Archival Research – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Demotion of Death, Part 1

The title page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “The Demotion of Death,” Christian Century, 1/27/1921.

The following is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “The Demotion of Death,” which appeared in the January 27, 1921 issue of The Christian Century. He writes:

“The world was old, weary, and jaded before there was vouchsafed to the race, through the words and deeds of Jesus, that which would dispel the gloom of life at the point where the shadows had ever rested most darkly. The Hebrew prophets spoke of death – when, rarely, they spoke of it – as a mystery too vast to be encompassed by human thought or phrased in human speech. The spiritual leaders of other peoples rose to their very highest points of faith when expressing the vague hope that the soul might persist. But all men walked uncertainly as their slanting shadows lengthened toward the east. Solemnly did they respect their obligation to preserve the bodies of their fathers, hoping that their children would deal no less considerately with theirs – but, beyond the sepulchre, there waited nothing more than was comprehended by an undefined wish.

“Thus, life lacked the buoyancy, the zest, the zeal, the urge, that came upon it by way of his spiritual contribution who has become known to the civilized world as Master and Lord. Not until he came was victory proclaimed at that part of life which surely is the most important of all parts of it! Not until he came did the soul become the motive power of life; lasting through all changes; superior to all changes; containing an indestructible spark that was as supreme over the body as the body was supreme over its clothes!

“Consistent with his own belief, this man of the vision splendid went to his own death with a serenity that made them marvel who had been so disinterested in his tragedy that they gambled for his robe. Not a tremor was in his voice as he declared to his sorrowing disciples, ‘Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ Not a trace of agitation in his tone as he remarks to the fearful crowd, that lined his way to the hill Golgotha, ‘You need not weep for me! If you weep, let it be for yourselves and your generation.’ Ah – to what heights did the evolving soul of humanity arise that afternoon when he hung, dying, to whom death was but a guide to a land uninvaded by sorrow!”

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

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 9

by Ronald R Johnson

From “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the 1/13/1921 issue of The Christian Century.

The following is the conclusion of “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has been saying that it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the church’s music is good. He continues:

“It goes without saying that the preacher should have a fair working knowledge of hymnology. it is somewhat important that he should be able to read New Testament Greek; but far more important to this job than Greek is a fine sense of discrimination in the selection of hymns. He ought to know whether it is more uplifting for his congregation to sing, ‘Pull for the Shore, Sailor,’ or ‘Lead On, O King Eternal.’ It ought to make a difference to him whether his people sing, ‘Brighten Your Corner’ or ‘Lead, Kindly Light.’ He should understand the relative values of ‘Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?’ and ‘Jerusalem the Golden.’

“And he must keep close to that choir! He must attend rehearsals and lend encouragement to all worthy effort. He must dare to administer tactful and constructive criticism. The fact – for it is a fact – must be kept constantly before that choir that its service is of signal importance to the life of the church. Some preachers pray for the choir, just before the service begins. That is as it should be. Most choirs need it. But whatever means the minister employs to teach his musicians the significance of their task, they should be made aware of it as a solemn obligation. Are your Sunday services lifeless and poorly attended? Look behind you!”

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 8

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has been saying that it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the church’s music is good. He continues:

“Now there are a few facts that every preacher really ought to know about choir anthems. First, the choir must never attempt anything that is too difficult to be rendered well. It is much better that the quartet should spend two hours trying to get together on ‘Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross’ – and then sing it with an eye single to one purpose – than to invest an equal amount of time on ‘The Radiant Morn’ – and tote it to the shambles. Every quartet wants to sing ‘The Radiant Morn.’ There are about a dozen church quartets on the Western Hemisphere that have any warrant for making the adventure. It is much more effective for the choir to learn ‘Hark, Hark, My Soul,’ so that it can sing it with good interpretation than to butcher Tchaikowsky’s ‘O Come, Let Us Worship,’ or Gounod’s ‘Sanctus.’

“In the next place, the choir should not attempt to present a new anthem every Sunday. That means nothing else than that the piece has been given only brief rehearsal. Possibly all that these loyal folk have achieved in that one rehearsal is a scrappy knowledge of the harmony. As to its interpretation, they have had not chance to attend to that. They just grind it out – happy if they all contrive to get through at the same time. It is much better if the choir should plan to present one new anthem each month, and repeat old ones frequently. The best choirs do it. If the piece is good, it will bear repetition. If it is not, it should never have been done in the first place. Quite to the contrary is the repeated sermon! Any sermon that the parson can repeat with a feeling of assurance that his congregation will not recall it never was worth preaching. Is that not a fact? When you preach an old sermon, do you pick one of the big ones that made everybody sit up? You do not? We are right, then, about this, as usual. It is not so of the anthem. The congregation likes an old anthem, if it is well done. Preachers who are poor readers of the Scripture Lesson should select obscure passages. The people have heard the familiar ones done well, and cannot forget about it.”

