The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

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November, 1923 431 Why Put the Reel in Religion? Rev. Paul G. Macy Hyde Park Congregational Church, Chicago. THIS title is not meant to be facetious or irreverent, nor was the title originally planned for this article, namely, 'Taking the 'Cuss' off Religion." It was chosen carefully and deliberately after failure to find another which so aptly expresses a task which faces the present generation in the ministry of the Church. There is a ''cuss" on religion — that is, of course, on organized religion, not on religion in the deepest and broadest sense. Man is still "incurably religious," but there is certainly a popular revolt against the religion of the churches. Canvass the situation in our great centers of learning, check up the reactions to established religion which you get in any large business office, see in how far the church is reaching the great industrial masses, listen in on the star chamber sessions held in Pullman smoking compartments, or compare the total population with the population of the churches and the fact is inevitably established that there is at least a great lethargy, if not an open antipathy, toward the established forms for expressing religious feeling. This is not the place to discuss all the various causes which have produced this state of affairs or to fix the blame for them, if blame there be. There is one fundamental cause, however, which does concern us here. It is the testimony of thousands that they find nothing real in the forms of religion which are offered them. One woman expressed it to me as feeling, upon attending a service, as though she were "at a rehearsal for something." There seemed to be the indication of something wonderful to happen in the future, but the "main show" was a long way off. A man of deeply religious nature, in describing his last venture at church, said that when he saw the clergyman, bedecked in varicolored raiment, fold his hands in artificial pose and intone "Let us pray," his reaction was a violent desire to hurl a hymnbook ! Still another said, "The ringing of the church bells is a signal to curse and put on a Victor record." These are but typical of an astounding number of testimonies to the same lack of reality in the forms of religion. Let me interject right here the testimony that I know of many churches today where a real, vital message is being preached and that I am personally acquainted with a number of ministers who are not posing. On the other hand, it is all too true that there is a tragic prevalence of religious training which is utterly lacking in reality and which brings up children into adults who turn their backs disgustedly upon it all. There is, in much of organized religion, a lack of vital force and in its place a sort of holy show which fails to fool the thinking public. "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed" in many a gorgeous temple of religion. Is this a condition of things in which motion pictures can lend a helping hand to the church? Can we make religion more real by putting the reel into its services ? I think we can. Take, for example, a man who has been long out of touch with organized religion. He is probably entirely misjudging the church which is near him. He thinks that it is still teaching (and he may be right) the same sort of thing which he got as a boy and that is "bunk" to him. If he should go to a regulation service he would be so out of touch with the "language" of the churches that he would only see in it all a sort of artificial and superficial attempt to stir emotion. It would seem