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BX 7231 .N37 1909
Nash, Charles Sumner, 1856-
1926. Congregational
CONGREGATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
The Carew Lectures before the Hartford
Theological Seminary -''<\5\V^^ ^^ ^^^^JCtf
1908-1909
BY CHARLES SUMNER NASH
[* JUL 11 1910
t^C^
Professor of Homiletlcs and Pastoral Theology in the Pacific Theological Seminary
^/CAL StViV^
BOSTON THE PILGRIM PRESS
NEW YORK CHICAGO
1909
Copyright, igog. By Charles Sumner Nash
PREFACE
The following lectures, published substantially as they were delivered, attempt to state sym- pathetically and constructively the principles of the Congregational polity with reference to pres- ent phases and problems. Attention is not turned upon the past. The Scriptural deduction of our principles and the story of our historic de- velopment have been given repeatedly. These lectures, while consistent with the past, desire to serve immediate conditions and emergencies in our church life. We are in no little confusion, such as always attends progress. There are earnest inquiries and disagreements among us respecting methods of procedure. Reorganizations in the interest of closer ranks and united action are pro- ceeding in many parts of the land, and as well in oversea Congregationalism. We are feeling our way toward the better thing. That there is a better thing and that we can and must achieve it large numbers of us are convinced. The Con- gregational churches in large majority seem in- tent upon becoming the Congregational Church.
Our problem is that of an efficient democracy, how to organize an effective union without over- riding or fettering personal and local liberty ; or, in the words of Mr. John Fiske, "the task of combining indestructible union of the whole with indestructible life in the parts.'" It is, moreover, ' Beginnings of New England, p. 48.
how tO' dO' this in our Congregational way, how to make our own peculiar contribution to modern development in both Church and State. With local independence we are perfectly familiar; of union of the whole we are still not a little igno- rant and afraid. Upon that union, however, in some wise form, we are resolved, answering the charge of inefficiency and defeat, and responding to the call of modern organized life to unflagging zeal and grander enterprise. The mission of Congregationalism — whether in other hands or ours — to human progress is still great and long. The service of our own body of churches is be- lieved to be far from complete. Our augmented resources, personal and material, have overtaxed the old methods of service, and are waiting half inactive to be marshaled afresh. The new ways, so far from being less than denominational, are taking interdenominational, national and inter- national proportions. Many-voiced and sharp is the challenge to enlarged administration for mightier movements afield.
Charles Sumner Nash. Berkeley, California, August i, 1909.
CONTENTS
Lecture Page
I. EsSENTlAIv CONGREGATIONAUSM I
II. MiNisTERiAi. Leadership 35
III. Forms oe Local Feli^owship 71
IV. State Unification ioi V. National Unity 129
VI. CONGREGATIONAEISM AND ChURCH
Union 155
TO MY WIFE
LECTURE I ESSENTIAL CONGREGATIONALISM
CONGREGATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
I
ESSENTIAL CONGREGATIONALISM
The Congregational polity ranks with the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian and the Papal polities as one of the historic forms of church organization. It is found in principle and illus- tration in the New Testament. Framed and developed in the last three hundred years, it has already made great history. Brought to these shores by the Pilgrims, it gave creative spirit and form to this nation ; a form remaining essen- tially unaltered, a spirit unsubdued by corruption.
From early years this polity has been carried beyond the circle of churches which originated it. Since Roger Williams the other congregational Congregational Baptists have ^denominations become a multitude. Using essentially this order there are also Unitarians, Disciples, Christians, Plymouth Brethren and others, until the Con- gregational polity now covers more than forty per cent, of the American Protestant churches. The several regiments show minor differences ; the main principles everywhere distinguish the polity. Doubtless we Congregationalists have special proprietary rights therein. We should show best its characteristic spirit. Dr. Williston Walker has well said, "The body known as the [3]
Congregation al A dm in istration
Congregational churches has a distinct unity and history. It represents something more than a form of church government. . . . The Con- gregational churches constitute a distinct reli- gious whole — as marked in its characteristics as any religious denomination in America." ^ Yet we cannot, nor would we, hinder others from developing the polity into efficiency superior to our own. And we must be quick to learn from any competent instructors.
These lectures will discuss the Congregational polity with reference to our own body. They The Congregational will not return to the field of Polity To-Day ^s^^^^ Testament study. From
that source have been drawn often enough the form and warrant of our order. Nor shall we tarry in our three centuries of Congregational history. Glorious indeed it is, and worthy of all attention and labor. But these lectures are engaged upon the present day v/ith a forward look. The taking of such modern limits should require no justification. Mr. Heermance is right, in his book on "Democracy in the Church," the most significant recent presentation of our polity, when he says, "The Christian Church must be free at any period to adapt the fundamental prin- ciples which it derives from Christ to the exigen- cies of its life. . . . We shall insist in the name of the churches on absolute freedom to ap- ply fundamental principles directly to present ' Congregationalists, pp. 427, 428. [4]
Essential Congregationalism
conditions, whatever may have been the usage of the fathers." '
There is abundant reason for attention to the present with reference to the future. The "Chris- tian World" of London compared a congregational unfavorably our International consciousness Congregational Council in Edinburgh with the Pan-Anglican Congress held about the same time in London. It criticized the Edinburgh program as engaged too little with the present and future, adding, "Far too much time is taken up with in- quiries into the title deeds of Congregationalism and what Congregationalism has done in the past. The burning questions are: What is Congrega- tionalism doing to-day, and, What is it going to do in the futui-e?" If that were the only voice of the kind, it might be ignored. But the same cry comes up from all quarters of the Congrega- tional world. There is much inquiry, much sug- gestion, much perplexity, much strong purpose. The National Council in its Cleveland meeting made a list of recommendations to the churches which have engaged earnest attention throughout the land. Maine, Nev/ Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Michi- gan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Washing- ton, Northern and Southern California and other states have taken action in line therewith. The New England Congress is well forward in the advance. The South has joined the march. * Democracy in the Church, pp. 2, 3. [5]
Congregational Administration
The Pacific Coast has attained an active self- consciousness. The present is a most promising hour by reason of our general concern and endeavor.
There is also much to make the present hour one of unusual opportunity for our polity in gen- congregationai eral, for any body of churches or- opportunity ganizcd under it, and in particular
for ourselves. We properly rejoice in our sim- plicity and adaptability, our breadth of sympathy, our freedom of thought, creed, speech and action. These qualities supply individual strength, but sometimes at a cost of corporate weakness. They have won many to our ranks, but have likewise spoiled us of multitudes who have easily slipped away into other connections. These qualities are now at a premium in our modern life. The new day has come forward to meet our fitness.
Furthermore, our polity furnishes one of the greatest principles for social and ecclesiastical or- Dcmocratic Tendency ganization, viz., personal and in other Polities Jq^^^j autonomy, freedom and
self-direction for the individual and the local group. This must be one of the corner-stones of the ultimate polity, as of perfected human life in all departments. It is interesting to observe how the other great polities have developed mod- trnly in this direction of freedom. Under the Presbyterian order both Presbyterian and Meth- odist churches have secured an unprecedented measure of self-control. The Methodist bishop [6]
Bsscntial Congregationalism
is a superintendent of work, not a lord of life, while the presiding elder has just been given the more suitable title of district superintendent. The Episcopalian churches are supervised with- out coercion, and enjoy much latitude of thought and creed as well as much free variety in active service. And even Rome has upon her hands some hardly manageable affairs, such as the French government, the Modernist movement, the American nation. This mere mention must suffice for the fact that the more highly organ- ized polities have been tending our way in this central matter of human liberty. We who were free-born can watch with equanimity their pur- chases of freedom.
Important for us are also current developments toward direct democracy beyond the domain of
religion. The new state of Okla- Direct Democracy
homa has adopted a most demo- ^" *^® ^*^*® cratic constitution. In Oregon great issues have been passed upon at the polls in state election, and the choice of United States Senator deter- mined by popular vote. Direct primaries have come or are at hand in most states. New York's experience in the late campaign was characterized as the awakening of a great state. In that cam- paign the appeal all over the land was more than ever to the thinking man, presenting solid mate- rials for reflection and decision. In politics, in- dustry, education, and indeed in all social depart- ments, the same movement toward enlightened [7]
Congregational Administration
participation is pronounced. In so far as this is the day of resurgent democracy, when the peo- ple reassert ultimate authority to delegate power and to withdraw it, when they insist upon re- turning to direct initiative in many things large and small, the churches that are constituted upon these very principles of individual intelligence, popular initiative and inalienable authority must realize a fresh opportunity.
Along with this movement back toward direct democracy has gone another tendency, viz., to- Organized ward Stronger union. It is perhaps Democracy i^uev to Say that the democratic move- ment has gone beyond individualism and direct democracy, and is driving hard into organized democracy. And by as much as our modern day has achieved stronger combination and more united action than ever before, our free churches must learn the ways of organized democracy. This is no time for the free- churchman to swing off alone and strike for Christ and humanity when and where he pleases. In state, in labor, in religion, we have reached glorious manhood and splendid group consciousness; so far we have restored the conditions and personal power of the New- England town meeting or the New Testament churches; but we have also learned to marshal these "bayonets that think" into regiments and brigades and national armies and even interna- tional armaments. The men are free, the groups [8]
Bssential Congregationalism
are independent in their local life, but they form of their own will a closer and mightier force than was ever driven together and wielded by coercive authority. It is this last step into administrative union that we Congregationalists need to take. We have the elements and resources in ample measure — strong personality, churches, associa- tions, councils, conferences, national societies, educational institutions. National Council — all these afire with high spirit and possessing a con- stituency which holds great material resources. Wherever our machinery is not at any moment productive, it can readily be made so. The equip- ment is magnificent. It only needs to be set to- gether into an effective array, wherein the total power can be driven upon one inclusive purpose. The future belongs, not to unordered individual- ism, not to authoritative compulsion, but to the voluntary administrative union of self-realized manhood, every man a king.
The administrative question of every hour for any polity, whether in Church or in State, and for any organized body under any pol- ProMem of ity, is the question of efficiency and re- Efficiency ^ suits. We must answer for deeds. The Church is means, not end. We must ever ask. How may we do our full part in the world's work? This is the inquiry of these lectures. The question whether we Congregationalists are doing our full part is not up; we lament that w^e are not, and the lamentation is no less than national. The [9]
Congregational Administration
question is, Hoav tO' do our part? Says one writer, "It is only by covering the meanness of our performances with the magnificence of our principles that we can hide from ourselves the ex- traordinary inefiiciency of our present methods, judged as a method of conserving, continuing and extending the life of Christian communities."* Difference of opinion must be admitted upon what constitutes our Congregational part, how great it is, v.-hat results to aim at and count satis- factory. But most of us are not content to be a loose aggregation of churches, pleased to exem- plify individualism, to diffuse an atmosphere of freedom, to show the organized modern world how little can nov\- be done separately or how much can still be done separately, and to enjoy a quiet brotherhood of spiritual communion. We' believe in more definite duty, more concrete and ponderable results. We hear the cry of souls lost through the interstices of unorganized search. We confess the obligation of united labor. We know that six thousand churches properly arrayed are able to produce enormous results, and we know that our six thousand churches are far short of that great measure. In that faith and these confessions is reason enough for our rest- lessness and discontent, our words of mutual re- assurance, our splendid hope and courage, and our unflagging industry.
Efficiency, then, is the duty of the hour. But * Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals, p. 47. [10]
Essential Congregationalism
efificiency has a fuller meaning in this social age. We cannot remain content to go on turning our church wheels, putting out individual spiritual product in moderate measure. The vast, tangled social problems have challenged us. Opportunity in these and inspiration for them must be given to men on a commensurate scale. Churches that are not living a national life cannot be fountains of national inspiration. Churches that are not feel- ing the pulse-beat of a close-knit body stretching far through the straining social fabric cannot speak to men's hearts with impulses that carry out into the heat and burden of the day.
The problem of efficiency is to be solved through adaptation. This principle may be denied a place in a jure divino system Adaptation for like that of Rome, but in democratic E^^iency life it plays a constant and leading part. All our x\merican churches claim to recognize and use it, none more properly than ourselves. The swift currents of modern advance cannot be shut out of the Church. It is the same men working in the Church who work in education and politics and business. They know that the forces of persua- sion, construction and achievement are the same throughout. They are watching the shifting scenes of human action, the birth of new desires, the altered preferences, the sweep of new knowl- edge, the demand of new faith. Efficiency, for service and returns, is all for which they care. Without pain, with only a financial shrug, thev [II]
Congregational Administration
throw out upon the scrap-heap machinery that scarcely shows wear, but has ceased to meet the more exacting requirement. In affairs ecclesi- astical and spiritual these men are equally ready to discard old for new machinery, and hardly keep patient with men too attached to wheels and cogs and bands — or the absence of these — to discover that life's calendar has swept beyond them.
The Church is under fire for its tardiness in adaptation. Parts of its apparatus and methods Tardy are charged with being at least obsoles-
Adaptation cent; it is obvious that the product is meager and old-fashioned. And yet we love them so, and cannot give them up, these true and tried servants of ours — not living men, but mere ways and means of doing things. Says a recent writer on our polity, "There is no limit to the power of adaptation which our system possesses. We are not faithful to our ideal, if we do not avail ourselves of it. . . . So far as methods are concerned, the Church has power to put on institutions when it wants them, and to put them off when it is done with them." ' These words are a shout of administrative liberty, such as many a Congregationalist needs to hear. How often we act, and how many of us always act, as if we could not put off institutions and methods when we are done with them, and therefore dare
* Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. ii6, 119.
[12]
Bssential Congregationalism
not put them on when we want them. Could we once get our seven hundred thousand American CongregationaHsts to rejoice unanimously in this power to assume and discard, the work of reorganization would go gloriously on. It is Professor Ladd of New Haven who wrote in his volume ^ that we Congregationalists ought to be willing to change as current conditions may de- mand, and must expect the alteration of all save our fundamental principles.
If, willing to adapt our polity to modern life, we ask what is required of us, the answer is already on many lips. The phrase, An Adequate "some form of connectionalism," has Administrative lately become current among us, — ''^ notorious, some stalwart independents might say. I like a phrase which I noted in Mr. Heermance's book, "An adequate administrative system." We need, for adaptation to the hour, an adequate ad- ministrative system. This we certainly lack at present. We have parts of such a system, work- ing admirably in localities and departments. It will, for instance, be difficult to increase the enterprise, economy and productivity of the American Board, as indeed of not a few other Congregational agencies. But these parts have not been built together into a system. When we call for an adequate system, we mean equal to duty and its tasks. We have already noted how these have grown. They cannot be kept divided *The Principles of Church Polity, p. 62. [13]
Congregational Adniimstration
and subdivided into unrelated parts. We are oppressed with the separate administration of our national societies, whose work is organically one. Our place among the American Churches has become far less creditable than formerly. We have not retained the leadership which created this nation. And when this is said, it is not that petty thing, denominational rivalry, that is in mind, but duty to God and service to the abysmal needs of men. We are not so useful compara- tively in the day's work as we used to be; our polity sometimes seems less so than other polities; and it is being employed to greater ef- fect in other than Congregational hands. Others are showing us how much more a body of churches can do than we are doing. We appear to lack practical wisdom in administrative meth- ods. This charge is brought against us from without and within, and judgment must be con- fessed when the case is stated in such compara- tive terms. In such terms, I say, for the case must be carefully put in order to be true. I can- not see that we Congregationalists have declined in either amount or quality of service. I believe our moral and spiritual living as a whole to be higher than ever, less morbid, more wholesome and out-of-doors, more winsome and productive. Our ministry never was so well equipped, de- voted and faithful. Our methods never showed so much of wise adaptation and enterprise. Our resources are more generously expended than [14]
Hssential Congregationalism
ever. But the comparison with the past has less of rebuke and impulse than some other compari- sons. Measured by the immense strides of mod- ern life, the bewildering growth of resources, the astounding disclosures of human need, the ex- tent of new opportunity, the clearer vision of Christ our King, the sharpened conscience of de- votion to Him — measured by these tests which rise out of the conditions of the hour and hang in the sky before us, our service has lagged and fallen. Though we are greater and better than ever, we are seriously inadequate for to-day and to-morrow. Our administrative system — have we anything which can be called such ? — was devised for a smaller and simpler day. Hence- forth details of work done locally are to be set in vast plans, constructed into a whole, directed and distributed from gathering-points and from the center of all.
Considering the erection of an adequate ad- ministrative system upon our Congregational principles and with the use of the upward Trend of good and fruitful forms already crsanization possessed, the first thing to notice and safeguard is the fact that our organific direction is from be- low upward. We do not begin with overlords, whether called bishops or superintendents or ministers. We begin with common men, free individuals, uncoerced, associating themselves in voluntary local churches, each church as free in its own domain as the souls that compose it. We [15]
Congregational Administration
form local churches, not by permission or order from without, but by divine grace in the heart. The primary obHgation to organize ourselves into churches is duty directly to God and human need. From this principle of organization under divine constraint free of all human authority we swing our total administrative system. This sunders us radically from all systems that work from above downward, from the Papal polity surely, from the Episcopal polity almost as completely; not however from the Presbyterian polity, which begins as we do from the free individual and the local church, but further on adds elements of authority which we decline. Our distinguishing mark, therefore, from all other polities together lies beyond the formation of voluntary churches ; it lies in the direct democracy and inalienable authority of the local churches. Into their pri- vate domain no hand from without can be thrust. They exercise a certain rightful pov/er, often called authority, over their own members, based on the individual duty of uniting in churches, of staying there, and of behaving Christianly. This authority is no more than the semblance of co- ercion, inasmuch as a member cannot be held in membership if determined to withdraw. Au- thority, then, even in local churches, is only the standing affirmation of universal duty and rea- sonable service; it is right reason; it is personal and corporate influence uttered and exerted from one to another and by all unto each. Church [i6]
Essential Congregationalism
officers are but appointed ag-ents and channels of such quasi authority, deriving their vocation and enduement from Ciod, their fitness from culture methods, their specific local enlistment from the churches themselves. Discipline and organized service are thus possible only as drawing all their vitality from personal loyalty to Christ translated voluntarily into terms of church-membership and work. Thus tenuous and weak appears ecclesi- astical leadership when referred to its funda- mentals. But so deep running and inwardly con- straining is this loyalty to Christ and the Church that leadership becomes, even in our voluntary system, a noble and influential vocation, discipline a saving grace, and united action a dependable, mighty, and world-wide power.
The local church, thus principled, becomes the vitaUunit for all the larger forms in the polity. Out of it, not from individual Chris- Local church tians, arise those larger forms. Asso-the vital umi ciations, conferences, councils, societies, National Council, all are organizations of local churches, not of individual Christians, not of independent and authoritative officials. The churches unite of their own will into all these social forms, giv- ing to them their leadership, their standing war- rant, their life itself. General order, consistency, sympathy, effective union are secured by free agreement in adopting the same forms. Similar forms and uniform terminology thus become im- portant. The higher groups, always composed [17]
Congregational Administration
of churches, though acting through representa- tives, depend on the lower groups, as these im- mediately upon the churches. Thus organization proceeds from below upward, while leadership and influence are trusts and ministration, not au- thority and commandment. We have, more- over, a way, especially by means of local asso- ciations and councils, of keeping all the groups in intimate relations with the churches them- selves, as will further appear in later lectures. This local church derivation and dependence, with the consequent procedure upward, are of prime importance to the conception and operation of our polity, and must be safeguarded in all its de- velopments.
A second feature of our polity structure is its direct democracy, or its combination of direct Direct and indirect democracy. Each local Democracy churcli is a direct or pure democracy. We, the people en masse, handle affairs with im- mediate touch. Our theory is that each member be an intelligent voter and capable co-worker, able to propose, discuss and pass upon proposi- tions, able also to carry his part of the church work as either private laborer, officer, or com- mitteeman. Our polity calls for and promotes universal intelligence and participation. We suf- fer no class or order of men to monopolize capa- bility or opportunity. We would have no man evade his share of c^ligation or deprive himself of privilege or reward. Nor do we surrender [i8]
Bsscntial Congregationalism
opportunity and privilege to any small body within the church. At this point we decline the company of our neare^t__friends. the Presby- terians, refusing to charge an annually elected session wnth the authoritative conduct of the church's life. Reception or dismissal of mem- bers, election of delegates to fraternal meetings, current phases and problems of local work and welfare, cases of discipline — in short, all local matters whatsoever we hold in the common hand. This is pure democracy, direct popular action upon all afifairs within reach.
But not all duty is within reach of the single church and individual member. Duty stretches away in great circles to the world's Representative end. Afifairs ecclesiastical and spir- i*emocracy itual shape up into magnificent proportions, com- mensurate with affairs educational, industrial and political. Mighty forces, equipped, arrayed and directed, are required against entrenched evils and vast human needs. On that wide field direct democracy is as good as helpless. Churches serving in large bands must act by rep- resentatives. Mr. John Fiske says, "Representa- tive government in counties is necessitated by the extent of territory covered ; in cities it is neces- sitated by the multitude of people." ' The Con- gregational churches, having their county, city, national and world-wide life, have been forced to develop forms of representative or indirect ' Civil Government in the United States, p. loi. [19]
Congregational Administration
democracy. This is not subversive of our orig- inal character or destructive of Congregational principles. Our safety lies in preserving in local affairs the direct action of the primary assembly. We do not substitute representative democracy; we add it and assign it its own secondary realm. We constitute and direct it from below. The local church maintains pure democracy on a bet- ter status than does the town meeting. The vital and immediate influence of the churches in all the larger interests is far greater. For us, as for all free churches and states, the problem of democracy is the mutual adjustment of pure and representative democracy. We must cease to fear the latter. We must hold it in firm control, but give it worthy and fruitful development.
