The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-01-04
It'll VIu OttO1tI
Close Description Of a PFacticed
Idea Of The Day.
IN THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH
A Developer ent of the Practical
Activities of Christian Leaders
sphere of the Church y
Literary Digest.)

/ y
One OF the most notable develop
ments in the organic life and practical
! activities OF the Christian church at
the present day is what has come TO be
known, for want of better name, as
the Institutional Church. The title is
applied to those churches that have
made themselves the center OF a Gus
ter of auxiliary or dependent societies
and agencies engaged in charitable,
| philanthropic, and educational work.
| They may be found in almost all Pro
| testant denominations, and in some
| Others Among the more prominent
| churches belonging to this distinctive
class are Berkeley Temple, Boston; st.
Bartholomew Episcopal and Madison
| Avenue Presbyterian churches, New
York; the Peoples Tabernacle, Jersey
City; and the Temple, Philadelphia.
| There are enough of them altogether
| to form a national organization known
as the Open Church League, body
which holds it's annual convention at
Worcester, Mass, during the present
| month Some idea of the scope and
variety of the work carried on by one
of these institutional churches may be
gathered from a list of auxiliary socie-
ties connected with one of them in New
York City, as given in the Charities
Directory for 1898. He"a we have
charitable bureau, an employment Du-
reau, a kindergarten, a sewing school,,
| penny provident fund, clubs for girls,
boys, and men, each provided with
gymnasium, reading-room, and baths;
| laicnpnSarV a
| zeal clinic, and provision for mothers
meetings, and special services for Ar
| menians Chinese and SwedeS. The
descriptive list alone of the societies
| in one of these churches occupies more
| than two full pages in the Charities
| Directory. The greater part of them
| are in operation every day all the year
| around One or more separate build
| ings have been erected and fitted up eX-
| pressly for their use, and several paid
superintendent and managers are en-
| ployed.
The religious public is not altogeth-
| er agreed to the wisdom and pro-
priety of conducting churches on this
basis, and they have been severely
criticized in some quarters. 1t is not
| the business of church, it is said, to
teach people housekeeping, to run
| banks and employment bureaus, nor to
afford means of recreation and amuse-
ment. The churches that do these
| things, it is cOntended, are departing
from their proper sphere of action, and
weakening their influence as centers
OF spiritual light and religious teach
ing The New York Evening Post re
| verts to some of these points in an ed
itorial on Institutional Christianity.
After giving paragraph summing up
the institutional work of Berkeley
| Temple, Boston, and some other
churches, the Evening Post says:
Every city in the land has its tab
| ernacle, or temple, or Peoples church,
or plain, everyday Trinity church, or
First Presbyterian, which are immense
business establishments. The church
buildings have lost their old awfulneSs
and Shut-up seclusiOn, and swarm every
day in the week with busy teachers and
organizers and entertainers and man
ayers. A divine of the austerer type of
Puritan days would be as much at a
loss in one of those modern hives of
industry that are known as institution
al churches as he would be in Vanity
| Fair itself.
Good or bad. the sweeping change
we speak of has come. Wise and good
men differ on the question whether it
not. We think it is. The actual HUI
man good done by church that thus
holds itself steadily in contact with
actual human need must be much
greater than that within the reach of
one living in the old sacred aloofness.
The motives leading to the change of
attitude may be mixed; there may
have been in it a feeling that some
thing must be done to attract people
to church; people who have yielded TO
the new attractions may often be lovers
of amusement rather than lovers of
goodness That does not greatly mat
ter. If the net result is a benefit, both
to the community and the church. we
need inquire no further But the trans
formed church certainly has had, and
will yet have more strikingly, a pro-
found influence upon the habits and
mental attitude of those within her
pale-especially the clergy, and upon
some aspects of il we wish to remark.
1T has brought to prominence the
business type of clergyman. He has al
ways existed here and there, in a more
or less developed form. but the Institu-
tional Church has made him indispen-
sable. The superintendent of factory,
or the manager of a department store,
can have hardly severer demands made
upon MS executive ability than has the
head of a modern church with all it's
multiplied philanthropic activities. He
must be able to thread his way through
a maze of affairs, and keep each clear.
His tact and energy are constantly ap-
pealed to, and the planning Of his
weeks campaign is like the marshaling
of an army corps. We have all seen
him-thiS modern typical clerical ad-
miniStratOr of an immense eccleSiaStic-
al business. His alert precision of
manner and Impotence of all dawdling
devastators of his day would we'll be-
| come The manaeer of railway