Yet among all the costly ecclesiastical structures,—the city is said to have $17,000,000 invested in church buildings,—there are only three or four which have any adequate equipment for the promotion of human service or friendly association. The responsibility of the rich congregations for re-enforcing the poorer ones in their struggle against adverse conditions is scarcely recognized.
The problem is as in other cities. In the most crowded sections, the normal constituency of the Protestant churches has been swept away by the immigrant tide. In somewhat better conditioned neighborhoods, families have moved away and the homeless, neighborless lodger has taken their place. That is, the fundamental conditions which have created and directed the churches have disappeared; and only a broadly organized, well financed campaign can provide the fresh force, equipment, intelligence, which are indispensable to the revolutionized situation.
ADDIE S. WEIHL.
Head worker, Columbian Settlement, Pittsburgh.
The suburban churches side-step the present crisis. They are sincere but other-worldly. One minister who is genuinely interested in foreign missions feels it much on his conscience to make his people care less about the Orient and more about the East End. A few preachers deal with a present-day, near-home kingdom of God. Some presented the results of the Survey to their people; more entered into solemn account of stock at the time of the bribery arrests. The following of the churches is large, devout, loyal; but, on the whole, the church is a hospitable garrison to defend the faith, not a conquering army of righteousness.
JULIAN KENNEDY.
Consulting engineer, Member Civic Improvement Commission.
Religion as being one-half the ingenuity and adventure of diversified personal service in every kind of neighborly and civic fellowship; the truth which Dr. Parkhurst long ago voiced, that the congregation is not the minister's field but his force,—this is what has produced Pittsburgh's small but heroic group of present civic leaders. A widespread contagion of it is what Pittsburgh needs more than anything else. In this the city must find its chief resource for bringing about and continuing a better order. The response of the churches to the sickening series of breaches of trust, to bribe giving and bribe-taking, to the overwork that means debauchery, to the mill-owners' Sabbath-breaking that breaks the mill-worker's body and soul,—must be a bold relaxing from tradition and letting their dynamic go free. The outcome would be a new synthesis which would overcome the weakness and shame of sectarianism, and give a broad, strong front to the city's renascent moral life.