A Clerical Analysis of Christendom

In his book Questions People Ask, Robert J. McCracken, pastor of New York city’s Riverside Church, writes: “Years ago in Boston Bishop F. J. McConnell delivered a speech. . . . ‘During the Boxer Rebellion,’ he said, ‘hundreds, probably thousands of Chinese Christians were martyred. There they knelt, with their heads on the blocks, the knives trembling in the hands of the executioners. All they needed to do was to grunt out a Chinese word that meant “I recant” and their lives would be saved. Now, what should I have done under these circumstances? And I speak not simply personally, but in a representative capacity, for I think the rest of you are very much like myself. With my head on the block I suspect I should have said, “Hold on! I think I can make a statement that will be satisfactory to all sides.’”

“For too long, Christians have been like that, accommodating, worldly-wise, pliable, acquiescing in what is conventional, leaving their unbelieving neighbours uncertain as to what the Church stands for, unless it is an easy-going toleration of things as they are, coupled with a mild desire that they may grow better in time, so far as that is compatible with the maintenance of vested interests. Salt, light, leaven—those were the terms Jesus used in envisaging the impact of his disciples on the world. And to-day . . . the ever-present danger which confronts the Church is that it may become insipid—standing for nothing in particular, hesitant, halfhearted, its message muffled and uncertain.”