Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

THE WOMEN WHO HAVE LOVED ME MY MOTHER lYIY SISTERS FRIDA AND EMM& MY DEAR WIFE PAULINE AND MY LITTLE DAUGHTERS WINIFRED AND ELIZABETtt THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED

WESTERN civilization is passing through a social revolution unparalleled in history for scope and power. Its coming was inevitable. The religious, political, and intellectual revolutions of the past rive centuries, which together created the modern world, necessarily had to culminate in an economic and social revolution such as is now upon us. By universal consent, this social crisis is the overshadowing problem of our generation. The industrial and commercial lire of the advanced nations are in the throes of it. In politics all issues and methods are undergoing upheaval and re-alignment as the social movement advances. In the world of thought all the young and serious minds are absorbed in the solution of the social problems. Even literature and art point like compass-needles to this magnetic pole of all out thought. The social revolution has been slow in reaching our country. We have been exempt, hot because we had solved the problems, but because we had hOt yet confronted them. We have now arrived, and ail the characteristic conditions of American life will henceforth combine to make the social struggle here more intense than anywhere e|se. The vastness and the free sweep of our concentrated wealth on the one side, tne independence, intelligence, moral vigor, and political power of the common people on the other side, promise a long-drav«n grapple of contesting forces which may well make the heart of every American patriot sink within him. It is realized by friend and foe that religion can play, and must play, a momentous part in this irrepressible conflict. The Church, the organized expression of the religious life of the past, is one of the most potent institutions and forces in Western civilization. Its favor and moral influence are wooed by all parties. It cannot help throwing its immense weight on one side or the other. If it tries hot to act, it thereby acts; and in any case its choice will be decisive for its own future. Apart from the organized Church, the religious spirit is a factor of incalculable power in the making of history. In the idealistic spirits that lead and in the masses that follow, the religious spirit always intensifies thought, enlarges hope, unfetters daring, evokes the willingness to sacrifice, and gives coherence in the fight. Under the warm breath of religious faith, all social institutions become plastic. The religious spirit removes mountains and tramples on impossibilities. Unless the economic and intellectual factors are strongly reënforced by religious enthusiasm, the whole social movement may prove abortive, and the New Era may die before it cornes to birth. It follows that the relation between Christianity and the social crisis is one of the most pressing questions for all intelligent men who realize the power of religion, and most of all for the religious leaders of the people who give direction to the forces of religion. The question has, in fact, been discussed frequently and earnestly, but it is plain to any thoughtful observer that the common mind of the Christian Church in America has not begun to arrive at any solid convictions or any permanent basis of action. The conscience of Christendom is halting and groping, perplexed by contradicting voices, still poorly informed on essential questions, justly reluctant to part with the treasured maxims of the past, and yet conscious of the imperious call of the future. This book is to serve as a contribution to this discussion. Its first chapters are historical, for nothing is more needed than a true comprehension of past history if we are to forecast the future correctly and act wisely in the present. I have tried to set forth the religious development of the prophets of Israel, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the dominant tendencies of primitive Christianity, in order to ascertain what was the original and fundamental purpose of the great Christian movement in history. Every discussion of the question which appeals to history has to cover this ground, but usually onIy detached fragments of the material are handled at all, and often without insight adequate to give their true meaning even to these fragments. I am in hopes that these chapters will contribute some facts and points of view that have not yet become common property. The outcome of these first historical chapters is that the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God. The fourth chapter raises the question why the Christian Church has never undertaken to carry out this fundamental purpose of its existence. I have never met with any previous attempt to give a satisfactory historicaI explanation of this failure, and I regard this chapter as one of the most important in the book. The fifth chapter sets forth the conditions which constitute the present social crisis and which imperatively demand of Christianity that contribution of moral and religious power which it was destined to furnish. The sixth chapter points out that the Church, as such, has a stake in the social movement. The Church owns property, needs income, employs men, works on human material, and banks on its moral prestige. Its present efficiency and future standing are bound up for weal or woe with the social welfare of the people and with the outcome of the present struggle. The last chapter suggests what contributions Christianity can make and in what main directions the religious spirit should exert its force. In covering so vast a field of history and in touching on such a multitude of questions, error and incompleteness are certain, and the writer can claim only that he has tried to do honest work. Moreover, it is impossible to handle questions so vital to the economic, the social, and the moral standing of great and antagonistic classes of men, without jarring precious interests and convictions, and without giving men the choice between the bitterness of social repentance and the bitterness of moral resentment. I can frankly affirm that I have written with malice toward none and with charity for ail. Even where I udge men to have done wrong, I find it easy to sympathize with them in the temptations which ruade the wrong almost inevitable, and in the points of view in which they intrench themselves to save their self-respect. I have tried—so far as erring human iudgment permits- to lift the issues out of the plane of personal selfishness and hate, and to put them where the white light of the iust and pitying spirit of Jesus can play upon them. If I have failed in that effort, it is my sin. If others in reading fail to respond in the same spirit, it is their sin. In a few years all our restless and angry hearts will be quiet in death, but those who corne after us will live in the world which our sins have blighted or which our love of right has redeemed. Let us do our thinking on these great questions, not with our eyes fixed on our bank account, but with a wise outlook on the fields of the future and with the consciousness that the spirit of the Eternal is seeking to distil from our lives some essence of righteousness belote they pass away. I have written this book to discharge a debt. For eleven years I was pastor among the working people on the West Side of New York City. I shared their life as well as I then knew, and used up the early strength of my life in their service. In recelÇt years my work has been turned into other channels, but I have never ceased to feel that I owe help to the plain people who were my friends. If this book in some far-off way helps to ease the pressure that bears them down and increases the forces that bear them up, I shall meet the Master of my life with better confidence.

