p. 130 | Caste in Churches

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 20, 1874

Caste in Churches.

THE NEW YORK Evening Post has lately made some interesting remarks on the tendency to a certain exclusiveness or caste in churches and public worship in that city. Churches are built mainly by the rich, and are managed according to their ideas and views. The result is, that public worship soon becomes very expensive, and all but those who are well-to-do in the world are virtually excluded from it. The ornaments of the church building, the comforts of the pews, and the general style of the establishment, all are such as people of wealth alone are accustomed to, or can afford to enjoy. As a consequence of all this, it is fast becoming the fact in New York, that the rich worship by themselves; and this is especially true of the fashionable rich; for everybody knows, there are rich everywhere who are not within the pale of fashion. According to the Evening Post, not only the poor, but very many of what are called the middle classes, are in this way compelled to find for themselves churches of their several denominations, which hold a secondary rank. This is, of course, contrary to the spirit of our people, and it is not surprising that the number is constantly increasing of those who are gradually ceasing to be attendants at any place of public worship whatever, and in continually increasing numbers, are spending their Sundays in other ways than in going to church.

There can be no question that the evil to which reference is thus made, is one which is already very serious in New York, and is also rapidly on the increase in all other large cities. In the opinion of very many, it is threatening the influence of religion itself among large classes of our population. Public worship has become needlessly expensive in a large portion of the congregations of nearly every city. None but the wealthy can afford to join its regular services. In addition to this, fashion is fast establishing, in too many of them, its cast-iron pale, within which no one but its chosen ones can enter. The music is such as only cultivated and artificial tastes can appreciate, and it costs what well-filled pockets alone can pay. The sermons, also, are too often only delicate and refined essays on the lesser morals of society, with occasional references to the vices or crimes of those who are never present to hear themselves described. Religion thus represented becomes a commodity, which only the favored few can obtain at the places where it is to be had.

Few things that can be named in connection with churches are to be more deprecated than this tendency to exclusiveness in public worship. It is unintentionally promoted by very many who, if they were aware of them, would shrink from the evil results which it is producing. There are those who would not, on any account, willingly encourage what they thought to be injurious to religion, but who still lend their sanction to this tendency to an exclusiveness which is dictated only by fashion and worldliness, and is wholly at variance with the genius of Christianity. Splendid churches are, no doubt, great and desirable ornaments to a city; music of the best masters, rendered by choirs borrowed from the opera-house, unquestionably brings relief to the monotony of a religious observance; sweet-voiced preachers, trained to prophesy only the smoothest things to their people, are often agreeable companions and excellent members of society; but all these are insufficient to maintain religion in its true place as a real power over the lives of men. They have for ages been most common in countries in which Christianity has been continually declining. And in these countries, too, it must be remembered, they have been shared alike by the poor and the rich, for the churches of the old world are very seldom the property, as with us, of those who worship in them. They belong to the State, and are managed in accordance with ideas of the equality of all classes of people, which are but imperfectly recognized in the Christian congregations of our American cities.

There are many who value religious institutions most highly, who are of the opinion that public worship is becoming too expensive to be within easy reach of the masses of the people, and that not a few among them are repelled from connection with Christian congregations on account of a certain exclusiveness which so often manifests itself in their management. We think such a result exceedingly to be deprecated, and it ought to be carefully guarded against. No reading from the library, no service at the lecture room, can take the place of the gospel preached from the pulpit and the public worship of God, without bringing a blight on the moral natures of men and on the best interests of society.—Providence Journal.