Sunday Diversions

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 9, 1911

Sunday Diversions

THAT Sunday diversions in various parts of the country are seriously affecting church attendance is apparent. The pastors in Newport have been much exercised over this situation for some time. Recently from every Episcopal pulpit in that city, a pastoral letter was read appealing to the people to resist the inclination to absent themselves from the church service, and to uphold the hands of their ministers. Washington Gladden, in a letter of resignation addressed to the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, refers to the same tendency. According to the Buffalo Express of September 5, he says:—

I do not attribute the absence of church-members in many cases to disaffection; in most cases I believe it is simply lack of interest. For some reason they have formed the habit of church neglect. Some of them devote their Sunday to pleasure; the ways of Sunday diversion have been multiplying of late. All this means that the interests of recreation have taken precedence, in the minds of many church-members, of the interests of the higher life. The fact that this is taking place everywhere does not comfort me. This is the alarming thing.

The alarming thing, as Dr. Gladden observes, is that this condition is not apparent alone in Columbus, Ohio, but that it is taking place everywhere. It indicates a lessening of the spiritual tone that once pervaded the religious life of the community. The church to-day has many competitive interests, the world is bidding high for the following of the multitude, and too many of the professed children of Christ are heeding the call. We need to-day a revival of the old-time spirit of faith and faithfulness which once characterized the professed church of Christ.