The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

432 Why Put the Reel in Religion The Educational Si quite disconnected with the every-day world in which he does his work. Now he is used to going to the "movies." He hkes them. There is something definite and tangible about them which he can understand for, of course, they are designed to make him like them. Therefore, the very use of a motion picture film in a religious service at once says to that man, ''Here is something you can understand, something you are accustomed to and like." He goes to such a service without the prejudice which he might have had and, going without prejudice against it, perhaps even W'ith prejudice for it, he probably likes all of the service. He did not know that he really loves to sing the old hymns. He never realized what a lot of meaning there is for him in some of the things which the minister reads out of a modern and plainer translation of the New Testament. He rather likes it all. There is something in it to which he reacts most favorably. The "reel" has not simply attracted him in, but it has "taken the cuss oflf" the service and he enjoys every bit of it. At all events this reaction is typical of the experience which I have had with the use of motion pictures in an evening Church service on Sundays, both in a small town and a very large city. At one time I held services in a theatre to which men who never darkened the door of a church came regularly, usually more men than women. Best of all, they came not just to see the picture, for I seldom gave them as good as that same theatre showed during the week, but for the whole service. Never have I had better attention for an out and out religious message. It was a religious service from start to finish, although held in a theatre and using motion pictures as an integral part. The wife of one man who had formerly done all his church attendance by proxy told me that her husband was so enamored of the service at the opera house that he even begged ofif to attend w^hen she was quite sick ! Incidentally my evening audience in that small town jumped from an average attendance of 25 to over 300 or an increase of 1,200 percent! It hardly seems necessary to argue the propriety of using motion pictures in a religious service, although there are still some people wdio fume against them just as our grandfathers did against the violin, organ, and stereopticon. But it is necessary to make the particular function of motion pictures in the service of religion definitelyunderstood. I state my case thus : Jesus, in His day, faced a problem similar to ours in the fact that religion had become an unreality. The lofty teachings of the great prophets had become encrusted with ceremonialism. Between the Old Testament and the people were the Mishna and Talmud and a flood of authoritative commentaries with their intricate provisions for holiness. Between God and the people stood the priesthood. Jesus sought to make religion a real, vital, living thing, a matter of personal relationship to the Father, God. One of the favorite ways He had for doing this was the use of the parable or picture story. It w^as the accepted and popular form for presenting truth. Through the parable one made his hearer "see" with the mind's eye a vivid picture of what happened in life when people acted in certain ways. Through this means a lesson was taught with far greater impression than through mere moralizing. Jesus did just that. He made His hearers see the Prodigal Son feeding with the swine as a result of his profligacy, the house built on the sand crumbling because of the kind of foundation which the builder chose, the foolish girls at the wadding left out of the bridal procession because they had failed to bring oil enough for their lamps ; and, seeing, the people understood and were helped. The present-day parallel to the parable or picture story of Jesus' day is unquestionably