The Literary Digest

Accompanied by a German political cartoon that more than implied that army generals do not belong in God’s heaven, this article is a digest of a number of articles from Germany that thought carefully about a speech given by Kaiser Wilhelm, in which the sovereign opined:

He who is not a good Christian is not a good man, nor a good Prussian soldier, and he cannot possibly fulfill the duty of a soldier in the Prussian army.

The Teutonic press corps rightfully pointed out that Jews had been serving in that army since 1812, and had been recognized as a patriotic and reliable pool of recruits.

A report from The Literary Digest revealed that only one man out of every nine attended Sunday services with any regularity in 1929. The article quotes one wounded clergymen who predicted doom for the American culture as a whole, and interviewed an assorted number of church-goers of the male variety who offered a number sound reasons to attend weekly services, none of them having anything to do with the Gospels. However 317 out of 320 interviewed all concurred that their participation helps them attain a sense of the presence of God in their lives.

Click here to read an article from 1900 about why men dislike going to church.

When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church…

Bertram Goodhue (1869 – 1924) was a popular American architect who was highly praised for his mastery of the Gothic Revival style of architecture, which won him many of the finest commissions that society had to offer any architect during the high-water mark of the WASP ascendancy.

This article appeared in The Literary Digest just as his design for St. Thomas Church on New York’s Fifth Avenue was nearing completion and he shared with the journalist his insights as to how he designs churches:

Sometimes, of course, the cloistral effect is needed, in a monastery, for instance. And the church must always have solemnity, but not coldness. I have tried in my work to express this quality of invitation, together with sanctity and a degree of magnificence quite undreamed of in my craftsman days.

Many and myriad are the reasons Roman Catholics and Protestants worship differently – one of them is the idolization of the Virgin Mary.
This article from 1897 outlines the reasoning behind this uniquely Roman Catholic brand of piety that emphasizes the Virgin Mary while numerous other Christian faiths have long held that this extracurricular devotion merely serves to upstage Christ and His message. The column is composed of numerous passages from an open letter written by Pope Leo XIII (1878 – 1903) clarifying the need for the Catholics to understand the importance of the Virgin Mary:

From all eternity He chose her to become the mother of the Word who was to clothe Himself in human flesh…

Here is an article concerning the persecution of that Protestant faith so unique to American shores: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion that numbered 50,000 world-wide in 1936. The attached article reported on the school expulsions of various assorted young followers for failing to show proper respect to the American flag on campus:

A year ago the first such case, in Pennsylvania, startled the newspapers. ‘If you kill me I won’t salute!’ quavered an eleven year-old schoolboy. He was expelled. Soon after, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, a teacher was was dismissed for refusing to honor ‘the flag of horror and hate.’

The credited source for the attached article was a Christian cleric in Baku by the name of Pastor von Bergmann, who, having lived among the Mohammedans for some time, had gained a unique understanding as to their creed:

But, by the rejection of the great grace of God through Mohamed, Christians and all other unbelievers have become such gross criminals that their lives have no worth or value whatever…It is a terrible sin to regard the Christians as equal to a Mohammedan or to consider them entitled to any rights over against the latter.

An article about the Muslim opinion concerning colonialism can be read here…

For the stat-minded among us who study the religions of New York City, this short magazine article from 1933 will illustrate how the various faiths were represented numerically in New York’s Sing Sing Prison:

One Buddhist and two [Muslims] were received within the gray walls of Sing Sing during the last fiscal year.

During the same period the doors of the great prison closed behind 855 Catholics, 518 Protestants, 177 Hebrews, twenty Christian Scientists and eight of no religion at all.

Click here to see a 1938 photo essay about life in Sing Sing Prison.


Click here to read more old magazine articles about religion.

This is a review of one of the first movies to tell the story of Jesus, The King of Kings, which was directed by one of Hollywood’s earliest seers: Cecil B. DeMille (1881 – 1959). The film was genuinely adored in all circles; one critic gushed:

Cecil B. DeMille’s reward for The King of Kings will be in heaven…

Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.