IT seems a long start to approach the most modern problems by talking of men who lived before Lycurgus and Solon gave laws to Sparta and Athcns. What light can we get on the troubles of the great capitalistic republic of the West from men who tended sheep in Judea or meddled in the petty politics of the Semitic tribes? History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the saine. It is always hungry for brcad, sweaty with labor, struggling to wrest from nature and hostile men enough to feed its children. The welfare of the mass is always at odds with the selfish force of the strong. The exodus of the Roman plebeians and the Pennsylvania coal strike, the agrarian agitation of the Gracchi and the rising of the Russian peasants,- it is all the saine tragic human lire. And in all history it would be hard to find any chapter so profoundly instructive, and dignified by such sublime passion and ability, as that in which the prophets took the leading part. B

Moreover, the life and thought of the Old Testament prophets are more to us than classical illustrations and sidelights. They are an integral part of the thought-life of Christianity. From the beginning the Christian Church appropriated the Bible of Israel as its own book and thereby ruade the history of Israel part of the history of Christendom. That history lives in the heart of the Christian nations with a very rem spiritual force. The average American knows more about David than about King Arthur, and more about the exodus from Egypt than about the emigration of the Puritans. Throughout the Christian centuries the historical material embodied in the Old Testament bas been regarded as hot merely instructive, but as authoritative. The social ideas drawn from it bave been powerful factors in all attempts of Christianity to influence social and political life. In so far as men bave attempted to use the Old Testament as a code of model laws and institutions and have applied these to modern conditions, regardless of the historical connections, these attempts bave left a trail of blunder and disaster. In so far as they have caught the spirit that burned in the hearts of the prophets and breathed in gentle humaity through the Mosaic Law, the influence of the Old Testament bas been one of the great permanent forces making for democracy and social justice. However out views of the Bible may change, every religious man will continue to recognize that to the elect minds of the Jewish people God gave so vivid a consciousness of the divine will that, in its main tendencies at least, their life and thought carries a permanent authority for all who wish to know the higher right of God. Their writings are like channel-buoys anchored by God, and we shall do well to heed them now that the roar of an angry surf is in out cars. Wc shall confine this bricf study o thc Old Tcs*amcnt to the prophets, because they are the beating heart of the Old Testament. Modern study has shown that they were the real makers of the unique religious life of Israel. If all that proceeded from them, directly or indirectly, were climinated from the Old Testament, there would be little left to appeal to the moral and religieus judgmcnt of the modcrn world. Moreover, a comprehension of the essential purpose and spirit of the prophets is necessary for a comprehension of the purpose and spirit of Jesus and of gcnuine Christianity. In Jesus and the primitive Church the prophetic spirit rose from the dead. To the ceremonial aspects of Jewish religion Jesus was either indifferent or hostile; the thought of the prophets was the spiritual food that he assimilated in his own process of growth. With them he linked his points of view, the convictions which he regarded as axiomatic. Their spirit was to him what the soil and climate of a country are to its flora. The real meaning of his life and the real direction of his purposes can be understood only in that historical connection. Thus a study of the prophets is not only an interesting part in the history of social movements but it is indispensable for any full comprehension of the social influence exerted by historical Christianity, and for any true comprehension of the mind of Jesus Christ. For the purposes of this book it is not necessary to follow the work of the prophets in their historical sequence. We shall simply try to lay bare those large and permanent characteristics which are COlllmon to that remarkable series of men and which bear on the question in hand.

