Lloyd C Douglas – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Bread Problem, Part 3

An excerpt from “The Bread Problem,” an editorial in the February 17, 1921, issue of The Christian Century, written anonymously by Lloyd C. Douglas.

[This is the conclusion of an editorial, “The Bread Problem,” which Douglas wrote without a by-line for The Christian Century’s February 17, 1921, issue. After briefly surveying the problem of hunger in the aftermath of the First World War, he narrated Christ’s first temptation in the wilderness, to make bread out of stones. He writes:]

“From that scene in the Jeshimon Wilderness, Anno Domini 30, let us return and take another glance at what we have before us in the early spring of 1921. Exactly how did our world get into its present miseries? We say that is an economic question. But is it? Well – say that the immediate cause of it was the war. Well – how did the world get itself head-over-ears in war? By walking in the ways of righteousness and brotherhood? By efforts at spiritual culture? By reliance upon his guidance who continually endeavors to attract our attention to the truth about human relationships? No; we got into war – the whole brood of nations – excusing nobody, laying the blame at every door impartially – through indifference to the cultivation of those principles which Jesus said would make for permanent peace!

“Even now – with so ghastly and complete a demonstration of the fact that war solves no problems whatsoever; that war not only wastes while it is waged but leaves a slimy trail behind it through uncounted years – there are plenty of us advocating more costly armies, more big gunboats, more deadly poison gas! In all the welter and wreckage – face to face with the problem of the world’s starvation – still – still – ‘armi virumque cano!’ [‘I sing of arms and men’: the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid.]

“Fully satisfied that organized greed and diabolical selfishness have not only foisted war upon the world, time after time, but have stood by to loot the pockets of its victims while they went forth hypnotized to death by appeals to their patriotism, still do we sit, complacently, declaring that the world’s chief difficulty is ‘a problem in economics.’ Economics? Nonsense! The world’s problem, today, is a spiritual problem! Humanity’s soul must be saved!

“What may we do about it? There is much that we can do. We can turn the searchlight in upon ourselves to see how far we, as individuals, are menaced by this temptation to believe that our own problems are questions in economics! Do I live by bread alone? What inspired to my choice of a life work – bread alone? For what reasons have I gathered friends about me – that they may use me, or I them? Have I cultivated them for bread alone? Is success, to my thinking, the sort of thing that has cornered some market; stacked up corn in warehouses against years of idleness; nailed down natural resources to make them inaccessible to other hands as fully entitled to them as myself?

“We do well who, through these Lenten days, assay the ore of our own characters and assist other people to test the quality of their motives to see if, perchance, we who have talked so volubly and knowingly of humanity’s great needs – the causes of its distress; the reasons of its hunger – may not be housing and arming the forces which make these problems more and more acute and perplexing.

“The Master found the complex problem of the world a simple spiritual problem at its root. Taking counsel of the God in his own heart, he found that man does not live by bread alone, but by the discernment and acceptance of his will who ‘standeth behind our lattice, keeping watch over his own.'”

[This last sentence was probably a quotation from memory (and therefore not quite accurately) of a line from James Russell Lowell’s 1845 poem, “The Present Crisis.” The poet complains of:

“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

This same poem contains the all-important line, “New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.” Douglas would quote that line repeatedly throughout the 1940s, very much aware that it was necessary to stop Hitler’s armies, despite everything he said in this 1921 editorial.]

The Bread Problem, Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

[The following is from an uncredited editorial that Lloyd Douglas wrote for The Christian Century under the heading, “The Bread Problem,” which appeared in the February 17, 1921, issue. He has just finished talking about world hunger following the aftermath of the First World War. He writes:]

“In this penitential period of 1921, we turn naturally to the story of our Lord’s temptation which provides a reason and a setting for this Lenten season. And we find, to our surprise, that the ancient narrative is vital, vascular, directly apropos of our present anxiety.

“The temptation followed the baptism immediately. Rising from the water, bearing in his soul heaven’s confirmation of his messiahship, Jesus went into the wilderness. Apparently he felt that he was not ready to face the crowd whom John had astonished with the announcement that the Messiah was among them, or any crowd, until he had struggled further through the problems vexing the world he had come to save.

“The first question thrust into the active consciousness of the young Galilean, after his voluntary exile into the wilderness, was essentially this: ‘What do men live by?’ At the moment, he was able to answer the question promptly, decisively. So far as he was concerned, the greatest thing in the world was bread! Because he happened to be hungry, the world’s problem seemed to be a clear case of economics! The cry of his people and the call of his own appetite united to tempt him to command the very stones at his feet to be transformed into bread!

