RELIGIOUS FRIVOLITY

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

RELIGIOUS FRIVOLITY.

IN common with other pastors, I have received a circular from a “Dramatic and Dialect Elocutionist,” proposing “An Evening with Mark Twain,” promising “uncontrollable bursts of laughter” and kindly offering “most liberal terms to churches.” This strange missive has awakened some reflections, mingled with feelings of shame, regret and resentment. Can we regard this as an insult to the high, holy, consecrated character of the ministry and the church? It should be so; but, alas, it is not! This humorist and trifler knows that the professing church of God has gone into this unblest business of entertainments, amusements, fun and jollity to such an extent that he is in request of them. He applies to churches as if they were organized bureaus of amusement. Ministers practice jesting in their ecclesiastical and social gatherings, sometimes in most unseemly excess. They try their wit in advertising sermons and giving pulpit notices, and even sometimes in sermons.

“Court a grin when they should win a soul.”

Ecclesiastical life is being transformed into a round of amusements and frolics, with which the preaching, singing and worship must in some degree accord. These play people of the church have learned the modern art of “Christianity made easy.” They play at Sabbath-school work, missions, and other church enterprises. They do up all such things in fun, with an entertainment or a religious spree. In amateur dime shows, small theaters and “nonsense evenings”—tell it not in Gath—the professing church is leading, and shall I say corrupting, the world. No one can scarcely blame this merry Andrew for expecting the patronage of the clergy and the churches.

Now, what results follow this career of religious frivolity? Some are honestly aiming to do good by these cunning inventions. They seek to “make religion attractive;” to keep persons from “worse amusements by providing better ones;” to “please the young people and keep them in the church,” and last, but not least, “to put money into the Lord’s treasury.” In some of these ends they succeed, but in all the most important ends of the gospel and the church they signally and fatally fail. By their amateur and rude performances they cultivate a taste for “the real thing,” and swell the throng at the play-house, where there is always more art and often more contamination. The church cannot compete with the play-house or the club. She has no right or power to excel except in holiness and usefulness. This religious frivolity compromises and identifies the church with the world, so as to destroy its corporate testimony. While the carnal heart of the world may be pleased, its moral judgment condemns this course. The position of effective witness-bearing and efficient service is one of absolute and entire moral separation from the world unto Christ. For illustration, study Abraham and Lot. Again, let it be emphasized, that this frivolity and trifling not only tend to destroy the faith of the world in the church and Christianity, but the faith of the church itself. These formal professors who fritter away life in ecclesiastical and worldly frivolities, who treat sacred scenes, characters, doctrines and duties lightly, generally have no clear and profound convictions of the fundamental doctrines of man’s ruin and redemption. How can men who believe there is such a place as an “orthodox hell” jest about it? Yet I lately knew a large portion of an “orthodox” congregation to go home jesting and bantering each other upon the sermon, which was upon future punishment—the first one, they said, in eight years. It is doubtful if more than half of our orthodox professors clearly and strongly hold the doctrine of eternal punishment. Our ministers shrink from preaching it except under challenge, and then it is often but an inefficient incongruity and a mere sensation.

A frivolous life is absolutely inconsistent with the spirit and practice of Christianity. Christianity is misrepresented when it is allied to carnal mirth. It demands earnestness of spirit, and a serious, practical purpose in life. It presents both the brightest and the blackest future ever conceived. It has a shady as well as a sunny side, and we must not conceal this fact to please and attract the world. We must seek to save sinners by telling them the whole truth. They must be warned, or they will perish, and we shall be guilty of helping on their frolic to perdition.

The Puritans were not wholly wrong in abolishing holidays, cutting down May-poles, and suppressing games. The “book of sports” did more to undermine the faith and morality of England than all the writings of Hume, Volney and Voltaire. Both gospel work and reform work are serious business, and no one can succeed in them without being in blood-red earnest. The church is losing in faith, piety, holiness and usefulness every day by this course of religious frivolity. The Scriptures condemn “foolish jesting,” enjoin “sobriety,” and everywhere teach us to pursue an earnest and a consecrated course of life. We should be solid, but not sad; lively, but not light. More vital godliness, more satisfaction in the salvation and service of Christ, is the only effectual remedy for this pleasure-loving spirit. Multitudes are pleasure-lovers, because unsatisfied formalists. It is time to call out a halt in this high, free career of frivolity. This modern spirit and device of the church is proving a specious and a dreadful failure. Oh, let us return to the real apostolic spirit and methods! Don’t trifle. Be in earnest,—Selected.