What the Clergy Are Doing

A LITTLE boy picked up a dust-covered Bible in his home and asked his mother: “Is this God’s Book?”

“Yes,” replied his mother.

Then the boy said: “Well, hadn’t we better take it back, because we don’t ever use it?”

A headline in This Week magazine of February 25, 1968, asked: “What’s Happening to Religion?” It noted: “Protestants accuse their religion of ‘being run like a business.’ Catholics say birth control is a private matter and reject the Pope’s infallibility. Nuns abandon convents to live in downtown apartments. Priests leave the church in unprecedented numbers to marry. One of the nation’s best known Episcopal Bishops is accused of heresy. Teachers of religion announce that ‘God is dead.’ . . . Today, chaos, acrimony and confusion are apparently the order of the day.”

Why all this chaos? Why, in the great majority of homes claiming to be Christian, does the Bible gather dust? Why are the laws of God so often ignored and belittled? And why is there such a growing lack of respect for clergymen today?

BELITTLING THE BIBLE

Jesus Christ, his apostles and the first-century Christians all had deep respect for God’s word as found in the Bible. Jesus said in prayer to God: “Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) The apostle Paul said to Christians in his day: “When you received God’s word, which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but, just as it truthfully is, as the word of God.”—1 Thess. 2:13.

Yet, in the Providence Journal of September 30, 1967, the following item appeared:

“Washington—(RNS)—After analyzing, clause by clause, the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, the Rev. Duncan Howlett, of All Saints’ Unitarian Church, said it would no longer be used in his church.

“The minister told the congregation that the prayer lacks real meaning, . . . As an example of his reasoning, Mr. Howlett said the clause ‘Hallowed be Thy name’ is a ‘joke’ in an age when the name of God is ‘no longer as sacred as that of Washington, Lincoln or Kennedy.’”

Nor is this an isolated case. More and more clergymen belittle the Bible. A New York newspaper carried the headline: “Cleric Is Critical of Bible Teaching.” It noted that clergyman H. Smith of London said that Bible teaching for youngsters “is a waste of time and can be harmful.” Yet the apostle Paul told Christian fathers regarding their children: “Go on bringing them up in the discipline and authoritative advice of Jehovah.”—Eph. 6:4.

In the Toronto Star Weekly, the front cover showed clergyman G. Goth stating: “The Ten Commandments are Dead.” The impression his article gave was that God requires persons to obey the Mosaic law today, that it is irrelevant, and that the entire Hebrew Scriptures are valueless. Nowhere did he explain, as the Bible so clearly does, that the Mosaic law is not binding upon Christians, but that it is filled with principles and prophetic patterns that are of vital importance to them.—Rom. 6:14; Heb. 10:1.

So completely have most clergymen downgraded the dynamic, inspiring message of the Bible that the religious editor of the Oakland Tribune said: “A recent study reveals that . . . the day of the 30 to 40 minute sermon is past. The study suggested that ministers confine their remarks to 10 minutes and not more than 15.” Indeed, some even suggest a more radical confining. P. Berton of Canada, in his book The Comfortable Pew, stated: “The lukewarm pulpit makes hypocrites of its occupants . . . the whole problem of the Sunday sermon and its lack of conviction is one that profoundly worries men of conviction. No wonder that some, in desperation, have seriously suggested a moratorium on all preaching . . . for a period of at least a year and probably longer.”

The blame for this lack of interest in God and his Word must rest largely with the clergy. They have so confused people that they no longer know what to believe. Notice how this is shown in the book A Church Without God, written by clergyman E. Harrison:

“Werner Pelz, who entitled a book God Is No More, is a Church of England vicar; William H. Dubay, who asserts that Christ ‘did away with religion,’ is a Roman Catholic priest . . . Father Jackson, who says, ‘If there is a God, we can’t speak of him as a supreme being,’ is a university chaplain; Thomas Altizer [God is dead], who wrote The Gospel of Christian Atheism, is an Associate Professor of Bible Studies at an American university; I am on the staff of an Anglican parish in Toronto. I claim to be a Christian and an Anglican; yet I can say, in all seriousness, that there is no God.”

Observing how far Christendom’s clergymen have strayed away from Christian standards, author Berton, a former member of the Anglican Church in Canada, stated:

“It has all but been forgotten that Christianity began as a revolutionary religion whose followers embraced an entirely different set of values from those held by other members of society. Those original values are still in conflict with the values of contemporary society; yet religion today has become as conservative a force as the force the original Christians were in conflict with.”