The fundamental conviction of the prophets, which distinguished them from the ordinary religious life of their day, was the conviction that God demands righteousness and demands nothing but righteousness. Primitive religions consisted mainly in the worship of the powers of nature. Each tribe worshipped its local tribal god, who dwelt in some gloomy ravine or on some mountaintop and sent rain and fertility to his people when he was pleased, or drought and pestilence on crops and herds v«hen he was offended. Like every other despot, the god must be kept in good humor by valuable girls and prayers, offered in the right places, in the right manner, and by the duly qualified persons. If the sacrifices were neglected, the god was sure to be angry and then had to be propitiated by redoubled ol%rings, incantations, and dances. There was always some connection between religion and morality. It was always understood that the tribal god had instituted the tribal customs and was displeased with any violation of them. But the essential thing in religion was not morality, but the ceremonial method of placating the god, securing his girls, and ascertaining his wishes. He might even be pleased best by immoral actions, by the immolation of human victims, by the sacrifice of woman's chastity, or by the burning of the first-born. In the primitive life of the Israelitish tribes the religion of the common folk was probably much of this kind. Jehovah was the tribal god of Israel. Fortunately he was stronger and more terrible than the gods of the neighboring tribes, so that he was able to drive them out and give their land to his own people, but he was not fundamentally different from them and they were believed to be quite as real as Jehovah. There were certain forms of moral evil which he hated and certain social duties which he loved and blessed, but the surest way of remaining in his favor was to sacrifice duly and plentifully. If a man had offended against his fellow or his tribe, Jehovah would forgive when the rich smell of burnt meat filled his nostrils. Against this current conception of religion the prophets insisted on a right life as the true worship of God. Morality to them was hot merely a prerequisite of effective ceremonial worship. They brushed sacrificial ritual aside altogether as trifling compared with righteousness, nay, as a harmful substitute and a hindrance for ethical religion. "I desire goodness and not sacrifice," said Hosea,  and Jesus was fond of quoting the words. The Book of Isaiah begins with a description of the disasters which had overtaken the nation, and then in impassioned words the prophet spurns the means taken to appease Jehovah's anger. He said the herds of beasts trampling his temple-court, the burning fat, the reek of blood, the clouds of incense, were a weariness and an abomination to the God whom they were meant to please. Their festivals and solemn meetings, their prayers and prostrations, were iniquity from which he averted his face. \Wnat he wanted was a right lire and the righting of social wrongs: "Your hands are full of blood. Wash you! lXIake you clean! Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes! Cease to do evil! Learn to do right! Seek justice! Relieve the oppressed! Secure justice for the orphaned and plead for the widow." 2 Perhaps the simplest and most beautiful expression of that reformatory conception of true religion is contained in the words of Micah: "Wherevith shall I corne before Jehovah, t Hosea 6. 6. = Isaiah z. zo-zT.

