Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 26

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26 Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Convention

whether it should not have been done in a better way. Activism
thrives on statistics. If so and so many new members have been
added, so and so many more dollars collected, so and so many new
missions founded, so and so many new books and tracts published,
then everything is considered to be flourishing, even though some
of the money and the memberships may have been gained by
high-pressure methods, some of the missions may have been estab-
lished in overchurched communities, some of the publications may
be little more than evangelistic journalism or jingoism.

Activism, or pragmatism, as it is sometimes called, is impatient
with anything that is slow, silent, thoughtful, with anything that
takes the long view or emphasizes the mystic relationship with
God. It is overoptimistic. When Christ says he that loses his life
shall find it and he who seeks first after righteousness will have
these other things added to him, the pragmatist stresses the find-
ing and the things added rather than the losing and the search after
righteousness, which are just as essential but more painful and
protracted.

Historically activism has gone to two exactly opposite ex-
tremes. Let me give you illustrations of what I mean. One of the
longer writings of Martin Luther was aimed against the private
mass, an abuse he considered especially bad in the church of his
time. Private masses were usually read in chapels built and
endowed by rich people who were especially concerned for the
spiritual welfare of themselves and their families. A priest was
appointed at a good salary with no other duty than to read a mass
day in and day out for the good of the souls of that particular
family, both of the living and the dead. The castle church at Wit-
tenberg was such a church, only on a much larger scale. It had
been heavily endowed by Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony.
In its heyday it boasted of having more than 80 priests and two
large trained choirs. At least 10,000 masses a year were read in it,
and if one were to count the number of years thereby lopped off
purgatory, they would run into the millions.

There usually were a few people present during services in
the castle church, but at most of the smaller chapels of this sort
no one was there except the priest. You see, the church was looked
upon as an institution created by God without human beings and
possessing a certain magical power which could help anyone who
came in contact with it. It was conceived as a kind of huge elec-
trical machine that radiated waves of healing. It would work upon
you whether you were waking or sleeping, conscious or uncon-
scious, yes, living or dead. All that was needed was for someone
to set it going — with the right amount of money — and someone
qualified to run it —a priest. Corresponding to this outward notion
of the church were some of the other practices of the time: the
sale of indulgences, the system of pilgrimages, the multiplication
of prayers and oblations, and the veneration of relics, with their
innumerable frauds— the castle church of Wittenberg alone had
thousands on display.

Now all this is an extreme instance of how religion was
debased into a kind of superstitious activism. There have been
other similar ages in the church. The Pharisees were activists
insofar as they concentrated on the tiny particulars of the cere-