A Statement: On the Future of This Church | Page 4

of my preaching has changed since I first entered the
Messiah pulpit. You know with what [8] waxing intensity of expression
I have moved to the left of our various divisions on the social question.
You do not know, hence I must tell you, how this intensity of radical
conviction is destined to continue in the years that are now before us.
For the war has accelerated the social crisis beyond all forecasting. In
two years has transpired what fifty years could not have consummated
under more normal conditions. Three great empires--Russia, Germany,
Austria--and several newborn countries, like that of the
Czecho-Slovaks, have been captured by the Socialists; and the British
Empire seems promised to the British Labor Party in not more than
another decade or two. The social revolution long prophesied, long
hoped for, long feared, is here; and this means in countries like our own,
still untouched by change, such a "sturm and drang periode," as makes
even the Great War pale into insignificance. Now in these years which
are before us, I propose to speak and serve for the speediest and most
thoroughgoing social reconstruction. I am committed both by
conviction and temperament to the program of the British Labor Party
and its policy of indirect or political action for the advancement of that
program. This is my predominant interest at this moment, and through
what is destined I suppose to be the whole period of my life. This is as
much the cause of our day as abolition was the cause of the days before
the Civil War. To this I have given all I have--from this I intend to
withdraw nothing that I have given. Not in any sense of bitterness or
violence in method, but in every sense of utter change as the end
desired, I am committed to the ideal of the complete democratization of
society.
When the significance of this transformation first broke upon me, I felt
an impulse to leave the church, and attach myself directly to the labor
movement. I recall how my soul leapt in answer to the great scene at
the close of Kennedy's "The Servant in the House," when the Vicar
strips off his clerical garb, seizes the dirty hand of his brother, the
Drain-Man, and cries out, [9] "This is no priest's work--it calls for a
man!" I was deterred, however, not, I hope, by cowardice but by
wisdom. On the surface I felt that I should miss the services of the
church--the prayers and worship with my people. Deeper down, and

nearer the heart of things, was an unshaken trust in the church as a
social institution. I loved her traditions, reverenced her saints and
prophets, believed in her destiny--was unconvinced that she must
necessarily serve the interests of reaction. At-bottom, was a perfectly
clear understanding that my approach to the social question was a
spiritual approach, and my acceptance of it the acceptance of a
religious task. I saw my new position as nothing more nor less than the
logic of Christianity. Men must be free from all oppression, because
they are children of God, and therefore living souls. They must be
equal in opportunity and privilege, because they are members of the
holy family of God, and therefore brothers. They must be lifted up out
of poverty, disease, war, because their heritage is the life of God, and
they must have it abundantly. The material aspects of the social
question, I would be among the last, I trust, to ignore. These are
central--but central only as the fetters are central to the problem of
slavery. Furthermore, the means which I recognized to the great end,
were also spiritual. I could find no place in my thought for the use of
violence. The plea of class-conscious rebellion never won my
acceptance. Only patience, persuasion, and much love for humankind,
seemed to me legitimate weapons of reform. In other words, I was
again a victim of the logic of Christianity. And where did this logic
hold me, if not to the church? Where could I make plain my spiritual
position, or bring to bear my spiritual influence, apart from the church?
If this institution must hold me altogether aloof from the social
question, then of course my duty was manifest. But its pulpit was wide
open to social preaching; its altar a chosen place for social consecration;
and its machinery of service all at hand to be shifted from the gear of
[10] charity to the gear of justice. Why not stay, therefore, in the church,
as Theodore Parker stayed, and fight capitalism, as he fought slavery,
in the garb of a minister of Christ?
Decision on this point came fairly early, and it was favorable to the
church. Strangely enough, however, it brought me little