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Save the City

If given playthings cleaner and more interestnig than an ash heap
and a tin can; if properly fed and completely clothed and "taught the
way he should go," this little urchin would stand as good a chance
of developing into a useful citizen as your boy

Save the City

FOREWORD

IMMEDIATELY upon adjourn-
ment of the annual meeting of the
Board of Home Missions and
Church Extension, November, 1918,
the Department of City Work was asked
to make a complete inventory, includ-
ing present equipment and program
and needs for the future, in the great
centers of population throughout this
Republic. It was a period of heart-
searchings for the Church, a period
in which God pressed the responsi-
bility down upon the hearts of
men to discover the weak points and
probe the sore spots in the churches'
life. Not to the end that the weak

points and sore spots might be held
up to ridicule before the world, but
that a remedy might be discovered and
applied which would, in the end,
strengthen and heal the church, lead-
ing her to greater usefulness and
power.

The findings of this inventory indi-
cate that the Christian Church has
failed in bringing about the redemp-
tion of the great cities. She has failed
to link herself up with God and adopt
a passionate, sacrificial, every-day
well-rounded evangelism such as
would enable her to work in an effect-
ive way in the densely populated cen-

"Beginning at Jerusalem"

ters. She has failed to project her
spiritual life into the foreign-speaking
and polyglot communities, the down-
town, congested and corrupted por-
tions, and the great industrial and
economic districts of our cities.

One need not look long for abundant
proof of this statement. Rev. Charles
Stelzle, of the Presbyterian Church,
tells us that in New York, while the
population below Twentieth Street
was increasing 300,000, forty-six
Protestant Evangelical Churches
moved out of the territory indicated,
and that this is typical of what has
been going on in almost every large city
during the last quarter of a century.

The fact is, we have pursued the line
of least resistance. We have been
fussing around looking after our mem-
bership and immediate constituency
to the utter neglect of the unrelated
masses in the community. In other
words, we have played the coward,
and instead of courageously undertak-
ing a solution of the problems, we
have dodged the issue and shunned
the responsibility. Let me ask: Must
God fail to take part in some great
forward movement in these congested
districts because of our incompetency?
Must Methodism be relegated to the
background as an antiquated institu-
tion totally disqualified to adapt her
life and policy to the conditions pre-
vailing in this great new day.f* It is
for us to speak this word of failure or
success.

Thus through this inventory, and in
cooperation with some of our best men
throughout the country, we have
wrought out a program which we con-
fidently believe will solve the city
problems and make the church a po-
tent factor in the redemption of
society. This program provides the
following specific items:

First, a great institutional, social
and community church in the heart of

the city. This church will be the
dynamo through which will speed the
spirit of the true evangel, quickening
and vitalizing the life of the whole
people. It should furnish a forum
where the minister and his advisers
can discuss the civic, political, social,
and industrial questions of the time,
compelling the body politic to right-
eousness in personal life and commun-
ity relation. It should be the place
where the young people, not only of
the immediate section, but of the
whole city, can receive training for
scientific and effective community
service. It should also constitute the
agency for replenishing the future life
of the church, for keeping it alive at the
top. Down in the lower part of the
city are living the clerks, bookkeepers,
stenographers, doctors, lawyers and
skilled men and women. In other
words, the future business and pro-
fessional men of the country, who will
direct its political and moral destinies,
are living in these boarding house,
rooming house, hotel, flat, and apart-
ment house sections. Every possible
effort should be expended to win this
class if the church hopes to survive.

In these great centers the work,
which must be kept at 100% effi-
ciency, is not only that of the old
rescue mission, which saves the indi-
vidual from present difficulties, but in
addition a community settlement
activity which builds for a new and
permanent manhood, through the
larger social agencies such as gymna-
siums and clubs. Jesus said: "The
Son of Man is come to seek and to
save that which was lost." The
church must prove conclusively that
she is both willing and able to render
such sacrificial service as shall win all
to the truth. We must devise the
means which will enable us to build
up into strong, conquering manhood
the down-and-outer. We must in

Christ's ministry was largely devoted to the city

Are the saloon and a foreign language the
best elements America has to offer her
foreign born citizens?

some way compel the heterogeneous,
nondescript population to a realiza-
tion of God and the beauty of clean
moral living. Jesus was not compla-
cent or indifferent concerning any
class. He struggled with like passion
to grip the soul of Nicodemus, the
woman at the well, Zaccheus, the
Pharisee, the leper, the lame and the
blind. He forgot altogether to classify
men either socially or financially. A
Gospel that cannot reach all classes is
disqualified to reach any class. A Gos-
pel that is able to reach and deliver one
man from the thraldom of sin is able
to reach and deliver all men. It is the
business of the church, under God, to
be the channel for the inflow of that
Gospel.

