Plan to Bring All Programs to Prevent Juvenile Delinquency Into One Bureau

 

"Miss Jennie Lawton, interdepartmental field agent for the Social Hygiene Bureau, expresses herself strongly in favor of the movement. The need for such a centralized authority in juvenile cases is greatly needed she says, and the extent of juvenile delinquency in the rural districts is more considerable than people dream of."

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle| 8 Dec. 1920

Social Hygiene Board

Suffolk County News | Sayville, N.Y. | 12 Dec 1919

from 100 Years: The Rockefeller Foundation

"From 1911 to 1934, the Bureau of Social Hygiene (BSH) funded research and sought to influence public policy on a number of issues related to sex, crime and delinquency. Although the BSH received contributions from a number of organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the Bureau was largely dependent upon the patronage of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who created the organization to address many of his own personal concerns and interests.

"The idea for the BSH originated in 1910, following JDR Jr.’s participation in a grand jury investigation of white slavery in New York City. Motivated by frustration with temporary public commissions that could only recommend governmental action, JDR Jr. established a permanent and private body to deal directly with a variety of social ills, including prostitution, corruption, drug use and juvenile delinquency."

Books of Worth

--> Jesse Halsey

c1934

  

“The Reason for Living” answers many questions that the contemporary mind is asking religious and other values. Its author is Dean Wicks of the Princeton Chapel. He was long time a pastor in a mill town, knows the life practical as well as scholastic, and represents a warm Evangelical faith in the heart of a real man, and in his mind, as it wrestles with doubt and difficulty, for serious students, in college or out.

“You Can Master Life,” by Jas. G. Gilkey, is ‘rational pep medicine to a college athlete. To a parish minister it appeals as common sense applied to everyday life problems with a modicum of religious verbiage, but with sound religious experience, though the expressions are more often Stoic than traditionally Christian.

In this, and in his numerous other books, Dr. Gilkey has been (unconsciously?) writing something that I should ineptly call, “A Psycho-theology of the Modernist Christian Left.” It is a fearless dealing of real problems as they lie in many minds and to the cautious, judicial, and reasoning mind, of which there are many, he speaks acceptably. To those who want another kind of Authority, there will be something lacking.

When you read, “What Men are Asking?” by Dr. Coffin, unless you are an arch-fundamentalist, you find soul satisfying stuff with an Evangelical fervor and flavor that warms your heart. Likely these are the positions of the majority of the Presbyterian Evangelicals (Liberals or Modernists, call them what you will). Dean Wicks’ “The Reason for Living” takes on a little more scholastic vocabulary and loses a little warmth, but has the same general, ‘though individual, approach. James Gilkey swings over to the Left, stoic common sense rather than (traditional) Christian religious expression. And Dr. Fosdick has at time some of all, trying always to put reasonable argument of emotional fervor. He maintains a good balance, but for five years has been (to the help of many) swinging to the Right.

A transcript from experience, we gather, is Dean Wicks’ book. The questions we asked our teachers (and ourselves) and many others added by a generation more inquisitive, and likely wiser than ours. From the first to the last (Why live? to “ . . . can we preserve the freedom of the human spirit?”) there is reason and counsel, affirmation and constructive suggestiveness.

To those of us who in our day and generation learned a catechism and who since have unlearned and relearned or discarded its answers it is interesting to find young people still asking the same basic questions and we rejoice that they have such wise instructors as Dean Wicks proves himself to be in this book. He never answers his question by simply  asking another question, unless that is a leading question that proceeds immediately to constructive affirmation.

AFTER A “RETREAT”

By Jesse Halsey | c1932

Conference (like Spurgeon’s “committee”) is a collective noun that means many—but not much. Yet conferences innumerable go on, and conference must be had, so it seems.

One bitter night, in North Russia, during the war, I asked a lone sentry what most he dreaded in our isolation, and he said, “I miss bein’ shoulder to shoulder on the march—we never march.” The value of conference is in comradeship; and its perils lie in the implication that plans and programs can take the place of work; we need “to march.”

But what are the marching orders? No one appears to know. At least there seems to be divided council. Here again is the disadvantage of conference. So many questions are asked, so much discussion develop, such differences of opinion, so little unanimity of thought, a dozen different emphases, and in every conference group one or two brethren who have positive opinions on every last subject: (but are not able to convince their confreres.)

