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The Journal of Religion
Volume II JANUARY 1922 Number 1
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE OPEN FORUM
TO DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION
GEORGE W. COLEMAN
Boston, Mass.
ABSTRACT
The open forum is a_ direct result of the eagerness of the church to "reach the
masses." Three of the pioneer organizations of the forum — at Cooper Union, in the
Church of the Ascension, and at Ford Hall — were all inspired by the ideals of
the church. The purpose of the forum is to give an opportunity for open discussion,
where objections may be raised as well as positions denned. The result has been to
jar church people out of their complacency, to modify unintelligent radicalism, and
to stimulate thinking and reading. Dogmatism is immediately checked. No
ecclesiastical or other conditions are prescribed for participation in the discussion.
Those who have been alienated from the church find that religion, like other human
interests, is progressing and is dealing with real issues. A wider sense of brotherhood
is developed. A new community interest is aroused. Brief descriptions of typical
experiments reinforce the foregoing points.
The open forum brings together all kinds of serious-minded
people at stated times for the purpose of discussing the issues
of life under the leadership of recognized experts who stand
ready to meet the challenge of any person in the audience who
wishes to cross-examine them. The open forum is utterly
democratic, but never chaotic. It guarantees a freedom of
discussion which neither the speaker nor the audience may
monopolize or subvert.
The motto of the open forum is " Let there be light ! " The
forum generates more light and less heat than any other form
of public discussion. Even applied science in the material
realm has not yet discovered how to give us light without
heat.
2 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
Although the modern forum idea is of very recent origin,
it has quickly spread throughout the United States and Canada
until now forums are numbered by the hundred.
To those who are interested in religion let it be noted that
this new instrument for democracy is an outgrowth of the life
of the church, although it must be admitted that it has taken
the church some time to recognize its own child. But the
day of distrust and suspicion on the part of the church has
given place to a time of eager inquiry, earnest appreciation,
and active co-operation. It was the Rev. Charles E. Jefferson,
D.D., of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, New York City,
who some time ago prophesied that within a few years
the forum would be as necessary an adjunct of the city church
as are the Sunday-school and the prayer meeting today.
The open forum came as an aftermath of that great urge
of the Protestant church in America to reach the masses.
Thirty years ago and more, "How to Reach the Masses" was
the great hue and cry heard on every religious convention
platform with interminable repercussions from our pulpits all
over the land. Just about the time, years later, when we woke
up to the fact that our effort to reach the masses was a continu-
ing failure and we had begun to grow very anxious as to what
the masses would soon be doing to us, one or two bold spirits
within the church proceeded to do the obvious thing: they
quit talking in the church about the masses and went out to
the masses and talked to them. That was the beginning of the
modern forum idea.
The late Mr. Charles Sprague Smith at Cooper Union,
New York City, Dr. Percy S. Grant of the Church of the
Ascension on lower Fifth Avenue, New York City, and the
writer in his work on Sunday evenings at Ford Hall in Boston,
were the first to develop the technique and to practice the
spirit of the forum as it is now conceived. At least they were
the first to give a large, outstanding, and permanent exhibit
of what an open forum can be and do. All three of these
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION 3
enterprises owed their existence to the life and inspiration of
the church. Charles Sprague Smith was the son of a minister,
Dr. Grant used his church to father and mother the infant
forum, and it was the Boston Baptist Social Union that gave
me my opportunity to demonstrate what could be done in
Boston.
In all three of these ventures the driving force was the
desperate need of finding some way to bridge the widening
chasm between the well-meaning people within the churches
and the good folks outside. It is doubtful if any one of us had
at the start any clear vision of the open forum as it is con-
ceived today.
As we look back over the work of fourteen seasons at Ford
Hall, our success in interesting the masses is unmistakable.
Not even our severest critic would gainsay that. And to
tell the story of the effect of these open-forum meetings on the
masses of Boston who have frequented Ford Hall would be to
write a romance. Many experts in social work have
pronounced this method the soundest and most successful
process of Americanization that they have witnessed — a
process which awakens the smug and somnolent native just
as surely as it informs and molds the confused and uncouth
foreigner.
