Mondays with Mencken: Sister Aimee, pt 3

Henry Louis Mencken (1800-1956) was a journalist and social commentator.   The following selection was originally published in 1926, and is found in H. L. Mencken on Religion, edited by S. T. Joshi.  Access part one, part two.

What brought this commonplace and transparent mountebank to her present high estate, with thousands crowding her tabernacle daily and money flowing in upon her from whole regiments of eager dupes?  The answer, it seems to me, is as plain as mud.  For years she had been wandering about the West, first as a sideshow barker, then as a faith healer, and finally as a cow-town evangelist.  One day, inspired by God, she decided to try her fortune in Los Angeles.  Instantly she was a roaring success.  And why?  For the plain reason that there were more morons collected in Los Angeles than in any other town on earth – because it was a pasture foreordained for evangelists, and she was the first comer to give it anything low enough for its taste and comprehension.

The osteopaths, chiropractors and other such quacks had long marked and occupied it.  It swarmed with swamis, spiritualists, Christian Scientists, crystal-gazers and the allied necromancers.  It offered brilliant pickings for real estate speculators, oil-stock brokers, wire-tappers and so on.  But the town pastors were not up to its opportunities.  They ranged from melancholy High Church Episcopalians, laboriously trying to interest retired Iowa alfalfa kings in ritualism, down to struggling Methodists and Baptists, as earnestly seeking to inflame the wives of the same monarchs with the crimes of the Pope.  All this was over the heads of the trade.  The Iowans longed for something that they could get their teeth into.  They wanted magic and noise.  They wanted an excuse to whoop.

Then came Aimee, with the oldest, safest tricks out of the pack of Dr. Billy Sunday, Dr. Gispsy Smith and the rest of the consecreted hell-robbers.  To them she added some passes from her circus days.  In a month she had Los Angeles sitting up.  In six months she had it in an uproar.  In a year she was building her rococo temple and her flamboyant Bible College, and the half-wits were flocking in to hear her from twenty States.  Today, if her temple were closed by the police, she could live on her radio business alone.  Every word she utters is carried on the air to every forlorn hamlet in those abominable deserts, and every day the mail brings her a flood of money.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: God Transcendent

The following excerpt was originally published in 1949, in God Transcendent.

Nevertheless, though the primary importance of the Bible is found in its recording of facts, the way in which the facts are recorded is by no means a matter of indifference.  A bald, dry record of the history of redemption might possibly have convinced the mind -though even that, because of subtle moral factors involved, may be doubtful – but it would at any rate never have touched the heart.  As it is, God has been very good; He has spoken to us in gracious fashion; He has condescended to persuade where He might have spoken only in a tone of cold command.  He has condescended to win our hearts by the variety and beauty of His Book.  In the Bible there is that which meets every need of man, which answers to every moood, which speaks to every heart.  No one who comes to this feast need go empty away; and there are times in every life when even the least considered of the things that the Bible contains are just what is needed by the soul.  So there is a place in the nurture of the Christian life, among other things, for the majestic poetry of Isaiah. 

The fortieth chapter of Isaiah was written by a prophet who revealed the truth; but the prophet was also a poet.  And this poet – unlike some poets whose worth lies altogether in the music of the form and not at all in the matter – this poet had a great theme.  The theme is the living God.  The prophet celebrates especially the awful transcendence of God, the awful separateness between God and the world.  The God of Isaiah is not the rather pathetic finite god of Mr. H. G. Wells – not a god who works merely in and with striving humanity – but the sovereign King.  “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.”  “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him?  With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught himknowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?”  And this sovereign Person is Lord not only of mankind but also of all nature.  He is very different from what modern men are accustomed to call, by a perversion of a great truth, the “immanent” God.  He pervades all, but He also transcends all, and He has never abandoned His freedom in the presence of the things that He has made.  “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.  Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; no one faileth.”  This is the very pinnacle of natural religion; the heavens here indeed declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.  The living God, according to Isaiah, is revealed through the things that He has made.

