What Our Country Owes The Church 9/9/45
Scripture: Matthew 16: 13-27
Texts: Matthew 16: 18b; “...I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And I Timothy 3: 15b; ..... “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”
A great deal has happened in the world since our last union service in this church on the last Sunday of July! The end of the fighting in the world’s most destructive war came with the speed and power of an avalanche; when atomic bombing, Russian entry into the Far Eastern war and Japanese desire to negotiate for peace were all crowded into one terrible and hopeful week.
We begin this year’s church work and worship in a world turning toward peace, for the first time in years. How mountainous are the tasks of peace after the devastations of war! But how thankful we all are, to be able to turn toward them! As a church, we must give ourselves increasingly to these tasks through the months and the years ahead.
During the war years, the church has tried to continue its mission of learning, practicing and spreading the good news of God as revealed in Christ. The church, as such, has not been a belligerent. Most of its members have been involved in one way or another in war effort. They have tried to meet the opportunities for mercy and Christian service to soldiers and civilians alike everywhere. Church members have given money and materials for help to those who are stripped of their means of living by war - the homeless, hungry, ill-clad and otherwise hopeless. Its members have given service in USO centers, Red Cross, and countless other channels of service. They have filled in the places left vacant by those in the service. In large numbers, they have entered the armed services, as their turn came to serve, and have given months and years, health and life to the defense of country. Many of the church’s ordained ministers have gone along with Army, Navy and Marines to take the Christian fellowship of church to soldiers, sailors and marines wherever their duty has called them. More than 400 Congregational Christian ministers alone have served in chaplaincy with the United States forces. Church members have taken their part in keeping morale as high as possible, and on as good level as possible. In such ways has the church tried to serve and encourage all that is good in the nation. It has also offered criticism and suggestions on national policy, some of which have seemed valuable to the strategists and statesmen.
In such ways the church has served the nation. But, chiefly, its greatest service has been that it has continued to be the church.
Now, for a few minutes today, I should like to have us all reminded that the country owes a considerable debt to the church - not just in recent months and years, but throughout its history.
In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French man, came to North America to study the US prison system. While here, he made many observations on our culture. After some time, he wrote: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests [that was when America’s natural resources must have seemed inexhaustible!]; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and her democratic Congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found pulpits aflame for righteousness, did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
That visitor was right, then and now. Whatever is truly great in America must be attributed to America’s goodness, and its goodness arises from the influence of its free, Christian churches.
Our Master had said, at the outset of Christianity, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Only a little later, Paul wrote of “the church of the living God” as “the pillar and ground of the truth.” The church is God’s institution. Its business is to know and proclaim what is good. And it has endured in the testings of time.
This it has done in spite of its obvious blemishes. It has made serious mistakes. It is too much divided in matters of doctrine and fellowship and action. Its possibilities lie far ahead of its accomplishments. Like Peter with Jesus, the church has followed its Founder “afar off;” too often afraid to venture with Him in heroic sacrifice and daring service. But despite its inadequacies, it has continued a fount of good things that make living worthwhile.
(1) Among the things our country owes the church is its lofty standards of family life. Our country is not to be regarded as a model at this point. All is not well here. The people of our nation need the teachings of the church on the meaning of marriage and the responsibilities of home-building.
Recently we have regarded with loathing the reported moral conditions in Hitler’s Germany - and they have been flagrantly bad. But it is not becoming for us to throw the stones of self-righteous condemnation. For the situation in our own land is alarming. Students of the subject tell us that, as a nation, we lead the world in rates of bigamy, abortions and divorce; and that if our tendency continues at the present rate, we may arrive at a condition, in 50 years, when every other marriage will be broken in divorce court! If that trend should continue, it is a decadent prospect.
The prospect is considerably brighter where the influence of the church has been at work. One careful study of 61 communities in 15 states at a time when the nation’s divorce rate was 1 out of 6 (it has recently become 1 out of 5), discovered that, among married couples who professed even a nominal connection with a church, the rate was only 1 in 50. Among those regularly attending worship and actively serving in the church, the rate was only 1 in 113. The results of another study show that Sunday school attendance has had an excellent effect on the probability of successful wedlock.
The couple who desire to build and maintain a successful home, find a tremendous help in the steady, year by year, character-building force of the Christian church. And children, reared by parents whose love for each other is surpassed only by their love of the Heavenly Father, rarely become part of the nation’s tragic delinquency problem.
Our country is indebted to the churches for the contentment of countless homes which have been touched by the Master’s spirit and are dedicated to His will.
(2) The nation also owes the church for its support in the cause of achieving world order. Most important here is the Christian spirit which makes for peaceful and orderly living.
