Walter Laidlaw

“ It is useless, however, to shut one’s eyes to the fact that so long as the church remains the richest in material resources of the voluntary forces of social uplift, and so long as, in virtue of what she does, the state exempts her from taxation, every member of the state has the right to ask whether the service she renders is equal to the favor shown. ”

“ A pastor who visits on the fifth floor may think the house healthy, and over-compliment the sanitary condition. When, however, a church’s visitor goes through a whole dwelling, from the first floor to the fifth, an accurate estimate of its condition can be made, and, in the coöperative parish plan in New York, is to be made. All dwellings that are below the legal standard are to be listed, and the coöperating churches, through someone appointed in the matter, will communicate directly with the board of health when the law is violated. ”

“ The method of permanent coöperation, like the character of the canvass, will vary with locality. But a geographical area, assigned to a church, as a permanent special parish, is the unit idea. An area rather than a lot of families, because that area will be permanently occupied with homes. They may not be the same homes; there may be more or fewer. In New York, alas! one must think there will usually be more. ”

“ Originated by the Holy One from one of the least cities of Judah, commissioned in Palestine’s largest city, her literature christened with the names of the ancient world’s greatest cities and city, her social ideal a city let down from heaven, the church has opportunity to take the primacy, beyond all question, in altruistic movements, by the institution of a coöperative parish system in cities. ”

“ The churches will, of course, endeavor to connect each family with a church home. If a visiting church finds a family with no denominational preference, it, of course, will be its privilege and duty to connect that family with itself. ”

“ Among friends of the church it is only, therefore, the advocate, fortunately rare in America, of her divine right to favor from the state who will not point out the modes in which she may so improve her social services as to leave her tax-exemption favor unquestioned now and unchangeable in years to come. ”

“ If children are not in Sunday school, their attendance at some Sunday school of the locality will be urged. The visitation being coöperative, an invitation can be extended in the name of all the Sunday schools in the locality. The state has its attendance officers to compel the attendance of all children of legal public school age; the church, through a coöperative parish system, will have its attendance officers to invite the children in every assigned area to avail themselves of ethical and spiritual education. ”

“ One is to give to the neighborhood churches that combine to make a house-to-house canvass in any community a list of the families which would attend their respective churches, if attending any. This plan is not adapted to New York, because of physical obstacles. It is statistically possible, for instance, in the locality just canvassed, that the families assigned to the weakest denomination might, for the most part, live on the fourth floor of the tenements, and be scattered through more tenements than the families assigned to any other church. ”

“ There are statistics in the material gathered which abundantly prove that—either through its care for the religious culture of childhood, or through its special claims to league with supernatural forces, or through its magnificently devised and executed parish system—the Roman Catholic church is affecting the city more successfully than any other denomination. ”

“ Downtown churches in abundance in New York have moved uptown simply because they have been carried on to minister to the people supporting them. There is just as much ground for a graduated church tax—graduated in proportion to the social service it renders—as for a graduated income or inheritance tax. ”

“ It is useless for Protestantism to attempt to institute a parish system along the lines of Roman Catholicism. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the Roman Catholic parish system threatens with excommunication anyone living within definite parish limits who attends a church without them. Quantities of Roman Catholics hire pews across the parish boundary lines. The parish plan for which the writer pleads does not contemplate the limitation of the attendance of the people of any Protestant denomination to a Protestant church of that especial neighborhood. ”

“ For instance, the committee on parks recently circulated a petition, signed by every one of the pastors in the area, asking the city authorities to locate a small park in the region. When the park is actually opened, it cannot but advertise throughout the whole neighborhood the fact that the church is interested in the people’s physical well-being. There is a committee on public schools which will undoubtedly urge the extension to the locality of the kindergarten system of the city. ”

“ Notwithstanding the fact, however, that 20.6 per cent. of the pastors in New York city are giving attention to the church families in the district canvassed, 768 families out of 4,800 families have no church home, and 1,353 families have no church members.
It is evident that the families without members and places of worship are not Roman Catholic, for 97.5 per cent. of the Irish church families are Roman Catholic, and 96.4 per cent. of the Irish families of the entire district have a church home; while 76.9 per cent. of the American church families are Romanist, and 82.8 per cent. ”