Mondays with Mencken: Sister Aimee, Pt 2

Henry Louis Mencken (1800-1956) was a journalist and social commentator.   The following selection was originally published in 1926, and is found in H. L. Mencken on Religion, edited by S. T. Joshi.  Access part one here.

As I say, Aimee has nothing on tap to make my eyes pop, old revival fan that I am.  The proceedings began with a solemn march by the brass band, played about as well as the average Salvation Army band could have done it, but no better.  Then a brother from some remote oupost filed down the aisle at the head of a party of fifty or sixty of the faithful.  They sang a hymn, the brother made a short speech, and then he handed Aimee a check for $500 for her Defense Fund.  A quartet followed, male, a bit scared, and with Camp Meade haircuts.  Two little girls then did a duet, to the music of a ukelele plyaed by one of them.  Then Aimee prayed.  And then she delivered a brief harangue.

I could find nothing in it worthy of remark.  It was the time-honored evangelical hokum, made a bit more raucous than usual by the loudspeakers strewn all over the hall.  A brother who seemed to be a sort of stage manager shoved the microphone of the radio directly under Aimee’s nose.  When, warmed by her homiletic passion, she turned this way and that, he followed her with the microphone.  It somehow suggested an attentive deck-steward, plying his useful art and mystery on a rough day.  Aimee wore a long white robe, with a very low-cut collar, and over it there was a cape of dark purple.  Her thick hair, piled high in a curious coiffure, turned out to be of mahogany brown.  I had heard that it was a flaming red.

The rest of the orgy went on in the usual way.  Groups of four, six, eight or twenty got up and sang.  A large, pudgy, soapy-looking brother prayed.  Aimee herself led the choir in a hymn with a lively tune and very saucy words, chiefly aimed at her enemies.  Two or threee times more she launched into brief addresses.  But mostly she simply ran the show.  While the quartets bawled and the band played she was busy at a telephone behind the altar or hurling orders in a loud stage-whisper at sergeants and corporals on the floor.  Obviously a very mangaging woman.  A fixed smile stuck to her from first to last.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: Salvation for the Righteous

This brief paragraph from Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923, displays why I revere Machen.  He boldly contrasts the gospel with false religion, yet in a fresh and appealing manner that is able to be understoody by all readers.

The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task – she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance.  Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church wihtout requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin.  The preacher gets up onto the pulpit, opens the Bible, and addresses the congregation somewhat as follows: “You people are very good,” he says; “you respond to every appeal that looks toward the welfare of the community.  Now we have in the Bible – especially in the life of Jesus – something so good that we believe it is good enough even for you good people.”  Such is modern preaching.  It is heard every Sunday in thousands of pulpits.  But it is entirely futile.  Even our Lord did not call the righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no more successful than He.

Mondays with Mencken: On Sister Aimee Semple McPherson

Henry Louis Mencken (1800-1956) was a journalist and social commentator who was known as the “Sage of Baltimore.”  Mencken was not a particularly religious man, but had much to say about American religion: “I am anything but a militant atheist and haven’t the slightest objection to churchgoing, so long as it is honest.”  The following selection was originally published in 1926, and is found in H. L. Mencken on Religion, edited by S. T. Joshi.

The rev. sister in God, I confess, greatly disappointed me.  Arriving in Los Angeles out of the dreadful deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, I naturally made tracks to hear and see the town’s most distinguished citizen.  Her basilica turned out to be a great distance from my hotel, far up a high hill and in the midst of a third-rate neighborhood.  It was a cool and sunshiny Sunday afternoon, the place was packed, and the whisper had gone around that Aimee was heated up by the effort to jail her, and would give a gaudy show.  But all I found myself gaping at, after half an hour, was an orthodox Methodist revival, with a few trimmings borrowed from the Baptists and the United Brethren – in brief, precisely the sort of thing that goes on in the shabby suburbs and dark back streets of Baltimore, three hundred nights of every year.  I caught myself waiting for Dr. Crabbe to pop up, to shake down the boobs for the Anti-Saloon League – or Dr. Howard A. Kelly, to tell what Bible-reading has done for him.  

