Aliens or Americans? Part 26

In this work the interdenominational comity and cooperation represented in the federation of evangelical churches would secure the best covering of the whole field, in the true fraternal and Christian spirit. What all desire supremely is the salvation of the immigrants. And only a united Protestantism can present such a ma.s.sive front as to impress the world.

This work must be large enough to be self-respecting. At present it is extremely doubtful if there is enough of it to make individual members of the churches feel its worth and importance. There should be a mighty advance movement, calling for millions of money and thousands of missionaries, and reaching into a mult.i.tude of places now dest.i.tute of gospel influences. Then the alien in America would realize the American spirit and purpose and interest in him, and the birth of a new citizenship would begin.

[Sidenote: Planning Large Things]

This is the day of large enterprises. The home mission movement for the evangelization of the foreign peoples in America ought to be in the forefront of the great enterprises. The real hope of America lies in the success of this work. The best brain of the Christian laity should be engaged in this business.

[Sidenote: A Million a Year in New York]

In New York City alone the Christian denominations ought to raise and expend at least a million dollars a year for the next ten years for city foreign evangelization, and this would be only a start in a work bound to extend indefinitely. The demand is imperative. The fields are ripe for harvest. We have seen that the old religious ties are not only weakened by the Atlantic voyage, but often broken altogether. In some nationalities this tie is strong, in most of them not very binding. The great bulk of the new immigration is Roman or Greek Catholic. Thousands of these nominal church members drift into open infidelity or schools of atheism, or else into nothingism. Their former Church does not keep them, and Protestantism does not get them. It is a question whether their new condition is better or worse, religiously, than it was in the old country. We should remove that question by surrounding them with such Christian influences and inst.i.tutions as will make it impossible for them to escape the Americanizing and evangelizing environment. Why should not Christian philanthropy, for instance, build a block of model tenement-houses in the Italian district, and give the income from rentals as a permanent endowment for Italian mission work? This would be a double blessing.

[Sidenote: How to Use Wealth for Country]

There is a magnificent opportunity, an opportunity to fire the heart of the men who have means to carry out whatever they devise. The evangelical denominations should establish in the heart of the East Side, where are gathered a dozen little nationalities, not simply one great establishment of distinctively religious and educational character, but a number of such inst.i.tutional churches, costing anywhere from a million to a million and a half each, and sustained in a thoroughly business-like way. Christianity should permeate the entire work. We ought to be working for to-day and for the future. The Home Mission Boards in cooperation should be asked to lead forward in this, the greatest task of the twentieth century. There is nothing sentimental or impracticable about these suggestions.

[Sidenote: A Work for United Protestantism]

Here is a work that demands the moral strength of Protestant union. Let us seek to make the foreigners Christian, give them the Bible, and set them an example of the brotherhood of believers. Then the immigrants will become believers and join the brotherhood.

[Sidenote: What the Local Church Can Do]

In addition to this organized work done through the missionary bodies, there is a large work for local churches to do. In some denominations, which report little organized effort, there is much mission work done by local parishes. And in all denominations there are many churches that study their community and apply themselves to its needs. The Chinese Sunday-school work has been chiefly done by the local churches, and therefore it is not easy to learn the extent of the work, since reports are not made to central boards. This form of service is especially desirable when it draws the members of the churches to any extent into personal contact with the foreign element, and it should be fostered.

_V. The Individual Duty_

[Sidenote: What You Can Do]

This brings us to the heart of the whole matter--the personal equation.

The trouble is that the alien and the American do not know each other.

Aversion on the one side is met by suspicion on the other. Shut away from intercourse, the alien becomes more alienated, and the American more opinionated, with results that may easily breed trouble. The antidote for prejudice is knowledge. Immigration has made it possible--and in this case possibility is duty--for the consecrated Christian, in this day and land of marvelous opportunity, to be a missionary--not by proxy but in person.

[Sidenote: Be a Home Missionary]

Here is the foreigner in every community. You meet him in a hundred places where the personal contact is possible. Did it ever occur to you that you could do something directly for the evangelization of the Greek or Italian fruit vender or bootblack or laborer? Have you ever felt any responsibility for the salvation of these commonly despised foreigners?

Have you laughed at them, or shown your contempt and dislike for them as they have crowded the public places? The evangelization of the foreigners in America must be effected by the direct missionary effort of the ma.s.ses of American Christians. That is the foundation truth. The work cannot be delegated to Home Mission Boards or any other agencies, no matter how good and strong in their place.