Is there wisdom in a multitude of counselors? Walter Lippman seems to doubt it, in the political field, and I agree, as to the religious. But, as I have intimated, conference does mean fellowship, and fellowship means strength for our souls and for our cause. Not programs, but more brotherliness will strengthen the church. Friendliness is a good beginning and in days of mistrust and bickering these ought to be, among ministers, camaraderie and understanding. Somehow or other the world outside rather expects a minister to be a gentleman—and brotherly! To forge a brotherhood, to weld a fellowship, is the first business of a conference.

Discussion is valuable, and interchange of ideas. A great number of questions will be propounded. (Most men who ask questions will at least suggest an answer, so I say “propounded,” not “asked.”) Suppose we list some of the contemporary interrogations. It would run like this: Have you read “Re-thinking Missions?” What about it? (These are among the first.) What about the Oxford movement? (Whether the quester says “Bookman” or “Buckman,” will, subtly, indicate his own feelings.) What do you know about Karl Barth? Is the proper emphasis on worship or on the sermon? What is the best book of the contemporary flood? How do you balance your budget? (“I don’t,” comes the answer.) The ethics of Jesus—do you preach them now? Socialism, communism, bolshevism and not the first queries, but their shadow is thrown over all. And then (toward the end)—prohibition?

Where shall the emphasis be placed? Where are our leaders? The soldiers are ready. What of the march? (Haig latterly, Napoleon formerly, is credited with the opinion that there are no poor soldiers, only poor colonels.) And the colonels are in conference!

One (lieutenant) colonel has come to the following conclusions after many conferences, participated in, listened to, and conducted. And these “findings” are colored by the opinion and feeling of a hundred of his brothers, if he has been able to interpret words—and “feelings.”

First and foremost among the younger clergy there is a desire to follow Christ if they can ascertain His will. They are not strong for theology, many of them, but they take Jesus seriously, as few generations of Christians ever have. Over their ministry I would write the text, “Why call me Lord, Lord and do not the things that I say?”

Many have ceased to look for Leadership or to talk about it. When leaders appear they are not always recognized. They do their work, give their message, and pass on. Then men awake and recognize their quality. Moreover, when a man has the qualities of leadership he seldom knows it. And, surely, he never talks about it. Like the blue-bird, it comes unsought. No Federal Council pronouncement, no denominational-headquarters-ukase, none of the old dynamite will stir us now. It has “frozen” and cannot be detonated. (One of my first jobs as a Labrador missionary, years ago, was to thaw the giant powder over the forge fire, so that it could be exploded.)

From the point of view of a parish minister in a denomination that has no bishop (in name at least); in a Protestantism that has no pope (for better or for worse); I have determined on a few and simple things that, God helping me, shall characterize my ministry from this time forward. (And this slowly formed decision has been molded by many conferences and much fellowship with the brethren.)

I am done with labels. Men of goodwill are everywhere and except for these all abide in the ship we cannot be saved. Time has done some things even with my non-scholar’s mind and I know some of the tricks of the party-labeled protagonists; they “walk in blinders” as Scott (Ernest F.) says.

So Variety is my first word. From anyone who has knowledge I am willing to learn. My brethren will differ with me on all sorts of things, and we will agree to differ. I love them still and hope that they will at least respect me. The pattern is too complicated for any one man to know everything.

Then I must Simplify. Technology will hit the rocks; it carries too much sail. People need a few truths, simply stated, but beautifully clothed in life. For example; whatever elevates human life, dignifies it and makes it meaningful is for me RIGHT. Whatever degrades life is WRONG. This is simple—and inclusive. (Edwin Lewis says it emphatically, and more at length. I acknowledge the debt, but the principle I learned long ago.) For me, quite arbitrarily, if you please, this is the criterion. A philosophy that belittles life is wrong. A science that degrades life is wrong. An ethic that cheapens life is wrong. Art, education, literature, drama (movies included), whatsoever heightens the value of life is right and whatsoever debauches or besmirches life is wrong—arbitrarily or eternally wrong—(just as you please). There I stand.

Another simplification (most difficult to practice) might be characterized as “brotherhood” (there are many synonyms). Charles Kingsley avowed that we ministers use “brethren” because we don’t mean “brothers.” The practice of this virtue would solve most, if not all, of our social problems. “Every problem is a problem in personnel.” Effective conferences of all sorts could be built around this principle. It is called Love in the New Testament, but, as Moffat points out, it has a vigorous ethical, never a romantic, connotation. It works in the family; it works in a church—sometimes. It always works if it is worked. Race, creed, color, all will yield to it. It is our only hope. All the problems of international politics apparently must come back to this simple practice. It is a long road but a sure road. To simplify.