Secondly, the Church in the indus-
trial community demands attention.
The industrial classes are alienated
from the church. There are three mil-
lion trade-union men in the United

States of America, and the number
affiliated with the church is practically
negligible. The Bolsheviki, the I. W.
W., the Trade Unions and all other
representative labor bodies are not
only indifferent, but positively antag-
onistic, in spirit, to the Christian
Church. The vital life of the Church
is inseparably connected with the
problems and interests of the com-
mon people. Eliminate the great in-
dustrial element from our church
program and our God-given commis-
sion is largely rescinded. Therefore
we must install a great plant and
project a great program of social ser-
vice together with a mighty evan-
gelistic propaganda that will win
these workers to the Christ.

Thirdly, we must include in our
program the evangelization of the dif-
ferent groups of foreign-speaking peo-
ples. About 40% of the total popula-
tion of the United States at the
present time is of foreign birth or
parentage. This fact alone consti-
tutes a tremendous challenge to Amer-
ican Christianity. These people, for
the most part, come from countries
where the standards of life are low,
comparatively speaking. For cen-
turies manyof them have been directed
in moral life and spiritual thought
by the Roman Catholic Church.
Either we must grip the hearts of these
people and lift them to the standards
of Christian thinking or they will in-
evitably drag us down. How shall we
best reach, Americanize and Chris-
tianize these peoples .'^ How shall the
Methodist Episcopal Church approach
these particular groups?

We cannot evangelize them through
absent treatment. Neither can it be
done through the conventional meth-
ods of church procedure. I seriously
question if it can ever be done in a
large way through the pronouncement
of the individualistic Gospel message.

We do not know how to run a city. Nobody does yet

^atje tlje Citp

We must seek to lead the individual to
accept Christ, but we must, at the
same time, through social agencies,
seek to inject the spirit of our Chris-
tian civilization into the life of the en-
tire group . I have sometimes thought,
perhaps foolishly, that if we could
adopt and carry the community meth-
od forward successfully we might
reach and redeem these people in
blocks. I am perfectly aware that
some do not believe in the block sys-
tem, but to such I cite the India
"Mass Movement," where great
blocks of the natives are ready for
Christian baptism and reception in
the Church. If we do not avail our-
selves of the block movement in India,
the time may come when those multi-
tudes now clamoring for God and
spiritual direction will turn in con-
tempt from Christianity to atheism
and the church will have lost her great
opportunity. I am perfectly con-
vinced that the heart of the foreigner
is open to the Gospel message if our
church people would carry it to them
in a fine, big, brotherly, sympathetic
way. Therefore we are planning in all
our city programs to connect each for-
eign group , whenever possible and ad-
visable, with some English-speaking
church, hoping thereby, ultimately,
to weld all together in one great
spiritual brotherhood.

Then we have the call from the con-
gested and polyglot communities.
This is the call that vexes the soul.
Many of these sections have from 15
to 50 different latiguages, types and
races living in the territory. Race
antipathies, prejudices and jealousies
abound. The task may seem utterly
hopeless, but still we maintain God
holds Methodism responsible for a
solution without which ultimately the
nation and the world are lost. In each
of these communities we should plant
our Church of All Nations with a

The mothering of children in crowded
neighborhoods eventually may become
the largest factor in winning the city for
Christ

great staff of specially trained workers
to cultivate the individual and the
home life of the people.

Finally, we must see to it that the
suburbs are not neglected. New or
rapidly growing sections must be pre-
empted, strong churches organized
and commanding edifices erected. In
other words, we must see to it that the
home base is not only occupied, but
that it is strongly fortified. The
quickest and easiest way to save the
foreign lands is to save and spiritually
vitalize the home land.