Yes, the clergy of Christendom have abandoned true Christian teaching and practice. They have become the very thing that Jesus and the first-century Christians exposed as working contrary to God’s will. They are like the ones to whom Jesus said: “You have made the word of God invalid because of your tradition. You hypocrites, Isaiah aptly prophesied about you, when he said, ‘This people honors me with their lips, yet their heart is far removed from me. It is in vain that they keep worshiping me, because they teach commands of men as doctrines.’”—Matt. 15:6-9.

SOCIAL DUTIES TAKE PRECEDENCE

Much of the clergy’s time today is devoted, not to Bible teaching and study, but to social affairs. The Saturday Evening Post said of the average clergyman today:

“He is, instead, . . . an organizer of committees, a club chairman, and a settler of petty squabbles among good ladies of the altar guild. He is a fund raiser, a builder, a luncheon speaker, a participant in and contributor to every worthy community project, so incessantly tugged and hauled at that he must literally hide himself away if he is to find the time to let the springs of the spirit fill up through meditation, prayer and the study of the Scriptures.

Similarly, the book The Comfortable Pew notes: “The chains of parish life make it difficult for him to break out and be anything else, since so much of his time is devoted to tea-cup balancing and inoffensive palaver with the natives. . . . The dominance of parish life, with its social club atmosphere, means that the church is tightly tied to the secular social hierarchy of the community.”

POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

One of the main reasons for the decline in esteem that the clergy are suffering is their involvement in the politics and wars of this world. More and more persons are coming to see how inconsistent it is for clergymen to support both sides, especially in military struggles. In this regard the New York World-Telegram and Sun reported on March 11, 1966:

“Representatives of three religious faiths sought yesterday to convince a group of Brooklyn students that the Biblical injunction against killing did not apply to the war in Viet Nam.

“In general, the attempt was unsuccessful. The audience . . . left with the feeling, as one student put it, that the speakers were ‘putting us on.’”

The clergymen involved were Catholic, Jewish and Protestant. In attempting to justify involvement in war, one of them said: “Killing must be done with a pure heart.”

In a poll taken of clergymen serving as military chaplains, it was discovered that their views in no way differed from those of other military men as to the morality of modern warfare. As author Berton notes: “None felt that the individual soldier had any more responsibility in the matter except to serve his country. This outlook is very similar to the one that formed the core of Adolph Eichmann’s defence during his trial in Israel.”

Bertrand Russell said that in England “the Anglican Church has upheld every Government view including those concerning war and killing.” He noted that the church actually had become a force for establishing “resistance to conscientious protest.”

Of the Catholic church, the New York Times of December 29, 1966, reported:

“Traditionally Catholics support the nation’s war efforts and leave moral responsibilities for the wars’ conduct to the political authorities. . . .

“In the past local Catholic hierarchies almost always supported the wars of their nations, blessing troops and offering prayers for victory, while another group of bishops on the other side publicly prayed for the opposite outcome. And while this took place, the Vatican usually maintained a careful neutrality and advocated an early end to hostilities. . . .

“The contradiction between the Christian spirit and the conduct of the war, which was often obscured by theological subtleties, seems increasingly clear to many, as weapons grow more brutal.”

At the funeral of a soldier killed in action, the pastor of a Lutheran Church in Des Moines, Iowa, performed the service. The Register of February 10, 1968, related: “The Rev. Martin Haerther, church pastor, said . . . he knew it was God’s will.” The clergyman added: “When a soldier dies in line of duty in a just war, not only is it a glorious death in the service of country but it is a blessed end for him . . . I am sure the angels were on hand to carry his soul into heaven and he is now enjoying peace.”

This clergyman mentioned a “just” war. A booklet, The Church and War, published by the National Council of Catholic Men in the United States, comments on this. In reviewing the booklet, United Press International writer Louis Cassels observed that “the mainstream of Christian tradition is represented by the doctrine of the ‘just war,’ spelled out in the 5th century A.D. by the great St. Augustine.” What were Augustine’s rules for a “just” war? (1) It should be waged only as a necessity; (2) its only legitimate objective is to achieve a just and stable peace as quickly as possible; (3) it should be fought with mercy, avoiding all needless brutality and restricting use of violence to the minimum.

When reporting on this booklet’s publication, Cassels pointed out: “In World War II, however, both sides abandoned any pretense of ‘minimum’ force in favor of all-out, ‘total’ war. Each side rained bombs on the other’s cities, and millions of civilians, including women, children and the aged, were killed, maimed or rendered homeless.”

Yet all the time the clergy of both sides regarded the war as a “just” war. Clergymen of the same religion prayed for victory on each of the opposing sides!

