The following is from an article by Lloyd C. Douglas in the February 3, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. The title of the article is, “What About Lent?” Douglas has been saying that the seasons themselves put people in the appropriate mood for each part of the church calendar, but the local pastor is often harried by outside forces to preach about something entirely unrelated to the season the church is celebrating (Great Literature Day, Camp Sunday, etc.). Douglas writes:
“Days and days and days! If it may not be too impudent, I should like to assume the role of soothsayer long enough to predict that we have now passed the crest of these ‘days,’ and that our good friends with the causes and movements and drives and campaigns – good, bad, and indifferent – are presently to discover that they have overdone it. The good old preacher-pitcher has been carried once too often to the campaign-well. He is ‘gone broke.’ And that is a fact.
“Lent begins next week. What are we going to do about it? Most of us who plan the programs for our non-liturgical churches organize classes during this season for the instruction of young people in the fundamentals of Christianity as interpreted by our own denominations. This is as it ought to be. Many of us make special evangelistic efforts. More and more, our churches are coming to think of the pre-Easter weeks as a season of recruiting. But it is to be doubted if many of us are making proper use of this period for the deepening of the springs of spiritual life in the hearts of mature and confessed Christians.
“The preacher who fails to see and utilize the possibilities of Lent is standing in his own light. He may be reluctant to observe the season lest he infringe upon the exclusive privilege of the liturgical churches, but no denomination enjoys a monopoly of Lent. He may fear the indictment that he is ‘headed toward Rome’ – an ancient bugaboo that has cost us heavily who have sacrificed so much of the beauty of holiness in our awkward efforts to avoid doing anything that was ever practiced by historic Christianity previous to 1517. Again, he remembers the ungodly travesty of Lenten observance in the upper ether of ‘high sassiety’ where the self-abnegation of this penitential season seems to enjoin no more rigorous discipline than the refusal to have lemon in one’s tea at the bridge party; and where fasting means laying up, for a few days, in some sanitarium, to take medicinal baths wherewith to recuperate from the winter’s over-gorging and loss of sleep. But good things will be counterfeited; and the better they are, the more likely to be imitated.”
[Douglas will continue his essay in my next post…]
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 