But the purpose of this paper draws me away from this
absorbing side of the story to another phase of the subject.
What contribution does this open-forum idea make to democ-
racy in religion ? Perhaps there is even more significance in
the answer that can be made to that question.
Let me say first of all with reference to this single forum at
Ford Hall, after fourteen years of the most intimate acquaint-
ance with its work and the results flowing from it, that the
reaction on the life of the churches in Boston is in itself worth
all these meetings have cost, if they have accomplished nothing
else. Greater Boston now has twenty-five or more forums,
and churches and church people are responsible for a generous
4 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
share of them. Not only have Protestant churches taken up
readily this method of discussing vital issues with the average
man and woman, regardless of church connections, but the
Roman Catholic church and the Jewish synagogue are also
alert in taking advantage of this democratic method of dis-
cussing everything that interests the public mind.
The Common Cause Forum, conducted under the auspices
of the Roman Catholic church every Sunday evening during
the season in the Franklin Union Hall in the city of Boston,
would be a very interesting study in itself. There you would
find twelve hundred people in the most serious frame of mind,
listening to the pros and cons of religion, the church,
democracy, education, and every other vital topic, as set
forth not only by responsible lay leaders of the church, but
also as challenged, contradicted, and defied by some of the
keenest young radicals this day of unrest has produced.
Such an extraordinary spectacle was never witnessed before
the coming of the forum idea, but it is a commonplace now at
the Franklin Union after about ten years of continuous opera-
tion. This forum under Catholic auspices goes much farther
in the democratic discussion of religious questions than we
at Ford Hall, under Baptist auspices, think is wise and fitting.
In one Jewish synagogue in Boston some years ago the
forum for the entire season was given over to the discussion
of distinctly Jewish questions with a large audience of Jewish
young people every Sunday night. The older men of the
synagogue looked on in amazement and some of them in fear
and trembling as they saw the young people gathering by the
hundreds to discuss freely and frankly everything of interest to
serious-minded Jews.
But the establishment of forums under religious auspices,
significant and interesting as that may be, was not the only
mark made upon the religious life of the city by the Sunday
evening meetings at Ford Hall. Neither would I lay special
stress upon the forum method of discussion introduced into
TEE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION 5
various adult Bible classes. Undoubtedly the greatest effect
produced by the forum on the religious life of Boston is to be
found in a changed state of mind among church people. They
have been aroused and quickened, jarred and irritated, and
set to thinking and reading as to the relation of religion to the
whole realm of life. Even those who have never wandered
into a forum meeting have not escaped its lessons as set forth
in the daily press, sometimes in startling headlines. The
meeting at Ford Hall, Sunday night, is often the topic of the
week in store and factory, in office and boarding-house. While
only a thousand or twelve hundred people may have par-
ticipated directly in the meeting, perhaps a hundred thou-
sand, some of them scattered all over New England, have
eagerly watched for the report, especially so when some tick-
lish subject was up for discussion or some unusually striking
personality took the platform.
If true religion is to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly,
as the prophet Micah had it, then the forums everywhere are
democratizing the discussion of religion with remarkable
success. Justice is the passionate desire of these audiences
everywhere, and the note of kindness in any address always
meets a quick and warm response. And while many an ardent
propagandist, both conservative and radical, comes to the
forum in a cock-sure spirit, he often goes away much chastened
and subdued. And, oftener than not, the humbling dose he
needs is administered by the audience rather than by the
appointed speaker of the hour.
While it is a general forum principle to avoid all strictly
sectarian and partisan discussions, one must have a very
narrow conception of religion not to see that a live forum is
shot through and through with a powerful religious dynamic.
And the entire procedure and the dominant spirit are
democratic. While no topic is sacrosanct to a well-trained
forum audience, it is clearly recognized that some topics
are futile.
