Its director is Robert W. Bruere; its treasurer, Herbert Crowley, of the "New Republic." Its other members are Ordway Tead, Henry C. Metcalf, P. Sargent Florence, Leonard Outhwaite, Carl G. Karsten, Mary D. Blankenhorn.

It also has special lecturers: John A. Fitch and Irwin H. Schell.

This organization co-operates with the "New School for Social Research," which has been established by men who belong to the ranks of near-Bolshevik Intelligentsia, some of them being too radical in their views to remain on the faculty of Columbia University.

36

Socialism and the Churches

All church organizations have entered since the war into a period of tremendous activity, with a view to meeting, from the point of view of Christianity, the difficulties and problems of the present. The churches have realized that a rebirth of religious beliefs and of moral conscience is absolutely necessary among the masses if present civilization is to endure. In large numbers the masses during the present generation have been drifting away from religion. In order to insure that the churches shall take the part that really belongs to them, two currents have been set in motion; one, based upon the historical principles that lie at the foundation of Christianity, and, the other, experimenting with new more or less radical principles as the basis for a renewal of society.

While the Committee presents in this chapter a number of data which illustrate dangerous revolutionary tendencies, it wishes emphatically to state that such tendencies are embodied in a comparatively small number of members of the clergy of the different denominations. By far the larger bulk of all religious teachers are working in an old-fashioned crusade against the inroads of materialism and revolutionary thought. The new activity and enthusiasm was embodied, in the Protestant sphere, in the Inter-Church World-Wide Movement, which was started during the latter part of 1919. It aimed not only to raise over $300,000,000 for spreading the right kind of Christianity among the people, but it aimed at increasing church membership and unity of Christian faith and endeavor to an extent hitherto unknown in this generation. It is true that radical elements attained prominence in certain spheres of this work, but it remains to be seen how influential they will be when their real aims are known.

Not long ago a pastoral letter was issued by the leaders of the Catholic Church in America, which expresses on behalf of the Catholic Church their attitude and their hopes. This pastoral letter was prepared by a committee belonging to the American Hierarchy, including Cardinals Gibbons and O'Connell and the Rector of the Catholic University at Washington, Thomas J. Shaham, and more than one hundred bishops of the Church. It is issued to the 20,000,000 Catholics in the United States and is the first pastoral letter issued by the general organization of the

Catholic Church since one sent out thirty-five years ago in 1884, to the then 7,000,000 Catholics of the United States.

As the Catholic Bulletin of Cleveland expresses it:

"Materialism and its formidable sons, anarchy, Bolshevism and unrest, have thrown down the gauge of battle. We must catch it up and wage the good fight for God and for country." The pastoral letter says:

"It is an error to assert that the issues involved are purely economic. They are, at bottom, moral and religious.

"It is necessary (it states), to insist that the rights of the community shall prevail; that law and order shall be preserved; and that the public shall not be made to suffer while the contention goes on from one state to another."

The letter agrees that there are wrongs that must be righted, fundamental wrongs. It says:

"This is not a time for makeshifts. Rightly or wrongly, the movements which are shaking the foundations of order come out of men's souls. They embody a demand for right. They may be stopped for a time or diverted; but, if, in keeping with American principles, order is to rest on the willingness of the people and their free co-operation, their souls must be right. They must be trained to think rightly and to do as they think. . . . What we have chiefly to fear is educated intelligence devoid of moral principles. . . The right of labor to a living wage, with decent maintenance for the present and provision for the future, is generally recognized. The right of capital to a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, is equally plain. To secure the practical recognition and exercise of both rights, good will, no less than adherence to justice is required. Animosity and mistrust should first be cleared away. When this is done, when the parties meet in a friendly rather than militant spirit, it will be possible to effect a reconciliation."

A considerable portion of the men who are doing yeoman's service in country-wide speaking and writing against the revolutionary movement, are laymen of the Catholic Church. It is an interesting and significant fact that the work that all Christian leaders are doing in this campaign is bringing all the branches

of Christian believers closer together and breaking down as comparatively unimportant the denominational walls of separation.

The Committee has given elsewhere, especially in the educational section, a conspectus of the work done by the different branches of the Protestant Church in connection with education of the aliens, and other constructive work to stamp out all forms of radicalism, materialism and anarchy.

What is of the greatest importance for churchmen to understand, in order that they may not be led astray by specious arguments of so-called Christian Socialists and so-called liberals and self-styled partisan of free speech, is that Socialism as a system as well as anarchism and all its ramifications from high-brow Bolshevism to the Russian Anarchist Association, are all the declared enemies of religion and of all recognized moral standards and restraints.

Unless this movement is killed and unless the constructive movement of church leaders leads to a revival of religious belief, the necessary foundations for a permanent social reconstruction will be wanting.

The object of the present chapter is to clarify the situation from this point of view and to point out the danger to church leaders who are carried away by false, specious idealism masquerading as progress.

Nothing has attracted public attention more strongly than the attitude of the different churches and religious organizations either semi-officially, through their various agencies, or unofficially through individual action. This attitude relates to both the revolutionary and the labor questions. Before reporting on this question it would be well to state the attitude toward religion of the Soviet system and of Socialism in general. As elsewhere stated, the system of Karl Marx is a pure materialism which abolishes religion of any sort. Of this there can be no question. Marx was an avowed atheist. The Marxian philosophy being the recognized basis of the Soviet government of Russia, of every Communist, every Socialist and every Social Democratic Party, it follows that the whole revolutionary movement is atheistic, is anti-religious. One of the common rallying cries of the Soviet army is, We have abolished God." "

The official attitude of Bolshevism as an atheistic theory secking to destroy all religion, all belief in a God, is clearly expressed in an article by N. Bucharin, entitled "Church and School in the

Soviet Republic," published in the "Class Struggle" for May, 1919. This Bucharin is recognized all over the world as the official literary mouthpiece and program maker of Lenin, as the leader in the Soviet educational system. What he says, therefore, is authoritative.

"One of the instruments for the obscuring of the consciousness of the people is the belief in God and the devil, in good and evil spirits, angels, saints, etc., in short, religion. The masses of the people have become accustomed to believe in these things, and yet, if we approach these beliefs sensibly, and come to understand where religion comes from, and why religion receives such warm support from the bourgeois gentlemen, we shall clearly understand that the function of religion at present is to act as a poison with which the minds of the people have been and continue to be corrupted. And then we shall also understand why the Communist Party is so resolutely opposed to religion.

"Present day science has pointed out that the most primitive form of religion was the worship of the souls of dead chieftains, and that this worship began at the moment that, in ancient human society, the elders of the tribe, old men more wealthy, experienced and wise than the rest of the tribe, already had secured power over the remaining members. At the very outset of human history, when men still were in the semi-ape stage, they were equal. The elders did not put in their appearance until later, and then began the subjugation of the other members. Then also the latter began to worship the former, and this worship of the souls of the dead rich is the foundation of religion; these 'saints,' these little gods, were later transformed into a single threatening deity, who punishes and rewards, judges and regulates.

The

world also has its master, a great powerful, threatening creature, on whom all depends, and who will severely punish all disobedience. Now, this master over all the world is God.

"God, so to speak, is a really rich, powerful master, a slaveholder, one who rules the heavens,' a judge — in a word, a precise counterfeit and copy of the earthly power of the elder, later of the prince.

"In short, the belief in God is an expression of the vile conditions on earth, is the belief in slavery, which is present,