The charge against religion most frequently made by critics who are interested in social reconstruction is that it is a conservative force which impedes social progress. If it has resources which are indispensable for the life of society, social idealists will not appreciate them if its contemporary forms are invariably aligned with the social forces most intent upon preserving the status quo. Contemporary liberal Christianity refutes the charge of social conservatism by appealing to the social radicalism of Jesus which it alleges to have appropriated. By this appeal liberal Christianity exhibits one of the very tendencies of religion which subjects it to the criticism of social liberals. Religion is easily tempted to make devotion to the ideal a substitute for its realization and to become oblivious to the inevitable compromise between its ideal and the brute facts of life. The absolute nature of the ethics of Jesus and the perfect harmony between his religion and his ethics may be the guarantee of the perennial spiritual and ethical renewal of the Christian religion; but it is also occasion for the self-deception of many professed disciples. Many streams of thought have contributed to the current of modern liberal Christianity and it contains alluvial deposits from all Western civilizations. Yet it imagines that it represents a simple return to radical and dynamic ethics of the religion of Jesus. By this deception it easily becomes the façade behind which the brutal facts of modern industrial civilization may be obscured rather than a force by which they might be eliminated. The Protestant Reformation suffered from the same deception. It thought of itself as a return to the original ideal when it was, as a matter of fact, a new type of compromise.

Catholicism was a compound of early Christianity and the thought and life of Græco-Roman civilization. The medieval church was a kind of ghostly aftermath of the Roman empire and the popes were inspired by the genius of Cæsar as much as by the spirit of Christ. The north European peoples first accepted this latinized Christianity, partly because they were attracted by those universal elements in it which have made their appeal to all peoples, and particularly those of the Western world, and partly because it was for them the symbol of the ordered civilization of Rome which they first envied, then destroyed, and finally tried to rebuild. In time they reacted against the ecclesiastical, international and feudal solidarities of this whole politico-religious world, prompted no doubt by the untamed spirit of liberty which characterized the northern peoples and which resented the tyranny by which the middle ages achieved their high measure of social cohesion. Thus Protestantism became the handmaiden of a budding nationalism which was impatient of the restraints of an international papacy, as it has since been impatient of every other type of international control. In time it also came to be the peculiar spiritual possession of those classes among the northern peoples who developed modern commerce and industry. The affinity between its sanctification of the principle of liberty and the necessary individualism of classes which were intent upon destroying the traditional restraints of the ancient world for the sake of giving unhampered play to a growing commercial and industrial life, has been so perfect that it is hardly possible to decide which of the two is cause and which effect. Max Weber⁠[6] has made an interesting analysis of commercial and industrial superiority of Protestant nations. It may be that the aptitude for commercial and industrial pursuits and an inclination to the Protestant form of the Christian faith are concomitant characteristics of north European peoples rather than casually related phenomena. Yet they have become so intimately related in history that the most typical commercial classes and nations are most generally Protestant, and most uniquely Protestant. In England the nonconformist sects are almost identical with the commercial middle classes, while the established church with its semi-Catholic genius has spiritual affinities both with the old Tories and the new world of the industrial worker. In Germany there is a similar alignment with Catholic and agrarian Bavaria on the one hand and the highly industrialized and Protestant Prussia on the other. The contrast between Protestant and industrial Ulster and Catholic and agrarian south Ireland is equally significant. Everywhere in Western civilization, and nowhere more than in America, Protestantism with its individualism became a kind of spiritual sanctification of the peculiar interests and prejudices of the races and classes which dominate the industrial and commercial expansion of Western civilization.