This brings us to a third consideration regard- ing our proposed adequate administrative sys- Administration tcm. Our representative bodies, the Sole from the local associations and
councils up to the National Council, are administrative only. Mr. Heermance has given us the freshest discussion of this matter, comparing the Congregational polity with others in respect to the three possible functions — legis- lative, judicial and administrative — of repre- sentative bodies. Congregationalism began right, and has continued so, in excluding all provision for legislative and judicial procedure. None of our representative bodies are permitted to so much as enter those domains, lest we suffer in-
[20]
Bssential Congregationalism
sensible encroachments of authority. But in our terror of that, we have deprived ourselves of the administrative function to a point far below efficiency. Herein, says Mr. Heermance, we are two-thirds right and one-third wrong. It is evi- dent now in the growing light that we need not remain even one-third wrong. We may safely correct our administrative mistake. "If we bear in mind," adds Mr. Heermance, "that legislation and judicature have no place in the Church, in general bodies or anywhere else, the liberties of the churches are entirely safe." '
In the administrative function there is no in- evitable impairment of personal liberty and local independence. These latter the Con- independence gregational polity is prepared to pre- "^o* impaired serve and guarantee under whatever development of an administrative system. For the native pos- sessors of authority — individual Christians and local churches — do not surrender it. Our repre- sentative bodies are granted, not power over the churches, but leadership of the churches. In the first place, they are given specific tasks, definite and circumscribed kinds of work to do, like the organization of the church or the ordination of a minister. Some would hold these bodies quite strictly to prescribed tasks. Dr. Mackennal seems to do so. when he says, "It must be borne in mind that the representatives of the churches . . . are constituted simply to fulfil the spe- * Democracy in the Church, pp. 102, 103. [21]
Congregation al Administration
cific charges committed to them." ' Such limits, however, are too strait for efficiency and even for Hberty. Members of Congregational churches do not surrender the native right of individual and collective initiative when they sit as repre- sentatives in administrative bodies. We expect initiative of such bodies. They are to lead off in the larger fields for which they were created. The further they can see and lead forward the better. But here is the safeguard : these bodies are not, as already remarked, allowed authority over the churches. We constitute no body with power to coerce us, or to go forward or back without us. Apart from us they can do nothing, as certain of our higher Congregational bodies are in tedious process of discovering. Moreover, the creative hand of the churches keeps a dis- ciplinary and even a destructive hold upon its own agencies. Their personnel is in constant flux, their constitutions are exposed to precipitate alteration, their very life is not immortal and may be snuffed out. And furthermore — and this is the most practical thing of all — the churches preserve the right of initiative and the power to work their will through their representatives. Constraint and coercion and authority work, not back upon the churches, but from the churches; and they work. The representative bodies must and will do the bidding of the churches. The latter, when convinced and ready, are able to ef-
*The Witness of Congregationalism, pp. 25, 26. [22]
Bssential Congregationalism
feet their purpose. This is the point of safety and power.
A striking article appeared in the columns of the New York Independent, October 22, 1908,
from the pen of DeloS F. Wilcox, Popular initiative
Ph.D., Mdierein the author deline- ^°* Progress ated the undemocratic development of our repre- sentative political forms, and the enslaving pass to which we have come. His conclusion is this : "The next step forward in the program of polit- ical development is the democratization of the forms of government. All other issues pale into insignificance before this. Shall the people be able to exercise political initiative and crystallize their intelligence into progress?"' In this most gracious and potent liberty we of the Congrega- tional polity live and labor in religion. We are entirely able to exercise initiative and crystallize our intelligence into progress. We have no pro- visions, nor will we consent to any, whereby our representative bodies can ever despoil us of this free power of popular initiative and control Secure in this possession, we need not hesitate to develop an adequate administrative system and keep it adequate to the advancing day.
A fourth characteristic of our polity is found in the fact that our administrative force is public opinion or right reason. There are PubUc opinion other phrases for it, such as public °"'" ^""""^ sentiment, general consent. It is more than * Independent, p. 924. [23]
Congregational Administration
truth; it is a certain employment of truth. It is common acknowledgment of truth in general and a specific truth in hand, with the active adop- tion of the latter as a measure ; it is general agree- ment that that is the right thing to do and this the proper time to do it. To the authoritative polities this seems no power at all, the absence of power rather, a helpless and tedious way of leaving things to work themselves out. To' us the method seems of the very essence of freedom, and as sure as the mills of God. They who can- not abide it must foregather elsewhere. For this is really our method and our power. We are forever repeating that we have no authority which can outrun our public opinion. Our sole method is general education, approximately uni- versal, on any measure before us, and the re- sultant crystallization of conviction and purpose regarding it. It is a slow process. We die piti- fully often with the desire of our hearts unful- filled. But the method is heaven's own, and counts one day as a thousand years and a thou- sand years as one day. When you get the rea- soned conviction and consequent deliberate action of a large body of intelligent and conscientious men, you have the finest fruit of personality, the closest human approach to truth and righteous- ness, and the mightiest force under the skies. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table rises to remark that the essence of real democracy "is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence [24]
Essential Congregationalism
of public opinion that grows out of it." * Our leaders should always catch the potent enthusi- asms of this method, for our people never will yield an inch in the direction of any other method. You can do what you will with Congregational- ists whom you can convince and persuade, but you have no other hope.
Let us notice how much is involved in this method. The point to be reached in every practical issue is twofold: (a) Ac- Majority and tive agreement of a majority, and ^1"°"*^ (b) acquiescence and cooperation of the minor- ity. This is the lowest point of public opinion; until you have reached this, you have no force for starting the issue before you. And this ma- jority agreement and minority acquiescence may be a very low point indeed and equally weak force. On the other hand, the crystallization may take place at high temperature, generating irre- sistible energy, whether with large or small majority.
Our theory, however, is unanimity, not major- ity and minority. We seek the instruction, con- viction and unanimous action of the Unanimity our total constituency involved. We Theory and labor and wait for this, believing in ° ° it, knowing it to be the highest reservoir of power. Our system stands for the utmost ab- sence of unwelcome coercion, though it should be but the carrying away of a small minority by ' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 35. [25]
Congregational Administration
a great majority on a trivial issue. And we be- lieve that what is true and wise ought to be, and at length will be, unanimously accepted. We are, on the other hand, quite accustomed to the power of minorities to hinder or to mar, even to hold the real truth and carry it finally to victory. They can delay, prevent, or render futile the tru- est or wisest measures, and have been known to do so. They can enforce their will on the princi- ple of noblesse oblige; the majority will wait for time and reason, or will even give up the whole issue. The minoritv will often split the body or withdraw rather than acquiesce in a decision how- ever fairly and patiently reached; and the ma- jority is sometimes right in counting the loss of the issue in dispute less grievous than a breach in the body. We are so accustomed to these ad- ministrative phases that illustrations are needless. It often seems as if Congregational procedure were by minorities, not by majorities; it_js almost true that minorities rule. The pursuit of unan- imity, with constant fraternal regard for the slow, the unwilling, the blind, the unheeding, the self-conscious, is an ideal pursuit, producing high and generous character ; but its threat to block all progress must not be endured.
A chapter on the virtues and duties of Con- gregational minorities is due in our polity man- uals. The rule is not too rigid that minorities, whether of one or of hundreds, should yield and cooperate except in extreme cases of principle. [26]
Mssential Congregationalism
And it should be added that extreme cases of principle are rarer in administrative affairs than heated litigants are apt to imagine. Many a question of practical procedure is erected into a moral test of immortality. The conscience is a different faculty from the will; a moral judgment other than an obstinate preference. Great relief is possible in our polity at this point of the duty of minorities upon administrative measures which contain no hint of legislative or judicial authority. A fifth and final point to consider respecting an adequate administrative system is the import- ance of achieving national unity. I National unity am aware that some brethren who *° *® Achieved would agree with most that has been said thus far might take fright at so ambitious a phrase. Yet should we not despair of securing unanimity for this higher and stronger thing. The foregoing discussion has been in vain if the cry of danger to our liberties is raised here. And the appeal for efficiency is vain if a denominational halt be called this side of an all-inclusive and enduring unity. Mr. John Fiske has put our case in a brilliant sentence in his volume, "The Beginnings of New England." He says, "Our experience has now so far widened that we can see . . . that the only perdurable government must be that which succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand scale, without weakening the sense of personal and local independence." ' Our Congregational * The Beginnings of New England, p. 23. [27]
Congregational Administration
problem could not be better stated, only substi- tuting the word organization for the word gov- ernment — "the only perdurable organization must be that which succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand scale without weakening the sense of personal and local independence." Mr. Fiske was an old-line Congregationalist in thus insisting on local independence and a new-line Congregationalist in affirming national unity. We have the independence, safe and stable; we must achieve the unity if we would endure. No voice is clearer or stronger than Mr. Fiske's, but the chorus is already large and inspiriting. The Rev. D. Macfadyen in his "Constructive Con- gregational Ideals" gives us excellent statements by himself and other writers. "Those," he says, "who understand the Congregational ideal best in England and the United States have main- tained .... that for the expression of the common spirit and sacrificial life of our churches our existing organizations are inadequate. Large investments are required for large tasks. As the churches fir i themselves now confronted by duties on the scale of a nation and an empire, -: . .it has become necessary to find suitable administrative and executive instruments for the tasks which have fallen to them." * Again he speaks of certain addresses printed in his volume as "alike in adopting what for want of a better phrase is commonly called the statesman's point
'Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 9-1 1. [28]
Bssential Congregationalism
of view — that is, they grasp the life of the de- nomination as a whole and try to shape it in the hght of the higher politics of the kingdom of God. , . . They assume that it is possible to prepare ourselves both in spirit and method for a more united, disciplined and organized service of Christ in the nation and the kingdom of God than we have yet accomplished." ' "Who," ex- claims another, "shall demonstrate the important theorem — how without abandoning a single principle we shall gain firm cohesion and multiplied strength; how we may learn to exist, no longer as comminuted particles which the wind of events may drive away, but as a whole mass, separate in its organization, but confeder- ate in its united action; free from tyranny and free from slavery, a great, united, cooperating Christian body." ' "If Congregationalism," con- tinues the same writer, "be incapable of a large and generous union, it lacks an important element of spiritual power; whilst, if it be capable of it, it must needs put forth means and agencies which have hitherto been unfamiliar." '
These quotations might be buttressed by many more. We are aware how frequently the sub- ject finds expression in our religious Toward unity papers and programs. We are far *"^ ^^^^^ from unanimity, but we are discussing and ex- perimenting from Maine to California, and all
* Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 17, 18. ^ Ibid, pp. 60, 61. 3 Ibid, pp. 57, 58.
[29]
Congregation al A dministration
movement is toward unity and order ; no instance of the opposite procedure has come to my at- tention. By an overwhehning majority we in- tend to achieve national unity. We Hke to feel already the strengthening cords and bands, the touch of shoulders, the eye to eye, the impulse of vast affairs, the thrill of being one and mighty. Throughout the land we are responsive to the stroke of such words as Mr. Fiske's upon the Congregational conscience. And it is good for us just now to iterate and reiterate from ocean to ocean and from lakes to gulf this call of the hour, till "the subliminal self" catches the sug- gestion. "The only perdurable organization must be that which succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand scale without weakening the , sense of personal and local independence." This is the complete significance of an adequate ad- ministrative system, one that adjusts us to this national and international age, this interdenom- inational and missionary age, this age which reads undismayed the duty of world evangelization and the transformation of total humanity into the Kingdom of God. Though we did not mean to be, we have been weak and backward, we lovers of our separate ways ; we must achieve unity, and coin our corporate power into reconstructed man- hood and social order.
Does it not follow from the course of our dis- cussion that Congregationalism has a real admin- istrative problem to solve, the task of constructing [30]
Essential Congregationalism
new and enlarged denominational machinery? There are times in religion — and the present is one of them for us Congregation- a Real Problem
alistS when outward matters of in Administration
organization and method are the necessity of the hour. The criticism is neither false nor su- perficial that we have confined ourselves too ex- clusively to the individual and spiritual side of our church life. It is always and everywhere true that the spiritual is the paramount issue; it is not true always and everywhere that it can successfully be given exclusive pursuit. Spiritual forces have regard to the fitness of human agen- cies. We may not expect God to do mighty spir- itual works in our deliberate neglect of resources and strategy. And we properly charge with error those who find nothing to do in the King- dom of Christ but to convert sinners by evan- gelistic methods and edify saints by spiritual instruction and moral suasion. There are magnifi- cent and awful things to do which require more exterior ministration, such as cleansing filthy homes, running a juvenile court, electing clean and capable civic officials, succoring earth- quake-stricken Italy, distributing world-wide streams of religion charged full with edu- cation and civilized ways. Unorganized men or churches, taking hold as each will, cannot do this greater work and do it all and do it all the time. Nothing can effect it save the studied array and strategic deployment of [31]
Congregation al A dministration mighty forces, of all the forces there are. This is forgotten when in a low day the cry is raised that nothing is necessary but more spirituality and evangelism, purer doctrine, restored faith in the Bible, deeper loyalty to Christ. These do not always come at call. They are hindered now by our disturbed and protesting attention to ad- ministration. We are not free-minded for our spiritual work. The remedy lies, not in absorbed, unorganized devotion to the spiritual ; that would throw us the more out of joint with the modern world. It lies in solving the outer problems, un- til soon, adjusted in ways suitable to the new day, we find "a heart at leisure from itself" and re- cover "the joy of the working."
Such development of our administrative sys- tem must be the general concern. It has already Administration bccu Hoticed that in a democracy the General the cultivatiuii of patriotic citizen- ship and the service of the State are universal duties. It has been weil said that a democracy never enjoys the rule of the best, but only of the average man. Transfer the adminis- tration to the few best, and you convert your democracy into an aristocracy. Preserve your democracy by all means, cultivate and qualify the average ability, extend the general partici- pation. Congregationalists everywhere should give its due measure of thoughtful effort to polity.
Nor is this so superficial and unworthy as [32]
Hssential Congregationalism
deemed by some. Its honorable character is seen in the State, where it is accounted a principal de- partment of study and action, one of Administration
the highest vocations. The states- worthy and man and the political economist are not working directly upon character. Their serv- ice tO' manhood is indirect. But though they hold no evangelistic services, they are endlessly evangelizing. You do not think of Abraham Lincoln as a mere administrator — the phrase often becomes a sneer upon Congregational lips — nor Theodore Roosevelt, nor President Taft, nor Governor Hughes, nor Everett Colby, nor Uren of Oregon ; nor in education, the presidents of our colleges and secondary schools; nor in our Church, Leonard Bacon, nor H. M. Dexter, nor A. H. Quint, nor the secretaries of our na- tional societies. Administrative work done with vision and heart is worthy of the best man's part, is filled with the spirit of worship, serves the Kingdom of heaven at principal points, greatens the servants, organizes the progress of mankind. Polity is intimately interwoven with doctrine, as Professor Ladd and others have taken pains to show. At its source our Congregational organi- zation flows out of our democratic conception of the ways of God with man. An aristocratic and mediative conception of the Holy Spirit gives an aristocratic polity. Nor can the deep influence of organization and administration upon personal and social character, in either State or Church, be [33]
Congregational Administration
overlooked. We of this land of the free church and the free state know what we can do in a few decades in the Philippines for peoples just re- leased from four hundred years of lordliness and degradation. Dr. R. W. Dale wrote that questions of organization and polity "'cannot be evaded or postponed. Ecclesiastical institutions are at once an expression and a discipline of the character of the churches. The connection between organ- ization and life is never accidental or arbitrary." ' We ought not to speak with a sneer or even light- ness, adds Mr. Macfadyen, of "mere matters of organization. It would be as reasonable for the soul to speak of mere matters of the body. ... It is true that a soul may live and triumph over manifest infirmities and deficiencies; and this is very much what the Congregational ideal has done with its very defective organization for more than two hundred years. But part of the duty which our churches owe to the principles and ideals they inherit is to give them the solid assistance of an effective business management and practical or- ganization." ' Here, then, is the need of this hour for Congregationalists — "an adequate adminis- trative system," "achieving national unity with- out weakening the sense of personal and local in- dependence." In words historic and immortal, "we can if we will."
' Congregational Church Polity, pp. 3, 4. * Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 44-47.
[34]
LECTURE II MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP
II
MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP
In our Congregational theory the Church is first of all, composed of ordinary men and women who love our Lord Jesus Christ and unite for service in his name. This theory, as held in com- pleteness and consistency by us, distinguishes our polity. Out of the Church comes the specialized ministry of religion. Needing instructors and leaders, the Church lays hands oil a sufficient number and puts them forth. They in turn are evermore responsible to the Church and depend upon her for opportunity and resources. The Church is first, the ministry second and sub- ordinate.
In practical administration, however, the min- istry leads. Scarcely an individual church any- where is organized apart from its primacy of agency. The machinery of the Leadership Kingdom is in its hands even to an un- fortunate degree. This leadership oi a class of ^men is Inevitable and not to b^ deplored. No more than the State, can the Church ^^osper save by competent and devoted leaders. The primacy of leadership among practical problems of administration needs emphasis, but not argu- ment. Mr. John R. Mott, in his latest volume, "The Future Leadership of the Church," is say- ing, "Wherever the Church has proved inade- quate, it has been due to inadequate leadership. [37]
Congregational /Jdministration
. . . The failure to raise up a competent min- istry would be a far greater failure than not to win converts to the faith, because the enlargement of the Kingdom ever waits for leaders of power. . . . To secure able men for the Christian min- istry is an object of transcendent, urgent, and world-wide concern. It involves the life, the growth, the extension of the Church ■> — the fu- ture of Christianity itself." ^
At the present moment we Congregationalists — and others -with us — are convicted of remiss- ness and consequent weakness on this principal point. Our problem of leadership is affecting to an alarming degree our whole enterprise. It has been for some years a low time with regard to our ministry. Full ranks of young men have not been coming. Too few of the best equipped men have come. We are painfully aware of a low conception of the ministry among college stu- dents. The phases and causes of this situation have been much in print, and are freshly given in Mr. Mott's volume. There are this year en- couraging signs that the tide will make in again, but it is too soon to predict this with assurance.
Primary responsibility for its leadership rests upon the Church. It may not be discharged upon The Church Pri- the ministry, nor upon the tnariiy Responsible young men in colleges, nor even upon the Christian home. This mighty institution named the Church, whose exist- *The Future Leadership of the Church, pp. 3, 4. [38]
Ministerial Leadership
ence, prosperity and usefulness absolutely de- pend, under God, upon its leadership, should maintain measures adequate to insure that lead- ership. Its best agency for this is the Christian home. At this time the Church and the home are not furnishing the conditions and motives which, when present, will always carry a sufficient number of their sons intO' the ministry. That vocation is now discredited in the minds of great numbers of Christian parents and church-mem- bers, and hence inevitably in the minds of the boys and young men. Mr. Mott's unequaled ob- servation leads him to testify that increasing numbers of Christian parents and church-mem- bers in the evangelical churches generally do not care to have their sons enter the ministry, are not thinking them prayerfully on in that direc- tion, but are actively turning them toward other vocations. This atmosphere cannot be kept nega- tive, leaving young men unaffected to reach an unbiased decision. Indeed, there is little scruple about making it affirmative and influential. Un- til it is corrected the best hope tarries. Until the ministry is restored to its sacred place in the re- gard of church-members and parents, no formal measures can contend successfully for recruits. Nor is there any correction of this state of things save by what the psychologists are calling re- education. The mind of the Church and the home, now working too habitually away from the ministry, must be restored to a favorable [39]
Congregational Administration
habit. It is a case for mental and spiritual heal- ing — disclaiming the technical meaning of the phrase.
But now, having laid this obligation where it fundamentally belongs, upon the Church as an Ministry Mainly institution, Upon Christians and Responsible church-niembers in general, upon parents and teachers and church officers in particular, I feel like throwing it specifically upon the ministry itself. When you are not theorizing, but urging practical measures, you have to say that in every department of hu- man activity results depend upon the leaders of action. Theirs is the prime responsibility for the long working of cause and effect. The ministry of the Church is definitely responsible for its own numbers and quality. The reeducation of the Church and the home on this subject is its task. And prior to that it has to rectify its own state of mind. For at the present time the min- istry is not warmly accrediting and sustaining its own craft, is not exalting its own vocation, is not crying with an exultant challenge to the young men, including its own sons. Here as elsewhere statements must be careful, and the ap- peal is to your general observation. On that basis, and on suggestive evidence appearing time by time in our religious journals, are we not within bounds in saying that there is in the minds and homes of ministers themselves wide-spread reluctance to have their own sons follow them? [40]
Ministerial Leadership
Mr, Mott says: "Even ministers and their wives, in an increasing number of cases, are not encoiu-- aging their sons to consider this cahing. Far too frequently they positively discourage such serious consideration." ' If this is true, there is much to be said in palliation and even justification of special cases ; there is also much to be said to the Church about suffering such a state of things, such treatment of its leaders, as would justify any number of them in reaching this state of mind. But my contention at this moment is this, that such a minister, or such a group of minis- ters, is both unfit and unwilling to lead other men's sons into the ministry, unfit and unwilling to reeducate the Church and the home on the subject. The case must remain lean and unhope- ful so long and so far as the ministers of Christ remain heavy-laden and dispirited with their task, so far as they judge it by its incidentals, so far as its great visions fail them;, so far as they cannot lay upon their own sons first and then on others a hand of joy unspeakable and full of glory. ^ \
And now — for we are in the domain of ad- ministration— it is urged that Congregational-
istS should take constructive Adequate Measures
measures for sustaining their RecLuired ministerial leadership at its highest point of efficiency. We certainly have no ade- quate measures at present. Far too little is being * Future Leadership of the Church, p. 96. [41]
Congregational Administration
done, and most of that is volunteer effort, partial and unrelated. The Congregational denomination as such, with a national life and world-wide serv- ice, is conducting no apparatus for assuring its own permanent power through adequate leader- ship. It is wonderful that we fare on as well as we do. But are we not arriving at that adminis- trative consciousness which would take earnest measures to restore conditions and develop pro- visions? It is time that the Congregational Church undertook its ministerial leadership in large-minded, far-reaching and patient plans.
What, then, have we to do that may be said to require so much? We have, in brief phrase, to reeducate our churches, to rectify conditions, and then to go out after the best young men in our colleges and homes.
