In the year 1906 the Young Men’s Christian Association of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, rejected the application of an actor for membership on the ground that one of his profession could not be a moral person. Viewing the action as a slur cast on the whole theatrical profession, Mr. Henry E. Dixey, the well-known actor, offered to give one thousand dollars to charity if it could be shown that actors, man for man, were not as good as ministers of the gospel. No champion of the cloth appearing to claim Mr. Dixey’s money on that proposition, he went further and offered another thousand dollars if there could not be found a minister in jail for every state in the Union. This second challenge was likewise ignored by the clergy and the association which had provoked it, but Mr. Dixey made a few inquiries as to the proportion of ministers to actors among convicts. His research, which was far short of being thorough, discovered 43 ministers and 19 actors in jail. The investigation, so far as the ministers were concerned, could have touched only the fringe of the matter, for in eight months of the year 1914 the publishers of this work counted more than seventy reported offenses of preachers for which they were or deserved to be imprisoned, and of course the count included only those cases reported in newspapers that reached the office through an agency which scans only the more important ones. There had been nothing like a systematic reading of the press of the [6]country for these cases. Judged by 1914, the clerical convicts in 1906 must have far exceeded the number developed by Mr. Dixey’s census.

The foregoing incident is introduced here to explain the nature of this work, “Crimes of Preachers,” which, like Mr. Dixey’s challenge to the clergy in behalf of his profession, is the reply we have to make to the preachers in behalf of the unbelievers in their religion.

The clergy assume to be the teachers and guardians of morality, and assert not only that belief in their astonishing creeds is necessary to an upright life, but, by implication, that a profession of faith is in a sense a guarantee of morality. It has become traditionary with them to assume that the non-Christian man is an immoral man; that the sincere believer is the exemplar of the higher life, while the “Infidel,” the unbeliever, illustrates the opposite; and that whatever of morality the civilized world enjoys today it owes to the profession and practice of Christianity.

Now, it is wholly legitimate that systems should be judged by the correspondence between the claims made for them and their actual performances. When Mrs. Eddy, for an instance, rose up and asserted that Christian Science was the key to health, investigation into the health of persons professing and practicing Christian Science became at once a proper inquiry. And so, when ministers exalt the belief and practice of Christianity as the one highway to the moral life of individuals and nations, it is equally germane to observe with some care whether or not the clergy make good their claims in their own persons. The inquiry would be of great interest and permissible even were [7]Christianity offered only for our free acceptance or rejection; but the investigation assumes the binding nature of a civic duty when, on the strength of these clerical pretensions, the preachers of Christianity claim and are allowed to enjoy privileges and immunities from the state that are not granted to other citizens. There are many “benefits of the clergy” besides those bestowed on them personally in the shape of half-fares, freedom from civic and military duties, and the license under the papal decree which forbids that any priest shall be brought into a civil or criminal court without the approval of his ecclesiastical superior. In the United States church property valued at a billion and a half dollars escapes taxation on the plea that it is devoted to improving the morals of the community, and the ministers have a virtual monopoly of the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, on the strength of the same unproved theory. The plea is questioned and denied by the publishers of this book, who quote the evidences in disproof, among these being the fact of the immorality of the clergy themselves. If the religion they spend their lives in expounding does not keep the ministers straight, it is almost useless to ask how much restraining influence that religion has on the laity who only listen once a week.

It is admitted that just as the upright life of a professed Christian is no evidence whatever of the truth of Christian doctrine and history, so the moral delinquency of a believer is no disproof of those things which it is necessary to accept in order to be orthodox. The creation story, the flood story, the story of Jonah and the whale, the virgin birth and the other miracles of the Old and New Testaments are not affected by [8]anything a believer in them may do, either good or bad. Therefore we have been asked of what value a list of the crimes of preachers can be to the cause of Freethought and mental liberty. The reply, couched in the language of an editorial article in “The Truth Seeker,” is as follows:

“Christianity, as interpreted by its preachers, affirms a fundamental relation between belief and morals. It claims that its system of morals is revealed and perfect; and not only this, but also that good morals are out of the question unless we believe in the Christian religion.

“There are Christian ministers, and they are of the class who have the widest hearing, because they are ‘sensational’ ones, who will tell you that unbelief is synonymous with immorality; that men are wicked because they are Infidels, and are Infidels because they are wicked. They argue that as religion cannot countenance anything that is wrong, the wrongdoer must justify his course by denying the authority of religion, and hence becomes an unbeliever in order that his creed may not conflict with his conduct. Who has not heard that Infidels deny the existence of hell to relieve their minds of the uncertainty of going there when they die; that they put the Bible aside because it will not permit their indulgences in sin, and that a reform in conduct will be accompanied by a renunciation of their Infidelity and a reacceptance of religion and the Bible?

“The preachers who promulgate these principles often proceed from the general to the particular. Having asserted the correlation of unbelief with moral turpitude, they give pretended illustrative instances, and they do not seem to understand that the force of their argument is lessened by the fact that they are obliged to invent cases and to deal with imaginary characters. Some, of course, prefer to libel known and representative Freethinkers instead of exercising [9]the faculty of invention and defaming unbelievers who are pure myths.

“A list of ministers, guilty of crimes and immoralities, though of unimpeached orthodoxy, is the answer to this class of falsifying preachers, which any court must accept as historical and lawful evidence against the pretense that good conduct grows out of belief in Christianity. It shows that the very apostles of that religion go wrong, that its ministers are profligate, and that in these the theory is condemned before we come to its mere lay exponents who less perfectly understand it.

“People have been taught so long that piety and morality are interchangeable terms, that they believe it without regard to the facts which demonstrate the contrary to be true. When an individual of reputed orthodoxy violates the moral law they accuse him of being a hypocrite and set his religious professions down as mere outward pretense. But here their mental narrowness is shown, for the immoral person may be thoroughly sincere. The more firmly he believes, the stronger may be his confidence that no mere human weakness on his part can deprive him of the benefits of his religion. For according to the code we are all sinners, and the function of religion is not so much to keep us from personal sin as to save us from its natural consequences. One has fallen already in Adam and is therefore totally depraved, which is the limit of depravity. How, then, can his own sins count against him, when he cannot be depraved beyond ‘totally’? His concern is to escape the consequences of the fall, which is accomplished by accepting the Christian scheme of salvation. His own transgressions can be adjusted by prayer and repentance. He conceives of divine mercy as infinite—there is no reaching the end of it; hence with unlimited credit he may draw on his account whenever he feels sinfully disposed.”

