There's No Business Like Church Business

July 1, 1956
Bridgeport

This title is chosen because of [the] present celebration of the annual Barnum Festival. What with the great Ballyhoo Show last night, the coming Parade of Champions and great Street parade, with the auspicious beginning of the second year of Shakespearean Theatre at Stratford on Housatonic, we are made conscious these days of the glitter, fascination and entertainment of show business. There's no business like it, and most of us rejoice that the great performers, actors, directors and producers are determined to go on with it. '

P.T. Barnum lived long before Irving Berlin wrote the song that Ethel Merman and others have made part of our American culture. Barnum, too, believed there was no business like show business.

Barnum also believed there was no business like church business. He gave his money, his time and his public allegiance to the Universalist Church. He was convinced enough of the merit of the message of Universalism that he was willing to be known publicly as a religious liberal. Once, you will recall he went to jail because he was a Universalists and Universalists were not permitted to testify.

Barnum was interested enough in his church to write and publish his reasons for being a Universalist. You might not agree with his arguments; some of his testimony has become dated by later scholarship. But in its day it was trenchant reasoning. Much is still valid. But, not many laypeople are willing to take the time to write out the reasons why they are Universalists. Isn't it true, if you will look back on the actions of people, do not many of them act as though the Church was not the "Greatest Show on Earth" but the "Greatest Bore on Earth."

Many times a person approaching another member to get a task done for the church, is almost unbelievably shy; seemingly quite reluctant to ask for something for his church. We are quite apologetic for our church at times. Why? Have we lost our nerve? Has religion lost its zest? Is organized religion merely an outworn relic, with little relevance for the needs of people today? Are we afraid to make the church really count in our lives because of the manner in which we might alter our loyalties and our allotments of time, money, and devotion?

It was with such questions as the foregoing in mind that I attempted to draw some tentative conclusions as to why I happen to believe there is no business like church business. There are negative as well as positive claims which may be lodged against the church.

There is merit in removing the rose-colored glasses often enough so that the church may be seen in the role of shabby conniver as well as in the spotless role of the angel. For the church and churches, all forms of organized religion is subject to constant decay. Unless the decay is eradicated. Unless new shoots are constantly taking root so that worn-out growth can again become part of the dust of the earth, then the church will no longer serve mankind well.

So first I would ask you to consider that there is no business like church business for being a shelter for hypocrisy as well as honesty. On many occasions this was the sore spot that Jesus struck with rigorous frankness. Think back of the conversations you have had with persons who wanted no part of any church. Is it not so that the most common criticism by these no-church goers, is that they believe there are too many hypocrites in the church.

Any honest reading of the history of the church discloses without any shadow of a doubt that there has been an alternation of the best and the worst in the rise, growth, and decay of the formal religions of the world.

There are examples on almost every page of history. Thousands of Huguenots slaughtered in a single day in the name of the one "true" church. Thousands of lives made more wholesome, cleaner, ---saved from sordid lives or ugly death by the spirit of human reform nurtured at least in part by the great evangelical movements of the 19th century.

When one considers the inquisition, the acid and unlovely bigotry which has characterized many sections of both Protestantism and Catholicism within Christianity, the failure of organized religion to make much of a dent in war, the hardness of heart which is the vain character trait of many persons who loudly proclaim the virtues of a particular religion, then we are tempted to affirm that evil is most foul when it infiltrates the life of religion.

But when one considers the martyrs, the service to those in need, beginning with the elders of the primitive Xn church, continuing down through the religious orders which were founded to serve humanity in its needs, the orphanages, hospitals, and educational institutions inspired, organized, founded and nurtured by the countless branches of all forms of religion, we have to affirm to that good is never better than when discovered in the workings of churches.

All churches proclaim one way or another the "liberty of the Christian man." But also when one church becomes by far the strongest in a nation, historically that church begins to use force to have its own way, rather than persuasion. This is true not only of Roman Catholicism, but many branches of Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, as well as the great religion of Islam. They forget the quotation Mr. Jackson uses, "a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."

There is no business like church business for irony. One could almost define Christianity as the worship of dead radicals. Jesus, Paul, John, the Church Fathers, Luther, Calvin, and in our liberal traditions, Murray, Ballou, Channing, and Parker. We may not worship their memories, but we do hold them in high favor, and quote their lives and sermons with approval. Yet, ironically enough, most churches will persecute their live radicals.

One of the most feared slanders in the church today, is the charge that some of the ministers and lament are atheists. It is a loosely used word which usually means that the one called the name doesn't believe in the god of the one who makes the label. Yet, in the beginning, the early Christians were called Atheists, persons who believed in a detestable superstition.

There's no business like church business. The church proclaims itself to be an institution of God. All churches do one way or another. Yet the worst mistake any church can make, whether it calls itself "the true Church," is to place itself beyond human criticism.

There's no business like church business and the greatest mistake you can make is to see only one side of its picture, either good or bad. For just as in the buying and selling of antique furniture to be used in a home today, you must see both sides of the picture, whether the claims are true or false, whether the facts are as they state, and what use it is today.

Yet is isn't a true picture to portray the church only as an institution in which the alternating currents of good and evil render about equal power. For in addition, there's no business like church business to help people see themselves who are religious more for what they can give, rather than what they can get. This is not to say that persons do not find some needs satisfied in the worship and work of the church. It would be naive to think that persons would continue to attend and support churches if they got nothing. But, the highest rewards of the church offers results from the opportunities of giving.

While many persons do get peace of mind, via the "buck up old boy philosophy, life isn't so bad after all," there are also those and their name has been legion in the past who acquire serenity, even though life is bad and difficult, by trusting that the universe is ultimately biased toward what is good for life. There's no business like church business for acquiring an honest as well as reverence inner balance, if you will give your trust.

There's no business like church business either for defining life in terms of what you can give others. That was the way Jesus defined religion. Micah of a more ancient day said, do just, love march (an outgoing attitude) and walk humbly with thy God.

When the church gets beneath ceremonies, whether simple or ornate, there's no business like it for telling us humans that we need religion because of what we can give. This is not because we will be automatically rewarded, but rather the act or intention of giving without hope of reward, is the essence of getting to know God.

Lastly I would say that there's no business like church business for carrying in its movement the values which human beings believe to be of ultimate importance. With all its faults and fumbles, the church symbolizes what we have faith is the highest. Whatever our ideas of deity may be, the highest ones we place in the religion of our allegiance. When the events and feelings of life become disconnected, confused, doubtful, we find in the church the institution which expresses the myths and principles which we believe to be highest and of ultimate importance. The human spirit; the continuing endurance of human life experience, forgiveness, mercy, love, truth, and beauty.

There's no business like church business. In our modern day we have not yet found the architecture and the liturgy and symbolism which the Gothic cathedral, the mass and the cross, and vestments did for Medieval man.

But the human spirit will not be denied. When we too recognize that the religious institution must be the vehicle for our most valuable hopes and dreams, then we will seek to make it as significant for us as the RC was for Francis; Judaism for Isaiah; the wandering brotherhoods for Buddha.