I. First in the order of a minister's career stands his theological training. Our schools of Congregational thcology posscss the Confidence
Divinity Schools ^f churchcs and ministry to a high degree. There is, of course, dis- tressed and militant criticism ; there are also better grades of the same fabric, not less firm, but inwrought with courtesy, faith and cheer. There are improvements and enrichments always due in theological training. It is desirable that these be pressed upon the seminaries, for vested interests incline to slow down into security and comfort. But criticism and impulse are in no danger of failing from the ecclesiastical earth. [42]
Ministerial Leadership
What, then, should our churches, as organized into a branch of the Church of Christ, do for and with the seminaries? The question of de- nominational control, perhaps, comes first to mind. There is excellent historical counsel on this subject. It is vital to both churches and sem- inaries to enjoy unreserved intimacy together. The mutual benefits are too obvious for rehearsal. The seminaries draw their life from the Church and the Kingdom, and exist solely to serve these. Administrative control by the organized churches is logical and practical, even in Congregational- ism; its absence looks strange to many eyes, but this also is very Congregational. Local auton- omy here does not imperil great interests, while it makes for that priceless thing, the freedom of the truth. Advance has come and must come through the fearless pioneering of men who grow used to the wide horizon. But, short of control, the association of churches and ministers with the theological schools should be perfect, pro- moted on both sides with perseverance and love. Each should offer the other all possible service. Each should be sure of the other's readiness. The active exchange should be continuous and whole-hearted.
Given intimate association and sturdy criti- cism, there is but one further requisite for assuring continuous improvement increased and adaptation in our ministerial Endowments training. That one essential is ample resources. [43]
Congregational Administration
The same old cry, to be sure, simply because there is no other cry and no adequate re- sponse to this one. The required advances in training noiie see more sanely or desire more ardently than our seminary faculties and trustee boards. Give them power to do always the better thing, and they will do it; any timor- ous or indolent reluctance is easily overcome.
Down to almost the present hour in Congre- gational administration, financial action has been entirely local, individual and voluntary. A bet- ter day has dawned. Witness our scheme of proportionate benevolence, here at last and here to stay. We are reducing to system the use of money in the service of God; the day of senti- mental disorder is declining. Into this process our theological institutions should be admitted. Endorsement of the seminaries by the National Council and other denominational bodies as con- spicuous parts of our machinery requiring pro- vision adequate to extreme efficiency would sound an urgent note in the ears of our generous givers. Enormous gifts go annually into education. No proper proportion of these is for theological edu- cation. If one or two of our seminaries are am- ply endowed through private generosity, the rest are straitened and strained well-nigh to the breaking point. Our churches want the finest young men out of the best equipped colleges of the land. They cannot have them unless they enable their professional schools to equal, in their [44]
Ministerial Leadership
own department, the amplitude, the freedom, the pedagogical quality to which the young men have become accustomed in the colleges. The lack at present is not in the methods in vogue in our theological halls, nor in the men who labor there ; it is in the financial inability of these alert and eager men to develop the methods.
II. Considering conditions in the ministry which need attention and repair, the first is that oi the minister's salary. This is doubtless to salaries be regarded as the lowest thing of all but it can- no be belittled out of sight. Recently the Rev. Jonathan Hardup and his friends have been ex- pressing breezy and not at all sordid opinions in our religious papers. The National Council at its Cleveland meeting passed an earnest resolution that better financial support of the ministry be urged upon the churches. Several important arti- cles during recent years in our magazine litera- ture have discussed this factor in the situation; none so frankly and justly as Mr. Mott's volume, to which frequent reference is being made in this lecture. The cost of education for the ministry and of living as ministers must live, is steadily increasing. The special demands upon the par- son's purse are not only greater than formerly, but greater in proportion to his income than upon any other person in the community. His salary has not risen proportionately; in many commu- nities it has declined. "Thousands of ministers receive stipends which amount to less than the [45]
Congregational A dm in istratio n
wages of day laborers." Nor is the meager sal- ary always paid promptly, while some of it is never paid. This financial injustice constitutes a main deterrent from the ministry. It acts upon the young men themselves, and still more forcibly upon their parents. But it were well if the churches could understand how it acts. It is no matter of shrewd commercial calculation. In this question are involved high interests and sa- cred values, such as a minister's financial integrity and standing in the community, his personal growth by means of books and meetings and travel, his mental ease and freedom for the high levels whereon lies the significance of religious work, his ability to create and sustain a home, the education of his children, his provision for sickness and old age. All these and other things belong inherently to manhood; they are human, not merely professional. And being human, they are not to be nullified by professional conditions.
Now the rub comes at the point of discovery that these financial conditions of the ministry are Wrong unnecessary and morally wrong.
Conditions Neither consecrated young men nor their parents are afraid of poverty. Min- isters who are worth while do not abandon the ministry through love of money. Nec- essary and fruitful sacrifice commands as much heroism as ever. But the current financial conditions of the ministry are not necessary, and [46]
Ministerial Leadership
submission to them is ceasing tO' be heroic. "Men," says Mr. Mott, "are not less heroic than of old; but they have knowledge and discern- ment, and they see that it is not poverty, but care- lessness and selfishness that dictate the financial provision for many ministers to-day." * This means that the pastor's M-ork may lie among men and women who will discredit him in advance for accepting an unworthy and ineffective situa- tion, who will be by so much less accessible to the high impulses which he brings, who will, worst O'f all, be so far forth themselves unfit to constitute a sacrificial force for Christ and right- eousness. Less wonder, in this view of the facts, that the young man shuns the barren sacrifice, and that his parents, living in a parsonage, perhaps, are sadly silent as he turns away.
The aim of this moment is less to describe this situation than to urge denominational action to correct what has grown to be a great how correct wrong. In the unequal local con- the wrong ditions of our churches the difficulty cannot be conquered separately. Cooperative effort is required upon a denominational and even an interdenominational scale. Example and stimulus are given us by our English breth- ren. The Congregational Union of Eng- land and Wales at its meeting in May, 1909, adopted with enthusiasm a plan for raising and ' Future Leadership of the Church, p. 93. [47]
Congregational A dministration
administering "the Central Fund for Ministerial Support." The amount to be raised is not less than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It will be vested in The Congregational Union of England and Wales, Incorporated, and be con- trolled by the Council of the Union in accordance with the careful terms of the Central Fund Scheme. The object is "the better support of the recognized ministry of the Union, un- til an adequate minimum stipend shall be secured for all accredited ministers in charge," after which the Fund shall also be available for grants to ministers temporarily without charge and ministers superannuated. The Union has taken this radical step believing "that once this primary problem is satisfactorily dealt with, the seriousness of other denominational difficulties will be largely relieved." It may be added that the Baptist body in England has formulated an equally thoroughgoing provision for ministerial support. These examples, afforded by bodies standing equally with us for local autonomy, we Congregationalists ought soon to imi- tate. Our primary problem is the same and calls for similar denominational action. Yet even then it will remain inadequate to repair in- sufficient salaries out of a national Congrega- tional treasury. The trouble is enormously augmented by sectarianism and the financial waste in overchurched communities. We must agree with Mr. Mott's conclusion, when he says : [48]
Ministerial Leadership
"Nothing is clearer than that the different Chris- tian communions should deal thoroughly with the problem of insuring adequate salaries for their ministers, and that the various Christian bodies unitedly should agree on a policy which would do away with the unnecessary multiplication and unwise distribution of churches." '
III. Close to this matter of adequate salaries lies that of putting within the reach of our min- isters the means of sustaining their "The Doom of mental and spiritual power. In- leadership" creased salaries, even if they came at once wherever needed, would not obviate this further requirement. The draught upon the pastor's thought and vitality is incessant and un- calculating. His sustained intellectual production is equaled by no other man in the community. His sympathies may never cease tO' flow, for hu- man need holds the spigot open night and day. It is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who says, better lose a pint of blood than have a nerve tapped. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, in a lecture from this platform, thus presented in thrilling words "the doom of leadership" :
"He who has borne the burden and heat of the day learns in bitterness of soul the doom of leadership. To stand in the midst of the ecclesia, with the ordinary vicissitudes of man's life transpiring upon one's self from day to day, its variations of mental activity, its episodes of spiritual depression, its yoke of earthly care, its fettering relation- ships, and yet to behold a thousand souls assembled and waiting for inspiration from one soul ; to be conscious per-
* Future Leadership of the Church, p. 94.
[49]
Congregational Administration
petually of this silent demand upon one's selfhood ; to know that life must be maintained at the giving point, at the point of spiritual exaltation, where influence is generated for the uplift of many souls ; to look into the faces of men and women gathered in the house of God, and to see in some the hunger of expectation that must be fed, in others the absence of energy that must be supplied — that is the doom of leadership." *
Every faithful pastor is consciously living this doom; many are living it with a disheartening sense of untimely, unforeseen and unnecessary de- feat. Within a few weeks a pastor in New Eng- land has been reported unable to buy a single book since his graduation from the theological school several years ago. It is a confession of gathering tragedy. The greater tragedy is found in the large numbers of such pastors dwelling amid the dulness of church-members who do not buy books themselves and do not realize the min- ister's need. You may find in every state num- bers of pastors, not all so-called home mission- aries, who, not one year, but year after year, can- not afford to attend their State Conference and often are embarrassed to attend their local As- sociation. Again the laymen who never think of going are blind to the worth of such privileges to the pastor's brain and heart.
These are two main points among others in which our ministry suffers and declines. Cor- porate duty, ecclesiastical strategy and brotherly love unite in demanding organized effort to turn back this ebbing tide of power. Nor should it ' Qualifications for Ministerial Power, p. 173. [50]
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be done with an eye solely to individual pastors, though with personal regard for each one. It must be the action of a great branch of the Church of Christ providing for its own leader- ship for the ends of the Kingdom. We cannot let our leaders go unnourished. We cannot af- ford to leave our corporate life in the hands of weak men ; and the case is worse when inherently strong men go weak through lack of sustenance than when weak men are enabled to do their best ; it is the latter situation on which the divine bless- ing may be expected.
If it be asked what can be done on this line, the answer is in part ready; correspondence courses of study and reading, sum- Practical mer schools or institutes, circulating Measures libraries, pastoral tours through remote re- gions, such as have proved so profitable in New York State, pastoral exchanges be- tween centers and circumference. A great body of churches administering cordially such a purpose will not be at a loss for timely measures. Pastors who are unable to buy books must be pro- vided with them by gift or loan. Pastors whose studious opportunities were brief and habits poorly formed must be given further training. Pastors who cannot reach the stimulating atmos- phere of our Congregational meetings, our large churches and our mighty cities must be brought there or have the energy of these transported to them. We cannot afford, for the sake of our [51]
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corporate well-being, in duty to the Kingdom, to let our leaders stop reading and learning and thinking and greeting the new morning with a cheer. Hitherto it has been almost completely left to the individual, solitary there in his isolated parish. It has been every man for himself, and when he can no longer keep the pace, Christ have mercy on him ! A beginning of better fraternity and strategy has been made. About a dozen states have arranged courses of reading which are recommended to partially trained men, but which are confessedly of small value. There are sum- mer schools and institutes here and there, use- ful, but limited. Some of our seminaries earn- estly try to make their resources helpful, as when Andover assembles the home missionary pastors of Massachusetts for ten days of instruction and spiritual uplift, or when Hartford invites pastors and physicians to a course of lectures on Religion and Medicine, or when Atlanta maintains con- tinual plans which carry her influence through- out the Gulf States. In many sections surely, though I have meager reports thereon, at least a little is done to give men the privilege of attend- ing state meetings or district congresses, or tO' visit the cities, touch the pulse-beat of the great churches, and catch step with the marching throng. At this moment, as often in these lec- tures, I find myself speaking as a westerner in eastern conditions where my words sound alien and irrelevant. Does any pastor in New Eng- [52]
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land need to be helped to a city or to a central meeting? Lacking railroad fares, he finds the walking short. In California — and to some de- gree in other states — we have pastors whose fares to San Francisco are from $15 to $25 each way, and the running time a night and a day. A Sunday exchange is far beyond reach; the visit of a fellow minister rarer than other theophanies. Leave such pastors to themselves, and your prayers for them ring hollow. Leave them to themselves, and your devotion to home missions, to the growth of Congregational power, to the advance of the Kingdom, lacks wisdom at a main point.
In fine, the personal welfare and industrial ef- ficiency of our ministers through the burden and heat of the day are coming to form a chief con- cern of our churches. In part by increased sal- aries, in part by methods of intellectual and spir- itual supply, we purpose to do tardy justice to those who go out under the crushing ends of our common load, we purpose to organize victory in regions where we have remained indifferent to inefficiency or defeat. The National Council, at its Cleveland meeting in 1907, projected action along several specific lines and appointed a Com- mission on Ministerial Education, with which our theological faculties are heartily cooper- ating.
IV. When we organize the case of our pro- fessional leaders, we shall not stop short of an- [53]
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other provision, viz., that of support in sickness and old age. In this we are behind other For Sickness branches of the Church — of course and Old Age ^^^ ^^^ . ^^^^ jg corporate work,
and we have been individuahsts. Now we all know in what caustic language this matter can be attacked by a well-to-do individualist, and in what cold and unsympathetic words the argument can be laid against pauper- izing manhood. But there stands here a problem in righteousness and brotherhood, to be solved without prejudice, with appreciation of fortitude and sacrifice in terribly stringent conditions, and with a sharp conscience of justice instead of charity.
What does the Church demand of its minis- ters ? Nothing, some one replies : the young man Ministry a who enters the ministry takes his Vocation ^^^.j^ risks and must not complain. Happily this is not the universal reply, and yet many of us have fallen in with it, and the age has dropped toward a com- mercial conception of the ministry. But God will never suffer the conception to prevail. If this matter of the Church and her leaders is a busi- ness matter, it is spiritual business. It is engaged with God upon the spirit of man. The ministry is a vocation. The Church recognizes the divine call and adjusts her call to that. The Church can- not take pleasure in that easy running in and out of the ministry of which we see lamentably much [54]
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to-day. It is not a business or profession to be lightly assumed with a calculating eye and pres- ently to be discarded as unprosperous. It is the highest of vocations, to be entered with a lifelong purpose and uncalculating devotion. The Church demands the entire life of her ministers, their undivided attention and their unswerving purpose unto death; and quality of ministerial work is clearly seen to be in direct proportion to such un- reserved and dateless consecration. With less than this churches often put up, but the Church is never satisfied. Really providential interrup- tions are understood; but the Church's concep- tion of the sacred calling stands at the ideal height, and the Church's demands upon her min- isters abate nothing from the man's total gift of himself and all that he hath.
Now the Church knows well enough where this brings a minister out in old age. He has made no material provision for himself ; he could not ; the Church would not permit him ; it would not even allow him normal self-preservation; he is worn out untimely, and a younger man is called to his parsonage and pulpit — "Business is busi- ness!" Oh, but our vaunted individualism has led to such heartless evictions of faithful servants and such shameless denials of corporate responsi- biHty for our brethren! Even now, with our clearer vision, we are making no haste to rectify our action, as our state and national funds for ministerial relief pitifully show. But the better [55]
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days will come, more dutiful on our part as a church, more sustained and relieved for servants of Christ worn out in the warfare.
It is a day of old-age pensions. The British and German governments exhibit them on the largest scales, while they are seen on all sides in smaller forms. More centralized denominations than ourselves have this provision in full opera- tion for their ministries. We must follow them, for we cannot come near meeting the case by en- larged salaries. The Central Fund Scheme of the Congregational Union of England and Wales already looks in this direction.
But one thing we must cease; we must cease calling this a charity; it is not charity, it is quid Ministerial Seiief pro QUO; it is wcll-eamed pay- not Charity ment for labor rendered ; it is barely living wages for a life clean fore- spent in our service. Our gifts cannot match the desert. God will assure "the wages of going on and not to die." But let us meanwhile give the bread and water, yea, the butter and honey, in a way worthier of us and of them. A comparison is sometimes made, in a way that seems to me mistaken, between the ministry and the army and navy. There is more of a parallelism here than is usually stated. The government pays more adequate salaries and re- tires its offtcers on half pay, because, it is said, the government gets the total service of the life, whereas the Church cannot command this. I sub- [56]
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mit that this is blinking facts and obHgation. From the hour when the young man enters the pastorate, and shall we not say when he enters the seminary, the Church commands his total sac- rificial service under a command more regal and a constraint more potent than those of the State. In daily quality, in faithfulness, in completeness of sacrifice the Church gets a service unmatched by the State ; the State's servants give nobly, even Christianly in many cases, but the Church's serv- ants give more divinely, for their lives run nearer God's. But my point is that you call for their all, and you get it ; you get it; the cases wherein you do not get it are beneath notice. When, then, the State's faithful servants are retiring in fair measure of comfort on half pay, how shall your spiritual servants fare? Pittances doled out to extreme cases of privation, and to such only, can- not truthfully be called proper returns for service rendered or gifts at all worthy of the giving Church. The trouble is not with the committees which administer the funds; the trouble is with the funds. This matter must be shaped up on higher principles than the mere prevention of starvation. Far more than that is due to the sick or aged servant himself and his family. And beyond the obligation to him and them stretches the large matter of administrative wnsdom. The ministry as a factor in our church life, deprived of the means of self-provision, must not be left to run out into an old age beginning earlier than [57]
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in other callings and wandering off into cool dis- missal, neglect and oblivion. It is more than in- justice; it is poor policy. The evils of it do not escape the young men we want in the ministry, do not fail to affect the total product of church work, and surely do not meet the approval of the Judge who doeth right.
I would not be understood to mean that the Church should bring all its ministers under the working of such a policy. It could not, for they •would not. Most of them manage to escape this recourse. As we do justice in other respects, a smaller proportion will need it. Perhaps it can one day be brought well-nigh to an end. Mean- while the high potencies of Christian manhood will continue to carry our ministers and their families bravely, and for the most part silently, through.
V. There are other things to be done toward restoring our ministry to its place of power. General conditions vitally affecting pastoral effi- ciency, felt by many ministers, perceived by young men looking that way, can be much im- proved. Some of them are actually better than reported ; in these cases the facts need to be shown up.
Freedom of thought and speech is one of the points emphasized of late years in most of the Ministerial ai'ticlcs Upon the ministry. The Freedom suppO'Scd dearth of this freedom is said to be almost the chief deterrent upon [58]
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college men. They get the idea that the ministry may not deal honestly and fearlessly with truth, following wherever it leads, uttering it without fear or favor. They note that even yet ministers here and there suffer ecclesiastical discipline for their theological holdings and pul- pit teachings, or move on to escape disagreement with the center aisle. That such things have ut- terly ceased from the Congregational domain cannot be affirmed. We seem tolerably unani- mous against iron creeds and the sport of heresy- hunting. We have no tribunals for reducing domineering pews, and holding church commit- tees to honorable and considerate treatment of pastors. And we continue to believe it more suitable, usually, for a pastor to suffer and depart than to wage even a just and victorious warfare likely to result in a torn and bleeding church. But we, the ministry and members of the Con- gregational churches, have it in our power, first, to improve still further our conditions of free faith and untrammeled speech, and, second, to make it clear to all the world, and to students, that unhappy experiences of this kind are to re- main as near zero among us as anywhere in the world of free thought, and that a young man and a minister would better gird up his manhood and march on unshrinking past this lion — he is chained, and most of him is stuffed.
Personal opportunity for self-realization and u^^eful achievement is another point heavily criti- [59]
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cized to the detriment of the ministry. In many departments of action to-day such opportunity Ministerial is magnificent. Limitless resources Opportunity in an Open field challenge man's utmost aspiration and endeavor. The minis- try appears to be disadvantaged in this re- gard. The high-hearted young man says he doubts the open field, the resources of action, the progressive character of the churches, the adequacy of church funds, the enterprise of church plans, the breadth of view, the stride for- ward which is SO' thrilling in some other lines. Now this is a most sensitive point with a normal man up to fifty years of age. The man worth while in the ministry demands first of all the chance of life. This is the prime inquiry; not for comfort, or recognition, but a great field of freedom and resource whereon to render tO' God the noblest account of himself. You will not an- swer him by pointing to a score of our leading churches with a remark about room at the top. He is not an individualist. He has accepted the age of combination. He thinks the Church should act with as wide a reach and as long a purpose as does industry or education or philanthropy or statesmanship. Such scope he would prefer to find elsewhere than tO' miss it in the ministry. A large fraction, I for one be- lieve a major fraction, of our six thousand Con- gregational ministers are already restive with our conservative hesitation to adopt frankly the more [60]
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efficient organization. In an age of concerted ac- tion they do not see, among some thousands of independent churches rather gingerly holding hands, a rich chance to make full account of their lives. And they are right. The opportunity of our ministry will not be commensurate with that in other departments of modern life until the Congregational churches have achieved "a na- tional unity on a grand scale" — repeating the words of John Fiske from the former lecture. This is no ungodly lust after a bishopric; it is the righteous and timely demand to join a great body of men who march out together into the great issues where two put ten thousand to flight. We have many men who prefer to chase a thou- sand alone — God bless them !
VI. It is time to formulate what is coming to be, I believe, our all but unanimous conception of the ministry. And here I must. The congregational in the interest of frankness, conception acknowledge my disagreement with Mr. Heer- mance, whose chapter on the ministry seems to me unequal to the rest of his valuable volume. With many affirmations and denials in this chapter all Congregationalists are in full ac- cord. We are as far as ever from the sacerdotal idea of the ministry as an exclusive and govern- ing priesthood. We stand for "a ministry, not an order of priests." We subscribe as heartily as ever to the statement adopted by the Council of 1865, as follows: — "The ministry of the [61]
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gospel by members of the churches who have jjeen duly called and set apart to^hat work implies in itself no power of government, and ministers of the gospel not elected to office in any church are not a hierarchy, nor are they invested with any official power in or out of the churches." But this has ceased tO' be a sufficient statement of the position and character of our ministry. It does not lead logically into the old pastoral theory of the ministry advocated by Mr. Heermance, as earlier by Dr. Dexter. That theorywas that jthejninis- try was no larger than the pastorate, that a man entered_the ministry only by assuming thepas- torate of a local church and ceased from the min- istry jjjgonjaying^^^vnjdiatpa^to^ Involved in this were several things, some of which have permanent validity, some not. The minister was chosen out of the membership of the church he was to serve; or if not, he must at once become a member of it. Hig ordination was mere induc- tion into that limited pastorate, was of course an action of that one church, and was to be repeated, as affirmed in the Cambridge Platform, if heaver entered upon the pastorate of another church. Between pastorates he had no standing as a.min- istej, though he might be looked upon as worthy and experienced.
