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THE CHURCH'S RELATION to the WORLD
tabernacle Sermon by Reb, Len G. Broughton, D.D,
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
TEXT: Matt. 15:13, “Ye are the salt of the
earth.”
WISH to speak to you on the relation
ship of the church to civil and political
life, and I wish to illustrate by the life
of Solomon what I believe to be the
main issue that concerns the church at
the present hour. I do not think that
in all the history of Israel as a Kingdom
that she ever had a man upon her
throne that was the equal of King Solo-
I
mon. He was the greatest king that Israel ever had;
that is to say, if you measure man’s greatness by his
accomplishments. King Solomon was the man who
was instrumental in building one of the greatest
buildings that the world ever saw. There has never
been a building in all the history of the hum-n race
that came anywhere near approximating Solomon’s
temple in several respects. His father, David, had
planned to build this temple, but he had never ac
complished so much as the bringing of any two
pieces of timber together in the construction of that
wonderful place of worship.
Solomon was also one of the greatest diplomats
that the world has ever produced. He was a man
who by his diplomatic genious and tact was able to
form business and political alliances with the sur
rounding countries and powers in such away as to
make them every one tributary to Israel. Under his
reign Israel prospered by leaps and bounds until she
became the most prosperous nation in all that land.
This once despised and enslaved people, in the reign
of this man, became the mighty giant power of the
universe.
ISRAEL’S DOWNFALL.
But while this was true, this diplomatic method of
dealing with the countries round about was the
cause of Israel’s final failure. It came about in this
way. There had been such an intimate relationship
of business and politics between these powers as
that Israel lost her place of independence of other
nations and dependence upon God. She was so
mixed up with other people that she became depend
ent upon them in many ways, and this intimate mix
ing and mingling caused Israel’s downfall.
We can see an illustration of Solomon’s diplomacy
in that of the late King Edward the Seventh. King
Edward in many respects exemplified in his short
reign this line of success that contributed to the
making of Solomon and his people. One of the first
official acts of that king was to pay a visit to prac
tically all the powers of Europe. It was my good
fortune to be traveling through the Continent of
Europe at the time when this tour was made by the
King. It was the first time since the reign of Charles
the sth that any occupant of the throne of England
had gone outside of his immediate dominion. But
so shrewd a business man was the king that he de
cided to form alliances, and the way to bring this
about was to visit the countries. The result was
thoroughly satisfactory to himself and to his people,
and yet I believe King Edward, though with these al
liances he advanced England’s business and political
interest, also sowed seed which if they are not
checked in some way will redound to the hurt of the
British Empire for the same reason that Solomon’s
kingdom finally went down.
I have recited this brief history of Solomon and
illustrated it in the life of King Edward VII for the
purpose of showing something of the dangers that
confront the church of Christ at the present mo
ment. In many respects the history of King Solo
mon is a-prophecy of the church of the present hour,
and especially is that true with reference to us here
in the South. For forty-five years the South has been
known for her poverty, and for her religion. It has
been true of us that we are most religious when we
are most conscious of our poverty. We are most ir
religious and godless when we are conscious of our
prosperity, and for this past forty-five years since the
civil war there has been a state of poverty prevail
ing throughout the region of the South and co-inci
dent with it has been the progress of religion, until
today we are noted in the world for our religious
The dolden Age for July 21, 1010.
fidelity, and the eyes of the world are turned upon
the people of the South; the world, the religious
world, is expecting the South to maintain a pure and
undefiled Christianity.
THE CHURCH’S ENTANGLEMENT.
But in recent years we have begun to prosper, un
til perhaps there is no section of this country that is
comparable to ours for its prosperity; in every sec
tion of this Southland of ours there is to be seen
scenes of great and growing prosperity. And as we
have gone forward in prosperity we have gone for
ward in the alliances that prosperity leads to. The
church has formed alliances in a business way and in
a social way and in a political way that today almost
leads the church to a place of independence upon
God. We are so mixed up now, the church is with
the world, the world has so gotten into the church
and the church i nthe world, that it is hard today for
the church to stand up and declare herself with ref
erence to any great and weighty proposition; she is
afraid to ; afraid she will hurt some of her al
liances. Recently a minister friend of mine gave me
this bit of personal experience. He said, “In my
church, which has in it a number of very rich peo
ple, recently I decided that I would preach a series
of sermons on the Ten Commandments and I preach
ed in that series on the Commandment, “Thou shalt
not steal,’ and I did not see fit to deal with stealing
in the ordinary accepted term. Among other things
I tried to show that the man in business who works
women and causes them to do the same amount of
work that men would do and yet who fails to pay
them wages equal to the wages that he pays men for
the same work, was not only a thief but a highway
robber”; and he said, “I would like for you to tell
me what you think of that?” I said, “I think you are
eminently correct. I have said that a number of
times in my own pulpit.” He said, “I hope you did
not have the same experience that I had in my
church. I had a man who owned a large department
store in my church. He had consequently a
number of women that worked for him and
some of them did just the same work that
men did and they received far less pay
than the men. The next day after my sermon
I was down the street and found this business man
away from his place of business. He seemed to be
busying himself about town and I wondered what
was up; I soon found out that he was going around
to see our official board to get them to request my
resignation on the ground that I was meddling with
his business. What was the result? He got enough
men on his side to force me to resign. “Well,” I
said to him, “My criticism of you is that you ought
to have forced him to resign.”
