8. The Kingdom of the Dollar and Preaching

The almighty dollar. – The sale of pews in churches. – An auction and good

earnings. – A curious lawsuit. – Preachers and preaching. –

Humor and the telephone on the preaching pulpit.

Philosophers, as is known, have long sought to find the seat of the soul in man. The ancients pointed to it in the breast, moderns chiefly in the cerebellum. But one recent philosopher, to whose observation an American came, found the seat of the soul – in the pocket. And he is in considerable measure right. If one examines the political and public life of Americans, one can see that the main lever that controls the entire mechanism of their life is precisely in the pocket, filled, of course, with dollars. With them everything is calculated in dollars. Politicians pave their way to the presidency with dollars, the position and significance of a man in society is valued in dollars, we are rewarded in dollars for bodily injury, for example on railways, for wrongful arrest, for slander, and so forth. Finally, even prayer itself is weighed against dollars with them. When a man suddenly has a desire to pray, he cannot immediately satisfy his desire. To enter the house of prayer, he must first check with his pocket whether its contents are sufficient for free entry. This custom of payment for the right to enter a church has developed into the regular custom of the annual sale of pews in churches, performed at a fixed time. In each church you usually see on the front columns posted tables that show a plan of the church with numbered seats and indication of the cost. Upon the completion of each year the resale occurs according to the prices shown. Having paid the money, the worshipper receives a key to his seat, which he keeps until the next sale. This is the usual form of sale at set prices. But in many and especially the best churches, the sale takes the form of an auction in the ordinary sense of the word. Newspapers usually announce that on such and such a day there will be an auction in such and such a church and therefore all who wish are invited. Such an auction recently occurred in the church of the famous American preacher Dr. Beecher, the brother of the well-known writer Beecher Stowe. Besides the announcement in the newspapers, upon entry to the church were distributed sheets on which the prices of pews were indicated and the rules for the auction sale were set forth. The auction was appointed for 7 o’clock in the evening, and by that time a multitude of people had gathered. On the platform, or as we call it the ambo, the church trustees occupied their places at a special table with writing materials and a gavel. At the appointed time Dr. Beecher himself arrived and, greeting the purchasers, addressed the assembly with the words: “Well, a pleasant evening has come to us again. You, gentlemen, of course, know the conditions of sale, and if not, you can learn about them from the rules in your hands. For my part, I can give you only one instruction, which is usually given to children in school: ‘Speak, children, loudly and clearly.’ For this evening I yield my place to a man whose speech should raise more money than any single speech by the greatest preacher and orator can raise. He will take my place and will orate to you,” said Dr. Beecher with a smile and departed. A church trustee took his place and opened the auction. The first pew, valued at 100 dollars[1] quickly passed through the assembly and one by one voices “loudly and clearly” cried out: two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. At five hundred they stopped and the gavel confirmed this price. The pew went to a respectable-looking gentleman, who was immediately congratulated by acquaintances. The entire sale proceeded in this manner, with all pews being purchased at prices two and three times higher than the nominal. The nominal value of all pews in the church in total equaled 12,852 dollars. The auction sale produced a sum of 40,289 dollars, that is 27,437 dollars above the nominal. If one takes into account that the church also has additional collections of up to 10 thousand dollars and the clergy consist of only one pastor-preacher, one cannot but say that its budget is quite respectable. Under special and exceptional circumstances, such as the sale of pews in a newly constructed church that therefore needed special financial assistance, the auction often presented remarkable examples of religious zeal.

When the first auction took place in the newly constructed Cathedral of St. Patrick, then for the first pews instead of the nominal price of 150 dollars, purchasers paid 5,000 dollars.

Where the matter is placed on purely financial grounds, there disputes are inevitable with their further consequences. An interesting example of this was provided by one of the recent facts, characteristic, among other things, of the generally mercenary nature of Americans. In one church a respectable Yankee rented a pew for 500 dollars and peacefully prayed in it for several months. After Easter the closing of services was announced for two months for the purpose of church repairs. When the church reopened for services, the respectable Yankee, coming to the church, could scarcely find and recognize his pew: right above it a staircase to the choir had been built. His spirit was troubled by such a change, and he could not pray, as he himself declared, and without delay brought a lawsuit against the church administrators. In his complaint he accused them of willful encroachment on his property, of causing him moral and material losses. Since his pew now, not having its former conveniences, is not worth the sum he paid for it and since he can no longer pray in this place, – then in compensation for all of this he asked the court to fine the church administrators a thousand dollars in his favor. But American court is as calculating as the Yankees themselves, and it did not immediately yield to the complaints of the petitioner. It calculated monthly how much money the petitioner had already consumed through his prayer before the church repairs, and deducted this sum from the accounts. But then it nevertheless weighed how much the petitioner’s moral suffering was worth from the interruption of prayer and how much his present uncomfortable position was worth until he found a new pew in the church, and for this added a few hundred dollars. The petty result of these calculations and deductions was that the court ordered to collect in favor of the petitioner from the church administrators six hundred dollars, so that the respectable Yankee could rent a new pew in the church and still have a hundred dollars left as compensation for his moral suffering. This curious lawsuit is not at all exceptional; in judicial practice such facts occur daily, only, of course, from different spheres of life.