I will share Douglas’s concluding remarks in my next post.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 7

by Ronald R Johnson

“If the minister will give some attention to this matter in his study and in conference with good musicians, he will discover, perhaps to his surprise, that a great deal of the strictly high class music of Christianity is not difficult of execution. He should find out what these anthems and solos are, if his choir is composed of persons who lack the talent and training to adventure with more complicated scores. It may be with the best intent in the world that he proposes to the choir that it attempt the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ which is, as he says, a very wonderful thing. But unless his chorus is made up of trained vocalists, he has placed his friends in a position from which it will be quite difficult to escape with credit to themselves and the cause they would like to serve. He should know exactly what grade of music his choir can successfully negotiate, and see to it that the musical library of his church is supplied with the best there is of that grade. He should have a complete list of the titles of these numbers in his study. When he plans a service, he should inform the choir director what special music is demanded by his sermon theme.

“How little coordination there is in most of our churches, of the sermon and the music! Sometimes the choir director doesn’t have the faintest idea what the sermon is about, and preacher doesn’t know (or care) what the choir is going to sing. He picks his hymns at random, without regard to their fitness or tunefulness. Occasionally he does this at the last minute. The choir has no notion what hymns are to be sung. No rehearsal of them has been had. And then this fellow will get up and babble about a wicked world that will not come out to church! Why should it? What is he doing to make the church more attractive? Complains about the size of his salary. In what other business could he earn more, if he went at it in the same way that he prepares for Sunday?”

Douglas has more advice for pastors on this subject, and he’ll share it my next post.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 6

by Ronald R Johnson

“If the preacher is careless whether or not his church ever commands any attention and respect, let him put up with what he has had vouchsafed unto him. But if he hopes to make something of his church, he must deal with his music problem firmly. He must boldly announce that his church will have good music, or none! Far better to have no music at all than what passes for the same in far too many of our Protestant churches. And where does the responsibility rest, at last? With the choir? Not at all! With the music committee? Not a bit of it! It resides with the manager of the whole institution – the preacher. When the music is bad, the congregation is depleted; when that happens, who gets the blame? The choir? The music committee? Not for a minute.

“No; it is the preacher’s business, after all. He may pretend to wash his hands of it and lay the responsibility elsewhere; but verily he has his reward (which, likely as not, involves a move to some other locality where he stands a good chance of swapping the worst chorus-choir on the face of the earth for the awfullest quartet that ever jangled discords). Here shows up the importance of the preacher’s knowing something about music himself. He should be in a position to speak to his choir in a tone of authority. It is not enough that he should be vaguely conscious that the noise behind him on Sunday is raucous and infuriating; he should know exactly what the trouble is, and spare no pains to mend it.

“This demands of the preacher that he should have acquired some musical training. It is not very important that he should be a ‘practical musician.’ Indeed, it has happened that a preacher’s ability to sit down on the organ bench and demonstrate precisely how he would like to have a certain passage rendered has earned him an enemy guaranteed to hate him and his to the third and fourth generation. If the preacher is a good organist, he can well afford to keep this one candle of his under a bushel. And if he has a trained voice, he had better use it to talk with. The preacher-soloist who steps from the pulpit to the choir and back again had better take a day off and decide which of these two very excellent callings is his – and put all of his time on the vocation he decides to retain.

“But it will never be against him, in the opinion of the choir, if he reveals the fact that he knows good music from trash. How many preachers like to draw a chuckle from the choir by deprecating their complete ignorance of the devotional and inspirational music of the church – as if it were something to grin about! Just about as funny as if the doctor should remark that he had never taken any interest in clinical thermometers! And all this foolishness of asepsis in surgery! Of course, the preacher intends this pleasantly as a pretty little compliment to the choir for knowing so very much about something concerning which even he knows nothing; but it’s a poor joke, any way you take it.”

