The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., March 01, 1923, Page 7, Image 7

March, 1923
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
SEEDS THAT WILL NOT NOT GROW IN OUR SOIL
(Continued from page 6)
ancestry—a weakness that has not gone out of fa­
shion to this day.”
The Lutheran church, as an example, along this
line of procrastination, proves the depreciable success
attendant upon administering to the spiritual needs
of the immigrant people in America in a score of
foreign tongues and seperate nationality synods.
Efforts on the part of some Lutheran church organi­
zations to bi-lingualize their work in order to
check the trend away from the church because of
the foreign languages, to which this particular church
denomination has been devoted, have in a measure
checked the accelerated pace with which the process
of elimination has been going on, but it is a moot ques­
tion whether this method will not eventually hasten
the process of elimination rather than counteract this
I disheartening situation.
, A bi-lingual church is like a bi-lingual newspaper,
I leaving much to be desired in the matter of a correct
I interpretation of the foreign colored substance, form
I and subject matter into a semblance of something
I American.
The Lutheran, a worthy preceptor of Americaniza-
I tion of the Lutheran church institution in America,
I is clearly out of patience with the foreign form and
I foreign language of the Lutheran faith in America, so
I far as its editorial writers are concerned. In one of
I its rcent issues the Lutheran registers the following
I stinging rebuke of the Lutheran church divided into
I many unassimilable units in half a score foreign lan-
I guage synodical groupings, rendering this church
I denomination ineffective as an American Christian
I church:
7
have no prejudice against non-American forms of speech. We
realize that people who know only one language must have
their prayer and preaching in the language they know. But
surely such figures as we quote show the entire separation of
western from European Lutheranism. There is a fatherland
■but no grandfatherland. The emigrant who leaves his country
can bring his Bible, his faith and his duty to God. But his
church and his community of believers are not portable.
Too many preceptors of foreign persuasion have in
the name of the church denominations they assay to
represent, come into America to “organize churches
among their people”—gullible immigrants, to have
and to hold them for the foreign interests, spiritual
and temporal, which they actually represent.
It is plain to the analytic mind that this is the chief
reason that one-half of the population of America is
today unchurched.
It is the American people’s own silent repudiation
of foreign alliances and foreign entanglements which
they believe to be detrimental to freedom of thought
and action for Americans in America.
Strife and intolerance, suspicion and hatred on re­
ligious ground, now current in America, is but a se­
quence to the attempted preservation in this country
of foreign religious institutions in language, in form,
in expression and in authority.
An American religious creed, with the soul of
America in it; Episcopalian, Catholic, Lutheran, Jew­
ish, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian,
Christian Science, or any other denominational faith,
will thrive in America to the extent it is an Amer-
can institution, of, by and for the people of America
and governed of, by and for Americans. Note the
later day growth of some religious denominations in
America that are held to be distinctly American,
though they may not strictly be called Christian in
faith.
I We are more than a century in arrears in our home mission
America’s throng of the unchurched is an unde­
I task. Instead of reaching out into the great pagan highways niable result of the continuance of church govern­
I and byways of our country to help gather in the fifty two mil-
I lion souls outside of the Christian church, we as a church have ment entanglements .with Europe, maintained by the
not been able to win or to hold what rightfully belonged to us. church denominations in America that have suffered
I Too many so-called Lutherans from so-called Lutheran coun- the most severe loses as pointed out in the statistics
II tries have been driftwood. They have found their way into no made the basis for this review.
I church. They 'belong to the 52,000,000.
With the orthodox Christian churches wholly un­
The early immigrant brought his faith and his willing to Americanize themselves, the process of
I Bible, his concept of God and his stern Christian con- elimination is bound to continue, while in their stead
flEvictions with him to the new homeland, but he left the so-called liberal religious denominations are, by
■the old church and its attachments behind in the old indications, due for some unbelievable growth and
world.
development.
Later immigrants have in verity been bringing
There is no church denomination in America, ortho­
their old country church and its form, the old coun- dox or liberal, contending a faith that is detrimental
try language, community interests and other attach- to our progress as a nation, if such denominations are
iments with them, causing reactions indicating that strictly American in their scope and free from all
they have left behind in the old world those very foreign entanglements.
America may rightfully continue to claim the title:
attributes which the ancestral immigrants brought
along, planted and nurtured until it took root in this a Christian nation, but the only way to do this is to
make every Christian church denomination in Amer­
nil.
I Reviewing some time ago in the “Lutheran” the ica a distinctly American institution in language form
tendencies away from the Lutheran Church of and church government.
America on account of its complicity of foreign lan­
Automible manufacturers in the United States produce a
guages, Dr. Nathan R. Melhorn says:
I Nothing we have seen So explicitly reveals the utter vanity
W linguistic and international Lutheran entanglements. The
too large valuation of fatherlands and mother tongues have
too long beguiled sections of our North American church. We
car for the French market especially designed for French
needs, English cars for the British roads, and domestic cars
adapted to American conditions. The latter car is founid
to stand the test of touring abroad better than either of the
other makes.