books – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 8

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

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 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.

Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade, Part 6

by Ronald R Johnson

From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” published in The Christian Century, 11/25/1920.

[The following is the conclusion of Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” published in The Christian Century on November 25, 1920. He writes:]

“A few days ago this eminent lecturer spoke to a large audience of laymen in Chicago. The chance was his to make a notable contribution to that convention. What does it get from him? Why – the monkey jokes, of course! And the red cow! It is to be presumed that hundreds of laymen, going home from that convention under the impression that they had heard a great scientist speak his mind about evolution, will be on the alert now to detect the slightest deflection from orthodoxy on the part of their pastors. Let the good brother phrase his remarks in the language of modern scholarship, insisting upon a faith that may be held without damage to one’s intellectual self-respect, and he takes a chance of hearing unfavorably from the deacon who has just returned from the convention where ‘Darwinism’ – and all things scientific – had been weighed and found wanting.

“I write this partly to relieve my feelings, but mostly because there is no doubt in my own mind that we ministers, who have thought our way through these problems at no little cost of time and effort, should refuse any longer to tolerate such presentations of religion as that indicated above, if we may by any possibility put a stop to it! For Mr. Bryan to speak in any presence concerning the relation of religion and science is a piece of presumption! King David prayed, ‘Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins!’ David apparently considered this a serious offense – presumption. And David, being something of an expert on sinning, surely ought to be an authority.

“One is not forgetting that Mr. Bryan is a great and good man who means well and is loved devotedly by great masses of people. He has it in him to make a large contribution to religion. But however rich and active may be the wine of his faith and his enthusiasm, he really ought to stop trying to vend it in the old bottles. Oh – oh – but how fearfully old are the bottles!”

Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of Lloyd C. Douglas’s article, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” in the November 25, 1920 issue of The Christian Century.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” as it appeared over five installments in The Christian Century during the summer of 1920. Now that he had made a name for himself at the Century, he continued to be a frequent contributor throughout the first half of that decade. His next article, which appeared in the November 25, 1920, issue, was about three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. It was entitled, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade.”

It was prompted by Bryan’s recent public appearance at the University of Michigan, where he (apparently) ridiculed the theory of evolution. It made Douglas so mad, he wrote the following essay.

“Monkeys are funny animals. A joke about a monkey is good for a hearty laugh anywhere. The very word ‘monkey’ will provide a smile, even if nothing should be predicated of the subject. Vaudeville actors understand that when all other tricks fail to provide suitable entertainment, is there not the time-tried monkey joke? Certain popular lecturers have always known that no Chautauqua crowd on a hot afternoon in July is too dull, stupid, or sleepy to react promptly under a few carefully chosen words relative to this little animal which seems to symbolize humor – though so inexpressibly sad of countenance.

“Elderly readers will recall that a long time ago, the Hon. William J. Bryan began employing this interesting this interesting and amusing device to entertain his vast audiences from the lecture platform. His own use of the monkey was made in connection with satire and ridicule hurled at the Darwinian theory of evolution. Anybody who had seriously read Charles Robert Darwin’s theory of ‘the descent of man’ was in a position to know that Mr. Bryan was taking great liberties with this celebrated scientist’s hypothesis but saw no reason why the lovable and good-natured lecturer shouldn’t be permitted license to distort, misquote, and otherwise incorrectly present the Darwin belief, if it was understood that he was doing it only in play and for the sole purpose of raising a laugh.”

Does it sound like Douglas approved of that? Just wait. His essay will continue in my next post.

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5f: Old Friend Blue Again

by Ronald R Johnson

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 says:]

“Readers of these articles will have noticed that whenever the writer would ease his mind of something a bit too rough and radical to be fathered with the first personal pronoun singular, he solemnly imputes the burden to one hypothetical D. Preston Blue, who serves in the capacity of official goat, and sends him forth into the wilderness. How do you like that ‘wilderness’ idea? Well – that’s where the goat went, did he not? But, we’re getting derailed here. Lend a hand, won’t you, and let us jack this thing up on the track again.

