Bob Shuler's Free Lance, Volume 1, Number 1, December 1916 Page: 6 of 32
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6 BOB SHULER'S FREE LANCE
_ THECHURCH AND THE OPEN SALOON
Will Our Ministers Longer Tolerate Men of Impure Private Lives and Men Who Openly Support
ja Evil Institutions in the Leadership of Our Churches?
~ SI I I tI l aI IIII I I . .11 1 1 1 Y 1 1 IIIII ItIlI I I I II 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11tilli ll III I litltilitli 111 111111 11111 11111 111111 11111 11111111111 11111 111111 11111I1ilI IlIII 11ll1 11l1ll11111 111111 111l1 1l1ll11ll1ll11bI IIllil lllllllllillllll Ill. ...... ...li lllll ililll lllll liillllllll lllll i lilllllll lillll llll lllll llll11 llill lllltl illlllllll l llll lllll llllll lil lllliThe hour has dawned when the church of God must
save herself from the attempted domination of the
liquor evil. There is no denying the fact that the
same diabolical machine that has taken over Texas
politics and which seeks to elect every public official
from a precinct constable to a United States Senator,
is now attempting to lay its hand, red with crimes,
upon the church of Jesus Christ and control, through
men within the membership of our various churches
who are aligned with this machine, not only the ap-
pointment or calling of ministers but their messages,
after they become pastors.
Our city churches are more and more coming under
the control and direction of men who have large means
and wide-spread power, while their lives are devoid
of spirituality and perfectly barren of Christian fruits.
Multitudes of men are upon the official boards of our
churches for no other reason save the fact that they
have money If a rich man is a converted man, full
of spiritual grace, his money makes him only that
much more useful. But if he stands for the wrong
in social and civic things, if his life is full of worldli-
ness and sin, if he supports the devil's snares and
traps, he becomes, it matters not as to his wealth or
liberality,, a ruinous stumbling block and the most
dangerous obstacle in the way of the progress of the
church that can be imagined.
Even the unconverted world, vile as it is, is aware
of the fact that the church can not afford to come to
it for its leadership. Everywhere, you hear men of
the world accusing the church, for the very simple
reason that they find men, just as evil as themselves
in their private lives and espousing the cause of the
same vicious institutions, which these men of the world
espouse, and at the same time posing as the pillars
of the church of the Nazarene. We who are ministers
need not hide from the facts or seek to avoid the sure
challenge that the world is flinging into our faces.
The world will never respect us until we clean up
In fact, in the very deep of our hearts we know that
we can not respect ourselves so long as such con-
ditions obtain.
When the ministers of Austin, Texas, declared war
on the red light district of that city, seeking to re-
move it, for the sake of the hundreds of young men
who were in the city from every part of Texas, those
ministers were met by dozens of church officials among
the business men of Austin, who either privately or
publicly supported these institutions. There they
stood, these men of God's Holy Zion, lined side by sidewith the pimp and the slum louse, fighting this move-
nent for decency on the ground that these lewd wom-
en spent much money in their places of business and
some of them for reasons, perhaps, more privately
known since they were more personal.
This Editor knows a church today whose official
board is made up of 14 prohibitionists and 13 anti-
prohibitionists. Thank God, He has a margin of one
man in His own church, though all hell grins no doubt
at such a travesty on the Christian religion. On all
moral movements or questions, that church lines ex-
actly the same, so far as its official membership is con-
cerned. The vote always stands 14 to 13. To be sure
that church hasn't had a real convert to Jesus Christ
at its altars in five years and perhaps will never have
another, unless some preacher comes along with grace
and nerve enough to take the devil's disciples out of
the leadership of God's people.
I do not know of any sinner in that city who be-
lieves in that church. Some of them occasionally join
it for social or business reasons, or because they think
it is respectable to join the church, but even then, I
am sure they are ashamed of what they have done.
Were Jesus Christ to spend an hour in that church,
it would be a revelation to hear Him discuss "whited
sepulchres, dead men's bones, hypocrites, wolves in
sheep's clothing" and the like. As it stands now, that
church is much more useful to the devil than it is to
Jesus Christ. While Christ seems to have one major-
ity on the official board, the devil has the advantage,
in that one dirty, unworthy, evil church member, in
the leadership of the church, can do more harm than
ten good men can counteract.
Brethren, we need no longer think that men will
respect the church just because it is the church. The
fact that ours is an old and worthy institution does
not avail. The good we have acomphished in the past
is not sufficient. We must deliver the goods in this
hour, when the eyes of all the world are upon us. This
is no time to lower the standards of Jesus Christ to
meet the demands of men whose lives are full of
viciousness, however fat their pocketbooks may be.
We have not come to the day when the church can
live without having a character, a record and a
reputation that men may scrutinize and approve. It
doesn't make any difference how beautiful your
windows, how matchless the melody of your pipe
organs, how tall your towering steeples, how elegant
your cushioned pews, the church of God will smell
to heaven with its rottenness, unless the lives of our--r I
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Shuler, Robert P. (Robert Pierce), 1880-. Bob Shuler's Free Lance, Volume 1, Number 1, December 1916, periodical, December 1916; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1146846/m1/6/?rotate=90: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lena Armstrong Public Library.