The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

suffice, nor will anything less be brought into being, in this crisis of transition. For while there are u

le of Christianity, is the least variable element; the institutions and dogmas by whi

l changing, and its history shows that it is subject to the same influences as fashion the changing social

the social order in Western lands have developed on parallel lines. E

c or feudalistic p

lization--darker even than the struggle of the last five years. They were the centuries of a struggle not so colossal in its appa

, defeated the Roman armies and slew the Emperor in the great battle of Adrianople. From that year, with varying intervals of quiet, armies, or rather hordes, of men from the inexhaustible forests of Germany and Scandinavia, from the steppes of Russia and Central Asia, swept over lands for centuries accustomed to peace and weakened by bureaucratic despotism, inequitable and crippling system

ed by a flood, and trees are uprooted,

thstood the waves, uprose above the yeasty flood in

on his part gave the fullest measure of protection he was able to furnish. He became the feudal lord of a district. Through those stormy centuries that followed, when the savage people fought each other, and western Europe as it slowly struggled into order again was assailed by the Viking pirates on the North and West, by Hun-like M

territories might out of these allot subordinate holdings to faithful followers, or by the same methods establish an overlordship over other lord

land to support themselves and a body of fighting men. Whatever authority there was lay in their hands. The men who tilled the soil and practised the rude handicrafts of the age and carried on such beginnings of commerce as were possible, could find such imperfect security as there was only in accepting the despotic rule of one o

ions under which an aristocratic system was the best system and, probably, the only and the inevitable one. Whatever judgment one may pass on the inadequacy and unserviceableness of aristocratic and monarchical forms of Government to-day, it ought ne

ting themselves upon the Empire and almost extinguishing the ancient civilization, the only kind of Church that could grapple with the problem--the most formidable and appalling that civilization and Christianity ever had to face--was a Church organized on thoroughly aristocratic principles. Such a Church had been providentially prepared in the Roman Empire before its downfall. It ha

ely untheological and unorganized faith developed its latent philosophical implications. The Greeks gave it a creed. Transplanted simultaneously among the Latin

ithin and by deadliest attacks on the constancy of its people from without, found its salvation, as far as human agency was concerned, in the episcopacy, in large powers intrusted to the man who in the judgment of the individual Church was the wisest and ablest leader. The rule of the bishop was as natural and inevitable under such conditions as the rule of the captain on the ship at sea, the rule of the commanding officer in a fighting unit, the authority of the man recognized as

s times for large powers of command being held by the ablest man in the individual congregation or, later, in the group of Churches which came to be known as the diocese, developed the over-bishop, or archbishop, or metropolitan, or patriarch, a

the war in that decisive area, and which will make illustrious till the Great War is forgotten the names of the great war-minister,

ly be designated, the Papal Church, is a greater construction than even the Roman Empire, of which it is the spiritual counterpart--vaster, more enduring, more firmly-knit, and infinitely more beneficent. The Pope corresponded to the Emperor; the bishops, to

oah's ark for the Deluge, and not only as a shelter for the precious salvage of the submerged Greco-Roman civilization, but as a spirit

received at the hands of men wise to give the Church such organization as the conditions demanded. It was this Church which the barbarian onset could neither shatter nor overpower. It was this Church which met the barbarians with a force and a sovereignty beyond their own. It as

dation--were the qualities which enabled it to evangelize the vast heathen and barbarian masses. As in the state so in the Church, the centuries from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Protestant Reformation were ce

utocratic or capitalist

ent feudatories, the irrepressible trading instinct asserted itself. English wool found its way to Flanders, French wine to England, the silks and spices and gems of the East to Europe. Busy and wealthy cities sprang up in districts favorable for manufacture and along the great trade routes between

(A.D. 1096-1270) during which the crusading spirit was active, the most n

have more sacred associations than the old city halls of the medieval cities of t

itself. The towns, wearied of the exactions of their castellated tyrants, won their freedom by purchas

been transformed by a profitable and strengthening admixture of rich plebeians. The bulk of even such an imposing aristocracy as that of Britain is composed of creations of the last two or three generations, and these so largely from the ranks of wealthy brewers that there is truth as well

c nation like the United States

t to find would be that, with the growing ascendancy in the social structure of the trading and manufacturing class (or to use a single term, t

as well-meant and when it was selfish and tyrannical. Especially they resented the enormous sums which were extracted from them by the fees and taxes of priests, bishops, and the Papal Court at Rome. They resented, too, the Church's prohibition of interest. This condemnation, based on the Mosaic prohibition of interest, had not been found so unfair or vexatious prior to the sixteenth century when money was borrowed mainly fo

gulation of purchases and prices. As this well-meant legislat

urally, also, the object of envy. Clerical immunities from municipal taxation, and

f and many of his followers the motive was a genuinely religious one. It was a revolt against the legalistic interpretation of Christianity and against the moral failure of the Roman Catholic Church. B

cidents of history, came to be known as the protesting or Protestant Church, was the Church which suited a predominately middle class society as Roman Catholicism suited a feudal society.[#] Protestantism, in a word, is bourgeois Christianity. It is the Christianity of the middle, or trading, classes. It was born where these classes were stronges

al, ecclesiastical, was based on the principle of the group or the community--ranging in hierarchical order from the trade-guild to the town-corporation; from the town corporation through the feudal orders to the imperial throne itself; from the single monastery to the order as a whole; and from the order as a

est class, though the distinct refusal of German Protestantism to champion the cause of the oppressed peasants in 1524 may be credited to the imperfect sympathies of Luther

