Chapter XI

. The American emphasis on the principle of equality is shown in the admiration that is accorded the achievements of energy and toil, in the common struggle for more wealth and luxury, in foreign missionary activities, in the rise of the democratic conscience and the idealistic impulses of the people.

On the other hand, the principle of equality is being violated when, instead of trying to remove the natural inequalities among folks, “we increase them by giving special privileges to the strong as the reward of their strength.” The United States is at the crossroads. One highway is characterized by luxury and extravagance on one side, and by poverty and slavery on the other; it leads to revolutionary attempts on the part of the masses to overthrow the privileged classes. It ends in national decadence. The second highway is characterized by justice. Those in economic authority are willing to grant representation to labor in the management of industry and to further the rise of the co-operative spirit. They are willing to sacrifice their own special privileges for the sake of the welfare of the disinherited.

The intellectuals of the middle class hold vast power. In crises, they usually join the privileged classes rather than the masses; and hence, their influence often swings to the side of injustice.[XXVI-43]

(2) Universal service is the principle of equal obligation. Equal rights, by itself, may mean equal rights to cheat, to exploit. It needs to be checked by its complement of equal obligation. During the World War there was a frequent demonstration of the principle of universal service. “We are engaged in helping the boys at the front” became the slogan. At the front as well as in the home towns and cities, wealthy and poor, capital and labor served together. The end of the War gave prominence to this question: Will the universal service idea spread or will it be discarded? Will industry go back to the unashamed pursuit of private gain?[XXVI-44]

Dr. Ward makes a careful distinction between the service of democratic mutual helpfulness and the service of a governing class, no matter how excellent.[XXVI-45] It is a low type of service which grants Christmas dinners to the poor with the result that the poor are thereby made contented with their lot in life.

(3) Efficiency is a term which is the product of the mechanical era, which originated in the business world, and which is now being applied to all phases of social organization.[XXVI-46] Its aim is perfection in social mechanics. Social efficiency includes not only social engineering but social knowledge, social philosophy, social ethics, and social religion. Evidences of social inefficiency are common; for example, the failure to use and apply the social knowledge that we have, and the loss of energy through an over-emphasis on competition. Democracy will never be able to succeed merely because of its splendid ethical ideals.[XXVI-47] The need is for an efficiency in government that is scientific and not simply a business efficiency.[XXVI-48] Scientific efficiency includes “the spirit of service to the common interest by which alone democracy can live.”[XXVI-49]

(4) The supremacy of personality is a principle of life that conflicts today with the current emphasis on economic efficiency. It is because the latter is so often reckless of human values that the new social order will stress the development of things of the spirit rather than material goods; even business must practice this ideal. The World War raised the estimate which the common people put on their own lives; but the ultimate result will depend on whether or not people took part in the war voluntarily and conscious of high moral purposes, and whether or not the peace which follows shall bring a new world organization that conserves all the advances in human living that have thus far been made.

Institutions possess an inherent fallibility. They tend to become mechanical and repressive, even those dedicated to high purposes, such as institutions of democracy, of education, and of religion. The supreme object of any social institution and organization, no matter in what field it may exist, should be the increase of personality.[XXVI-50]

(5) The new social order will be governed by a sense of solidarity, that is, by a community of feeling and thought which arises when individuals associate together in working for a common end. World solidarity will come when all peoples learn to work together for public welfare, and subordinate all selfish desires to this end. Christianity is moving in this direction when it advances the concept of “comradeship of all men with each other and with the Great Companion,” when it gradually unfolds the idea of a unified world life, when it applies its doctrines of brotherhood of man to the relations of the employer and employee or to the relations of white and black races, when it seeks the democratic solidarity of the human race rather than the imperialistic solidarity of an overhead religious control, when it endeavors to spread love and faith, rather than to spread dogmas and promote organizations.[XXVI-51] Class cleavage, nationalism as distinct from nationality, race prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness are the main opponents of the world brotherhood principle.

Dr. Ward, having defined what he considers the chief principles that will govern the new social order, proceeds to measure current movements by certain standards. He reviews the declarations of the British Labor Party, the Russian Soviet Republic, the League of Nations, and the labor movements in the United States. These tendencies are all expressions of a more or less blind desire for justice. In all countries of the world the masses are restless, stirring, and experiencing a keen sense of injustice. Their leaders are struggling, unscientifically as a rule, toward the light of a new day of democracy. The trend which this struggle takes depends on the given social environment and the attitude of the persons in authority. If undue repression and autocracy are exercised for a long period of time, as in Russia under the Czars, revolution is the only means of escape open to the masses. Schooled for a long time under the lash of autocracy, when they themselves come into control, they will use the only means of control that they know, the lash of autocracy.

The British Labor Party is moving in the direction of guild socialism, which includes the organization of industry into large units, in charge of the workers and relatively free from the rule of the politicians. The national government is to have a general oversight over the large industrial units. As immediate steps in this direction, the Labor Party demands the nationalization of the railroads, mines, and of the production of electric power. Municipalities participate in the common ownership program. The method of transformation is to be gradual, largely based on political action.

