Protestantism in its Full Development. The Wandering of Religious Thought. Rationalism – The Unlimited Arbitrary Will of Preachers and the Degeneration of Preaching. – The Sectarian Insularity of Parish Churches and Their Inaccessibility to the Common People. – Helpless Victims of Religious Demagogues. – Dark Sectarianism With an Admixture of Charlatanism – “Independent Catholic” and “Physiological” Churches. – The Salvation Army. (Cont.)

But this wavering and wandering of thought is not confined to individual persons. It characterizes the very communities or churches into which the Protestant population of America is divided. This is most clearly evident in the fact that within the communities themselves discord usually occurs, which at first leads to the division of the community into parties disagreeing in their understanding of essential points of doctrine, and as this discord intensifies further, it leads to complete rupture, sometimes resulting in the formation of new communities and sects. Such a phenomenon is observable even in such established communities as the Episcopal Church, where a party was found discontented with the growth of sound Catholic principles in this church, as a result of which it separated into a new community under the name “Reformed Episcopal Church.” The same is observable in Methodism, Presbyterianism, and other communities where the leaven of Protestantism still works. Among their members there are always such reasoners and enthusiasts who wish to make full use of the right of personal freedom of religious thought, reject the conventional forms in which the doctrinal principle happens to take shape, and at their own risk form new and newer communities and sects up to nebulous theosophy and Mormonism. But most remarkable here is not this fragmentation but the fact that in Protestantism, even in the most established communities, there is no firm assurance in one’s own doctrine. A person belongs to a known church, zealously attends and carefully listens to sermons; but at the same time the worm of doubt constantly gnaws at the religious conscience: does this church truly express the truth of Christianity? Does the preacher correctly expound it? Is not that preacher in the neighboring church, who expounds the same subjects in a completely different spirit, more correct? And this is a painful feeling. It is like the feeling of a ship’s passenger who is unsure of the ship’s soundness and the captain’s competence, and therefore is constantly troubled by the thought, will not the ship now strike a submerged rock, on which it will break and founder? Or again it resembles the state of a man unsure of the architecture of his house, and therefore constantly worries whether he has laid the supporting beams firmly enough and whether the ceiling will not collapse at the slightest tremor? If there were a higher authority in the church, then of course one could turn to it for resolution of doubts and troubling uncertainties. But in Protestantism there is no such authority. It, having entrusted the conscience of each to build its own salvation, rejected even the authority of the bishop and gave the flock the simple preacher as a guide. But the preacher himself presents no guarantees of the correctness of his teaching; he alone can be guided by his personal reason, and consequently personal arbitrariness completely reigns in his teaching. This truly constantly happens. Different pastors and preachers of the same community often explain known Christian truths completely differently, and arbitrariness reaches such a degree that pastor conferences often have to resort to repressive measures to humble or bring to stricter doctrinal accuracy their brothers who have deviated too far from the known doctrinal symbol. But these measures for the most part do not achieve their goal, because the conferences themselves, as private institutions, do not have sufficient authority. And meanwhile this arbitrary will of the preacher lies with all its weight on the conscience of defenseless and helpless parishioners, for whom in case of decidedly impossible views of the preacher the only means of restraining him remains to reduce the salary paid him by the parish. And so it often comes to pass that a known parish decidedly does not know what views their preacher actually holds, for he often, so as not to disturb the conscience of his parishioners, masks his views in murky generalities. This happened even with the famous Brooklyn preacher Beecher. Once he produced extreme sensation in his community by openly expressing his sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church, which Protestants were accustomed to seeing only as the so-called “synagogue of Satan,” under the presidency of the Antichrist—the Pope, and then on another occasion even more astounded his followers by stating that he considered the doctrine of the fall and original sin as an outworn medieval anachronism. Such astounding shifts decidedly threw all his numerous admirers into indescribable confusion, and long was it debated what exactly their famous preacher believed in and what his brilliant moral teachings were founded upon? If such cases are possible even with such lofty, enlightened, and honest preachers, then it is unsurprising that in others lower in all respects this theological arbitrariness reaches incredible proportions and serves as a source of numerous misunderstandings, not only sowing confusion in church life but also harmfully affecting the religious conscience of the people. This arbitrariness, apart from dogmatic worldview, is expressed also in the choice of subjects for sermons. Since preaching in America represents a special profession for which the best orators are selected, receiving enormous sums of money (Beecher for example receives