It is unlikely, however, that the believer performs this mental operation before reaching a determination [10]to do that which is wrong. Were he capable of analyzing the plan of salvation in that manner he might doubt it. But he is like other men in the same environment, and, like them, when inclination prompts, he falls. Conduct, in the last analysis, is a matter of common sense, in which the minister and the believer are likely to be at a disadvantage as compared with the Rationalist. In our own minds we are pretty well convinced of the reason why ministers go wrong—they have more opportunities and, among the faithful, are under less suspicion and observation than the laity. Nevertheless we are not averse to hearing other explanations of their tendency to fall.

A few years ago the Rev. Dr. Madison C. Peters, a New York clergyman, offered a theory and remedy.

“The average minister,” said Dr. Peters, “has only to preach a twenty-minute or half-hour sermon on Sunday, and this, with a mid-week meeting, constitutes his week’s work. The rest of the days he is often loafing, trying to kill time. Even the weekly sermon may not be his own effort. He may be either too lazy or too ignorant to compose a sermon of his own, so he simply treats the congregation to a rehash of some other man’s work, and for this he often receives a good salary. Do you wonder that the worst passions of these men become inflamed by their lives of idleness? They are only human. They eat and drink of the choicest products of the earth; they visit only the homes of the wealthy, where they are sumptuously entertained; they do not try to keep the body in subjection to the spirit by any kind of restraint or mortification, and so their carnal passion becomes the master of their being, and they fall away from grace, [11]shocking the community and scandalizing the church of God. I would make all work for their money.”

No doubt the indolent habits of the stall-fed clergy contribute to their incontinence, which is recognized as their predominant weakness. While their offenses otherwise, as these pages show, range all the way from petty larceny to murder, yet the great majority are such as are committed with or against women and girls. The larger figures in the list number cases of adultery, bigamy, desertion, elopement, and seduction.

That the immorality of the clergy is recognized as a matter that needs explanation is shown by an article entitled “Why Ministers Go Wrong,” extracted from the “Baptist Standard” (Chicago), in which orthodox weekly it appeared in the latter part of the year 1913. The article, whose author is a minister, is surprising mainly because of its frankness and not because it tells anything not previously known or surmised. The writer says:

“Do ministers of the churches, that is clergymen, priests and preachers, go wrong in any greater proportion than do doctors, lawyers or teachers? If one answers the question mathematically, no; if one answers the question in the light of our moral standards for ministers of the gospel, the negative answer will not be so readily and decidedly given. There are few issues of the daily newspaper without at least a single item narrating the fall of a clergyman. It would be hard to find a man or a woman who has not at some time in life become personally acquainted with a professed exponent of religious truth and high moral ideals who has demonstrated the depths of human depravity.

“Yet the indictment against the profession is of a much more subtle character than that found in journalistic [12]annals of crime or even in personal knowledge of gross faults on the part of clergymen. It would be folly to deny that, taken as a class, ministers live lives as pure and as free from criminal or grossly immoral taint as any other class of persons. The indictment takes rather the form of a general impression, amounting almost to a conviction, that the minister does not have the clear-cut and high standards which the business world demands.

“Business men feel that there is something about the ‘cloth’ that makes its wearer a ‘doubtful proposition’ when it comes to square dealing between men. A prominent lawyer in Chicago said, only the other day, ‘I dread seeing a clergyman enter my office; I do not want his business; he does not have the commercial honor of the man of affairs.’ He went on to give instances of ministers who disregarded their business obligations and even ignored the sanctity of the oath at the bar of justice.

“It is a well-known fact among houses accustomed to extend credit that ministers are the slowest to pay, and the most difficult from whom to collect. In the smaller towns it would be difficult to find a grocer without an uncollected account against some minister who had left the place. Over five years ago such a preacher boasted in his farewell sermon that all his bills were paid in the village, and he ‘owed not any man’; he should have said that he had paid not any man, and some of his bills are still unpaid.

“A charitable organization in Chicago allowed a minister in a village nearby to become indebted to it. He promised to pay the small account at a certain date; but a year from that time, although many letters had been written, the bill was unpaid. Nor was settlement made until this prominent minister on a good salary was sent a sight draft for the amount.

“A struggling professor in an Eastern city consented to pick out a few books for a preacher up State, and to have them charged to his own account, being assured [13]that payment would be made at once. The books were sent, but the cash never was forthcoming, and after a lengthy correspondence, in which many excuses were offered, the professor had to count his loss as the price he had paid for a lesson in trusting the ‘cloth.’

“Such evidence could be extended indefinitely. The facts back of it, with the many other instances of which these few are but slightly indicative, have produced the decided opinion in the business world that the minister is unreliable, and that the ministry does not stand of necessity for admirable manliness.

“There are many exceptions. The manly, four-square ministers are the more noticeable because they are exceptional. There are still more ministers who are warmly admired by their congregations, but they are admired rather for professional traits and pulpit graces than for the rugged virtues that count on the street and in the store and office. On the whole, men of honor feel that today it is no honor to be entitled ‘Reverend’; the average man looks somewhat askance at the clergyman.

“Perhaps this is nowhere better illustrated than when a minister leaves his profession and desires to enter business. He finds there a strong prejudice against his past; it is regarded as unfitting him for work. When such a man goes into an office, experience shows that he is likely to lack the qualities that make for trustworthiness in details in the individual and for harmony in a large force of employees.

“Now, if the business of the minister is to teach the people how to live, he ought at least to know how to do it himself. His principles are valueless if they will not stand the wear of daily life. Is the trouble with the teachings, with the message, or is it with the man himself?