“We need not debate whether this narrative is wholly, or in part, allegorical. Of course, we are fully conscious of our power to turn stones into bread – at least so long as the saltpeter beds of Chili continue to provide our wheat fields with the nourishment that makes them productive. [Douglas is referring to fertilizer.] If we are minded to let the Master have the power to do the same, by processes unknown to any but himself, there is no reason why he should be deterred from it by our lack of faith. If anyone sees it simply as an allegory, the lesson still stands inviolate. Those who cannot help viewing it this way rightly resent the charge that they fail to catch the point of the story.

“The point at issue was this: Is humanity’s problem a question in economics? Jesus thought it through and decided in the negative. Man does not live by bread alone. Man lives through his discovery and acceptance of the will of God.

“From that scene in the Jeshimon Wilderness, Anno Domini 30, let us return and take another glance at what we have before us in the early spring of 1921.”

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

The Bread Problem, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

In recent months I’ve been sharing with you the essays Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century from the summer of 1920 to the early months of 1921. In the February 17, 1921, issue, there is an uncredited editorial that was clearly written by Douglas. It not only has his style and vocabulary, but he later emphasized its thesis in a number of his books, both fiction and non-fiction.

He begins by talking about world conditions in the aftermath of the Great War (which they, poor souls, did not yet realize was merely the First World War of the twentieth century). He writes:

“If we are to believe the cries that proceed now from all quarters, the problem of this world is hunger – actual, physical, death-bent hunger! There are some complications to the problem – but at root it is a simple demand for bread. We stand aghast at the figures which announce the state of wretchedness in China where ten thousand daily die of starvation. We read with horror of living conditions in Russia where even those long inured to such poverty as we Americans could not possibly understand, much less endure, cry out that they can go no further. We are appalled at cablegrams from the war-devastated countries of Europe where fully thirty million little children are barely kept alive through the generosity of strangers in foreign lands. And always a large block of India is in a state of slow starvation: the only reason we do not observe her plight at this moment is because these European dead, closer to us by common ties and miles and racial stock, emit a phosphorescent glow that obscures India’s suffering. How to find bread to eat – this is the problem.

“Little good can come of spending our time in an attempted analysis of this condition to determine its exact causes. Some of them are patent. It is beyond thought that the greater nations of the world could spend four years firing off high explosives, all of which contained the potentiality of food, and could take out of the normal walks of life millions of men habitually productive of such supplies, without inviting the disaster now so pitifully paraded before the eyes of all the world. This cause is obvious enough.

“Neither need any mystery be made of the fact that organized greed has capitalized this emergency of war for all that the traffic would bear. Not one government on earth has had the facilities to deal with this menace, so strongly entrenched was it, and so skillfully operated. Our own nation, very much better situated to handle the problem than any of the others, has registered the most spectacular failure of them all. So rampant and inclusive has greed become, and so triumphant, that those who have been going through the motions of checking it feel ridiculous and ineffective when they lay hands upon any single individual and say, ‘You are guilty.’

“There have been other causes, but these two will suffice to explain the world’s present predicament. The world is hungry! The problem of the moment is bread! This is an economic consideration. Everybody is thinking, talking, writing economics! We must produce more food; plough more deeply; sow more grain; develop a larger arable acreage through fertilization, irrigation, and other reclamation activities; increase the merchant marine, build more gondola-cars; and entice young men into the open country. Food! Bread! That is our need!”

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

What About Lent? Part 7

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “What About Lent?” in The Christian Century, 2/3/1921.

The following is the conclusion of 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 just been saying that he holds church services every afternoon during Holy Week, and that he handles them topically. He writes:

“For example: Let the general theme of the addresses [all week] be phrased: ‘Suffered Under Pontius Pilate.’ On Monday, the theme might be, ‘The Indictment.’ Pilate asks, ‘Art thou a King?’ That is the indictment. It fits like a glove to the business one was doing on the day before, when the Palm Sunday pageantry was displayed.

“On Tuesday (all of these topics have to do with Pilate’s attitude toward Jesus – Pilate the cold-blooded, self-contained, dispassionate businessman) the topic might be, ‘A Problem of Jurisdiction.’ This deals with the story of Pilate’s sending his prisoner to Herod. He hoped to prove that the adjudication of the case was none of his business. A curious little twist is given to the story when it is noted that ‘Pilate and Herod, who had been previously at enmity, became friends that day.’ Pilate the gentleman strikes hands with Herod, roue and sot. Pilate despised Herod – but today they find common cause.

“On Wednesday a good theme is, ‘A Compromise Settlement.’ Pilate advises the crowd to ‘scourge him and let him go.’ If Jesus was guilty, he should be punished; if innocent, he should be acquitted. Pilate is willing to trim. It all gets back to the old query, ‘What will you do with Jesus?’

“On Thursday the topic might be phrased, ‘A Judgment Affirmed.’ This has to do with Pilate’s remark to the priests, ‘What I have written, I have written.’ After it is too late, Pilate bucks up and reveals a vestige of moral courage. After it is too late, Nicodemus ben Gorion and Joseph of Arimathaea appear as pallbearers. It is a great text – ‘What I have written.’