What determines the comparative value of pews in a church? It is determined partly by the location of the church in one part of the city or another, partly by the beauty and richness of the temple’s decorations, by the music and singing, but more than anything by preaching. Preaching in American churches constitutes the main part of worship and upon it is based the significance and fame of the church. The better and more brilliant the preaching in a church, the more visitors are attracted and at the same time the higher the price of pews rises and the greater the church budget becomes. With the weakening of preaching the church empties and becomes poor, becomes entangled in debt, and quickly moves toward the usual sad fate – sale for debt at auction. In view of this, the direct interest of church trustees is to attract and hire the best possible preacher for their church. In this regard American church trustees proceed exactly the same way as theatrical impresarios when they invite and hire famous and celebrated actors for their theaters. The calculations and interests are the same. For this purpose the trustees carefully follow preachers throughout the country, send special agents to search for the best preachers, and at the first opportunity hire them for their church. The salary paid to the best preachers sometimes reaches a tremendous sum. Thus Dr. Beecher, considered the most famous American preacher, receives half of the entire annual church budget, that is 25,000 dollars a year. For a preacher this figure is very substantial, especially if one takes into account that the President of the United States receives only 50,000 dollars. Other preachers, depending on their talent and ability, receive 20, 10, 5 thousand, and in the poorest churches of New York 2–3 thousand dollars a year. Such an order of filling preaching pulpits, making preaching into a simple money-making occupation with usual competition, was at the same time the reason that preaching positively developed into a special art. American preachers – they are in the true sense artists, whose success and fame depend exclusively on their literary and oratorical talents. A man with weak talents has no chance here of occupying a preaching pulpit except perhaps somewhere in the backwoods, without hope of ever getting out of them. The strict selection of preachers, conditioned by the very money system of their hiring, is at the same time maintained by the free judgment of the community and the press. The press takes a lively interest in preaching, and in Monday issues of newspapers usually give reports of Sunday sermons with critical approval or censure. The community at any time can deny their preacher a place when he does not satisfy them and hire another, more capable one. All of this together maintains preaching at a remarkable level, and the sermon here appears as a tremendous public force. Besides churches usually being filled with listeners, you constantly hear conversations and judgments about one or another particularly remarkable sermon in homes. It is interesting for foreigners to know the external aspect of American preaching. In this regard it is distinguished by remarkable peculiarity. Americans in general are an extremely lively and mobile people and usually express their feelings energetically through the movement of their limbs. With preacher-orators this mobility sometimes reaches comic dimensions. They not only gesture with their faces and wave their hands, but give full scope to physical movement – in all its manifestations. The preacher, depending on the content of the speech, sometimes depressedly droops his head and covers his face with his hands, sometimes proudly throws it back and snaps his fingers; sometimes drops to his knees, sometimes jumps up, claps his hands, strikes his fist on the pulpit; he lowers his voice to a caressing whisper, then raises it to the threatening roar of thunder, and you see before you now a humbly repenting sinner, now a terrible judge. Plastical dramatism in preaching plays a very important role, and in the best preachers it sometimes reaches artistic development. Together with external dramatism in American preachers is combined an extraordinarily easy and vivid language. In this regard Americans hardly have rivals even among the French. With the French, ease and vividness of language often passes into soulless and empty phraseology; here, on the contrary, with vivid language is constantly combined clear and distinct thought. Possessing strong imagination and healthy observation, American preachers often paint pictures of social life with remarkable artistry, and the discussion of some outstanding social event is often more interesting to hear in church from the best preachers than to read in newspapers. From the formal side preachers are not limited to a determined homiletical form of sermon; they use all possible literary forms and intersperse the sermon with philosophical maxims and proverbs, verses and anecdotes, tragic tirades and comic passages, witticisms and puns. Sometimes the sermon takes on such a humorous character that all listeners laugh till tears. Once I happened to attend such a sermon. The preacher discussed the life of “unbelief” and depicted it in a series of such humorous anecdotes that the entire assembly was literally dying with laughter. I became so interested in this form of Christian apologetics that at the end of the service I thought it worthwhile to introduce myself to the humorous preacher and personally speak with him about this form of preaching. Having expressed my pleasure at such an entertaining sermon, I incidentally asked him whether its form contradicted the generally accepted custom. The preacher quickly understood my thought and answered with a smile: “It not only does not contradict the generally accepted custom, but even sacred Scripture. Jesus in his encounters with the unbelievers of his time very often put them by his questions and objections in such a comic position over which those present undoubtedly laughed more than my listeners laugh now. And what forms did the Old Testament prophets not give to their speeches, if only to strike, humiliate vice and exalt virtue? What can compare, for example, with this tirade of Ezekiel (and he recited several verses by heart), where sarcasm cuts more powerfully than an Indian tomahawk and irony stings more deadly than the fang of a rattlesnake? For my part I consider irony one of the best instruments for the elevation of humanity, and in ordinary secular literature humorous works influence public consciousness more directly and powerfully than any other kind of literature. I am not, however, acquainted with your Russian literature and do not know to what extent the divine humor enjoys the rights of citizenship with you. But your church does not permit humor?” – Having answered this question, I took leave of the respectable preacher.

Occasionally extraordinary phenomena appear as preachers, distinguished by some remarkable qualities. Thus recently in New York there has been attracting numerous listeners the so-called “boy preacher.” Scientific discoveries are also applied to preaching. On one of the recent Sundays beneath the pulpit of Dr. Beecher an entrepreneur set up a telephone apparatus, so that his sermon was heard at the same time in fifty different locations – in New York and in cities of the neighboring state.