The Passing of the Evangelist
QUOTING the Omaha Bee in a caustic criticism of the professional evangelist, the Lutheran of February 16 adds the following sensible remarks concerning some who carry forward religious work under this honored title, but whose conduct brings discredit upon the holy calling which they profess to follow:— Want of sincerity and genuine character evidently accounts for the waning popularity of the professional evangelist. The mercenary spirit is more manifest in most of our modern evangelists than religious zeal. Their vaudeville antics and coarse expressions, resorted to for the manifest purpose of advertising, were shocking to the people of real piety; and the disposition of both pulpit and pew to require definite knowledge regarding the character and habits of evangelists before approving them, has had a tendency to discourage evangelism as a profession. Unfortunately the Moodys are rare, and the mountebanks plentiful. Not long ago the writer was shown a letter from one of these vaudeville-evangelists to a friend with whom he had been associated as a street-fakir, in which this new-fledged revivalist, after telling about the big collections he was receiving, used this language: “This is a better graft than the patent-medicine game!” Imagine a man of that character as a propagandist of Christianity!