“Good Friday seems to take care of itself. There should be a program of penitential music, an address on the significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha, a stirring appeal to the courage and devotion of every man who has claimed fealty to Christ. Care must be exercised not to let this service become a mere lugubrious funeral of the Lord. Seeing he is not dead, that manner of memorial is out of drawing. A great theme for that day is, ‘Ye need not weep for me!'”

What About Lent? Part 6

by Ronald R Johnson

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 offering ways that Protestant ministers can make the most of Lent. He writes:

“All of the sermons and mid-week addresses of this period should be clustered around this central idea of self-search, self-examination, spiritual appraisal. Great advantage is gained by printing and distributing a calendar of all these services, showing that they are all of a piece, and all pertaining to Lent. One can build a program that has cumulative value, reaching its high point in the celebration of Holy Week.

“We miss much who do not hold daily services during Holy Week. Unless local conditions absolutely prohibit the plan, it is best to have these meetings late afternoons. There should be excellent music, meditative and devotional of mood. The address should be brief. The congregation should be asked to do little or nothing but sit and think and pray. We have been making mistakes who have considered it necessary to every service that our people should sing hymns and read responsively. Occasionally – during Holy Week, for example – it is better to give them nothing to do but listen and meditate. In the writer’s program for the coming Holy Week, the congregation has nothing to say or do at all. A penitential ritual (homemade, for we are not ritualists) is to be rendered by two choirs, one in the choir box consisting of a mixed chorus of sixteen voices, the other in the rear of the balcony composed of a male quartet acting as an obligato accompaniment to a soprano soloist. In answer to the question that has just come to the reader’s mind – ‘Does this not involve large expense?’ – it may be said that, in our own case, these people are contributing their daily services through Holy Week without financial recompense.

“As to the addresses of Holy Week, it is better for the minister to make them himself rather than call in local colleagues who are unable to establish such continuity of thought as may be achieved by one speaker. The most frequent treatment during this Week is a consideration of the events in Jesus’ life, day by day through the crucial period. This proves quite perplexing. On Wednesday, there is practically nothing to be said; on Thursday and Friday one is positively embarrassed by the abundance of materials. It is better to plan a series of addresses, topically.”

[Douglas will conclude this essay in my next post…]

What About Lent? Part 5

by Ronald R Johnson

“It will be well for us to consider how we may make something profitable and helpful of Lent for our people who have not been trained to observe the season – not even to the extent of going through the motions of celebrating it. Perhaps the caution should be extended to the zealous young minister who feels the importance of doing this thing to the limit and has it in mind to hold daily services all the way from Ash Wednesday to Easter, that forty days are a very great many! He may begin his campaign with much enthusiasm, but before he has arrived at the end of the season, he will feel that instead of commemorating the forty-day fast of the Master in Jeshimon, he has been emulating the period spent by Moses in the Wilderness of Paran. In offering this suggestion, we speak that which we do know.

“This isn’t something that a church may hurl itself into, in one season, with utter abandon. If you have never observed Lent at all in your church, do not plan a lot of extra meetings, but keep the Lenten idea to the fore in all the meetings that you would customarily hold. A series of three sermons, on the first three Sundays of Lent, dealing with the temptations of Jesus, will serve to establish the idea that we are in a season of the year when such meditation is timely.

“Practically inexhaustible are the spiritual resources in this story. The preacher can afford to sit down over it for a whole day and study it in the light of present-day problems. It makes a delightful setting for a series of three sermons because it falls apart naturally into as many distinct propositions. The Wilderness Temptation comes first – temptation on low levels, a frank appeal to appetite. The City Temptation follows -temptation to get into the hurly-burly of the crowd, to take the short-cut to success, to win one’s way at a leap, to gamble with Providence. No less alluring and dangerous is the Mountain-Top Temptation – temptation to dream of glory and honor achieved by other processes than the simple, friendly, hand-to-hand contact with men as brethren.”

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

What About Lent? Part 4

by Ronald R Johnson

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…]

What About Lent? Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

“In the fall, when [the pastor] knows he should be driving deeply into the ‘thanatopsis’ mood and making the most of it in his sermons, the secretary of his denomination’s board of education sends him a whole wastebasket full of literature providing plans and specifications for the sermon he is to preach on the importance of supporting the little church colleges. He knows this is a worthy cause. He wishes, however, that he might be permitted to speak about it some other time. Just now he has himself all set to do a constructive task bearing upon the spiritual life of his congregation. To spend one Sunday morning parading the poverty of our wretched little – our own little – our all-but-dead little Peewee College at Hinkum’s Crossing – will upset the continuity of his proposed series of sermons; but if he doesn’t come through with the Peewee business, he will be put down as ‘a brother hard to work with.’