CHRISTIAN VIEW

Is a war that pits “brothers” of the same “Christian” religion against one another really a “just” war? By whose definition? Augustine’s? But is Augustine a greater authority on Christian conduct and doctrine than Jesus Christ, or the apostles, or God’s written Word, the Bible?

Jesus said to those who would claim to be Christian: “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” (John 13:35) The apostle Paul said to Christians: “You should all speak in agreement, and . . . there should not be divisions among you, . . . Does the Christ exist divided?” (1 Cor. 1:10, 13) Could there be any division greater than that which results in members of the same religion killing one another?

Some clergymen do admit that there is no basis whatsoever in early Christianity for the support they have given to this world’s wars. Clergyman I. Evans, former editor of Blackfriars, a British journal, acknowledged that such shedding of blood was incompatible with the “inherent Christian tradition of turning the other cheek.” The Eugene Register-Guard of January 22, 1967, reported: “Until 313 A.D., Evans said, Christians took no part in the wars of the Roman Empire. With the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. the Emperor Constantine gave the minority group of Christians full rights and obligations as Roman citizens. This, Evans said, was the beginning of the just war theory.” Later, Augustine elaborated on it.

Note the sources of the “just” war theory. It comes, not from God, not from Jesus Christ, not from the apostles, not from the first-century Christians. Instead, it originated with politicians and with clergymen who had already turned apostate by the fourth century of our Common Era.

During World War II the vast majority of the clergy of all major religions in Germany accepted Constantine’s and Augustine’s unscriptural views. They supported Hitler’s war machine. Yet after World War II the Nuremberg trials of Nazi political and military leaders found them guilty of carrying out Hitler’s murderous orders. The clergy, however, were just as guilty, since they encouraged their followers to obey Hitler’s orders for mass murder. On the other hand, Jehovah’s witnesses upheld the true Christian view and unitedly refused to carry out the murderous designs of the Nazis. They went to concentration camps rather than violate the Christian standard of neutrality in war, knowing that “we must obey God as ruler rather than men.”—Acts 5:29.

Though Hitler has long since been discredited, and the support given him by clergymen exposed, some clergy today still uphold his memory! In the May 12, 1968, issue of La Vanguardia Española in Barcelona, Spain, a headline declared: “Funeral Rites for Hitler’s Eternal Rest.” The accompanying article said:

“In the Church of San Martín in Desengaño Street, a mass for the eternal rest of Hitler’s soul was held yesterday. In the memorial cards distributed during the service it was precisely declared that the mass was offered ‘for the eternal rest of Adolf Hitler and of all the fallen in defense of Christendom and of Western Civilization.’”

PART OF THE WORLD

By their involvement in the politics and wars of this world the clergy have become part of it. Added to this is their justifying the “new morality” and their attempts to reshape doctrine and practice to conform to what is popular rather than what is right.

When a Barnard College sophomore was recently threatened with expulsion from school for breaking regulations by living with her boyfriend in an off-campus apartment, two clergymen testified in her behalf. The New York Daily News declared in a front-page headline: “Clerics Back Linda in Love Trial. The paper said:

“A minister, a rabbi, and a philosophy professor spoke in her behalf . . . claiming that the college has no legal right to regulate students’ private affairs. . . . The Rev. William Starr, Protestant counselor of Columbia University, cited the housing rules as ‘ridiculous.’ . . .

“Starr was followed on the stand by Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman, Jewish counselor of Columbia University. Praising Linda for what he said was her courage and conviction, Goldman said the hearing was a ‘test of civil and individual rights.’”

Similarly, Time magazine of May 10, 1968, reported: “Should Christianity permit polygamy? Under certain conditions, yes, argues a Roman Catholic missionary in Africa. . . . His recommendation: ‘If polygamy is the established custom of a place, take the lot into the church—kids and all.’”

But does true Christianity condone fornication and adultery? No, it upholds high moral standards. (1 Cor. 6:9, 10) So how can clergymen call themselves Christian and yet promote ideas so contrary to Christianity? What they promote cannot be true religion approved by God.

Truly the clergy are a part of this world. They apply its methods, tactics, doctrines and morals. Yet God’s Word warns: “Do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.”—Jas. 4:4.

Does the Bible urge sincere persons to try to reform the religions and clergymen that refuse to abide by God’s standards? No. Instead, God’s Word urges: “Get out from among them, and separate yourselves.”—2 Cor. 6:17.

Why is such separation urgent? Because, very shortly, God will execute his judgments against all religions and religious leaders that break his laws and lead others to do the same. All will come to their end soon, as well as those who adhere to them. That is why God’s Word warns concerning false religion: “Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues. For her sins have massed together clear up to heaven, and God has called her acts of injustice to mind.”—Rev. 18:4.