The Sunday Circus Issue of the Fifth and Twentieth Centuries
By S. B. Horton
In New Orleans recently there took place an episode which will furnish food for reflection, and we make reference to it in the interest of a forewarning. A certain circus had advertised to perform in the city on Sunday, November 11, following a street parade. A committee of Protestant ministers called on Mayor Behrman to protest against the proposed parade on Sunday, and to get him to prohibit the same. The reasons assigned were that it would disturb the church services, and, in the language of one of the ministers, “that the parade would draw thousands of children from Sunday-schools, interfere with morning services, and otherwise tend to lower the moral standard of Sabbath observance in a first-class city.” The mayor replied that he would not stand for any disturbance of church services, and would prohibit the parade. In the meantime the agent of the circus secured the license to perform, and when informed that the parade part would have to be dispensed with, the agent told the mayor that he could not prohibit the same. With this agreed the city attorney. The mayor then insisted that the parade should not be held in the forenoon. This was agreed to and carried out, the mayor having written the ministers in reference to the situation. The parade took place, and attracted considerable attention. In a day or two the ministers’ committee called upon the mayor and charged him with bad faith. This was resented in earnest yet polite language, and the matter has caused considerable stir in some quarters. The way it is viewed by the Daily Picayune may be judged by the following editorial:— “Truant Christians and the Sunday Circus”
“A committee of Christian ministers has waited on the mayor to state a grievance or express indignation at the fact that a circus parade was held in the city last Sunday, while the people should have been worshiping in their respective churches, whereas the members of the congregations were playing truant and looking at the parade.” “The Picayune does not know what promises, if any, the mayor had previously made to his reverend visitors, and therefore is ignorant of the degree to which their indignation was justified, but except in the cases of the few churches which are located on Canal Street, where the parade was held, if in those churches religious exercises were being had, they were evidently violently disturbed, and are entitled to serious consideration. But as to churches at a distance whose congregations played truant, the remedy seems to be in the hands of the ministers themselves.” “The clergy possesses the prerogative to reprove, to censure, and to discipline their church-members for any infraction of church regulations or relaxation of religious zeal, and this would seem a more obvious course of conduct than seeking to pour out their wrath upon the conditions that tempted their flock to stray away. Some years ago a committee of the clergy organized a movement against the Sunday newspapers because they were charged with keeping church-members away from public worship.” “That movement soon came to an end when the ministers realized that they were able to discourse on themes vastly more important and thrillingly interesting than anything published in a secular newspaper, and if they would only take advantage of their opportunities, they would have no reason to complain of the Sunday press. The man who has the mission to preach salvation to sinful and criminal human beings has only to present the fact with the zeal and fervor of a Whitefield or a Moody, and in the simple language used by them, and there is not a church or public hall or theater in the city that will contain the eager and reverential crowd that will seek to hear.” To the student of history this whole situation savors of a similar condition which antedated some of the Sunday legislation of the fourth and subsequent centuries. Neander in his “History of the Christian Religion and Church,” speaks of the things which led to the Sunday law of A. D. 425, in this language:— “Owing to the prevailing passion at that time, especially in the large cities, to run after the various shows, it so happened that when these spectacles fell on the same days which had been consecrated by the church to some religious festival, they proved a great hindrance to the devotion of Christians, though chiefly, it must be allowed, to those whose Christianity was the least an affair of the life and of the heart.” It would seem that the Christianity of some of the people of that time was at a very low ebb when a circus could interfere with their church duty. All work had been prohibited (but not play) in order that the people could attend church. But when a circus came to town, the people flocked to it rather than to the church. Says Neander again:— “Church teachers . . . were, in truth, often forced to complain that in such competitions the theater was vastly more frequented than the church.” So it was necessary to form a church “trust,” and according to Hefele’s “History of the Church Councils,” a council was held at Carthage in June, A. D. 401, and the following canon enacted:— “CANON 5.—On Sundays and feast-days no plays may be performed.” To make this effective the bishops sent up a petition to Emperor Honorius, praying that “the public shows might be transferred from the Christian [?] Sunday and from feast-days, to some other days of the week.” This was not successful until 425, when the desired law was passed. This kind of work led to the terrible history of the Dark Ages. And can not the true Christian see that for the church to lean upon any other than the divine arm for sustenance is to lower its standard of righteousness? To be sure, the disturbing of any church service is a manifest interference with the civil right to assemble in peaceable meeting, and the state should punish for infractions against this right. This would be true in the matter of disturbing any lawfully assembled gathering. But where the disturbance lies in the issue as to the sanctity of any day, the state can not interfere without becoming a partisan in religious controversy, a position entirely out of accord with the teachings of the founders of this country, as incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is the right and privilege of a religious sect to propagate its doctrine about the sanctity of a day. And these should not be molested nor interfered with in the exercise of this right of free speech. But when such sect asks and demands of the state that it lend its arm of force in assisting to propagate its teaching, it not only demands of the state something entirely outside the state’s prerogatives, but it also is contrary to the teachings of the Head of the church, who said, and still says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” S. B. HORTON.