NOT CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
By William N. Glenn
ONE of the addresses at the late Christian Endeavor Convention in San Francisco was on the subject of “Christian Endeavor and Christian Citizenship,” by Josiah Strong, D.D., of New York. After an array of facts and figures showing the extent and increase of political corruption in the country, he asked, “What are Christian Endeavorers going to do about it?” Then he proposed a remedy, the substance of which was ministerial alliance with Christian Endeavor auxiliary forces. Where there are already ministerial associations, they can carry on the work. Where there are none, such alliances or associations should be formed at once. They should then district their community, and assign young Christian Endeavorers to these districts as messengers, under the direction of the ministers. Then when any legislation or other movement is to be opposed, or some proposition is to be advocated, the community could be quickly canvassed by these ever-ready messengers, either with literature or petitions. In brief, this proposition for political reform is based in the suggestion that the ministers manipulate the young Christian Endeavorers in the interest of what they deem good politics. This is stooping far below the original design, or the ostensible design, of the Christian Endeavor Society. It is foreign to the purposes which have induced most of the young people to unite with the society. It is foreign to the work in which they, especially the young ladies, have hitherto engaged. It is a terrible fall from a work of Christian benevolence in behalf of the kingdom of heaven, to take up the scramble for office and the task of patching up the fast-decaying and soon-to-be annihilated governments of this world. Jesus Christ set a perfect example of Christian endeavor before the world, and he in no way entered the political arena, nor sought in a political way to purify the world's institutions. He sought men, to win them over to God and to his work of going about doing good. He sent out his “messengers” to be “fishers of men,” for the very purpose of bringing them out of the entanglements of this world and setting them to work in the interests of his kingdom, which is “not of this world.” The apostle Paul, who was a faithful minister of the Word, says, “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.” In the course of Dr. Strong's remarks he said that we have no longer a “government of the people by the people for the people,” but instead we have a government of the people by the boss for the machine. This is true, the situation is all that he represents it to be; but what about his suggested remedy? Fully carried out, it would be a government of the people by the ministers for the church. It is a question for the people to consider, whether politicians who openly claim to be politicians and nothing else, are any worse as political bosses than professed ministers of Christ who step down from their high calling to entangle themselves with the affairs of this life. It is a question for Christians to earnestly consider, whether they can afford to give up their citizenship in heaven to strive for the mastery as citizens of the corrupt, dying governments of earth. No man can of right be a citizen of two kingdoms at the same time. Christ said of his disciples, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Then any participation in the world's political struggles can not be legitimate “Christian endeavor.”