Long Beach Sunday Concerts and the Churches
By E. Hilliard
LONG Beach is a great summer resort, in Southern California; and the “Pike,” a paved promenade on the ocean beach, is thronged with people during the heated term, especially on Sunday evenings. Music is provided by a brass band at the expense of the city. It appears that the city council has control of the band, and regulates its hours for playing. The hours of 2:30 and 5:30 P.M. had been previously fixed upon, and for the past two years the band has occupied these hours. The larger number of the people, by far, congregate in the evening, and for this reason the patrons of the band desired the city council to change the hour from 5:30 to 7 P.M. This stirred the pastors of the city, and an evening was appointed to discuss the matter before the council. The Sunday before the appointed meeting, the pastors took a vote of their congregations as to whether they favored the band's playing during the hour of church services or not. On the night of the appointed meeting, the principal opponents of the band's representatives were the Rev. Mr. Rasmussen, of the First Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Mr. Rogers, of the Church of Christ. The former said he could see no good reason why the band should play at 7 P.M., instead of giving two concerts in the afternoon; that the people all along had been satisfied with this arrangement; and that he represented fifteen hundred people who protested against Sunday night concerts. He further stated that six of the most prominent denominations in Long Beach had on Sunday night voted almost unanimously against the band's playing at 7 P.M. on Sundays. In opposition to this, the Rev. Mr. Baker, Unitarian, said, among other things: “If the churches are unable to compete with the band, they had better go out of business. For my part, I am willing to take my chances with a brass band. The people are too enlightened to permit of such interference, by the churches, with the people's rights. It is time to divorce the church from politics.” The pastor of the Church of Christ took clear-cut issue with this, and emphatically endorsed the position of the Episcopal pastor. During the debate, one minister vehemently charged his opponent with absolute falsehood. The question was decided in favor11of the churches. But what a spectacle — the church quarreling with its opponents, and charging them with falsehood, before the civil authorities! As we listened to the animated discussion, it reminded us of a scene in the fourth century, when the bishops appealed to the emperor to remedy a similar perplexity. At a church convention held in Carthage, 401 A.D., the bishops passed a resolution to send up a petition to the emperor praying “that the public shows might be transferred from the Christian Sunday to some other day of the week.” The reason given in support of this petition was, “The people congregate more to the circus than the church.” (Torrey’s Neander, page 300.) The church could not then stand competition. She wanted a monopoly, and she got it. Subsequently a law was passed that closed the circuses and the theaters, and the temptation was removed. The church soon gained full control of the civil power, and the pages of history are burdened with the cruel persecutions carried on by the church dominating the civil power. If these worldly entertainments that are permissible at any hour on week-days are to be prohibited on Sunday because they interfere with the workings of the church, is it not a clear acknowledgment that she has forsaken her source of divine power, and therefore is unable to compete successfully with the world? Pastors and people may argue that the temptations to violate the day of rest should be removed by legal enactment, but such a course is contrary to the Lord’s appointed way. On that principle, all sorrow, misery, sin, and death could have been averted by guarding or removing the prohibited tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This would have destroyed man’s free moral agency. God does not want His church to work upon such a principle.