The Church Paper

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 28, 1912

In the Missionary Survey for August, a paper published by the Presbyterian Church, Dr. S. L. Morris, secretary of home missions of that church, makes the following excellent statements relative to the value and importance of the church paper, which we may well apply to our own church papers:—

Next in importance to attendance upon the preaching of the sanctuary is the value of the church paper. If the great daily giving the latest news, and the magazine of current literature, are considered indispensable for the secular information of the home, how much more indispensable the religious press, which brings its spiritual messages, and makes its readers more intelligent and therefore more efficient Christians.

Aside from this, what the daily paper is to our every-day concerns, the religious paper is to the cause of Christ. Where its presence brings no vital contact with the work of our own church, and no familiarity with the interests of the kingdom at large, there is great danger that its absence may open the door for the Sunday newspaper. This mammoth publication, with its multiplied pages of light or sensational reading, its various recitals of scandal and crime, its crude, inflammatory “funny pages,” not only secularizes the Sabbath day, but makes our children early acquainted with the baser things of life, while debarring them from the privileges and wholesome pleasures of the church paper. The head of a family who does not provide himself and his children with his denominational organ is culpably negligent.

No denomination can boast of a religious press of higher standards than ours, and other communions bear willing testimony to its merit. If any reader of these words is not a regular subscriber to one or more of our splendid church papers, we wish to go on record as testifying to his error of judgment and his loss of some of the best things in life. For value received, for information, for entertainment, for efficiency in the service of Christ and his church, we know of no better investment than the small subscription price of a good church paper.