Dr. Lynn Hough has told us, in a variety of ways, that we need more great thinking. Many smart and some great thinkers we have, but great undergirding thought is lacking. (Here is the reason for the welcome to Karl Barth: Will he stand the test?) I read the brilliant epigramist, the caustic critic, the Menken, whoever he may be, in his particular line (and religion has its brilliant exponents, too). They leave me burned out. Some system, some simple but profound principles that will tie thoughts into the bundle of thought—these, I need, and the times need. (The first books I ever bought with my own money were Calvin’s Institutes. Long since they went on the top shelf; I knew too much. They have come down. I need a system. I find, too, that Augustine’s “City of God” has been dusted off. A gesture of desperation? Have your way. And Hocking, rather than Wieman, gets attention in a study hour. I am becoming a sturdy Theist.)

Yes, after a quarter century of tasting and testing there seem to be emerging some Certainties for me. And people are saying to me (and my brother ministers), as Helen Keller said to Phillips Brooks, “Tell us what you KNOW about God.” With Carlisle I determine to consume my own smoke. Such as I have I’ll give. Without apology, in congenial thought forms, I’ll try to convey my conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord. With Pearl Buck I’m sometimes tired of preaching, but as preaching is needed, the living-preaching, I will try and “carry on.” With Dr. Fosdick, sometimes, at least, I will try to “debunk the debunkers.” Cynicism, and agnosticism and atheism are not entirely new. I ought to have known it. This is not the first generation to question. Plato’s teacher taught him to question rather drastically. There is a wisdom not of today: (A lot of it is in the Bible).

Yes, I should have known it. My teachers often said so. For example; one day in preceptorial, when the talk had wandered from politics to philosophy, and an enthusiastic student was expounding the Riddle of the Universe after Haeckel’s formula, Woodrow Wilson turned to another student, who was majoring in philosophy, and said, “Tell us about Democritus.” Materialism is not new; that was the implication—and the truth.

Variety, Simplification, Certitude—these three I now covet, having learned much from my brethren and some things from experience.

The Affirmation

The reaction in American Protestantism rose to militant activity after the First World War, in a time congenial to such a movement. A widespread and powerful body of opinion charged the Churches with weakness and failures, and located the cause in "modernism," which meant modern Biblical study and religious thought accepting scientific truth, in particular "evolution." In this temper fundamentalism was organized as the great World Conference on Christian Fundamentals in Philadelphia in May, 1919. The conference issued a doctrinal declaration including the five points and also the imminent return of Christ, the tenets of which were the "fundamentals." It adopted a broad program of measures of war on "modernism" and modernists, aimed at Churches, theological seminaries, colleges, missions, boards, religious periodicals, the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., and planned extensive means to spread the theology of the fundamentals. The avowed ultimate object was to secure control of the great Churches.

The first attempt of this kind was made in the Northern Baptist Convention of 1922. Before this Dr. Harry Fosdick preached in the First Presbyterian Church of New York his celebrated sermon on "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" Defeated with the Baptists, fundamentalism turned to the Presbyterian Church. The General Assembly of 1923 by a narrow vote expressed disapproval of Dr. Fosdick's teaching, without mentioning his name, and directed the Presbytery of New York to bring the teaching in the First Presbyterian Church into conformity with the doctrinal standards of the Church and report to the next Assembly. It accompanied this with a reiteration of the five points as essential doctrines. A question of the whole Church had thus arisen, and now the fundamentalist effort to control the Church was fully launched. The propaganda seeking to make the five points the Church's effective creed was much intensified, with unceasing denunciation of all ministers and laymen known to hold liberal theological views as enemies of Christian faith. Vague but very positive assertions were made to the effect that there was in the Church a large body of ministers who had forsaken evangelical Christianity. The words "materialist," "rationalist," "infidel," "pagan," were cast about without much regard for their meaning, but so as to strengthen this suspicion. After some months of this fomenting of theological panic there appeared a proposal designed to accomplish fundamentalist domination. To the General Assembly of 1924 came an overture asking it to require that all members of the General Council and the Boards of the Church and all professors in its theological seminaries declare their assent to the doctrinal deliverances containing the five points. This would involve giving to utterances of the General Assembly an authority equal to that of the Church's creed, and also binding the five points practically on the Church.

