"Heresy"

Bruce Barton, lay apostle of the Lord, may be said to have entered upon his ministry about 1912, when he published The Resurrection of a Soul. But not until 1925, when he published The Man Nobody Knows, did his faith show forth really widely before men. The Man, of course, was Jesus--rediscovered, as the title implied, in the image of the ideal U. S. businessman that Mr. Barton himself strives to be.

Last year, with The Book Nobody Knows, Mr. Barton rediscovered the Bible for this ideal businessman. And last week he carried his ministry further with an article in Collier's entitled "The Church Nobody Knows."

People who resent hearing Jesus called "first Rotarian" resent also he kindred phenomenon of a smooth-spoken advertising expert exercising his facile dictaphone to bring home truths about religion with which most literate people consider themselves perfectly conversant. Critics have derided Mr. Barton's writings for carrying he strong odor of professional publicity and for the seeming presumptuousness of the titles: Nobody Knows." The implication is: "Nobody knows but Bruce Barton, and many people are affronted by such mixtures of religious with secular talk as "Christianity was launched as a short-time proposition." . . . "Preachers . . . believed the world would be . . . liquidated by God as a failure. . . .

But the more abusive of Bruce Barton's critics can never have read a word he wrote. If they had, they would know that-victim of cliches though he is, Utopian and ambrosial though his visions become and offensive though it seems of him to announce his views as "heresy of the first order"--he is not an unctuous man. He is a clear-headed businessman and pretends to be nothing else; nothing mystical, nothing superior to others.

Should his critics read "The Church Nobody Knows" they would find Bruce Barton making the following points in his own prosaic but clear and modest way about those traditional strangers, Business and the Church:

1) The church is less honest than business, to the world and to itself. "The statistics which are issued by the Protestant churches are not sincere statistics." There is hardly a roll of "active" church members which is not impressively padded with inactive members. Big corporations have the sense and honesty to write false assets and known liabilities off their books. Not so the churches.

2) "It sounds almost shocking, yet it is true, that the church does not have as much faith as business." Business courts Change. The church fears it. Business employs pure scientists for research that may mean scrapping not only millions in factories and material but entire attitudes of mind as well. Pure scientists, above pelf and profit, are "the mystics of the modern world." Business sets them free to provoke Change because it knows tomorrow will be different from today. "The church is AFRAID" that tomorrow may be different.

3) Business is flexible, adaptable. The church, blindly, is not. It used to be a social, mental, cultural centre for rural folk. It still tries to be this for urban communities. Result: frantic competition with urban life's 101 other social, mental, cultural agencies. Let the church recognize the decay of its incidental functions and return to its essential one-spirituality, "an oasis of reverence, a giver of peace."

4) Business "checks up on" its direction. The church, founded to ease and enrich life, "has got it all turned around." "Rich men, greedy men, hard-hearted men" rule it, take wine from the people, suppress Sunday games, condemn "the impulses of hot blood." Greater sins are ignored. Forgiveness is forgotten.

5) "Business is terribly concerned if there be the slightest depreciation in the quality of the men who enter its ranks." The quality of the clergy has obviously and greatly declined. Reasons:

a) "absurd hurdles," such as belief in the Virgin Birth, placed in the path of ministerial candidates; b) "To be the private Chaplain of 25 or 50 families; to make pastoral calls and attend meetings of women's auxiliaries; to conduct prayer meetings for a dozen completely saved and sanctified old people; to live shabbily and be worried about the education of the children and the burdens of old age-this is not the life to appeal to a high-spirited man. There is no lift in it, no power, nothing to tempt men to trade for it the only life on earth that they will ever have. . . ."

Bruce Barton, heretic, was not "kicking a dead horse." He cited Paul, "the first heretic," as his precedent for criticism from within the ranks of Christianity. Indeed he had said nothing new, and knew it, but he was earnest enough to risk a prophet's ridicule and picture a Bartonized Church of 100 years hence. . . .

The world has been made sate for this church by Bartonized business. "The so-called economic struggle is over. Money is, as the bankers say 'cheap' . . . . Pride in service* rendered has become even more important." Cemeteries are playgrounds. Funerals are appreciative dinner parties among believers in immortality.

The Bartonized church is the only church in town. Its Sunday School is for religious teaching only-"no socials, no bazaars, no motion-picture shows." The church itself is small because few people enter it at the same time. But it is open all the time. The organ plays continuously. People drop in for silent prayer and contemplation at all hours. "Religion is accepted as a perfectly normal part of life . . . is regarded AS life. Men pray as they breathe or eat or take their morning exercise."

There are more unusual adjuncts. Businessmen begin their day by listening to church music, a short prayer and seeing a vision of their pastor, at their offices, by television. The pastor himself is a remarkable character."

"He wears no special uniform but is visibly "a confident citizen of two worlds." He is about 50, ordained only after having shown special qualifications for the spiritual life. His training has consisted in study of Christ's life and two or three years in the Orient to become familiar with mysticism at its source. He comes not to do, or say anything, primarily. He comes "to BE something."

Made potent with money of which he needs give no accounting, he performs miracles of feeding, healing, etc. He conducts six short Sunday services, preaching no sermons, at early and late hours so that his people may be out of doors on their holy day. He holds confessional, informally, in his study. His annual report deals not with attendances, collections or membership rolls, but with community improvements or needs which are no more churchly than secular since the two are one.

Heretic Barton, having sketched a frockless Catholic priest conducting a Quaker meeting house in Utopia, finished his article with an affirmation which none might well deny.

"When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?"

"He shall!"

*Mr. Barton spelled it with a small "a."