Monday, Aug. 20, 1923
Trends
A Money Crusade. In the Middle Ages knights in armor went on crusades to recover to Christianity the holy places in Jerusalem. Today the British, having at last put Jerusalem under Christian oversight, are appealing to all Christians to be knights of the open purse, and give liberally toward the preservation of the holy places for which the older crusaders fought. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has, since the year 328 A. D., kept intact many of the sacred buildings and sites of Palestine. Most of the income of this little patriarchate came from Russia. This support is now almost entirely gone. The falling exchange of Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, has almost wiped out the revenue of the Patriarch, and the hospitality which he and his flock are constantly called upon to show toward visiting Christians has, since 1920, piled up a debt of $3,500,000. Colonel J. B. Barron, Chairman of the British Commission of Liquidation and Control of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, made an appeal on behalf of the Patriarchate, at a luncheon of the American Committee on the Preservation of Sacred Places at the Hotel Pennsylvania, Manhattan, last week. It is not expected that America and England will allow the cradle of Christianity to suffer permanent decay. Richard the Lion Hearted would turn in his grave.
Baptist Muzhiks. Dr. Edgar Mullins, of Louisville, Ky., arrived in the U. S. last week from Stockholm, where he was elected President of the World Baptist Alliance. (Tins, July 30, Aug. 6.) The Baptist type of church polity appeals to the Russian mind, in its present extremely democratic state, for each and every Baptist Church is free and independent, and all higher ecclesiastical organization is the voluntary work of churches which wish to cooperate without being subject to ecclesiastical domination. In 1914, when the Greek Orthodox Church was the State Church of the Tzars, there were only 100,000 Baptists in Russia. Today, according to Dr. Mullins, there are 2,000,000 Baptist Muzhiks (peasants).
Each in His Own Tongue. Every six weeks the American Bible Society publishes the scriptures in some new language. The Bible is now published in 770 languages of the world. The Bible Society hopes to continue its work of translation into 300 other languages, since that many more are spoken by a sufficiently large group of people to warrant the trouble and expense of printing and distributing.
K. of C. The Knights of. Columbus held their 41st international convention in Montreal. Every state of the U. S. and every province of Canada was represented. Seventy-five thousand new members joined the order during the past year, bringing the total membership up to 800,000. A feature of the convention was a speech by Supreme Knight James A. Flaherty, in which he challenged the Ku Klux Klan and other K. of C. detractors. He declared that the K. of C. would combat all combinations which seek to inject religious or racial bias into governmental or social life. He then sketched the vast educational work of his order: hospital work for 30,000 disabled soldiers; national correspondence school for members of the order, furnishing tuition at cost; and the Italian Welfare program, carried on under the auspices of the Vatican.
Y. M. C. A. The North American Associations of the Y. M. C. A. issued their annual year book with a foreword by John R. Mott, General Secretary of the International Committee. The Associations have had to decrease their force of employed officers and their educational work. They have been able to increase, however, their recreational activities, their Bible study groups and their religious meetings. Total membership of the Y. M. C. A.'s of North America is now past the 900,000 mark.