charles Reinbrecht, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Mount Airy, Pa. James Bradley, University of Pennsylvania Edith Petrie, 3921 5th Avenue, N. W., Washing- ton, D. C. Virgina Pritchard, Blanksburg, Virginia Noel Mayhew, Yale Divinity School Leo. V. Barker, Union Theological Seminary Rachael Childrey, Cornell University Mary J. Harrar, Bucknell University J. Levering Evans, Yale Divinity School Y. T. Wu, Union Theological Seminary Harriett Crutchfield, Vassar College Esther West, Columbia University Miss Marquis, .Wellesley College FINDINGS ON FOREIGN MISSIONS AND THE CHURCH The conference indorses the report of the Student Commission on Foreign Missions as a statement of its principles especially concerning the reinterpreta- tion of the missionary program, emphasis being © placed on the following: 1. Denominationalism should be absolutely cut out of the spirit and method of the Christian enter- prise abroad. : 2. We must strive for more mutuality of giving © and receiving not only in mission work but also by — means of exchange students, professors and Chris- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 202 tian workers. We ask the United States Congress to appropriate as much money as they now spend per year on R. O. T. C. in colleges and high schools for an exchange of students between the United States and other nations. 3. Jesus’ way of life must replace creedal and legalistic teachings. 4. We must separate Christian missions from political influence and Western materialism and we must stand unqualifiedly opposed to commercial exploitation. 5. The missionary must work in such a way as _ to eliminate the need for his leadership as quickly as possible. 6. We must seek friendship with students from _ other lands. Further the conference makes the following addi- tions to this statement of principles in the report: 1. The missionary enterprise should become more responsive to the courage and moral vision of youth and not be bound by the lack of vision in the churches. 2. The Mission Boards should be more honest with the constituency who are supporting them by ex- plaining the policies fully though it forfeits some financial support. __ 38. We must seek to avoid fostering by our mis- sions a narrow nationalism. 4. The Mission Boards should seek to find a way to appoint candidates to country and profession early in their educational career. 5. We must recognize a new frontier other than geographical which the evils of new social and eco- nomic exploitation have created. _ We resolve, in the light of these principles that We should undertake the task of the Christian stu- 204 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH dent in working for this program as outlined in the report, as a student, as a member of society, as a member of the church. (Suggestions offered but not added as amendments. ) 1. That we substitute for the words “missions” and “missionaries” words which have a better con- notation, e. g., “American church international activities,” “Christian world enterprise abroad.” 2. That a young person or persons be placed on the Mission Boards. 3. That the Board of Foreign Missions recognize the right of Oriental Christians to administer for themselves the money raised for Christian work in their own country and to direct their own religious policies. FINDINGS COOPERATION OF CHURCHES Chairman of Committee, Mr. Nelson We favor the unification of all Christian churches. To. secure this we suggest the union of all Prot- estant denominations. As a first step toward this end we suggest the unification of young people’s societies—the Chris- tian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the Baptist Young People’s Union, the Luther League, etc.— and that this be done through the Federal Council of Churches, if possible. We suggest this step toward union unification be taken first of all in the young people’s societies of. local churches. We suggest a unified program of religious edu- cation. a. A department of religious education in every college. b. That all Christian colleges and theological YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 205 schools be made undenominational in their char- acter. Discussion CoNcERNING FINDINGS ON COOPERATION OF CHURCHES ‘Mr. West, Ohio University: I wonder what kind of unification of young people’s organization is meant by this? Is it another organization to bring about unity of denominations? We already have a national young people’s denomination. Is_ this Simply a unification of the societies in the churches throughout the country, without any overhead na- tional machinery? Mr. Nelson: The committee felt that the young people of this assembly or of the country could not logically ask the churches to unite until they were willing to unite in their own organization. Since we have the Christian Endeavor working in several different denominations, we felt that all of these young people’s organizations could come together under one head. If they wanted to forget their names, they could take another. I think that was the idea. Mr. Wills, Massachusetts Institute of Technology : I am from an engineering school. I don’t see why we should have a department of religious educa- tion. Mr. Shock, Purdue: I come from an engineering college. I think we have a distinct need for some religious education there. For that reason, I feel courses in religious education would not be out of place in an engineering college. 