The World's Christian Citizenship Conference
By C. M. S.
THE World's Christian Citizenship Conference has proved to be a great disappointment to the city in which it was held. The committee of one hundred citizens had been given to understand by the promoters of the great conference that there would be twenty thousand delegates present, a great portion of them from other countries. Upon this representation the committee buckled earnestly to the task of raising the splendid sum of $15,000. This sum was to be used in a campaign of publicity, which, while primarily advantageous to the conference itself, would be also advantageous in a very material way to the city of Portland. So great a throng of people would necessarily leave a large amount of money in the city, and the business interests which contributed to the publicity campaign expected to reap from the conference in a material way more than they contributed. Moreover, the committee of one hundred expected that it would have the right of selling tickets of admission to the meetings, which would also help to make sure to them the return of the money they had invested. The $15,000 was paid over to the management of the enterprise, and the committee seems to have been expecting that the ones who had the handling of the funds would give an accounting. The committee also professes to have had an understanding with the promoters of the conference that there would be nothing in the nature of an attack in the conference upon any denomination or denominations. There were to be many eminent speakers both from foreign lands and from this country, and the committee understood that there would be not less than seven hundred delegates from England alone. But there was a great difference between what was promised and what was actually produced, as the aftermath of the conference shows. The only thing that Portland can lay its hand upon as a definitely accomplished fact is the contribution of $15,000 to the publicity campaign by herself, and a contribution by her citizens of about $5,000 or $6,000 more in gate receipts and hat collections. If there was ever a city that felt grieved over the holding of a convention in its midst, Portland is that city. One of the newspapers, the Telegram, in its issue of July 8, after printing a whole column of complaint, says that the business men “feel that the whole thing should, in charity and tolerance, be forgotten.” Instead of there being twenty thousand delegates in attendance, there were six hundred and sixty-two, and of these all were from the Pacific Coast except one hundred and fifty-six. The Oregonian declares that only twenty-two persons came from foreign countries, and nine of these came from Canada. The railroads, in anticipation of a large amount of travel, are reported to have expended some thousands of dollars. They have not been able to account for the hauling of more than about six hundred persons whose fare they received on account of the conference, and a large proportion of these were entitled to travel at reduced rates. The railroads, as a consequence, are much disappointed. The hotels were warned to prepare for a large throng, and did so. It is stated that the largest “throng” of conference delegates that was entertained at any one hotel in Portland numbered twenty, and one of the best-equipped housed only three. These institutions had each contributed $250 to the publicity fund that was turned over to the National728Reform Association, according to the Portland press. The committee of business men are greatly disappointed and chagrined over their inability to realize much from the sale of gate tickets to recoup themselves partially for what they had contributed to the publicity campaign fund. They expected that they were to do this; but when the managers of the enterprise came upon the ground, the committee of one hundred, according to a member of the committee, was dismissed from further responsibility, and the National Reform Association took charge of the arrangements. Trouble arose over the sale of tickets, and a squad of police was called to prevent trouble over the seating of ticket-holders. The hat was passed at frequent intervals, and the people were importuned to give liberally to help in defraying the expenses of the conference. The Oregonian, speaking editorially, declares that the managers of the conference seemed to “have concerned themselves rather too much with pure promotion and exploitation, to put it mildly.” In spite of the understanding which the Portland committee had with the managers of the conference to the effect that there should be no attacks upon other denominations, two very strong attacks were made upon one denomination. This, too, has very naturally created great dissatisfaction. Some of the most prominent persons who were advertised to speak at the conference, and whose names were used to influence Portland citizens to contribute to the big fund, did not come at all. These were such men as President Wilson, Secretary of State Bryan, and Robert J. Burdette. This was another cause of disappointment on the part of those who contributed. The seven hundred delegates from England dwindled to a very small handful, probably not more than ten. In view of the promises made, the expectations aroused, and the funds given, it is small wonder, therefore, that the press of Portland is condemning the affair in strong language. Says the Telegram of July 8:— There should be perfect frankness about the managers of the World's Christian Citizenship Conference. They did not begin to carry out their contract. They made many promises and fulfilled few. They got a large sum of money and made no accounting for it. They were to bring here not less than twice as many notable foreign speakers as they brought. They were to bring hundreds of visitors where they brought units. They did the very best they could while here to add to their receipts through various means, and succeeded to a degree. Portland was bitterly disappointed in these men. It will not permit other communities to have experiences with them without a frank statement of its disappointment and the causes of it. This much we owe to ourselves and