The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5e: Off-Hand Prayers

From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation; Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” in the 9/9/1920 issue of The Christian Century.

[The following is from the last installment of the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” which Lloyd Douglas published in the Christian Century during the summer of 1920. This final essay is entitled, “Fifth Phase: Making Worship Worshipful,” and it was in the September 9th issue. Douglas has just claimed that “non-conformist” churches have gotten too far away from beauty in their worship services, and he acknowledges that any attempt at making worship beautiful again might lead to the accusation of being “mystical.” He continues:]

“Yet this problem must be solved somehow. ‘Evolutionary momentum’ has been at work again. The service became so ornate that it met disaster and made an open bid for gross paganism four hundred years ago. Now it has become so denuded of its beauty that its stark ugliness repels. We preachers have become dreadfully poor psychologists. There is an instinctive heart-hunger for the mystical in worship that we have been unable to satisfy with our crude, bungling attempts at ritual and the rasping dissonances of the alleged music rendered by our untrained choirs. There has been entirely too much extemporaneous and ill-considered matter introduced into our ‘services of worship.’ Our ‘free’ pulpit prayers, for example, have been so very free that they jar unpleasantly on the sensitive ear of the naturally devout. Indeed, our public prayers are filled with impertinences that are only saved from being blasphemous by the fact that we know not what we do. We pick up disgusting tricks of addressing The Absolute in terms of a contemptuous familiarity. How often one hears preachers mouthing that raucous phrase whose vogue the reverential fail to comprehend, ‘Now, Lord, just send us’ – whatever-it-is – in the same inflection one uses when telephoning the butcher, ‘Now, Sam, just send us a few lean pork chops, this time, can’t you? No; no sausage today, thank you. Yes, that will be all, Sam. Thanks very much!’

“Now, this will not do! Some of us have been wondering what is the matter with our churches, and some of us have been berating the generation for its godlessness. Many of us may find, upon investigation, that we have disgusted our potential constituency with our unwitting want of reverence. Many a sensitive man would greatly prefer to take a book of essays with him to a shady bend in the river on Sunday morning than attend our church, whereas his whole soul cries out for a much closer contact with the divine than he can achieve by his communion with nature. But – it is a great deal better for that man’s spiritual welfare that he should go out Sunday morning and watch the river than to go to some church where the music is so ugly it positively frightens one, and the preacher talks to the Great Unseen as if he were chaffing with his next-door neighbor over the back fence. Let it be repeated: This will not do! We who have been committing these serious blunders must mend our ways!”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5d: Evolutionary Momentum

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the last installment of the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” which Lloyd Douglas published in the Christian Century during the summer of 1920. This final essay is entitled, “Fifth Phase: Making Worship Worshipful,” and it was in the September 9th issue. Douglas has just said that the problem with most churches is that they ignored “the ‘incurably’ religious passion in men’s hearts for a beautiful, reverential, dignified and consistent means of church worship.” He goes on to explain:]

“There is a curious phenomenon in nature known to biology as ‘evolutionary momentum.’ A certain animal develops a tusk or a horn or a set of spines, for purpose of defense. By natural selection, only such members of the species survive as are best equipped with the peculiar protection. But, after an interminable length of time, this thing upon which the animal’s ancestors had relied for defense has so increased in length and weight that it becomes a serious menace. After that – Nemesis! By a process of ‘evolutionary momentum,’ the weapon becomes the machinery of his defeat who carries it. What was once a safeguard becomes a shackle. The virtue becomes a vice.

“When our forefathers repudiated the Vatican, they decided to pitch out of the church everything that was loose at both ends. True, many a dingy old tenet which might have been more honored by the breach than the observance was permitted to remain – but everything that had any color, form, or beauty was enrolled on Protestantism’s index expurgatorius. Gradually, the service of worship was denuded of its vestments, its historic symbolism, its awesome solemnities, its majestic music, its stately grandeur, its subtle appeal to the mystical quality of the human mind.

“Doubtless the whole business of ceremonialism and symbolism had been grossly exaggerated. One suspects that it was this overdevelopment of the ritual that had as much as anything to do with the great protest which sent such a flock of awkward fledglings fluttering out of the old nest. It was a typical case of ‘evolutionary momentum.’ Generation after generation, these embellishments had been added to the service of worship until the accretion of ornate rites toppled of its own weight. Thereupon, new tendencies arose, pledged to have no more of such nonsense. They kept the faith. At this point, they kept the faith!