206 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Mr. Schwarz: We also have Bible work, and the engineers in the place feel that the time is not any loss. All the engineers I have met feel it is really good for them. Mr. Kill, Toronto: Candidates for the ministry of the United Church of Canada may differ on cer- tain individual points of doctrine. It is left to the conference to decide whether this person is eligible for the ministry. The responsibility should be on the living church and not on the dead. Mr. Leper, Allegheny: I think one small item that might be contributed to our thought on this ques- tion is the experience of the Society of Friends. I think the general opinion of the people here is that that group succeeded in emphasizing spiritual life and social service in a way that hardly any other © group has done. In my study of that group this past summer it has become my conviction that one © of the things which aided them to do that was the © fact they have no statement of theological belief. : When you ask to become a member of their society — they do not even ask you what you believe. I think, © therefore, if we are to have a united church with the right emphasis, we should incorporate this first — article. Miss Evans, Kansas: I think if we are going to — have any basis of union at all, it will be on the prin- ciple of freedom of the individual to believe as he © Sees fit. The reason we have no scientists, to speak — of, within the church is because we don’t have this freedom of belief. In my own local church, in the Bs te ee YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 207 young people’s department there are several of the best workers we have, some of the most respected members who don’t conform to the beliefs laid down in the discipline of that church. I think we can have difference of belief within a unified church and maintain a spiritual fellowship. THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE Chairman of Findings, W. E. Dempster, Harvard We suggest that the conference urge the Church of Jesus Christ to develop according to the follow- ing suggestions: 1. That the church be based upon an entire free- dom of belief. 2..That the minister may take part in movements in which his church cannot function ag a church. 3. That it conceive a major purpose be to educate and to inspire each man to bear his share of the social burden. 4, That it be a distinctly religious organization conserving and recreating Spiritual values in man by communion with God. 5. That one united church be substituted for de- nominational organizations. 6. That the local churches provide different types of service to minister to different religious beliefs and temperaments. ¢. That as a beginning toward unity we urge the young people’s societies, immediately, to join forces regardless of denominational lines, preferably under the Federal Council of Churches. Discussion ConceRNING FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH OF THR Fururn Mr. Taber, Taylor: The first proposition is based t 208 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH upon the assumption of what we believe is not im- portant. When John Wesley revolutionized Eng- land, it was because he believed God could do cer- tain things. With that power he served England. Any person who wants to stir the country to-day must have definite belief in some power. Mr. Turner, ITilinois: It seems to me this sug- gestion is based upon the idea that the individual, if he is given adequate training in religious educa- tion, can determine his own beliefs much better than any larger group can determine a set of beliefs which he should accept. It will mean more in solvy- ing some of the social problems and a lot of the feeble beliefs that somebody hands down to us. Mr. Dempster: I feel very deeply about this first question. You have convictions about) God and about Jesus, and you believe that those convictions are the true ones. You believe that very sincerely, but you know other students on your campus; you meet them every day and you like them; you don’t fight with them very much; they have different feel- ings about the matter. They are equally as sincere as you are. They perhaps would like to believe in the kind of God you believe in, but they, for some reason or other, find, despite their sincere efforts, that they can’t believe that way. These students who believe differently than you do—and you know there are thousands of them on the campus—could worship in the churches if they were allowed to — worship there. They do worship in some churches which do not require belief for admission. ¢ ‘YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH &9 These propositions that are before you suggest that each group that is large enough to have a serv- ice of worship of its own, according to its own belief, be provided. If you are big enough and broad enough to let the students who do not happen to believe the same way you do, come in the same church you are in, and have their own services of worship, or worship as they may, how will you weaken the church? There will be plenty of belief. Miss Lewis, Taylor: I believe there are some essen- tial fundamental principles in Christianity. If there are no fundamentals, then there is no Chris- tianity; there is just religion. There are funda- mental principles upon which Christianity is based. if a person does not believe in those, he is not a Christian. I believe this resolution should not be passed, because Christianity in itself is not entirely open to freedom of belief. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FRIENDLY CONSIDERATIONS Chairman, Harold C. Hodge, University of Iowa The Findings Committee as representative of the students and expressing their sentiments take this opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of those who have made this conference possible. For the promo- tion of the conference we are indebted to the peo- ple in the gallery, who have given their time and labor; to the church boards for their moral and financial assistance, and to the scores of people whose voluntary services have contributed to the success of the conference. 210 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH We are sincerely thankful to the pastor, Board of Trustees, church secretaries, Mr. Gustafson, Mr. Johnson, and the members of the First Methodist Church of Evanston, to the homes and fraternity houses of this city, for their hospitality, to the Con- gregational and Baptist Churches of Evanston, to Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical School, to the Boy Scouts, the Y. W. C: A. and Y. M. C. A. for their cooperation. We are indebted to members of the Executive Committee, the executive secretary and office secre- tary, the treasurer of the conference, and the chair- men of the committees for carrying out the confer- ence purpose and program. We thank the organist and song leader, the speakers, Stanley High, and Albert Parker Fitch for their contribution to the conference program. We are grateful to the press for its rather fair evalua- — tion and excellent cooperation and admirable con- sideration during this conference. Carried. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON A CONTINUATION COMMITTEE Chairman, Mr. Marvin Harper, Yale T will make the report. In the session this morn- ing you voted there should be a Continuation Com- mittee. You did not specify what sort of a com- mittee you wanted, what type of personnel, or what type of work they should do, but it seems several reasons were in your mind. You had several rea- sons in mind when you proposed such a committee. Those possibly might be summarized briefly as fol- lows: first, that the average American student does not know the definition, purpose, or program of the Christian Chureh; secondly, that the American col- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 211 lege student does not know how the church is work- ing or can work with the social, economic, and inter- national affairs of our day; thirdly, that certain problems have come up which are seen to require further study by students. These should be studied by a Continuation Committee of this group. The committee that was so appointed suggested that the Continuation Committee consist of twenty- five people; that fifteen of these shall be students; six shall be nonstudents engaged in definite church work, and four shall be members at large and, of course, shall be those definitely interested in the church and in the things which this conference has been discussing. I think the method of choosing these names should come before you. First, will be the students who have been active in promoting this conference before we convened; secondly, students, who from the list of conference nominations are eligible. You re- member you nominated a group of forty. There were two hundred nominations that came in. These were studied, and from that number, certain were selected for this committee. From our recommenda- tions you will see we knew what certain students had been doing back on their campuses as well as what they were doing on the floor, so we had that to judge by. Then we selected students who showed activity on the various Findings Committees and in confer- ence discussion from the floor. The nonstudent members are those who have shown great interest before and during this conference. I want to submit the nominations of this com- mittee. As I said, there are fifteen students, six, what we might call, church people, those engaged in doing church work, and four members at large. (See Appendix. ) 212 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH CLOSING ADDRESS Mr. Howard McCluskey, University of Michigan According to the program, I am supposed to give some sort of a final touch to the conference, so we “can get out of here and not feel that it was a con- fused meeting. If you will help me, I will try to do the very best I can. I am going to talk very briefly in the form of a. confession, because I think I can make it the most significant by talking to you out of my own personal experience. I am still an idealist, in spite of that fact I have