And now, brethren, back of this
program, through it and in it, pos-
sessing it fully and directing it wholly,
must be the spirit of true evangelism.
Not a shouting, jerky, spasmodic, in-
sipid, occasional evangelism, on two
weeks in the winter time and then off
eleven months and two weeks, feeding
itself on transient emotions; but a
sane, sensible, enthusiastic, passion-
ate , sacrificial , e very-day, well-rounded

The great cities are masters of our national destiny

^atje tilt Ci'tp

evangelism. A personal evangelism
under the inspiration of which not
only the minister, but each layman in
the church, shall press the claim of
God on the hearts of the men with
whom he comes in contact from day
to day. An evangelism whose spirit
shall penetrate the life of the Sunday
School, the Ep worth League, the reg-
ular services, the prayer meeting and

pastoral visitation; which shall in
time control the office, the shop, the
bank, and the home. An evangelism
that will literally compel men to God.
Then and only then will the life of
God be projected into the heart of the
world; then and only then will de-
mocracy bring larger liberty and secur-
ity for all the nations.

Save the City

StixtcJiing upward and expanding with
phenomenal rapidity the city is a challenge to
the church and God''s plan of redemption

AMERICAN Methodism in down
town sections of the city has
been failing.
It would be a false prophet who
would rise to proclaim that our de-
nomination has been fully meeting her
responsibility even so recently as with-
in the last decade. Methodism has
done probably as much as any other
Protestant church, it is true, but
Protestantism itself is decadent in the
congested section of the large centers
of population.

In spite of notable exceptions, the
evidence is everywhere that the
churches are retreating. For instance,
in the down-town sections we have
yielded before the invasion of the in-
dustrial types, or the polyglot popu-
lation that swarms today in the very
heart of many of our cities.

Whole districts, where the number
of inhabitants has quadrupled, are

left to the devil, and the one-time
strong churches of Methodism, now
with sadly depleted membership,
scramble in confusion to leave their
changed environment and follow the
wealthy and fashionable members to
more select surroundings . That church
is unfit that does not adapt her activi-
ties to the needs of those about her.

It is in no harsh spirit of fault-find-
ing that these facts are noted. Amer-
ican Methodism in the city may have
been failing, but American Methodism
has not utterly failed.

The Centenary Survey, the most
accurate and comprehensive ever
made, has taken inventory of our
weaknesses and also of our resources.
Our resources are adequate; our forces
are getting into alignment; and the
city is to be reclaimed. In every de-
partment of the Centenary movement
there is one slogan that is always capi-

The sexton's sign is the liveliest feature of some churches

All memories of hymn-singing are drowned in the uproar of motor trucks which
make this abandoned church their home. But, like a ghostly reminder of the
preaching and teaching of bygone ministers, a sign on the wall says sternly —

"No Smoking"

talized in print and that is: "IT CAN
BE DONE!" It is already being done.

Yet it is a shock to read of forty
Protestant churches passing out of
existence in the lower East side of
New York within a generation, while
there is an increase of 300,000 souls
in that section. Add to this fact
the still more significant one that
the raw material of our urban
citizenship is no longer even remotely
predisposed to be Protestant, or even
religious, and some idea of the magni-
tude of the challenge of the city to
Methodism can be gained. Hereto-
fore, our appeal has been to English,
German, and Scandinavian newcom-
ers. Today we find a human sea
surging around the very doors of many
of our down-town churches with
southern European groups predomi-
nating. We cannot condemn city
Methodism for pausing in her work
before the kaleidoscopic change that
has been effected recently in some of
her most notable metropolitan par-
ishes. She has not yet recovered from
her surprise. The world is our parish,
however, and just as long as we con-

tinue to be a missionary church, so
long will it be incumbent upon us to
minister to these people, who carry
this challenge to the very foot of our
altars. Methodism has gone on
record that she will accept the chal-
lenge .

Now an increase of population is
not necessarily an evidence of pros-
perity. Superficially viewed, this,
and industrial development, are sup-
posed to be a basis for civic pride. In
any city where the individual and his
rights have been lost sight of, the very
things that some call blessings will
tend in themselves to hold back real
civic advancement. The Church is
the one organization that can grip the
individual heart and minister to it;
so then, wherever the Church has re-
treated in the city, material prosper-
ity is indirectly lessened. By pros-
perity we do not mean the reaping of
wealth by any favored class, but the
general welfare of every class.

At the opportune moment, the Cen-
tenary program was inaugurated. In
some instances, by means of the most
revolutionary tactics, the cities are

The modern city is a problem, an opportunity , and a test

now being saved for Christ. As an
example, we have had to confess that
the Institutional Church is a defeated
church, but one that has failed while
fighting hard. In the first place, it
arrived too late to meet the need for
which it was planned. The duplica-
tion of equipment and consequent ex-
pense made it impossible to continue,
but it was most largely condemned
because it tended to minimize the
spiritual phase of its program. Thus
the Institutional Church was pro-
nounced obsolete, and the revolution-
ary plans of the Centenary project
include the "neighborhood idea," with
its spiritual emphasis, to supersede
the inefiiciency of yesterday.