Since liberal Christianity is the product of an adjustment of the main tenets of orthodox Protestantism to the sophistication of the cities and the growing intelligence of the privileged and therefore educated classes, its whole moral atmosphere is much more determined by the special interests of these classes than it is willing to admit. The authority of Jesus, to which it appeals, has indeed been given a new emphasis, but this has been done because liberal Christianity valued the theological simplicity rather than the moral austerity of his gospel. In the same way many liberal Jews have appealed from the law to the prophets, not because they had a great passion for the ethical rigors of an Amos or Isaiah but because they found obedience to the minute exactions of the law too onerous in a sophisticated age. Jesus is valuable to the modern Christian because he offers an escape from the theological absurdities of the ancient creeds; meanwhile his ethical and religious idealism will not leave the lives of those who profess to follow him unaffected. In time it may become the instrument of the regeneration of Western society; but this will not be possible if the liberal church does not overcome its self-deception and realizes that its religious and moral life is a composite into which have entered the imperialism of Rome, the sophistication of the Greeks, the fierce tribalism and individualism of the Nordics and the prudential ethics of an industrial civilization.

Religion can be healthy and vital only if a certain tension is maintained between it and the civilization in which it functions. In time this tension is inevitably resolved into some kind of compromise. The tendency of religion to become a conservative social force is partly derived from its ambition to defend the resultant compromise in the name of its original ideal. Thus all partial values, determined by geographic, economic, social and political forces, are given a pseudo-absolute character by the religious elements which entered into the compromise; and their defects are sufficiently obscured and sanctified to make them comparatively impregnable to the attacks of the critics of the status quo. The Russian moujik was more than ordinarily docile under the tyranny of the czars and more than ordinarily patient with the imperfections of his society, because his obedience was claimed not by Russia but by “holy Russia,” the historic incarnation of his religion. In the same way the medieval church became organically involved with feudalism and forced the critics of feudal society to undermine its influence before they could hope to change the feudal social order. Orthodox Protestantism is intimately related to this day with Nordicism, with the racial arrogance of north European peoples. The Ku Klux Klan, which thrives in the hinterlands of America, maintains its influence over simple minds by screening racial prejudice against Slavic, Latin and Semitic peoples behind a devotion to the spiritual treasures of Protestantism and their defense against the fancied peril of allegedly inferior religions. In Ireland the racial pride of Ulstermen expresses itself in a passionate espousal of the Presbyterian religion and a contemptuous attitude toward the Catholicism of the Irish. In modern prewar Germany there was a curious partnership between “Thron und Altar,” the interests of the nationalist German state, as integrated by the Prussian royal house, with the interests of Protestantism. To this day the fanatic monarchists of Germany are also Protestant extremists who imagine that the monarchy was undermined by religiously motivated conspiracies of Jews and Catholics. Incidentally the Lutheran type of Protestantism which flourishes in Germany has always been less intimately aligned with the commercial classes than the Calvinistic sects of other Western nations. While the German socialists include the Lutheran church among the forces of reaction with which they must contend, the church’s real strength is among the peasants and junkers, who are also the strongest support of monarchist opinion and who abhor the democratic liberalism of commercial and industrial Germany as much as they despise socialist radicalism; and they imagine both to be inspired by Semitic designs upon their national integrity. The real inspiration of this liberalism with its emphasis on international conciliation and coöperation is born out of the economic and political necessities of an industrial and commercial state which cannot afford to indulge in the fanatic nationalism to which peasants and agrarian aristocrats are prone.

Liberal Christianity as it has developed in the urban centers of the Western world grew out of the intellectual and religious needs of the privileged classes and bears the marks of its social environment just as much as the other types of religion which have preceded it and with which it is historically related. It is in the same danger of becoming a spiritual sublimation of the peculiar interests and prejudices of these classes while it imagines itself the bearer of an unconditioned message to its day. It has preserved the same individualistic ethics which has characterized orthodox Protestantism and which is so dear to the hearts of the commercial classes, and so unequal to the moral problems of a complex civilization in which the needs of interdependence outweigh the values of personal liberty. The supposed devotion of the privileged classes to a religion in which the sacrifice rather than the stubborn preservation of individual rights is enjoined and in which the prudential and utilitarian root of morality is completely plucked out is one of the incongruities which frequently occur when a civilization harks back to the spiritual visions of its childhood in order to obscure the sober and disenchanted practicality of its maturity.