“Our so-called ‘service of worship,’ in such churches as employ you and me to serve as their pastors, surely ought to satisfy the most exacting of our colonial fathers who had come to hate the sights, sounds, and scents of ritualistic worship. It is only rarely that the service of worship in a ‘non-conformist’ church excites a feeling of reverence. To be sure, many churches have not failed here. I am just talking about your church and mine. We know very well that our ‘service of worship’ needs the breath of life put into it! But how are we going to manage it without being accused of ‘mysticism’ or something else a very great deal worse?”

[Douglas’s essay will be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5c: Failures and Their Causes

by Ronald R Johnson

“Regarded specifically, it is true that many churches have been unable to present a very attractive portrait of his life and love who spoke of a social commonwealth of souls in that gripping phrase – ‘The Kingdom.’ Possibly such failures may be traced to a large number of causes. At least three of these causes stand out rather prominently. One type of failure may easily be accounted for on the ground of an overemphasis upon some minor point of doctrine which has been permitted to grow so huge as to drain the very life of the cultus that produced it – like a monstrous sarcoma. It may have gone in for feet-washing as a necessary and important ceremonial rite, for example. At first, this performance may have had some real symbolic beauty – though the imagination of the writer is far too sluggish to understand what beauty could ever have been thus expressed to the occidental mind; he merely assumes that such may have been the case, at first. But once the ceremony had lost its pristine spontaneity, it must have become a heavy load to carry. The sect could not relax its grip upon its burden, however. What it had written, it had written! Presently, so far as that body of believers is concerned, there is nothing much to Christianity except to get one’s feet washed, and so large a volume of effort is required for the persistence of this rite that there is very little energy left for the main task. It is the old case of the tail wagging the dog. It is also like the steamboat of Lincoln’s story that had a ten-foot boiler and a twelve-foot whistle. Every time it whistled, it stopped. I fancy that the sacrament of feet-washing is now nearly enough passe to be safely mentioned as a case in point to cover a great many similar pathological conditions still present with us. Such deflections from the main task of the church account for part of her present discomfiture.

“A second type of failure may be explained on the ground of an untrained and ineffective leadership in the pulpit. No church can get on very well or for a very long time which willfully does violence to human intelligence. To endure, a church must be able to command the respect of thoughtful people. But this is a truism requiring no argument; at least not in this presence.

“The third and by far the most prevalent type of failure may be accounted for on the ground that the churches of this order have almost completely ignored the ‘incurably’ religious passion in men’s hearts for a beautiful, reverential, dignified and consistent means of church worship.”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5b: The Disappointed

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the last installment of the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” which Lloyd Douglas published in the Christian Century during the summer of 1920. This final essay is entitled, “Fifth Phase: Making Worship Worshipful,” and it was in the September 9th issue. Douglas has just finished telling the story of an American tourist – one of the new rich – who goes to an art museum in Europe and is disappointed with what he sees there. The old verger tells him his disappointment says more about him than it does about the old works of art. Douglas continues:]

“There seems to be a general rumor to the effect that Christianity, as expressed by the church, is failing to please this generation. Almost everybody, both within and without the church, is either announcing blatantly his firm belief that the church confronts a crisis or waggles his head solemnly when somebody else asserts it. Some people view the situation with alarm. Others, unable to add a cubit to their own spiritual stature, are glad enough to think that the norm and standard of the soul has been lowered, and poorly conceal their satisfaction over the general chatter relative to the failure of the church to maintain her grip upon the mind and heart of our age.

“Prominent among the doleful, who are sincerely disturbed over this matter, are many members of our own profession. We have permitted ourselves to be stampeded by all this idle chatter. Really – it is mere impudence for our country, whose most permanent works still reek of green lumber, hot rivets, wet plaster, fresh paint, and perspiration, to grow hysterically concerned about the fate of an institution that was ancient and venerable more than a millennium before civilization was apprised of the fact that this continent was in existence!

“The church has quite passed out of the experimental stage. She does not happen to be on trial. The spectators are, however; and when they presume to express their fear that she may not survive the temporary flurry of our present restlessness, they but advertise the vasty depths of their unplumbed ignorance of history, and the almost incredible lengths to which naive bumptiousness can aspire in a land of unbridled and unsupervised gabble. So much for the church – generally considered and spelled in caps.”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5a: Making Worship Worshipful

by Ronald R Johnson

From the title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation; Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” in the 9/9/1920 issue of The Christian Century.

[During the summer of 1920, Lloyd Douglas published a series of articles in the Christian Century under the heading, “Wanted – A Congregation.” The following is from the last installment of this series, which was published on September 9, 1920.]

