QUESTIONNAIRE

The modern parallel of the Inquisition is to be found in the Religious Questionnaire to be published in newspapers throughout the United States for the remainder of the present week. Laudable though the purpose is--that of attempting to improve the national moral condition--it is difficult to see how such a series of questions as those asked by the Church Advertising Association can be of much practical aid. The first "Do you believe in God"--is typical of the manner in which the questions are pre-pounded. Whether or not the reader does believe in God is a matter after all which chiefly concerns himself and one which he probably would feel rather reticent to broadcast through the column of the public press. The fact that all answers are to be unsigned makes little difference in the essential bad taste of the whole affair.

Another example of the enigmatic questions which the potential respondent faces is "Were you brought up in a religious home?" Even the most pious will admit that there are religious homes and religious homes, and that what makes them religious constitutes one of the chief causes of the Reformation and all subsequent schisms. The questionnaire is presumably non-dimensional and as such has little interest in sects. Nevertheless the distinctions between modern churches are sometimes of such very great breadth that one cannot subscribe to the tenets of dissimilar faiths, deeply as one may sympathize with them in their ambition to reach God in their own way. Advertising religion is at best an effort to further spiritual progress by materialistic mediums--and this latest attempt is unfortunately symbolical of the entire movement which, in spite of its being headed by the sincerest of men, is little more than an apology for a lick of real religious zeal on the part of the general public.