“The first reason ministers go wrong is because they are men. They are not angels; they are not the reincarnated ideal saints that the sisters and the sisterly [14]brethren like to think they are. Because they are men they have human frailties. But, while that does account for the fact that ministers steal and break the express commandments the same as other men, it does not account for the fact that they are held below par in commercial esteem.

“As a profession the ministry seems to offer a premium on the pretender, the impostor, the hypocrite. So long as there are the intentional pretenders and the unconscious hypocrites in the church they will enjoy the ministry of the pretender and hypocrite. So long as the churches say, ‘There’s nothing either good or ill but seeming makes it so,’ the man who can succeed in fooling the people with appearances of virtues, with saintly air and pious phrase will be the man who reaches the top of his profession.

“Then no mortal being can stand for long the fawning and adulation which the preacher is likely to receive, especially from foolish and emotional women. He is sure to come to believe that he is a superior being, one who either can do no wrong or can do only right. Steady feeding on flattery unfits him for sound counsel regarding his shortcomings; he gets into the habit of judging his own actions, not by any undeviating principles, but by the measure of praise they receive.

“There are peculiar temptations incident to the work of any man who appears to weak minds as a demi-god on occasions, whose work makes unusual demands on his nerve forces, and who is obliged to work almost exclusively with women. There is not only the temptation to license in personal virtue coupled with opportunity in pastoral visitation; there is the tendency to conformity to feminine standards, so that the man becomes womanly and usually a poor kind of an old woman at that.

“Mere preaching puts a tremendous strain on a man’s moral fibre. It is the habitual statement of duties and ideals which the preacher knows he does [15]not reach and do. It is the expression of the phrases of character, not necessarily accompanied with their expression in living and doing. It results in the mental habit of considering a duty done as soon as it is declared. It exhausts the moral impetus in phrases. It makes the man act the lie.

“Intellectual dishonesty results from habitual standing as a special pleader; as the defender of ground which has not been honestly, candidly examined. The preacher seldom goes back to the evidence; he argues from the conclusions of others. He stands as an authority in that in which he frequently has made no original, unprejudicial examination.

“Intellectual dishonesty comes as a result of cowardice in regard to the declaration of his own honest convictions. He is perhaps unconsciously persuaded to teach what the church teaches rather than what he would teach if he gave himself a chance to think. Creeds may be small matters, after all, but the teaching of a creed in which we do not believe is no small matter in its effects on the teacher. There are many potent reasons for fearing a heresy trial—often the thought of his children’s hungry mouths and bare backs is one reason. It is a good deal easier to admire the men who went to the stake for a conviction than it is to follow them. The truth is, no minister who is honest with himself and who declares what he fully believes will have any reason to fear. The church may cast him out, but he will find a thousand voices and hearts to echo to any honest truth in his own.

“Often the preacher is so dead sure that his motive is right, that he does not stop to examine sufficiently his method. He wants to save souls, and if he can do it, as it seems to him, by crooked means more quickly than by straight ones, then he takes the crooked way. He wants to build a church—if he can build it quicker by misrepresentation, by double dealing, by beating any one, he thinks only of the church, and that overweighs any other consideration. [16]

“Take the matter of ministers (and others, too) lying in the stories and illustrations they tell. We have all heard preachers tell as happening to them some incident which we read when we were boys; perhaps before they were born. The man is so carried away with desire to impress the truth on you that he consents to lie to make the illustration more personal and forceful. That makes it none the less a lie; but after he has told it that way a few times, he forgets that it is a lie.

“One of the principal reasons for the disrespect in which the preacher is often regarded by the business world lies in the shamefully unbusinesslike manner in which the preacher has been treated in regard to compensation for his work. If his work is worthless, why not say so and tell him to get out, and do something worth while? If it is worth doing, then he ought to be paid sufficient for a living without being compelled to become a cadger and a pauper.

“The old donation party may have had a good beginning, but it has had a bad effect on the minister’s character. Add to the moral results of being compelled to digest frozen potatoes, wooden turnips and other donation specimens, the experience of being forced into the attitude, at least annually, of a beggar, and one will begin to appreciate the difficulty the preacher has in maintaining his self-respect. When one makes it hard for a man to respect himself, how long is one likely to respect him?

“When the man in the pulpit is dependent for his daily bread on the tolerance and good will of the man in the pew; when he feels that he may get butter on his bread or even a little cake now and then if he can only get in the good graces of that smug old sinner sitting down there, it is easy to see how he has been tempted to fawn on him, how he has been tempted to speak of the old humbug’s robbery of the widow and the orphan as one of the achievements of modern commerce and civilization. It has always been ‘hard hitting [17]the devil over the back if you are feeding his belly.’

“The preacher in the country and in the old days could get along very well between the neighborly gifts he received and the produce of his little farm or garden when these were added to his small salary. But when, without increase of salary, that same man is placed in the city in our days of swollen prices for necessities, he is hard put to it to keep out of debt and remain honest in the ministry. Under the pressure some men have turned to crooked schemes, to selling mining stocks and other bogus investments, and some have gone out of the ministry. But the greater number have stayed in and are working hard to make ends meet and to stay straight.

“Ministers have gone wrong because they have not been trained right in their professional schools; they have been educated only for oratorical labor, and that with the intent of persuading men to certain things by dint of their eloquence. What seminaries are giving courses corresponding to those in other professional schools on professional ethics? They have gone wrong in instances because their employers, the people, have not treated them right, have not given them a fair chance to live right; they have paid them, and are paying them less than we pay mechanics and clerks, and yet they expect the minister to live according to their social standards.

“When the people who employ the ministers will give them an honest return for their work, when they will also encourage them to be honest in their preaching and teaching, there will be fewer unworthy ministers. When the theological schools get out of their shells and into the cities, and the preachers get out of their cloth and among folk, when they take off their garments of sanctimoniousness and get busy helping and leading others to better living, and to making this world a better place to live in, the ministers will be a good many notches higher in the world’s esteem. It [18]is needless to say there are a great many ministers who have made good in these ways.”

