EthicsDaily.com's
Teddy Roosevelt's 10 Reasons for Going to Church
By: Barry Howard
Posted: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:20 am
(http://www.differentbookscommonword.com/)
(http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=15204)
President and Mrs. Roosevelt and their family in 1903. (Photo: Library of
Congress) Some people go to church regularly, some go occasionally, and
others seldom go at all. How important is church participation? Are there
good reasons that I should go to church?
Actually, the Bible calls on believers to be the church, and not just go
to church. But to effectively be the church, believers need to faithfully
gather with the other members of the body of Christ for equipping and
encouragement.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, believed
in attending and participating in church. In 1917, in an interview with
Ladies Home Journal, President Roosevelt offered at least 10 reasons for
going
to church:
1. In the actual world a churchless community, a community where men
have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a
community on the rapid downgrade.
1. Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the
habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral
strength, which prevents a relaxation of one's own moral fiber.
1. There are enough holidays for most of us that can quite properly
be devoted to pure holiday making. Sundays differ from other holidays,
among other ways, in the fact that there are 52 of them every year. On
Sunday, go to church.
1. Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the
Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a
running
brook, or in one's own house, just as well as in church. But I also know
as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus
dedicate himself. If he strays away from church, he does not spend his time
in
good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of
the newspaper.
1. He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very
unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is
engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum and important
tasks for making hard lives a little easier.
1. He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages
from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered
a loss.
1. He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.
1. He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet neighbors. He
will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even
toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather
a soft performance.
1. I advocate a man's joining in church works for the sake of
showing his faith by his works.
1. The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself
with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his
neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.
Ninety-two years have passed since that historic interview with President
Roosevelt. And church attendance and participation is still vitally
important to faith development and Christian service.
The Scriptures advise us "not to give up meeting together, as some are in
the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, even more as you see
the day of the Lord approaching." (Hebrews 10:25)
Why not go to church next Sunday and learn to be the church in your
community every day?
_Barry Howard_ (mailto:[email protected]?subject=via%20ethicsdaily.com)
serves as senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Pensacola, Fla.
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