Aimee, of course, is richer than most evangelists, and so she has got herself a plant that far surpasses anything ever seen in shabby suburbs.  Her temple to the One God is immensely wide – as wide, almost, as the Hippodrome in New York – and probably seats 2,500 customers.  There is a full brass band down in front, with a grand piano to one side of it and an organ to the other.  From the vast gallery, built like that of a theater, runways run along the side walls to what may be called the proscenium arch, and from their far ends stairways lead down to the platform.  As in many other evangelical churches, there are theater seats instead of pews.  Some pious texts are emblazoned on the wall behind the platform: I forget what they say.  There are no stained-glass windows.  The architecture, in and out, is otherwise of the Early Norddeutscher – Lloyd Rauchzimmer school, with modifications suggested by the filling-stations of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.  The whole building is very cheaply made.  It is large and hideous, but I don’t think it costs much.  Nothing in Los Angeles appears to have cost much.  The town, save for a few brilliant spots – for example, the Elk clubhouse and one or two theaters – is inconceivably shoddy.

Office Hours at WSC Now Online!

August 17: Westminster Seminary California releases a new broadcast, Office Hours, featuring interviews with the faculty.  This is a great way to get to know the seminary and its outstanding professors, while hearing serious theological discussion.  There are also many free gifts that will be given away to listeners.  You can subscribe via iTunes or the WSC website.

What About Multi-Campus Ministry?

Rev. Danny Hyde of Oceanside URC looks to John Owen for advice on multi-campus ministry.  While the technology might be updated, the principles that led Owen to oppose this practice in the seventeenth century are still applicable to the twenty-first.  As someone who was formerly a member of a multi-campus church, I can testify to some of the downsides that often occur with this phenomenon: lack of shepherding, anonymity, emphasis on doing rather than receiving, showmanship, personality cult, etc.  Being a pastor of a one-campus church that plants other churches is not as exciting or as apt to build name recognition as being a pastor of a multi-campus church; but it is more rewarding, and is the right thing to do.

H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, on J. Gresham Machen

The following excerpt is from The Impregnable Rock, by H. L. Mencken
American Mercury, Dec. 1931 (vol. 9), pp. 411-12
Special thanks to D. G. Hart for compiling this.
Thinking of the theological doctrine called Fundamentalism, one is apt to think at once of the Rev. Aimee Semple McPherson, the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, and the late D. John Roach Straton. . . . Such clowns, of course, are high in human interest, and their sincerity need not be impugned, but one must remember always that they do not represent fairly the body of ideas they presume to voice, and that those ideas have much better spokesmen. I point, for example to the Rev. J. Gresham Machen, D.D., Litt.D., formerly of Princeton and now professor of the New Testament in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Dr. Machen is surely no more soap-boxer of God, alarming bucolic sinners for a percentage of the plate. On the contrary, he is a man of great learning and dignity – a former student of European universities, the author of various valuable books, including a Greek grammar, and a member of several societies of savants. Moreover, he is a Democrat and a wet, and may be presumed to have voted for Al in 1928. Nevertheless, this Dr. Machen believes completely in the inspired integrity of Holy Writ, and when it was questioned at Princeton he withdrew indignantly from those hallowed shades, leaving Dr. Paul Elmer More to hold the bag.
 
I confess frankly, as a life-long fan of theology, that I can find no defect in his defense of his position. Is Christianity actually a revealed religion? If not, then it is nothing; if so, then we must accept the Bible as an inspired statement of its principles. But how can we think of the Bible as inspired and at the same time as fallible? How can we imagine it as part divine and awful truth, and part mere literary confectionary? And how, if we manage so to imagine it, are we to distinguish between the truth and the confectionary? Dr. Machen answers these questions very simply and very convincingly. If Christianity is really true, as he believes, then the Bible is true, and if the Bible is true, then it is true from cover to cover. So answering, he takes his stand upon it, and defies the hosts of Beelzebub to shake him. As I have hinted, I think that, given his faith, his position is completely impregnable. There is absolutely no flaw in the argument with which he supports it. If he is wrong, then the science of logic is a hollow vanity, signifying nothing.