But Douglas’s comments weren’t all negative. In my next post, I’ll share his encouragement to ministers on this subject.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 5

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has just finished saying that the public has better taste in music than most ministers are willing to admit, and that makes it harder for them to listen to poor music at church. He continues:

“Unfortunately, too many churches have been specializing in poor music. The reasons for it are legion. Two or three of them will bear mentioning. The trouble may be, for example, with the choir leader. Not to speak too abstractly, permit me to present Sister Iontha Place. Miss Place began directing the choir at the tender age of twenty-two, just after her return from the year she spent at the Tophole Conservatory. That was in the early summer of 1901. [Twenty years earlier, in other words.] Because she has been at it so long, and also because her brother is the heavy contributor, Miss Place must be retained. By virtue of her position, she may sing solos if she wishes so to do. And she wishes so to do – almost every Sunday. Miss Place flats abominably. There is only one satisfying tone taken in the whole of her performance – the final syllable of ‘Amen.’ There are ten persons in her choir – the sort that could be expected to become and remain party to such an enterprise. Every Sunday there is a sugary little anthem about ‘Behind the Beyond is Somewhere,’ or ‘His Old Mother’s Rocking Chair.’ And other stuff like that.

“Now, Rev. R. H. Pepper, a real preacher with a real message, has become aware that he can never make anything of his church so long as this state of things persists. He wants to know what he is to do. For, as has been said, Miss Place is the esteemed sister of Deacon G. Rowling Place, and in most excellent health. Your duty is plain, Pepper. It is not a pleasant job; but – somehow – you must contrive to displace the misplaced Miss Place (begging a thousand pardons!). Nobody envies you the task; for this kind comes out only by prayer and fasting. But you can’t preach against that music. You must either change matters at that point, or be resigned, or resign!

“Have another? Well; meet our good friend, Mr. Onestop, the genial organist who has been playing for nothing (a just wage for services rendered) during the past thirteen years. Whenever the suggestion has come up to the board of trustees that Brother Onestop be given a big birthday dinner in celebration of his retirement as organist, somebody has remembered that Onestop really has been doing the best he could – which even the frenzied admit – and absolutely without recompense. This latter is to be kept carefully in mind. A new organist will add another annoying item to the budget; and the board’s pet motto is, ‘Budge not the budget!’

“These well-meaning people do not realize that they would be doing Percy Onestop a kindness by shielding him from any further rough criticism and contumely behind his back. And, as to the economics involved, Onestop’s gratuitous service at the organ is the most expensive item in their whole blessed and unbudgeable budget! If there are any tears to fall, let them be shed in behalf of our brother, the preacher, who has become the ungrateful legatee of such a bequest as Onestop. What shall he do? In the midnight watches, he asks himself, ‘What shall I do?’ He must get rid of Onestop. It would be positively wrong for him to poison the fellow; but he can easily request the rendition of certain musical numbers which are quite out of Onestop’s reach. If the man has any sense at all, he will see the point. If not, it can be explained to him by the aid of a map and lucid footnotes. But Onestop must go!”

In my next post, Douglas will say more about the role of the pastor in insuring that his church offers good music.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 4

by Ronald R Johnson

“It can easily be proved that discouraged preachers have consistently underrated the public taste. They have harangued their congregations about the increasing godlessness of this generation as a reason why their churches are failing to attract, when the real reason may reside in the increasing unattractiveness of their services, due to the more exacting nature of the public taste. In no field has this development of taste proceeded with more rapidity of late than in this matter that is before the house just now. The public has recently achieved new agencies for the cultivation and satisfaction of its heart-hunger for good music. The phonograph which has become almost as common and indispensable to the American home as the wash-boiler, reproduces the music of the masters, executed by the best known of contemporaneous artists. True, the jazz record brays its abominable yawp more often than ‘Gloria a Te’ raises its majestic praise, but the family that is likely to take any interest in church at all owns a few first-class records and plays them with delight of a Sunday afternoon. More people know good music when they hear it than we suspect. It should be repeated – the preacher is always tempted to underrate the public taste! Because they don’t talk back, he thinks his puny little essay on Sunday morning was a wonder. Because nobody stayed after church to ask him where he got his figures when he said that one-third of the inmates of Sing Sing are college graduates, he thinks they believe it. Because they don’t call him up Monday morning to tell him that the music yesterday was the most awful thing they had ever heard on land or sea, he imagines the music will do. Ah, no; the public isn’t such a dull ass as some would have us believe.”

Douglas is just getting started. In my next post, he’ll tell us why he thinks church music is so bad.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. Before getting into the subject of his essay, he’s talking about some of the things that can help keep the church pews empty on Sunday mornings. He has just finished talking about various ministers’ personality problems. He continues:

“But one’s full sympathy goes out to the minister who knows that he is not making a go of it – not failing for any of the reasons indicated above… but because he has never taking into account the importance of that supreme feature of Christian worship: the music of the church.