gotten out in the game and it is begin- ning to be appalling. After people get out of this ‘student period they hit a slump. There is a tend- ency to go down. I am not giving this to you folks just simply because this is a last-minute appeal, but as a sincere, genuine confession, as an interpre- tation of what your reaction might be to the thing that occurred here this evening. I want to analyze the situation. You were here together in a most extraordinary situation. A great group of you folks came together from all over the country to discuss the problem. There has been absolutely no protest from the gallery. You have had the support and have had the influence of a group of people around you, which has made you more courageous and more brave than if you were in it by yourselves. The psychologists know that a person is absolutely different when he is in a group. You have been courageous because a great group has YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 213 been here to support you, but just as soon as you leave the doors of this conference to-night, you are placing yourselves in an entirely new atmosphere, where these other distintegrating forces will begin to take place. The good Lord help you, and I hope he does, but there is some one who is going to go down, and some one is going to betray the spirit of this conference. Don’t you make any mistake about it. | You will hardly get out of the church when you will be smack up against this thing, and you can- not evade it. We are in the midst of life. We are in the midst of a situation, where forces about us are going to influence us. Whether you like it or mot, you are going to be influenced. Life is not a vacuum. You simply can’t sit down and hold your hands and let the rest of the world go by. You either go with the world or against it. Don’t make a bit of mistake about that. In the face of all that, what hope is there? I think there is far more reason for hope than there is reason for pessimism. There is bound to be a slump when you leave the conference. To my mind, the remedy is that we, by some hook or crook, find the source of new powers of life. After all, what is the secret of life? What is the thing that is going to keep us going on and on at this high peak of existence? I maintain there are powers, there are secret powers that we haven’t yet dreamed of, and the new psychology is beginning to indicate to us, if we 214. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH could develop the technic by which we could dig down and get to those tremendous powers which we will call, for the want of a better term, spiritual powers, we would begin to understand the secret of life and begin to get hold of the thing that will keep us from slumping. It is coming to me with power- ful conviction that there actually are resources at our command which we have not yet even tapped. There are tremendous reservoirs of strength. There are uncharted seas that would literally make us supermen if we knew how to get them. I venture to say the new race is not going to come in this genera- tion, but I bet you the new race is not only going to be intellectual giants but spiritual giants. It is up to some of us to begin to experiment with life and prove to the world and prove to the skeptics, and those who have not found the higher way of life that it is gloriously possible te combine this pas- sionate search for facts and this fine intellectual honesty with spiritual fervor, and be cognizant of deeper reservoirs of strength. Psychologists and some of us in the outside field are beginning to find out that perhaps one of the finest things you can do is to keep quiet for about an hour. You ought to have a period where you devote just as much time to spiritual exercise as you devote to eating or physical exercise. Did it ever occur to you that in perhaps two hundred years when all of us are in our mummy cases, the new thinkers and the new psychologists and new spir- itual masters of the race will be discussing spir- YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 215 itual nature? It ought to be just as necessary to consider the spiritual nature as it is to eat. Immediately when you go out of this conference, you are going to have that tendency to slump. I think the solution for the thing is that we have to develop some way, somehow, to get at the secret of strength that Christ seemed to have. He got it from some place. I don’t care whether you say it is conscious of unconscious. I submit that some place he got strength that was not in himself. I submit to you that some day we will know what that is, and I submit to you further that that is just as neces- Sary as this extremely scientific and intellectual - approach. I hope that those of you who have been in the conference will go out and be centers of influence, that you will give yourself earnestly in serious at- tempts to combine these viewpoints. The only thing you can do in all honesty is to get down on your knees, walk out in the moonlight, or on the lake shore; I don’t care what method you use, but get next to yourself, and convince yourself that you are sold on the Christian program, and you are go- ing to try and seek the new levels