p. 7 | Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1902

Note and Comment

THE failure of religion, as expressed in the prevailing denominational systems of the present day, to satisfy the wants of the masses of the common laboring people, especially the laboring men, is a fact of which frequent evidence is given at this time. It is now reported that workingmen in the natural gas region of Indiana, not content with merely expressing their want of sympathy with the modern popular church by keeping away from it, are ready to go further and organize a church for themselves, which will, as they believe, meet the requirements of their circumstances. A press telegram dated at Indianapolis says:—

Organized labor in the natural gas belt, Marion, Grant County, where many factories have been established, has divorced itself entirely from denominational churches, and is preparing to build a church of its own, from which the rich will be excluded, and whose membership will be limited to organized workingmen and their sympathizers. It is proposed to pay the pastor and all the running expenses of the church by assessments upon the unions, and thus make it free in the broadest possible sense of the word. One of the projectors of the movement said to-day that the churches offer no inducements to the laboring classes to become regular attendants, and this fact has led to the labor-church experiment.