If the modern church is really to become an instrument of social redemption, it must learn how to divorce itself from the moral temper of its age even while it tries to accommodate itself to the intellectual needs of the generation. The religion of Jesus is free of theological absurdities. Its very simplicity saves it from undue entanglements with discredited cosmologies. But those who espouse it chiefly for this reason easily miss its real genius. Its essential assumptions may not outrage the mind, but neither are they readily accepted by an age which has sanctified cool and careful, moral prudence. Its solemn injunction, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ... but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” is strangely anachronistic in a day which worships obvious and tangible success and appreciates virtue only as it insures those advantages of health and prosperity which are its highest desiderata. Prudential morality has its own uses. Few men have either the imagination or the courage to pursue an ideal if it does not justify itself by some fairly immediate advantage. Society is not altogether the loser if men discover that “Godliness is profitable unto all things,” and espouse an ideal because they have their eye upon the concrete and obvious advantages which flow from it. But a prudential morality has its limitations and these will prove less detrimental to society if they are not sanctified by religion. It is better therefore to seek no other basis for utilitarian ethics than the social experience from which it is really derived. Honesty will prove itself the best policy without the authority of religion. The function of religion is to nerve men for an ethical achievement when it promises no immediate returns. From the perspective of an impartial observer there is an element of hypocrisy in all prudential morality. The cool intelligence which computes selfish advantage which may flow from moral action is not imaginative enough to include all persons who are affected by an action and not dynamic enough to balance the drive of self-interest which influences it.

In modern industrial society those who are in position of power and privilege are most inclined to espouse an ethical ideal because it tends to stabilize social life and thus insures the perpetuation of privilege. They are also most easily tempted to restrict ethical action so that it will prompt to no sacrifices which are not consistent with a wise self-interest. Since they are also the classes which have, for reasons previously discussed, maintained their loyalty to religion, the church can avoid connivance with their prudential morality only by a continual regeneration of its religious life. Failing to maintain a distinction between utilitarian ethics and a religiously inspired moral life, the church cannot escape the fate of becoming a useful adjunct of the forces of privilege in the social and economic conflict in which modern society is engaged. It may be good business to pay high wages, but social good may demand an increase in the wages of workers beyond the point where economic advantage is derived from an enlightened wage policy. It may be wise to share some privileges so that all of them will not be lost, but sensitive ethical insight will detect the selfishness and insincerity in such a course. A religion which sanctifies such social prudence is ultimately a hindrance to the ethical reconstruction of modern society. A religion which discovers and amends the limitations of prudential morality by the elements of its reverence for personality and its quest for the absolute is a necessary factor in social reconstruction.

The question which faces the modern church is whether it will help to hide or to discover the limitations in the ethical orientation of modern life. Its devotion to the gospel of Jesus may serve either purpose. The contempt for ethical opportunism implied in the whole idealism of Jesus and its scorn for immediate advantages are the very ethical values which the generation needs, but they are also the values which have given the Christian religion its great moral authority and prestige which the church can so easily misuse. If the authority of Jesus prompts men to a courage and imagination which escapes the defects of contemporary morality, its influence will be redemptive; if it is used merely to hide the defects, the critics of the church will be justified in regarding it as detriment to social progress. The religion which is socially most useful is one which can maintain a stubborn indifference to immediate ends and thus give the ethical life of man that touch of the absolute without which all morality is finally reduced to a decorous but essentially unqualified self-assertiveness. The paradox of religion is that it serves the world best when it maintains its high disdain for the world’s values. Its social usefulness is dependent upon its ability to maintain devotion to absolute moral and spiritual values without too much concern for their practical, even for their social usefulness. The church is in a very favorable position to make a necessary contribution to social life, for it reveres as Lord one whose life incarnates the strategy which saves morality from insincerity. But its assets easily became moral liabilities when it compounds the pure idealism of Jesus with the calculated practicalities of the age and attempts to give the resultant compromise the prestige of absolute authority.