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Show Politics; but Never Personalities, Have Definite Place in the Pulpit By REV. CHARLES FRANCIS POTTER, New York. The pulpit .not only has the right to discuss national issues of a moral nature, but is in duty bound to do so. The idea that politics and the pulpit should be kept apart and especially that the pulpit should not "meddle" in politics is a quaint survival of the period when religion was supposed to have nothing to do with daily life ; when a deacon could in all conscience pass the plate on Sunday and "deacon" his apples on Monday. Mon-day. Those were the days when Christians were so busy getting readv for the next world that they let this one go to pot. Politics was considered consid-ered "worldly" matters and it was not just the thing for real devout Christians to be concerned with them. Women, particularly, risked their reputations if they showed any interest in political matters. We have somewhat overcome the inhibition about women in polities, but we have not yet waked up to the fact that ministers have just as mucb right in politics as women have. The same people are objecting to the pulpit speaking on political matters as used to protest if a woman opened her mouth on subjects that were supposed to belong only to the domain of her husband. It is true that personalities and partisanship are out of place in the pulpit, but that is not because it is the pulpit but because they are out of place anywhere among gentlefolk. The important thing to remember is that the pulpit is the place for proclaiming truth and justice, and if political po-litical matters get in the way of the progress of truth and justice, then so much the worse for politics. |