Just before this same General Assembly of 1924 there came from the liberals an instrument destined to repulse the fundamentalists, in the framing of which Henry Coffin bore a leading part. Early in 1923 they had begun to organize and prepare. Out of long consultation among them emerged the memorable Affirmation, prepared to be signed by ministers. In this document, which has become a symbol of liberal Presbyterianism, the signers affirmed their loyalty to evangelical Christianity and their adherence to the Church's Confession, as given at their ordinations. From its history and law they showed that the Church assured to its ministers liberty in the interpretation of the Confession and the Scriptures. They rejected Biblical inerrancy as not a teaching of the Bible, the Confession of Faith, the ancient creeds or those of the Reformation, and as in fact impairing the authority of the Bible. They met the assertion of "essential doctrines" by denying on constitutional grounds the General Assembly's authority to declare doctrine for the Church. Then they continued, in words which were the main strength of the Affirmation: 'Furthermore, this opinion of the General Assembly attempts to commit our Church to certain theories concerning the inspiration of the Bible, and the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Continuing Life and Supernatural Power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We all hold most earnestly to these great facts and doctrines; we all believe from our hearts that the writers of the Bible were inspired by God; that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh; that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, and through Him we have our redemption; that having died for our sins He rose from the dead and is our ever-living Savior; that in His earthly ministry He wrought many mighty works, and by His vicarious death and unfailing presence He is able to save to the uttermost." --Robert Hastings Nichols from "Leader of Liberal Presbyterianism" an essay in "This Ministry: The Contribution of Henry Sloane Coffin," ed. Niebuhr, 1945

Most Used Books

Jesse Halsey

Bible

Authorized Version

Moffatt’s Translation

Strong’s Concordance

Hasting’s Bible Dictionaries

Hasting’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics

Marcus Dods, “The Bible, Its Origin and Meaning”

Moffatt, “The Approach to N.T.”

*C.H. Dodd, everything

Vincent, “Word Studies in N.T.”

Expositor’s Greek Testament

Driver’s Introduction

Davidson, “O.T. Theology”

G.A. Smith, “Isaiah” “Minor Prophets”

Marcus Dods, “Genesis and John” (Expositor’s)

On the Psalms: Briggs, Buttenweiser

On the Gospels: Moffat’s Commentaries

Mathew Henry, high spots

Alex Maclaren, some

Inter-Critical, some

Major, Mansen & Wright, “Message and Meaning of the N.T.”

Theology

*W.N. Clarke, Outline

Fairbairn, “The Place of Christ in Modern Theology”

*W.A. Brown, Outline

*James Denney, Studies “Death of Christ”

Bowne, “Theism”

*Streeter, “Reality”

Lyman, “The Meaning of Truth and Religion”

Oman, everything

Baillie, “Invitation to Pilgrimage” “Our Knowledge of God”

Lote

*Martineau

Rauschenbusch, “Theology for Social Gospel”

Cairns, “Reasonableness of Christian Faith” “The Riddle of the World”

Foster, “Life and Sayings”

Sermons

Hubert Simpson

Gossip

*Coffin

Fosdick

Gilkey (James G.)

--

Matheson, “Studies in Portrait of Jesus” “Representative Men of Bible”

*Whyte, “Character Studies in Bible” “Bunyan’s Characters”

Peabody, “Mornings in a College Chapel,” etc.

*Watson, “Inspiration of our Faith”

Devotional

Stalker, “Trial and Death of Jesus Christ”

*Bunyan, “Pilgrim’s Progress”

Wm. Law, “Devout and Serious Call”

Matheson, “Rests by the River”

Baillie, “Diary of Private Prayer”

Orchard, “The Temple”

*Merjikowski, “Jesus Manifest” “Jesus Unknown”

Public Prayer

*Hunter, “Devotional Services”

Common Prayer; Common Worship

Scottish, “Euchalogion”

History and Theory of Worship

Maxwell, “Outline of Christian Worship”

Hyslop, “Our Heritage in Public Worship”

*Coffin, “The Public Worship of God”

Micklem, Ed. “Worship

--

Clarke, “The Ideal of Jesus”

Buttrick, “On the Parables”

Bruce, “The Training of the Twelve”

*Schweitzer, “Quest of Historical Jesus”

Inge, “Faith and Its Psychology”

Pratt’s books on psychology of religion

*Robertson, “Hidden Romance of N.T.”