The Institutional Church failed
while fighting. This much is to be
said to her credit. Some other Meth-
odist churches in down-town sections
with less generous programs fared
even worse. Unfortunately, it can-
not be disputed that, in a number of
cases, trustees have opposed any
attempt to open the doors to the new
inhabitants of the neighborhood, and,
with a dying constituency, mortgaged
the property to meet the current ex-
penses, in violation of disciplinary
rules. This is the sin of self-destruc-

tion, which brings its own retribu-
tion.

Still other churches struggled on
with an ever-shrinking membership,
anxiously attempting to minister to
the neighborhood but without funds
to launch any enterprise. Such or-
ganizations, and they are legion, are
unwillingly contributing also to the
defeat of the Kingdom of Christ in the
city. Their buildings are antiquated
and constructed for a form of service
that belongs to a bygone century . Upon
many of them may be seen an under-
taker's sign, and the address of the
sexton, all of which conforms to the
general appearance of a sepulcher that
the whole plant suggests to the passer-
by. The people who walk upon the
streets that skirt such city churches
are generally those who come from
lands where the church building is the
center of light, and dignity, and rever-
ence. Neither the lonely desolation of
a locked and neglected church, nor the
tawdry attempt to compete with com-
mercial amusements, which is the
other extreme to which Protestantism
now runs, holds any religious appeal
to those whose delicacy of taste in
ecclesiastical matters is a rebuke to
our indifi^erence or shallowness.

Providential Opportunities

TN spite of the fact that there are
■■■ many more Methodist congrega-
tions assembled for worship every
Sunday outside of the great cities than
in them, the city problem is the most
complex of Home Missionary prob-
lems, and, indeed, the ultimate fate
of our denominational life will be de-
cided upon the measure of our success
in meeting the challenge of urban life.

If all the inhabitants of the United
States now living in cities were to
march in single file past a given point,
abreast with a line of residents from
the towns, villages, camps, and rural
sections, these two lines would be of
equal length. Although every second
person in this country lives in the
city, only four per cent of the mem-
bers of the Methodist Church belong

An abandoned church preaches a poor sermon

to that half of the population. And
within a generation, at the present
rate of increase, three-fourths of the
nation's population will be urban,
with no appreciable advancement on
the part of Methodism.

Such a ratio constitutes one of the
multitude of difficulties that City
Missionary Societies, pastors, and
Home Missionary workers have to
meet. The wealth of the nation may
gravitate to the centers of population,
but the major financial resources of
Methodism are not to be found there.

The need of a great outlay strategi-
cally expended at this critical moment
cannot be met if the whole burden is
to be carried by the local city societies,
or the already over-burdened city
Missionary Societies.

If it is true that to save the world
we must first save America, and to
save America, we must begin by sav-
ing the cities, then the Centenary
project to make an unprecedented
drive to win the city on the very eve
of defeat is providentially opportune.

Typical New York

"Cp VERY problem that confronts vast difference that exists between the

Methodism in every other city in ancient and the modern cities. Athens,

America can be met with in New Rome, and even London are what

York. writers have called "mother cities."

This metropolis is typical of the They have sent out colonists and they

Jetterson f ark Church, in the Italian section of New York is literally "planted in
the market place." This row of push carts, selling everything from cocoanut
milk to suspenders, is just across the street from the church

Courage! Modern cities are less depraved than ancient cities

These little vacant-lot gardeners have "Mary, Mary quite contrary" beaten by
a good deal. No such indigestible products as "silver bells and cockle shells,"
but good solid, Hooveresque vegetables make up their crop

have spent of their own resources in
following such a policy, but New
York only illustrates in the most
marked degree the tendency of all
American cities to draw in and absorb
rather than to give out.

Again, Babel the ancient city was
uniglot and all activity ceased when
the many strange tongues were heard.
Just the opposite is true in the case
of New York. With the coming of the
confusion of tongues came also the
great skyward reach of the tall build-
ings, and the growth that is a new
challenge to God and his redemptive
plan.

