Presbyterian preacher Billy Sunday (William Ashley Sunday, 1862 – 1935) was, without a doubt, one of the leading figures advocating for the adoption of Prohibition in 1919. When it became clear to many that Prohibition was causing far more problems than it solved, he continued to strongly support the legislation, and after its repeal in 1933, the Preacher called for its reinstatement.
The author reported that in the year 1912 one could easily find a plethora of useless and needless faiths and denominations:
These religions come to naught in the end.
Seeing that much of the momentum to prohibit the national sale, distribution and consumption of wine and spirits originated with a hardy chunk of the observant Christian community, the Reverend John Cole McKim decided to weigh in on the topic. McKim tended to believe that:
Christ, being divine and consequently infallible, could not have erred. Since it is well known that Christ used wine Himself and gave it to others…
He further opined:
But to vote what one regards as a natural right shall be declared forever illegal, is cowardly, un-American, and un-Christian.
Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era
Attached is an article filed during the closing days of the Greco-Turkish War (1919 – 1922) which takes into account that seven years after the 1915 Armenian slaughter in Asia Minor, the victorious governments of the West had never dolled out any punitive measures whatever, and the murder of Christians was continuing under cover of the Greek military withdrawal from that region.
…the Christian population is flying, like herds of frightened sheep, and the fate of those who lag behind is death.
Heresy Hunters are on the war-path again, we are told, their latest attack being directed against Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick…who is charged with rejecting the four great doctrines of Christianity -the virgin birth, the inspiration of scriptures, the atonement of Jesus, and Christ’s second coming…
The well-loved Christian author Helen Walker Homan wrote this very charming essay about Saint Peter:
Saint Peter knows that the very fact that he, of all the Apostles, has been the most frequent subject of jokes by mankind, is only an added proof that he has been the most beloved of mankind.
This is the very succinct response from the Religion Editor at Theodore Roosevelt’s magazine, The Outlook when asked for an article on the modern views of the Genesis and how the Sunday school teachers of 1901 might best address the topic. The article has been reduced to the bare bones for the sake of brevity.
Pretty girl’s pictures help sell toothpaste, cigarettes and magazines, so why shouldn’t they help sell religion? This logic is being applied by churchmen producing the new TV series called, This is the Life.
After all – it’s no sin to be pretty – quoth Reverend R.C. Wuerffel, Chairman of the Lutheran TV Production Committee.
It was indeed divine inspiration that graced the craniums of these producing-churchmen employed by the Lutheran Hour Ministries – this television program was an absolute success – appearing first in 1952 and wrapping in 1988. Some of the pretty faces they employed along the way belonged to Annette O’Toole, Kathy Garver, Angie Dickinson, Lisa Pelikan, Mala Powers and Lynn Whitfield.
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.’
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…
At the thirty-fifth annual church congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919) clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were fully complicit in the recently ended war and were guilty of abandoning Christianity for patriotism:
Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul.
When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church…
In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…
Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era
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.
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.
A short article from 1935 reporting on the near-death experience of a British gardener named John Puckering who insisted that when his heart ceased beating for four and a half minutes during the course of a complicated surgery his soul slipped away, and joined a heavenly company…
A second article dealing with the same subject can be read here.
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 short article from 1935 reporting on the near-death experience of a British gardener named John Puckering who insisted that when his heart ceased beating for four and a half minutes during the course of a complicated surgery his soul slipped away, and joined a heavenly company…
A second article dealing with the same subject 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.
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…