must they hear the rod and the gun and they get their due. Let us pray for them that they obey; otherwise there need be no pity for the

in the Tyrol and elsewhere was chiefly responsible. But the chief cause was the increased exactions of the German princes, sustained in their oppressive claims by the growing recognition of the Roman law, which found no place for the peasants except as slaves. Eventually, in 1524 the peasants drew up twelve demands which they submitted to Luther with an appeal for his support. Luther found the demands mainly just and urged the princes to make concessions, but strongly condemned any effort, in case the reforms were not granted, to secure t

had urged the princes on to the slaughter in wo

r the things that are Caesar's,' and (Rom. 13:1), 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.' But since they have deliberately and with outrage abandoned obedience,

inces against the Emperor to whom they had sworn obedience--so early

*

nder God and the Emperor's ban. [Luther himself was certainly under the latter ban and, in the judgmen

ing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man [much more devilish in Luther's judgment than an oppr

*

out previous consideration of right or fairness, I do not condemn such action,

*

nor shew mercy and compassion. Nay, this is the

*

prince can more easily win heaven by sh

e whether he should grant the peasants their twelve articles. I told him, not one," (M

ce year by year. But this was the turning-point. With the crushing of the Peasants' revolt and the decisively anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movement associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionar

Melanchthon, a more oppressive tyranny was imposed on the Lutheran Church in Germany than had been exercised by the bishops, and the foundation was laid for that estrangement of the proletariat from the Church which has had such fatal results on both proletariat and Church in our time. On Luther rests the responsibi

s, pushful, courageous, energetic, industrious, self-reliant, independent, freedom-loving, intensely individualistic. They are honorable according to the standards of their class, often generous when the business struggle is not involved, but in the str

It consults him and honors him, puts him forward on every possible occasion, suitable or s

y, thrift, sobriety, self-control, honesty, at least as far as th

pectability,--such as indolence, profanity, intemperance,

omoter was unfolding the secret of his success, if he were to say, "I owe my success and any di

e for good than for evil, now more for evil than f

ntism has emphasized this. Christianity has also its

so. They are the two virtues least called for in the business str

ply differs from Primitive Christianity and from

reliant and hard. Fair play is its substitute for brotherlin

ood. So it is not strange that, where the reviving spirit of brotherhood, which is the di

d a generalization that, on this Continent at least,--it does not seem so widely true in England--the working man who is most interested in the Church is least interested in labor o

e and children. Very frequently his attitude to the Church is one, not of indifference, but of resentment and distrust. He feels, though perhaps subconsciously, that the prevailing temper of the Church is one of self-advancement. The leading men in the Chur

n the movement had struggled through the early days of conflict and persecution, the Churches reached out hesitatingly and half-heartedly a

lated and unofficial representatives, gave no assistance, not even its blessing

ed employees, it maintained a cautious neutrality. The first step to right relations between the Churches and La

and America, it has rendered great services. Like that again, it was, perhaps, the only sort of Christianity possible under the conditions under which it took its form. It has helped to train an energetic, daring, self-reliant, and relatively honorable people. It h

phase, A

in state and Church, substituting a social and political order and a Church dominated by the business class. Similarly, since the middle of the last cen

hey been other than the despised, ill-paid, ill-housed servants of the classes who through their fighting-power or their money-power could command the services of the toilers? What right had they to overturn the ancient order, an order which history recognized and the Church was willing to consecrate? Against the established order, against religious sanctions, against the combined authority of wealth and rank, against the legislative and military powers of governments, the workers had to carry on their new, uncharted, and desperate struggle

world. It is the strongest element in that welter of confusion and uncertainty to which the most powerful and compactly o

t Britain. Wisely led, there seems

Labor and one of the most powerful capitalistic groups, the President

to the sea. Old precedents have lost their authority, old calculations and presuppositions fail or mislead. It is a new age the world is entering. As the determining factor in the social structure of Europe

age just opening, it becomes a question of deepest int

of uncertainty, but the essential outstanding principles of the Labor

and every w

he normal working years, make a just contribution to the welfare of the social organism. It is determined that there

every worker t

h of the soul. It is a very modest and restricted assertion of that great principle, but it is a more substantial and significant assertion than

Uni

n unions. There have been few things in history that had more of the morally sublime in them than the way in which the individual has been called upon by the Labor movement to

iod, the social conditions demanding the aristocratic organization in Church and State and permitting no other, and as, in the age which succeeded the feudal, a freedom-loving, competitive, individualistic class imposed

e the prevailing religion of a collectivist age. It is passing away before our eyes.

awning, but to a new Christianity which will, indeed, have affinities

contributions from both the great historic forms of Christianity, not improbably from the Eastern, or Greek Christianity, as well. But in promise and potency the coming Christianity is more fully and truly here in the Labor movement than

e main, but two

must b

lighting of the children of men. It must include the inventor, the research scientist, the manager, as well as the manual worker; the men who grow things or who distribute them as well as those who make them; the professional cla

ze the Christianness

t man or woman to human conditions of life, in its corresponding denial of the right of any human being to live on the labor o

so far drawn up, but in its aims and methods and spirit it is profoundly Christian, a thousand times more Christian than the ordinary ecclesiastical pronouncement, though the name of Christ does

w can He be fully understood except through a working man's consciousness? The high, the served, the rich, the mere scholars, as such, are not fitted to understand Christianity. Individuals of exceptional character and insight may escape the limitations of their environment and educ

ssion of the prophetic spirit at this fateful hour to interpret Labor to itself, that it may not in this hour of consummation miss the path. To turn away f