Seven Follies

With the enthusiasm of a dozen Martin Luthers pelting a dozen devils with inkpots, Rev. Dr. Walter A. Maier of Concordia Theological Seminary (St. Louis, Mo.) addressed 4,000 Lutherans last week at a Luther Day celebration at Ocean Grove, N. J.

Bitterly he flayed "this cynical, scoffing self-willed generation that bows down before the idol of profit and production, that knows not God and prides itself in this ignorance; . . . its penitentiaries, enlarged and yet overcrowded; juvenile crime . . . divorce, with states like Nevada and Arkansas feverishly competing in the effort to make divorce easier, quicker and cheaper; apostles of free love and loose moral leaders . . . quicksand of companionate marriage, childless families . . . collapse of family felicity; our business world with its fraud and connivance . . . professional impurity . . . commercialized vice. . . ."

Hotly he excoriated the "seven follies of church structure":

1) The political church, which "either follows the dictates of an ecclesiastical head . . . or foists upon the free and sovereign people of our nation a program of selfish and sectarian ambitions."

2) The sensational church, which uses "jazz bands, picked beauties as ushers and other bizarre attractions."

3) The church "with the financial complex . . . raffles . . . roulette wheels . . . frenzied financing. . . ."

4) The "epileptic church which institutes Bible reading marathons . . . churches that kick and scream."

5) The "social church which fights against industrialism and capitalism . . . working for the body instead of the soul."

6) The "inactive . . . smugly self-sufficient church."

7) "Worst of all . . . the church with a craving for a modernistic creed, the passion for creating a new Christianity."

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