New York grows in every direction.
Human mites travel almost fifty
stories heavenward in lightning ex-
press elevators. They go down into
the bowels of the earth in concrete
burrows. Floods of people pour out
of ferry houses, railroad terminals,
subway stations, and elevated stair-
ways. Offices and homes are piled
one on top of the other, and every
year 135,000 more people are added
to her permanent population.

In the five million inhabitants of
lesser New York only one out of every
hundred persons happens to be a

Methodist. To present to the reader
a more graphic conception of this
startling fact it was intended to show
two figures on the opposite page of this
booklet representing the comparative
sizes of the city population and Meth-
odist membership. It would be im-
possible, however, to place upon this
page any pictures showing the propor-
tion of membership drawn to scale
that would raise Methodism into a
larger place than that occupied by the
smallest point in this type. Seven
million souls in Greater New York is
the mass that the little leaven of
Methodism is to permeate.

The restlessness of the city has been
bewailed as a barrier to evangelism.
In a spirit of pessimism one writer has
cried: "Nothing ever stays fixed in
New York." But we look to the
Orient and view the flux and change
in India that ushered in the God-given
moment when the Mass Movement
broke the barriers of centuries. The
prophetic soul of Methodism faces an
overwhelming responsibility, but ex-
ults in the opportunity to win the
plastic masses in the cities for the
Kingdom of Christ.

We are afflicted with the bad citizenship of good men

The Centenary Program
for the Down- Town Church

VyHERE the down-town church
has continued, and attempted, in
the face of untold difficulties, to react
on its community, it has been signally-
successful . The Morgan Memorial in
Boston, and Central Church, Detroit
are notable examples so familiar that
to mention them suffices. In the
former society fifty religious meetings
are conducted every week.

An Outstanding Pulpit Voice

The great preachers are to return to
the same pulpits occupied by the great
preachers of a generation ago. In all
probability the Centenary leaders of
the city work will emphasize the
power of the pulpit above all other
factors. They have realized that the
men who are doing the biggest things
in the churches of America are invari-
ably strong in pulpit work. Indeed
this rule applies in other countries
also, as such names as Hugh Price
Hughes and Sylvester Horne would
suggest.

The Independent several years ago
said in an editorial: "The workingman
will not be won to Christ by doles of
charity, or by professions of sympathy
with Trade Unionists and strikers, or
by an acceptance of a socialistic creed .
Those who nowadays live in habitual
neglect of Church and its worship will
be drawn back to the Church when the
Church offers to them every Sunday
morning something which they feel
they cannot afford to miss or to live
without."

Educational Work

Not only in the down- town church,
but in many other Centenary projects,

the work of the Director of Religious
Education will be a new but impor-
tant feature. Such a teacher will be a
psychologist, but more than anything
else will he or she be an evangelist,
versed in the Scriptures and the .hearts
of men. Under trained leadership will
be arranged lectures, and the forum
and night schools, including trade
and citizenship classes. All energies
bent in this direction are only to be a
means toward this one end, to accom-
plish the salvation of the individual.

Comiiiunity Welfare

Much that was helpful in the old
institutional church must be retained.
Dispensaries, clinics, baths, nurseries,
gymnasiums, fresh air outings, are
only a few of the items included in the
welfare program.

Recreation

Closely related to, and to some ex-
tent overlapping the Community Wel-
fare department, is the much-needed
recreational aspect of Christian serv-
ice.

Industrial Relief

Still connected, and still overlap-
ping as local conditions vary, is the
constructive type of industrial relief.
Such work will be modeled largely
upon the principles tested in Morgan
Memorial and other successful down-
town churches.

The evangelistic note will be em-
phasized in every department, so this
is not classified as something apart,
but rather constitutes the main task
of the whole plant.

The church is the city's home of brotherhood

The Suburban Church

*'TN the suburbs almost everyone ex-
■'■ cept the minister is running for
trains." The divided interest of the
suburbanite increases the difficulty of
introducing spiritual matters to his
attention. His zeal may run to effi-
ciency in the busy mart or it may find
vent m village politics, but wherever
the church is ministering in a suburb, it
is competing with some other interest.

The dweller in the suburb is often
generous with financial aid, but he has
little time or energy to devote to the
church unless he has been linked up
with a society of unusual power and
attraction.,

It has been pointed out that to save
America we must save the cities.
Amory Bradford carries this respon-
sibility back further and says, "The
problem of the city church in America

will never be solved until the suburbs
realize that they have responsibilities
to the cities."

