1931, Current Opinion – CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM – A few weeks ago we called attention in this column to the impressive evidences of the spread of socialism in this country. This spread, curiously enough, is not marked among the manual workers, who are in Europe the bone and sinew of socialism. On the contrary, organized labor in America is, for the most part, antagonistic to socialism. It is in the range of what is contemptuously termed the “bourgeoisie” by European socialism that the cult is growing here. It is to the bourgeoisie, and particularly to professions within it, that Professor John Dewey’s proposed new party, called the League for Independent Political Action, is frankly making its appeal, and this party is socialism thinly disguised. (link)
But the most disturbing feature of this movement is the clear and apparently determined effort to capture the Christian Church and utilize it as a political agency for the advancement of the principles and economic purposes of socialism. In recent months there have been an increasing number of books and magazine articles in which Christian leaders manifest more or less support for socialistic ideas. We find many of them freely condemning capitalism and individualism and the “profit motive,” using as their own and with obvious approval the terms and theories of socialism. One of the latest books in the class is “Which Way Religion,” by Doctor Harry F Ward, professor of Christian Ethics in Union Theological Seminary, in which he says: “What is clear is that communism, stripped of its dogmatic glorification and use of force – in common with socialism – gives us the religion of humanity.” And, in summing up: “the faith of the future will find its central task in applying the ethical principles which Jesus represents to the conquest of the means of existence. That much it will owe to Marx and those who have followed him.”
This association of Jesus and Karl Marx is becoming more and more frequent and, by repetition, less and less shocking, in Christian discussion. We have here, however, been referring to individual expression of views having this tendency. But now we have a collective and representative expression, from no less than a division of the National Council of Christian Associations, advocating a socialistic political program for Christianity. In a report of the economic division of this Council, which has just been issued, and said to be addressed cheaply to college and church elements, cooperation is urged with the Socialist Party, or political action through a new party along the lines of that which the League for Independent Political Action is attempting to organize. This report, which is a document of 96 pages, declares that “Whatever its name, that party should stand resolutely” for a program that includes among other socialistic objectives” the social ownership of public utilities, natural resources and the basic industries.”
The chairman of the commission which drew up this report is Francis A Henson, secretary of the student division of the National Council of the YMCA. The Introduction of the Report was written by Professor Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary. Among other members of the commission are Professor John Bennett, of Auburn Theological Seminary; Sidney D Gamble, secretary foreign division National Council YMCA; Josephine Little, secretary National Board YMCA; Professor Lois McDonald of New York University; Patrick M Malin of Swarthmore College; Mildred Morgan, University of Iowa; Walter Ludwig, secretary, Pioneer Youth, and Paul Porter, secretary, League for Industrial Democracy. Christianity, said the report, must concern itself about the economic order because an intelligent application of Christian ethics will necessarily change the presence system. The implication is that the present economic system, in association with which all Christianity has thus far been developed, is necessarily anti-Christian. How far this movement of social revolution can attain the support of the Christian church remains to be seen, plainly an impressive effort to ally Christianity with socialism is underway, and directed by men of influence in religion and education – St. Louis Globe-Democrat. *-*-*
This appeared 04JUL1931 while Republican altruist President Herbert Hoover was negotiating the Moratorium on War Debt Payments in exchange for the International Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of [sic] narcotic drugs about to be signed on July 13, 1931. Pharmaceutical and industrial giants in Germany, by far the world’s largest producer of opiate drugs, are financing the election campaign of Christian spokesman Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party urging Positive Christianity and repudiation of all war reparations payments in its platform and speeches.
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Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or amigra.us
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