The New Era Movement

from The Messenger | Promoting the Work and Worship of The Seventh Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati | February 23, 1919

EDITORIAL. Chicago Examiner. Jan 15.—While some agencies that have made much more noise about reconstruction have been muddling over their blueprints, demanding legislation or waiting for the other fellow to make the first move, the Presbyterian Church has stepped out boldly and started something. The church does not call what it is doing “reconstruction,” but it is the best sort of reconstruction, nevertheless. Designated “The New Era Movement,” the program calls for the expenditure of $75,000,000 within the next five years in ways that will benefit society. Yesterday, one million was appropriate to increase the salaries of 6,500 pastors in 1919. Just as chaplains were invaluable to the armies of Foch, so will clergymen be needed in the social readjustment upon which the world now is entering and the end of which no man can foretell.

The Presbyterians are to be congratulated on their foresight. Able men will be needed in the ministry in the years ahead, and plenty of them. And you must permit an able man to hold up his head in the corner grocery if you expect to get out of him all that is in him.

Altar and pulpit are bulwarks against that which is most feared by thinking men to-day. When they fell in Russia—dragged down, it is true, by the Czar—Bolshevism rose. The cloth, under any name, represents what is constructive. In the ratio that it is free and respected, a country will prosper.

A PLATFORM FOR COUNTRY CHURCHES.

One church in ever community. To unite the peple in worship and service, with the gospel of friendship for all; with help for every community need, whether good roads, adequate schools, social life, or what not; with Christian leadership for every occasion and co-operation for every moment which contributes to the betterment of mankind. A resident minister in every community church, with the love of the country church and country people in his heart, with accurate and sympathetic knowledge of this task and his community. Every community a permanent home, where no one is poor or strange or dissatisfied; where men are taught how to live and work in the country and to support their homes, their institutions, and their community; where ever generation transmits a richer heritage—in lands and institutions and traditions—than it received; where there is satisfaction in the present and a faith in the future to inspire with confidence of Eternal Life—this is the program of our Board of Home Missions.

AMERICAN business requires foreign representatives. So does American Christianity. The Presbyterian branch is operated in fifteen foreign lands. Educating the ignorant, healing the sick, uplifting the fallen, holding forth the Word of Life to one hundred millions for whom we are responsible. We have 1,366 foreign representatives who conduct this work. A foreign representative costs a home church $1,250.