Where club life, fraternal orders,
Sunday visitation, and ambitious en-
tertaining — with a little gardening
that may violate the fourth command-
ment — ^are all drawing the people,
there is no time left for participation
in a church program that reaches
beyond the suburban environs.

Then, there is as much variety to be
found in the suburb as has been dis-
covered in the city, and every suburb
presents distinct, complex, and dif-
ferent conditions and problems.

Some residential neighborhoods are
built around universities. Some are
completely populated by industrial
workers. Some are aloof and wealthy,
and in the case of several cities the

About seven hundred people — a popula-
tion as large as that of many a New
England village, are crowded into this
one block in New York's Little Italy.
But while the New England village 6ften
boasts two or three churches, there is only
one Methodist pastor to serve this block
and many more like it. He often uses
his head to save his heels and devises
short-cuts from one parish call to another
by means of fire-escapes and adjoining
roofs

Make the church a door into good society

Sewing classes, cooking schools and training for little mothers will do much toward
creating a healthier, happier city population

very slums have spread out into sub-
urban districts. One of Chicago's
suburbs has become so polyglot that
at least twenty-one languages have
been identified as being spoken there.

Every variation of conditions adds
to the perplexities of the Centenary
workers who are devoting their time
to minister to the suburban church
and have her measure up to the re-
sponsibility that rests upon her to help

reclaim the city for the Kingdom of
Christ.

There can be only one program for
the suburban church, whether it be a
long established church or an unde-
veloped field. That must be a modern
program adapted to local necessities,
but never without a definite task in
the city as a means of saving itself
from such a fate as has befallen many
down-town churches.

The Neighborhood Idea

nPHERE is a No-Man's Land in the
field of church work in the city.
The down-town church and the subur-
ban church present such distinctive
difiiculties that they can be catalogued
and easily recognized. There is an-
other type that does not conform to
either of these mentioned and yet is
so commonplace as to be generally
overlooked. It is the church, not

quite a family church, and far from
being an institutional church, or even
needing to adopt any such policy. It
may be found in a foreign-speaking
community, but is discovered any-
where in the city. It is so situated
that it cannot be a community church,
as that term is generally understood.

It may be a dying church, but it is
a church that requires a changed atti-

Plant the church in the market place

^atie tf)e Citp

Once a Methodist church, this building on
East Seventh Street, New York City, has
donned a number of cupolas and become
the meeting place of Greek Catholics

tude, and a changed policy in response
to a now-changing environment. It
is a strategic point where Christianity
may be entrenched, and disgraceful
retreat made impossible.

Such a church adopting the Cen-
tenary program becomes a "Neighbor-
hood Church."

In an undertaking of this nature the
object is not to make any organization
supreme in influence in the neighbor-
hood. As far as the Centenary pro-
gram is concerned there is a positive
avoidance of competition between the
church and other agencies for good.
Where the social, industrial, and rec-
reational needs of the neighborhood
are being adequately supplied by the
school, city, Y. M. C. A., or by other
churches, the neighborhood church
will waste no resources by attempting

"Z must preach .

to duplicate the service. Where there
is any lack of needed ministration,
effort is concentrated at this one point
by the church that has the neighbor-
hood idea. The emphasis in every
activity, however, is laid upon per-
sonal evangelism.

The Neighborhood Church at-
tempts no mammoth undertaking. It
appeals to the smallest possible local
social unit — the neighborhood; and
the need for such a church exists,
because while there may be a com-
munity organization and conscious-
ness, this is generally absent in the
small neighborhood.

It is true that here may be found
people of the same social class, and
sometimes groups of the same voca-
tional class, but without other com-
mon bonds and interest.

Proximity is opportunity, and no-
where should personal contact and
influence be more effective than here.
Touch and sight — these physical con-
tacts — are the basis for the first and
most elementary of human relation-
ships. The neighborhood work offers
untold possibilities in this respect in
the development of the hand-picking
process of soul winning.

Neighborhood child life may be-
come the largest factor eventually in
winning the city for Christ.

Fifteen thousand children marching
in an annual Sunday-school parade of
Brooklyn become a mere handful,
compared to the hordes of wild little
urchins of the street that have never
entered a church. There are more
than half a million children in New
York City receiving no formal religious
instruction in Jewish, Roman Catholic
or Protestant institutions. In New
York City every third person is a
Roman Catholic, and every fourth
person a Jew.

