Visiting the Sick

“Failure to practice practical religion is Christianity’s disrupting contribution to communism’s program of destruction,” says cleric Caleb J. King, Sr., writing in the Jacksonville, Florida, Times Union of February 21, 1959. “At least 95 percent of the more than a hundred million professed Christians on the enrollment books of the churches of America are Christians in name only—insofar as practicing what Christ teaches about visiting the sick and ministering to the needy, including widows and orphans, is concerned. You can find shocking demonstrations of this fact in virtually every congregation. An illustration came recently in the report of the wife of one of the staunchest supporters of a local church. This couple has held membership and been active for 20 years in the church. Two or three years ago he became ill, and was ill for a long time. But his wife said her husband was not visited by one single person from that church during his entire period of invalidism. Now the couple is trying to find a church whose members have a different attitude toward those who become sick, or are otherwise in trouble.”