We have thus a view of the clerical profession from the inside, the writer having turned state’s evidence. In the closing paragraph there is an intimation that liberal preaching, or “honest” preaching, with a discarding of the cloak of sanctimoniousness, will react on clerical morality and thus raise the preachers in the world’s esteem. That view is borne out by the figures showing that the ministers of the liberal sects are the best behaved.

The editor of the “Baptist Standard,” commenting on the article which he prints and which we have quoted, attributes the clergy’s poor reputation for morality to the “yellow journal,” which he says “will get twice as black in the face as it will over any other person of equal prominence.” The Baptist editor complains because—

“A cross-roads clergyman who runs away with his organist will get more attention than a congressman who goes off with his stenographer. The senile philanderings of a former United States senator did not get a front-page position so often as did a comparatively obscure clergyman who a few years ago failed to get gold out of sea-water, but did get it out of the purses of customers who thought they had a ‘good thing.’ Why? The answer throws a flood of light upon the question at issue. Because out of tens of thousands of ministers, all of them working under the obvious limitations and temptations to which the article makes reference, those who go wrong are so few that, when such instances occur, they are played up, because they are news. When a lawyer or a physician, or a bank president, or a commercial traveler is found with the broken fragments of the seventh commandment on his person, it is no news, at [19]least relatively speaking, and it is given an inside page. This is an unconscious tribute of the sensational press to the high estimate in which the clerical profession is in general held.”

The theory of the religious editor might account for the notoriety given a delinquent minister, but no amount of publicity could create the fact of his delinquency. He has to run off with his organist before the yellow journal chronicles the event. And if more publicity is given him than is received by the lawyer, physician and bank president when the facts come out, the notoriety in known cases is more than offset by the secrecy preserved by the minister’s congregation and friends in nine cases out of ten, so that the papers never get hold of the matter at all.

But the defense based on extraordinary notoriety breaks down when we remember that the preacher who wrote the article we reproduce does not depend on the press for his knowledge of the clerical character. He has first-hand information of his own, and makes the assertion, moreover, that “it would be hard to find a man or a woman who has not at some time in life become personally acquainted with a professed exponent of religious truth and high moral ideals who has demonstrated the depths of human depravity.” This may or may not be an exaggeration; it agrees, however, with the testimony of purchasers of the previous editions of this pamphlet, who generally fail to find in its pages certain cases of clerical depravity they have individually met. And we do not suppose that one act of immorality in a thousand committed by clergymen is ever known to anyone but himself. Not regarding ministers as worse than other men in this respect, we [20]may yet reasonably conclude that they practice the customary male reserve, and therefore are no more given to relating all the incidents of their lives—the only way such incidents could become known—than members of the laity.

The indictment really is not against the ministers as men—it is against their religion and their profession. There is so close a relation between religious emotion and what is called desire, that scientific men have written treatises and books on the correlation of religion and lust. The more fervent the preacher is godward, the more ardent is he womanward—and piety works the same way with the sisters. Our preacher who has turned state’s evidence blames among other things the pastoral visit and the emotional women who place temptation before the man of God. He is concerned only with the minister, but the minister is as often a tempter as a victim. He improves the opportunities the pastoral visit affords, and makes his share of the advances. It may be that only men without mental honesty—men who are willing to profess to believe and to teach what they feel is false—are entering the ministry. In that case the worst is to be expected, and their conduct is accounted for by their lack of principle. The “Standard’s” contributor offers the novel excuse that the minister uses up so much of his virtue in phrasing and uttering moral precepts that he has no strength left for applying them. The proposition is worth the notice of the churches; for if true it means that the vocation of a preacher devitalizes a man of his moral stamina.

The religious editor and his contributor disagree on an important point. The editor holds that the fuss [21]made over one minister who goes wrong with his organist is a tribute to the high estimate in which the profession is held. On the other hand, the contributor represents that most ministers are moral skates, and that any high estimate the profession enjoys is due to the few decent exceptions. The distinction is vital.

The orthodox religious standards to which a minister is supposed to measure up are admittedly responsible for much moral laxity. Besides the sincerely orthodox preacher (whose religious austerity never prevents him from erring sexually), there are thousands of ministers who live a mental or intellectual lie by remaining in the church and preaching the creeds they do not believe. And the church does not trouble itself about the minister’s doubts so long as he keeps them to himself. What can the church expect, then, from the religious hypocrite in the pulpit except that he will be a moral hypocrite out of it? Is he going to be dishonest as a preacher and honest as a man?

The Baptist paper’s contributor puts the query: “Do ministers of the churches, that is, clergymen, priests and preachers, go wrong in any greater proportion than do doctors, lawyers or teachers?” He gives a negative answer, “mathematically,” but the very asking of the question proves that an affirmative reply was not unexpected. Had he included editors in his list it could have been given. The literary and editorial professions are very poorly represented in our prisons, and even printers are exceedingly scarce.

This compilation, periodically revised and enlarged, has been before the public in its nine successive editions since 1881, as is stated in one of its prefaces; [22]and considering that its information is based on newspaper reports, the number of corrections demanded by the ministers whose names are herein enrolled is small. The following is the only threat of action with which the publishers have been menaced. We follow the style of the clerical gentleman, who writes:

“BLUFFTON O.—5–12/1905.

“The Truth Seeker Co., No. 28 Lafayette Place, New York, N. Y.

“Sirs I notice you have published a Book The title of which is Crimes of Preachers in U. S. and Canada In which you have the name of Shelter, of McClure O. Now sirs, if the Copies of that Book is not called in and DESTROYED AND ITS PUBLICATION CEAS at once and the same notice bein given in your paper so published by your Co. in side of 20 days, ACTION will be taken against YOU immediately for blackmailing. The above name used by you is the untruth,

“Trusting to heare from you early. Yours.

“J. Shelter.”

Mr. J. Shelter heard from the publishers early, but not only did he fail to keep up the correspondence, but apparently abandoned altogether his contemplated action. The charge against the Rev. John Shelter, of the United Brethren church, is that in 1890, at McClure, Ohio, he sold liquor without a license. All we can gather from his apparent denial is that the name used by us is not the true one. However, he does not take the trouble to correct it.