our neighbors. Portland would not get tangled a second time with the promoters of the World's Christian Citizenship Conference, therefore it should not permit its neighbors to get tangled up with them. One of the papers goes so far as to speak of the affair as a “frenzied finance deal,” and declares that a warning against the National Reform Association's methods will be given to any city where it is proposed to hold another World's Christian Citizenship Conference. The Oregonian of July 10 says:— Railroad officials in Portland and in other parts of the country have started on the trail of Clement H. Congdon, promoter of the recent World's Christian Citizenship Conference held in Portland, and intend to prevent him from engaging in a similar enterprise in San Francisco or in any other city in 1915. Advice has been sent to officials of the various roads in San Francisco and to officials of the Panama-Pacific Exposition that the recent conference was a disappointment, and that there was gross misrepresentation as to the number of speakers brought here from foreign countries. The National Reform Association will long be remembered in Portland as being associated with one of her most unpleasant experiences. These same newspapers which speak in such unsparing terms of the management of this conference were still willing to give the conference its due, and in spite of their disappointment, commended many of the addresses given on the platform of the conference. But it is distinctly noticeable that the addresses which they commended were not the addresses of the National Reformers, but of those who were speaking upon other themes of a social or religious nature. In his opening address, Pres. Henry Colin Minton gave expression to the purposes of the organization in these words:— The spirit of a movement may be known by the spirit of the association that is behind it. This association believes in Almighty God as the source of all earthly authority, the fountain of all human liberty. It believes in the universal application of his law alike in the lives of individual men and among the nations of the earth. It believes in the supreme lordship of the Man of Nazareth who lived on the earth some nineteen hundred years ago, and who, as the strong Son of God, is worthy to be, and is today, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It believes that in all the chances and changes of human history, in all the strides and stages of this world's development, allegiance to his scepter is the only spirit in which we are to conquer, and obedience to his law is the condition upon which may be solved all the problems of earth and may be overcome all the barriers that may be encountered. The good Samaritan did a great service and was a prince among social servants; but he who would clean out the robbers on the Jerusalem-to-Jericho road would have been a wiser social servant. These two statements are characteristic of, and in a way epitomize, all the addresses made at this conference by National Reformers. They contain a strange commingling of the things that are essential in the soul and experience of the Christian, and the things that dechristianize Christianity when an attempt is made to enforce them by compulsion of human law upon all men everywhere. When that is done, we have Babylon again, confusion, the spirit of the Papacy. To the true Christian, God is all and in all; but there is no process of human law by which he can be made that to all men. The will of God is the supreme law of the Christian; but when an attempt is made to make that will the supreme law of everybody else, we have laid the groundwork for persecution and made necessary another Inquisition. The Christian believes, without any force to compel him to do so, that Christ is his supreme Lord, that he is King over all kings and Lord over all lords; but that belief cannot be enforced by law and made to apply to all men everywhere, nor can it be made an actuating principle in the governments of the world; and the attempt to make it so would make this world another shamble such as that over which Torquemada and Isabella gloated. True it is that allegiance to the scepter of Jesus Christ is the only spirit in which the individual Christian can conquer; but when we attempt to compel every one else in the world to accept that allegiance and that scepter, we unchristianize ourselves and imbrue our hands in our brother's blood. But this was the spirit of the World's Christian Citizenship Conference as far as the National Reformers made themselves heard. Everything that is essential to the triumph of the individual Christian they would enact into law and enforce upon others whether they were Christians or not. From the second paragraph quoted above, it is very evident that the National Reformers are not satisfied with the achievement of the good Samaritan. Our Saviour commends the work of the good Samaritan, and left his deed on record as an incentive and an example. The National Reformers are not satisfied with the illustration and example which our Saviour chose; and if they had been there, would have advised him to drop out the good Samaritan feature of his discourse and substitute for it9a military expedition. This shows again that the National Reform idea is out of harmony with both the gospel of Jesus Christ and the fundamental and vital principles of the government of the United States. It is not difficult to believe, therefore, that the two things which they are so completely out of harmony with may be in perfect harmony with each other. And they are. The government as our fathers founded it is in harmony with the principles laid down by the Founder of our faith; whereas the government as the National Reformers would establish it would perpetuate the principles of confusion and oppression that made the Papacy what it was, and would open wide a door through which rejuvenated Romanism would enter to rule and to despoil. One of the topics discussed at this conference, and perhaps referred to more than any other, was “The Christianizing of the Social Order.” By that is meant that all the activities of human existence are to be Christianized. As it is not even