twenty-five thousand dollars, that is, up to fifty thousand rubles), it is natural that rivalry arises among preachers, and those less gifted are not averse to resorting, to maintain their fame, to such means as have little relation to the true aims of preaching. Noticing for example their inability to captivate their listeners with exposition of higher religious and moral subjects, American preachers begin to resort to artificial measures, abandon purely religious and moral subjects, intrude into public and political life, exploit all manner of sensational rumors, turn to advantage striking and piquant court cases, and not rarely play on the strings of public passions, especially when they are inflamed to the extreme—as for example during presidential campaigns, that is, the electoral struggle for choosing the President of the United States. Hence the very subjects, advertised in advance in the newspapers, strike one with their eccentricity and sensational character, evidently calculated to attract listeners. As an example one can point to such subjects: “on heavenly police,” on “white horses in heaven,” on “dead lions and living dogs,” “on the best choice of bridegrooms and brides,” on how “the Lord thrashes us” or “how Satan sows us,” and so forth in the same vein. Of course, such subjects are capable of attracting even such listeners as would not have gone to church if the subject of the sermon were for example some serious religious and moral question; but on the other hand such preaching clearly loses its true character and often leads, especially when touching on personal interests, not to the establishment of peace on earth and goodwill among men, but to the opposite results. In 1881 near New York there occurred a terrible disaster: a light two-story pleasure steamboat, crowded with hundreds of passengers, many of whom drowned, collided with an ocean ship. Preachers did not fail to make this catastrophe the subject of their sermons, and one of the young beginning preachers gave his subject the most offensive character toward the captain of the ill-fated steamer, based on an effective juxtaposition of “the Captain of Salvation” (Captain of Salvation), that is, Jesus Christ, with “the captain of destruction.” And so when he was at the height of his oratorical depiction of the incompetence of the captain who through his mismanagement had allowed such a disaster, suddenly a loud and angry voice rang out across the entire church: “You are a liar!” Terrible confusion ensued, everyone rushed at the disturber of church order, who turned out to be the captain of the ill-fated steamer himself, and the sermon ended with a police report. Such cases are not uncommon and they constitute a factual denunciation of the false direction of American preaching, as a result of which it loses a considerable portion of its moral teaching value.

Beyond doctrinal and homiletic arbitrariness, the extreme Protestant principle manifests itself in the extraordinary separatism of churches. Despite the fact that in America the population theoretically divides into several large communities, in reality each parish church considers itself entirely autonomous, acknowledging no higher jurisdiction over itself. Among preachers, it is true, various conferences and assemblies exist where the affairs of the whole community are discussed; but these conferences possess no canonical character, and the pastor submits to their verdicts and decrees only as long as he finds them beneficial and advantageous, and he can always reject their authority regarding the ordering of affairs in his own parish. For him, the highest authority and jurisdiction reside in the parish itself, represented by its trustees, who pay him his salary and upon whom depends his very right to occupy his position. And such separatism not only fosters again the fragmentation of doctrinal opinion, but at the same time leads to a remarkable phenomenon that greatly narrows the beneficent influence of the church. The matter is that the church, as a separate unit, becomes the full property of the parish; and by parish is understood only those who bear the expenses of its upkeep; consequently, the first condition for belonging to the church becomes the sum paid for the church’s maintenance and the preacher’s support—whether in the form of direct subscriptions or in the form of payment for a seat in the church, which is organized in this case entirely by the system and plan of public clubs. As a result of this, the church inevitably loses the character of universal accessibility; those of greatest means obtain predominant significance, people making the largest contributions, purchasing the most expensive seats. Competition and rivalry, especially in churches where popular preachers serve, extraordinarily raise the prices for places, commonly sold by auction (as for example in Beecher’s church where the price for seats sometimes reaches a thousand dollars); subscription to these seats becomes a matter of a kind of fashion and respectability, and thus the church closes itself within a narrow circle of more or less wealthy classes and becomes completely inaccessible to the poor classes of the population. And thus in America the church decidedly loses the character of that truly Christian principle, according to which it ought to represent a complete brotherhood of all believers in Christ and according to which in it there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, and consequently neither rich nor poor, but all are one in Christ. By such an organization, establishing the dominion of plutocracy, the American church pitilessly excludes from its doors precisely those who hunger and thirst, those who labor and are heavy laden, to whom the preaching and gospel were addressed principally by Christ Himself.

