Ancient Perils in Modern Churches (Part 2)

Religious, as well as social and political, problems have not been the same in every age and generation. Martyrdom and persecution were the prices of being a Christian in the first century of the church. Later came a millennium of papal assumption, accompanied by tyranny, superstition, and ignorance. Emerging from that benighted era came Protestant creeds, orthodox denominationalism, religious confusion. Then the plea for a return to the ancient order of things. But the people were blinded by Protestant creeds, Lutheran, Calvinist, Wesleyan, and general orthodox views, and those who would lay aside party names, party creeds, and party doctrines, to “speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent,” were opposed by religious prejudice and intolerance hardly imaginable today.

While prejudice exists today in milder form, yet there is a “tolerance” being preached that would amount to signing an armistice with all error and declaring peace with Satan himself.

The peril today is compromise in doctrine, general indifference in religion, and worldliness in the church. The recent press announcement of the union of Congregational and Christian Churches, with a set of human by-laws and resolutions nothing short of a new creed to govern the united bodies, illustrates the present-day tendencies toward compromise. The spirit of indifference finds sufficient illustration in the common sentiment expressed in nearly every religious conversation that “it makes no difference what one believes if his heart is right,” which is about as rational as saying that it makes no difference what disease one has if his health is good!

While these are the influences prevailing generally in religion, there is one that more vitally affects the church from within. It is not the problem of prejudice and intolerance of the world toward the church, but of worldliness in the church. An alliance with the world and mammon threatened the church at Pergamum. An alliance of the same nature threatens the church today--ancient perils in modern churches. Money and pleasure are the two absorbing interests today. An avalanche of worldliness threatens to engulf society, including the home and the church. Members of the church freely patronize the dance, play cards, engage in promiscuous mixed swimming in public bathing pools (which would be better named “cesspools,” morally), and frequent the vulgar movie and vaudeville, the parent of all the moral laxity and social corruption of today. All such things once under ban in decent society are now freely practiced by prominent members of the church. Puerile attempts are made to defend them and puny excuses are offered to justify them by those whose conduct in such things nullifies the effect of gospel preaching in practically every community today. For when the church does everything the world does, how can the world be reached with the gospel?

To be continued…

Foy E. Wallace, Jr.