Another correction was personally solicited. In the ninth edition appeared an entry condensed from the following newspaper clipping, dated at a Connecticut town: [23]

“If the Rev. —— ——. ——, the —— minister who eloped with Mrs. —— ——. ——, of ——, and who is being sued for divorce by his wife on the ground of intolerable cruelty, had been publicly drummed out, his expulsion from the Methodist church could not have been more emphatic and humiliating. This afternoon, after more than an hour’s debate in executive session, the New York East Conference of the Methodist church voted, practically unanimously, to allow him to withdraw ‘under complaints.’ ”

Our entry, above mentioned, concerning this preacher, recorded: “Eloped with a married woman; cruelty to wife; expelled from the ministry.” The entry should now be: “Personally appeared before us the reverend gentleman whose name is suppressed and requested the removal of the aforesaid entry, on the ground that there was no elopement.” While acceding to the request, we have the feeling that with his name left out the book does not quite justify its title. The preacher whom the New York East Conference of the Methodist church got rid of in the emphatic and humiliating manner described by the clipping is now a Presbyterian clergyman and doctor of divinity. The names of more deserving men are very likely retained, for the gentleman showed himself so lacking in loyalty to his class that he voluntarily gave information regarding other Methodist ministers, including a well-known editor, which could have been used to their hurt.

An act of favoritism on our part which we might prefer to commit would be in the case of the reverend president of a Southern college who came to Philadelphia for some unremembered purpose, and was [24]found dead in the house of a woman with whom he had made an assignation. This book would be kinder to his family than were the public prints at the time of the tragedy if it would do any good to the survivors. One toward whom we have not felt that any especial consideration is due is a minister of Jamestown, N. Y., who disappeared from a steamer on the Sound in circumstances pointing to suicide, leaving with his effects a note in which he said: “Let not those ‘insane babblers’ or Infidels get hold of this for their miserable, God-dishonoring yearly book on the crimes of preachers.” We cannot see that it dishonors God to print what God permits his preachers to do. The man in this case wished his wife and relatives to regard him as dead because he had another woman in view, and was shortly found living with her in Albany.

Some amusing uses have been made of this volume. In 1909 the opponents of a bill before the legislature of California cited, to its prejudice, the fact that members of the clerical profession were against its passage. The gentleman who appeared before the legislative committee in behalf of the bill offered this list of reverend delinquents and inquired whether these were included among the ministers whose opposition was allowed to weigh with the committee. Ministers who undertake legislative work and pose as “Reformers” are often unfortunate in their moral character. There has been a singular series of mishaps among the conspicuous maintainers of the sanctity of the Sabbath who have allied themselves with organizations to promote Sunday observance by the saloon-keepers. The following list of them gathered in a single state is [25]taken from a Detroit newspaper called “Truth” in 1905:

The Rev. R. G. Malone, superintendent of the Grand Traverse district, arrested for licentious conduct; fled the state; now in employ of Minnesota League.

The Rev. George Kulp, League orator, Grand Rapids, arrested for adultery.

The Rev. Ralph Baldwin, League in Saginaw, fled after being exposed in a liaison with a Detroit woman.

The Rev. John M. Wright, an organizer and orator for the League from Muskegon, proven guilty of perjury in a divorce case.

The Rev. Orson D. Taylor, a Saginaw League organizer and orator, sent to House of Correction for thefts.

The Rev. E. I. Waldorf, another Saginaw League worker, sent to House of Correction for thefts.

The Rev. C. E. Lee, a prominent League worker and orator in Grand Rapids, expelled from his church for licentiousness.

The Rev. J. Printer, a Branch county League organizer, fled the state to escape arrest for bigamy.

The Rev. Charles Kirchner, St. Clair county League organizer and orator, betrayed his foster daughter.

The Rev. Jos. St. Johns, Pontiac member of the League’s force of workers, serving a term for assaulting a colored girl.

The Rev. J. R. Andrews, a Lansing League orator, expelled from church and arrested for blackmail.

The Rev. S. A. Northrop, one of the League’s most gifted orators at Owosso, expelled from his church for undue intimacy with women of the congregation.

The Rev. John Smith, a Grand Rapids League orator and ardent supporter, eloped with one of the women of his church.

The Rev. Dr. J. G. Holiday, Manistee county organizer, expelled from his church for swindling.

The Rev. William P. Squires, Bay City organizer and orator for the League, expelled from his church for falsehood and swindling. [26]

The Rev. A. C. Marshall, from Amboy, Hillsdale county, League worker and orator at Corunna, expelled from church for licentiousness.

There have been a number of clerical reformers in the East whose records cannot be cited to their advantage. One went against the Sabbath breakers in Brooklyn, was arrested for blackmail and forfeited his bond. One in West Virginia fought the theaters and Sunday trains, but he turned out a gallows bird, a bigamist, and the thief of his children’s inheritance. One went to combat license in Brattleboro, Vermont, but turned up too drunk to go on with the lecture. One in New Jersey railed against Sunday liberty, but beat his wife and eloped with a choir singer. One of Boston stood in the pulpit with the blood of a girl seduced and murdered on his hands and demanded legal suppression of Sunday baseball. The “phrasing of morality,” thus becoming a habit with the clergy, does not conflict with their other vices.

Wherever a reform is attacked by the clergy on moral grounds the usefulness of this work is appreciable. In Pittsburgh, Pa., the secretary of a Socialist group was debating with a prominent Presbyterian minister, when the preacher incautiously asserted that Socialism would break up the home, and paraded the horrible example of a Socialist professor who had been divorced by his wife. The proponent of Socialism, expressing his regrets that so irrelevant a matter had been brought into the argument, produced a copy of “Crimes of Preachers” to show how the home had fared at the hands of men of his opponent’s profession.

Incidentals to the downfall of the preachers are [27]sometimes dramatic. One exhorted his congregation to confession and repentance, whereupon his contrite landlady, much moved, made public the fact that she had been living with him in adultery, and asked for prayers. Another, having worked his hearers to the proper condition, said: “Let us all lay our sins upon the altar.” A young woman with an infant in her arms came forward and, handing him the baby, said: “Here’s yours.” It appeared that he was the father of the child, though not married to the mother.

