In Search of the Sons of Barnum

The Church and various religious groups have always created brilliant copy, and the film and theatre business have benefitted from outraged clerics who find inoffensive theatre shows too sexually explicit for words.

This is not a modern phenomenon. The first Church offensive against the fun brigade was in the 1920’s. Clerics in the U.S. were threatened by the hard facts that more people were going to theatre shows on Sundays, than to Church. The Church felt the slump spiritually, but more importantly in the collection plate.

In 1919 The Methodist Church noted three vices for the ban list. Card playing, dancing and theatre going. The Dancing Masters Association protested against this and the vice was erased from the black lists, but the Methodists still had the thumbs down on theatre going.

The Methodist Church tried a PR drive in Columbus, Ohio spending half a million dollars on a spectacle that included a chorus of 4000, an orchestra of 1000 and 125 trombones. Accommodation was provided for everyone in the celebration. Fortunately they failed to muster enough interest, with more people going to the theatre than attending their happy clappy PR drive.

Since then various clergy have jumped on the bandwagon to condemn theatre productions that quite frankly, would be hard pushed to make your grandmother blush. They continue to think they save souls, but all they do is create column inches. Without their efforts the real publicists couldn’t do such an effective job.