“D. Preston Blue, on vacation, has been suffering of severe misgivings over his ‘order of service.’ He has resolved to plan a brief ritual with some inspirational possibilities. After much careful and prayerful study, he has made a service which proceeds somewhat as follows. It will be recalled that Blue proposes to have the opening hymn sung without other announcement than is to be found on the printed bulletin. There is a great deal to be said about the bulletin for which no time or space is provided here – how it ought to be made, what purposes it should serve, and the excellent service it may render as an advertising medium.

“This opening hymn is frankly announced on the bulletin as ‘The Hymn of Praise’ – and it must be exactly as advertised. Blue reflects upon the time when a peripatetic tent-preacher had taken all Centerville by the ears, and a great (as to numbers) chorus nightly sang at the top of its lungs such doggerel as distinguished the singing evangelist’s own hymnbook (which was to be had at the opening of the meeting and during several impressive intervals thereafter, for the absurdly low price of forty cents) – that he, Blue, had temporarily adopted the book in his own services, at the request of a warmed-over brother who, in the tent, had found again something he declared he had lost (and never missed). So – for several weeks Broad Street began its worship on Sundays by singing ‘Brighten the Corner Where You Are’ or ‘You in Your Corner and I in Mine’ and several other ‘corner’ hymns which appear to have been produced, as to libretto, by Mr. Uriah Heep in collaboration with Pollyanna; the music brought forth by somebody who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to compose the score for a jazz opera, and had marketed his rejected offspring for the purpose indicated above. (If any blame attaches to these remarks, see Blue.)”

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

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 4a: The Service of Worship

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page from Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation,” in the Christian Century, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship,” dated 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.]

“It was ten o’clock. Stiff in every joint but entirely oblivious to his physical discomfort, the Rev. D. Preston Blue sat on the verandah of the borrowed bungalow overlooking the water, his mind disturbed by very serious reflections. An old man had said something to him that afternoon which had haunted his thoughts for hours. Doubtless the old fellow’s quaint remark, and the incident producing it, possessed some sermonic value. And while questing a possible spiritual significance, our friend had discovered that the cryptic words were aimed directly at one Rev. D. Preston Blue, pastor of the Broad Street Church of Centerville. As the conviction deepened that the words, ‘Thou art the man!’ had been spoken, Blue looked less and less like a carefree man on vacation. He sat with pursed lips, corrugated brow, flexed muscles, and accelerated pulse….

“From two to four that afternoon, stalled in mid-lake, Blue had tinkered hopelessly with a cantankerous little motorboat – an invention closely resembling a violin solo in that, when it is good there are only a few better things, and when it is bad there is positively nothing worse. The preacher had unscrewed all the nuts and taps that would come off the engine, had wiped each one carefully on his trouser leg, and, having inspected them with the gravity of ignorance, had screwed them back on again. He had cranked until he reeled with vertigo and reeked of perspiration. His knuckles were bloody, his throat was parched, his temples throbbed, and his patience was gone.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3f: Leading the Way

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is an excerpt from the third installment of Lloyd Douglas’s series about the fictitious minister, Rev. D. Preston Blue in the Christian Century during summer/fall 1920. The series was called, “Wanted – A Congregation!” The third installment, dated 8/26/1920, was titled, “The Sermon Sample.”]

“We have seen the minister’s process of enlisting his congregation’s interest in his new aspiration to develop an inspiring crowd. He has sworn them in to the task of doing their utmost to get their friends out to church on the particular date he has announced. But, as he recalls their pitifully ineffective efforts to perform such service in the past, he decides that they should be shown the way. He resolves to suggest a process to them.

“He goes to his printer with a card in mind – a card 6 x 3-1/4 – to be placed in their hands for distribution. Wait a minute! One knows exactly what you are going to say – that Blue is wasting his money – that the people will make no use of these cards at all. Just hold up a minute, please! Blue has some ideas that may be new.

