Thy grace has made us strong,
And now, O King eternal,
We lift our battle song.”
VIII
GOOD NEIGHBORS AND BAD
The Church. The Protestant church in America is a good neighbor to the immigrant. The trouble is that many immigrants refuse to permit it to be their friend.
We have seen that the chief reason that the church cannot do what it would among the Jews, Russians, Italians and Chinese, the people we are studying, is because these people do not understand that the church in America is different from the church in their home countries. They do not know that American Christianity is a friend of liberty, and is really trying to aid the common people.
When the Irish immigrants came in such multitudes to America they thronged the Catholic Churches. Their church had been their loyal champion in Ireland, and they knew it would be the same friend in America. The same loyalty was shown by the Lutheran to his church when he came from Germany to America.
But the million and more Jews that have flowed into America want to have nothing to do with the church, and the multitudes of Italians, when loyal to any church, belong to the Church of Rome. The Russians are often exiled from home because of the church.