[Sidenote: A Personal Service]

Hence, let all emphasis be put here upon personal responsibility and opportunity. Be a missionary yourself. Reach and teach some one of these newcomers, and you will do your part. Do not begin with talking about religion. Make the chance to get acquainted; then after you have shown genuine human interest, and won confidence, the way will be open for the gospel that has already been felt in human helpfulness. As a result of this study, which has taught you to discriminate and to be charitable to all peoples, the new att.i.tude and sympathy will enable you to approach those who have been brought within your sphere of influence. There is a field of magnificent breadth open to our young people. Once engaged in this personal service, and aware of its blessed effects, there will be no lack of a missionary zeal that will embrace the world-wide kingdom.

[Sidenote: A Shining Example of Personal Effort]

At a conference in New York, in the Home Mission study cla.s.s a young colored man from the West Indies gave a practical ill.u.s.tration of individual missionary effort of the kind that would evangelize the foreigners, if it were generally practiced. He said that every Thursday, when the steamer from the West Indies arrives, he arranges his work so as to be at the wharf, ready to welcome immigrants, especially young people, and to advise them, if they are strangers without settled destination. He was led to do this by his own experience. For three years after he came to New York, he went from church to church without ever receiving a word of welcome or invitation to come again. Finally he found a church home; but the homesickness and loneliness of those years made him feel that so far as he could help it, no one else from the West Indies should have a similar experience. So he made himself free to speak to the young men, and always invited them to church. He had been the means of aiding many to establish themselves, and had saved many immigrants from being lured away into evil. He said the place to get the heart of the foreigner was when he first landed. It was a simple story, told without any false modesty. Plainly his heart was in the work. He was a home missionary, doing a definite service of importance, and setting an example that inspired that company. They could not help the round of applause that followed his statement. It was spontaneous. This is the personal touch that must be put in some way upon the stranger that is within our gates. If the alien can be brought under this gracious Christian influence, the chances are many that he will soon cease to be alien and become Christian. Blessed is he who makes any soul welcome to country and church.

[Sidenote: A Call for Sacrifice]

A call to home mission service is thus presented by Dr. Goodchild, who would carry religion more fully into the settlement idea: "We need for the solution of this problem that young men and women who go to the great cities from the strong churches of the smaller towns and villages should identify themselves with mission churches rather than to seek ease and honor in wealthy churches where unused talent is already congested.

[Sidenote: The Living Example]

"We need young men and young women to go down among these people and live Christian lives in the midst of them. I do not believe that any one should take his children there to rear them. But young men in groups, or young women in groups, or young couples without children, who are able to earn their own living could contribute greatly to the solution of these problems if they would live among these foreigners and help in the process of digestion and a.s.similation. And there is nothing that can do that work so quickly and effectually as for Christian men and women to dwell among these people, as Christ once left his home on high to dwell among the sinful ones of earth. And if there are young men and young women who are willing to give themselves wholly to work for these people, and will live among them, and seek by the power of divine grace to lift them up, it surely is very little for you and me to sustain them while they toil."

[Sidenote: How the Work Grows]

Wherever earnest effort has been put forth, the progress of the work has been most encouraging. As an ill.u.s.tration of this, when Dr. H. A.

Schauffler some twenty years ago began his pioneer missionary work among the 25,000 Bohemians of Cleveland, he could not learn of any fellow-laborers in the Slavic field except a Bohemian theological student in New York, a Bohemian Reformed Church pastor in Iowa, and another in Texas. But in 1905 there met in Chicago an Interdenominational Conference of Slavic missionaries and pastors, and that gathering comprised no less than 103 Slavic workers, of whom sixty-four were pastors and preachers, fourteen women missionaries, and twenty-five missionary students; while the conference represented forty-nine churches in thirteen states, and five evangelical denominations. Mr. Ives says truly: "It has been forever established that foreigners are as convertible as our own people, that in many instances their faith is more pure and evangelical than the American type, that their lives are transformed by its power to an extent that sometimes puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into Endeavor Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent has been found."

[Sidenote: Inspiring Difficulties]

There is no escaping the fact that a prodigious amount of difficult lifting must be done in order to elevate the aliens to the American social and religious level. But the very vastness of the home mission task is inspiring rather than discouraging to heroic souls. As someone says, "The American loves a tough job." Difficulties will not hinder him a moment when once he is moved with the divine impulse, sees the thing to be done, and sets himself with G.o.d's help to do it. Present conditions call to mind that pa.s.sage in "Alice in Wonderland," where by the seash.o.r.e

The walrus and the carpenter were walking hand in hand, And wept like anything to see such quant.i.ties of sand.

"If seven maids with seven mops, swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could get it clear?"

"I doubt it," said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.

