Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-05-07
Social Service Causes Trouble
in Presbyterian Denomination
Home Mission Board Gusts Secretary McAfee a
Leader in Church Comfy; Declared Reactionary
Triumph
tBy The Religious RambIer.)

with the cause of labor and social un-
l. rest
The most vigorous attacks upon the
social service phases of the Home
Boards work have been made by a
small paper published in Philadelphia,
The Presbyterian" which is sup
ported for purposes of propaganda by
little group of wealthy and conser-
vative Presbyterians. Mrs. William
Thaw, the mother of Harry Thaw, was
long the principal contributor to THE
Presbyterian's maintenance, but since
the heavy expenses of the famous
trials. 1t has been necessary for others
to cooperate. 1t is reported in Pres
byterian circles that DIR. Maitland
Alexander, who is connected by mar
| riage with the Jones-Laughlin steel
works, of Pittsburgh, is now one of
the financial hackers of THE Pres
byterian."
Friction With the Southern Church
simultaneously with this crisis in
the Presbyterian Church's administra-
ton of home missions has risen an
other, in way related to it. Secre-
tary McAfee has stood, publicly and
radically, for the most advanced form
of comfy and cooperation. He has
startled many a congregation by his
stgmatism of the sins of overchurch-
ing in small towns, and of spending
mission funds merely for the further
ance of a jealous sectarianism. He
mas openly repudiated the policy of
planting Northern Presbyterian
churches in communities in the South
where Southern Presbyterian Churches
already are at work.
Now there is an extraordinary
amount of discussion in the South and
Southwest of what is called the "inya-
SlOn' nf n.
Northern Home Mission Board. Some
leaders of the Southern church say
that union of the two bodies is farther
away in spirit than at any time for a
generation past.
The Rev. DR.. John n. Mills. of
Washington, D. c., clergyman of the
Northern Church who has been tray-
cling through the South making ad- adj
dresses for the Laymens Missionary
movement, wrote a protest in last
weeks Continent" against the condi-
tons he found in various parts of the
South.
While I personally saw nothing so
bad as that town of 800 people near
Memphis, Tenn, which has. five
churches, three of them Presbyterian,
did see town of 1000 which has
four Presbyterian churches. The num-
Der OF those having both a northern
and southern church, the former
and sometimes the latter also aided
by home mission grants, is consider
able.
'Of course, many of these feeble
and competing churches came to us
from the Cumberland body. and /
suppose they have a historic right to
be, at least for the present. But what
shall we say of those others which
came out of Southern churches, some-
times with considerable urging on the
part of secretaries and presbyterial
committees?
BY organizing and encouraging
these churches in southern territory
we are putting a stumbling block in
the way of church union greater than
any other which exists to-day. 1t has
aroused untold antagonism. One hears
nothing about differences in theology.
and little of sectional differences. But
the bitterness engendered by planting
and encouraging feeble churches in
communities whose PRESBYTERIAN
needs are already fully met is every
where apparent"
From all OF the foregoing facts it
'looks as If Yesterday and Tomorrow
were engaged in a grapple in the
Presbyterian church. The outcome
will interest all thinking people, both
within and without the churches.
THE RELIGIOUS RAMBLER.