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

His concern for the poor was the necessary result of the two fundamental convictions discussed by us in the previous chapters. If he felt the sacredness of life, even in its humble and hardworn forms, and if he felt the family unity of all men in such a way that the sorrows of the poor were his sorrows, then, of course, he could not be at ease while the people were “skinned and prostrate,” “like sheep without a shepherd.” Wherever any group has developed real solidarity, its best attention is always given to those who are most in need. “The whole have no need of a physician,” said Jesus; the strong can take care of themselves.

So he cast in his lot with the people consciously. He slept in their homes, healed their diseases, ate their bread, and shared his own with them. He gave them a faith, a hope of better days, and a sense that God was on their side. Such a faith is more than meat and drink. In turn they rallied around him, and could not get enough of him. “The common people heard him gladly.”

Furthermore, the feeling of Jesus for “the poor” was not the sort of compassion we feel for the hopelessly crippled in body or mind. His feeling was one of love and trust. The Galilæan peasants, from whom Peter and John sprang, were not morons, or the sodden dregs of city slums. They were the patient, hard-working folks who have always made up the rank and file of all peoples. They had their faults, and Jesus must have known them. But did he ever denounce them, or call them “offspring of vipers”? Did he ever indicate that their special vices were frustrating the Kingdom of God? They needed spiritual impulse and leadership, but their nature was sound and they were the raw material for the redeemed humanity which he strove to create.

There is one more quality which we shall have to recognize in the attitude of Jesus to “the poor.” He saw them over against “the rich.” Amid all the variations of human society these two groups always reappear—those who live by their own productive labor, and those who live on the productive labor of others whom they control. Practically they overlap and blend, but when our perspective is distant enough, we can distinguish them. In Greek and Roman society, in medieval life, and in all civilized nations of today—barring, of course, our own—we can see them side by side. Each conditions the other; neither would exist without the other. Each class develops its own moral and spiritual habits, its own set of virtues and vices. Some of us were born in the upper class, some in the lower; and in college groups the majority come from the border line. By instinct, by the experiences of life, or by national reflection, we usually give our moral allegiance to one or the other, and are then apt to lean to that side in every question arising.

Now, Jesus took sides with the group of toil. He stood up for them. He stood with them. We can not help seeing him with his arm thrown in protection about the poor man, and his other hand raised in warning to the rich. If we are in any doubt about this, we can let his contemporaries decide it for us. Plainly the common people claimed him as their friend. Did the governing classes have the same feeling for him? It seems hard to escape the conclusion that Jesus was not impartial between the two. Was he nevertheless just? To the æsthetic sense, and also to a superficial moral judgment, the upper classes are everywhere more congenial and attractive. To the moral judgment of Jesus, as we shall see more fully in a later chapter, there was something disquieting and dangerous about the spiritual qualities of “the rich,” and something lovable and hopeful about the qualities of the common man. Was he right? This is a very important practical question for all who are disposed to follow his moral leadership.

The perception that Jesus championed the people can be found throughout literature and art. Our own Lowell has expressed it in his “Parable” in which he describes Jesus coming back to earth to see “how the men, my brethren, believe in me.”

“Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

“With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father’s fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.

“Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

“These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem For fear of defilement, “Lo, here,” said he, ‘The images ye have made of me.’ ”

We shall get the historical setting for Christ’s championship of the people by going back to the Old Testament prophets. They were his spiritual forebears. He nourished his mind on their writings and loved to quote them. Now, the Hebrew prophets with one accord stood up for the common people and laid the blame for social wrong on the powerful classes. They underlined no other sin with such scarlet marks as the sins of injustice, oppression, and the corruption of judges. But these are the sins which bear down the lowly, and have always been practiced and hushed up by the powerful. “Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that oppress the poor, that crush the needy.... Ye trample upon the poor, and take exactions from him of wheat;... ye that afflict the just, that take a bribe, and that turn aside the needy in the gate from their right.... For three transgressions of Israel, yea, for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; they that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor” (Amos 4:1; 5:11-12; 2:6-7). Micah describes the strong and crafty crowding the peasant from his ancestral holding and the mother from her home by the devices always used for such ends, exorbitant interest on loans, foreclosure in times of distress, “seeing the judge” before the trial, and hardness of heart toward broken life and happiness (Micah 2:1-2; 2:9; 3:1-2). We cannot belittle the moral insight of that unique succession of men. Their spiritual force is still hard at work in our Christian civilization, especially in the contribution which the Jewish people are making to the labor movement.

Among the Greeks and Romans political and literary life was so completely dominated by the aristocratic class that no such succession of champions of the common man could well arise. Yet some of the men of whom posterity thinks with most veneration were upper-class champions of the common people—Solon, for instance, Manlius, and the Gracchi.