And so the common people, and especially the poor classes in great cities, are deprived of this greatest blessing that can fall to a human being on earth—namely the blessing of satisfying the essential needs of their religious-moral nature. This deprivation of the right to brotherly communion in the church is felt all the more strongly and heavily because by the principle of the country’s civic and state life all citizens are equal in their rights and duties, all equal members of one democratic republic. And this theoretical equality is flagrantly violated precisely in the domain of the most sacred rights to Christ’s gospel! But having been left, so to speak, beyond the church’s pale, the poor and common people do not lose through this their striving to satisfy their religious-moral thirst; on the contrary, because of this deprivation the thirst grows stronger still, and the people are compelled to seek this satisfaction outside the church, from whatever source presents itself. And here, in our view, opens the darkest side of the church-religious life of America. Here the simple and most spiritually helpless people, those most in need of the church’s guidance, are utterly delivered into the power of wolves, often appearing in sheep’s clothing. Into the arena step various ‘benefactors’ of the common people, those uninvited or unrecognized preachers who, lacking the means to establish themselves in church circles, begin seeking popularity among the forsaken masses of the population, preaching them a poorly understood Gospel and, to act more powerfully on the masses, produce the crudest confusion of the spiritual with the material, of Christ’s Gospel with the preaching of socialism, stirring up not only the spirit but alongside it the most dangerous passions. And the poor people, abandoned by the church, go in masses to these sermons, gradually imbibing the most pernicious ideas and being drawn into lawless sentiments. But these uninvited preachers do not confine themselves to this. Having felt their influence, they inevitably become inflamed with the passion of ambition and therefore strive to come forward as special religious reformers, having a mission to renew church-religious life. With truly demagogic impudence they begin to hint at their higher calling, and then directly proclaim that they have received a supernatural revelation commanding them to found a new church—like the ‘church of the saints of the latter days’ or the ‘church of the second coming’ and so forth. And here precisely is where sectarian ferment is born and takes root, and the madness by which we ordinarily form our view of church-religious life in America generally. We are far from thinking that the church in its best representatives completely abandons the people. No, we know that among the best preachers there are many self-sacrificing persons who, understanding all the abnormality of this state of affairs, after preaching before the brilliant assembly of their congregants descend into the darkest slums of poverty and desolation to speak a word of comfort to their wretched inhabitants, accompanied often by material charity (for which there is a special collection box for the poor at each church); but we speak generally of the church’s relation to the poor classes of the people, and in this relation the church in America sins against the fundamental principle of Christ’s Gospel. Alongside wandering preachers, attempting in some way to satisfy the religious needs of the people, outright charlatans and speculators often come forward, who make from the people’s ignorance and religion a source of profit or an object of political ambition. In 1880 a new community was formed in New York under the pretentious name of the ‘independent Catholic church.’ Its preachers, under the grand title of ‘bishops’ and ‘presbyters’ of the Roman Catholic Church, by means of preaching and pamphlets began to declare that the time had come to throw off the tyranny of the papacy, and that to this end they themselves, despite the height and security of their position, left that church and shook the dust from their feet, to seek true happiness in Christ alone, to whom they called especially the Irish, who are very numerous in America and zealous Catholics. This preaching found considerable success among the lowest classes and interested even me personally, as at that time I was occupied with my composition on ‘Roman Catholicism in America’ and was carefully following all movements in that church. But what was my astonishment when a few months later I read in the N. Y. Herald that all these so-called ‘bishops’ and ‘presbyters’ had been brought to trial for a whole series of frauds and fraudulent extortions of money from various pious persons for matters having no connection whatsoever to religious mission! It turned out that this entire ‘independent Catholic church’ was a speculative scheme of a few charlatans who conceived of exploiting the religious feelings of a credulous popular mass. To the same category belongs the so-called ‘physiological church,’ founded in New York by one doctor around the same time. Intrigued by an announcement in the newspapers about the peculiar worship in this monstrous church, accompanied by sermons of its founder himself—Doctor Linner—I once went to this church and was struck by the filthy, shameless impudence of this founder of the ‘physiological church.’ The whole thing is built on crude deception and unscrupulous exploitation of credulous people. At the entrance a fee is charged for seats. The doctor himself sings, to the accompaniment of a small harmonium, some sort of decadent hymns in honor of nature; then delivers a sermon about the mysterious forces of nature, and in conclusion offers—or rather forces upon—his victims at an exorbitant price his pamphlets, mostly of dirty medical content, and the whole ‘worship’ ends with the distribution of the doctor-preacher’s business cards, on which his medical practice is advertised as capable of conquering even the most chronic and medically incurable forms of disease.