“One of our recently rich was touring what remains of France with his overdressed family, two maids, a Pekinese pup, and a valet whom he addressed as ‘Jim’ and by whom he was fond of being addressed as ‘Bill.’ This man understood that it was the proper thing to visit historic shrines, to view celebrated paintings, and to make appreciative noises before notable sculptured figures of the great; and all this he did because it was the proper thing. Lacking a background of historical information and the lore of the arts, however, he was experiencing considerable disappointment. Unable to look through a stone figure and quite on past it for a distance of five hundred years to the causes and conditions which had had more to do with its production than the genius of the artist, to his untutored mind it was merely a huge chunk of rock which somebody with an unfamiliar and unpronounceable name had once hacked at with a chisel.

“One day he pulled loose from his party and went alone into one of the most widely known of the picture galleries. He did not provide himself with a catalog, nor did he seek the advice of attendants relative to the masterpieces on view. He rushed about the place like a stranger hunting for the proper ticket window in a metropolitan railroad station, pausing occasionally, for an instant, to lean over a railing and dart a hurried, hummingbird glance at some priceless work of art before scurrying away to peck at another. Within twenty minutes, he had his fill of the place and was quite ready to take leave of it. On his way out, he spied the elderly verger sitting by a window, reading. Prompted by that raw insolence which sudden wealth seems usually to bestow upon the proletarian mind, it occurred to this man that he might ease his annoyance somewhat by baiting the old gentleman; so he approached him, and assuming a posture as nearly simulating hauteur as an ex-blacksmith’s imagination could devise, he snarled, ‘I’ve been hearing all my life about these famous masterpieces. Masterpieces – bah! Daubs, I call ’em! Old trash! May have pleased, once upon a time – but not today! I want you to know that I have been disappointed!’ Whereupon the verger put down his book, polished his glasses, and, having regarded the noisy tourist for some moments in silence, replied quietly, ‘Sir, these pictures are not on trial; the spectators are!‘”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4l: Is That Moment of Silence Possible?

by Ronald R Johnson

From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship,” in The Christian Century, 9/2/1920.

[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. Douglas explains why it is necessary for latecomers not to be admitted during the ritualistic part of the service.]

“It is entirely unnecessary that there should be a steady tramp, tramp, tramp down the aisles during this impressive moment. The public does not value Christianity the more highly for being permitted to treat a church service with less respect than it is obliged to manifest in a playhouse. Therein lies one of the chief difficulties with the Protestant churches of America. They have consistently believed and practiced a series of logical fallacies with reference to the public mind.

“They have lacked the wisdom to understand that people are not especially attracted to any institution which they are permitted to treat disrespectfully. Not infrequently during the organ prelude, ‘dear old Brother Smithers’ snuggles up beside ‘dear old Major Welickedem’ and chatters audibly, to the annoyance of everybody within a range of fifty yards. Where else but in a Protestant church would such an absolutely unnecessary disturbance be tolerated? Not in the theater, surely. Nor at a concert. And why must the church put up with such annoyances? Oh, because it has consistently permitted almost any sort of a nuisance to nullify whatever opportunities were presented for an orderly, inspirational service of worship! But – someone exclaims – what is one to do? One must go to dear old Brother Smithers and tell him to cut it out. It can be said gently, tactfully, purringly – but it should be said. If the dear old fellow becomes incensed and withdraws to some other church, it will be a great deal better for his own soul than if he stayed where he was and habitually made a nuisance of himself. For, in church Number Two, he will not talk during the service, remembering what had happened at Number One.

“There must be no crying babies, shrieking all through the otherwise impressive moments of the service! Nowhere else but in a Protestant church would such an annoyance be permitted for a moment! What shall we do? We must tell the young mother that she is to be excused from her church duties until her baby is old enough to be placed in the church kindergarten where all small children are to be during the church service.

“You wonder why some of the finest, most earnest, most philanthropic people in your town are not in church on Sundays? Provide a service that appeals to the heart and is uninterrupted by petty annoyances which destroy every possibility for a reverential worship, and let it be known that you mean to have such a service every Sunday – and you may notice a change!

“No, sir; when the time comes in the service where silence is the order, close the doors, shut off the tramp of the tardy and the chatter of the thoughtless, and have silence!