In regard to the League of Nations Covenant, which was agreed upon in Paris in 1919, Dr. Ward takes a negative attitude. Although he believes firmly in an organization of good will, in international friendship and in world solidarity upon democratic bases, he asserts stoutly that the Paris Covenant is “a symbol of the sacred right of private property,”[XXVI-52] that it provided for an international organization of capitalism with all the force of powerful national governments behind it, that it represented a series of compromises between nationally selfish units, that it was an expression of the wishes of the rulers of the democratic states who are essentially of “the same moral caliber as the ruling class of imperialistic militarism, and bear a similar sinister relationship to the future welfare of the common folk.”[XXVI-53]

The weakness of Dr. Ward’s treatment of the programs for the new social order is that it discusses almost entirely programs, platforms, ideals, without considerating the relations between the programs and the actual practices of the various organizations. In contrasting the best phases, for example, of the British Labor Party with the worst phases of capitalism, an incomplete picture is given. However, this weakness in method need not obscure the strength of thought which Dr. Ward displays. Some of the most thought-provoking deductions are:

1. That individualistic Christianity is losing ground.

2. That the middle class is becoming a class of privilege.

3. That the intellectuals of the middle class, while keenly aware of the evils in the capitalistic system, are so much indebted to that system that they would consider themselves ingrates if they spoke out against it, or they are simply afraid to speak out.

4. That jails and machine guns will not stop the laboring classes in appealing for a democratic reorganization of industry, but will rather hasten revolutions, with resultant dictatorships of the proletariat.

5. That capitalism is passing, as it is bound to do, because it is organized selfishness--its fundamental principle is wrong.

6. That political democracy is fighting for its life today, being attacked on the one flank by economic imperialism and on the other by the dictatorship of the proletariat.[XXVI-54]

7. That unless the struggle can be ended by a process of reason and orderly progress, the world is doomed to devastation by universal conflict.

8. That the goal of social development is, in broad terms, “a fraternal world community, the great loving family of mankind, knit together by common needs but most of all by loyalty to common ideals, and by the power of its common love efficiently directing and controlling its common life.”[XXVI-55]

An important question arises: How shall the social teachings of Jesus become widely taught? Evangelistic Christianity, with its personal emphasis, cannot be expected adequately to carry the social message. Preachers, theologically trained, are bound to give the social phases of Christianity a secondary place. In recent years, however, a movement known as religious education has been acquiring momentum. Moreover, a social theory of religious education has been formulated. In this connection, Dr. George Albert Coe has perhaps done the most significant work. Our life, Dr. Coe believes, gets its largest meaning not from the fact of individual self-consciousness alone, but from the equally important fact that life is social.[XXVI-56] Without a belief in social consciousness, an endless existence after death, in terms of self-consciousness primarily, would be meaningless and probably valueless. Religion must solve the problem of establishing a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and also train its votaries for a societal life in Heaven. The latter problem will be met easily when the former is solved. It is well illustrated by the young Christian lady from Virginia who asked: Won’t there have to be a separate Heaven for Negroes, since we hate them so here? In other words, will there not have to be a thousand or a million Heavens in order to accommodate happily all the antagonistic Christian groups now on earth? How can the Protestant Ulstermen and Catholic Irishmen live together lovingly in Heaven? The problem goes back to solving the social implications of Christianity in earthly relationships.

The social aims of Christian education, according to Dr. Coe, are as follows: (1) Social welfare, or the control of the non-human environment in the interest of human life. (2) Social justice, or the inauguration of fair play in all the dealings of every individual, no matter how strong and shrewd, with every other individual, no matter how weak and ignorant. (3) A world society or the promotion of a code of conduct that leads to “the integration of all peoples into a single, democratically governed mankind.” Nationalism must melt into a larger regard for human beings; and that which is “a climactic expression of the selfishness, that is to say the injustice that is organized in our legal systems and our national sovereignties,” must be revealed to all, even in the Sunday schools.[XXVI-57]

The implications of a sound social theory of religious education are met by the religious doctrine of personal fellowship between God and man, and between man and man; by a reorganization of the church as a religious institution in a way which shall put religious education on as scientific a basis as the ordinary day school education; and by training the church school pupils in the principles of social justice, co-operation, and love, as well as in matters pertaining to personal salvation.

Another current development is the religious social service director. For some time the religious education director has been a recognized force in church work. The social service director in church life is coming into the foreground, bearing the responsibility of working out social welfare programs for the church services, directing the training of the membership in volunteer social work, inaugurating religious social surveys, in fact, carrying the social message of the church into all the church activities.

The social service activities of the church have often been used as a net for catching the churchless. Social service as a bribe, however, will fail. Genuine religious social service is that which emanates naturally and easily from the lives of the church members and of the church itself, asking no pay and possessing no sinuous ends. The church that inaugurates a social program for building up the family life, the play life, the moral life, the economic life, as well as the religious life, in the community in which it is located, most truly represents a socialized church. The church, however, that uses its social welfare program merely in order to build itself up, fails to understand the social calling as a religious institution.

The social thought of the Hebrews revolved about the idea of social justice; of Jesus, about the concept of active love; and of modern Christianity, at its best, about an unselfish social program for bringing about a just, co-operative, and harmonious life, ranging in its operation from the individual in his family and local community life to the individual as a functioning unit in a new world society.

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