“The reason that most of the ‘envelope stuff’ that the minister usually issues for advertising purposes is a mere waste of time, money, and effort may be accounted for on the ground that the printing is cheap – looks cheap – and the text dull and trite. One cannot afford to be economical in this business. Oh, what stupid cards many preachers circulate among their people – cards composed with no care whatsoever – mostly in the nature of a sad note beginning, ‘Dearly Beloved’ and closing with ‘Faithfully yours.’ No – that is a waste of good money. All the people who will read a card beginning ‘Dearly Beloved’ will get to church without any assistance.

“Blue is going to preach on ‘Shipwrecks.’ Isn’t it the most simple thing in the world for him to inquire of the printer whether he owns a ‘cut’ of a ship? Well – the printer doesn’t happen to have one; but he does own a big catalog of a type foundry; perhaps if Mr. Blue will look through that book, he may happen upon the very thing he has in mind.

“This book is a great revelation to the Rev. D. Preston Blue. He had never known there was such a thing. Here he has access to all manner of little cuts – ships, dynamos, dredges, fire apparatus, trees – of all kinds and sizes – flowers, birds, patriotic eagles, doves of peace, bluebirds ‘for happiness.’ Why – just to sit and study that book for an hour is good for enough material to stock a dozen sermons. Blue tells the printer to order him enough of the tiny cuts to make a border (36 pt.) all around the card, and two cuts of ships (inch) for marginal decoration. He leaves copy for the card, as follows:

SHIPWRECKS

A SERIES OF OCTOBER SUNDAY MORNING SERMONS

At the Broad Street Church

By Rev. D. Preston Blue

October third – ‘THE TITANIC’

October tenth – ‘THE EASTLAND’

October seventeenth – ‘THE IBERNIA’

A cordial invitation is extended to you by ______.

“There are one hundred active families in Broad Street church. That is – if one is not too punctilious about fine shadings of such words as ‘active.’ Blue has decided that he will make up enough of these cards to supply every family with five, except about twenty homes which may be trusted to make good use of so many as ten each. He proposes to mail one hundred cards himself to ‘prospectives’ and out-of-town friends who are on his mailing list – former members of the church removed to other places, occasional benefactors to the work of Broad Street church. All told, Blue needs 700 cards. He orders them printed in two colors – an orange border, with blue for the composition and marginal cuts. Cuts never cost very much, if ordered out of the regular stock.”

Douglas wasn’t making this up. Here is the card he used for a series of sermons he preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, adjacent to the University of Michigan, in January 1916:

An invitation card used by the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor for a January 1916 series. In Douglas’s 1917 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

[Douglas will continue his comments in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3a: Knowing the Value of Your Message

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Third Phase—The Sermon Sample,” in the August 26, 1920, issue of The Christian Century.

[The following is from the third installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 8/26/1920, is titled, “Third Phase—The Sermon Sample.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his audience.]

“Late one afternoon when the Blues were sitting out on their front porch talking things over, a woman sauntered up the steps peeling an apple. She smiled pleasantly but said nothing; not even ‘how-de-do’ – just smiled and peeled. Neither did the Blues disturb the silence, so fascinated were they by the performance of the woman who was skinning the rind off that apple with a curiously shaped knife that turned work into play. After a moment, Mrs. Blue exclaimed: ‘Oh – do tell me where I can get a knife like that!’ ‘You may have this one,’ replied the woman, quietly – ‘for thirty-five cents.’ She took the money, left the knife, and, enroute to the gate, picked up two bags which she had parked behind a rosebush – a large bag and a small one. Said Mr. Blue as the gate clicked behind her, ‘The small bag is full of knives, and the large bag is full of apples – and the woman is full of wisdom.’

“Now it happens that this man, who is no other than our good friend, Rev. D. Preston Blue of the consuming ambition to preach to a large congregation, has been giving himself recently to a serious study of psychology – especially in its relation to the processes by which a demand may be created in the public mind for a thing of high value. For several minutes he was thoughtful after the agent had left, and then he said, half to himself, ‘That woman has a good head. She didn’t come up with a whole bagful of knives to make a long speech about their meritorious attributes. She didn’t muddle us with a lot of knives and arguments; she simply exhibited one knife – in operation.’