Reference has been made to the papal decree, which of late years has shown renewed capacity for mischief, protecting a priest from prosecution by any Catholic without a bishop or other superior’s consent. It is a survival of the “benefit of clergy” law under which the church claimed the right to try the cases of clerical offenders, instead of letting them go before the civil courts. The working of this decree was illustrated in New York recently when a priest attempted an immoral act with an eight or ten-year-old girl. The mother of the girl, unmindful of the prohibition, reported the case to the police, and caused the lecherous clergyman’s arrest, but later, having been advised by one of the higher clergy of the diocese, withdrew the charge and declined to testify against the accused, who appears to have been liberated after a reprimand by the court. It must be obvious that with this rule in force, all but the most serious offenses of the Catholic clergy will escape public notice. When in 1913 the murder of Anna Aumuller had been traced to the Rev. Hans Schmidt, a priest of a New York church, the police arrested and the courts convicted the reverend criminal; yet the Rev. Hans Schmidt had committed [28]other crimes previous to this, and was known by his Catholic acquaintances to be a man of immoral life. He enjoyed, however, the benefit of clergy, and was protected by it from the exposure that would have come earlier but for the Catholic ban on “scandal,” and that would not have come at all but for his sensational crime. With this wall of secrecy thrown about the priestly life, we know not what immoralities and crimes take place among the clergy and never come to light. While this edition of “Crimes of Preachers” is in preparation a Chicago Catholic priest, in line for distinguished honors from his church, takes an automobile “joy ride,” visits a saloon in the suburbs and ends the outing by stabbing a station agent to the heart. The published offenses of the priests are such, usually, as in the nature of things cannot be covered up. For them there is no such offense as conduct unbecoming a priest, carrying the penalty of deposition and exposure.

In this edition an attempt has been made to shorten the list of terms by which the offenses of the preachers have hitherto been described. Now such breaches of good morals as were variously named “Beecherism,” “immoralities,” “lascivious conduct,” “lechery,” “scandalous conduct,” “unministerial conduct,” and the like have been brought under the head of “Immoralities with women and girls miscellaneously and variously described,” which is as definite as the previously used terms, and saves space.

It will be observed that the total number of offenses charged is considerably greater than the total number of ministers involved. This results from the complicated character of some of the delinquencies of the [29]reverends. A married minister betrays a young woman, thereby committing seduction and adultery. There may be a child and a charge of bastardy. He may run away with her, adding elopement and desertion of wife and family, and often divorce. Elopements are numerous, and they are mentioned here only when complicated with adultery or desertion, since the unmarried parson is entitled to his romance, and not to be censured above other men if he makes a runaway match of it—the woman concerned having reached or survived the ages of discretion without any matrimonial alliance at present existing. So the adulteries, seductions, etc., are all enlarged, while only one name is added to the number of ministers.

In only about two-thirds of the cases are the denominations of the clerical law-breakers known, that detail being often omitted by rural reporters or correspondents in whom the news sense is but imperfectly developed. The instances in which the communion is supplied give the Methodists first place, Baptists second, and Catholics third. The number of each is not disproportionate to the total number of clergy of the given denominations. Nothing appears to show that there is any great disparity between sects or between Protestants and Catholics in point of morality. There are, say, 170,000 ministers in the United States, 15,000 of them Catholic. That is ten parsons to one priest. Of the 3,795 ministers in this directory, 325 are Catholics, or about 1 priest to 10 non-Catholic clergymen.

Catholics do not have so many clergymen in proportion to their communicants as the Protestant sects. With them one priest has to serve a thousand adherents (provided they have the sixteen million communicants [30]they claim), while the Baptists, with less than six million communicants, have nearly forty-three thousand ministers, and the Methodists, with seven million members, report upwards of forty-one thousand ministers. With such a multiplication of pulpiteers and a low standard of qualification for the ministry, the bad preeminence of the Methodist parsons is explained. It has been noticed already that priests are not publicly exposed in such peccadilloes as might cost a Protestant minister his pulpit or a layman his standing in the community.

It cannot be inappropriate to quote the following comment on an excuse offered for the two delegates to the Methodist conference of 1912, who were caught with the broken fragments of the seventh commandment on their person, or rather almost in the act of breaking them:

“The fact that two of the ministers who attended the late Methodist conference in Indianapolis committed the statutory offense before they went home led Pastor Dinsmore of the Baptist church of Anderson, Ind., to which state one of the delinquents belonged, to deliver a discourse on the theme, ‘How Preachers Go Wrong.’ Viewing the matter historically, as was his duty, the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore found that the going wrong of a preacher is by no means a modern innovation; for did not Micah, David, Eli, and Abiathar prove false to the trust imposed in them? The preacher blamed society for protecting the preacher in his sin, and for not giving him away. But the first cause, he says, why a preacher falls is that he is ‘human,’ and the devil works for mastery over him as over other souls. And the second cause of the preacher’s fall, we are told, is the woman (nothing said about her being also ‘human’). The religious woman who has missed her man finds him in Jesus [31]and takes the parson as his deputy. The women tempt the preacher also by the cut of their clothes, says the Rev. Mr. Dinsmore. They wear and let their daughters wear gowns so low in the neck and so short in the skirt that when a man looks at them ‘hell is stirred up’ in his breast. And so on. Of course some of it is true; the minister is exposed to temptation, but if he cannot resist what the Infidel has to, what is his religion for?”