“If some belated brother and his wife become offended because they are obliged to wait a few minutes in the vestibule, that is sufficient proof that the church, with its old way of doing things, hasn’t done very much for their souls, and it is high time something was tried! And if they get so angry they resolve never to come back, and go away and tell it all over the lot that they went to their dear old church, where their dear old fathers and mothers had been wont to come straggling down the aisle almost any time between ten-forty-three and eleven-thirty-five, and, bless you, weren’t permitted to go to their own seat just because their fool preacher had suddenly developed a crazy notion that the doors were to be closed through the opening service – well – what of that? Is that going to put the church out of business? Indeed, it is the very choicest advertising. No church would be able to purchase or devise a finer publicity medium than about half a dozen loquacious ex-members who had gone forth to spread the report that their church had gone in for a strict practice of reverence. Such a campaign is sure to bring out a select lot of splendid souls who will come next Sunday to see if, perchance, there is that something in your service for which they had sought, eagerly and in vain.”

[In my next post, I’ll tell you about Douglas’s fifth and final article in the series, “Wanted – A Congregation.”]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4k: A Consistent Ritual

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. He is explaining to his wife how he intends to improve the order of worship.]

“‘Now,’ said Blue, ‘the ritualistic service of worship begins. I don’t believe that we had better fumble around in the back of the book anymore for a responsive reading. We’ll print it in the bulletin, and let it make up in power whatever it lacks in former length. Anyway, these ‘readings’ in the back of the book weren’t built correctly. Most of them are too long, and too full of local color about the Jews.’

“The preacher smiled as he repeated a few of these passages for the edification of his wife. ‘What good does it do a crowd of able-bodied citizens of the United States in 1920 to stand up and read together about brotherhood being “like the precious oil upon the head; like the dew of Hermon,” or that purely parochial remark of an ancient people, “Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up thy might.” And what possible benefit can accrue to anybody by reading aloud so misleading a passage as, “For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled”? And so many of them have a curious trick of ending on an awkward phrase like, “Yes, the work of our hands, establish Thou it” – leaving one with the uncomfortable feeling of having come off and forgotten something, until the next event of the service mercifully blots the dissonance out of mind. No; we will not go to the back of the hymnal anymore – at least not until we can do so with better effect than is now in sight.

“‘After that first hymn, there is going to be a moment of silence – an impressive silence! The auditorium doors will be closed. The ushers will seat no more latecomers until the ritualistic service is concluded. The service isn’t operated for the sole purpose of accommodating the tardy anyway. If they will come late, they can do exactly as at the orchestral concert or the theater – wait until there is an intermission.’

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4j: Encouraging Meditation

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. He is telling his wife about his plans for improving the order of worship…]

“‘That organ prelude,’ soliloquized Blue, ‘ought to begin quietly. People come in from the racket of traffic on the street. They should be given some incentive to calm their spirits and meditate without being overwhelmed and distracted with a thunderous noise. It should be understood by the ushers that the seating of the people should be done with a minimum of confusion. From the moment the prospective worshipper steps inside the door, he should be impressed with the fact that this is the House of God. He should be given a chance to think, to pray, to sense the divine Presence. Therefore, the organ prelude, which helps him to that mood, must not be a big ‘show piece,’ but rather an impassioned tug at the heart-strings. And then it should grow, almost imperceptibly, at its close, until it seems to be building up toward some definite action. The people must be filled with a desire to express themselves.

“‘Without a pause,’ continued Blue, thinking aloud, ‘the organist will modulate into the score of the opening hymn. Just think of the thrill of it, my dear,’ exclaimed the minister – ‘the organ piling harmony upon harmony, higher, richer, fuller, until, in one great, triumphant chord, it peals out the majestic measures of ‘O God, the Rock of Ages!’ – and the choir comes to its feet – and the congregation rises, not hesitatingly, by squads, but spontaneously, immediately, because it can’t sit still another moment – and then they will sing! Fine – isn’t it?’

“Blue remembers a wonderful service he had attended, in which the organist had begun with an impassioned prelude, rising to a martial mood, and, because the minister was going to preach on a patriotic theme, brought the congregation to a stand with the strains of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ – after which he swept his choir and the audience into the first verse of ‘Lead On, O King Eternal,’ which happened to be in the same key and therefore required no introduction at all. True, the congregation didn’t know for a moment what was afoot, but it was not long in finding out, and the genuine thrill it experienced shattered every vestige of indifference and tuned the heart for a thorough appreciation of that great militant hymn.”