Now this pastoral theory became almost at once in early New England too small to cover the facts. The churches held the min- istry in higher esteem and administered it [62]
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upon a larger view. Ordination became a ^social act, performed by representatives of the churches. The ordained pastorai '
man was considered a minister Theory inadequate ^ beyond the bounds of his own parish, and his official acts properly ministerial wher-( ever performed. In 1812 the General Con- ference of Connecticut asserted that the or- ( dained man remained amenable to discipline when out of a pastorate. Repeated ordination ( to^the miiiistry gave way tO' installation into the pastorate, already a different matter in Congre- gational eyes. Dismissal from a pastorate ceas^ to be deposition from the ministry. The close of the last pastorate of a lifetime was not ipso facto departure from the ministry. The man's standing in the eyes of men, his responsibility to the Congregational order, his right to officiate temporarily in any church that invited him — in short, his, full ministerial_character and power, both_^in the Church and before the law of the land, abode upon him, and in their sacred folds was he buried, however late and full of years. He himself, indeed, might lay off his ministerial char- acter by definite act of withdrawal. He might, if unworthy, be stripped of it, but, as Congre- gationalists have jealously protested, only by a similar body to that which ordained him, viz., a council convened for that specific purpose. This is not the practise of the pastoral theory of the ministry, any more than it is of the sacerdotal [63]
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theory. Neither, it should be added, must we keep on affirming the obsolete pastoral theory in order to save our practise from slipping over into the sacerdotal theory. Nor, be it further added, is it the Presbyterian theory. In that scheme the minister is not a member of a church at all, but of a presbytery. He is thus part of a body which is above the churches and has authority in the churches. And it is by this body that he is, humanly speaking, made a minister. Between this and the Congregational practise here advo- cated there is a gap which we have neither reason nor willingness to bridge. It is, I believe, pos- sible to formulate our ministerial theory and Congregationally safe to practise it in accordance with the larger facts thus presented and the wider social order of the present day.
In our polity, then, the ministry is greater than
the pastorate. I like Dr. Ross' putting of it as
Kingdom a function in the Church-Kingdom.
Theory It is an Order or range of service
in the Kingdom and the Church. It is
not ouside the Church, and we rightly hold
our ministers to church-membership. It is not
abo've^ the Church, not a hierarchy with gov-
, erning power over the churches. It is only
/ by way of the pastorate that it becomes official
I in the churches. A minister must be a pastor or
, be invited to perform pastoral service in order
I to get the office and opportunity of leadership in
\ any church. The ministry, as distinguished from
[64]
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the pastorate, is to be found not merely in the churches, but in and among them in a pervasive sense. It belongs to the churches in common, to the Church Catholic. It is a service to the Church at large, ready to define itself upon in- vitation into a pastorate of any local church at any time. This distinction discloses the safety enjoyed by every Congregational church with reference to the body of men called the ministry. No one of these men, nor all of them combined,/ can enter the field of any local church for the purpose, or by the pow^r of any official action,) save upon that church's invitation and for thef term of that church's pleasure.
Being such, the ministry is in our Congrega- , tional view a lifelong function. We do not hold^ that ordination confers an indelible character. It / rather recognizes a divine call into a sacred and' permanent vocation. It seems clear to us thatt God has such an enduring service of religion and calls men into it. It is the number of men called of God into the lifelong service of religion and the Church that we, in common with all Chris- tians, mean by the ministry. At this point, _as distinctly as at any, we repudiate the pa_storal theory w^ith its temporary character. We mean to ordain only such men as have entered upon a long engagement with God.
Let us, then, frankly accept the implications of this conception. We ordain a man to- the ministry of Jesus Christ ; we install him into the pastorate [65]
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of a particular church. We should no longer hesi- tate_at genera] ordination to the ministry apart Implications from installation into a pastorate. There is no reason in the character of Congrega- tional ordination, though there may be special and personal reasons, against taking the graduat- ing class of any seminary and ordaining them together in one great day to the Christian min- istry, to go their several ways into pastorates or evangelism or religious education or the mis- sion field as the Spirit may lead them. In parts of our country, perhaps not here in New England, we are frankly practising such general ordina- tion. And so logical and practical is it, that it seems likely to win its way, aided by the modern decline of installation and the increasing brevity of formal pastorates.
f We should also cease to claim for the local , church the exclusive right to ordain. That be- / longs with the pastoral, not with the Kingdom I theory of the ministry. The right of every church ' to invite any man to officiate as its pastor is not to be denied, nor its right to call a council to or- dain a candidate. The Congregational churches may, indeed, prefer to retain this method of get- ting at the ordination of new men. But let us discharge our minds of the fiction that the mean- ing of this method is that ordination is the pre- rogative of a single church, a sacred part of its wonderful autonomy, while the cooperation of other churches in ordination is social courtesy [66]
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and a good display of church fraternity. It is time to hold and practise the larger idea that the Cqngregationa]__ Church — Congregational Churches, Tf the phrase is preferred — provides itself, or themselves, with a ministry. The ordination of a candidate is the act of the Church at large, performed by the churches of a vicinage acting coordinately and representing not a single church but the denomination. Nor need we wait for the individual church to initiate the procedure and give the churches right and occasion to or- dain. Ordination should be by that body, namely, the local association of^ churches, to which we safely entrust the standing of ministers ; and the association should be ready to meet for ordina- tion at the call of its own officers, upon the re- quest either of a local church or of the candidate himself. And even if ordination by a council of churches is still preferred, it should be as compe- tent and orderly for an association of churches as for a single church to call that council. The provision, be it repeated, of an unfailing line of men discharging the ministerial function in the Kingdom and the Church is the duty and pre- rogative of the Church, or of the churches cor- ^ porately, not singly.
This may sound heretical to many mature and ecclesiastically jealous Congregational ears. It may therefore be necessary to congregational protest once more that this is strategy not a process of Presbyterianizing the Con- [67]
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gregatioiial ministry. It will not have es- caped attention that the self-control of each local church still remains uninvaded. Though the churches act corporately in filling the ranks of the ministry, they cannot thrust a single minister into the pastorate of any church or withdraw a pastor. Our ministers remain members of local churches and so are amenable to ordinary church discipline. A church is as free as ever to advance one of its own members for temporary service in its own pulpit, as free as ever to re- quest other churches to unite in ordaining a promising candidate. And ordination by local association, which will be brought forward in an- other lecture, is no less completely in the control of the churches than is ordination by council. The larger conception of the ministry does not elevate the ministry above the churches, nor give it power over the churches. And be it further -protested that here is no attempt to produce a , new conception of the Congregational ministry I or to alter our Congregational practise. The at- ' tempt is to state clearly, albeit with cordial ap- proval, what is believed to be the increasing be- lief and practise, the truer and foreordained idea. It is offered, too, as a most significant element in our denominational reconstruction. The achieve- ment of a national unity involves such enlarged administration of the ministry. And there exists no more important point in Congregational states- manship. The welfare of our churches and the [68]
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fruitage of their work depend under God upon their ministerial leadership. The full ranks, per- sonal quality and efficiency of that leadership de- pend upon the most commanding conception of it wrought out into the most liberal and engaging opportunity of service. Here is our supreme strategy. There is all to gain and nothing to lose in it. It makes for manhood, vision, power. The ministry wants, not to be carried, but to be challenged and enabled. There is no danger of enfeebling and pauperizing such a body of Christ- called men. Give them room and resources. Then make your scrutiny of candidates search- ing, your selection rigid, your demands heavy, the battle fierce all the day long, the sacrifice a whole burnt offering; these men will keep full ranks, will fight the fight, will finish the course, will keep the faith, — and with God be the rest!
[69]
LECTURE in FORMS OF LOCAL FELLOWSHIP
Ill
FORMS OF LOCAL FELLOWSHIP
EsSENTiAiv Congregationalism resides in the local church. If we try to state our polity in a single sentence, we must affirm the native right of ^ individual Christians to organize themselves into' a church, sovereign in its private life and unit-^ ing with other sovereign churches in voluntary ( forms of fellowship and work. It is in the local, church not as an isolated and self-sufficient in- teger, but as a social being and member of a body, that we find the essence of our Congregational order. Our tersest characterization must have room for our social forms. Rising thus in the
local church and moving out- Distinctive Feature
ward, our order is seen to dif- of congregational fer radically from polities whose essence lies in an authoritative hierarchy. But careful words are necessary to differentiate it from polities whose source and direction agree with ours. It is important to get into view, over against Presbyterianism for example, just what we must stand for and all we need to stand for. I should state this essential distinction thus : Coii- gre^ationalism stands and must stan^for direct democi-acy in the local church and absence of authority in the fellowship forms. Such double statement may seem to many unnecessary. It is admitted that either half involves the other. [73]
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Direct democracy in the local church means free- dom from all coercion from above. The absence of authority from the whole fellowship system guarantees independent popular action in the local church. Yet it seems well to utter both points in a working statement of our polity. For we are self-conscious and distressed at both points. We have to lay stress, now on the one, and then on the other. A platform two planks deep feels firmer.
The phrase, pure or direct democracy in the local church, may appear to miss the point. Our Local Church a historic words have been "the Pure Democracy autonomy of the local church." We have meant by these w^ords real and entire self- government. That has seemed the precise point to guard, the proud distinction of our democratic churches. Many are satisfied to assure the churches this freedom from outside interference. It matters not under what forms each sovereign church may conduct its private life. Dr. ]\Tackennal deemed it sufficient, "if it be recog- nized that the government of each particular church is in its membership." Without obscur- ing this, may we not, in thesc^ days when our un- invaded self-control is secure, put our local life in some richer phrase, such as direct democracy? An addition of meaning is not denied, is intended rather, but not a substitute principle; for the es- sence of democracy is free popular self-cuntrol. No attempt is made to alter Congregational prac- [74]
Forms of Local fellowship
tise, but only to characterize it. As a matter of fact, bare autonomy has been our fighting Hne. Behind that hne our church methods have agreed upon more than sheer freedom to do as each hked. If a church here and there chose to commit its annual procedure to an authoritative session, the rest of us did not count that good Congregation- alism ; it was, so far forth, straight Presbyterian- ism in local administration ; it delegated authority out of the hands of the people. We, the onlook- ers, took refuge in the principle of auton- omy, initiated no action against that church, and waited for time; but we were not satisfied. It was a case of autonomy, but it was not good Congregationalism.
It is now entirely safe to withdraw all but the sentinels from the fighting line of bare autonomy.
We could throw the total force More Than Bars
back there, armed cap-a-pie, at a Autonomy bugle call, but it is cold ground to hold idly night and day. In inside practise we stand for that which is signified by the phrase "direct democracy." The Congregational churches are those which do^ as they like, indeed, with none to say them nay, but which like to handle local affairs by direct popular action. We are used to membership franchise and universal participation in church administration. We call our important business meetings according to legal forms; other meet- ings we convene informally, perhaps at the close of midweek prayer meetings. In all cases we, [75]
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the people, do business at first-hand on the basis of equal rights and duties. This is not other than autonomy; it is more than autonomy. It is the Congregational practise of autonomy. This ad- dition to bare autonomy deserves to be inserted in our statement of Congregational principles and our characterization of Congregational prac- tise. It is too central to be omitted. It ought also to be contended for, and restored wherever impaired. There are one or two lapses from it which may be mentioned here.
In the first place our direct democracy too often suffers at the hands of pastors or standing com- Autocratic mittees. It is easy for some pastors to Officials make themselves almost the whole thing, the sole administrators — in blunt term, autocrats. Many cases of such autocracy are but mildly guilty, the church not only making no outcry, but welcoming the relief. There are, however, heinous cases of tyranny on the part of strong men who are determined to have their way. All pastors should remember that the peo- ple rule in our polity, and the people should suffer no pastor to forget. The Congregational pastor is neither ruler nor hired servant. He should neither lord it over the flock, nor do their work for them at market-place wages for a definite time. He is the elected leader, whose duty is to lead and train. He will do well to have con- spicuous among his working principles this one, that he will do nothing which he can get any one [ 76 ]
Forms of Local Fellowship
else to do. It is his business to secure the widest distribution and most effective discharge of__Chris- tian service and church administration. The church well-trained and led feels no sense of helplessness when it sorrowfully surrenders its pastor to another field.
Scarcely less uncongregational and undemo- cratic is the assumed domination of a church com- mittee. A recent case of it has been reported to be as flagrant as this, that the decision of a board of trustees was enforced against the majority ac- tion of the church. Responsibility for such an offense must be divided between the board that arrogated the authority and the church that suf- fered it to do so. No Congregational church should allow any issue to be carried beyond its own immediate reach or counter to its own de- cision. Nor should any pastor or church officer ever try to thwart the popular will or to proceed without it.
The other impairment of our direct democracy is the ecclesiastical society. How this arose out of the early union of Church and Ecclesiastical State, and how it has persisted in Society New England, though hardly known from the Hudson River to the Pacific, need not be related. This parish system withdrew secular affairs from the management of the church into the control of a small body of men who might or might not be members of the church. ToO' often, in the Unitarian controversy which smote New Eng- [77]
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land, they were not members. The church had no standing before the law; legally the society was the church. The great majority of church- members were thus debarred from exercising in a main section of church affairs their native right to handle their own business. A curious paradox appeared here. The original contention that citi- zens of a town should not be taxed for the min- ister's salary without being represented in the business of the church led to the debarment of the great majority of contributing church-mem- bers — all the women and many of the men — in order to admit into business management the few men who were contributors without being church-members.
Relief has come through laws in all the states providing for the direct incorporation and legal standing of the church, with the consequent con- trol of all its business. Under this provision the transfer from the society to the incorporated church has proceeded slowly. I am interested now, not in presenting the actual situation, but in urging that this parish system is a serious impairment of that direct democracy which is our very life and to which we insist upon conforming our Congregational order. A church is competent indeed to commit its affairs to a small body of inside and outside males called the society, or to continue to leave its affairs in their historic hands. It is the way in which our New England churches have actually been compelled [78]
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to live. But it is not proper Congregationalism; it is a weakness in the very citadel of power, the local church. It is to the honor of our Congre- gational character that damage so slight and in- frequent has resulted from a dual system of which it has been forcibly said, "No other churches anywhere, under any polity, were ever more completely in subjection to a power largely outside and independent of themselves. . . . The result of union with the State was that the Church was bereft of liberty and independent life." '
Turn now to the other half of our statement of essential Congregationalism, namely, the ab- sence of authority from our Authority Absent from fellowship forms, or the sub- congregational
stitution of public opinion for ^^""^^'^^p authority in those forms. This may seem to be the main point in our polity and the best way to put it. We have been very assertive of local in- dependence. Such assertion of right often sounds combative; it certainly has often been divisive among brethren. Is it not preferable to use a phrase which faces the other way? Absence of authority from our fellowship forms is a joint phrase. We utter it together in that cor- porate capacity against which our churches have hurled their bolts of autonomy. It^ affirmatively dis2Lyows_Jhat dread monster, authority. It frankly adopts public opinion as its working * Ross, Church Kingdom, pp. 331, 332. [79]
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force. It leaves the local church secure in free- dom and democracy. This is all that our churches demand. This being assured, based upon our mutual trust, we are ready to develop our voluntary fellowship forms unto full effi- ciency. We never have been unwilling to frame the larger union and perform the wider service; we have only waited to be sure of our way. Agreeing that our larger life is to be void of coercion, we hesitate no longer, as is shown by the universal interest now given to administrative reorganization.
Note, then, our present problem in terms of our two main principles, independence and iel-
independence in lowship. The former is as price- Local Field legg ^g g^g,.^ ^^^ j^ jg f^j^^jjy ^^^
forever secure. Its sphere and scope have shrunk in our modern social conditions, though the in- terests which lie therein never can lose their pri- macy. The inmost parts of the spiritual service which produces individual salvation and parish ministration continue to be discharged by the churches one by one. Our combined work rests heavily upon that which the churches must con- tinue to do mainly alone.
The limits, however, of the strictly local field are suprisingly narrow. Cooperation has now a large place, even in the spiritual work just re- ferred to. Revival work is now largely done in cooperation. No large city should remain un- provided with a federated parish system resem- [80]
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bling that of the New York City Federation. And when you think of it, how Httle can a local church properly do in entire disregard of the common good! All private affairs are matters of com- mon concern. The election of a pastor or a dea- con, the budget for the new year, plans of local work — all such things affect the sisterhood of churches. And that church is contributing most to the Kingdom which in all these things called local and private is sensitive to the wider interests
and needs. . . .
Beyond the circumscribed local activities, which are properly left to each church alone, stretches away the common field cooperation Beyond which must be worked in union. ^*"=^ Just here occurs the mistake. Too often our in- dependence has meant the right to work our sep- arate wills out in the larger domain. It was natural enough, for our church work was obliged to begin and continue long without ways for laboring together. But that time is now past. We agree that the local organization and most of the parish ministration are best handled by the single church. Let each church continue to elect its own officers, care for its own property, and sustain the various forms of worship and helpfulness. But out in the larger region, m the affairs which cover a city, a county, a state, a o-reat section, or the whole country — out there, what right has a church to do its separate will? It was Dr. Quint, one of our ablest ecclesi- [8i]
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asticians, who said, "It is manifest that no church can rightly assume to do, without consultation, what may affect the character and work of the churches in general." ' There still are pastors and churches declining to cooperate in plans that would adequately cover a city, persistently turn- ing their sole and singular work out into the city wherever they choose v/ith small regard to fellow laborers. In one of our strategic centers the pastor of a leading church has consistently declined parish cooperation. He said recently to a brother pastor, "I propose to attend strictly to my own church, and I advise you to do the same." Such independence, persisting in separ- ate action, is now outdated. The social age is in full swing. Without losing individual initia- tive we must unite. Without neglecting the strictly local work we must organize our churches for effective labor in the wider field. Out there independence must yield to fellowship. Minis- ters must learn to be colleagues and colaborers. Churches must learn the same lesson. Our pres- ent concern is not the safeguarding of independ- ence, but the development of fellowship.
The problem of the hour may be stated thus : Given independence, how much fellowship can How Much we develop ? There have been times
Fellowship ^i^gj^ ^j^^^y f^^g^l y^g ^^j^gj. ^^^^^, (.j^^^
a fair measure of fellowship, how can we se- curely establish independence? Until freedom ' Dunning, Congregationalists in America, p. 494. [82]
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is won, all sacrifice must serve it, all other good must wait. Fellowship is the greater good, but' only if it be of freemen. The field has swept on-/ ward. Sacrifice now belongs to fellowship. In-' dependence must not be impaired; it never will( be. We are free and independent churches. How much can we rejoice in one another? How much can we do in union? How shall we freely organize in order to manifold our service to the Kingdom? All would work out grandly if Con- gregationalists would unanimously adopt this so- cial purpose, would take local independence for granted, would quietly sustain their local life, and would turn their main administrative atten- tion to fellowship. We should find the wisest forms and methods, and our missionary work would leap forward. Any one familiar with our state meetings or our National Council can pre- dict the relief and the release of energy, if all should sit together taking freedom for granted, too sure of it to assert it, trusting one another without suspicion, absorbed in love and strategy. "It is time," writes another, "to answer the ques- tion. Upon what terms is it possible for Congre- gationalism to become a manifested power? But that can never be till we have learned that independency is not an ultimate object, but only the means to a higher end." '
Proceeding from the local church into our fellowship forms, the ministerial association may » Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals, p. 59- [83]
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claim a passing notice. It might be called, as it has been, a voluntary social club, without admin- Ministeriai istrative significance, save for the im- Associations portant fact that it has held in its hand, to the present hour in some sections, prime interests of the churches, namely, the licensure of candidates and the standing of ministers. As long as this is so, every member is responsible to the association for his ministerial character and the association must answer to the churches for all its members. A body with such respon- sibilities cannot be called a social club, and must not decline to hold its members to moral and professional standards. But, being a purely min- isterial body, it never can properly represent democratic churches. Beyond New England it has small place in the denomination. In many locahties it has never existed; elsewhere it has disbanded or been merged with Monday minis- ters' meetings. "Ministerial associations," wrote Dr. Ross, "are temporary in our polity. They were the stepping-stones in this country between the independency which relied on the State and associations of independent churches. They se- cure the fellowship of the clergy, not of the churches, except through their pastors." '
The association or conference of churches, on
the other hand, is taking its place at the head
of our line O'f fellowship. It is truly and closely
representative of the churches. It is the churches
' Ross, Church Kingdom, p. 294.
[84]'
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of a convenient vincinage organized together and meeting by elected delegates for mutual help and united labor. The members of the Associations association are the churches ; the indi- °^ churches vidual delegates are simply members of the meet- ing. Here commences our indirect or representa- tive democracy. Not_until the nineteenth century came the hour of association of churches. They would Tm^e arisen in the seventeenth century save for opposition by the ministry. In 1641 Alassachusetts Colony adopted a code of laws permitting both ministerial and church associa- tions. In 1662 its legislature ordered a synod to settle, among other questions, this : "Whether, according to the Word of God, there ought to be a consociation of churches, and what should be the manner of it." "This question," say the Colonial Records, "was unfortunately returned to the Secretary of State by the elders." "The elders stifled this attempt of the laymen for church association," is a later comment.
The association of churches at once approved itself and spread rapidly. It now covers all our churches. And so true is it to Congregational- ism, that its function has been steadily enlarged, till it has come to be our pivotal fellowship body. As concerns service in the Kingdom of God, the association's field remains small; our extensive ministries must go through state and national ao-cncies. But as concerns orderly and re- [85]
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sponsible organization, for both safety and sig- nificance, the local association is for the present the most important of our fellowship bodies. I would therefore bespeak for it the unfailing in- terest of churches and ministers. Because the association is the churches in immediate organi- zation, able to report and appeal instantly back to the churches, liable to be called to prompt ac- count by the churches, prepared to carry oiit the will of the churches into wider fields of fellow- ship, it is both safe and important to magnify this body.