6 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
And as to the kinds of people who may be permitted to
share in the discussion, there is no limit save one which is
self-operating. The frivolous-minded person absents himself.
The individual who prefers a movie, a dance, or a flirtation to
the earnest, serious temper of the forum goes to his own place.
But everybody else in the community is there or is represented
by one or more of his kind. All classes, cliques, and creeds
are present in the model forum.
Here you have a thoroughly democratic audience — Jew,
Catholic, Protestant, unbeliever, native and foreigner, em-
ployer and employee, student and mechanic, radical and con-
servative, rich and poor, coming together for one and the
same purpose, keen to listen, eager to answer back. The
fundamentals of life, individual and collective, are seriously
discussed in a manner that gives everyone his right to be heard
and no one a privilege to monopolize the discussion. Every-
thing that touches life is pertinent and the topic set for dis-
cussion invariably has its moral and spiritual implications.
This is "democracy in religion" in action. Such a beacon
light burning in any community for a period of years cannot
fail to throw its beams into every nook and corner where
religious-minded people gather, while its effect on the great
throngs who are churchless and yet hungering and thirsting
is dramatic and pathetic to a degree.
Let me give one example. Boston, like every great city, has
a considerable Jewish population. Eighty per cent of the Jew-
ish young people are unattached to the synagogue, either ortho-
dox or liberal. They are, for the most part, born idealists and
extraordinarily alert mentally. They cannot be drawn into
any kind of a religious service, so-called. They will have none
of it. But it would be difficult to keep them away from a
real community forum run without bias and having no axes
to grind. From the first night it threw open its doors, all
through its fourteen seasons, the Ford Hall forum in Boston
has had in its audience a large contingent of these young
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION 7
Jews. They come of course to discuss economic, social,
civil, and industrial questions, but in connection with this
discussion and through other topics presented in course, they
find themselves facing the most serious personal questions of
life. Its effect on them may be best judged by a friendly com-
ment from Rabbi Harry Levi, of the liberal Jewish synagogue on
Commonwealth Avenue, who remarked that the Ford Hall
forum was a half-way house to Temple Israel for these young
Jews. Thus many of these young people are saved from
indifference, agnosticism, or atheism to a modern democratic
interpretation of the religion of their fathers.
And other men and women of Christian antecedents, who
long since have become estranged from the church in which
they were brought up, find themselves influenced by the forum
discussions to make a fresh evaluation of the church. They
are often greatly surprised to note that the church, too, has
grown and progressed like themselves since the days when
they were last in touch with its activities. I well remember
the head mechanic on one of our steam railroads, who had
gotten entirely out of patience with churches in general, com-
ing to me privately at the close of a forum meeting where he
had been a regular attendant and asking me very earnestly
where he could get a manual of the church in which he had
been trained; he wanted to study afresh the up-to-date
pronouncement of the creedless church on which he had turned
his back ten years before.
There are still others attending forum meetings, and in
large numbers, who will in all probability never find their
way back into church membership. Poor substitute indeed as
the forum is for a church, it seems to bring to these indi-
viduals the inspiration, guidance, and fellowship which they
crave and which they will not or cannot find in any church.
It is no small contribution to democratic religion, I would
judge, when innumerable earnest, serious-minded souls find
in the forum, or through it, a means of encouraging and
8 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
cultivating a sense of brotherhood based on justice, mercy,
and humility. I have seen week after week in forum meet-
ings a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan crowd, representing every
prejudice and antagonism known to our American life, come
to a unity of feeling, a self-forgetfulness, a high pitch of enthusi-
asm over a mutual discussion of some topic of the most vital
concern. This is a process of forming public opinion under
the power of emotion, something that Benjamin Kidd declares
to be of the very first importance for these days. When that
discussion deals with the relations of men to one another and
with the relation of man to the universe, which is the range
of forum topics, it is shot through and through with religion.
And what could be more truly democratic than the forum
method of discussion, which exalts the expert, hears the voice
of the people, and snuffs out the irrepressible talking nuisance ?