The passing of the home in great
American cities is having a reaction

. . to other cities"

upon spiritual life. Many apartment
houses make no provision for children
— they don't want any. The ever-in-
creasing number of buildings devoted
to catering to the class that patronize
furnished rooms is tending to make
large districts absolutely homeless.
The city children of the rich or of the
poor have one common playground —
the streets and parks.

It is true that in one case the child
may lounge in a limousine rather than
ride on the step of the ice- wagon, or
be accompanied by a nurse instead of
by the little mothers of the slums, but
the houses in either case were not
built for them. Break down the home
and you break down the Church.

The Neighborhood Church proba-
bly can gain access to a far greater
number of children than any other
type of city church where the con-
stituency is as migratory as the Arabs
of the desert. The importance of this
trust and opportunity cannot be over-
estimated. Grafted on to the old
family style of worship must be a
service planned to touch the varied
needs of humanity. If the fruit is not
gathered immediately by the Cen-
tenary methods, we have at least laid
the foundations for a living church to
minister a thousand times more effect-
ively to those generations following us .
There never will be a solution of the

Once a house of God; now a busy garage.
When its original congregation of Amer-
ican famihes drifted to another section of
the city and the neighborhood was
swamped with a sudden flood of foreign-
ers, this Methodist church was not pre-
pared to meet the emergency. Today,
children who might have attended its
Sunday school loiter around its doors,
watching the autos come and go and
incidentally picking up all varieties of
profanity

problems confronting us today till
trained workers are put at every
strategic point to pre-empt the field
for Christ.

The Church in the Industrial Community

nPHE following quotation is from a
^ noted leader in labor circles, and
may serve to indicate the attitude of
the workingman towards the Church.
"The Church has nothing to give that
we care to receive. It has nothing to
teach that we care to know. We are

very well satisfied to have working-
men out of touch with the Church."

It is rankly unjust, of course. It is
unreasonable too, but it is a challenge
to Christendom. The workingman in
so many instances may be more
narrow-minded in his bitterness

The city church must not only hold a ser:ice, hut render service

For many a city boy this is the only kind of gymnasium available. He does
spiral ascents and descents on the fire-escape, "chins himself" on the battered
gate and emulates the rope walker on the uneven top of the fence

towards organized Christianity than
the most sectarian Protestant, yet no
attitude of his, be it indifference or
opposition, justifies a laissez-faire
policy in the Church.

As the increase of urban hfe is coin-
cident with the growth of manufactur-
ing industries, the problem of the
unchurched workingman is primarily
a city problen. It constitutes a chal-
lenge that must be faced by Method-
ism in the city.

A settlement of this question can
never be gained while the Church mis-
understands the industrial worker, or
fails to get at the fundamental causes
of his alienation.

In justice to those that condemn the
church it must be admitted that the
workingman, generally speaking, lacks
any childhood religious training, and
the usual tendency on his part is a
development of prejudice, or at best
an indifference or preoccupation that
may carry no intentional antagonism.

Again, many men have grown hard

under bitter conditions, and think of
God as unjust or unkind, if they admit
that there is any God.

They believe that the church exists
for their employers, and one-time op-
pressors, and that all religious privi-
leges must be purchased. Through no
fault on the part of Methodism at
large they have grounds for their
belief.

There is also a grain of justice in the
plea of the workingman that his labor
occupies so many of his working hours
that he must enjoy needed rest and
recreation even at the expense of
church attendance.

It is not for Methodism to submit
to any policy that would detract from
the holiness of the Lord's Day. While
granting every possible concession,
that she may better approach the
question from the workingman's
standpoint, she will meet her chal-
lenge only by a removal of his diffi-
culties, and not by ignoring them.

To this end the Centenary Program

A great city is a little world

is attempting that near-hopeless task
of reconcihng labor and the Church.
Billy-Sundayism and noon-day shop
meetings will not do it. Socialistic
preaching has failed as a substitute for
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But so-
called "Gospel Sermons" have failed
also, possibly because they have not
reached the ears of the industrial
classes, or possibly because there are
inconsistencies too glaring to be over-
looked.

To fail the workingmen of today is
to fail Jesus, the carpenter of Naza-
reth. There is only one solution to the
labor problem — the application of His
principles to modern industrial life.
Workingmen are essentially practical.