In recent centuries the vast forces of social evolution seem to have set in the direction toward which Jesus faced. Since the Reformation the institutions of religion have been more or less democratized. The common people have secured some participation in political power and have been able to use it somewhat for their economic betterment. They share much more fully in education than formerly. Before the outbreak of the Great War it seemed safe to anticipate that the working people would secure an increasing share of the social wealth, the security, the opportunities for health, for artistic enjoyment, and of all that makes life worth living. Today the future is heavily clouded and uncertain; but our faith still holds that even the great disaster will help ultimately to weaken the despotic and exploiting forces, and make the condition of the common people more than ever the chief concern of science and statesmanship.

Jesus was on the side of the common people long before democracy was on the ascendant. He loved them, felt their worth, trusted their latent capacities, and promised them the Kingdom of God. The religion he founded, even when impure and under the control of the upper classes, has been the historical basis for the aspirations of the common people and has readily united with democratic movements. His personality and spirit has remained an impelling and directing force in the minds of many individuals who have “gone to the people” because they know Jesus is with them. In fact we can look for more direct social effectiveness of Jesus in the future, because the new historical interpretation of the Bible helps us to see him more plainly amid the social life of his own people.

So we must add a third social principle to the first two. The first was that life and personality are sacred; the second that men belong together; the third is that the strong must stand with the weak and defend their cause. In his description of the Messianic Judgment, Jesus proposed to recognize as his followers only those who had responded to the call of human need and solidarity. He created the apostleship and therewith the germ of the Church in order to serve the people whose needs he saw and felt.

How does this concern college men and women? By our opportunities and equipment we rank with the strong. Disciplined intellect is armor and sword. Many of us have inherited social standing and some wealth; it may not be much, but it raises us above the terrible push of immediate need. What relation do we propose to have with the great mass of men and women who were born without the chances which have fallen to us without exertion? Do we propose to serve them or to ride on them? Will we seek to gain some form of power by means of which we can live in plenty, with only slight and pleasurable exertion? In that case we can hardly return to our fellow-men in work as much as we take from them in enjoyment and luxury. We shall be part of that dead weight which has always bent the back of the poor. Is that an honorable ambition? Or do we propose to enter the working team of humanity and to hold up our end? Our end ought to be heavier than the average because we have had longer and better training. “To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.”

The moral problem for college communities is accentuated when we remember that few students pay fully for what they get. Whether our institutions are supported from taxation or from endowments, a large part of their incomes are derived from the annual labor of society; tuitions pay only a fraction of the running expenses and of the interest on the plant. Even if a student pays all charges, he is in part a pensioner on the public. The working people in the last resort support us; the same people who are often so eager for education, and who can not get it. Some of them would feel rich if they had the leavings of knowledge which we throw to the floor and tread upon in our spirit of surfeit. To take our education at their hands and use it to devise ways by which we can continue to live on them, seems disquieting even to a pagan conscience. It ought to be insufferable to a sense of social responsibility trained under Christian influences.

Here is a test for college communities more searching than the physical test of athletics, or the intellectual tests of scholarship. Do we feel our social unity with the people who work for their living, and do we propose to use our special privileges and capacities for their social redemption?

“When wilt Thou save the people? O God of Mercy, when? Not kings and lords, but nations, Not thrones and crowns, but men. Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they. Let them not pass like weeds away, Let them not fade in sunless day! God save the people!”—EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

1. Did Jesus really take sides with the poor? Prove it.

2. Try to prove the other side.

3. Which would be safer evidence: single sayings, or the total impression of his life and teachings?

4. What do you conclude regarding the attitude of Jesus?

II. The Church and the People

1. What motives led Jesus to organize and send out the twelve? What was the historical significance of that action?

2. When and how did the Church lose its working class character?

3. Does the Church today share Jesus’ feelings about the condition of the people? Sum up evidence for and against.

4. What is the true function of the Church in society so far as the poor are concerned?

III. Standing up for the People Today

1. Is it a superficial or profound test to range a man according to his sympathy with the common people?

2. What does it involve to stand up for the people today? How does it differ from charity and relief work?

3. Name some men and women in our own times who seem to have stood up for them most wisely and effectively.

4. What are the vices of social reformers?

1. How can college men and women make a just return for their special opportunities?

2. What movements in college and university life in recent years are in line with this social principle of Jesus?

3. What part have the university students of Russia, Austria, Germany, and England taken in social movements? Have American students ever taken a similar interest in working class movements? If not, why not?

1. Is it an advantage or disadvantage to Christianity that it began among the working class? What effects did that have on its ethical points of view and its impulses?

2. Why did the regeneration of ancient society have to come through the lowly? Will it have to come the same way today?

3. Is it ethical to live without productive labor? Is it morally tolerable to enjoy excessive leisure purchased by the excessive toil of others?

4. Is there any clear conviction on this question in the Christian Church today?

5. Is the fact that a person has sprung from the working-class a guarantee that he will have the working-class sympathies?

6. Who seem to have more natural democratic feeling, the men or the women of the upper classes?