In its enlarging scope and function the asso- ciation is charged first with the welfare of its Welfare of own cliurchcs. Our churches have Its Churches \^q^y\ dcscrtcd by one another. Our independence has been shamefully unfraternal. Under our competitive system hundreds of our churches can barely make a living; some that ought not to fail starve to death. Some, badly located or abandoned by the currents of social life, ought to remove or disband. Some that are doing noble work might be helped to multi- ply the service and increase the joy. Our churches are slow to learn what it means to be members one of another.
Included in the association's duty is the reli- gious condition of the county or district, so far as this belongs to Congregationalists. The questio'U is, What is our part in the religious welfare of this district, and how shall our [86]
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churches, organized in the association, perform their part? Enter here the duties of church ex- tension and evangehzation. church Extension Why should a new church be and Evangelization
formed when and where a few individuals would like to have it? Every Congregational church in the district is affected by each new church or- ganized. The latter will draw members from one and another church, and probably will appeal to the churches singly and to the home missionary society for financial aid. It is time all over the land for church extension to proceed upon advice and cooperation, and for the power of Christ to be carried throughout a city or a county by the united churches. Bay Association of churches in California covers a large county, in- cluding the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda. New Haven West Association in Connecticut covers the city and county of New Haven. These bodies are competent to spread the united power of all the Congregational churches over the spiritual needs of those coun- ties. I do not, of course, forget specially organ- ized church extension societies and city mission societies, which have the advantage of restricted aim and special pleading. But I believe that the associations of churches can well handle such work until the local fields grow so dense as to require separate organizations.
For this work of church welfare and exten- sion an advisory, prudential or missionary com- [87]
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mittee of the association is sufficient. One such association acts through a prudential committee, Prudential or whosc function is described as fol- Advisory lows in the coustitution : "It shall be
Committees ^i^g ^^^y Q,f |.j-,g Prudential Committee to promote the welfare and fellowship of the churches of this association in all possible ways, and especially as follows: (a) To consider the opportunities, responsibilities and resources of the churches of this association, and to study the -whole field with reference to the best distribution and employment of forces; (b) To receive any requests for counsel, to offer advice in needy and difficult cases, and when necessary to report to the association ways and means for meeting such cases and execute the association's pro- visions for relief; (c) To initiate and report plans for new enterprises and forward movements, in short, all that pertains to the extension of Christ's kingdom throughout the county. And to make its work effective the Prudential Com- mittee is hereby empowered by the churches through the association to assume from year to year whatever financial responsibility may be necessary." This particular committee has led the association to serve the churches in several important advances, such as the union of two churches, the erection of a new meeting-house, the purchase of a parsonage, the organization and housing of a new church, tKe removal of a church to a better site — these along with [88]
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lesser acts of helpfulness and a constant brooding watch-care over the churches and their united fields. The committee answers every call upon its service and is expected to proffer advice and initiate work at its discretion. It would be hard for men who appreciate the labor of such a com- mittee to think any association in the country well off without one, or in lack of some adequate provision for such service.
Another charge upon the local association is the orderly standing of churches and ministers. Dr. Quint wrote: ''No Congrega- ^^^^^^^ ^, tional church is independent. It can churches and become so by withdrawing from its Ministers affiliations with the other churches, but in that case it ceases to be a part of the Congregational body." ' The Council Manual, issued by the National Council as its expression of Congrega- tional organization, explicitly includes member- ship in a local association as requisite for a church which would secure and maintain Con- gregational character and standing. Every Con- gregational church is thus amenable to the de- nomination, and every association is responsible for the good standing of its churches. The same is true of every Congregational minister. His good name and commendation to the churches used to be in the hands of ordaining, installing and dismissing- councils. In the decline of in- stallation, ministerial standing has passed over to * Dunning, Congregationalists in America, p. 492. [89]
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the associations of churches. We have reached such proportions that we can secure good order in no less methodical way. The National Coun- cil has affirmed the conditions of ministerial standing to be threefold :
(i) Membership in a Congregational church;
(2) Ordination tO' the Christian ministry;
(3) Membership in that body, in most states
the local association of churches, which
holds the standing of ministers.
Now for the safe and orderly procedure of our
denominational life throughout this great coun-
_ , , . ^. try this matter of the good stand- Local Association _ ■' ...
Responsible for ing of churchcs and ministers is Good standing extremely important and gives prominence to the fellowship body charged with it. I believe that we are wise in laying it upon a local body, composed of the churches and min- isters themselves, closely conversant with all per- sonal character and church conditions, meeting regularly and as a matter of course, easily meet- ing in special session either to correct irregular- ities or to perform specific tasks. The state con- ference is less suited to be the custodian of min- isterial and church standing. Nor is there any local body adequate to bear this obligation save the association of churches. The council is fugi- tive, while these responsibilities are permanent. The ministerial association is limited to the clergy, while these responsibilities pertain to the churches inclusive of the clergy. The National [90]
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Council recommended that all local associations of churches so amend their constitutions as to provide for ministerial standing, and that all ministerial associations turn their members over to the church bodies. The transfer is already well-nigh universal.
There is one new feature in the possible scope and function of the association of churches which I desire to join with Mr. Heermance ordination by and others in advocating. It is the Association ordination of_ ministers. It seems to some like red revolution to carry over ordination from the time-honored council to the upstart association. But there are reason and good order in it. In our Congregational history ordination by other bodies than the council is far from unknown, while at present there is a distinct trend toward the association of churches. Several State bodies have recommended it in whole or in part. And those who have considered it and seen it work cannot help believing that it will gradually win its way. It cannot be forced. Those who prefer ordination by council are as free as ever to em- ploy that method. The change must come as a recognized improvement.
It is evident at a glance that ordination by an association of churches is good Congregational ordination. No man ordained by The Best such a body would have his minis- ^'^^^^'^^ ^ody terial standing questioned anywhere in the land. The association is a better body than the council [91]
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for this service, inasmuch as it includes all the churches of the vicinage and has permanent life and records. Having more time and repeated sessions for its business, with standing officers and commitees, it is less likely than a council to perform a mistaken ordination, while it is always at hand to correct such an error.
"Over some case of ministerial delinquency or impotence we ask, Who ordained this man? A council in northeastern Maine or southwestern California. Write that council and charge back its blunder upon it; bid it recall those ordination papers and terminate the mischievous or in- effective career. Impossible; the deed was done by an agency irresponsible, because too short- lived to be brought to an account, created for the work of an hour with endless consequences, and falling apart beyond recall before sunset. It gave the ordained man the sole copy of credentials good for a lifetime to the ends of the Congre- gational earth and beyond. It sent no records to a responsible custodian. And yet there is a thoroughly Congregational and representative body, dignified, stable, inclusive of all the neigh- boring churches and ministers and responsible for all, possessing all the prerogatives and ma- chinery for ordination. It writes such deeds in permanent records. It is more cautious, because it studies constantly the interests intrusted to it, and because it must answer any day for the deeds it has done. It can be called together as readily [92]
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as a council. Holding stated meetings, it need not for every case be called in extra session."
The main objection to ordination by associa- tion of churches, aside from sentimental devotion to the council, is a fear of some encroachment upon the liberties of the churches. Let us con- tinue to ordain, say the fearful, by the council which disbands at once; let us not trust this prin- cipal matter in the hands of a permanent body able to act repeatedly; independence is endan- gered by a permanent body. That general proposition is, I trust, being sufficiently argued in these lectures. To make a stand on ordina- tion seems to me peculiarly inapt. There can be no threat upon liberty at this point; it is too brief and fleeting. Time is a necessary element in tyranny. Ordination is done and past in a day, else a council never could perform it. It passes over into permanent ministerial standing; in that there is time for tyranny.
Suffer another moment's emphasis upon our present management of the life of our ministry. Licensure, or approbation to preach, The Life of is in the hands of the association of °"'" ^i^i^*^^ churches or ministers. Ministerial standing, as a permanent holding, is in the same hands. Cer- tification of that standing is therefore given at any time by the association, and the council is no longer depended on for a minister's creden- tials. Virtual deposition from the ministry for sufficient cause is in the same associational [93]
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hands; for while technical deposition is held by a council, the refusal of an association to sustain longer a minister's membership and standing- locks him, and ought to lock him, out of our pul- pits. It has always been next to impossible to secure formal deposition by a council; it is now rendered unnecessary by the normal working of ministerial standing in the association of churches. Thus that body presides over the whole extent of a minister's professional life, his ordination alone excepted. At that juncture we turn to the council, as though to say that we will not entrust with this man's ordination the bcKly to which we commit his entire career, though that body be composed of the very churches which must in any case perform his ordination. Safety, consistency, fitness and all the values of good order should, and I believe will, transfer ordination to the association's hands. And this is another argument for locating the whole proc- ess of ministerial standing in associations of churches instead of associations of ministers.
It remains to suggest that many other things hitherto performed by the council would often
other Functions ^^ ^^^"^ "''o^'^ appropriately and for the effectively by the association of
Association churchcs. The installation or dis-
missal of a pastor, the organization or migration of a church, the union of two churches, many appeals for advice and material assistance, coun- sel upon cases of discipline or business difficulty [94]
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— such things belong more fitly to the associa- tion with its system of meetings and records, of- ficers and committees. For, be it said for the smaller churches and their pastors who shrink from pressing their desires and rights, it is a main weakness of our council system that it assembles the "leading churches" and "leading pastors," seldom including those who would most appre- ciate participation in ecclesiastical affairs. These fellowship functions are occasions of growth and brotherly love, as well as service. It is neither fraternity nor strategy to magnify an agency which in the human nature of the case leaves many churches and pastors out in the cold year after year. Moreover, most of these denomina- tional occasions concern the whole circle of the vicinage, small and large churches alike. It is both good Christianity and good democracy to substitute the association of churches for the co-uncil in these denominational activities. The transfer would be one more step in simplifying and strengthening our polity.
What, then, of the council, our true and tried servant, our familiar friend, our Congregational way, the habit of three hundred Permanent scope years — what of this? No dis- °^ ^^^^ c°"°°" honor will be shown it in the change. So useful an agency is it that we should be entirely un- willing to deprive ourselves of it. It is admitted that some occasions for fellowship can be better served by a council than by an association. Rep-
[95]
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resentatives from a larger neighborhood, even from beyond state boundaries, are sometimes needed, as in an extreme case of discipline or financial distress. I have knoAvn a council to be preferred for the good reason that the larger body could not be entertained in the small meeting- house. And a case frequently arises of such length, delicacy or complexity as to require a small and select council.
Beyond these ordinary uses, however, the coun- cil has in our practise of the Congregational pol- court of ity a special function which assures it Last Resort abiding honor. For this function I like the brief, trim phrase, "court of last resort." To this title Mr. Heermance and others object, with- out suggesting another equally terse and ade- quate. Having dismissed authority from our total system, and having committed our decision to rational constraint by public opinion, it would seem as if no phrases could threaten our serenity. But in whatever terms stated, the provision is a real Congregational distinction and protection. We must always have some recourse from mis- takes and injustice. If a church, for example, or a minister has just complaint against the decision of the association of which either is a member, an appeal must be within reach to a judicatory regarded superior, because more disinterested, because concentrated upon the one issue, and be- cause advantaged by information of the former trial. Refuge has not always been found in a [96]
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council. In early days resort was had to town officers or the state legislature. In the consoci- ational days in Connecticut an appeal from one consociation might be presented to a neighboring one in joint session; if the two decisions coin- cided, they constituted a doubly final and author- itative settlement of the case. Both these lines of appeal have disappeared. We look to the State no longer, save in legal complications. Nor do we appeal from one association or conference to another, expecting the two to play a drawn game or enforce a joint decree. Least of all do we think of carrying our appeals up to state or national bodies. To these we give no legislative or judicial functions, and to them present no such business. We thus have no ascending ju- dicial system, such as would remove our difficult cases from the vincinage to distant judgment- seats. On the contrary, we carry our appeals directly back to the local churches. Our resort is to a council, that familiar immediate represen- tative of the churches, whose nature is to utter the best available judgment of the churches and leave it to be enforced by its inherent reason and public opinion. If we need a safeguard against other polities, here is one. The Presbyterian may carry his troubles up the line, to presbytery, synod and assembly, and accept the results form- ulated in the distant judicatories. The Congre- gationalist turns back to the local churches whose fraternal advice is his final dependence. As long [97]
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as this method of appeal stands, a drift into other poHties is blocked. Equally blocked is a tendency into any sort of perilous centralization. We may freely develop the local association, only keeping the council behind it as court of appeal. This turn is pivotal in our polity; upon it we swing back to the pro re nata action of the churches. And should the council come to be mainly limited to this function of appeal, it would therein retain eminence and power such as should satisfy its most jealous advocates.
Returning now to the association of churches, let me for a moment urge the importance of Uniform agreeing upon a uniform terminol- Terminoiogy ^g-y ^^^ National Council has
recommended that our local organizations of churches take the name "association," and our state bodies be called "conferences." This is a subordinate but not trivial matter. An incon- sistent terminology causes confusion in any de- partment of thought or action. Science corrects it at every discoverable point. So does practical wisdom, bent upon improving methods and pro- ducing results. These are days of the constant migration of pastors and church-members. Their familiarity with our working terms and methods affects efficiency. These facts, plus the increas- ing administrative significance of our ecclesiasti- cal bodies, argue the importance of uniform features and phraseology. In its main lines our work is one and the same throughout the land. [98]
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Local variety is required only in minor details. Preference for our inherited names is natural enough, but unworthy to stand against our desire for united power.
In such ways as have now been indicated our local fellowship is being shaped. The trend all over the countr}^ is to magnify the local associa- tion, composed of the churches themselves in immediate union for the common work of the vicinage. Here, close to the separate churches, in their first organized body, we find the safest basis of good order. Here we fear no danger to our liberties, for these are the very churches whose liberties are precious. Here we have an agency adequate to meet the conditions of the local field, competent also to enter those wider relations which remain to be considered.
[99]
LECTURE IV STATE UNIFICATION
IV
STATE UNIFICATION
The state is as natural a district for religious as for civil organization. Interests and activities of the churches too large for our local associa- tions, yet too restricted for national administra- tion, we handle statewise. Thus we have a state organization in every state and two in California. They have been styled conferences or associations or conventions. To secure a uniform termin- ology the name "conference," recommended by the National Council, is being gradually adopted.
The membership of both local associations and state conferences, which may be discussed as one question, presents difficulties Local and state requiring thought and experiment. Membership The present variety is confusing. In some cases, local or state, the membership is limited to churches, these being represented in the meetings by pastors as such and elected delegates. In other cases ministers, whether pastors or not, have personal membership, with or without vot- ing rig^hts; this membership, as held and inter- preted in local associations, constituting their ministerial standing. There are state bodies which determine their own membership inde- pendently, as of course they are free tO' do, while others base their membership upon the local as- sociations. Now similar to that regarding termin- [ 103 ]
C on s.y€ (Rational Adniinist ration
ology, though much more cogent here, is the argument for uniformity. Not until we have achieved it, can a minister or active layman, re- moving from one state to another, enter upon his new relations unconfused.
The first question concerns the duties and prerogatives connected with ministerial standing. Ministerial Shall the minister's connection with Membership and a local association of churchcs, standing which he is obliged to secure and
keep unsullied, be reckoned as membership? If so, what kind of membership, entitled to what privileges, and charged with what duties? If not membership, what is it? Can sO' vital and re- sponsible a connection, involving discipline for cause, be ordered and insisted upon without being accorded the status of membership? Ministerial standing is coordinate with the standing of a church; if the latter involves full membership in an association, with voting rights in all meetings, should the former be limited to less? In this matter is it right to reckon a minister as no more than an individual church-member? The local association is the body in and through which de- nominational administration is carried on; shall a minister have no participation in administration save as a church-member occasionally elected as delegate to an association meeting? If a larger share is just or desirable, is it sufficient to give him an associate or honorary membership, with all rights save that of voting? [ 104]
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Three practises now in vogue among us may be stated as follows: — (a) in some associations all ministers hold personal voting membership; (b) in other associations there is no ministerial membership, but pastors are ex officio delegates and voting members of the meetings; other min- isters have no place in any meeting save as duly elected delegates of churches; (c) in still other associations even pastors hold nO' ex officio place in the meetings, but must be elected as delegates.
It is easy to object to any one of these arrange- ments, but the most just and consistent solution does not instantly appear. Ministerial a Difficult membership, giving each minister, Solution whether pastor or not, voting rights in every meeting, puts a minister on a par with a church, gives him undue prominence in the meetings and the organization generally, and introduces a double and disparate membership. On the other hand, tO' refuse ministerial membership is liable to injustice. For the minister, not the pastor only, is held under responsibilities peculiar to him, not shared by any layman, shared only by a church. We Congregationalists — and freemen generally — have a very vital rubric entitled ''taxation without representation." We feel like insisting in simple justice that one who is held to unique accountability must be given unique rights in the organization which holds him.
There are times when ordinary injustice at this point would be magnified intO' grievous [ 105 ]
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wrong. The discipline of a minister as church- member belongs in the church which holds his Complicated by membership. But his discipline as Disoipiine minister belongs in the associa-
tion which holds his standing. It is a grave question whether he ought to be held amenable to disciplinary action by a body in which voting membership is denied him, and in which his fellow ministers, likewise excluded from mem- bership, have no right to give judgment in his trial. Discipline for delinquency reveals the dis- parity between minister and lay delegate; the latter the association cannot call to account, his case lying totally within his own church. If you surrender the associational discipline of min- isters, you do indeed remove that difference be- tween them and lay delegates, but you also throw out the real values of ministerial standing. Un- less the rolls are kept purged of delinquents, it is worth nothing to stand in the lists. It is a good thing to withdraw the special privileges formerly accorded to the clergy and hold them to the common standards of manhood and social order. But when the question concerns their professional responsibilities, you will find neither ministers nor laymen willing to reduce the craft to the lay level or refuse it the standing commen- surate with its obligations. Between such depre- ciation and the segregation of ministers as a class or order in their own exclusive associations, where the church cannot pass upon their pro- [io6]
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fessional standing, there is safe middle ground. The double membership of churches and minis- ters disturbs very httle the thought of the churches, and introduces no disorder into cur- rent affairs. If, however, complete ministerial membership should upon discussion be refused, then the ex officio standing of pastors in the association meetings has not a little in its favor. I believe that, thinking this matter out through some years of experiment, churches and ministers will agree upon the justice and desirability of safeguarding the rights and obligations pertain- ing to ministerial membership. If it come to be regarded as a special privilege, it will go and ought to go. If it turn out to be justice and a true way of sustaining the high character and se- curing the full service of our ministry, it will be retained.
A further inquiry concerns the membership of the state conference, and particularly its rela- tion to that of the local aSSOcia- state conference tions within the state. At present versus Association f 1 • £■/• o 1 • i Membership
conferences dirier. borne admit every pastor as one of the representatives of his church, but no ministers on any other terms. Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, California and others admit as members coordinate with the churches all ministers who are members of local associations within the state. This introduces the dual membership again, the voters in all meetings being ministers as such and delegates of [ 107]
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churches. What these states seem to mean is this : Admitting the right of the state conference to determine its own membership, it is thought wiser to base it directly and completely upon membership in local associations. Upon this is founded majority membership in the National Council. It is consistent and practical for the state body also to rest its membership upon the local bodies. The states just named are saying that their state conference membership shall con- sist of all the churches and all the ministers named in the lists of their local associations. The purpose evidently is to assemble the total recognized forces of the state, to apply the total available power at this pivotal point between local and national forms of work.
Conceivably it may still be asked why the state conference should, in constituting its member- Higher Memberships ship, refer at all to the local Rest on Good Standing associatious. The auswcr is, Because our Congregational practise leaves in the associations the determination of the good stand- ing which consists in membership acquired and retained. The state conference, the national so- cieties and the National Council then accept the matter of membership as settled and adjust their practise thereto. The question then becomes one as to representation in these higher bodies. And the two classes to be represented are : — ( i ) churches and (2) ministers, the whole number of the latter as an ordained ministry, not merely the [108]
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major fraction of them as pastors. Our organific direction, as considered in the first lecture, is from below upward. The single church is first. The churches organize the local association, and make it the corner-stone of our fellowship struc- ture. The churches carry up to the state confer- ence nothing which the smaller bodies can bear just as well. And the churches carry on to the national bodies only the still wider interests com- mon tO' the states. It is admitted, of course, that these adjustments are still sub judice; all meth- ods always are in Congregationalism. But these are present phases and attempted interpretations. The wisest structural details will seasonably an- swer our united inquiries. And the denser states, whose state meetings tend toward an unmanage- ably large membership, may make special contri- butions toward the solutions.
Beyond membership come the two main mat- ters of all — state unification and state superin- tendence. Consider first the unifying state of our total Congregational organ- Unification ization with its agencies and labors in each state. The National Council at its Cleveland meet- ing recommended as follows : — "That the state organizations become legally incorporated bod- ies; and that under a general superintendent and such boards as they may create, and acting in cooperation with committees of local associa- tions and churches, they pro\dde for and direct the extension of church work, the planting of [ 109]
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churches, the mutual oversight and care of all self-sustaining as well as missionary churches, and other missionary and church activities, to the end that closer union may ensure greater ef- ficiency without curtailing local independence." Action of this sort had been begun in several states prior to the Cleveland meeting, and since then has been accelerated and extended. Michi- gan was the first state to formulate definite prog- ress toward a unity of state work, with Wiscon- sin and Northern California moving that way. Ohio then outstripped Michigan, to be herself outdone by Northern and then by Southern Cali- fornia. And now Wisconsin and Michigan are showing us all the way unto complete unity of state interests under a single administrative head. Other states in their annual meetings and by committees or groups of individuals are advanc- ing in this direction.
