The reader will be ready by this time with the question: are there no free colleges whatever in America, no institutions of higher learning where truth is sought and respected? There are a few, and we have now to give them credit.
We have heard Mrs. Helen Gould Shepard declaring at her dinner-table that “the Union Theological Seminary is the greatest menace to New York City today.” Translated into commonsense, this means that there are professors at this institution who have come to realize the futility of basing the moral standards of mankind upon a literal acceptance of fairy stories, the product of the child-mind of the race; also who have read the words of Jesus about the impossibility of serving both God and Mammon.
Among these revolutionary theologians is Harry F. Ward, secretary of the Social Service Federation of the Methodist church. Dr. Ward was active in protest against the crimes of Judge Gary during the recent steel strike, and as a result fell victim to the Helen Ghouls. A man called upon him, being obviously not of the idealist type, but representing himself as a lecturer on Bolshevism, wishing to verify certain facts. After a brief conversation Dr. Ward gave the man a “calling-down,” telling him that he was utterly ignorant of the subject with which he pretended to deal. Not long afterwards Dr. Ward learned of a document, issued by the National Civic Federation, but bearing no name, and accompanied by a request for its return after reading. It was being submitted to open shop employers and propagandists, and used as a means of money-getting: an alleged interview with Ward, in which he was represented as having said that Christianity would soon pass away, and Bolshevism take its place; the full absurdity of which statement you could not realize unless you had the fortune to know this passionately earnest Christian clergyman. Ward had mentioned a young Y. M. C. A. man named Hecker, as one who had first-hand knowledge of the Seattle strike, and this document named Hecker, and was used to procure his discharge. It was also used to bar Jerome Davis from Chautauqua platforms. When a committee of the Inter-church Federation called upon Judge Gary, they found the document on his desk, and he quoted from it liberally. Also it was in the hands of Chancellor Buchtel of Denver University when he barred Harry Ward from speaking. So far extends the reach of the Shepard’s Crook!
There are other places in the country in which the revolutionary leaven of Jesus is working. There is the Berkeley Divinity School at Middletown, Connecticut, a place of open-mindedness and fine idealism, presided over by Dean W. P. Ladd. Wild rumors were spread concerning Bolshevist activities, and the grand duke of the trustees, Mr. Nettleton, president of the New Haven Gas Company, took up the fight. One of the charges was that the dean belonged to the Church League for Industrial Democracy—among whose members are fifteen bishops of the Episcopal church! The investigating committee of the trustees decided that it was unwise for the dean and members of the faculty to belong to this organization. They qualified their statement, “in the present state of the public mind, and from the standpoint of the citizen of the world”; to which Dean Ladd makes the pungent comment: “One would have thought that even a citizen of the world would prefer that a member of the faculty of a Christian divinity school should regulate his conduct, not with reference to the world and the prevailing state of the public mind, but according to the principles of the religion which he professes.” Also the committee laid down the rule: “We cannot for a moment permit any action or influence of theirs (the faculty), as teachers, which would seem to develop Socialism as a political idea.” And further, the committee laid down the rule: “What the teachings of the School shall be and how they shall be taught, and under what influences the students shall live are matters for (the trustees), if not entirely, at least in co-operation with the dean and the faculty.”
Dean Ladd issued a counter statement, in which he frankly and completely differs from this policy, and declares that he will not follow it. He says:
I cannot while I remain dean of the School be a party to a policy so entirely at variance with my own judgment and conviction of what is right. The Berkeley Divinity School is, of course, desperately in need of money. And trustees and others have repeatedly said that no money will be forthcoming so long as our present policy continues. I hope this is not so. But if the School has to die in a losing fight for a policy, one feature of which is to try to make justice and love the controlling motive in all social conditions, I am quite ready to say, with Bishop Brewster, “Then let it die!” Better so to die than to live on prosperously in an attitude of subservience and compromise.
The school still lives; but you may judge the drawing-power of social idealism in America today by the fact that it has only fifteen students. It has to exist by gifts, because its trustees invested most of its funds in the shares of the New Haven Railroad!
Also at Oberlin, Ohio, is an old college under religious auspices, struggling hard to preserve the high traditions of its abolitionist founders. From its beginning in 1833 it admitted women and Negroes, and its internal affairs have always been controlled by its faculty. Appointments are made by the faculty and ratified by the trustees, and so far the trustees have behaved themselves. During the war they tried to drive out a professor on the ground that he was pro-German, but they were only able to get one faculty vote for the proposal, and so were forced to drop it. A professor at Oberlin writes me that the faculty is conservative, as in all other colleges, and they naturally try to appoint only those who conform; “but if a mistake is made there is never a thing said to coerce his freedom in the class or out.” As a consequence, this professor has ventured to advise his classes to read “The Brass Check.” When the librarian declared that the library had no funds with which to subscribe to the New York “Call,” the professor of Hebrew advised him to take the money from the “Old Testament fund,” explaining quite correctly that “the Old Testament is a book of prophecy.”
Also, in Denver is the Iliff School of Theology of the Methodist church, where several young professors are following the example of the dangerous Harry Ward. When Ward was barred from speaking by Chancellor Buchtel, they brought him across the street and triumphantly listened to his message. When I came to Denver they welcomed me in a church, and told me the story of their struggle against the infinite corruption enthroned in Denver politics, and worshipped in Denver churches.
And then, I must not overlook the Y. M. C. A. College, located at Springfield, Massachusetts, which through some freak of chance has secured a phenomenal president in L. L. Doggett, who brought his old Oberlin professor, Ballantine, to teach some truth about the Bible, and thus caused anguish to the orthodox. The war brought President Doggett to the conclusion that the world cannot be saved by prayer and Indian clubs, and he went abroad and got into touch with the London School of Economics, and other European progressives, and came back and founded an “industrial course,” in the face of bitter opposition from a solemn, prayerful and gymnastic faculty. The pious morons in the Association are fighting him tooth and nail, and have, of course, curtailed their gifts to the college. President Doggett has taken up an endowment campaign of his own, and I cheerfully give him this “boost,” though I fear it may do him more harm than good!