U. Of M. Band In Church

U. OF M. BAND IN CHURCH

One Man Suggests It As a Drawing Card.

WHY UNFILLED CHURCHES

Dr. Hinsdale Gives an Interesting Paper-More in Tomorrow's Daily Argus

Dr. Hinsdale delivered Sunday before the Business Men's Class, a paper on "Why so Many People Remain Away from Church, and the Remedy Therefor." He had taken great pains to collect the opinions of many citizens of this city as to the cause, and read the most striking interviews, of course omitting names. The Argus selected a number of the best.:

The following is an interview with a bright student in the university: "I am not a church member. My mother is a Presbyterian, my father, if anything, 'a Church of England.' We live in Canada. When Sunday comes I want to rest. After listening to lectures all the week, a sermon does not appeal to me. I was not in the habit of going to church when at home; father did not go. His way of spending Sunday is to sleep till 11 a. m, take a bath, eat dinner, smoke during the afternoon and read in the evening. He is a very hard worked office man. We do not see him at home from the time he leaves Monday morning until 7 o'clock Saturday night. Our sympathies are with the church but, not often, our presence. In Canada poor people do not go to church because they cannot stand the style. The Catholics are different. I know a good many workingmen; they want to stay at home Sunday to loaf and rest"

A letter from a Unitarian minister:

"Causes for non-attendance at church. 1. Spiritual lethargy due to excessive worldliness. 2. Distractions of modern society. 3. Deterioration of the pulpit. 4. Discord between dogmas assumed and our present intellectual life. 5. A mildly held feeling that the church is merely a social club. 6. The lack of frankness and sincerity. The causes imply, in a general way, the means of cure."

The following is an interview with an enterprising Methodist layman: "Church is a bore to most people. The reason is that preachers talk too much of Mormonism in Utah and sinners in Mexico; they do not touch the burning needs of their communities. The preachers that draw the crowds are preaching the every-day gospel of their neighborhoods. I would make the church service attractive. I would have Sousa's Band in the church and not at Manhattan Beach upon Sunday. I would have the U. of M. Band at Newberry hall every Sunday morning. I condemn the pew system. When you see a congregation grab their hats and start straight for the center aisle after the sermon, you find a religious refrigerator; a church doing more injury than good by freezing people out. I like a religion that thaws a warm-handed, I-am-not-holier-than-thou religion. When I leave a church house, I like to be asked, not by a printed poster, but by word of mouth, to come again. I go to church regularly and am a so-called hard church worker."

 A letter from a Unitarian layman:

"Dear Sir: - You ask my opinion why people do not more generally attend church. Frankly stated, it is as follows: People do not attend church for the same reasons that they do not attend theaters, a political meeting or a circus. It may be because they are tired and want to rest, because they have no money to spend for that purpose or because they take no interest in what is going on there. It is not worth while to conceal from ourselves the fact that the church is no longer looked upon by the intelligent Protestant as a specially Holy place and that the Bible is no longer looked upon as fetish. If the truth is spoken, few people care much today what Paul said or did not say to the Galations 18 centuries ago. They can no longer believe that a good man ii to be sent to everlasting punishment 'prepared for the devil and his angels' because he cannot conscientiously believe in. or assent to, some metaphysical dogma, or that some hypothetical scoundrel will be ' justified' and 'saved' in Heaven forever, by 'faith' in the dogma. In short, people do not attend church because they are no more interested in dull and absurd nonsense when uttered from a pulpit than when uttered from any other platform, and since the pulpit and the platform have reached a level so far as sacredness is concerned. People will not crowd around a pulpit or platform unless they are interested in what goes on there and have the time and money and clothes necessary to make it convenient or decent to do so."

I had the following dialogue with a prominent Episcopalian the other day:

Question - Is there anything the matter with the churches, especially your own?

Answer- Yes, they do not supply the present want.

Q.- What is the want

A.- Both intellectual and spiritual.

Q. - What does the church supply then?

A.- Cold victuals of the last generation.

Q. - What would you call warm victuals in your case?

A. - New ideas. I get neither new ideas or assistance. Very much that is said in the church is offensive.

Q. - How many non-fashionable people belong to your particular church?

A. - We have half a dozen colored people, a few laborers, and some servant girls. Our pews are free.

Q. - You are quite democratic then?

A. - Yes, thoroughly so.

Q.. - Is it true that your church, as charged, seeks out the wealthy as "preferred" religious "risks?"

A. - Yes, as between two men, if one can contribute $100 and the other nothing, we proceed upon the theory that their souls are of equal value, and that $100 is more valuable than nothing, and take the $100 man. We are taught to be not slothful in business, you know.

Q. - Does your church reach the masses?

A. - No, they ought to be reached in this way. All churches should unite in a kind of "trust," have a large hall, an immense auditorium for religious mass meetings upon Sunday afternoon. There should be music, time for conversation, short speeches, readings and all kinds of elevating entertainment. The church must be the great leader and put all the people upon a common level. Everybody in Ann Arbor would go. We could get acquainted, know our neighbors,brotherly love would be unconfined, and an immense amount of good done.

Q. - Does your scheme suggest a kind of beerless beer garden for Sunday afternoon?

A. - Yes, something of that kind. There might be refreshments, but it would be a picnic of a high moral and even religious character. It would be better than any Sunday shooting gallery, bicycle riding, social visiting or excursion. Once organized, it would not lack funds to employ the best talent the country affords.

The following is from the pastor of one of the strongest and most flourishing congregations of this city:

"The question you propose is not easily answered. It is one to which I have given no little consideration, but a satisfactory conclusion is still to seek. (Results as far as I have obtained them might be stated somewhat as follows:)

"1. I cannot escape the conviction that the habitual non-attendance of church of so large a part of the population is largely due to insensibility and indifference to the things of the spiritual life. Many seem scarcely aware that they are possessed of souls; that they have any spiritual being to be ministered to. The result very largely, perhaps, of engrossment in things material. The interests and attractions of the world have greatly multiplied and the appeal to worldliness is correspondingly strong.

"2. Changed conceptions as to what constitutes the religious life and the change in the motives to which appeal is commonly made.

"3. Failure on the part of Christian people to manifest the Christian spirit and to live the Christian life as unmistakably as might have been, together with want of manifest sympathy with the distressed classes in the struggles.

"4. Without doubt, the abundance of excellent literature, religious and quasi-religious, is in a measure responsible for the neglect of church services. The one remedy at our command which, as it seems to me, possesses promise of real effectiveness is genuine Christian living, combined with a thoroughly missionary spirit among the members of our churches. If church members in the spirit of loving neighborliness would set themselves earnestly at work to make the acquaintance of those who do not attend church and then to induce them to frequent the churches, making them feel thoroughly welcome whenever present, the churches could be filled. As has been recently said: 'A pastor is not a porous plaster, to draw.' Earnest preaching and a helpful service of worship in prayer and song are attractions, but that by themselves they are inadequate is sufficiently evident. Other expedients which appeal to the love of novelty or to the desire to be entertained, are of little permanent value.. The only influence through which I hope for any great and radical good is such a movement of the spirit of God as shall awaken men to their spiritual needs and shall constrain them to Him for their satisfaction. Such a movement, I do not doubt, is to come sooner or later. If I judge rightly, it will be by praying and laboring for such a refreshing by the spirit of God, in addition to such effort as is referred to above, that those who would bring the unchurched multitudes to the preaching of the gospel and to the worship of God 's house will render most effectual service.''