Some unknown writer of the second century said of Christians then, that they “hold the world together.” Christians have tried to help in that way, today. And if a great enough number of men and women of all lands possessed the true spirit of Jesus, as taught by the church, there would be no strife between nations. Beyond the hope of peace by triumph of military strength and occupations, the only true hope of permanent peace with Japan and Germany - or for that matter with Russia, France, China, and Britain - lies in Christian understanding and good will. For us Christian church folk, that means inter-racial and inter-national Christian fellowship and it means Christian missions - adequately staffed and supported!
The church has accomplished more than the fashioning of so many peace-loving individuals that even a desperate war has been fought with no real taste for it except the sheer necessity of seeing it through. The church has had a voice in the immediate task of creating suitable machinery for international peace among men. Early during the war, the Federal Council of Churches set up a commission to study bases for just and durable peace. Its activities and recommendations have helped immeasurably to awaken America’s conscience on this nation’s responsibility for establishing global peace.
John Foster Dulles, an official adviser to the US delegation at the San Francisco conference, thinks that this effort of the churches made a real contribution to the thinking of the delegations there. He thinks that the influence of the church has led to popular approval of plans for world organization - plans not even mentioned in the Atlantic charter or earlier official statements.
To the church, whose Founder said “Blessed are the peace makers,” the nation is indebted for help in building the peace.
(3) Further, the country owes the church a debt for persistent protest against prejudice and ill will. The protest must be increased in some areas in order to meet more serious threats of ill will. The church makes a sweeping declaration when it subscribes to the New Testament position that “God hath made of one blood all nations to dwell on all the face of the earth” [Acts 17: 26]. That is an exceedingly demanding position, not easy to maintain, but tremendously important.
Only one force is great enough to overcome pagan doctrines of race and blood, racial or national superiority, unequal justice for various groups of humans. The Church does, and must, raise its voice wherever justice and fair play are denied to Jew, Negro, Japanese American, or any other minority member. Professor Einstein tells of his disappointment that the public press, educational leaders and business interests of Germany all failed to destroy the Nazi ideology at its inception. Only the churches in Germany, holding to the belief in the worth of every human personality, boldly defied the oppressor, at the cost of many lives.
The church has not done all it could; -- far from it. Its many hesitations call repentance. But its contribution has been real, because it is a part of the Hebrew conviction that, under God, justice should “roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” [Amos 5: 24].
(4) In the next place, America owes the church a debt for great humanitarian programs. The first educational institutions of America, and in many other lands, were founded by the church. The church has founded hospitals and given motivation for great secular efforts - community chests, Red Cross, and others. And consider the influence of the vast foreign missionary movement, which, constantly revised and revitalized, must still be a vigorous part of American church life.
The late Wendell Wilkie, doubtful in his earlier years about the wisdom and value of Christian missions, said, after his famous world tour: “On my recent trip, I saw at first hand a multitude of concrete instances, which convinced me of the value of foreign missions both to the lands they serve and to the cause of good will for America. Everywhere I went I found American colleges, schools, hospitals and churches, many of them supported by the churches of this land. I found American missionaries, men and women, exerting a leadership - a human, personal leadership - which I have no hesitation in characterizing as vital to the future hopes, not alone of other nations, but of our own United States.”
Or perhaps you know the story of 7 naval fliers forced down in the South Pacific. They reached an island after paddling their rafts for more than 2 days. They were welcomed by many natives whose grandfathers had been cannibals. These civilized descendants handed the American fliers a copy of the Holy Bible. It was their way of saying, “Welcome. Don’t be afraid. We are Christians.” These Christian natives cared for the fliers for 87 days, hiding them from enemy patrols. At night they gathered around the white visitors, took turns reading the Bible, sang the hymns familiar to both fliers and themselves. Are any of us surprised at learning that the fliers said, on returning later to the US that these island hosts of theirs had converted them to Christianity?
Many such incident s are recorded in Henry P. Van Dusen’s book, “They Found The Church There.” Some of the story appeared in the April 7th Saturday Evening Post.
(5) Finally, America is indebted to its churches for a refuge and strength. In the fellowship of the church, millions have prayed for the welfare and safety of loved ones abroad at their duty, have found fortification against anxious months ahead, have committed to the Eternal their beloved dead, have prayed for peace, and solemnly rejoiced when the prayer was at last answered. The church has gone with its members in service by letter, in the person on chaplains, in imagination and faithful concern. Tens of thousands have been able to testify, in words of their own, “The Lord is our refuge and strength.”
[Psalm 46: 1].
You and I, as well as those who neglect or spurn membership in the church, are as citizens of this nation indebted to the church. We owe it much in return, by the joyful giving of ourselves in time, service and substance.
Let us declare in our own souls: “From this time forward, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, [Joshua 24: 15], and we will devote ourselves to his church so long as we shall live.”
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 9, 1945.