Uncle Sam's Bible, Part 2


Abstract:
Excepts from the first chapter:

Body:
"We have called on you, Brother Jones, ...to ask your opinion about our social conditions. The times are hard. The property of the country is concentrating into fewer hands. Class distinctions are growing stronger. You and I can remember the condition of the people before the war. There is great change, and it is a very sad one."

"...the Republicans promised us better times," said Mrs. Smith, "but I see little difference. If anything, the times are harder."

Sound familiar? Remember, this is from 1899. There's another little bit where a character says the Democrats were just as bad.
...

"The hard times affect the prosperity of the church," added Mrs. Smith. "Twenty years ago everybody in Browntown went to church. Now two-thirds of the people are non-attendants. Although the population has trebled, the churches are not so well attended now as they were then."

Again, from 1899. It could be the intro to any one of a number of books on church revitalization.
...

Brother Jones replies:
"...our love of Christ should make us study the problems of our civilization till we have solved them; for he was profoundly interested in the welfare of men; he called himself 'the son of man'; he said that he came to establish the kingdom of God on earth. If we care nothing for what affects the happiness of all the people, if we joke about political corruption, if we abandon the study of social problems as matters too hard for us, if we refuse to spend and be spent in introducing a better state of society, we lack the spirit of Christ."
"Then you think more religion is what is needed?" asked Mrs. Smith.
"Yes and no," replied Mr. Jones. "If all the people were converted, joined the churches, and attended them regularly, it would make very little difference in our condition if other things remained as they are now. They are wrong who say, 'Make all the people Christians and then we shall have a Christian civilization.' Something more than sound lumber is needed to build a house: there must be a plan, and the lumber must be properly fitted and nailed. So it takes more than Christian people to make a Christian civilization.
...The trouble is that our civilization is idolatrous – that in public affairs we worship false gods."

"We do not understand what you mean," Mrs. Smith exclaimed. "Ours is a land of Bibles and churches, and we cannot be called idolators."

"I feared that you would not understand this brief explanation," Mr. Jones replied, "and I will try to make myself better understood."

Posted: Tue - September 27, 2005 at 01:11 PM           |

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