Commerce and Piety

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 983, 28 May 1930, Page 10

Commerce and Piety

“HOT GOSPELLER” AT PASSION PLAY

WHAT the genuinely pious townspeople of Oberammergau, Bavaria, will think when provocative Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson, the American “hot gospeller,arrives on her mission to the Passion Play can best be imagined. Prom now until September thousands will flock to the village for the play, but Mrs. McPherson’s presence will be notable. It will provide a contrast of commercialised evangelism and a simple devotion which has lasted for centuries.

This contrast will not be apparent to those who have understood the Oberammergau ritual to be commercial, too. Every decade the Passion Play is performed. Many have said that the performance of the Bavarian villagers has been simply an entertainment; many have said openly that it is held for the purpose of bringing trade to the town of Oberammergau. The position actually is the reverse. John Gibbons, who has a rare knowledge of the Catholic religious observances at Lourdes and at Oberammergau, recently told the true story of Oberammergau in an English publication. The village, he said, is nothing more than a normal community, with natural busy life. Whether the hundreds of thousands of visitors brought any real profit, considering the enormous expense which had to be levied for their accommodation, was open to question. What was absolutely certain was that, if by some miracle, not a single stranger attended, the play would continue. It was a question of the traditional pride of centuries and not the taking of money from foreigners, Mr. Gibbons emphasised. CONTRAST OF EXPRESSION This is where the contrast with the methods of Aimee Semple McPherson, who, no matter what her critics say, is yet a dominating figure of a new branch of religion or religious fervour, becomes most apparent. It must be taken as definite that Oberammergau is a simple expression of piety followed devoutly by many generations. On the other hand, Mrs. McPherson has been hotly assailed for developing a procedure greatly dependent on a direct appeal to the emotions. Hers is a force in American religious life—with adherents elsewhere, too —which is recognised in the face of a considerable amount of antagonism from the sturdier religious creeds of the United States, yet the home of new thought and newer. Possibly Mrs. McPherson is going to Oberammergau with the impression that the Bavarian townspeople are. after all, commercial beneath a pretence of play acting. As John Gibbons says, the popular opinion of the Passion Play is that it is a commercial thing. One remembers the criticism show-

ered upon an unperturbed Mrs. McPherson when she conducted her revival meetings in England not so long ago. The responsible English Press was unanimous in condemning deliberate appeal to the somewhat frenzied emotions of the considerable class of people which idolised the evangelist. This emotionalism had its illustration in the outpourings of thousands at the Albert Hall, London. Mrs. McPherson’s ultra-modern evangelism found no favour -with the conservative thought of most British people. This disapproval was reflected completely in the younger and educated generation of England. Beverley Nichols may be taken as a representative of a considerable section of this generation and he wrote, in “The Star-Spangled Manner.” an absorbing ! chapter on Mrs. McPherson's activi- { ties at her headquarters in the An- | gelus Temple, Los Angeles. “MAKING HIM UP” Mr. Nichols recorded this dream I after his observation at the temple: ! “I dreamed that I was in the dressj ing-room of a third-rate theatre. The ! room was brilliantly lit, and two people were in it—a man and a | woman. The woman’s face I could not see, but the man’s was a face on 1 : which I dared not look, for it was j the face of Christ . . . the woman was making Him up. Upon His head was no crown of thorns, but a wig set grotesquely awry ... in the distance I could hear the sound of a vast audience, clamouring for their favourite comedian. Into His hands the woman thrusts something. A reed? No. A walking-stick—knobbed and twisted . . . the conventional walkingstick of the low comedian. The woman stands looking after Him, her hands on her hips. Suddenly there is a roar of applause, a bellow of whistles and yells, and then a still, quiet voice . . . ‘Forgive them. Father, for they know not what they do.’ And the woman turns, grinning broadly, her work completed. I see her face. I need not tell you who she is.” Students of religions will wonder if the “hot gospeller” will reconcile her work with the expression of the Passion Play, continuous repetition of which was vowed by the people of Oberammergau in 1634. —TUPUA.