Certain thoughts appear to be brewing in many minds, somewhat as follows : — ( i ) It is desir- state Consciousness able and really obligatory to and State Eights unify our Congregational forces and forms for superior efficiency. (2) A state consciousness has been born, and is growing lustily. (3) Within its own borders state administration is more effective than na- tional. The former has the advantages of in- timate knowledge, close range, personal con- tact and strong pressure on localities, churches, individuals. (4) The right of a state to self-
[IIO]
State Unification
administration is superior to the right of any national body to act within a state's boundaries. Mr. John Fiske says again, "Stated broadly, so as to acquire somewhat the force of a universal proposition, the principle of federalism is just this: that the people of a state shall have full and entire control of their own domestic affairs, which directly concern them only, and which they will naturally manage with more intelligence and with more zeal than any distant governing body could possibly exercise." ' Thus to efficiency and expediency we add state rights. Each fellowship body takes precedence of the higher ones. The rights of the state conference are prior to those of the national bodies. Nothing is left to the latter save what the churches see will be most effective when handled nationally. Thus our Congregational administration is "broad-based upon the people's will." Our national organiza- tions have not always acted so; they could not until yesterday, but only to-day are they fairly beginning the new ways. We are all freshly realizing the supremacy of the churches, the rep- resentative principle, and the movement from be- low upward. There is no danger of stripping our national work of its magnificent proportions. Duty to our splendid societies must be kept aflame. The limits of state administration are quickly reached. Just now, in the warmth of state reorganization, there is special need of steadiness,
'American Political Ideas, pp. 133, 134. [Ill]
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and vision. It is easy for mortals, acting in what- ever capacit}^, to groAv so intent as to lose sight of the greater horizons. But wherever the sky-line may be, here at hand are the state boundaries, en- closing concrete and instant obligations.
Full details cannot be given of the reorganiza- tion which has taken place in the several states already mentioned. Reports can be obtained from the state registrars. At this time it will be more profitable to present some of the major ele- ments in the process.
First, the incorporation of the state confer- ence. That it is possible to incorporate a body Incorporation of of such extended bulk is proved state Conference j^y ^.j^g ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^g General Con- ference of Michigan has lived an incorporated life since 1886, and others from more recent dates. Others still, like Ohio and California, have secured incorporation within the last two years. State missionary societies have been cor- porations for a much longer period. Reasons for this step seem cogent. Under such an inter- pretation of Congregationalism as we are here submitting, no damage to our liberties need be feared. The state conference is simply the churches themselves, lacking all alien elements. Its responsibilities are changing and developing. Financial and legal obligations will be heavy in thoroughgoing state unification. The confer- ence, once incorporated, is quite equal to all re- sponsibilities and opportunities. [112]
State Unification
The state conference being thus prepared for whatever may befall, the proposal is no less than to unify in its hands and con- state work duct under its superintend- ^"'^"^ *" conference ence all the Congregational work in the state. It may be well to repeat that the private spheres of the separate churches and local associations are not to be invaded, that only the common work laid out in state proportions is in view, and that throughout the new method the force continues to be the influence of public opinion and not the arm of coercion. Under such safeguards the states are proceeding to do the thing which seems good theory to us all, to simplify complexity, to transform competition into combination, to re- duce operating expenses, to direct the whole sys- tem from one office. It is easier to state this and to cheer for it than to achieve it; but it can be achieved everywhere. The conviction is already wide-spread that the results will be cheaply bought at whatever price of labor and patience.
In some states the relations between state con- ference and state missionary society present dif- ficulties. The latter body has ac- conference quired a strong and independent versus
,- r /-v , ■ ,1 1 • , 1 Missionary Society
life. Our action through it has grown habitual. In some cases, Connecticut and California for example, its relations with the conference have been vital. The conference elects the directors of the Missionary [113]
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Society of Connecticut. The General Association of Northern CaHfornia used to elect the members of its home missionary society, while at present the twenty-one directors of the Northern California Congregational Conference are ipso facto the total membership of the home missionary society, and elect its directors from their own number. Elsewhere the conditions are less favorable, the missionary society being quite separate from the conference. The question be- ing asked in state after state is this, Why should not the conference do its state missionary work directly? The conference is the churches organ- ized, as the Connecticut constitution admirably puts it, "for the purpose of fraternal intercourse and cooperation and mutual incitement in all the evangelizing work of Christian churches." Why then must it employ a separate incorporated body and turn the churches' contributions into a sepa- rate treasury? Moreover, the churches are in- terested in developing a state superintendency much wider than that hitherto confined mainly to home missionary work. Must there be two superintendents? There need be but one in case the state conference manages directly its home missionary interests.
The issue here is not yet so clear as to induce uniform action. The Ohio conference has or- various ganized its state work into two bu- Methods reaus; of one of these the home mis- sionary society is a main part. In Michigan the [114]
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general association, the home missionary society/ the foreign missionary society, and the central advisory board have all been united into one cor- poration, the Michigan Congregational Confer- ence. For legal reasons the home missionary so- ciety retains a nominal existence, but within a few years may entirely disappear. In Northern California financial obligations compel for the present the retention of the home missionary so- ciety as a separate corporation. In Southern California the early disappearance of that society into the state conference has been provided for. The Nebraska state body has under consideration a plan which merges the home missionary society in the conference. Wisconsin has reduced its state affairs, including its home missionary so- ciety, to a splendid unity.
Possible legal and financial complications may present in any state grave difficulties. Trusts must be faithfully administered. Legal Funds must not be lost by unwise complications attempts to transfer them. Future gifts and leg- acies must not be jeopardized. The strong senti- ments of living givers must not be shocked. Such considerations urge deliberation until good coun- sel settles upon the changes most certain to con- serve all interests. But on the other hand the financial and legal forms become subject to modi- fication in so far as it appears that moral in- tegrity inheres in their general management for specified ends rather than in details of method. [115]
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Administrative forms are but means of convey- ing spiritual power. It is the end that is precious to the givers of money. And it may transpire in these state negotiations that a minority, scarcely numerical at all, but forceful and per- sistent, can roll into the path obstacles which would not appear at all to a unanimous company. Legal difficulties are adjustable to unanimous de- sires held faithfully to an unaltered purpose. In the tri-church negotiations the committee on vested interests affirmed that no insurmountable obstacles were presented by property considera- tions. The law can bring to pass such changes as right-hearted persons have ceased to contend against.
The relations of the state conference with our national missionary societies comprise one of the
Conference and mOSt delicate matters to be ad-
National Societies j\isted. In certain of the reor- ganizing states this has proved to be a point of some friction. Our national societies have been accustomed to solicit funds freely and without concert anywhere in the land. They have gone in and out among our churches without let or hindrance. They have dealt directly and sepa- rately with the churches, each society seeking the largest possible income without regard to any other society. The confusion and discomfort of this system, the increasing irritation and inade- quacy, the rising demand for cooperation between the societies, the need of orderly and reliable [ii6]
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giving, — these have brought on our present trial of proportionate benevolence. This advance has been synchronous with the growing state consciousness and consolida- tion. And now the states are undertaking to ap- ply, each in its own territory, the offered plan of benevolence, and on the other hand are serving friendly notice upon the national societies that their solicitations must no longer be independent of state advice and joint management. Our churches are unwilling to have a scheme, elabo- rated however carefully in New York or Boston, laid down hard all over the land from the na- tional offices. There is something which looks like assessing the churches, or at least assessing the conferences and associations ; and assessment is another of those dreadful words which, when uttered megaphonically from national headquar- ters, make autonomous Congregationalists nerv- ous. The state conferences are therefore saying. Hand this new scheme to us for inspection and application.
These adjustments between the state and na- tional bodies must be made with the utmost pains
and good-will. It is true, and it For increased
must be kept clear, that the one de- Efficiency sire is for increased efficiency. No' detriment to the glorious work of our national societies will be permitted. No injustice will be done them by the state bodies. On the contrary, the confer- ences purpose to give the societies a better hear- [117]
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ing in the churches and to offer themselves as new agencies for presenting the national forms of work, raising increased funds and training the churches to systematic giving. The con- ferences should commend all the national societies to the churches, inspire and hold the churches to their duty, welcome the secretaries and agents of the societies, instruct and stimulate the churches, operate detailed finan- cial plans, thus coworking with the national so- cieties. Nothing less is proposed by any state. It may indeed seem new and strange to the of- ficers of the societies to hear the conferences claim to be in charge of their own fields. But it is believed that all parties concerned will soon discover power and a superior brand of Congre- gationalism in the new measures with their sys- tem, their multiplied leaders and interests, their distributed responsibility.
If it be asked in what actual terms adjustments have already been arranged in any states, the re- Experiments in ply must be very partial. In some Several States cascs cooperation has been initiated at useful points, in the faith that no problems in fraternal adjustment will prove bafRing. As con- crete examples, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North- ern California may be cited again.
In California the state and national adjustment
is affected by the residence among us of district
secretaries or agents of the national societies
whose field is the entire Pacific Coast. With
[ii8]
State Unification
these brethren, as also with state superintendents of national forms of work, we have the happiest relations. We have entered upon our new ad- ministration with the cordial cooperation of these men, believing- that all adjustments will prove manageable as they emerge. Our board of t\venty-one directors is entrusted with our state- wide future, the relations with the national so- cieties being one of the main things left confi- dently in their charge. In Michigan, while noth- ing has been formulated in the constitution or in resolution, the state leaders and forces are a unit in insisting that all national work in the state shall be under state direction, and that there shall be in Michigan no officers or agents of the national societies wholly directed from without the state.
The most definite statement of relations thus far made is by the Wisconsin State Association. It is as follows: "That the Association through its board of directors shall control the work now done by The Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, but the national society shall be consulted in the appointment of superintendent and missionaries and in the initiation of all im- portant measures. All money received for the Sunday-school work in our denomination in Wis- consin shall pass through the hands of the treas- urer of the Association, but the national society shall receive from such offerings and bequests an amount to be determined from year to year [119I
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by the board of directors. Appeals to the churches of Wisconsin in behalf of the national society shall be through the office of the State Association. The directors shall organize this work under a committee of their own appoint- ment, of which committee the superintendent of Sunday-school work shall be a member ex officio. While the work of this committee shall be dis- tinct from the work of the home missionary com- mittee, it shall be coordinate with home mission- ary work, and the Sunday-school and home mis- sionary committees shall have a joint conference at least once a year. The superintendent and Sunday-school committee shall use the office force of the Association in their work and shall use the association office for their headquarters."
The points here are state management under a superintendent and committee of Sunday-school work, consultation with the national society, con- tributions to the national treasury, appeals by na- tional society agents to be made through the state office, the state Sunday-school superintend- ent and committee to use the state headquarters and to be appointed by and responsible to the state board of directors. The design in both Michigan and Wisconsin is to develop similar relations of state superintendence and cooperation with all the national societies alike, reducing the present diversity to order.
An easier adjustment is that between state conference and local associations. What the
[ 120]
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churches through their representatives plan for the whole state can best be put Into execution
through the local associations. conference and
These are smaller groups of the -Associations same churches. There should be no friction within the state. The Congregational way is to appoint an active committee in each local association to cooperate with the central committee of the con- ference. In Michigan there are such advisory committees heading up in the board of trustees in the conference. The same is true in Wiscon- sin, Ohio and California. Thus the whole state shares the responsibilities of administration. The two main points are always and everywhere the same : — local responsibility all along the work- ing line and effective state unity.
Thus we reach the question of administrative headship in a Congregational state. What form shall the state executive take? Administrative What the states are working at is, Headship as we have seen, to unite all activities under a single administration. The unifying body must be the state conference with a board of directors large enough to manage the whole diversified work. The board should contain at least one rep- resentative from each local association in the state. In Michigan the directors number one from each local association and four at large ; in Wisconsin the same plus moderator, registrar, and treasurer ; in Southern California and North- ern California twenty-one similarly distributed;
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in Ohio, twenty-seven; in South Dakota, fifteen. The aim is to make these directors the responsi- ble managers, more or less directly, of the total state work. They may act through bureaus and committees, and even through separate home mis- sionary corporations. Wherever the latter can legally be dispensed wath, the unity of work and the immediate management of the directors may be complete. In some states, notably Michigan and Wisconsin, the directors are already going one step further. They are putting the state work under a single executive, elected either by the directors or the conference, responsible to the board and subject to its direction. In these states the superintendent is in charge not merely of the home missionary work as heretofore, but of all forms of work now organized together under the directors of the incorporated state con- ference. The different departments — home mis- sionary, Sunday-school, church building, foreign missionary and others — he will conduct through heads of departments and committees. The whole force is the executive agency of the board of directors, which is itself responsible to the con- ference. This complete unification of state work is rational and practical. It is also proper and consistent Congregationalism.
We come now to superintendence as an ele- ment in Congregationalism. Its discussion is most pertinent here, because in state work it is most in evidence and debate. But it opens out [ 122]
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into larger proportions. Let the precise point of inquiry be noted. The question is not whether the employment of executive agents superintendence is germane to the Congrega- a factor in
. 1 ,., , , (. , , Congregationalism
tional polity; no body of churches can grow and serve without such leaders. The question is not whether to admit into our system an element hitherto rejected; the element is pres- ent. The question is, Shall we build it up, and how far? We are quite accustomed to the class of men called superintendents; shall we enlarge their scope and influence? This is one point of difference between denominations which are al- ready practising federation and even discussing union. Along this line of administrative super- intendence how far can we safely and wisely go, either to promote our own efficiency or to meet other bodies inclined to union?
Let us bear in mind our large use of this form of service. We find it in the secretaryships of
our national societies. Enlarged superintendence We have it nearer home "' Dangers and usefulness
in the district secretaries and state superintend- ents sustained by these societies. We have super- intendents or secretaries of city missions, of church extension societies, of Sunday-school work, of Christian Endeavor, of the Brother- hood, and of other lines of work. Chief of all for current developments in our polity are the state home missionary superintendents or secre- taries. This is the office which the states now [ 123]
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reorganizing are enlarging, to bear in some cases cited the total administrative headship of the state work. The very first step in the enlargement of this office is sensitively challenged. The scope of the office has been confined to our home mission- ary churches. But surely a dividing line solely financial between churches, separating the one division as independent from the other as de- pendent, is far from making a fraternal and gra- cious distinction. It is proposed to minimize this distinction and make the state superintendent the servant of all the churches. This is ques- tioned, resented, resisted by some leaders and churches, as derogatory to themselves and a men- ace to local autonomy. But it is neither, when rightly constituted, manned and understood. Cu- riously, some persons and churches are sensitive to the presence of a Congregational superintend- ent suffered to run at large in a state. His mere existence irritates. If he venture to ask a church, Is there anything you care to have me do for you? the question sounds like a threat against liberty; surely it contains the veiled approach of authority ; the man is a fledgling bishop ! It is, however, interesting to learn from any home missionary superintendent, how few churches there are which never call upon him for any sort of service. It is safe to say that there is no such official in the land whose desk is often free from business pertaining to self-sustaining churches. It is already happily and fruitfully true that our [ 124]
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churches and superintendents are ignoring the hne between missionary and non-missionary churches, that the superintendents are regarded as servants of all the churches, and that to forbid our self-supporting churches to seek further serv- ice from the superintendents would embarrass our state conditions as few other things could. To promote the home missionary superintendent to be superintendent of all the churches would be scarcely more than formal recognition of ac- tual fact. And then to bring together in his executive hand all the reins of state activity would be simply to consolidate our scattered in- terests around the natural and prepared center.
Such an enlarged superintendency lies wholly in the realm of administration, having no legisla- tive or judicial function. It is Confined to
clothed with no irresponsible au- Administration
thority, possessed of no coercion; nothing is in Congregationalism. It is influential leadership; influential certainly and strongly, else it need not be at all. It is service and sacrifice, not lordship. It is the organ of the churches' mutual care. Its opportunity is wide and grand, its duties infi- nitely exacting, its devotion even unto death. Here, as everywhere in Congregationalism and democracy, the personal equation bulks large. It is nothing to say that the wrong man in this office may grow lordly and tyrannical. In a world of freedom all perversions are possible. But as no man taketh this power unto himself, [125]
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so no man retains it by personal prowess. We, the churches, appoint him, and supersede him for cause. I heard Dr. Gladden ridicule the fear of authority, saying that he should like to see a Con- gregational officer attempt authority over the churches; forthwith we would make him wish that he had never been born. We need not deny the tendency of official position to entrench itself and put forth power. But if any concrete case of it proceed far, the fault is the people's, the rem- edy being always in their hands. Do not illus- trate by the "big stick" in politics or industry. In neither industry nor politics are there equal incentives to righteousness, service, and sacrifice; in neither are evil men so weak in social re- sources, so exposed to rebuke and displacement. No system of things is so secure from official tyr- anny as a body of free churches, whose reliance is upon genuine moral character and Christian experience, whose instrument is right reason. In our Congregational order we may develop the executive superintendency without imperiling the liberties of our churches. No superintendent can obtain his office or hold it save by the concurrent action of the churches. No superintendent can touch a single church against its will. Be it re- peated till "the youngest critic has died," — we are a body of free churches; our officers are our servants, always subject to our will. On such a basis we may organize a unified and effective order, and have for our responsible leaderships [126]
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Christian men too choice in character, too win- some in approach, too wise in counsel, too re- sourceful in strategy, too effective in action, too unreserved in sacrifice, too divinely attended, to be suspected of ambition or begrudged the nth power of influential service. Any system of elected and removable superintendence is safe in Congregationalism. Until we develop it, we are behind our duty and beneath our opportunity. Dr. Mackennal said again, in his address from the chair of the Congregational Union of Eng- land and Wales, "If it be recognized that the government of each particular church is in its membership, we may adopt diocesan and con- nexional methods of administration, not only without mischief, but even with the best results."
[ 127 J
LECTURE V NATIONAL UNITY
V
NATIONAL UNITY
At the point reached by the preceding lecture, there were more than twoscore separate state conferences, each composed of the rphe Fieia Congregational churches of a is the single state, and vitally related to the local associations in the same ter- ritory. Our construction of an adequate admin- istrative system must not, as we have heard from Mr. John Fiske, stop short of achieving national unity. The field is the country, cut and uncut by state boundaries, and the field is the world. There are problems and opportunities sectional, national, continental and ecumenical, requiring larger regimentation and "farflung battle lines." This we discovered a century ago. For a hundred years we have lived in these greater visions, and have wrought unto the ends of the earth. Ap- paratus for each new line of service came at call, in the best way, the only way it could come, by experiment and invention; it was, in Professor Ladd's phrase, "Progress by individual inquiry."^ The Congregational churches knew not how to rise up all together, act in full national force through accredited representatives, and create a S3^stem of agencies expansive enough for the * Principles of Church Polity, p. 57. [131]
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growing day. Such churches as desired to — and that was the great majority — accepted and employed the societies launched by a few organiz- ing individuals. Those unrepresentative, self- governing societies were true Congregational products of their time, suited to Congregational spirit and action. They were supported with fervent and generous devotion, and drew our in- dependent churches together in common service. And when in these last days the spirit of Con- gregational unity began to stir within us, behold among us several unifying agencies of truly na- tional proportions and influence! It was only too plain, however, that since each was partial and specialized, independent of the others and the churches, and was missionary rather than admin- istrative, no one of them was capable of organiz- ing a truly national unity of the Congregational churches.
Our unifying body is the National Council. It came to the kingdom for this hour. Far-sighted The National men, they who organized it in 1871, Council "qj^ |.j-jg grave of buried prejudices."
The Congregational churches cf the United States, not their associations and conferences, are the constituent members, as saith its con- stitution. The delegates to the meetings of the Council, elected in the local and state bodies, are representatives of the churches which directly compose those bodies and the Council. Thus our highest administrative agency is but one step re- [132]
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moved — it were better called a half step — from the churches themselves.
The National Council is a permanent body, having perennial life like the conferences, associa- tions and the churches themselves, a Permanent There are some who speak as if the ^°^^ Council had no enduring existence, sprang anew intO' being on the stroke of a gavel once in three years and dropped dead a few days later under the same magic touch. It is the tempo- rary session of a permanent body that is opened and closed upon a gavel stroke by a few tech- nical words. If this was not intended at Oberlin in 1 87 1, we have grown to the stronger idea. It is explicitly stated in the constitution, at any rate, and we may hope our fathers knew how well they were building that platform. "The Con- gregational churches of the United States," they said, "by elders and messengers assembled, do now associate themselves in National Coun* cil" ; "the churches will meet in National Council every third year" ; "at each triennial session" — the phrase is "triennial session" — certain officers shall be chosen "to serve from the close of such session to the close of the next triennial session." It is the constitution of a living organism, never disappearing altogether, never unproductive, but rising into full view and formal action once in three years.
In the section of the constitution just quoted, provision is made for secretary, registrar and [ 133 ]
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treasurer, who shall hold office and continue ac- t;\-e during the triennium; also for a provisional Moderator of Committee to arrange for the next National Council j-egular sessiou and for any special session that may be called. As to the ad interim standing of these officers and this committee, there can be no difference of opinion ; nor respecting any and all standing committees, for these also are expressly provided for in the constitution. Over the moderatorship there has arisen since the meeting of 1901 an earnest disagreement. The moderator elected then was the Rev. Amory H. Bradford, D.D., of New Jersey, of bluer Con- gregational blood than John Wise or Nathaniel Emmons, and equally loyal to Congregational spirit and principle. Believing himself moder- ator until his successor should be elected, and desiring to make the office useful between ses- sions, he ventured to speak out in the organized silence of Congregationalism. It was a mon- strous thing to do ! Some told him so when they had caught their breath. Moderator of what? There was nothing to be moderator of between October 1901 and October 1904. But he went right on serving the churches as moderator of the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States until his successor was elected in the triennial session at Des Moines. That successor was busier yet in the same capacity until the present moderator was elected in 1907 at Cleveland. In the current triennium [134]
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our leader is rendering much admirable service, is generous with time and influence, and is in no danger of being declared an ad interim incompe- tent. Many of us are sure we have a standing moderator of the National Council ; some refuse to acknowledge him. Congregationalists are not compelled to take what they do not want. We are waiting hopefully for that unanimity of which we sing. In 1871 our fathers had not reached this issue of a permanent moderatorship. In their constitution they ordered the election of a moderator at the beginning of every stated or special session "to preside over its deliberations" ; in the following sentence, however, they direct him as moderator to open with an address the fol- lowing meeting of the Council. A pertinent by- law has been added since then, which says, "The presiding officers shall retain their offices until their successors are chosen." etc. At Des Moines we were instructed in a sincere and very expert speech from the floor that that clause of the by- law, when enacted, was not intended to mean what it says. At the present time we desire to have it mean what it says. It would seem wise, however, to take such action as may set the whole matter at rest.
