Christian sociology; Labor -- United States; Labor movement -- United States; Working class -- United States
=The Makers of Things Outside the Churches.= Communities in which
the church has failed are the communities where may be found most of
the workers who are the actual producers of the things that go to
make up our life. The men who run the lathes and other machines, the
day-laborers on the street, in the factory, and on the railroads;
these men and their families are the ones untouched by the church. The
foremen, the better class of skilled mechanics, and those workers who
are doing the more congenial kinds of work are the ones found in the
churches. I asked one of the leading labor leaders of the country why
it is that the laboring man is opposed to the church. “Opposed?” he
answered. “He is not opposed. The average laboring man living under
average conditions does not know that there is a church in town.” In
other words, the church moves in an orbit that is totally removed from
the life of the mass of the workers.
=When Nineteen Men Last Went to Church.= During the last year I took
occasion to ask different men that I met at various times what they
thought of the church. I have the record of the conversation of
nineteen men on this subject. Not one of these men had been to church
with any degree of regularity during the past five years; three of
them had attended the Billy Sunday meetings in the various cities. They
went to see the evangelist, however, just as they would visit Barnum
& Bailey’s circus, and they professed to having come away from the
meetings in the same frame of mind as if they had been attending such
an entertainment. Five of the men were Jews, nine were Roman Catholics,
and five were Protestants. They gave various reasons for not going to
church, but all agreed on three things: they had no especial criticism
or complaint to make regarding the church; it was easier to stay at
home on Sundays than it was to go to church; the church had very little
to do with the things that they were interested in. One of the men
said, “The minister stands in a pulpit over my head and talks down to
me about things that I am not interested in.” They also agreed that
they could see no special reason why they should be influenced or moved
to live according to the requirements of the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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