as dimly felt in those days, was suddenly transformed into
something clearly seen by the impact of the Great War. If this
stupendous conflict has revealed anything in religion, it is that
the sectarian divisions of Christendom are no longer to be
tolerated. In the fusing fires of battle, Presbyterian, Methodist,
Episcopalian, Unitarian, even Catholic, Protestant and Jew, have
been melted, and now flow in a single flaming stream into the mould
which shall fashion them into a single casting. Man after man has
returned from the front, to tell us that the denominational church
is dead. A new ordering of Christendom is at hand. The unit of
organization will be not the one belief, nor even the one spirit,
but the one field of service. Not the sect, but the community, will
be the nucleus of integration. We will have groupings not of
Methodist churches, and Baptist churches, and Unitarian churches, to
remind the world of ancient differences, but of New York churches,
and Boston churches, and San Francisco churches, to teach the world
of present needs and future hopes. Our churches will be related as
the wards in a city are related, or the cities in a state, or the
states in the nation. We shall be all Christians together, as we are
all Americans together. We shall have different religious ideas as
we have different political ideas. But we shall be organized
religiously, as well as politically, in a single community. Our
churches, like our schools, will be the possession, and the resort,
of all!

This vision of the church as a community, or civic centre, is the
logical application of socialized religion. It is no accident that
together these two things have captured my life. For a moment, just
as the idea of the social question set me thinking of leaving the
church altogether, so this idea of the community church set me
thinking of leaving this church and organizing in this city an
independent religious movement. Indeed, this latter thought has been
something more than a [13] momentary temptation. To have a church
has been with me from the beginning a necessity. To have a church of
the new community order has become a great desire. Last spring I
seriously considered presenting to you my resignation, that I might
enter upon the fulfillment of this hope. Last summer I pretty
definitely made up my mind to lay this problem and prospect before
you, as soon as peace should come, and the distractions of war be
gone. Then, at the very