hoped that this can be done by converting individual men and women and bringing them into individual submission to the will of God, human legislation must be relied upon for its accomplishment; and through that means they intend to bring in the real kingdom of Christ. It is a deception of the adversary, to make men unprepared for the real coming of the real kingdom. By the plan they are operating upon, there would be no “time of trouble, such as never was;” there would be no destruction of the hosts of the ungodly, for they would all be made godly by law; there would be no ascension of the saints to “meet the Lord in the air,” for they are going to induct him into office here as the King over the kings of this present world. All that the Word of God has said as to his return, his manner of rewarding the righteous and the wicked, and his manner of setting up his kingdom goes for naught. Said Dr. Samuel Zane Batten, D. D., in discussing this topic:— The old age is passing away. The great social reformation is coming. The eternal God is in his world, and he is stirring up the hearts of men to undertake a great and new and wonderful task. This is the age of the rediscovery of the kingdom of God. The state is coming to social self-consciousness. We are going to undertake the Christianization of the social order in the name of our God. The Spirit of Christ has entered into the political life of the world. The leaven of the kingdom has penetrated the measures of human life. God does not mean that Dives shall luxuriate in his palace while Lazarus starves at the gate. He dwelt upon the unchristian conditions of our day, and the unchristian doings of some of the people, and then said:— We cannot say that such a society is the social order that God wills or that God ordains. The mind of Christ is the mind that men are to show in their political relations. We shall each esteem others better than ourselves; we shall bear one another's burdens in the family circle and in civic life; the golden rule is to be just as binding upon political primaries as upon the church prayer-meeting. The Christianizing of the social order means that we are no more free to be selfish in the mill than at the family altar. It means that we are to take the principles of Christ out into the world with us into our modern complex order, into mill and store and city, and we are to stand or to fall with these principles. And if the principles of the Bible are not workable in the mill, then the Bible is not worth any more than a last-year's almanac on the church desk. Believing in the kingdom of God, it is for us to dedicate ourselves to the work of establishing that kingdom and getting the will of God done in our world. The time is coming for us to lay the crown of our industrial and civic relations at the feet of Christ. The conditions that are unchristian in our world every Christian must deplore; the necessity of carrying out the law of Christ every Christian must concede; and the establishment of Christ's kingdom in this world every Christian will pray for and work for. Nevertheless we know of no way of transforming those conditions only as individual hearts are converted by the power of the gospel working in the soul. The idea of transforming the world through political primaries is an idea born entirely outside of God's Word and outside of his purpose. While the Christian must carry out the will of Christ, he cannot compel another to do so; and while we pray for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, we are given no warrant in the divine Word for supposing that it will ever be brought about through the ballot-box, or that it will come in any other way than that way which he so clearly pointed out in his own language and through his inspired prophets. One must have a vivid and fertile imagination who can believe that “the spirit of Christ has entered into the political life of the world.” When, to protect the tariff bill against defeat, it was necessary for the President of the United States to warn the Senate of the United States against the evil designs of powerful lobbyists in that highest legislative body of our land, it does not look as if the spirit of Christ had entered very deeply into the soul of the body politic. No Christian will maintain that it is God's design that Dives should luxuriate in his palace while Lazarus starves at his gate. Neither is it God's design that sin should be in the world at all. But sin is here, and the starving Lazaruses are here, and the selfish, wealthy, luxuriating Diveses are here; and God has a plan by which sin and all its results will be wiped out, and righteousness and peace and joy and equality shall reign in its stead. But of that plan no word was heard at this conference. No reference was made to such texts of Scripture as this:— “To you that are afflicted rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus: who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believe (because our testimony unto you was believed) in that day.” 2 Thess. 1:7-10. Nor was any reference made to such texts as this:— “As the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man. . . . Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matt. 24:27-31. Although there was much said about the coming of the kingdom, there was no reference made to this text:— “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. These texts reveal something of God's program for closing up the history of this world and bringing in the reign of righteousness, the kingdom of Christ; but neither in them nor in any other text in the Bible is there any hint of such a consummation as that which the World's Christian Citizenship Conference—the National Reform Association—teaches the people to believe in and expect. Which is the true program? Which is the true solution of the problem of sin in this world? Both cannot be true, for they are opposed the one to the other. The true Christian, who cares more for God's way and to be in harmony with his purpose than for anything else, will cling to the program outlined by the Spirit of God, and will not be deceived by this program of the human for establishing the kingdom of God.