This is the result of alliances that the church has
naturally formed with the business of the world.
Great, strong, mighty business men have come into
the church, and they should come into it; they have
got souls to save and lives to live and spheres in
which to serve, but many times they have come with
methods that are wrong; they come into the
church with a determination that the church shall
not regulate their standard of moral conduct. I am
free to say to you today that this thing has so ef
fected the church as that it is almost an impossi
bility for a man to stand upon the platform of any
church and dare to speak plainly the word of God
concerning the business relationship and customs of
the present day.
There has also come about as the result of this
prosperity and the alliances that it naturally has
made, that there is such an intermixing of the
church and of society as that society almost robs the
pulpit of its independence and the church of its right
to erect its great moral standards. I have in mind
another minister whose church set up a standard
against gambling at cards, whether in the parlor or
in a gambling dive, and it had in its official board a
man who had a large income, in fact an income lar
ger than that of the whole official board put together
and the church naturally needed that man’s strength
and it was pleased to have it. But he began to give
these card parties in his home; and the pastor of his
church called upon him; that deacon said to his pas
tor, “There is no harm in this thing and if you don’t
stop having so much to say about it my family and I
will leave your church.” That pastor frankly said
to him, “Thten you and your family will
have to find a church home elsewhere; you can
not stay in this church, though you are the richest
man in it, and engage in this practice that the
church has declared shall not be tolerated.” That
was a hard thing for that pastor to do on account of
the closeness of the tie between them; occasionally
we find a pastor who will do it, but it is mighty hard.
THE REALM OF POLITICS.
And the same thing is true with respect to poli
tics. Once I had an experience that I shall never
forget. The democratic party of my county and sen
atorial district put out its candidates for the Legisla
ture and Senate. There were two candidates for the
Legislature; one was a whiskey seller and the other
a whiskey distiller. The candidate for the Senate
was neither a seller nor a distiller, but a heavy
drinker. Some of us got together, though they were
the parties desired by the political machine of that
district, and it was almost social, political, and busi
ness suicide for a man to stand up against the po
litical machine of the democratic party; we got to
gether and put up an independent ticket and put
clean, sober, solid, sensible, hardworking men on our
ticket, and we started the campaign. It was the first
time in my life that I had ever done any political
stump speaking and some of my friends say that is
where I learned what I know about speaking. It
was a red hot campaign. We made the fur fly three
or four weeks. We elected two of our men and
came within seven votes of electing the other. We
elected the senator and one representative. We
gave the other the worst scare he ever had. He
went to Richmond to the Legislature and the first
thing he did and the only thing he did was to intro
duce a bill in that Legislature making it a misdemea
nor for a preacher to open his mouth on the subject
of politics in his church. That bill passed the first
and second readings. You can see why that man
proposed to legislate against the preacher who dared
to open his mouth on the great question of politics;
and many pulpits are so afraid of hurting the feel
ings of such men as that they wouldn’t think of
speaking out against them.
Why is this true? It is the alliances that
the church has made, and I am not criti
cising her for making them. These alliances
have come about by the rapid progress of
the church. She has become entangled with the af
fairs of politics by reason of the fact that she has
thees men within her ranks, and I say to you again
and say it with equal frankness, it is the rarest thing
today to find a church with a pulpit that can be al
lowed to cry aloud and spare not in reference to the
evil that confronts us in the political realm. Now,
what is to be said in view of all these things? In
the first place, it has to be said the church of Jesus
Christ today has got to take the place of the prophet
in the days of Israel’s decline. The place of the
prophet in those days was to express to the worlj
the voice of God. The prophet in the days of Israel
was of more importance than was the king. His
voice was the voice of authority rather than the
voice of the king not because of his own import
ance but because he spoke for God. That ought to be
the position of the church today. Suppose she does
scatter men from her ranks, suppose she does thin
out her columns? What the church wants is not so
much members as quality; what she wants is a unit
ed army to fight the battles against wrong, whether
in high or low places.
MISSION OF THE CHURCH.
And again, the church, in the midst of these things
I have spoken of, has got to remember that it is just
as obligatory upon her to create an atmosphere in
which to grow character as it is to save lost souls.
If I were asked to summarize the mission of the
church, I would do it in this fashion. First, salva
tion for the lost through Jesus Christ our Lord, and
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