The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1919-02-11
Matter of Trenches
Against the Church
Underlying Negative Attitude of
American Churches Condemned
by A.ev. DR.. FOsdick
THE LITERARY DIGEST FOR FEB.

| hC AlICldly Dl6Col lOT
Tried in the trenches and found
wanting is the judgment which q
thoughtful New York preacher
whose words have carried far, de-
clares against religion as commonly
practiced today in America, and he
considers it a glorious, ominous
fact" that some millions of our sol
diers are returning with no great love
for that conventional religion in
their hearts. Selfishness, pettiness,
and false social distinctions are some
of the specific counts on which rests
this judgment as delivered by the
Rev. DR.. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a
Baptist clergyman recently chosen
preacher of the "Old First" Presby-
terrain church, of New York City.
The reaction of fighting men to con-
ventional religion furnishes him with
a vantage-point from which he maps
out and condemns the underlying
negative" attitude of American
churches, out of which proceed the
specific evils which he denounces.
"The church may we'll desire to
know what the soldiers are think
ing,' he writes in The Atlantic
Monthly, and justifies the reliance
which he places on their judgment:
"Of all the men of our generation
l would choose to know what they
think about God, and the institutions
that are supposed to represent him,
and the people who are accustomed
to proclaim him. l would choose
them, not simply because they are
the epitome of our American man.
hood at its best, but because this
experience of war, in spite of the
self-limitation which it imposes, has
been an apocalypse to every sensitive
man who has gone into it.. Non
essentials inevitably fall away; the
conventional trappings and drapery
of life are torn asunder; men, freed
from traditional bias, look first
hand at the grim, elemental facts
of life. They are not going thru this
mingled hell Of agony and heaven of
devotion without growing WISE"
But with all this appreciation of
the soldier as religious critic, the
writes adopts anything but a "plas-
ter-saint" view of those men whom,
as he says, necessity forces to
tougher their spirits against the
impact of life, and be as thoughtless
as they can" They leave a part Of
their souls behind when they go into
the trenches, true, and the part of
their souls, probably, that is most
interested in religion; but this very
spiritual stripping for action makes
them more impatient of sham, in
tolerant of ineffective words, sick of
and bigotry and of pre-
tensions that are full of wind" AL
ready one chaplain is quoteds as re-
porting: Our boys look upon the
folk at home as children in exper-
lence by comparison with them.
They went out boys They will come
back like the Judgment Day."
So it is not the fact that war is
DR.. Fosdick decides,
hat has "widened the gulf between
nan and the church." He finds q |
better answer in some things in the
life on which the hostility |
If the soldier falls, and is excusable |
or falling:
For one thing, how intolerable to |
hose who have caught the devotion |
If the army is certain habitual sell |
ishness in the churches appeal to |
men! II in France today, in speak
ng to the soldiers, any one suggests
hat perhaps they soon will die that
I they do they may go to hell unless
hey are prepared and that there
ore they had better believe some
hing religious to avoid the sad con-
urgency, that man incontinently
huts up, or else he leaves France, or
more probably he does both. The
oldiers will not listen to him; the
.rmy will not tolerate him. The
eason is not simply that playing on
nOrbib fears is an assault on the
rmy's morale: deeper reason