The effort to throw off the bondage of the popular and the scholastic dogma is an advance, and not a decline; it is an advance into the realm of freedom. It first gives the possibility of a critical re-examination of the dogmatic faith of the Church. Only by the application of the scientific methods of our age to dogma is it possible for our age to verify dogma and accept it as valid and reliable. We can not rely on anything that is merely traditional or the product of the logical analysis of premises which remain themselves unverified. The revolt against the confessional orthodoxy, especially in the Presbyterian, Reformed, and Lutheran Churches, is not a sign of decline, as some think, but a wholesome movement which indicates a determination to know the truth and to hold nothing but the truth.
The Chicago-Lambeth articles, adopted by the whole Anglican communion throughout the world, reduces the essential doctrines of Christ’s Church to the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed; those creeds in which all the great historical churches, the Greek and the Oriental, the Roman and the Protestant, agree. This marks a dogmatic advance, not a dogmatic decline, because it makes the distinction between the essential and unessential doctrines, it defines essential doctrines by holding up ancient fundamental historical creeds; it thereby represents all other matters as within the realm of the unessential doctrines, the province of Christian liberty.
The churches are therefore readjusting themselves in their relation to Christian doctrine, and the Christian community is readjusting itself likewise. The offensive features of Christian dogma, while still retained and advocated by some theologians and some communions, have been in great measure removed by other theologians and communions, and the process is going on with great rapidity. The war against science, criticism, literature, and art—all that is characteristic of our age—is gradually being limited to a smaller number of theologians and denominations, and there is ever an increasing number of theologians and churches which fully recognize all the achievements of modern times and who are at work in harmonizing them with the verified Christian dogmas in a larger, grander system—in a new theology representing all that is noblest and best in Christianity as applied to the modern world. While this process is going on, the dissatisfied ones will take some little time to find their new church homes and to adjust themselves to new conditions and circumstances.
So far as the great mass of mankind is concerned, the chief factor in the Christian religion is the fundamental one of the Christian life and the Christian institution, and the advance or decline of Christianity will be judged from this point of view. Here, however, we must recognize that there are several types of religious life which sometimes combine in one community, but which ordinarily exist apart as characteristic of different temperaments, different nations, different races. The lines of cleavage in historical Christianity are for the most part racial, national, or temperamental. We have to take this into account when we consider the religious life and institutions of different countries. What a difference there is in religion from this point of view in the great centers, such as Rome, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, Edinburgh, New York! That man would go far astray who should undertake to use any one of these as a test of any or of all the others.
Let us consider, for example, the question of participation in the services of the Church. Rome has apparently, from a Protestant point of view, an abnormal number of churches, and in these churches an extraordinary number of chapels and altars. The reason for this is that there is an immense number of clergy in Rome, and all these altars are needed that they may perform the most important of their duties—the sacrifice of the mass. The churches, chapels, and altars are not erected for the people merely—if so, vastly fewer would be necessary—but for the priests who sacrifice for the people even when they are absent. Berlin has apparently very few churches, and these are not always well attended by the people, and are used infrequently except on Sundays. Judging from this, it would be a very irreligious city; but any one who really knows Berlin would not say that it is less religious than Rome. The religion of the German people finds its expression in a mystic type of personal piety and of family and social life; it maintains and propagates itself without frequent attendance upon public worship.
In London regular attendance upon public worship is commonly regarded as indispensable for the maintenance of the Christian religion. Therefore Christian people frequent the churches to an extent that is unknown on the continent of Europe. But to make the British habit of frequenting the Church for public worship a test of the vitality of the Christian religion in the great cities of the Continent would be altogether unjust and untrue. The historical development of religion in Great Britain has brought about an entirely different state of affairs there from that which we find everywhere else in the world. The situation in Great Britain is therefore special, peculiar, and, one might say, abnormal as compared with the situation in other parts of the world. In the United States the original population was chiefly British, and therefore followed British methods in religion. But in the present century our land, and especially our cities, have filled up with a population from the continent of Europe, bringing with them Continental methods of worship which would not yield to or readily adopt British methods. Intermarriage with the British stock and familiar converse in society have tended to assimilation, and therefore the situation has gradually and inevitably emerged that the Christianity of New York and Chicago and our other great cities has assumed an intermediate position between that of the Continent and that of Great Britain. The religious customs characteristic of British Christianity have undoubtedly declined—they have yielded to the influence of Continental Christianity. If British Christianity is the norm by which we are to judge, then Christianity has declined in the United States. If, however, it is not the norm, then it might appear that an intermediate position, such as we have attained by the assimilation of the British and the Continental types, may be a real advance and gain, because of the appropriation of some of the best features of both methods and the rubbing off of some of the eccentricities and excrescences of both. A decline in the relative attendance upon the public worship, and especially upon the second service on Sunday, is exactly what we would anticipate under the circumstances. It is altogether probable that the decline is much less than we had the right to expect in view of the vast influence exerted upon us by Continental types of Christianity during the past half century. And it is altogether probable that the decline has not reached its normal goal. Especially is this the case when we take into consideration other influences which tend to diminish the attendance upon public worship.
1. In Great Britain, where the churches were established by law, the state and Church were so entwined that it was a badge of good citizenship to attend upon public worship. In antithesis with this, attendance of the nonconformists upon public worship was regarded as a standing by their principles and a test of fidelity and courage. These influences worked also in the United States during the colonial period; but during the present century this motive has lost its influence, and it is to be feared that politicians as such feel under no special obligation to attend church, especially in view of the attitude of many of the ministry as to political life and political questions.
2. In Great Britain it has been a badge of social propriety to attend public worship. Social influences still prevail greatly in the United States, in villages and small cities, and even to some extent in the churches in the great cities, where they are organized and conducted in social lines as social religious clubs. But this influence is much weaker than it used to be, and it is gradually passing away.
3. The pulpit was once the chief means of instruction and of intellectual and moral stimulation for the people. The preacher was the people’s orator. The pulpit has in great measure lost its attractive power in this regard. The daily and weekly press have a greater influence in public instruction. The multiplication of cheap books also takes from the preacher a large share of his influence in this regard. Oratory in legislative bodies has to a great extent lost its influence. Its place has been taken by simple, compact, time-saving statements, often printed but not delivered. Committees do the work which used to be done after discussion before the public. So the people will not listen now to the pulpit orator of former generations. They demand short, crisp sermons that bristle with points, and are practical and helpful. In other words, the oratorical and highly intellectual character of the pulpit which used to attract worshipers no longer attracts them. They feel that they can get more benefit in this regard by reading in the comfort of the home. Multitudes of people can no longer be induced to attend church to be instructed by the minister or to get his judgment on topics of the time, or to be stirred by his eloquence; they can get all these things cheaper and easier by reading at home. When, now, this is re-enforced by the fact that multitudes dislike the doctrines of the Church, and resent them when they are preached, we can easily understand that church attendance should decline very greatly from this reason.
But this is no evidence that the Christian religion has declined. If men absent themselves from public worship because it is no longer necessary for them, as good citizens and as respectable members of society, to attend, or because they may get their instruction and stimulation elsewhere easier and with less expenditure of time and money, that is simply an evidence that attendance upon church in the past has been due in great measure to other than religious reasons, and that, these no longer holding, attendance has disappeared with them. The attendance upon public worship, though reduced so far as number is concerned, is now more simply and purely for religious reasons, and therefore minister and people may with greater freedom make the services more distinctly religious.