Confessional

Among Baptist ministers John Roach Straton and Harry Emerson Fosdick are antithetical--in training, personality and ways of thought. Dr. Straton's religion is absolute--his way or damnation; Dr. Fosdick's religion is expanding --it includes good things of the past as of the present. As professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary and pastor of Park Avenue Baptist ("Rockefeller's") Church, Dr. Fosdick has great influence on influential men.

Last week, he, with Dr. Straton and the other members of the Greater New York Federation of Churches attended the Federation's annual meeting; heard Rev. Charles C. Albertson of Brooklyn decry: "There has never been a time when people, especially young people, found it so difficult to believe in God." (In Brooklyn, 90 children, grim, last week proclaimed their membership in a "Society of the Godless"; mocked at school assembly prayers.) ". . . Whether or not professional evangelism has any future, pastoral evangelism has a great future and personal evangelism a greater one. . . ." (In Chicago, Professional Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson told her life story; raised hell for the terror of sinners; filled her heaven with the fresh ululations of 500 new "converts" and her suitcase with fractional currency; went shopping for pretty wearing apparel.)

It came Dr. Fosdick's turn to speak. In his study he had labored over his topic, watched by the eight-inch crucifix, gilded, that he had mucked out of War debris. Now he rose, hair kinky, face pouched; said: "If Jesus Christ came back to earth He would work through the individual. We modern Protestants fail in some things. Our Roman Catholic brethren in keeping the confessional have pretty nearly wiped us off the stage in one feature of human service. Through the confessional they have built up an amazing service for the treatment of sick souls. A good priest, through the confessional, can develop a treatment for the individual and we have nothing to compare with it. For six years I have conducted--Baptist though I am--what I call a confessional. I am not afraid to recover things the Protestants threw away-- beauty of service and the confessional. I have an office where people who know they are spiritually sick and mentally disturbed can come with their problems. Why shouldn't I minister to them? Never again will I be without such a place where people can meet me alone. Week after week I meet pretty nearly as many people as a priest. They are mentally unbalanced--sick souls who need ministration. We need a renaissance of what our fathers used to know as evangelical preaching. We Protestants have thrown out beauty of service, the confessional and the old-style evangelical preaching that used to fill me with thoughts of hell. We retreat to discussing themes instead of wrestling with human souls for life or death." Alert Editor Michael Williams of the Commonweal, learned Roman Catholic weekly comparable to the Protestant Christian Century, hastened to explain the Catholic Confession--telling sins to a priest authorized to give absolution.* He added: "Psychoanalysis has shown the modern mind the therapeutic value of confessing one's faults unreservedly. But it has been abused, and confession alone is not enough, in our opinion. Catholics think the confessional brings more than relief, advice and counsel." Dr. Fosdick's confessional is by no means unique among Protestant ministers. Every preacher who has listened to the confidences of his congregation has heard confessions. But few ministers have cared, or dared, to use the Roman Catholic Church term. Of the few are Methodist Bishop Francis J. McConnell of Pittsburgh, Reverend Ralph W. Sockman and Reverend Thomas Guthrie Speers of Manhattan. Not so John Roach Straton. At his fellow Baptist, Harry Emerson Fosdick, he sneered: ". . . Rockefeller's pulpit puppet."

Dr. Fosdick heard from another of his chronically vehement critics last week--Dr. Clarence E. N. Macartney of Philadelphia, one-time (1924-25) moderator of the Presbyterian Church, all time a Fundamentalist, although a less strident one than Dr. Straton. Dr. Macartney announced that he was resigning his pastorate of Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, to become pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh. Concerning Protestant confessional he said: "Dr. Fosdick, as usual, is about five centuries behind the times."

*The form of Roman Catholic confession is this : The penitent, kneeling at the confessor's feet, says : "Pray, Father, bless me, for I have sinned." The priest says : "The Lord be in thy heart and on thy lips, that thou mayest truly and humbly confess thy sins, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Penitent: "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, [tells of sins committed since last confession]. . . . For these and all my other sins which I can not now remember I am heartily sorry ; I purpose amendment for the future, and most humbly ask pardon of God and penance and absolution of you, my spiritual Father."