[Douglas’s story will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4i: Renewing the Batteries

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. While he and his wife are on vacation, he takes a critical look at his “order of worship” and finds it wanting…]

“Needless to say, explanations followed which made it possible for the minister’s wife to share her husband’s musings. She encouraged him to tell her of his plans for a better order of worship, and he begged her to help him with suggestions. They discussed this matter far into the night.

“‘First of all,’ said Blue after he had explained his dilemma, ‘I must establish closer cooperation with my choir. It is a good choir. And Fred Young is a capable organist and director. I mean to talk this all through with him when we get back. And then I shall go over it with the choir. They will see the significance of this matter, and will be glad to do their part.’

“‘Well,’ said Mrs. Blue, with a woman’s inclination to repair, ‘let us begin at the beginning, and see how much of the service is to be mended, and how much must be brand new. First, there is the opening hymn – ‘

“‘No,’ said Blue, ‘first is the organ prelude, which Broad Street Church uses to drown whispered conversations in the pews. We will put a notice in the bulletin that the organ prelude is a part of the service of worship. Perhaps, if Young is given to understand that the people are listening to his organ number, he may put a little more into it.’ There was a silence of several minutes during which the minister remembered dismally that this inattentiveness of the audience to the organ prelude might easily be accounted for on the ground of his own attitude toward it, for had he not customarily spent the whole of it fussing over his holy properties – locating his Bible lesson, and reading in the hymnal and the opening hymn, and toying with his sermon notes, and leafing through the bulky sheaf of announcements with which he would later drug his congregation almost into insensibility, and otherwise busying himself in a manner denoting his absolute indifference to the organ number?

“Why couldn’t he step into his pulpit Saturday evening and attend to all these little errands, seeing they were so important? Perhaps it would do no harm, anyway, to go into his pulpit on Saturday evening and, having arranged his books and papers, stand for a moment in that silent, dimly-lit place, and invoke God’s blessing on his next day’s work. Indeed, he thought, if there was a convenient way to do it, he would like to spend Saturday night in the church.

“Ah, but it was a wise old cult that required its officiating priests to sleep in the temple on the night preceding the major service of the week. Many an otherwise excellent sermon has had the breath of life clattered out of it by the rattle of breakfast dishes, the crying of babies, and general confusion at the parsonage on Sunday morning. Blue decides that henceforth he will get up at five on Sundays, prepare his own breakfast, and hie himself to the little den in the attic where nothing short of serious illness or a fire would be permitted to disturb him until time to go to church. He owes that much to his work.”

[Douglas’s story will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4h: Psychological Considerations

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. He is taking a critical look at his order of worship and finding many things he doesn’t like, especially his tendency to announce the hymn over and over again, even though it’s listed in the bulletin…]

“Then there would ensue an awkward pause, during which the organist was guessing whether Brother Blue had said everything that was in his mind at that moment. Having finally determined that the preacher had said it all, the organ would pipe out a puny little combination of ‘solicional’ and ‘violin diapason’ wherewith to introduce the hymn, playing the entire score of it in this feeble manner until, by the time the congregation was actually turned loose to sing, it didn’t want to. There is a peculiar psychology back of this. When the minister has begged the congregation to sing, the man in the pew is reluctant to make the adventure. He fears his neighbor may think that he is going to cut loose and show these people that he, for one, is some singer. Again, when the organ introduces the hymn with a frail little prelude, everybody is afraid to begin, for fear there will be no support.

“But, just now, the thing that filled D. Preston Blue’s mind with misgivings was the thought that he had been talking too much during his ‘service of worship.’ When he had come to the point of announcing the responsive reading of the psalm, he always said something like this: ‘Shall we not now turn to selection one hundred and six, in the back of the hymnal, page one hundred and twenty, and read responsively?’ Then came another of those blighting delays, while people hunted for the page. Blue was conscious of the awkwardness of such moments, and his only remedy for them was to fill them up with talk – mere superfluous chatter. He would keep on repeating, dully, while they searched, ‘Selection one hundred and six – on the one hundred and twentieth page – in the back of the hymnal.’ Oh, how could he have been so exasperatingly stupid? Every time there arose the merest ghost of a chance for the congregation to have a little of blessed silence, here was Blue chattering like a magpie!

“Thus did he review, with burning cheeks, the specific defects in that cold and pulseless ‘order of service,’ searching for the cause of its failure; when, suddenly, the real secret of its hopelessness and dullness stood out, clear-cut as a cameo, and he shouted to Mrs. Blue, ‘I’ve got it! I know what ails Broad Street Church! She’s a-been gettin’ too much gas and not enough spark!'”

[Douglas’s story will continue in my next post…]