The light sentences, if any, imposed upon clergymen in many instances having been alluded to, we may allege a concrete case. It occurred at the time when a nation-wide attempt was being made to fasten the crime of white slavery, with its penalties, on two laymen who had taken two women with their consent into an adjoining state and there cohabited with them. The clerical case was as follows (we quote an editorial paragraph in “The Truth Seeker” for July 19, 1913):

“In the state of Michigan, town of St. Johns, in the middle of last month, a Baptist clergyman, the Rev. J. T. Gregory, being arraigned for the crime of rape committed upon a girl 11 years old, pleaded guilty and was ‘sentenced to serve from one to ten years at the Ionia reformatory with a recommendation of two years by Judge Searl.’ What extreme penalty the law of Michigan imposes for outraging an infant we do not know; the terms of the sentence named in this case show it is at least ten years, and here is a man of God getting off with a sentence of from one up, and recommended by the court to be let loose again upon the community in two years! The report of the case, printed in the Grand Rapids ‘Press,’ is exasperating to any one who believes that the law should be administered without favor. Every courtesy was shown the clerical violator of childhood. ‘The sentence,’ we read, ‘was dealt out by a special arrangement with the judge,’ as court would not convene for [32]a week, and the minister ‘was desirous of pleading guilty and beginning his term in prison as soon as possible.’ The judge carried his consideration for the clerical rapist so far as to grant the latter’s request ‘for a day to clear up his personal affairs.’ All this favoritism, as the reporter innocently puts it, because the Rev. Mr. Gregory is ‘highly respected as the pastor of the Baptist church.’ That is benefit of the clergy with the lid off! Now we would like to inquire why there is no public excitement about this miscarriage of justice. The man is married and has three daughters, two of them school teachers, and one a high school graduate, and is hence a middle-aged man who has not the excuse of youthful ardor for his crime. The girls in the California case were old enough to marry or to consent without marriage. The minister’s victim is eleven years old. If the laymen had money and political influence, which they haven’t, to protect them from prosecution on a charge of which on the face of it they are not guilty, it still would not be as base for them to avail themselves of that advantage as it is for a court to consider the alleged ‘holy calling’ of a minister and withhold adequate punishment for an atrocious crime he confesses that he committed. Men possessed of a nature that permits them to attack female children are among the most dangerous persons in any community, because they only want the opportunity to repeat the offense. The motive is always with them. The are like the Chicago priest who saw a ‘stimulation to lust’ in Chabas’ picture, ‘September Morn.’ No young girl is safe in the power or presence of that kind of degenerates; and hence when one of them gets into the clutches of the law he should be kept there as long as the statute will permit. Had the Rev. Gregory been anything but a priest and the court anything but a boneheaded truckler to hypocritical piety, he would have got a determinate sentence of at least ten years.”

In one year, recently, seventeen Chicago ministers [33]were criminally or civilly prosecuted. It is difficult to believe that this number of offenses does not raise the percentage of criminal preachers above the average of all Chicago citizens. In six months of the same year (1912) Kokomo, Indiana, had four clerical scandals. We again quote:

“Is there some sinister element in the atmosphere of Kokomo, Indiana, inimical to clerical morals? After relating under the heading ‘Parson and Widow Out on a Little Lark,’ how ‘the Rev. G. W. Alley, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal church at Royal Center and an active member in the North Indiana conference, was arrested at a boarding house at Kokomo shortly before midnight Tuesday night in company with Mrs. Wendling, a widow of Walton, and both were hustled off to jail where they still remain,’ the Hartford City (Ind.) ‘Times-Gazette’ of August 6 remarks: ‘This is the fourth scandal in Kokomo within the past six months in which a preacher has been involved.’ Surely there must be something unfavorable to ministerial morals in the Kokomo atmosphere—some such element as that affirmed by one of the infallible popes who, finding himself and many of his priests disabled by a mysterious malady, laid it to ‘a certain malignity in the constitution of the air.’ The constitution of the air in Kokomo, Indiana, is obviously malign and contraindicated for ministers.”

Four delinquents in six months is eight a year in a community of 12,000 souls, the church-going portion of which could be adequately served by a dozen ministers.

It would be interesting, if practicable, to compare the morality of the American clergy with that of other countries, but the data are meager. Here, however, is an informing paragraph retained from a previous edition of this book: [34]

“In England, from October, 1891, to October, 1892, 12 ministers committed suicide, 14 broke the marriage promise, 17 committed various crimes, 18 misused animals, 109 violated women, 121 were indicted for drunkenness (habitual), 254 cheated their creditors, and 18 committed minor offenses. That is 2.75 per cent. of the English ministry, says the ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ who were in one year in trouble with the law.”

Since the revision of this work was undertaken, late in the fall of 1914, the clergy have not ceased to furnish fresh material for its pages, but as each additional name must cause a revision of totals, the later cases, which perhaps number two dozen, must await the next round-up. The following table condenses the crimes, offenses, etc., with which the ministers have been charged:

Breaking up the home of another man, defamation of character, illegal marrying, violation of game laws, 9 each; blackmail and extortion and breaking jail, 8 each; breach of hospitality, homicide, and pension frauds, 7 each; criminal neglect, cruelty to animals, and kidnapping, 6 each; dueling, administering poison, and fraudulent divorce, 5 each; bribery, nuisance, shoplifting, trespass, and speeding, 4 each; carrying concealed weapons, compounding of felony, and false arrest, 3 each; bankwrecking, beggary, breach of trust, cattle stealing, illegal voting, lynching and incitement to, prize-fighting, profanity, quackery, receiving stolen goods, smuggling, violation of revenue law, election frauds, extortion, and “felony,” 2 each; assisting prisoner to escape, attempted trainwrecking, coercion of the dying, criminal carelessness, cruelty to prisoners, desertion from the army, dynamiting, illegal practice of medicine, illicit manufacture of cigars, keeping disorderly house, lottery running, malicious prosecution, mutilating public records, praying for death of neighbor (who died), selling vote and influence, slave-holding (by a missionary), teaching boys to steal, vagrancy, violation of articles of war, violation of drug law, violation [37]of Sunday law, jury fixing, undue influence, “corrupting morals of young girl,” and obstructing justice, 1 each. The whole number is approximately five thousand, from actual count, 4,987.

Denomination of ministers so far as known:

[38]

The following minor denominations are represented by 1 each: Absolute Life, Apostolic, Amish, Christian Union, Christian Catholic, Come Outer, Do Right, German Evangelical, Gift of Thomas, Gospel Mission, Heliga, Holy Ghost Household Faithful, New Jerusalem, Nazarene, New Thought, Shaker, Straight Edge, Syrian, and True Reformer (20).