“ With the children of kindergarten age and the children of grammar school age, therefore, the state, through its compulsory education process, is doing better business than the church. It must be conceded that to the church, rather than to the public schools, the superior percentage of children of kindergarten age in kindergartens may be due ”

“ The result of such a study, which should be conducted by someone who has a measure of sociological training, will, it is felt, show, everywhere in America, a sadder state of social affairs than the Christian community knew to prevail. ”

“ The first step to be taken would seem to be to induce the churches to regard a geographical area as a special responsibility, and many a church would undertake this if, as a church, it were held responsible for the area, when it might not be willing to share the responsibility with workers from other churches. ”

“ To put it differently, but equally truthfully, Protestantism is not holding the people as compared with Roman Catholicism. Three Roman Catholic churches claim the attendance of 2,553 out of 2,575 Roman Catholic families; 106 Protestant churches are attended by 867 families with church members, and 572 families without members, but there are 786 Protestant families that have neither members nor church homes. ”

“ The congregation is rare in which one-tenth of the members are able or willing to give themselves to such work, a monthly visit on ten families. It is a plan made for a better army than Gideon’s. The spirit of social service is stronger in the land today than it was ten years ago, but it is doubtful whether the present decade will witness average churches with the percentage of available altruists needed to carry out such a crusading calling plan. ”

“ The agencies that afford relief should not be advertised from house to house, for this would undoubtedly create extra pauperism. Far from increasing the pauperism of their special parishes, coöperating churches should endeavor to diminish it by interchanging a list of their beneficiaries and communicating with the Charity Organization Society if they discover duplication of alms. ”

“ The coöperating churches will become agents to extend attendance upon the public schools. For this reason they will enter homes where the families already have a church home. They will inquire whether the children are attending school as the law suggests. ”

“ The churches that have entered into this coöperative parish system have special committees, whose purpose is to serve the neighborhood so as to increase the prevalence of the idea that the church is there, not to be served by the people, but to serve them. ”

“ Twenty-two Baptist churches out of forty-seven on Manhattan island are attended by the Baptists, and these churches are scattered from One Hundred and Fifty-Sixth street to Waverly place—a reach of nine miles, and from Second avenue on the east to Amsterdam avenue on the west—a reach of over two miles. In all other Protestant denominations from one-sixth to one-half of the churches are claimed as the church homes of the people. ”

“ Because this permits the best permanent portraiture of each fraction of the area over which coöperation extends, each fraction being viewed by one supervising eye. 2. Because a church can thus employ its energies in any way its minister and members have the genius and grace to devise and execute. Emulation is thus conserved, coöperation is not endangered. ”

“ Religious affiliations in individual houses show results similar to the ensemble of the district. In one house containing fifteen families three pastors have parishioners in nine families, leaving six families without pastors or church homes. An adjacent dwelling contains thirteen families, and four pastors visit seven families, but there are six other families, of three other denominations, in that house, who do not go to any church. Scores of houses among the 398 dwellings in which the 4,800 families live show similar conditions. ”

“ The number of Irish church members is larger than the number of Irish wage-earners, and the same is the case with the Canadians in the district. American heads of households who are church members are slightly in excess of the number of American fathers, wage-earners ”

“ The third plan is yet to make its history, and if it succeeds it will be another instance of the evolutionary order of social progress. If it fails, or is submitted to modifications before it is fitted to survive, none who have been concerned in formulating it will deny that God is in his world or in his church. ”

“ When the Persians were heading for Marathon, the Hellenic tribes got together and fought together against the invader. Christianity’s warm heart will say to her cool head, when she sees that her alms and uplift must be with both left hand and right hand: “Head, you must direct this business for me, or I shall fail in meeting this need. ”

“ Because it permits important social work to be done in addition to purely religious work, as in the church district plan of the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, by which the destitute in specific districts are cared for by the churches to which these districts are assigned. ”