XXII
THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AND THE IMMIGRANT
THE one institution in America most gravely concerned with the coming and staying of the immigrant is the Protestant church. Each ship-load of people from Southern and Southeastern Europe increases the already crowded Roman Catholic parishes, lays foundations for the perpetuation of the Greek Orthodox church in the United States and enlarges the tents of Israel whose camps encircle the dying churches.
The Protestant church, in our great cities, pointing to the decrease in her membership, as evidence of her peril, and bravely singing “Onward Christian soldiers, Marching as to war,” moves into the suburbs, away from the congested masses and among the attenuated few.
That the Protestant church has endured thus far, that its ideals are still dominant, that its preachers’ voices are still heard in the tumults of our Babels, is direct evidence that somewhere her foundations rest upon bed-rock and that the Christian faith and practice, as she understands them, are essential in the solution of the problems of our civilization. Because I believe this, I am not frightened by figures but am concerned with forces. It is not a question of the ability of the church to increase, but of her willingness to decrease, if necessary, in the attempt to communicate to these masses, from all races and religions, her passion for humanity and her devotion to the Divine.
I am not at all concerned regarding the inability of the Protestant church to adjust other men to her creeds or to adjust herself to theirs; but I am deeply concerned with her inability or unwillingness to make good her professions of democracy, and to relate herself in some vital way to these new citizens who are satiated by creeds, but are hungry for brotherhood; upon whom, like a curse, rest the damp and mould of tombs and chapels, but who have been untouched by the power of the living, redeeming Christ, as He has incarnated Himself in His followers.
So long as these people are within the sphere of Foreign Missions, in “Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” or some other remote and romantic place, they are the subjects of prayer and the recipients of gifts of men and money; but when drawn into the radius of one’s immediate neighbourhood, they become a peril which threatens everything, from the price of real estate to the foundation upon which the church rests. There is no question that in many cases the Protestant church is facing this problem in an admirable spirit; although very often expressing it in a way calculated to alienate rather than to attract. On the whole there is a growing desire to serve this new host of men, to help them adjust themselves more easily to their new environment and to make of them conscious human beings, consecrated Christians and efficient citizens.
There are to-day increasing numbers of Protestant Christians who have broken away from the old prejudice against the Roman Catholic church. It is not their desire to alienate faithful communicants from the church in which their individual and national life has root and being; but they recognize certain facts.
First, that in this new influx of immigrants there is an appreciably large number of men who have fallen heir to Protestant traditions, without fully realizing their spiritual inheritance and their moral obligations. To these, the American Protestant churches owe the duty of interpreting their common faith in its practical terms.
Second, the church realizes that numbers of men, more than are commonly supposed, among Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Jews, are lost to their respective churches. Many of them revert to infidelity and Paganism, and the Protestant church is under obligations to interpret its faith in rational terms to these, who have been touched by the rationalism of our times.
One cannot believe that it is good for such men to be left under the influences of these reactions which may become dangerous to the well-being of the individual and of the State.