In Congregationalism some one does a thing, and presently the rest of us exclaim, Why, that's right! So now we have a stand- The First ing moderator, and not merely a congregationaiist sessional presiding officer. We could not longer [135]
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do without him. The national organization of six thousand Christian churches is an important factor in the social order. Its moderatorship is an eminent post of honor and service, — not a prize of ambitious politics, but a stewardship en- trusted to capacity and consecration. Its oc- cupant should be a man of national proportions, administrative ability, and spiritual power. He is for the time the first man in the Congregational land. We have not yet reached, we may never reach, the point of expecting our moderator to devote his whole time to this office. We could not call a pastor away from his church or a lay- man out of his business without at least fair promise of a service longer than three years. Nor is this so needful while the secretaryship con- tinues powerful and productive.
The secretaryship of the National Council, as things now stand, should be the most conspicuous Secretary of position in the leadership of our
National Council churches. There is, of course, large room for divergent conceptions of it. To me it seems mainly an outdoor office. There is much indoor work to be done, of which the Year Book is the most palpable product. The churches should enable the secretary tO' conduct this indoor work through assistants and em- ployees. He himself, being a man of national size, and persona grata everywhere, should be out among the churches. All the state conferences and many of the local associations should know [ 136 ]
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his voice and feel his heart. He would carry everywhere the great issues of our organized churches. In his person would be greeted Con- gregationalism incarnate, and men would know it as a living thing. In many parts of the land his appearance would do more than anything else to give Congregationalism a local habitation and a name. Through him churches and pastors would learn, for example, that the two-cent annual assessment is a real and reasonable thing, and that honor is involved in its prompt payment. A secretary of the Council might, from his office desk, desire just such far-stretching ministry, and might wonder at not being invited in all directions. It would certainly be well for the churches in their organized bodies to request his service, and I can think of but one good reason why they might hesitate to do so. But when a man becomes a secretary he does not forfeit his native right of initiative and administration. Let him invite himself out and range freely among us. This office is a post of eminence and leader- ship. We elect its incumbent for his capacity as leader. Let us then expect him to lead, giving him support, attention, cooperation. His salary should be adequate to first-class constructive ability. And ample funds should be furnished for extensive service afield. It would be interest- ing, perhaps painful, to learn how generally our churches and ministers still conceive of the Na- tional Council secretary as an office employee [ 137]
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rather than as an organizer of national forces for world-wide enterprise.
National Council finances cannot be passed over in silence. We have reached a pass wherein Finances of wc must presently, perhaps at the
National Council ^ext meeting of the Council, choose between two alternatives : either to increase considerably the Council's income for operating expenses or to decline our en- larging service to the Kingdom of God. For some years the annual income of the Council stood at one and one-half cents per Con- gregational church-member. At that rate seven hundred thousand members would give $10,500 a year. Since the last meeting of the Council two cents per member have been called for, amounting to $14,000 from seven hundred thou- sand members. The state conferences are the bodies to collect this money and pay it into the national treasury. It is surprising and humiliat- ing to learn that there is always a number of states delinquent in payment, some of them two or even three years in arrears, and that these national moneys are never paid in full. Ultimate respon- sibility rests upon the churches. There are pastors and church officers who flatly refuse or silently repudiate their part of this common ob- ligation. For such men or groups of men cur- rent life has the sharp term "grafters"; they gather in as gratuity the standing benefits of membership in national Congregationalism. Such [138]
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conduct is indefensible; it does not fall under casuistry; it is simply wrong. Finance is never unmoral, but often immoral. The guilty men and churches cannot be imprisoned for debt; they may yield to Congregational sentiment as that grows vigorous and searching.
But what do we want of funds, and in- creased funds in our national administration? The salary and expenses of the increased national secretary have been men- income tioned. The Year-Book, indispensable to our denominational life, is an expensive kind of book. The salary and office expenses of the treasurer are not large, but real. Beyond these there spreads out an enlarging scope of official and committee work, for which at present we have almost no provision. We appoint standing committees to transact important business be- tween sessions; these committees cannot count on having their bare traveling expenses paid for a single meeting in the three years. There are lines of new work which require increasing expenditure, such as the Brotherhood movement, interdenominational comity, evangelism, social reform. The National Council has initiated work on all these lines, appointed committees, even approved the employment of special agents or secretaries, without offering the least financial provision for the work. This state of affairs can- not, it would seem, be continued. Our six thou- sand churches must not be limited to the service [ 139]
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of men who can afford and are interested to pay their own expenses or are able and willing to solicit contributions for their special tasks. Con- gregational work is already too multiform and expensive for these devoted and generous men. Must we imprison ourselves within the little forms of work which can be carried on in the good old way? The alternatives are endowment funds for administration, or increased per capita dues, punctually and regularly paid, from all our mem- bers in the land. I believe the Council must seriously undertake this vital matter. In the present triennium some of our indispensable pastors and laymen have declined committee serv- ice, because of their quickening conviction on this financial problem.
Nor have we yet the whole financial predica- ment before us. There is another factor in it Expenses of which bears more sharply than many Delegates would havc it Upon the proper con- stitution and efficiency of the National Council. I refer to the expenses of delegates to the meetings of the Council. Our national meetings never can be completely representative so long as attend- ance is left to the convenience and financial re- sources of individuals. At every meeting there are large gaps in our ranks, mainly according to distance save for special modifying circum- stances. And the actual attendants are in very many cases not those we should choose to send, but those who can and will go. It is not that any [ 140]
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pastor or layman is unworthy to go; we are dem- ocrats. On the contrary, just because all are worthy, we desire to distribute the high privilege of service and culture. We desire to be repre- sented by the men of our choice, and at special junctures by those best fitted for the issues to be wrought out. Large numbers of us have already fallen out of sympathy with those pastors and laymen, attendant on the Council again and again, who resist the change which would alter considerably the personnel of the meetings. We ought to be entirely free to send what delegates we would. The matter cannot be left to state and local bodies. These have always been at liberty to pay their own delegates' expenses, but they neither do it nor can do it. In so broad a land the burden remains too unequal.
The only solution of the problem, the only way to assemble whomsoever we would, the only way to enlist gradually our total force, No other the only way to make our national ad- s°i"ti°° ministration a real and vital thing to our ministers and churches everywhere, is to provide amply and administer equitably a central fund for dele- gates' expenses. True enough, w^e have sorrow- ful object-lessons on either side of us, awakening dread of the difficulties and dangers of such a fund. But nothing great was ever done in dread of difficulty and danger. The Congrega- tional churches of the United States in National Council assembled are six thousand strong, doing [141]
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enormous business for the Kingdom of God. As at present managed, the frequent remark is far from groundless, though severe and unjust, that the Council appears to be composed not of six thousand churches, but of certain numbers of in- terested individuals able to attend. The critic should discover the motives of genuine consecra- tion underlying personal interest in the men whose costly and faithful service sustains the national administration which alone gives co- herence and scope to our sectional and local life. But the criticism should be silenced by altering the general conditions.
The change now transpiring in the character of the Council's meetings is viewed with some Meetings of conccm. It is a matter which calls
National Council f^j- careful attention and provi- sion. Time was when the meetings were largely of inspiration and communion. Noble addresses were heard with leisurely attention and discussed with sustained interest. At present the Provi- sional Committee is hesitating to invite speakers and assure them the time assigned them. At the Cleveland meeting the encroachments of business repeatedly threatened an impasse in the program. The difficulty will increase if Congregationalists continue to enjoy doing business in open session.
We must give business the right of way. With our glorious themes and speakers we have other occasions to commune. But this is our one op- portunity in three years to shape our national [142]
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unity, to initiate and advance measures, and to authorize and direct our ad interim administra- tion. The Council meeting if", Business Sessions
therefore a business session. The ^^.iniy program should be conformed to that idea. The pressure grows heavier. No wonder the question is up, How long will triennial sessions suffice for the business of sO' large a body of churches? No man could wish to multiply meetings. Pos- sibly we might appoint an executive or business committee charged with more general functions between sessions.
Among considerations of national unity, main interest is directed just now to the relations be- tween our missionary societies ^^^.^^^^ Council and the Council. Preceded by no and small amount of discussion, the ^^*^°"^^ ^°"^"'' matter was taken up at Cleveland, and the follow- ing recommendation passed by the Council : "That the administration of the benevolent inter- ests of our churches be directed by the represent- atives of the churches in national organization, and that this Council appoint a commission of fifteen, including a representative from each of our benevolent societies, who shall report at its next regular meeting such an adjustment oi these societies to the body of the churches represented in this Council as shall secure such direction, care being taken to safeguard existing constitutional provisions of these societies and the present mem- bership of their boards of control, but also to
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lodge hereafter the creation and continuance of these administrative boards in the suffrage of the representatives of the churches."
This recommendation states clearly the desires of those who favor including the missionary so- Kationai Unity cictics in the achievement of na-
Must tional unity. They believe it
Include Societies • ^^ i ■ .1 • i-
Wise to bring these main lines of our service into such representative rela- tion to the churches supporting them as can be secured only through the Council. Past and pres- ent relations are generally understood. The unrepresentative status of each society was per- sisted in long enough to set up chronic irritation. Improved relations are still only partially repre- sentative, not yet gearing and belting the socie- ties into the Congregational system. The societies have approached the churches each in its own separate way, negotiating with associations or conferences or state missionary societies. Though they are national societies, they have not formed alliance with the national organization of our churches. Only one of them, Ministerial Relief, is an agency of the National Council. The rest remain independent, self-governing bodies. They have barely begun to labor together as members one of another and their several affairs parts of a single enterprise. Statements here must be general, with no time for detailed excep- tions. Substantial and hopeful advances in the relations of the societies to one another, to the [ 144]
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churches and to organized Congregationalism are observed with satisfaction. The ordinary mortal hailed the Joint Missionary Campaign as opening a new era of cooperation.
The recommendation of the National Council quoted above shows what more is asked. The Committee on Polity introduced under Direction their recommendations with °^ council these sentences : "With this view of the Congre- gational order as representative, and not purely independent, your committee unite in the judg- ment that local, state and national associations afford ample organization for the direction of all of our denominational activities, and that the function of these organizations may be inclusive of all such interests, not imperiling, but directly safeguarding the autonomy and liberty of the local church. Believing, therefore, that in the interest of simplicity, unity and efficiency our or- ganism should be representative, we urge the elimination of all such organizations as are not under the direction of our representative bodies." The action thus recommended by the National Council would result at least in the coordination of our national societies under the direction of the Council. Just how, will have to be worked out. The Council appointed the commission of fifteen to report the wisest procedure. The Con- gregational Board of Ministerial Relief illus- trates what might be done with all the societies.
Our Baptist brethren, more independent hither- [ 145 ]
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to than we, have passed us, and are showing us the way and the spirit of the way. At their Baptist General Convention in 1908 they
Reorganization g^i^j . '"fhe general activities of the denomination are now carried on by eight incor- porated societies. These are entirely independ- ent one of another, and while deriving their sup- port from the denomination at large, are legally independent of the denomination as a whole. This form of organization, dating as far back as 1812, was a natural outgrowth of circumstances — in- deed there seemed to be no other way at the time to attain the ends in view. ... In these days, however, the old methods are out of date. The general work of the denomination, it is believed, will be more economically and more effectively rendered under a suitable plan of definite coor- dination. Such a plan is in accordance with the practise of large business interests to-day and would command the confidence of laymen whose support is essential to the prosperity of the work.
"Be it resolved by the Northern Baptist Con- vention : That at the earliest practicable date there should be an organic union between the various general denominational societies and the North- ern Baptist Convention, to the end that the de- nomination through its convention may be able to determine a suitable related policy for all its general activities," etc.
This action was unanimous. And best of all, [146]
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the societies readily promised to begin working the new plan without waiting for the legal steps to be taken. Have our Congregational societies been heard offering as much? We hope, how- ever, to pursue organic union in the same unan- imous way.
A further reorganization of our missionary agencies seems wise to many, and has not escaped the attention of the Commission of Fifteen. To say that the sevenfold character of our Congrega- tional work is confusing to our churches is to put it mildly. It is doubtful if a majority of our church-members could give all the names of our seven societies. Only a minority of our churches have been carrying the full number of our socie- ties upon their benevolence lists, many churches contributing to but two or three. Doubtless the plan of proportionate benevolence will gradually improve this situation. Nothing, however, would relieve it so thoroughly as to reduce the number of societies. Such reduction would also tend, as constantly appears in the business world, to simplify administration, diminish operating expenses and multiply efficiency.
It has been suggested, as one of several pos- sible readjustments, that our seven societies might be compacted into three :
1. A foreign missionary society — the Ameri- can Board.
2. A home missionary society, the resultant of the Congregational Home Missionary Society,
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the Congregational Church Building Society, and the Board of Ministerial Relief.
3. A home-land religious educational society, a union of the American Missionary Association, the Sunday-School Society, and the Congrega- tional Education Society.
Such a readjustment would leave the publica- tion work standing by itself as a business agency, serving the whole denomination, capable of large expansion and efficiency.
These are natural and effective departments of benevolence, as is seen in other branches of the Church. Were we now projecting our work on a clear field, we should probably lay it out in pre- cisely these three departments. A popular vote throughout our churches would, with little doubt, declare for these. To remodel the sevenfold structure of a century may be more difficult than to build threefold from the foundation; yet the designs in this case do not differ radically, and the alterations would be almost confined to inter- nal partitions and rearrangement of space and sentiment. Some such consolidation of our work, under the direction of the National Council, would answer admirably the crescendo call for thorough systematization of our Congregational fellowship. The purpose extends to the achieve- ment of national unity, and is as urgent there as at nearer points. The demand is not merely to approve individually and locally, but also to con- trol in our representative organizations the [148]
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agencies which we entrust with our funds and business. This demand may be mistaken. The desired unification may prove unmanageable. But if it should appear to be the mature judgment of the churches, we should not shrink from the application of our principle of evolution and progress. The chief desideratum is a thor- ough study of the situation in the best of spirit. It is time, of course, to repeat the ancient and honorable reminder that such a national body as is now being described, set at the Liberty Not head of the Congregational repre- threatened sentative system, does not threaten the lib- erties of the churches. It declines legislative and judicial functions. It has no authority to intrude into the private affairs of a single church. It offers no coercive interference to confer- ences and associations in their respective fields. As we have seen, the churches organize the Council, and the movement is from be- low upward. The Council has nothing but what is left over from the lower bodies — left over because too great for even state manage- ment. The Council is a national union for na- tional purposes. On these wide issues it formu- lates the thought and will of the churches. It spreads these formulations before all the churches at once. It organizes action in which the whole denomination can cooperate. It has apparatus for executing the ascertained will of the denomina- tion. Thus it is the servant of the whole body, [ 149]
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the agency through which six thousand churches may act as one on Hues of universal Congrega- tional duty.
Let me quote Dr. Mackennal again at this highest of constructive points. He says, "I am heartily at one with those who believe that national religions needs demand a National Council with power to administer its own resolu- tions; and I think it would be quite within our wisdom to devise a scheme, which, while rigidly safeguarding the autonomy of the churches in all which concerns their congregational life, should also make the Union (the National Council) autonomous in all the larger matters committed to its charge." ' There is food for further thought here. It must be frankly acknowledged — boasted, if you will — that we have not that corporate autonomy of which he spoke. We do not give our organized bodies power to administer their own resolutions; we give them Corporate permission to persuade us to admin- Autonomy jg^g^. ^j^gjj- rcsolutious. We are so
wrapped up in the autonomy of the Christian man and the single church, that we never have tried to devise a scheme to make our organized bodies autonomous in their respective spheres. We autonomous men and churches surrender auton- omy when, without any extraneous elements whatever, we unite in associations, conferences and National Council. Suppose the Council •Evolution of Congregationalism, p. 211. [150]
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should say to a state conference, "Brethren, we have all covenanted together in a union which in- volves the common pledge of two cents a member annually; pay your share of it." The chances are, because the facts have been, that from various sections of that state would rise autono- mous growls, which being interpreted would mean, "I never pledged two cents a member, and you can't make me pay it. I'll pay it when I get ready — if I want to." The Council's officers know better than to exercise corporate autonomy towards anybody. We all know how their calls to service read : "Dear Brethren, the National Council, lamenting its inability to consult every church-member beforehand on each separate question, but trusting in the good-will of the churches — which in your persons has never yet failed us — would respectfully inform you, etc., etc. . . . and would count it a great favor if you would kindly consider wdiether, at no very dis- tant day, you will bear your share in these im- portant proceedings to which your National Council is in honor bound, but on which it is most regrettable that several of your leading members were unable to be present to vote." While we appreciate such deferential approach to our per- sonal and local throne, we are well aware how little of the world's earnest business could be con- ducted in that fashion. What we still have too much of is not personal and local autonomy in personal and local affairs; it is personal and local
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autonomy in corporate affairs, independent deci- sion how far we will act, or whether we will act at all, in affairs for which we have become jointly responsible as members of these several denomi- national bodies. At this point, as suggested in a preceding lecture, correction of our Congrega- tional system is indicated. Some of us surely agree with Dr. Mackennal that Congregational- ists have wisdom enough "to devise a scheme, which, while rigidly safeguarding the autonomy of the churches in all which concerns their con- gregational life, should also make our unifying bodies (the Union) autonomous in all the larger matters committed to their (its) charge." Therein would be truly achieved "national unity without weakening the sense of personal and local independence."
We have been moving hitherto, as we proposed in setting out, from below upward, from local Toward National church to National Council, from ^°"y local autonomy to national unity.
For three hundred years our churches have been advancing in this direction. The other polities have had authority above the churches, and have been conceding more and more local independ- ence. We have overdone the latter, and are now constructing real unity; a unity, however, which shall not be at any point or in any degree apart from the churches, but everywhere and totally of the churches, by the churches and for the churches. We will not even segregate our min- [152]
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istry in orders of clergy, presbyteries, or minis- terial associations. We will not even put our parish business out of our hand for a twelve- month by means of an authoritative session. The affairs within our reach we will handle by direct democracy, the greater affairs by representative democracy. Our power shall continue to be in- telligence and right reason shaped into public opinion. Yet will we draw together into firm and enduring array, into fellowship as wide as the country and real everywhere, intO' unified Christian service. We will live at liberty in the private parish ways where souls are born from above and learn their Master's sacrifice. We will organize mighty and dependable union for the great affairs of the Kingdom, wherein petty in- dependence is impotent.
It is not too much to say that in working out such an adequate administrative system we
should be giving the world a new ^ew Achievement
achievement. There is nothing i" Ecclesiastical
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quite like it. J\ever yet has the ecclesiastical world secured genuine and unham- pered democracy, with everything — even the official ministry — standing within the scope of the local church, and then proceeded out of such entirely voluntary materials to build up effective and enduring national unity. There are many to say that it cannot even now be done, that either the democracy will be damaged or the unity will not be reached. That it has not been done is [153]
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true. That it will one day be achieved must also be true, as God and brotherhood are real. Some- time there will be seven hundred thousand Chris- tian men, each one free to^ follow what the Spirit saith to him, living happily together in churches as truly self-conducting as their members — seven hundred thousand Christian souls, or a million, glad and faithful to hold unbound their places in orderly array up to national unity, eager in such union to multiply for the love they bear Him, the power He gives. It may be that that time is drav.ang near. It may be that we are just now those Christians. At any rate, the vision is superb; not they who do not reach it, but they who dO' not follow, fail.
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LECTURE VI
CONGREGATIONALISM AND
CHURCH UNION
VI
CONGREGATIONALISM AND CHURCH UNION
Christian unity is one thing, the union of churches another. Either may exist without the other. Conceivably there might be a single ad- ministrative body of churches on earth, inclusive of all church-members, in which and among whom there would be little Christian unity. Such external union would be difficult and not endur- ing, as church history shows. On the other hand, Christian unity in beauty and power, universal and abiding, is not dependent upon the absence of diversity and formal division. It may be said that the grand objective is essential unity and universal fellowship, with divisions solely for practical efficiency. What we have to-day is divisions unable to unite, aware of spiritual unity, with enough fellowship to flavor worship, to dis- turb complacency, to mitigate competition, to con- fuse conscience, and to lure us onward. We need not forget that it was Christian unity, not church union, for which Jesus prayed "that they may be one, even as we are," and of which he said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my dis- ciples, if ye have love one to another." Yet he must be a Christian without conscience who takes
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from those divine words no rebuke against the disruptions of Christendom. For the age-long discussion has not only revealed an anemic spirit of unity, but has kept that spirit anemic. There are many wlx) decry the cause of church union "with cheers for unity and communion. Chris- tians are one, they insist — are one so deeply that we need not labor for formal union. And you cannot get their minds upon the cruel wrongs still perpetrated in the name of Christ. The spirit is finally judged by its fruits. And down to this very day. even in this best land, many fruits of the spirit which actuates the Christian bodies are no less than frightful. The shameful facts are found in hundreds of overchurched communities with their wastes and strifes, while in administrative offices we may still hear — al- beit less often — insolent refusals to correct the wrongs.
