"King of the Jews"

In his study at the Community Church in New York, once known as the Church of the Messiah, the Rev. John Haynes Holmes knit his brows over a sermon he was preparing for Christmastide. He had his notions about this man Jesus.

While choirs in a thousand naves of Christian churches throughout Manhattan lifted their voices in the ancient glad Noels, while bells in the towers quivered with anticipation of midnight chimes to herald the eternal rebirth of the Babe, Pastor Holmes took the platform.

The place to look for Jesus is in the Jewish synagogs, he solemnly assured his congregation. More of the religion of Jesus is taught in the synagogs than in all the Christian churches put together.

Christians err, announced Pastor Holmes, when they speak of the Resurrection: "There is not the slightest shred of evidence that Jesus ever rose from the dead." Christians are all wrong because they don't understand the really great things Jesus did, such as wage war on Church and State. Christians are misguided, too, when they apotheosize the carpenter who loved the title "Son of Man."

Jesus taught the Jewish religion, and his religion "remains Jewish all the same."

There was holly in the Rev. Mr. Holmes's church during Christmas week, and some special music on Sunday, but nothing in the way of a carol service. On Christmas Day, the church was dark.

In books and sermons Pastor Holmes has, since going to the Church in 1907, identified himself with the radicals on all subjects: Jesus, marriage, socialism. In his own report of his activities in Who's Who he dates his rationalistic coming of age thus: "Left Unitarianism and became independent, 1919."

His views on marriage have made newspaper copy from time to time, since the publication in 1913 of his book, Marriage and Divorce. Marriage, he contended, must be regarded as a human institution, a social form to be used so long as it is useful, and to be abolished when abolition is wise. Essentially marriage is a sex matter, but the test of a true marriage is "spiritualization of the physical instinct of sex attraction." He approved of divorce whenever affection has dwindled.

In 1920 he published a study of the economic situation. Is Violence the Way Out? In this he aligned himself definitely with the working class in the capital-labor fight. By some method Labor must eventually triumph, and a completely new order of society must be established. But it would be folly for labor to use violence to attain its end.

In New Churches for Old (1922) he urged: get rid of theology, develop in its place a conception of religion as a social fellowship. He is against war and whiskey.