While the forum is no proper substitute for the church,
even though some people outside the church have found it
adequate for that purpose, it is unmistakably a most fitting
and successful substitute for a worn-out, brokendown, perfunc-
tory Sunday evening service. It is right here, doubtless, that
the forum makes its most direct and manifest contribution
to democracy in religion. The forum has already salvaged
many a Sunday night service to the great blessing of the
community and to the distinct advantage of the church
undertaking such a broad and generous service for its neighbor-
hood.
There are many downtown churches in cities all over the
land where they do well if they can muster an attendance of
one hundred on Sunday evenings, even though the auditorium
may easily accommodate five or ten times that number.
That was the case with a church I have in mind. It was in
the heart of the downtown district in a city that numbered
its inhabitants by the hundred thousand. Less than seventy-
five people would file into the aisles of this cathedral-like
auditorium on Sunday evenings, although the very same
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION g
preacher would be heard by several hundred in that same
church on the morning of the same day.
But it was entirely different when the forum got well under
way, and it was directed and presided over by this same
preacher. There were not seats enough in the auditorium
to accommodate the people who desired to attend. They
came from all over the city and from miles around. The
audiences exceeded a thousand every Sunday night. Two
hundred extra seats had to be brought in, and then people
sat all over the pulpit stairs and stood behind the choir-loft
and out in the vestibule, where they could hear but not see.
And this continued for five years, the interest and attendance
and support growing stronger every year.
There came to these forum meetings socialists and atheists
who had not darkened a church door in twenty-five years, a
multimillionaire was a frequent attendant, country folk drove
in from the towns outside the city, Jews and Catholics were
attracted even though the meeting was held in a Protestant
church building, church members from the morning congrega-
tion, who never before had gone to meeting Sunday evenings,
were there — and the program lasted two hours and a half,
and then it was too short for most of them. Remember this
went on for five years, every Sunday night during the winter
season. And it was a weakness in the church that resulted
in a change of leadership which cut the forum off at the time
of its maximum strength.
The meetings of this forum were opened with prayer and
closed with a benediction. Meeting in a church and led by a
minister, the churchly environment was unescapable. And
yet it was a meeting quite apart from the church, where no
axes were ground, no propaganda declared, no overlordship
exercised. Some of the most outstanding men and women
of the country brought their messages to these people. Dis-
cussion proceeded in true forum fashion. Many were amazed
to see men speaking from a church platform submitting
10 TEE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
themselves to cross-examination by the audience. Courteous
but critical challenges were hurled from the floor and no one
went to sleep or begged to have the time shortened, for these
people were discussing the serious affairs of present-day living
and they were all in dead earnest about it. They were asking
what is just and they were trying hard to be merciful toward
an opponent, and they often went out in a more humble frame
of mind.
This recital is but an outline of what one forum did in a
church in a great city. It could be duplicated again and
again, going each time to a different part of the country.
Such a meeting is democracy in religion, or at least one phase
of it, if I have not been misled as an American citizen or
bamboozled by my religious instructors. And yet I know
so-called ioo per cent Americans who deprecate a popular
discussion of critical questions and I am well acquainted with
religious leaders who insist that our present-day troubles
have nothing whatever to do with religion. Maybe that is
what is the matter with things after all. But if the churches
won't discuss these matters and the forums ought not to do
so, how are we ever going to get the troubles and religion within
sight of each other ?
As I write I am thinking of an able, well-seasoned minister
with a rich and powerful congregation who, not feeling that
the time of his crucifixion is yet at hand, has agreed with his
governing board in the church that for the next three months
he will not preach on any subject later than the Victorian
age. Is that what might be called plutocracy in religion?
Whatever it may be, it is far removed from the democracy
which the forum injects into religion.
In another city in the Middle West an almost defunct
Sunday evening service was immediately transformed into a
spiritual dynamo whose light is seen and power felt in every
corner of the city among all classes of people. Hundreds were
turned away all through a long first season. Again it was a
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION II
downtown church that had lost touch with the people, having
an evening congregation of less than seventy-five. Now the
only difficulty is how wisely to direct and utilize the tremendous
power which has been generated.
