p. 8 | MISTAKING THE MISSION by S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 50.

MISTAKING THE MISSION.

By S.

REV. CHAS. H. BRENT, of Boston, has been elected by the Episcopal Church to the office of Bishop of the Philippines, and has announced his acceptance of the office. That the new bishop is a convert to the idea of the union of secular and religious things, the interference of the clergy in the affairs of State, is plainly evident from his own declaration of what such an officer's duties would be in the Philippines. The following is his statement of the matter:—

The bishop who goes to the Philippine Islands goes to stand for righteousness in civil life, to make civil service what it should be there, to promote Christian education, to further the interests of American civilization in that country, which is now our responsibility, and foster the true elements of our own civilization. It is no longer a question of imperialism or of anti-imperialism. We have our duty to perform. It is to give these people—for they are ours now—all that we are capable of giving them.

It has been argued by some members of our church that because the Roman Catholic Church is established in that country we have no business there. Do not think that the bishop goes to the Philippines as the enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. He goes as the enemy of their enemies—of lust, extortion, dishonor, and oppression.

If the last sentence of the quotation could be shown to be true, the “lust, extortion, dishonor and ‘oppression’” must all have been perpetrated by the Filipinos. But we had understood that those were the things from which the Filipinos have been struggling for release for centuries; that they were the ones who had suffered those things, suffered them at the hands of a religious despotism. It is difficult to understand how the bishop can go there as the enemy of that despotism’s enemies, and still be the friend and well-wisher of the Filipino. It was the oppression, extortion, and dishonor which the Filipinos suffered at the hands of the friars that finally resulted in the loss of the islands to Spain. The Church used the State for its own ends, for the enforcement of its own demands. The result was continued rebellion against the government, and its final expulsion; but the Church is still there—and so are its enemies. The bishop who goes there as the enemy of those enemies, goes as the friend of Rome, an apologist for all she has done in those islands, standing for those very principles that lost the islands to the Spanish crown.

The bishop will “stand for righteousness in civil ‘life,’” and will seek “to make civil service what it ‘should be there.’” But how about the “great ‘commission’”? It seems to have been wholly buried under the glittering phraseology of a political religion. The “great commission” reads, “Go ye ‘into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every ‘creature.’” But we hear nothing of this among the platitudes of the bishop. It is “civil service” and “American civilization” that are to be the burden of the Episcopal mission to the Philippines, the very duties which the government has placed upon its accredited representatives there. Thus it is that our great religious bodies are laboring for a union of Church and State in this government—a union in fact and effect, if not in outward form. Gradually and almost imperceptibly the doctrine of the duty of the church to interfere in political affairs is gaining adherents and influence throughout the country. The great church body is being swept from its moorings on the rising tide of a political religion. “Civic ‘righteousness’ and ‘American civilization’” are usurping the place of the true Gospel in the great pulpits of the land, and every performance of a real religious duty is given a political turn by these misguided teachers. The truth of God is thus smitten in the house of its supposed friends. The kingdom of God, which Christ declared was “not of this ‘world’” is made to appear of this world wholly, with a bare tinge of religious sentiment.

It is hardly supposable that a missionary who goes to a foreign people with such a commission in one hand and a deed of ownership in the other (as this official does, judging from his own declaration) will either fitly represent Christ, or win for Him the sincere worship of that purchased people. He who regards himself as the owner of any man is in no condition to preach to that man the Gospel of Christ. The bishop says, “They are ours now.” Who made them ours? Did the $20,000,000 which the United States paid Spain give into our possession the souls and bodies of the Filipinos? If so, the emancipation proclamation was in vain, and we have since the Spanish war enslaved more human beings than were liberated in 1864.

Really, if this is the burden, the message, and the attitude of the new bishop to the Philippines, it were better that he should remain in America until he shall receive a spiritual eyesight, and be endowed with power from on high. S.