CHRIST AND SOCIALISM

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 272, 13 August 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

CHRIST AND SOCIALISM

"The Christian Challenge to Christians,” by Kenneth 'lngram (London: Allen and Unwin). This book is more political than religious. it is unlikely that the writer would carry his point entirely with many —there are not sufficient facts adduced to prove it—but it is to be hoped that in future books he will buttress his ideas with a wider selection of evidence. Ills aim—to rescue Christianity from etherealisin so that the man in the street can see bis need for it—is good. He declares that religion and politics have drifted apart, giving rise in the minds of religiouslyminded men to the idea that religion has nothing at all to do with the present life, but should be concerned solely with tlie next, while it has fostered in the minds of not-particularly-religious men the notion that religion has nothing to do with everyday reality. Put crudely, Mr. Ingram’s thesis would seem to be that the followers of Christ have made religion an ethereal thing, whereas all Christ wanted was that everybody should be a good Socialist, and that He had no particular concern with the supernatural or with the future life. A sharp protest must be sounded against the popular pastime of accepting as inspired such words of Jesus as agree with one’s pet theories, and rejecting the rest as contradictory accretions. Christians have often been accused of magnifying the supernatural element in-Christianity, and ignoring the Sermon on the Mount. That may be true, but it is not helpful merely to reverse the position. According to Mr. Ingram, many who are by nature altruistic are Christians, whatever their beliefs, while many professed Christians have nothing in common with Christ at all. This is very awkward. Then to suggest as he does that the Kingdom of Heaven is a world ruled by Socialism is to ignore the definite teaching of Jesus that the Kingdom of Heaven will be occupied by the comparative few who follow His teachings, not by the whole race. And Christ is not optimistic that the Kingdom will come as a matter of course, a political evolution, but states that it will be the result of His direct intervention at the end of the age. Mr. Ingram is sure that Capitalism stands condemned by the Christian conscience, and he bids the Church assume the spiritual leadership of the Left. He says that the future government of any state must be either Fascism, which is Capitalism driven by extremity to perpetuate itself by force, or Socialism, which adds to the idea of political democracy the ideal of economic democracy. He denies that there is any middle course.