Protestant Prescription

One of U.S. Protestantism's doughtiest champions--and one of its sharpest critics --is the owner-editor of the nondenominational Christian Century. For 38 years Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison's Protestant polemics have warmed the pages of his vigorous weekly (present circulation: 40,000).

This week's Century saw the completion of one of the biggest jobs in all Editor Morrison's 71 years--a penetrating, if sometimes repetitious, series of 13 articles titled "Can Protestantism Win America?" Main points:

Secular Shadow. U.S. Protestantism, says Editor Morrison, may examine its yearly membership gains and complacently conclude that all is well. This would be about as intelligent as an assumption that a man is healthy merely because he is not losing weight.

"Is Protestantism growing stronger in its interior life--in spiritual depth, in an intelligent grasp of its faith, in the bonds which make for its solidarity? . . . Is Protestantism advancing in relation to the other forces which are competing for ascendancy in American culture? . . ." No, says Morrison; it is being outdistanced and overshadowed by its two competitors, Catholicism and secularism--and the greater of these is secularism.

"Secularism is an outlook on life limited to this world only. It either denies or has no interest in affirming that human life has any meaning beyond the immediate experience of its events. . . . It is thus the absolute opposite of Christianity. . . . Secularism has been growing much faster in American culture than Protestantism."

Editor Morrison argues that America's rigidly non-religious public school system is an ideal training ground for secularism. "Unlike Catholicism, the Protestant churches . . . have given to the public school their consistent and unreserved devotion. The result is that their own children have been delivered back to their churches with a mentality that is not only unintelligent about religion but relatively incapacitated even to ask the questions out of which religion arises. . . ." The remedy, says Dr. Morrison, is to teach religion as a part of the public school curriculum, like history or economics.

Catholic Harvest. U.S. Catholicism, says Dr. Morrison, is working hard, fast and efficiently to reap the bumper harvest of souls wandering between decadent Protestantism and sterile secularism. "[The Catholic Church] is now developing and putting forward preachers who address the American public with winsome and persuasive arguments in exposition of Catholic doctrine and tradition. . . . This is a relatively new feature in American Catholicism. . . . Its evangelistic program has been exceedingly cautious. But now it feels no need of caution."

Roman Catholicism, Morrison says, does not merely threaten Protestantism--it is a threat to America itself: [It] is a self-enclosed system of power, resting upon the broad base of the submission of its people, whose submission it is able to exploit for the gaining of yet more power in the political and cultural life of the secular community. . . . Its triumph in America would radically transform our culture and change the character of our democratic institutions."

Theological Schizophrenia. Editor Morrison has no illusions that anti-Catholicism will butter any Protestant parsnips. Protestantism can never win America, he knows, unless it boldly stands up to "proclaim its own gospel." It will never do this, he thinks, as long as it is hag-ridden by the twin evils of old-fashioned conservatism and liberalism.

The conservative-fundamentalist wing of all denominations "has, in effect, withdrawn from the cultural scene and taken its Christianity with it. . . . Thus, in a kind of cloistered isolation, conservatism has been running on the momentum of the Christian tradition, rather than on the perennial dynamics of the Christian faith." It has failed to recognize "the challenge to make Christianity intelligible and potent in the present historical situation."

The liberals, on the other hand, are equally ineffective because they have swallowed secularism whole. "Liberalism did not propose a radical criticism of [U.S.] culture in the light of the Christian faith. Instead, it proposed a radical criticism of the Christian faith in the light of modern culture. . . . It expressed itself chiefly in a sigh of intellectual relief when it heard wise men declare that Christianity was just as simple as doing good and that the profundities of the Gospel were, after all, virtually meaningless."

Protestantism generally, says Critic Morrison, is "bedeviled by its unscriptural use of the Scriptures. . . . It has been the victim of a kind of theological schizophrenia which caused it to vibrate between two authorities. Professing loyalty to Christ, it has been tethered and hamstrung by its literalistic conception of the Scriptures as authoritative. . . . The Protestant mind has not allowed Christ to be the interpreter of the Bible, it has used the Bible as a legalistic and literalistic interpreter of Christ."

Ecumenical Church. Having painstakingly diagnosed Protestantism's compound ailments, Dr. Morrison fairly raced to a prescription for the cure: U.S. Protestantism's 200-odd separate "churches" must become a single Church united under the Lordship of Christ.

As for the denominations--"they can live just as long as they want to live. There will be room for them all in an ecumenical church. . . . There is no wrong, no sin, in being a denomination. The sin is in erecting a denomination into a 'church.' "

There is no time to be lost: "Protestantism has been too long going to seed in its sectarianism. To allow it . . . even so long a period as a generation in which to become strong enough to hope that it can win America, is to give it a longer lease than either secularism or Roman Catholicism may allow. . . .

"Protestantism must now demonstrate to itself and to the world that the intention of the Reformation was to project into history an empirical and truly catholic and ecumenical church. . . . It has the freedom, under Christ, to go about this undertaking without let or hindrance from any private interpretation of the Bible, or any theological differences. . . . I say it has the freedom to do this. More true is it to say that it has no freedom not to do it, because it is the will of Christ that it be done."

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