“‘Yes,’ responded Mrs. Blue, who guessed what was in her husband’s mind, ‘and she didn’t tell us what a good, kind man he was who owned the factory, or what kind of wood the handle is made of, or that she herself is selling them to support eleven starving children.’

“‘Exactly!’ approved D. Preston, nodding his head vigorously. ‘She knew the value of her merchandise and just let it sell itself by a demonstration.'”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2g: Preacher and Editor

by Ronald R Johnson

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“Anybody who is not more than two-thirds blind needs not be informed that most people derive their information and form their opinions from the papers. It is to be doubted if responsibility for public opinion rests so heavily upon any other man as the editor. That being true, this important individual should receive some moral support. He is entitled to the intelligent cooperation of the preacher. When he strikes exactly the right note in an editorial, registering on the side of honor, justice, and morality, he has a right to expect that his good friend the minister will call him up or drop him a line of appreciation and encouragement; not a long-winded, piously-phrased homily which may produce precisely the opposite effect than the one intended, but a mere, ‘Bully work, Jim! You are doing fine business! The people who count are with you to the limit! More power to your elbow!’

“Not only does a little recognition like this have the effect of keeping the editor buoyed up to his task, but it serves as a deterrent in moments when he is strongly tempted to trim and hedge in some situation where the nasty little virtue of Prudence is admonishing him to ‘keep in right’ with Big Tom of the Steenth Ward.

“If the minister is not too far absent in the spirit, and habitually has his ear to the ground to detect impending seismic vibrations likely to disturb The Morning Star and cause the tripod thereof to wobble, he will happen in about this time and invite the editor out to lunch. Two dollars spent in this manner will sometimes bring larger returns than invested in a volume of Thirty Thousand Thoughts for the Theologian.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2f: A Running Start

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who received a request from the local newspaper for an abstract of his sermon from the previous Sunday.]

“Now, the introduction to that sermon had cost the preacher many hours of labor. He had toiled over it until it was flawless; not a tool-mark in sight; smooth, euphonistic, rhetorically sound in wind and limb. Not on any account could he escape the temptation to repeat this introduction in his abstract. Of course, the introduction was historical. It had dealt with the dramatic incident of Israel’s abandonment of the national ideal in the building of the golden calf. To clear the way for that theatrical event, Mr. Blue had backed up about a score of years, into the Valley of the Nile, so that he might get a long, running start at the calf story.

“Confronted, now, with the necessity of boiling the whole sermon down to a scant nine inches of eight-point, instead of jumping into the very ruck of things and hurling red-hot chunks of his appeal at the public in the first paragraph, the only method his inexperience could suggest was to begin with the calf.

“We are forever lamenting that the public knows so little about the Bible. The public knows more about the Bible than we suspect. It does not understand the causes of biblical events very well, nor does it have much sense of sequence, but the majority of the reading public can recite the more stirring stories of the Bible with considerable fidelity to detail. It knows, for instance, the story of the golden calf. It knows it so well that the mere mention of that incident acts in the nature of a narcotic.

“Well; Mr. Blue had squandered his five hundred words in riotous introduction. He had told the story of Israel’s defection, but there was nothing in it – except possibly in the last few lines, which nobody reached but the proofreader – even vaguely suggestive of a modern application. The editor had found nothing in it, so far as he had gone, to warrant an attractive caption. In fact, he had labeled it, frankly, ‘The Golden Calf – Dr. Blue Recites Well-Known Story – Idol Worship.’ Think you that anybody would read it, after such a recommendation? Verily, a silly question.

“Our friend’s pride nearly bleeds to death when he reflects upon the matter. He had been given a chance to preach to every man in Centerville on Monday morning, and this is the way he had done it – by rehearsing the moral lapses of another country and another age, as if he were afraid to approach America’s and Centerville’s lapses by less than thirty-three hundred years and seven thousand miles! To be sure, this wasn’t true of him! Anybody hearing him on Sunday would have admired his fearlessness – but he kept it very carefully concealed from the public in his report on Monday.”

[To be continued in my next post…]