Dr. H. K, Carroll's racy description of eccle- siastical variety in our country is too true Infinite Variety to be merely amusing. "The of Religions f^j-gj- impression one gets," he says,
*'in studying the results of the census is that there is an infinite variety of religions in the United States. . . . Our native genius for invention has exerted itself in this direc- tion also, and worked out some curious results. The American patent covers no less than two original Bibles — the Mormon and Oahspe — and more brands of religion, so to [158]
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speak, than are to be found, I believe, in any other country. . . . We scarcely appreciate our advantages. . . . One may be a pagan, a Jew, or a Christian, or each in turn. If he is a pagan, he may worship in one of the numerous temples devoted to Buddha; if a Jew, he may be of the Orthodox or Reformed variety ; if a Christian, he may select any one of one hundred and twenty- five or one hundred and thirty different kinds, or join every one of them in turn. He may be six kinds of an Adventist, seven kinds of a Catholic, twelve kinds of a Mennonite or Presbyterian, thirteen kinds of a Baptist, sixteen kinds of a Lutheran, or seventeen kinds of a Methodist. He may be a member of any one of one hundred and forty-three denominations, or of all in succession. If none of these suit him, he still has a choice among one hundred and fifty separate and in- dependent congregations, which have no denomi- national name, creed or connection. , . . Accord- ing to the scientists no atom is so small that it may not be conceived of as consisting of halves. No denomination has thus far proved too small for division. Denominations appear in the list given in this volume with as few as twenty-five members. I was reluctantly compelled to ex- clude from the census one with twenty-one mem- bers. The reason was, that while they insisted that they were a separate body and did not wor- ship with other churches, they had no organized church of their own. Twelve of them were in
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Pennsylvania, divided between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, six in Illinois and three in Missouri. They were so widely scattered they could not maintain public worship.'"
Such words ought to be caricature or criminal libel, not a sober statement of facts.
We may hail an awakening conscience respect- ing this horror. Think how wide-spread the in- terest and effort toward union are.
Current
Movements Outsidc our owu land the move-
Toward Union , , ■ r^ i -r* i j
ment appears m Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand, and in all Protestant mission fields in the world, with advanced phases in India, China, and Japan, Many branches of the Church are engaged in it. In our own land the Federal Council is formed of thirty-three denominations holding nearly twenty millions of members. In England the Free Churches are federated in a national council. In Canada Presbyterians, Methodists and Congre- gationalists are working toward organic union. In Australia the present movement includes even the Church of England. In South India all the Protestant missions have united in a Missionary Conference, while Presby- terians, Reformed and Congregationalists have been fused into one body called the South India United Church. In China all the Protestant mis- sions are federated and acting together through a series of councils. In Japan since 1900 nearly
' Religious Forces of the United States, pp. xiv, xv, xviii. [160]
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all Protestant missions have wrought through a "Standing Committee of Cooperating Christian Missions," while at the present time practically all Japanese Christians are consummating a na- tional federation of churches. Thus the missions have taken the lead toward union. With them close communion has been, as a missionary said years ago, the communion that shuts in, not out. They have done much to rouse and shame the home-land churches out of their lethargy, till now the whole English-speaking world at least has been "stabbed broad awake."
The agitations of this subject show, too, that multitudes of Christians, whole denominations, are discovering the difference be- Essentials and tween essentials and non-essentials, Non-essentiais in doctrine, conduct and administration. This is a great discovery for any one. The Protestant world is attaining new perspective and propor- tion. The result is to clear the road of petty obstacles to union.
The next discovery is breaking here and there, like the new dawn, the discovery that in essen- tials of doctrine multitudes of Christians and whole bodies of churches agree. If only the es- sentials be formulated in spiritual and fraternal terms, we make our confession of faith in a unison of wonder and joy, as appeared so beauti- fully in the Tri-church Council at Dayton in 1904. Therewith has come the surprise that thus the heaviest obstacle to union is being rolled away. [161]
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Nothing has been so pitilessly divisive as doc- trinal contention. It thus appears that in some cases the problem of union reduces to one of polity, adjustments in organization and property interests.
Nothing is plainer, however, than that the cause of church union must proceed in great Progress by variety. Few generalizations of Experiment ^^^-y ^.^j^ j^g niade. The enterprise
is experimental everywhere. We are not far be- yond the beginning, and there is no end. Beyond the heights we see must lie other ranges of form and good. Some organic unions are being completed before our eyes, of which there is no better instance than that of the South India United Church. Other bodies are still too far apart to treat definitely with one another. Evan- gelicals and Unitarians cannot yet meet in doc- trine. Episcopalians and free churches are still in sturdy disagreement upon historic ordination. Such bodies may cooperate in some forms of moral and religious work, may even federate as do Episcopalians with others in the Federal Council and the New York City Federation. But before negotiating union, they must spend much time in mutual approaches.
How, then, stands our Congregational duty in this imperial enterprise of the reunion of Christendom? In the first place, all Congregationalists should face toward union. This may seem to some too much to ask. [162]
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Can we expect seven hundred thousand per- sons to be unanimoiis on a matter so deeply affecting personal duty, preference Facingr and convenience? Not, to be ^o^*'^^ u°"° sure, on all details; not, perhaps, on every concrete case which might arise. But on the general theme that church union must be furthered, that the wounds of Christendom must be healed, that denominations must ac- tually unite, and that O'Ur power must serve this cause, — so far we ought to be awake and unani- mous. It is quite evident that we are far from unanimity. Some of us object to negotiations for union with any other branch of the Church. While tri-church union with United Brethren and Methodist Protestants was in hand, there were many who lay heavily in indifference and opposition. T.hey did not judge that case on its merits ; they did not prepare their own minds for unprejudiced consideration of it. Not all were of this sort who opposed that union ; some did think it through and turn it down on large reasoning. But not a few allowed local and personal considerations to entrench them against £0' great a procedure in the Kingdom of God, while others failed to discern any significance in an attempt to heal the breaches in the walls of Zion. And so from several directions came t!ie time-worn protest that Congregationalists might better let well enough alone.
Be it urged, then, that church union is a [163]
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matter too momentous for indifference, thought- lessness, ignorance or opposition; that it is now Why not thrust forward by the cry of human- TTnite? \^y j^j-,j ^1-,^ gpjrit of God in front of most other issues in religious progress; that it is the true Christian part to be seeking ways and means to promote it ; that every con- crete instance should find all minds antecedently hospitable and all feet ready to run ; that in every case the burden of proof lies on those who de- cline; that the proper question is not, Why should we unite? but, Why should we not unite? not, How can we evade this predicament? but, How can we assure this advance? When two or more branches of the Church ap- proach each other with mutual desire, their nego- tiations will resemble those of the Tri-church Council at Dayton, not those of the same body later at Chicago, not those of our own National Council on the same issue at Cleveland. At Chicago and Cleveland we lacked much of a unanimous purpose to find a way of union.
More than most Christians, ought Congrega- tionalists to take this hospitable and ready pos- Duty of ture. Sectarianism has been at a congrega- low powcr in US. Evcu loyalty to
tionalists < ^ i wt ^
our own has been weak. We have been widely sympathetic, and have lived no strait- ened life. We have lavishly contributed members and money beyond our own boundaries. If we cannot now as a denomination act the larger parts [164]
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in the world drama, the greater shame is ours. We ought to welcome sincere approaches from any church bodies at any time. In negotiations we ought to stand, whether in doctrine or polity, for essentials only. With us difficulties of union would in most instances be found in administra- tion. We understand essentials and non-essen- tials of doctrine; and on essentials we are in agreement with large sections of the Church. Differences of polity remain; and polity is a minor thing.
It is also worth while to remember that nego- tiations which fail may yet advance church union. The participants will have learned of one another, will have greeted wider horizons, will have grown in stature. Congregationalists have gained much from intercourse with United Brethren and Methodist Protestants. Abiding effects will be found operative if that negotiation breaks out again, or if some other body solicits us.
The working principle in practical church union is opportunism. Who knows what can be done? Every inch must be taken opportunism the and held. Every fraternal glance working must be answered in kind. Every ^"ncipio extended hand must be clasped. Nay more, our ov/n eyes and hands and hearts must be reaching out every way to touch and draw our brethren.
In the second place, we must, in the interest of church union, develop effective unity and loyalty [165]
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of our own. It is not strictly true that the hon and lamb unite, certainly not on even terms, to Congregational pi'ocluce a third crcature better unity for Tjnion than the two Originals. The result ^^ ®" is all lion. To the lamb are left not
even memories of former days that were better than these. Recall the characterization of historic Congregationalism as a river rising in New Eng- land and emptying south and west into Presby- terianism. Sometimes w^e think that outpour was checked in 1852 by the Albany Convention, when the disastrous Plan of Union, which cost us several thousand churches in the middle west, was abrogated. It was in good measure checked ; but since then almost every ecclesiastical family has been tapping our waterw'ays. Our power pours at last, we trust, into the kingdom of heaven; but too much of it goes thither by trickling off in driblets to tumble over firmer banks into more acquisitive streams. Most easily of all are Congregationalists lured into other folds. . It is to our credit that we are broad-minded and hold no petty shibboleth to be the only open sesame to heaven; but we ought to stop dissipating our energies. It is time to believe hard in ourselves, in the Congregational Church, in Congregational methods and spirit. We need strength for treating as a church body with other bodies. Firm organization will ren- der us more fit, not less, for union. When strong forces unite, then there is gain. The [ 166]
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Kingdom comes as distinct factors coalesce in a richer and higher unity.
In the tri-church discussions the question kept recurring whether Congregationahsts had co- herence, whether we really consti- Movement by tuted an orgranism, whether, in Enlightened
° 1111 Conviction
ease union were voted by the three national bodies, our Congregational churches could be led into it. The question was pertinent. Certain it is that we cannot carry all our churches and ministers into any union upon the call even of their own representatives in National Council. Whether to ratify and join the union or refuse to do so would have to be left to every local church. Any church would be free to desert the advancing host. A strong minority might fall out and maintain the old body on the old ground. A majority even might hold back, discrediting the whole affair. It is impossible for us to deny that weakness in our organization. It is weak- ness for the purpose of church union, at least for any attempt at speedy union ; for ours is the slow way of popular enlightenment and conviction. On the whole, however, we count it strength, and de- cline to alter our method. We never shall ad- vance in blind obedience to leaders. But we shall strengthen our internal bonds and acquire a firmer and more loyal coherence. Our corporate life will be more robust, pervasive and retentive. It will grow more certain that, when an issue has finally been decided upon full deliberation, prac-
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tically all of us will move together. Then, if obviously fitter to survive alone, fitter also shall we be to negotiate and unite.
We need, in the third place, to understand and use certain important advantages which we enjoy Freedom an i" the department of polity. The Advantage world movement has been toward freedom and democracy, and there can be no return. Freedom, once possessed, is not surrendered. If lost, the battle will be fought out again, whatever waits. Union move- ments must crystallize near the points of greatest advance. Denominations which are free cannot return to unite with others which lie under authority; the latter must come forward. Herein we of the Congregational polity — Congrega- tionalists and others — lead the ecclesiastical V oiid. We are the freest. It is not bigotry which forbids us to unite with any but the free; it is the command of life itself. We may and must develop coherence, leadership and united action; but this, as we have seen, is not to fall back into fetters, but to advance out of individual- istic into organized democracy.
Now this freedom of ours may at any moment block a particular negotiation for union. In the Congregational- main, howcvcr, it gives us large ad- ism an Ideal vantage. Human progress is bring- ° ' ^ ing others forward. In this free land
all the other polities have perforce developed their free elements. We sometimes say that Con- [i68]
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gregationalism is fitted to be the denominational solvent. That it cannot be just as it stands to- day. Other bodies have a compactness, solidity, esprit de corps, effective leadership, which will not be surrendered and are not incompatible with freedom. These Ave must acquire, while other bodies come forward to meet our freedom. Con- gregationalism is suited to advanced stages of life. It is, indeed, in its elementary practise, easy for new members, new churches, new fron- tiers, new missionary conditions. But for its best employment it requires good measures of popular intelligence, steadiness, self-control, initiative ; these firm-based upon inherited and renewed moral character imbued with the spirit of love and of Christ. What could we do in some hot hours of mob violence, when the Roman hier- archy has been able to quench the fury and folly of the hordes which dare not defy the throne? "Congregationalism," wrote Dr. Dale, "is an ideal polit}^ This is at once its reproach and its glory. The transcendent prerogatives and powers which it claims for the Church lie beyond the reach of communities which are not completely penetrated and transfigured by the Spirit of Christ. But as churches approach more nearly to the perfection to which Christ has called them, their authority becomes more and more august, and they enter more and more fully into the pos- session of the blessedness which is their inherit- ance in him."
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Close to this lies another advantage which we should use tirelessly. The hope of reaching Union on church union in the aggregate
Local Fields ]ea^s through the local churches. True and lasting church union is no less than conformity of heart and character, separate de- nominations growing into likeness and lo\^e. It is labor lost for officials to arrange a formal union of bodies of churches which have not yet discovered one another and clasped hands. It has seemed to many that the federation move- ment was in far sounder youth in England and Wales than in our own land. Here, as was truly said at the outset, it has been federation at the top, the denominational leaders attempting through the national bodies to bring together the many corporations as if into a great ecclesiastical trust. The Free Church Council of England and Wales has been federation at the bottom. That movement has covered the whole land, from the Scotch border to Land's End — cities, vil- lages, hamlets, countrysides, with local councils, every church enlisted, denominational barriers lowered, no gaps left between pai'ishes, every neg- lected home and every lost or laden souj sought out for ministry. You can predict the effect of such mighty causes. Can any denominational es- trangrements or contentions withstand such gravity of love ? Our federation at the top will never win and hold until from the officers' quar- ters it overruns the field. But if now the leaders [170]
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of the thirty-three denominations whose names appear in the Federal Council can actually lead out their millions of members in federated action on the local fields, the day of real union will dawn. The advantages of separate divisions and machinery pertain mainly to leaders, central of- fices, large churches. The evils of sectarianism press hardest on the common people, small churches and their pastors in the meager fields, where the bills of fanaticism and local jealousies are paid in blood money.
The way of wisdom, then, is exactly our Con- gregational way. We must labor for concrete union on local fields, and start The congre- the cry up the line. Popular ^^t^^^^^ ^^^ movements often burst suddenly into mighty power after a season of silent preparation. So the temperance movement now, amazing all but those who have guided the quiet work for years in church and school and home. So the direct primary movement in politics, which has run by its own inner force since i860 well-nigh over the land. Church union is now getting quiet seed-sowing in all quarters, in Sunday- school and home missionary work, in foreign missions, in new cooperation of agents, superin- tendents, pastors and churches, in brotherhoods and young people's movements, in more and more frequent organic union of churches: the summer growth will be short and swift, I be- lieve, and the harvest not far ahead. We may [171]
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awake any morning to a great popular uprising in church union, so commanding that denomina- tional lines will be scorned, and even the great polity lines be for a time as though they were not. I find it already said openly that even now "the old classification of church polities into the Episcopa- lian, the Presbyterian and the Congregational has ceased to be of practical moment."
The most hopeful field, however, for union ef- fort seems to me to lie within each great polity, Union in ^^^ within the family groups. Family Here are found the points of least Groups resistance and the lines of strong- est contact, A few more words from Dr. Car- roll will best reveal the possibilities. He says : "A closer scrutiny of the list [of our church bodies] shows that many of these one hundred and forty-three denominations differ only in name. Without a single change in doctrine or polity the seventeen Methodist bodies could be re- duced to three or four, the twelve Presbyterian to three, the twelve Mennonite to two, and so on. The differences in many cases are only sec- tional or historical. The slavery question was the cause of not a few divisions, and matters of discipline were responsible for a large number. Arranging the denominations in groups or fami- lies, and counting as one family each the twelve Mennonite, the seventeen Methodist, the thirteen Baptist bodies, and so on, we have, instead of one hundred and forty-three, only forty-two titles. [ 172]
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In other words, if there could be a consoHdatioii of each denominational group, the reproach of our division would be largely taken away."
This family reunion is proceeding hopefully, as, for instance, in the return of the Cumberland Presbyterians to the northern Presbyterian body, the overtures between northern and southern Presbyterians, northern and southern Methodists, northern Methodists and J^.Iethodist Protestants, Baptists and Free Baptists. Similar action is in place between Congregationalists, Baptists, Dis- ciples and others.
Within these families or groups what divisive forces still hold Christians apart? Dr. Carroll classifies the historic causes of division under four heads.
1. "Controversies over doctrine;"
2. "Controversies over administration or dis- cipline ;"
3. "Controversies over moral questions;"
4. "Controversies of a personal character." Almost all of these have disappeared like the
slavery question. Two or three more general forces, likely to hinder union at any time, may be mentioned.
The first includes many standing disagree- ments, most of them upon non-essentials, some quite trivial ; some in doctrine, standing some in administration, some not Disagreements strictly in either field. Thus far the convictions of Baptists, and probably Disciples also, upon [173]
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immersion form toward us such a barrier. Our doctrinal disagreements upon the person of Christ hold Unitarians and Congregationalists apart; this is not a minor disagreement, but its action is within polity and family precincts. The bishopric was one of the issues which created the Methodist Protestant body; it might still hinder their happy return to the parent church.
A second seriously divisive force is the bunch of things called historic associations. Every Historic branch of the Church makes his-
Associations ^^^y ^^^ loves it. To merge with
others seems disloyal to the fathers. Denomina- tional patriotism is exceeding strong in some quarters. It might be hard for some lineal Bap- tists to lie close with the children of those who stoned the prophets out of Massachusetts into Rhode Island. And the "Wee Frees," both in Scotland and among Cumberland Presbyterians, are showing the stubbornness of tradition and the historic conscience, and are continuing to make fiercely separative history. Mason and Dixon's line has been almost a wall of fire between sec- tions of churches which broke apart on that awful issue. Such surcharged memories yield slowly to the grace of God. We have fathers and brethren among ourselves who shook mourn- ful heads over the proposed surrender of our Con- gregational name in the negotiations with United Brethren and Methodist Protestants. As to this name of ours, no minister who could get day's [174]
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wages for the time spent in uttering it would ever need a donation party or fall upon the tender mer- cies of relief funds. But it does have flocks of beautiful creatures lodging in the branches thereof. These three hundred years of ours are wonderful ; can any other loyal children think to match them? No one should be so disloyal as to be inconsiderate of others' attachments.
There remains the divisive power of tempera- ment. After all light and heavy humor about it, temperament is a deep-running reality. Tempera- In church union discussions we use it in '^®"* an ample sense. Good people differ in personal qualities, disposition, character, culture, manners, home life, social ways. It is not well to think, and it is worse to say, that some are better than others. For purposes of church dissension men may be better or worse; for purposes of church union they are merely dissimilar. Such differ- ences characterize neighborhoods, groups, organ- ized bodies, districts, denominations. Some people and groups are mutually congenial ; others, though respecting one another, lack affinities. It was freely said that we Congregationalists would not most naturally have sought United Brethren and Methodist Protestants, nor they us. They both belong rather in the Methodist group. Many opposed the union on this score. We should find our own kind more numerous, it was thought, among Presbyterians; similar psychological ele- ments and unities, similar grades of cultivation, [175]
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similar historic extractions and developments, similar social manners and customs and resources. It seems to many that we have drifted farther from Baptists and others in our administrative group than from the Presbyterian family.
Such divisive forces I desired to introduce into our line of thought, but not to discuss with any Brotherhood fulncss. What shall we think of Mightier them with respect to the duty of
church union? It seems clear to me that they should not be permitted to block any actual at- tempt whatever at union. Among all Christian communions on earth the uniting power of brotherhood ought to be mightier than all com- binations of divisive forces. It is not so yet; and who will cast the first stone? My convic- tion is this, that, when any two Christian bodies have been moved of God toward compounding their differences, have met, have found them- vSelves hopefully near to union on the graver issues of doctrine and property and polity, it is grief and shame to suffer the union to fail on these minor counts. The scandal of disunion, the beauty of union, the primacy of love, the word of the Master, each and all are too sovereign and august to be overborne by per- sonal pettiness. Temperament? "One is your Master, and all ye are brethren." Our Church, with its glorious history and matchless name? "God so loved the world." Our preferences? "Hereby know we love, because he laid down [176]
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his life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." The duty of church union is red, blood-red.
The union of churches is chiefly a means to- ward the reunion of Christendom. But what really is this greater end? It is Eeunion of
said that, if we could once get to- Christendom
gether in one all-inclusive organization, we should inevitably break up again ; the bulk would be too enormous and clumsy to move. The reply is that then we might properly divide. We should have established the primacy of union in the conscience of the Christian world. We should have bowed together under the scepter of love. The trouble is not that United Brethren, Methodist Protestants and Congregationalists are living and working in three separate organ- izations; the trouble is that they have declined to unite. That, not actual working divisions, is the scandal of Christendom. We could justify church divisions made upon convenience, temperamental affiliations, or preference for cer- tain forms of worship or administration, pro- vided that the separate bodies never preyed upon one another, always cooperated, in honor pre- ferred one another, and sprang together with a loyal shout wherever essential unit}' was seriously questioned. The profound issue of unity once made supreme in the heart of the Christian world and sovereign in its practise, agreeable and prac- tical measures of diversity promote health and [ 177]
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efficiency. The second great commandment does not forbid us to select our church relations, along with our social associations, among our affinities and conveniences. Ideas rule, not forms and physical arrangements. The question is not, Are the churches of Christ divided into separate ad- ministrative bodies? not, How many separate bodies? but, What does it mean? Why do they remain apart? Why do they permit the wrongs and woes of division to flourish? So long as the answer is that they are not willing to unite, that they prefer to tolerate the wrongs and woes, that they even prefer to flourish themselves upon those wrongs and woes, so long must the duty of church union stand paramount. Not until the answer may be that the evils of division are at an end, that the churches are heartily ready to unite, that existing divisions express quite minor choices of practical convenience and per- sonal preference, that all such choices are held subject to constraints of fellowship, — not until essential unity has thus embodied its victory all round the world, can church union halt or falter. But in order to compass such unity how far must church union be carried? Who knows? Limits of Not, I believe, so far as to a single
Church Union all-embracing organization; per- haps not so far as that in any Christian country. But just so far, though it be unto a single organi- zation and the ends of the earth, as may be neces- sary to unite the whole Christian world in un- [178]
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doubted and unfailing brotherhood. The or- ganic union of Christian denominations must be fostered. Cooperation is not sufficient. Federa- tion is not sufficient. The best Christian con- science condemns the one hundred and forty- three denominations and their attempted vindica- tions. The future must decide where a halt in the union movement may be made.
[179]
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