A religion of words, no matter how
eloquent, can find no place in their
lives. The accusation of insincerity
which many of them bring against the
Church is founded on the failure to
link up the doctrine of Sunday with
the practice of every day in the week.
Socialservice which springsfrom neigh-
borliness rather than from a rigid sense
of duty; help in the struggle for in-
dustrial justice; and evangelism that
proves its sincerity by more than the
thunder of a pulpit voice are neces-
sary if the workingman is to realize
his kinship to another worker of many
centuries ago. The factory has gotten
too far away from God. The Cen-
tenary must bring it back.

In the night school of the Church of All Nations in New York, Tom, Dick and
Harry of the Bowery have an opportunity to acquire knowledge, perhaps not so
thrilling, but ultimately more useful than that picked up on the streets and in

cheap movie shows

The city need not be a Sodom

The Boy Scout Movement is a great transformer of city boys. After their hikes
out into the parks and the open country, and under their training in obedience
and self-discipline, you would scarcely know these brown, wholesome lads for the
lawless, pallid urchins of some months ago

Giving God a Chance

npHE sweeping power of the Cente-
nary and its reaction upon the cen-
ters of population as well as upon the
Church itself was summed up in these
words at the 1918 Council of Cities:
"The Church has been altogether too
much concerned about saving herself
and too little concerned in the re-
demption of the community. It goes
without saying that just the moment
the Church becomes more interested
in her own life than she is in the life
of the people, she is at once disquali-
fied for rendering efficient service for
the uplift of the world.

"The Centenary is furnishing a

magnificent opening for the Church to
discover herself, her interests and
ambitions, her abilities and dis-
abilities, her purposes and designs for
and on the race. It is also furnishing
a splendid opportunity to make a
statement of program for cities
throughout the land, and to press the
challenge of God down upon the
people in a way commensurate with
the need. God has, perhaps, never
had a fair opportunity to force his
claims on men. In this Centenary for
the first time He will have a fair
chance to make an impression on the
heart of the world."

In the city, too, ahideth faith, hope, love

Facts Concerning Cities

IN congested and polyglot communi-
ties there are often from 15 to 50
different types and races living to-
gether.

Although every second person in this
country lives in the city, only four
per cent of the members of the
MethodistEpiscopal church belong
to the city.

Within a generation, at the present
rate of increase, three-fourths of the
nation's population will be urban,
with no appreciable advancement
on the part of Methodism.

The influence of wealth is increasing
much more rapidly than the popu-
lation and is being concentrated in
the city.

In this country public opinion is only
less mighty than omnipotence . . .
and the press which educates and
sways public opinion is located in
the city.

The moral development of the Amer-
ican city has not kept pace with the
material.

In 1905 there were more than a mil-
lion churchless Protestants in New
York alone.

The field for city workers of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church includes 50
cities and stretches from coast to
coast.

Nearly one-third of all the men and
women in all the industries of the
United States in 1910 were em-
ployed in the manufacturing and
mechanical industries, which means
in the city.

While the population of one section of
Philadelphia increased fourfold, 25
Protestant churches died or moved
away.

On the lower East Side in New York
is a ward which contains over 80,000
people, and has only one Protestant
house of worship.

In Philadelphia there are seven and a
half times as much crime to a given
population, and in Pittsburgh and
Alleghany City nearly three times
as much, as in the average rural
county of Pennsylvania.

The number of killed and injured in
the industries of the United States
is upwards of 500,000 annually, a
number larger than the average an-
nual casualties of our Civil War,
plus those of the Russian and
Japanese War.

In Chicago, of 35 boys and girls who
applied for admission to the Joseph
Medill Summer School, 19 had
never seen Lake Michigan and 80
had never been in the woods.

Department of City Work
Board of Home Missions and Cliurcli Extension
of the Methodist Episcopal Church
1701 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

%f)t Centenary ^ome 3SoarD Booklets;

Prepared by the Joint Centenary Committee
for the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension
of the Methodist Episcopal Church
1701 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

Three Outposts of Liberty

Porto Pico, Hawaii and Alaska

Jl^umliet Ctoo

Save the City

A discussion of the problems confronting the Church in reaching
the industrial and foreign-speaking groups of the cities

jBumfier Cftree

The Stranger Within Our Gates

A Study of the Americanization problem

Broken Trails on The Frontier

A view of the work in remote border settlements

Jl3umliec JFitie
Off The Highroad

An inquiry into the rural situation in connection
with the work of the Church

J13umtjer
John Stewart's Kinsmen

A survey of the needs of the Negro
Price five cents each

3foint Centenary Committee

111 Jfftftij Attptiur. Nrw fork