"CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR" AND "CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP."
By W. N. Glenn
CHRISTIAN endeavor is a most worthy endeavor, and the masses of the Y. P. S. C. E. are no doubt honestly and earnestly endeavoring to do Christian work. But unwittingly they are being manipulated by their elders and leaders for political purposes. A National Reform journal says:— The seventh plank in our Christian Endeavor is, 'Our Christian Citizenship Plank—Our Country for Christ, but as a society no entangling political alliances.' Inasmuch as the Christian citizenship movement, which the Christian Endeavor Society has espoused, is an effort to promote the cause of Christ through political reform, to establish his supremacy by means of politics, those who indorse the movement must logically enter the arena of politics. If entitled to vote, they must, to be consistent, vote and work with the party that upholds the principles sustained by the movement. To say that as a society there must be "no entangling political alliances," while the society urges its members into the entangling alliances of politics, is simply evading the issue. The apostle Paul thus speaks of the individual Christian's course: "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." The man who, more than any other individual, has given impetus to the present phase of the Christian citizenship cause is Professor Herron. He sounded the note in person from ocean to ocean, and received a marked indorsement by the ministry, especially by those who are actively engaged as guides of the Christian Endeavor Society. Professor Herron's slogan is a Christian state; his cure-all for existing evils throughout the land is a union of church and state. Of all the champions of the National Reform combination's schemes Professor Herron is the only one who has openly advocated them under a plea for church and state union. Others persistently refuse to admit that such a union will be the result of their clamor for the enforcement of religious dogma by civil law. In this respect Professor Herron is the most consistent of them all. A very significant sign of the times is the fact that notwithstanding Professor Herron's open declaration for church and state union, he has had far more extended indorsement and patronage from the ministry than any other National Reformer. When in California, he received an almost unanimous support from the ministry, and institutes were formed for the purpose of further inculcating his theories of Christian citizenship. And, as before stated, those who took a leading part in the advocacy of these principles are recognized leaders of the Christian Endeavor Society. In order that the reader may understand the drift of Professor Herron's Christian citizenship, or church and state teaching, we append an extract from one of his addresses delivered in this city:— There has never been a great revolution seeming to break with the past and make a new order of things, from which there has not been a terrible recoil sooner or later. The revolutionized nation or civilization has had to return and connect itself with the good substance of the evil forms from which it revoluted. The religious revolution which we call the Reformation was a universal loss as well as a gain, and we are already beginning to see that the future power of the church is involved in our finding some way to reunite our broken fragments, our discordant sects of Christendom, in the true and universal church. The Catholic Church was, after all, a spiritual splendor, and was historic with institutions which Protestantism can not afford to have done away.
In this utterance we have a key-note of the now popular Christian citizenship cry. And if the masses of the Christian Endeavor Society, especially the younger ones whose aim is purely Christian work, would pause a moment and reflect, they might realize to some extent the advantage that is being taken of their organization to make it practically an auxiliary of a most unholy purpose. One of the first things that the National Reform combination seeks to establish throughout the nation is compulsory Sunday observance, which is Rome's insignia of the authority of the church. As the logical fruits of the Sunday law are imprisonment, handcuffs, chain-gangs, etc., as already manifested in nine states of the Union, we naturally suppose that one of the "institutions which Protestantism can not afford to have done away" would be something akin to the Inquisition. At least, it is plainly to be seen that this Christian citizenship work, to whose support the Christian Endeavor Society is being inveigled by designing manipulators, is a work for making the people of this nation speak as an image to the papal theory of church and state union. While the rank and file of the Endeavorers, especially the sisters, aim only to do legitimate Christian work, the machinery of the organization and the voting element is fast being turned by its leaders into an engine of religious tyranny. Such is the power of the deceptions in vogue in these last days. The work of the great adversary is to deceive the whole world (Rev. 12:9), and such is his power to deceive, through false prophets, that he would deceive, if possible, the very elect (Matt. 24:24). Just before the coming of the Lord he will work "with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." 2 Thess. 2:9, 10. The "love of the truth" includes the love of God's law; for David says, "Thy law is the truth." The reason, then, that the Christian Endeavor workers are susceptible to the Christian citizenship delusion is because they ignore a part of God's law. They accept Rome's interpretation of it, namely, that the first day of the week is the Sabbath; an interpretation which has also been accepted by the Congress of the United States. Thus they reject that important part of the law which is God's special sign between him and his people; and they accept that substitute which Rome holds up as her special sign of authority. Having rejected one point of the law, they are consequently "guilty of all." James 2:10. Hence we see how easily the Christian Endeavor masses may be unwittingly led to accept Professor Herron's theory of returning to that condition from which the Reformation was a revolution. How naturally, too, will they step into the political road as the most feasible way of return, for the entire machinery of Rome's "spiritual splendor" never was anything but a great religio-political structure.