The whole number of ministers whose names are recorded here is 3,795. Their denomination is given in 2,556 cases; unknown in 1,239.

In explanation of the varying typographical arrangement of dates, names, etc., and of faults of pagination, it may be said that the older portions of the book, covering cases occurring prior to 1899, have been left as they formerly stood, except that the periodical comments and recapitulations accompanying fresh editions have been eliminated, and the available matter thrown into the general introduction to the volume. Cases that have occurred since the close of the list in the former style of composition have been rearranged and reset in one alphabetical list. The book, then, contains six alphabetical lists, beginning, in the first part, on page 10 (circa 1875–81); page 50 (to 1883); page 102 (to 1893); page 125 (to 1895); page 140 (to 1898); page 139, Part II. (to 1914). The rearrangement condenses, without omitting anything of permanent value, a volume which was becoming too large to be economically produced and distributed. [39]

So long as imagination creates a god to rule the destinies of men; so long as ignorance can be made to believe that the preacher or priest is in some way a go-between, or agent, between men and the powers in the clouds—that he is a “sky-pilot,” directly commissioned by deity to attend to God’s affairs on earth, and that the priest’s person and office are sacred—just so long will there be possible such a profession as that of the modern priesthood.

And if these preachers as a whole are just as criminal as any other class; if they are immoral without the excuse of want or ignorance—without reason other than because of their often indolent lives and the opportunities afforded them by the nature of their calling—then their followers cannot learn that fact too soon.

The first edition of this book was printed in 1881, since which time many thousands of copies have been scattered throughout the country; but in no case to our knowledge has anyone successfully denied the facts alleged against any “man of God” figuring in these pages. Its substantial accuracy is therefore assured. The only charge that can be maintained against it is its incompleteness. The publishers do not claim to have discovered more than a small percentage of clerical villainy. The churches endeavor to and do hide a great deal of the immorality of their ministers. The preachers, who govern the ecclesiastical tribunals, [40]have a fellow feeling for one another. As a general thing, it is only when the clergy are brought before the secular courts that the public can learn the full facts. Comparatively few Catholic priests figure in this record, for the reason that that church is a close corporation which by political influence and by control of its members’ tongues can conceal the crimes of its leaders. In all large cities of the country the Catholic church has a large and dangerous political influence, and its priests have every chance to go free of retribution for their vices and crimes. The judges are Catholics, or owe their positions to Catholic power; the court officers are Catholics; the policemen are Catholics. They all shield the “fathers” and withhold their names from publication.

It is impossible, too, for the editor to read all the papers and gather all the cases which do see the light of publicity. And, we are sorry to say, some of the secular journals suppress the news. If the country could be scanned closely the indications are that a hundred times as many crimes could be found rightfully charged to the men who set themselves up as teachers of morals. For use in future editions we therefore urge all who read these pages to send us such accounts of these cases as may come to their notice, giving facts, dates, and localities, and, if clippings from newspapers are sent, name, date, and place of publication of paper.

It has been objected by apologists for the system of religion in vogue in this country that clerical delinquencies prove nothing against the system. In this they are mistaken. Of course, if Christianity had a foundation of fact, these records would not prove that [41]the fact is not there. What they do prove, however, is that the claim made for Christianity, that it makes men moral, is not true. For if the system is not sufficient to restrain its very teachers, how can we expect their pupils to profit by it? The point this book emphasizes, as an ex-Methodist minister, now a Rationalist, but always a moral man, forcibly puts it, is that religion in and of itself, is not a moral force; that it is not one with morality; that it may, and often does, exist without morality, and that morality gains nothing by being associated with it.

In proportion to their numbers, it is believed, more ministers than members of any other profession are guilty of crimes and vices. A large portion of the crimes are against women or with women. This, perhaps, is not strange when one considers the institution of pastoral visits. While men are away from home attending to their duties in life, the minister is roving about, pretendedly looking after the welfare of his flock, but really making calls upon the women who most attract him. What the confessional is to the Roman Catholic church, such is the “pastoral visit” to the Protestant church. Women should not attend the one or receive the other except in the presence of their fathers or husbands. Another institution of the church could also be done away with to the gain of morality—to wit, the lone studies for the minister annexed to the churches. These furnished rooms are the scenes of many debaucheries. With them, too, should go the side doors or choir entrances. The side door and study of a church in San Francisco were used for assignation purposes, which culminated in murder. A murdered woman was found at the confessional box [42]of a Romish church in New York city. In Omaha a minister was found in the pastor’s room of his own church asphyxiated in close embrace with a woman missionary. These side doors, secluded “studies,” and secret confessional boxes are dangerous to virtue if not to life. Many a woman and girl passes through them to her downfall.

In this short history of ministerial conduct, lack of complete identity is sometimes unavoidable, for in the reports of these trials in the secular journals it has been customary to drop the first names of the defendant, and many a pious villain is recorded as “Rev. Mr. Smith,” or “Rev. Mr. Jones.” In some cases the place is not fully given where the crime was committed. Again, in certain instances, the offense receives the laconic name, applied by the ecclesiastical court which tried the criminal, as “immoral conduct,” “lascivious conduct,” etc.; definitions that hide the grossness of the offense, and so screen the reverend culprit in the interest of the church and the cloth. In many reports of trials by ecclesiastical gatherings the name of the accused is entirely suppressed, as is supposed, out of respect for his “sacred calling.”

The denomination to which the “pious soul” belonged, is not always given, consequently this record will not do to rely upon to enable the reader to ascertain what branch of “the church of God” has shown the most efficiency in pastoral criminality.

Letters will be found placed after a name, as P.E., for presiding elder, Ev. for Evangelist; for instance: Carhart, Rev. J. W., P.E., and Bayliss, Rev. E. L., Ev. The D.D., PhD., LLD., and other addenda purchased of colleges and theological seminaries have not [43]been preserved with any great care. If any reverend offender who has been overlooked, and so left out of this “illustrious category,” desires the distinction of having his name and title made famous, he will please forward the facts.