SOCIALISM'AND RELIGION

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1925, Page 11

SOCIALISM'AND RELIGION

In a letter to the Editor, "T.A.E., Socialist,” protests against charges of a Socialist attack on religion made by the Rev. J. Arbuthnot Nairn, in an article in the London “Morning Post,” which was reprinted recently in The Dominion. "The only attack made upon relision and menace to the. churches,” “T.A.E.” declares, “is such as these reverend prelates make themselves. , . . Hvide’ntly this is one of those cases where fools rush in where angels fear to tread. ... I honestly believe there is not a particle of honest truth in the charge that advanced Socialists are opposed to religion. No authoritative publication can be quoted which takes the stand that the ethics of Socialism are opposed to the ethics of Jesus. It is impossible they should be, for the foundation of the moral and material nature implied under Socialism ‘ establishes the principle of universal brotherhood and universal fatherhood. Every man who woked in the vineyard, in the parable of Jesus, though- he came at the last hour s of the day, received the same wages as the first—evidently according to his necessities, from the Master according to ‘his’ opportunities. That is the spiritual principle of Socialism. They who stand by and wait also serve, says the adage.” In succeeding passages of his letter, ■'T.A.E.” enters into a lengthy discussion of “class war.” “This’ jungle state camouflaged as Christianity, and Christian civilisation as social order,” he concludes, “goes even further and uses fiendish cruelty and mental and moral torture on your friend the enemy to get a minister of the Gospel of fesus, the Prince of Peace, to manufacture the most deadly poison gas barrage, and load the guns and make tile bullets to down the workers, to further crush the bottom dog and his family and plunge his children in the mire of poverty and misery and gloom. If this ‘spiritual science’ and ignorance is not a menace to the churches and to religion, I thank God the ethic of Socialism is, and is opposed to this species of ‘Christian’ religion, and is a menace to such churches that support a system so opposed to humanity, to real civilisation, so opposed to real Christian science, to the Christian life, and the moral laws of God and practical religion of moral every-day life.”