It isn't a vaudeville performance, nor a motion-picture
melodrama, nor a band concert, no, not even a stereopticon
that furnishes the lure that draws the crowd to forum meetings.
It is life, as we live it today, with all its problems and heart-
aches, with all its lure and significance, unfolded by leading
men and women who themselves have lived and thought in a
large way, with all the marvelous reactions that come from
hundreds of everyday men and women in the audience — it is
this that attracts and holds the forum crowds. A live forum
is as engaging as a vaudeville performance; something un-
expected happening all the time. It is as absorbing as a
motion picture, life speaking directly to you; it is as stirring as
a band concert, putting your emotions athrill; and it is as
true to life as the pictures from the stereopticon, for every
participant in the audience gives you an instantaneous etching
from real life. When doctrine, sectarianism, the life of two
thousand years ago, a threadbare evangelism, a stereotyped
service, a loosely thrown together address, fail to attract the
multitudes, don't despair of the multitude. When the gospel
fails to appeal, it might not be unreasonable to assume first
that perhaps the gospel has suffered at our hands or that we
have lost the ability to present it. At all events, it does not
necessarily follow that some other way than our way is surely
the wrong way.
Someone, doubtless, is saying to himself that the crowds
often follow after strange gods. A crowd in itself is no evi-
dence that one is on the right track. True enough, just as
certainly as empty seats are hopelessly unresponsive. But
there is this to be said about a forum crowd: It is not only
most wary and elusive, hard to get and harder to hold, but
the forum crowd is not the mass of the people at all. I wish
12 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
with all my heart it were. No, no, a forum audience is only
the cream skimmed off the top of the crowd. It includes
every class and kind, but only the most thoughtful individuals,
the most earnest and devoted representatives of the different
groups in the city. The great body of the rank and file in
almost every class is too inert to respond to the attraction of
serious discussion of public matters. It would rather be
amused with predigested motion-picture pap, or go on a lark,
or loll through the evening, or soak up a Sunday newspaper.
No, don't think for a moment that the forum will draw the
dregs either from the upper or the lower classes. Just as the
stated church services appeal to only a small proportion of
those who count themselves in the fold, so the forum draws
to itself only a small proportion of either church people or of
those outside the church.
The forum method of discussion, following the message by
the appointed speaker, is spreading far and wide, even where
the forum name is never attached to it. Nowhere is it more
often brought into use than in religious meetings. The
prayer meeting, the Bible study class, the young people's
meeting, the evening preaching service, and here and there
even the Sunday morning service have been forumized to the
extent that the people in attendance have the privilege of
cross-examining the speaker by the question method. An
able and successful pastor in New England, of long experience,
not only introduced the full-fledged forum into his church activi-
ties, but also forumized nearly every meeting held under the
auspices of the church. Where the forum discussion has
followed the Sunday morning service it has generally been the
custom to adjourn after the benediction to another room
where those who cared to remain were free to question the
pastor on the subject of his sermon.
While it must be apparent to anyone that a service for
worship and inspiration might easily be spoiled by introducing
an element of controversy, it must also be admitted that when
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION 13
the preacher is exercising the function of the teacher and
giving instruction to his flock, questioning on the part of his
hearers might follow very fittingly and profitably.
This last winter the open forum idea was planted in the
midst of the activities of a church with which I have been
connected all my life. It is a church made famous in the past
by a great ministry. That era closed twenty-five years ago.
Since then the environment of the church has completely
changed. The once fashionable residential section of the city
is now a boarding- and lodging-house district. There are three
times as many people in the district as in the olden days, but
they do not come to our church nor go to any church in large
numbers, although a goodly proportion of them are white
people of American or Canadian stock and Protestant in their
leanings. The same gospel which used to fill our fine church
auditorium has since come perilously near emptying it. Our
service is almost identically what it was a quarter of a century
and more ago. Our activities are precisely what they were
forty years ago: two services on Sunday, Bible school, Friday
night prayer meeting, young people's meeting, the Benevolent
Circle and the women's missionary meeting, with the church
sociable once a month — all preserved intact just as they were
originally planned.
