The blame for this lies largely with the clergy, which, whether it is in Russia, Bulgaria or the countries inhabited by the different Servian nationalities, stimulates the superstition of the people and does but little to enlighten or ennoble them.
The priests nowhere occupy or deserve the place which they hold among the Western Slavs, and where the Roman Catholic minority has any fighting ground among the Southern Slavs, as in Servia,—there the Franciscans and Trappists tower above the Greek clergy as benefactors of their people and often as true saints and martyrs.
My assertion that the Slav is by nature truly religious, and that the clergy is in a great measure to blame for his hopelessly low standards, is proved by the remarkable phenomenon of the sects, which especially in Russia flourish, in spite of persecution. They grew up from within; some of them, supposedly before the Reformation, and still they are being formed and developed.
These sects range all the way from the most fanatical, whose members seek salvation in voluntary death or in some revolting form of mortification of the flesh, to large and influential bodies, kinsmen to our Quakers, Baptists and Methodists.
It is this hunger for religion which is the most hopeful characteristic of the Slavs, and one which ought to make contact with them less difficult than we usually imagine it to be.
The problem is, how to purge these movements from fanaticism when transferred to America; although in our soberer, freer and more practical atmosphere the dangerous elements are apt to be spontaneously corrected.
Protestantism, as a manifestation of historic Christianity, antedates among them the German Reformation and was contemporaneous with the earliest movements in England. History clearly shows that the Protestant spirit found kinship among the Slavs and that it is still alive. Evidences of this are the sect of the Bogumils early in the fourteenth century, which has left its traces among the Southern Slavs as far as Bosnia; the Hussite movement so vitally effective in preparing the way for Martin Luther and still a force in the national life of Bohemia—and the various sects among the Russians.
This Protestant spirit in its conventional form, as found in Bohemia, in Poland to some extent and among the Slovaks of Hungary, is unfortunately no more a factor than the Mother Church in the shaping of character, in inducing right social relations, or in determining the future of the Slavic race.
There are, however, various Protestant forces at work among these people; forces which emphasize spiritual and ethical ideals; such as the missions of the American Board, in Bohemia; the devoted and enthusiastic members of the “Gemeinschaft” in Kattowitz in Silesia, strategically situated where three great empires meet; the Baptist missions in Russia, and above all, the returned immigrant, who comes home, often enthusiastically but sanely, practically and devotedly religious, and with whom rests largely the religious and political future of at least two Slavic nationalities, the Slovaks and the Ruthenians, the latest to be awakened to the economic possibilities in America.
The Slovaks for nearly a thousand years have retained their national consciousness, in spite of the fact that long ago they were conquered by the Magyars, who have used every possible means to wean them from their language, the one strong link binding them to their historic past.