Many strangers, like ourselves, were looking critically at the church bulletins as yesterday we had looked into the show windows, and it was the Frau Directorin who said she felt as if she were going shopping for religion.
The Herr Director said that he had no objection to our inventing or importing as many religions as we pleased; but he did object to our exporting any, for we were making the task of regulating and controlling them very difficult. Moreover he did not see how we could develop any kind of common, national ideals with such a confusion of religions. “You have, or pretend to have, a democratic government, and your strongest church is monarchic to the core.”
I had to admit that religiously we are a very chaotic people, and that we are daily adding to that chaos; yet these facts might prove what I had been trying to make clear to him: That this is fundamentally a religious country, and that as a whole we are the most religious people in the world. I supported this statement by quoting a good German authority, the late Prof. Karl Lamprecht, who thinks we have a great future as a people, because we are “capable of religious improvement.”
“Improvement!” The Herr Director sniffed derisively. “Wherever I look I see improvements: churches turned into theaters, theaters into churches, and residences which are still perfectly good turned into sky-scrapers. Chaos is not an improvement upon order. Nothing is finished, nothing complete, not even your religion.”
Just then we were compelled to pass along a wooden walk from which we looked into a canyon blasted out of the rock, upon which still stood the foundation of the house which was being turned into a sky-scraper.
“You see, that is the way we improve; we go deeper each time,” I remarked.
“But in religion,” the Herr Director retorted, “you do not go deeper, you go higher, and that is no improvement.”
For the second time the chimes were pealing, and we entered a sanctuary of friendly yet dignified English Gothic. An usher, who looked very American and well fed and out of place, guided us to a pew in the more than half empty church, from which nothing was missing in the way of ecclesiastical furnishings. One thing it lacked and that no architect can build and no money can buy—Spirit.
The organ was played by a master, the processional was splendidly staged, the rector looked prosperously pious, prayers were read and confessions uttered without any disquieting, spiritual agony, and the anthems were correctly sung by the picturesque boys’ choir. The curate preached a sermon on manliness; a sermon so thin and emasculated that even the Frau Directorin, whose English is limited, could understand it, and said she would like to come again “for the good English.”
I left the church deeply disappointed, and to the Herr Director’s taunts about “improvements” I did not reply, realizing more than ever how difficult and dangerous is this task of introducing the Spirit, especially when one goes to church in the spirit of pride, rather than in the spirit of meekness.