p. 122 | Church Amusements by P. R. Russell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1879

Church Amusements.

By P. R. Russell

One of the alarming signs of the times is the amazing and widespread mania for church amusements, both to please the young and raise funds out of unwilling pockets for religious purposes. The infection seems to have spread into nearly all denominations, from the Papists on one side to the utter Liberal on the other. Fun-making and hilarity are the great attractions, to allure the young—not to Christ, but to social intercourse, at “our meetings,” and enable the cunning sharpers in Zion to sponge a little money out of their leaky pockets. There are many insurmountable objections to this, as church work, and among them I will suggest the following:—

These amusements are gotten up, in general, on a kind of false pretense. The plea generally is, with the showmen and women who start up and run these frolics, that it is for the benefit of the young folks, to interest them in meetings, form a more intimate friendship with them and the church; but the whole tendency is in the opposite direction from that of interesting them in strictly religious meetings. The appetites and passions catered to are morbid, and the more they are pampered by nocturnal banqueting and hilarity, the more the morbid passions are developed, and habits of conviviality become fixed; the more the mind is fascinated, the less and less is thought or cared for the solemn and serious matters of public worship or personal repentance or the soul’s salvation. So far from being satisfied with an occasional “good time” in the line of convivial pleasures furnished by the church, they naturally run more and more to these entertainments, whenever there is an open door. So far from doing good to the young, these operations in Zion repel them, harden their tender hearts against serious impressions, and plunge them deeper and deeper in the slough of supreme worldliness and voluptuousness. By running plays and midnight frolics for our young folks, we naturally erase all the good, serious impressions we seek to make on their minds by Sunday-school lessons and preaching the gospel; and when they go out into the world, free from home restraints, we may reasonably expect they will, as they do, to a great extent, drop out of the circle of the church goers, and that Sunday will be the gala day of the week for hilarious amusements.

The cheat is, if possible, still more glaring. The real object generally, on the part of the caterers is, not simply to amuse the young, as a benevolent operation, but to sponge money out of their scanty pockets to pay bills that should never have been contracted, or should be cheerfully paid by those who are resorting to these miserable shifts to get rid of their own obligations. The young are passing through the perils of a transition from childhood to manhood, and they need kind care and good training. They need restraints and salutary lessons on self-denial, the bridling in of their passions and appetites. But if the churches, and all the secret fraternities and clubs in town, in addition to all the traveling shows, spread the fascinating entertainments as traps before them, and all seek to draw them in as the spider does the fly, what chance is there for them to save either money or character? They should learn, if possible, to say to these charmers, with their siren song, “No, No; I have better business on hand.” —P. R. Russell, Baptist, in Messiah’s Herald.