So strong is
this non-religious tendency among the Bohemians--especially in the
cities--that it has resulted in active unbelief, and hostility to Church
influence. _This spiritual isolation_, with its resultant social
separation, _is doing great harm in retarding assimilation_. Aside from
this matter of religion, the Bohemian falls into American customs with
surprising readiness."
[Sidenote: Protestant Opportunity]
Thus a member of this race points out to Protestants their opportunity.
Here is a people with inherited Protestant tendencies. They have been
driven in Bohemia by an enforced Roman Catholicism into antagonism to
the Church as they know it.
[Sidenote: Freethinkers' Society]
In Chicago, where over 100,000 of them make of that city the third
largest Bohemian center in the world, they have a strongly organized
Freethinkers' Society, with three hundred branches, which issues an
atheistic catechism, and has it taught in its numerous Sunday-schools,
as they are called. But there are thousands who do not belong to this
cult, and who are open to the gospel. The same is true of the Bohemians
in New York, Cleveland, and elsewhere who have not advanced to the
Chicago infidel standpoint.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171