“He may be an able preacher, but he can’t preach past bad music. He may be a tactful and beloved pastor, but he can’t win and hold people to his Sunday services with that execrable choir! He may be no end of a statesman in his deft manipulation of his multitudinous auxiliary societies, boards, cabinets, bureaus, and whatnots; but the feeble organist will see to it that the SRO sign is never put out. Sometimes he is entirely unaware that this is so.

“Not infrequently one hears a preacher saying that he knows nothing about music at all – church music or any other kind – saying it nonchalantly, as he might admit ignorance of the tapestries peculiar to the Ming dynasty, apparently oblivious to the fact that his confession is equivalent to a carpenter’s casual remark that he never could saw a board straight or drive a nail without pounding his thumb. No more rarely one hears a preacher saying that he has ‘no ear for music’ – saying it with a smile that clearly means he is too much preoccupied with serious matters to give attention to anything so trivial. We are to understand that it is just a pleasant little joke that he has on himself. By no means is it a joke! It is exactly as if a painter should confess to color-blindness! For so large a place does music rightfully hold in Christian worship that whoever accepts responsibility for the religious education and devotional inspiration of a church can never hope to teach his congregation how to sense the Divine Presence unless he is not only in love with music but fairly conversant with its history, its functions, and the proper manner of its execution. ”

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

“Only slightly less unalluring are the sermons that reek of the vapid tosh known as Pollyannaism. The ‘just be glad’ preacher gets to be as great a public nuisance as his colleague in the next block who knows the city deserves to be blown to perdition – and now a worm has chewed up his gourd-vine. Again, the preacher’s sermons may be so profound as to be incomprehensible to all but the self-confessed intellectuals of the neighborhood, or as light as the chaff which the wind driveth away.

“It is just possible that something may be wrong with his pastoral activities. He may have acquired a trick of wearing a chip on his shoulder, precariously poised, and frequently being brushed off by careless passers-by, to his perpetual discomfort and irritation; or he may have been built, temperamentally, by the rules which obtain in plain and solid geometry, with right angles and the apexes of triangles sticking out all over him, upon which rugged corners and sharp spikes people keep bumping themselves and moving off rubbing their hurts and muttering that he is what – most unfortunately – he is. Or, again, he may have so poor a head for anything like organization or executive leadership that his board of deacons is as glum, in session, as a coroner’s inquest, and his board of trustees haggles with him over the suggested appropriation of four dollars and fifteen cents wherewith to buy the janitor some new brooms and a coal-shovel, while his Sunday School hasn’t half enough teachers, and his women’s society is up to its ears in a brawl. These are some of the reasons [why the pews are empty]. Without doubt, these brethren have a bad time of it, each in his own way.”

But this was all by way of introduction. What Douglas wants to talk about is the music of the church, and its problems. In my next post, he’ll share some candid thoughts on that subject.

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, as published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. The photograph is taken from Douglas’s 1920-1923 Scrapbook. The green item in the upper left side of the picture is a cloth “snake” that the Bentley Library provides to help lay pages flat while being photographed.

Lloyd Douglas continued making controversial comments in The Christian Century in an article entitled, “The Music of the Church,” published in the January 13, 1921, issue. This time he took aim at church music.

He began by describing the pastor who doesn’t feel it’s his responsibility to supervise the church’s music. And that, he says, explains why “his church treasurer is always blue over a bank balance that is always red.” Douglas continues:

“Nor need this good man [the pastor] quest an ampler reason for the habitual listlessness of his congregation on the first day of the week, if it is listless, or for the diminutive size thereof, if it is small. Of course, there may be other excellent reasons, but this one will do quite nicely.”

Douglas employed a number of writing techniques that were unusual for the time and especially for Christian magazines. Here’s an example: he pretends that he’s being interrupted by one of his readers.

“Our young brother in the second balcony heckles us to state a few of these other reasons [why the pastor’s congregation might be listless or small]. We dislike to be interrupted [Douglas jokes, since he’s actually interrupting himself], but the question is fair. Well – for instance – something may be wrong with the preacher’s sermons. Their dimensions may be at fault – too long, too deep, too narrow. They may be blighted with a chronic pessimism. Weekly information to the effect that the world is going, if not already gone, to the dogs, and that the whole of nature groaneth and travaileth to the exclusion of any other lawful pursuit gets to be an old and not very attractive theme after a while. And people get tired of hearing, constantly, that they are miserable sinners – a fact too obvious to demand such frequent repetition. When they have enough, they quit. That is one reason, and a mighty good one.”

[And there are others, which Douglas will mention in my next post. But he’s actually going to talk about church music. That’s all coming! To be continued…]