Theaters as Teachers

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 24, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 12.

Theaters as Teachers.

Right in connection with the constantly growing tendency among ministers and other professed moral teachers in saying that the theater has a place, that Christianity may recognize it as an ally, etc., etc., there are others who dare lift their voice against it and tell us that the tendency in the theater is constantly to the bad. Rabbi Wise, of New York, is recently reported as saying: “It makes for degradation, for absolute moral rottenness. I wish to God our skirts were clean, and that there were fewer Jews to blame. The managers seem to vie with one another in producing the most degrading things, and they insult us by implying that we want such stuff, and

that you and I don’t want to see a clean play. I indict the theaters as they are to-day. I don’t care if every manager is a Jew. They are all heathen. I indict those who are pandering to vice whether Jew or Christian. It is the debasement of the nation.” And yet Rabbi Wise feels that the stage ought to be an uplifting agency. In the very nature of the case it can not be. The very element of stage life and stage success is not reality, but imitation, and the mockery of the whole thing all through and through takes possession of those who make it a success; and the difficulty is that if moral life came into it, it would spoil it as a success. Yet Rabbi Wise tells us there is too much of penal law and too little of moral law, and declares, “I want the moral principle applied.” Two years ago there was a strong enough protest against the wretched Salome to shut it out of New York theaters. Now it is being enacted everywhere, and it is almost impossible to accommodate the crowds that rush to see the wretched, disgusting play. Archbishop Farley, of New York, says: “If the present rage for nudity and the portrayal of lives of immorality continues, we shall soon reach a pass where it will be folly to assert that we have any standards at all.” And all this logically follows the setting aside of the law of God, the great standard of morality.