“What the world needs today is men who know how to play,” declared Rev. Lee McB. White in his sermon at the First Baptist Church Sunday evening. The subject of playing, or the amusement question, he declared, would be his subject in a set of sermon-lectures which were begun Sunday. This, the first one, was to concern itself with the amusement problem.
The minister held up as a shining example the words with which David was described to Saul, “Happy of countenance, one who played well and was valiant in war.” From these words he drew the conclusion that to play well was a God-given privilege, and one which the American people of today should make use of.
“Sports and not play are the amusement of the modern American people,” he continued. There must be something wrong with a public which will grand a man a quarter of a million dollars to bloody another’s nose, and yet permit its teachers and ministers to struggle along on a pittance, Mr. White believed. This same tendency to make spectators rather than participants of the many, and to have a few highly trained men for the crowd to observe, he declared to have been the source of much worry in modern educators. One great student declared that “We need a nation of playing college men.” A choice between commercialized sport in which the few participate and the many observe, and free for all amusement which affords rest for the tired body and brain was the issue, stated the minister.
Amusement Places
A close analysis of the amusement places in America followed, the pastor quoting a statistical list in which “movie,” dance hall, skating rink, etc., were given grading according to their percentage of good. The dance hall was rated very low, and towards this item the speaker was unsympathetic. “He could see no good in the public dance hall.” Movies were rated about three-quarters good, and with this the minister was fairly sympathetic. He could see no harm in a good moving picture. Shows for men only were rated nil, and the whole set of figures balanced up to something like a three-quarter portion of merit. Mr. White acquiesced here, and declared himself in sympathy with this, and heartily desirous of affording clean amusement for the people at the proper time.
The lamentable modern tendency to interpret virtue as always gloomy and unlovely, and vice as attractive, was exorcized. He spoke of an educator’s experience in a fairly large city on a summer night, how he found every theatre and pool parlor open but that library closed for the evening and the magnificent churches closed for summer. The summer was a particularly crucial time, it seemed to Mr. White, for then the people were cast into the streets for amusements, and with the authorities was the power to determine the nature of that amusement.
“I never intended to take another vacation in summer as long as I continue in the ministry,” he declared, deploring the current tendency to close churches during the summer months. “Never is there greater need for the minister to be on hand, and for the church to be open. The foundation must be laid for the true kind of play in America, and the people must abandon this pagan worship of sports. We have seen that 75 per cent of the American play desire is meritorious, and it remains then to take this germ and plant it to the best advantage, to turn this current of energy into the proper channels. The American people must learn how to play.”
The lecture Sunday evening began a set which will continue for the next few Sunday evenings, and on the coming Sunday Mr. White promises to go still deeper into the matter, having presented the fundamentals properly. Due to the oppressive heat, the minister declared “coats off” for the night, an offer which many availed themselves of, displaying in the subdued light shirts of vari-colored tint and suspenders whose silver trapping glittered in dazzling fashion.
From the front page of The Kinston Free Press, Wednesday, July 12, 1922
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