Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1904 — STILL BAR AMUSEMERTS. [ARTICLE]

STILL BAR AMUSEMERTS.

Methodists Will Not Make Changes in Church Rules. The Methodist general conference at Los Angeles decided, by the decisive yea and nay vote of 441 to 188, not to make any change in the church discipline in the matter of prohibited amusements — dancing, card playing and theater going. Immediately after this action by the conference the majority report, to retain the paragraph and strengthen it by the addition of a clause in the advices, as recommended by the bishops, was adopted. The conference’s decision on this, the most momentous question so far as members of the church generally were concerned before the body, came at the end of a heated and lengthy debate. The most pronounced advocates of the retention of paragraph 248 were women delegates. Advocates of the proposed change argued that young people were kept out of the church by an unnecessarily severe restriction which was not obeyed by many in the fold and could not be generally enforced. “The man who says I cannot righteously witness a Shakspearean drama tonight and go to prayer meeting to-mor-row night,” said Prof. Winchester of Wesleyan University, “is either ignorant or guilty of an uncharity that is worse, in my opinion, than the sin com; plained of.” The question is one which agitated the minds of the delegates to tlTe general conference perhaps more than any other single problem before it. The church at large took a wide interest in the subject of proposed striking out of the specified prohibited amusements from the discipline, and many memorials and petitions from nil parts of the country reflected popular opinion in the church on the matter. In nil sixty-five memorials were received, fifty-five of which opposed any change in the discipline on this point and ten favored various changes. A single petition from Binghamton, N. Y., bearing 2,000 signatures, was one of the protests against any change being made.