Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1908 — PREACHERS AND POLITICS. [ARTICLE]

PREACHERS AND POLITICS.

Now that the campaign has ended, the true condition arising from the unprecedented methods employed by certain ministers of the gospel in abandoning the preaching of the gospel of Christ and taking up the gospel of the Republican party is becoming apparent. All over Indiana comes stories about bitterness in the Methodist church, growing out of, the foolishness of the pastors, who were employed by those churches to look after the spiritual welfare of the members, but who so far forgot their duties *b to use their pulpits for partisan purposes. There are few if any churches that hate not some Democrats la

the congregations, and these Democrats contribute to the support of the church. The minister draws his 'salary from the money contributed by members of .ajl parties, and some churches are now confronted by the declaration of tpe Democratic members that they will not contribute further to those churfches until the offending ministers aire removed. This condition is a natural outgrowth of the happenings of a few weeks ago. As the Vfabash TimeaStar puts it, the purpose of a platform piaak is to gsi spies, and as neither the Democratic nor Republican platforms stood for prohibition in any sense, the minister who has intelligence enough tq preach the gospel of Christ, should have had intelligence enough to leave the political question alone, and confine bis efforts to the work for which his congregation employed him. In this connection, it may be noted that there Is less of the tendency to allow the ministers of the gospel to act as general advisers on all questions, no doubt due to an awakening knowledge, gleaned from such exhibitions of ignorance and bigotry as marked this campaign, that a man may be a good preacher, but a blamed poor adviser on other subjects.—The Booster.