The Edinburgh Review JANUARY, 1920 No. 471 THE CHURCH AND SOCIALISM 1. Christianity and Industrial Problems, being the Report of the Archbishops' Fifth Committee of Inquiry. S.P.C.K. 1919. 2. The Division of the Product of Industry: An Analysis of National Income before the War. By ARTHUR L. BOWLEY, SC.D. Oxford: University Press. 1919. 3. The Church and Industrial Questions. By the Rev. ARTHUR C. HEADLAM, D.D. A Sermon preached before the University of Cambridge. S.P.C.K. 1919. 4. Industry and Trade. By ALFRED MARSHALL. Macmillan. 1919. 5. Christianity and Economic Science. By W. CUNNINGHAM. John Murray. 1914. 6. Christianity and the Social Crisis. By WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH. The Macmillan Company. 1907. 7. The Publications of the Church Socialist League. 8. Christianity and the Social Order. By the Rev. R. J. CAMPBell. Chapman & Hall. 1907. NOTHING is more plainly written on the page of history than the slightness of the connexion between the ideals of social reformers and the social changes which they succeed in effecting. It would, perhaps, be true to say that the loftier the ideal, the more pathetically inadequate the achievement. Nor is the reason obscure. It lies in the idealist's contempt for experience, in his disregard of the conditions under which men think and act, in his impatience with the inability of average human nature to absorb and endorse VOL. 231. NO. 471. A his ideas, in his assumption not only that 'the end justifies 'the means,' but also that it qualifies the agents. The Anabaptists, whose name lingers still in the scornful allusion of the XXXVIIIth Article, provide a striking illustration. They were distinguished among the reformers of the sixteenth century by the loftiness of their social ideals, and, with some notorious exceptions, by the sincerity of their leaders. It has been said of them with justice that they were the 'modern men of their time,' for in many particulars they anticipated the beliefs of the future. In an age of violence, they preached the wrongfulness of war: in a time of persecution, they proclaimed the duty of toleration in a society marked by the extremes of pride and poverty, they denounced individual ownership and advocated communism. With the Bible as their teacher, they worked out a conception of social order in which the dreams of modern Socialists were expressed in religious phraseology. Yet the practical outcome of Anabaptist enthusiasm was a squalid and immoral anarchy which, save for its veneer of Biblical nomenclature, bears a curious resemblance to Russian Bolshevism. Munster, the scene of the Anabaptist experiment in social reconstruction, has passed into literature as the synonym for a brutal and degraded communism. The name became a by-word and a hissing through'out Europe.' Religion and politics cannot really be severed, for every religious man is also in some sense a politician, and every politician is, in some sense, religious. If, moreover, the dominant political factor in a community become Christian, the effect must needs be considerable in the community's life. Constantine's conversion implied the christianising of the Roman Empire. Medieval Christendom was the perfect example of christianised politics. Establishment, as it exists in England, may be said to perpetuate within a limited area and under modern conditions the medieval identification of religion and politics. In this way religion penetrates society, consecrating and exalting it, but not ordinarily innovating, disturbing, or revolutionising it. Christianity accepts the existing situation, pours a new spirit into existing institutions, and silently enables a gradual but continuous improvement in existing society. Its genius is conservative, cohesive, and constructive. Its action |