[Sidenote: A Hopeful, not Hopeless Task]

It must be confessed that what has been done, in comparison with what has to be done, would not be unfairly represented by the seven maids, and that some people think the conversion of the foreigner as hopeless as the carpenter did the sand-sweeping job. But seven mops are better than none, and the pessimists are few. Souls are different material to work upon from sand. By and by the Christian denominations will stop sweeping around the edges of this great missionary enterprise, and take hold of it with full force. This will come to pa.s.s when the real conditions and needs and perils are widely known; and in making them known the young people have their opportunity to render signal service to foreigner, country, Church, and Christ.

_VI. Basal Grounds for Optimism_

[Sidenote: The Outlook]

Now that we have completed our study of immigration, necessarily limited by time and s.p.a.ce, we are in position to draw some conclusions with regard to the outlook. Our study shows that there is plenty in the character and extent of present day immigration to make the Christian and patriot thoughtful, prayerful, and purposeful. On the surface there is enough that is appalling and threatening to excuse if not justify the use of the word "peril." The writer confesses that when he lived, years ago, in western Pennsylvania, and came close to the inferior grades of immigrants, and witnessed the changes wrought by the displacement of the earlier day mining cla.s.s, he bordered for a time on the pessimistic plane. Nor was his condition much improved during residence in New England, where the changing of the old order and the pa.s.sing of the Puritan are of vast significance to our country. But closer study of the broad subject has led to a positively optimistic view concerning immigration, and some of the grounds of this optimism may properly close this chapter and volume.

[Sidenote: Two Great Factors--Democracy and Religion]

The basal ground is the universal tendency toward democracy and the universal necessity for religion. These are sufficiently axiomatic. The appeal to the history of the nineteenth century is sufficient to establish the first, and the appeal to the heart of humanity will establish the second. Democracy is the dominant spirit in the world's life to-day. It is the vital air of America. Whatever is in its nature inimical to democracy cannot permanently endure on this continent, and certainly cannot control, whether it be in the sphere of ecclesiasticism or commercialism. This, then, is the sure ground for optimism. Religion is a necessity in a nation. What shall the type of religion be in America? The answer is clear, for Protestantism is democratic, while Romanism is autocratic.

[Sidenote: Influence of the New Environment]

The hope of America's evangelization is increased by the fact that the pure religion of Jesus Christ is so essentially democratic in its fundamental teachings of the brotherhood of man, of spiritual liberty and unity. The immigrant comes into a new environment, created alike by civil and religious liberty, and cannot escape its influence. Political liberty teaches the meaning of soul liberty, and leads the way slowly but surely to it. A man cannot come into rights of one kind without awakening to rights of every kind; and once awakened, soon he insists upon having them all for himself. Freedom is infectious and contagious, and the disease is speedily caught by the old-world arrival, who breathes in its germs almost before the ship-motion wears off. The peril of this is that to him the main idea of liberty is license. The true meaning of the word he must be taught by the Christian missionary, for certainly he will not learn it from the Church to which he commonly belongs. Here, then, is the opportunity for the pure gospel and for the Christian missionary.

[Sidenote: The Testing "If"]

Adding the natural appeal of the gospel in its simplicity to this favoring democratic environment, there is every reason for optimism concerning immigration, if only American Protestantism prove true to its opportunity and duty. "Ah, but that is a tremendous IF," said a widely known Christian worker to whom this statement was made. "I agree with you as to the favoring conditions, and my only doubt is whether our Christian Churches can be brought to see their duty and do it. So far there are only signs of promise. Our home mission societies are doubtless doing all they can with the slender means furnished by the contributing churches, but they are only playing at the evangelization of these inpouring millions." What could be said in reply? One could not deny present apathy on the part of Protestants at large, whether the cause be ignorance or indifference or want of missionary spirit. One could but declare faith in the prevailing power of Protestantism when the crisis comes. We believe the day is not distant when American Protestantism will present a united front and press forward irresistibly. For the hastening of this day let us pray and work.

[Sidenote: The Task of the Ages]

Thus the problem always resolves itself to this at last: G.o.d has set for American Protestant Christianity the gigantic task of the ages--the home-foreign-mission task--nothing less than the a.s.similation of all these foreign peoples who find a home on this continent into a common Americanism so that they shall form a composite American nation--Christian, united, free, and great. What could be more glorious than to have part in the solution of this problem? To this supreme service, young men and women of America, you are called of G.o.d. What say you: shall it be Alien or American?

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VIII

AIM: TO MAKE HOPEFUL BEGINNINGS A STRONG INCENTIVE TO GREAT EXPANSION OF CHRISTIAN WORK FOR FOREIGNERS

I. _Faults on Both Sides._