“In the same mail, he gets orders from someplace – he is not quite sure whence – that the next Sunday thereafter is the first day of ‘Good Literature Week.’ Unless he proposes to classify himself among the unread and unwashed who are indifferent to this wonderful movement, he had better load himself with good literature propaganda and be prepared to fire it off on the appointed day. It will be easy to do this, for the National Council for the Spread of Good Literature has not only prepared him a sermon outline, but has selected his text, his hymns, his Scripture lesson, his homiletic illustrations; so that though he may be a wayfarer, he need not err therein. (Incidentally, the impertinence of some of these people who persist in preparing sermons for us wherewith to present their various movements seems equaled only by the stupidity of the stuff they send us. One Sunday when the war was on, and we were getting sermons from Washington, the writer, thinking his people needed a moment of relaxation and a chance to have a hearty laugh, read a few paragraphs of a regulation government sermon. It was good.)”

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

What About Lent? Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

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 writes:

“If you will take the ‘periscope’ in one hand and a modern textbook on psychology in the other, and observe their close teamwork, you may be amazed at the excellence of their wisdom who devised the schedule of events commonly known as the ‘church year.’ There was nothing ‘hit-or-miss’ about the makeup of this calendar. These canny church fathers did not sit in council to determine whether it would be more convenient to observe a more ‘penitential season’ in June than in December. No; that matter was out of their jurisdiction. It was something that had been settled by Nature, and they simply obeyed her voice. It is a known fact that the budding spring inevitably lures men to introspection. At that season they search their hearts, take invoice of their spiritual capacities, and seek whatever art forms are more familiar to them in an endeavor to make articulate the vague longings of their souls. Of old, they fasted at this season, and took counsel of holy men in cloisters. Of late, some write spring poetry, hungrily seek the art galleries, and patronize orchestral concerts. It is a season when everybody grows restless, dissatisfied with the apparent futility of his business, rebellious against the narrow boundaries of his experience, eager to escape the tyranny of material things to make adventure with the more ambitious quest of what, for him, serves as the Ultima Thule, Summum Bonum, Utopia – or whatever you like that stands for the High Spot.

“So, we may conclude that the season of self-search is fixed by Nature. Christianity is not unique in respect to the time of its penitential period. All the other great religions understand this psychology quite as well, and some of them have followed the suggestion much more effectively. Christianity, so inextricably tangled with the best of progressive civilization that men debate whether it is Christianity blazes the way for science, commerce, and the arts, or vice versa, should have a care that it does not develop into an urbane, artificial, indoor kind of religion. It began out in the open, under the guidance of one who frequently had no pillow but the turf; and we do well who would give all the fresh air and sunshine to its health. When Nature suggests a mental and spiritual mood – and historic Christianity stamps its O.K. upon the suggestion – we are wise who follow the hint.

“It is quite difficult for the present-day minister in America to obey his natural impulses and suggestions of the ‘church year’ in making a program of sermons and services to suit the season. In his desire to be a good citizen, he feels obliged to comply with every request of local, state, and national reform and philanthropic societies when they solicit his backing of their movements to the extent of observing their ‘days.’ No sooner has he planned his schedule for a vigorous evangelistic appeal through January than along comes ‘National Thrift Week’ – backed by the local Chamber of Commerce. Will he not be so good as to preach, on the Sunday preceding the ‘drive,’ emphasizing the importance of saving pennies that they may grow up into dollars. He dislikes to decline. Perhaps he really can contribute something to this cause – especially on the subject of frugality, a matter with which he has had much experience. He can talk ably of pennies. In the course of his business he sees such a lot of them.”

What About Lent? Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “What About Lent?” in The Christian Century, 2/3/1921.

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 writes:

“One of the pet quotations with which we frequently embellish our remarks about human existence maintains that we do not live ‘in figures on a dial.’ It is an intriguing phrase, but fallacious. For precisely in this way to do we live – in figures on a dial. Solomon was entirely right when he said that men’s lives were ordered by seasons. There was a time to laugh, a time to weep, a time to jump into things impetuously, a time to reflect, a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to fight and a time to run. One gathers that this wise man felt the unsuccessful life was made so through failure to observe its appointed seasons.

“We upon whom there has been laid the responsibility of spiritual leadership should be more fully conversant than we are with the peculiar mental states induced by the changing seasons of the year. It is our business to know the difference between the prevailing moods of May and August. It is part of our task to understand the wanderlust provoked by the vernal equinox and the vagaries of autumnal melancholy. To secure such valuable information, we may not seek a more reliable source than the calendar for the ‘church year.’ It is to be believed that many of us have been failing to make full use of the greater festivals of Christianity – either neglecting them outright or subjecting them to purposes for which they were never intended.”

[Douglas will continue his essay in my next post.]