and bow rnyself before the high God? Shall I corne before hirnwith burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rarns, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give rny firstborn for rny transgression, [he fruit of rny body for the sin of rny soul? He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness; and to walk hurnbly with thy God?" * Arnos and Jererniah even tried to cut away the foundation of antiquity on which the sacrificial systeln rested, by denying that God had cornrnanded sacrifices at all when he constituted the nation after the exodus frorn Egypt. Obedience was all that he had required. 2 This insistence on religious Inorality as the only thing God cares about is of fundarnental importance for the question belote us. The social problerns are moral problerns on a large scale. Religion is a trernendous generator of selfsacrificing action. Under it irnpulse rnen have burned up the animais they had laboriously raised; they have sacrificed their first-born whorn they loved and prized; they have tapped their own veins and died with a shout of triurnph. But this unparalleled force has been largely diverted to cerernonial actions which wasted property and labor, and were either useless to social health or injurious to it. In so far as Inen believed that the traditional cerernonial was what God wanted of them, they would be indifferent to the reformation of sociaï ethics. If the hydraulic force of religion could be turned toward conduct, there is nothing which it could not accornplish. ' Micah 6. 6-8. See also Psalm 40. 6, 50. 8-15, 5i, I6"-I,  Amos 5- 25; ]eremiah 7- 2--3-

This is still a living question. Under the influence of non- Christian customs and conceptions Christianity early developed its own ceremonial system. It is, of course, far more refined. Our places of worship have no stench of blood and entrails; our priests are hOt expert butchers. But the immense majority of people in Christendom have holy places, where they recite a sacred ritual and go through sacred motions. They receive holy food and submit to washings that cleanse from sin. They have a priesthood with magic powers which offers a bloodless sacrifice. This Christian ritual grew up, not as the appropriate and oesthetic expression of spiritual emotions, but as the indispensable means of pleasing and appeasing God, and of securing his favors, temporal and eternal, for those who put their heart into these processes. This Christian ceremonial system does hot differ essentially from that against which the prophets protested; with a few verbal changes their invectives would still apply. But the point that here concerns us is that a very large part of the fervor of willing devotion which religion always generates in human hearts has spent itself on these religious acts. The force that would have been competent to "seek justice and relieve the oppressed" has been consumed in weaving the tinsel fringes for the garment of religion. The prophets were the heralds of the fundamental truth that religion and ethics are inseparable, and that ethical conduct is the supreme and sufficient religious act. If that principle had been fully adopted in our religious life, it would have turned the full force of the religious impulse into the creation of right moral conduct and would have ruade the unchecked growth and accumulation of injustice impossible. This assertion can be verified by history. The Calvinistic

Reformation stripped off a large part of the traditional cere. monial of the Church and it turned religious energy into political and intellectual channels. As a consequence the Calvinistic peoples at once leaped forward in the direction of democracy and education, and received such an increment of social efficiency that in spite of terrible handicaps they outstripped the stronger nations which failed to make this fuller connection between religion and social morality.

It is important to note, further, that the morality which the prophets had in mind in their strenuous insistence on righteousness was hOt merely the private morality of the home, but the public morality on which national life is founded. They said less about the pure heart for the individual than of just institutions for the nation. We are accustomed to connect piety with the thought of private virtues; the pious man is the quiet, temperate, sober, kindly man. The evils against which we contend in the churches are intemperance, unchastity, the s;ms of the tongue. The twin-evil against which the prophets launched the condemnation of Jehovah was injustice and oppression. The religious ideal of Israel was the theocracy. But the theocracy meant the complete penetration of the national lire by religious morality. It meant politics in the naine of God. That line by which we have tacitly separated the domain of public affairs and the domain of Christian life was tmknown to them. The prophets were hOt religious individualists. I)uring the classical rimes of prophetism they always dealt with Israel and Judah as organic totalities. They conceived of their people as a gigantic personality which sinned as one and