Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1920 — CHURCHES LOSING INFLUENCE OVER AMERICANS [ARTICLE]

CHURCHES LOSING INFLUENCE OVER AMERICANS

New York, Feb. 23.—The “decline of religion,” in the United States was discussed by the RevJoseph Fort Newton in .a settnon today at the Church bf the Di-i vine Paternity, in which he declared -that “twenty per cent of the pastors who were with us before the war have resigned to enter other occupations.” Dr. Newton recent-1 ly returned to America after resigning the pastorate of the City Temple in London. “The other day,” he said, “ a man came to me and asked if I wanted to sell my church. I said, ’ls that your busines, . buying churches?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘that is my regular business, buying and selling churches. How mu® do you want for yours? ’ ” “Of the 110,000,000 people in the United States,” he added, “not more than 44,000,000 attend services in any religious denomination. Today there 3,000,000 less children attending Sunday school than there were in the year before the war.” He added that “patriotic citizens could not help feeling alarmed at the growth of indifference to the church.” and that pastors were “leaving their pulpits because they could hot preach to empty bench.=4 ■ f . “What is /the reason?” he inquired. “Is it bolshevism? You knc*w what the belShevists did to Russia. Are we earning to the same thing -here?”