philosophy – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Bread Problem, Part 1

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

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…]

The Demotion of Death, Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

An excerpt 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 is talking to an audience largely of ministers, reminiscing about how harrowing funerals used to be. He writes:

“Little by little that which is mortal has abated its erstwhile interest for him who has lost his dearest friend; and gradually the whole event is being invested with the spiritual and immortal.

“The home of bereavement is, more and more, emulating that high spiritual courage which Christianity teaches. No other person is so aware of this as the minister, to whom this fact is increasingly made manifest. Whatever may be the peculiar advantages of our profession, none is so fraught with great value as the opportunity we have to see how other people conduct themselves in time of trouble! Of course, the layman knows something about this. He stands by his best friend in an hour of trouble and sees, that day, a glimpse of the radiant glory of the human soul in one of its high moments – and the remembrance of it will outlast all the other observations of his life! This may happen to the layman once, twice – a few times, perhaps – in a lifetime. In our business, such revelations are so frequent that they come to be classed as ‘all in the day’s work.’ I do not mean that we ever get used to it, or that the frequency of such experiences dulls our consciousness of the absolute grandeur of the human soul when empowered by this high spiritual courage; but we see it so often that we understand it is not a rare gift bequeathed to an occasional rare spirit, but rather that it is a sort of built-in capacity of the normal soul!

“And – sometimes – when I see that men and women are able to go under fire; and accept the losses of the very dearest possessions of their lives; and how they face, with a sense of victory and mastery, bereavements that fairly tear up the intricately knotted affections of years – smiling through it all – I stand in a kind of reverential awe before this virtue that lifts men out of the category of terrestrials and shows them to be sons of God!”

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

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 8

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 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.

Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade, Part 4

by Ronald R Johnson

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

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

“The total result of the Bryan address to his university audience was disgust on the part of religious people – both faculty and students – disgust over the speaker’s intellectual immorality, to say nothing of the crass impudence displayed by such an exhibition of ignorance before an audience of that character. But the really serious fact about the performance resided in the effect produced upon the students who never go to church, manifest no interest in religion, and who think of Christian faith with as little knowledge of its present-day claims as Mr. Bryan has of biology – which is next to nothing. This type of student understands that Mr. Bryan is a widely known and generally recognized religious leader in the country – frequent spokesman before ecclesiastical conclaves, and a general defender of the faith. The student is informed, from this respected quarter, that, to be a Christian, he must repudiate that which his own eyes have seen in the laboratory and believe certain ancient dogmas which he cannot hold without the sacrifice of his intellectual self-regard. It is extremely doubtful if Mr. Bryan will ever be invited to speak before this group again. But the damage is done!

“While we are on the subject – how much truth is there, after all, about the deplorable loss of religious faith which Mr. Bryan notices in academic circles? Let us see. Many people who do not know the facts are persuaded to believe that the typical freshman comes to the university firm in the faith of his fathers, fresh from Sunday School, convinced that the Bible is to be accepted as a textbook on geology, anthropology, astronomy, and all the rest of the natural sciences. After he has been here for a year or two, he loses his faith, becomes a cynic and a scoffer, flaunts his atheism or his infidelity, and repudiates religion as of no further use to him. What are the facts about this matter?”

[Douglas, having spent the past decade on major Midwestern college campuses, will give his answer in my next post.]

Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade, Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

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

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

“A few days ago, Mr. Bryan lectured, on a Saturday night, in the auditorium of a great Midwestern university [probably the University of Michigan, where Douglas was the Congregational minister]. No monkeys appeared in the lecture. Indeed, it was a good address – old, commonplace, but acceptable. There was a large crowd. The students were enthusiastic. The Students’ Christian Association pressed the speaker to stay over and talk, in the same place, on Sunday noon. He consented. The word was quickly passed about the campus. There were five thousand persons present, next day. Fully three-fourths of them were students. The faculties were largely represented. It was understood that Mr. Bryan was to speak about the claims of religion upon the life of youth. It was a brilliant opportunity for a really great contribution to be made to the lives of many hundreds of young men and women. As I look back over many similar opportunities afforded celebrated speakers to set the cause of religion squarely before the face of the college man, I do not remember ever having seen such a crowd, in such a receptive mood! One envied this rare spirit his chance to do valiant service for Christianity that day. What came of it? The monkey talk!

“How this good man could ever have gained the consent of his own mind to commit the almost incredible impertinence of reading the old misquotations, spinning the old yarns, and assailing ‘Darwinism’ in the presence of hundreds of youngsters who understood enough about evolution to know that the speaker knew nothing about it whatsoever – yes; and in the presence of scientists who had made a life job of research in this field – how he could have done it, I do not understand; but he did it. He went further. He deplored the subversive effects of science on Christian faith; explained to the students that science was the enemy of faith; excoriated scientific men, advanced scholarship, modern learning, and generally anathematized higher education. All this was by way of preface to a statement of his belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Adam was the first man. He was made of the dust of the ground. The Bible said so. Apparently nobody has ever gone to the bother of asking Mr. Bryan how he accounts for the fact that wherever explorers have gone they have found men boasting an ancestry easily traceable to remote periods whole millenniums before navigation was discovered or effected.

“A considerable volume of water has passed under the bridge, in the realm of science, since Mr. Bryan first came out as a biologist. Practically the whole theory of evolution has been rephrased during that time. Perhaps the genial ex-secretary of state is unaware of that fact. Surely he must be unaware of it, for his lectures still carry opportunities for the introduction of the same old stories, the same old misquotations, and the same old attacks against ‘Darwinism.’ His references to evolution have not grown an inch or gained a pound for twenty years. Meanwhile, let it be repeated, science has been busy. Mr. Bryan may have wished to inform himself upon this subject, or he may not; but science has been assiduously devoting itself to a sincere and honest investigation of the known facts.

“One of the interesting features of modern scholarship in this field – which may come as a shock to Mr. Bryan, should he ever have this matter brought to his attention – is the fact that the present-day scientist has long since left off talking of evolution in terms of ‘Darwinism.’ Mr. Bryan rarely speaks of evolution: his designation for it is ‘Darwinism.’ Ah – how he does put Darwin on the grille! Cannot some friend inform him, for his own sake, that Charles Robert Darwin is related to evolution, in the thought of the scholar, exactly as Robert Fulton is related to steam navigation, and as Langley is related to aeronautics, and as Dr. Harvey is related to present-day surgery? Of course, it used to make very little difference to the typical lecture audience whether Mr. Bryan was sure of his facts or not. But increasingly the American people have had opportunities to inform themselves about matters of a scientific nature, and the good man seriously underrates the intelligence of his audiences.”

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