Rev. Mark Johnston at OURC this Lord’s Day

This Lord’s Day, August 16th, Oceanside United Reformed Church will be having a guest preacher. Rev. Mark Johnston is the pastor of Grove Chapel (http://www.grovechapel.org/), an independent reformed congregation formed in 1818 in Camberwell, Southeast London. Rev. Johnston is a trustee for the Banner of Truth (http://www.banneroftruth.org/), an internationally known publisher of Reformed and Puritan books. He is also the author of Child of a King: What Joining God’s Family Really Means (Christian Focus), Let’s Study John (Banner of Truth), and Let’s Study 2 Peter and Jude (Banner of Truth).

In the morning he will be preaching a sermon entitled, “Postcard from Paradise,” with his text being Revelation 21:1–27.

In the evening he will be preaching a sermon entitled, “Singing in the Dark,” with his text being Psalm 37:1–9.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: The Value of Pessimism.

The following excerpt is from “Prophets False and True,” originally published in God Transcendent.

I am going to venture, however, to say a brief word in defense of pessimism.  There are times when pessimism is a very encouraging thing.  Last summer I took a voyage down the New England coast one foggy afternoon and night; it was one of the thickest nights that I have ever seen even on those fog-bound waters.  Now I am glad to say that the captain of each of the two boats on which I traveled was a thorough pessimist.  For a time the boat would plow along at full speed; but then, for no apparent reason, she would stop and rock quietly upon the gentle swells, and then proceed at a snail’s pace.  Presently the mournful sound of a buoy would be heard and then the buoy would come into sight.  The buoys were usually exactly where the captain expected them to be; but unless he saw them he took a thoroughly pessimistic view as to their whereabouts.  The result of such pessimism was good.  The sound of the fog-horn was, indeed, lugubrious and hardly conducive to repose; but at least we got safely into Boston in the morning.

There are ship-captains who are less pessimistic than the captain of that boat.  Such an one, for example, was the captain of the ill-fated Titanic.  He hoped that all was well, and kept the engines going at full speed.  I am certainly not presuming to blame him.  Perhaps every captain not gifted with superhuman vision would have been as optimistic as he.  But, whether excusably or not, optimistic he certainly was; and his optimism was fatal to many hundreds of human lives.  The great ship plowed onward through the night; and now she lies at the bottom of the sea.  Oh, that no mere weak mortal but some true prophet of God had been upon the bridge that night!

That disaster is a figure of what will come of optimism in the churches of today.  Superficially our eclesiastical life seems to be progressing as it always did: the cabins are full of comfortable passengers; the orchestra is playing a lively air; the rows of lighted windows shine cheerfully out into the night.  But all the time death is lurking beneath.  In this time of deadly peril there are leaders who say that all is well; there are leaders who decry controversy and urge peace, declaring that the Church is all perfectly loyal and true.  God forgive them, brethren!  I say it will all my heart: may God forgive them for the evil that they are doing to Christ’s little ones; may the Holy Spirit open their eyes while yet there is time!  Meanwhile, in the case of many of the churches, the great ship rushes onward to the risk, at least, of doom.

Yes, my friends, if you be true prophets like Micaiah, you will be called upon to warn the Church .  But you will also be called upon to warn individual men and women.  And the thing about which you will be called upon to warn them is sin.  In warning men of sin you will of course often have to cast popularity aside.  Like some good physicians, you will be laughed at as alarmists and hated as those who take the pleasure out of life.   Men love to be encouraged by false hopes; the world is full of quack remedies for sin.  In this spiritual sphere, moreover, there is no protection against quacks; there is no paternalistic state legislature to regulate medical practice and protect the unwary from their fate.  In such a world of quackery and of false optimism you will have to come forward with your terrible diagnosis of sin.