Eidersheim, “Life of Jesus”

*T. R. Glover, “Jesus of History” (and everything)

Biography

*Reid, “The Great Physician” (Osler)

Whipple, “Lights and Shadows”

Grenfell, “Forty Years for Labrador”

Allen, “Phillips Brooks”

Pupin, “From Immigrant to Inventor”

Boswell, “Johnson”

Pepy’s “Diary”

Parkhurst, “My Forty Years in New York”

Freeman, “Robert E. Lee”

Wm. Lyon Phelps

Clarke, “Forty Years with the Bible”

History

Woodrow Wilson, “American History”

Froude’s Studies

Goldwin Smith

Caldwell, “Short History of the American People”

Josephus

Macauley

Ferrero, “On Rome”

Moulton, “Life in the Middle Ages”  “The River” series

Youth

*Forbush, “Boy’s Life of Christ” “Young People’s Problems” “The Boy Problem”

Johnson, “Problems of Boyhood”

Hoben, “The Minister and the Boy”

Erdman Harris, “Twenty One”

Hunting, “Story of the Bible”

Hodges, “How to Know the Bible”

Webster’s Dictionary (Unabridged)

Thesaurus

Stevenson, “Home Book of Verse” “Home Book of Quotations”

Crabb’s Synonyms

Fernald, “Connective of English Speech” “Grammar”

Poets

Browning

Tennyson

Whittier

Lanier

*Francis Thompson

Vachel Lindsay

E. R. Sill

--

John Livingston Low, “Essays in Literary Appreciation”

Elkstein, “Lives”

Fiction—Modern

“The Case of Sergeant Greisha”

Hamsun, “The Growth of the Soil”

Practical

*Coffin, “What to Preach”

Yale Lectures on Preaching

notably, Watson, “Cure of Souls”

Brooks

Beecher

Dean Brown

*Oman, “Concerning the Ministry”

Dykes, “The Christian Minister”

Most helped by Watson (Ian Maclaren), Coffin, William Newton Clarke, W.A. Brown,

Fosdick, Glover, Marcus Dods, Forbush, Martineau, Peabody, Streeter, L.P. Jacks, William James, and Hocking. I find myself most often quoting these and using (consciously and unconsciously) their ideas.

(No pretentions that this is an “Ideal Book List.” Just those that one run-of-mine pastor found useful years on end.)

*Most used

Charles Wishart and William Jennings Bryan

The Philadelphia Overture addressing Fosdick came to the 1923 General Assembly meeting in Indianapolis. The two leading contenders for the office of moderator at this Assembly were Charles Wishart, president of the College of Wooster in Ohio, and William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential contender, Presbyterian elder, and crusader against the theory of biological evolution. Bryan was convinced that the theory of biological evolution not only undercut biblical authority and Christian doctrine, but also cut the nerve of moral reform and destroyed the foundation of Christian civilization. His entry into the moderatorial race brought the issue of biological evolution front and center on the Presbyterian agenda. Moreover, inasmuch as the College of Wooster taught biological evolution in its curriculum, the issue provided a clear choice for the Assembly.³³ In the words of one reporter for the New York Times, the Presbyterian Church was "being divided into evolutionists and anti-evolutionists."³⁴

Though Bryan was considered the clear frontrunner early on, he lost the election by a narrow margin, signaling the church's unease with Bryan's strident opposition to evolutionary thought. Indeed, the Assembly later defeated a hotly contested motion to oppose the teaching of biological evolution in Presbyterian schools and adopted a much milder resolution that instructed church judicatories to "withhold their official approval from such academies, colleges, and training schools where any teaching or instruction is given which seeks to establish a materialistic evolutionary philosophy of life or which disregards or attempts to discredit the Christian faith."³⁵ Most Presbyterians, even many theologically conservative Presbyterians like Machen, were willing to accept biological evolution to some degree.


The Committee on Bills and Overtures, which handled the Fosdick controversy, recommended no action pending the results of the investigation of the New York Presbytery. But militant conservatives were in no mood to leave Fosdick's fate in the hands of the liberal New York Presbytery. After long and acrimonious debate, the Assembly reaffirmed the five fundamentals of the faith first declared in 1910 and instructed the Presbytery of New York to bring the preaching of First Presbyterian Church, New York, into conformity with the Westminster Confession.³⁶

Hard upon this decision, however, liberals mobilized a public counteroffensive to this conservative victory. Henry Sloane Coffin, for example, a prominent liberal and pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, issued a statement claiming that he agreed completely with Fosdick and if Fosdick were disciplined he should be also.³⁷ Liberals like Coffin were convinced that if Christianity was going to appeal to thinking men and women and transform the world into God's Kingdom then it had to present a united front based on doctrinal liberty. As proponents of the Social Gospel, liberals believed that true evangelism had to bring all of life -- industry, education, and government -- under the gospel in order to "make the world the kingdom of God."³⁸ The liberal battle against fundamentalism was, therefore, not simply a fight for the tolerance of liberal theology but also a crusade to advance the Kingdom of God on earth.³⁹

--"For Church and Country: The Fundamentalist-Modernist Conflict in the Presbyterian Church" by Bradley J. Longfield