p. 13 | Religious Plays

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1911

Religious Plays

THE evils of theater-going in the past have been augmented during the last two or three years by the marked tendency to present so-called religious plays in European and American playhouses. Most of these plays are sentimental in character. Some love-scene is introduced, and even the histrionic features are pictured in such a way as to detract from the sacredness and dignity of the events. These plays serve to make a burlesque of religion. They drag it down into the depths, to be made the subject of jibe and scoff and ridicule.

These are days in which nothing seems too sacred to be exploited for commercial gain or to meet the pampered taste of depraved minds. Yet doubtless there are well-meaning persons, and even Christians, who may be deceived by the advertising of these so-called religious plays, and even be found to commend them. There needs to be a quickening of individual conscience. The devoted child of God will find other avenues for the exercise of thought and the employment of leisure than theater-going.