of energy and find out what the true Christian life really means as Christ knew it. APPENDIX EXECUTIVE COMMITTER Howard Becker, 1719 Hinman Avenue, sarap Til. Northwestern University. © George Bell, 825 Ayars Place, Evanston, I. Gar- rett Theological Union. Dorothy Dyer, care of Dr. 8. A. Knopf, 16 West 95th Street, New York. Union Theological Semi- nary. O. T. Gilmore, 181 West 104th Street, New York City. Columbia University. Frances P. Greenough, 276 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Glenn Harding, 306 Plymouth Building, Noe University of Chicago. Marvin Harper, Emory University, Georgia. James Henley, 1900 Duncan Avenue, Chattanooga, Tenn. Yale University. Stanley High, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Dr. L. B. Hillis, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Dr. Willard M. Lampe, 77 W. Washington Street, Chicago. Gilbert Lovell, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Twila Lytton, Dean of Women, Lawrence College. Serena Pendleton, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York City. C. M. McConnell, 740 Rush Street, Chicago. Mary Ann Randolph, 740 Rush Street, Chicago. 216 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 217 Harry W. Seamans, 10 E. Huron Street, Chicago. Mrs. H. R. Steele, Lambuth Building, Nashville, Tenn. Kathleen Stewart, 1037 Marquette Road, Chicago. University of Chicago. Harry T. Stock, 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. Florence C. Tyler, 25 Madison Avenue, New York City. Marian F. Warner, 317 16th Avenue, Columbus, O. Ohio State University. Bernard Meland, care of Meland Brothers Music Store, Harvey, Ill. University of Chicago. Dr. Ralph W. Owen. _ Fred Kuebler, Northwestern College. _ Raymond E. Wilson, 500 Riverside Drive, New York City. Columbia University. Ralph Barton, Laury Hall, University of Missouri. Elizabeth Conrad, 2017 Hill Street, Ann Arbor, Mich. University of Michigan. Dorothy Post, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Vassar College. Ann Silver, Salem, Oregon. Willamette University. John St. John, 500 Riverside Drive, N. Y. Columbia University. Cecil Headrick, Winfield, Kan. Southwestern Col- lege. Robert Weston, University of Denver. Agnes Sailer, Vassar College. G. E. McCracken, 312 Henry Hall, Princeton Uni- versity. Irene Gates, 1300 W. 22nd Street, Philadelphia. | Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. 218 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH James Woodruff, 72 Mount Vernon, Boston, Mass. Boston University. Ralph Wiborg, Garrett Biblical Institute. Harold Ehrensperger, Garrett Biblical Institute. R. A. Schermerhorn, Garrett Biblical Institute. Chairman of Executive Committee, Harry Seamans. Vice-Chairman of Executive Committee, Howard P. Becker. Secretary of Executive Committee, Dorothy Dyer. Treasurer, Mary Ann Randolph. Committee on Program, Bernard Meland. Committee on Finance, George R. Bell. Committee on Local Arrangements, Harold Ehrens- perger. Executive Secretary, R. A. Schermerhorn. CONTINUATION COMMITTEE Students Barton, Ralph F., Laury Hall, University of Missouri. Childrey, Rachael, 332 Wait Avenue, Ithaca, N. Y. Cornell University. Ehrensperger, Harold A., Garrett Biblical Insti- tute, Evanston. Fisher, J. Elliott, 34 North Park Avenue, Oberlin, Ohio. Headrick, Cecil, 101 Michigan Avenue, Winfield, Kan. Southwestern University. Henley, James W., Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 219 Morgan, Ernest, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Antioch College. Paik, L. George, 1195 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. Sailor, Agnes, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, Said ie Silver, Ann, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. Steiger, Andrew, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Til. Stimson, Edward W., 5960 Enright Street, Saint Louis, Mo. Washington University. Thurman, Howard, 300 Alexander Street, Rochester, N. Y. Warner, Marian, 317 Sixteenth Avenue, Colum- bus, Ohio. Wilkins, John, Boston University School of Theology. Nonstudent in definite Church Work Foster, O. D., Council of Church Boards of Edu- cation, Chicago, Temple Building, Chicago, Til. Greenough, Miss Frances, Board of Education of the Northern Baptist Convention, 276 Fifth Avenue, New York City. McConnell, C. M., Board of Home Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 740 Rush Street, Chicago. Owens, R. W., Religious Education Board of the ' 220 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH Presbyterian Church, 77 West Washington Street, Chicago. Stock, H. T., Board of Education of the Congre- gational Church, 14 Beacon Street, Boston. Tyler, Miss Florence, Secretary, Women’s Chris- tian Colleges of the Orient, 25 Madison Avenue, New York City. Members at Large Doan, R. A., 2958 Olentangy Boulevard, Colum- bus, Ohio. | High, Stanley, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. McCluskey, Howard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. Van Kirk, Walter, 105 East 22nd Street, New York City. a — 2 SS a Ee al —- oe Se St ea he eological Seminary-Speer Librar —lOT 1 1012 010 Hatten ui te aly, Tie lede. f ‘e A Fi el, +f Isiateitat Tiatets! i