The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-05-06
NOTHING TO DO

 and a vision; a fantasy that cannot be realized.
 NOTHING TO DO
 Now this Sunday, commerclaiized Ill part, is my ideal of how the day snail be observed. If you will add occasional baptisms and funerals and regular Sunday night drive 15 miles out to a , mining town for service; it is, in fact, l the way i spend by own day of rest. 1 But as d matter of fact it is seriously 1 open to question if more than zo,Wo l people in the city of Birmingham at- l tend Sunday services with any degree | of regularity. The rest of them are l wandering around trying to get through l a day with nothing to do. Golf provides amusement for a few hundred of them; I automobiles for a few thousands per haps, but where on Sunday shall We l find the 150,G00 of our population whom l seldom if ever any church draws with 1 in it's dcors? These are the people who
 constitute the Sunday problem The 1 Sunday problem is not What shall we | do with the movies?" The true problem l is "What will these people do with them
 selves?' And they have no union or association to speak for them, nor to | urge them to the polls tomorrow. Most 1 of them are working hard for living, and will have little if any chance to vote.
 For some reason the churches have
 not claimed them They have had every
 variety of religion presented to them
 that man has ever invented, and some l varieties that were invented by God | Himself Ever since there was city here our doors have been swinging wide. and yet they are outside. Why? Per
 haps we have been too dogmatic. Per l haps we have too often assumed an | I-am-holier-than-t thou attitude. Per
 haps we have had too many rules and regulations Perhaps we have daboled | in politics until as churches we have lost the respest of men. Perhaps the | churches have been too bigoted or mar
 row or ntolerant Perhaps the leaders
 of the churches have reproduced tho
 modes of thought of the Pharisees or | the time of Christ We cannot say
 NO RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION
 The fact is that there are tens of thou | sans in our midst who recognize no | religious obligation whatever, and yet they as much as we are the children or | God They have no church to go to-. l They have no golf clubs; no automobiles. Thousands of them even have no homes | They live in hallrooms and boarding houses, and they are lonely on Sunday with lonliness that passes the conn 1 prehension of the average busy pastor. i happen 10 know that I speak the truth, for in my own youth I was at times one of that lonely and idle t6rong.
 Where are these thousands who con- stitute our Sunday problem? They are 1 wandering the city streets on Sunuay
 afternoon. The bows are oggling ne | girls and the girls are smiling at the
 boys. They are playing the game Of life under terrific handicap, the game that begins with little So-called harm less flirting, and ends often in spiritual and moral ruin. They are trying to get through Sunday, long day of idle
 ness than hangs heavily on their hands | They are crying out for amusement as
 only youth can cry, and there is one
 thing of which you may be as sure as death: They are going to find amnse- l ment They are going to take it where they find it, and they are going to fol- low the line of least resistance in the
 taking. And this is not because they are wicked They are not nearly so wicked as you and I are if we shut the
 door of innocent amusement in the.r faces. It is simply that so many of
 them are young, and you and were once young. It is simply that they are
 human as you and I still are.
 1 NONGOING CHURCH PUBLIC
 There is our problem; to best con- | 1 sands who are too poor to take the only legitimate amusements that will be let if the movies are voted out of | existence Here is our problem: The non- -church-go public is going to be amused on Sunday. All of your laws
 and ordinances, though you pile them l from here to heaven and build them on foundation that reaches from
 here to the uttermost depths of the earth; your laws and ordinances are 1 not going to alter that unchangeablc | fact of human nature. The people al ( | going to be amused on Sunday. In l regard to that matter. you and have no choice. It is not going to be de- l termined by the way we chance to vote tomorrow. The only thing that 1 we are to determine is How are they I going to be amused?" Is it better for l them to crowd the streets and take | their amusement in the white light of l the public eye, or it is better that oy | withholding the innocent we should l invite them to amusement in more se- i cret and hidden ways? The cheap 1 rooming houses are open every day in 1 the week. Two Sundays ago. the first l Sunday that the picture houses were | closed. I am informed by local l clergyman that one of the biggest dice l games in the history of the eastern 1 sections of the city was conducted | near hs home under the shadow of q l church. The parks are open and the i "amusements' that the parks afford 1 are not always as innocent as some l seem to think. I hold no brief for | the moving pictures. God knows that | they ought to be reformed and cen | sored not on one, but on seven days 1 in the week But with all their im- 1 projections they are yet more inno- l cent than many other forms of en- 1 tertainment that neither the law nor 1 the church has yet been able to stop. 1 It is true that the Sunday pictures do i tend to commercialize Sunday, but re- 1 gardless of this, if there is any safe | guard in innocent amusement, and I | believe that there is, the people ought l to have 1t, for I am convinced that it is better thing in Gods sight to com
 mercialize every Sunday that has been