But with the present pastor there came two years ago a
new spirit and energy. He has the united support of all the
old-timers and the love and devotion of a constantly widening
circle of folks all through our community. He wouldn't accept
the call of the church until he had assured himself that it was
willing to go to some lengths to reach and serve the unchurched
people of that neighborhood through whatever methods might
be necessary. On his own initiative, without a suggestion
from me, he inaugurated an open forum every Wednesday
night in the vestry. And he made it an open forum for the
neighborhood, not another service of the church. It was so
satisfactory that, having been begun on a monthly basis, it
14 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
was soon made semi-monthly, and then weekly. It gripped
the neighborhood as had nothing else we had done in a long
time. It brought into the vestry on Wednesday nights as
great a variety of human beings as we have at Ford Hall and
they found there the same friendly, tolerant, helpful spirit,
with no traps set to catch them, no pressure brought to bear,
no smug condescension, but a virile, frank, hearty fellowship
and an eager disposition to learn something from the other
fellow.
Not only was this little forum with its weekly attendance
of two hundred and more a pronounced success from every
point of view and a joy and a blessing to those who attended
without ever approaching the church at any other time, but
every activity of the church itself began to take on new life.
The Sunday evening service is larger than it was in the palmiest
days of the old regime, and the morning attendance grows
steadily. A recent sociable in the vestry had more people in
attendance than the oldest member could remember having
seen at any similar gathering in the church. The credit for
all this is by no means due to the forum. Without our young
pastor we should be lost. But I am quite sure he would say
that he would now feel lost without the forum activity. This
forum is injecting the spirit of democracy into this fine old
church to an extent that it never dreamed of before, and it
needs it quite as much as the crowd it seeks to serve may need
the gospel.
A little dried-up Methodist church in an extreme southern
state opened its doors to the forum with the result that the
auditorium had to be enlarged three times in a few years and
the church became the fifth largest of its denomination in the
state. Finally it became necessary to build a big auditorium
with a seating capacity of three thousand for the exclusive use
of the forum and its various activities. A pastor of another
denomination in the next town across the river had an evening
congregation of about twenty-seven. He was afraid that the
THE OPEN FORUM AND DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION 15
afternoon session of the forum would draw away a few of his
attendants, perhaps five or six. When asked which he would
choose to suffer, the possible loss of six auditors, Sunday eve-
ning, or the shutting up of the forum on Sunday afternoons with
an attendance not less than two thousand, he promptly said he
would shut up the forum. Since the establishment of that
forum, the Sunday evening congregations within a radius of
ten miles of the forum auditorium have been augmented by
two thousand attendants. This same minister declared it was
his business to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and let the
world take care of itself. I wonder if he was preaching Jesus'
gospel and if it wasn't the gospel of Jesus that the forum there
was disseminating.
And that reminds me of what William T. Ellis, the widely
known religious journalist, once said about the forum at Ford
Hall. He said, "I could easily imagine the Galilean on that
Ford Hall platform, answering the eager, earnest questions of
the perplexed multitude."
Intelligent people cherish the most widely divergent views
about both democracy and religion. With some it is always
a form, while with others it is purely idealistic and mystical.
Most of us are able to recognize both democracy and religion
when we see them in action. The forum is a vital force and
its natural field of action is in the realm of practical democracy
and sound religion, and it is at its best when it finds the two
fields inevitably merging one into the other.
The forum cannot flourish where the instincts of the people
are not democratic. The forum will get no foothold where
the passion for truth and righteousness has been smothered
out. America provides the two requisites and the forum
flourishes on her soil. It is not ten years yet since the forum
movement may be said to have gotten under way. It would
be a bold prophet who would dare say what it will accomplish
in the next generation as a contributing force to the democ-
ratization of religion.
