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 ministers with a sour attitude. He continues:
“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.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 