DOES DEMOCRACY NEED RELIGION?

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 270, 10 August 1943, Page 6

DOES DEMOCRACY NEED RELIGION?

Trends Of History PLEA FOR INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS “Docs Democracy need a Religion?” was the subject of a sermon preached in St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Wellington, on Sunday night by the Rev. Gladstone Hughes. In its wider aspects the question had been answered in an incomparable way by one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Plato, said Mr. Hughes. In discussing the type of educational training essential for the equipment of the rulers of the ideal state. Plato laid no stress on the technical side of governnieni, and administration. The supreme training for the rulers was to consist in turning away from the wbrld of appearance and change and. in fixing the gaze on that of unchanging reality. Only in so far as they had succeeded in becoming spectators of all time and all existence, and in regarding life in the light of the supreme idea of the Good were they fit io rule. Translated into the terms of ordinary thought that meant that tlie one thing essential to good government was the inspiration which .sprang from the com temptation of the eternal, namely,' religion. If that was true of the aristocratic State in which the few ruled, how much more essential in a democracy in which all citizens took parr in the work of government? The Ordinary Man. Christianity and the democratic ideal had one thing in common—faith in the ordinary man. Let them ask where the democratic faith in the ordinary man came from. It came neither from Greece nor Rome, though both had contributed to it. It came from Christianity, which from the start taught that men of all nations were souls for whom Christ died. That was at the root of Shaftsibury’s championship of the factory workers, of ■Wilberforce’s war against slavery and of John Wesley's magnificent service. When the secular, rationalistic ideal of the French Revolutionaries gave way to a military dictatorship. the Christian Church was sending its ambassadors all over the world to proclaim the spiritual equality of all men before God. To argue that Christians had tolerated and -even justified slavery and other inhuman conditions was beside the point. In common with politicians, Christians had the human failing of taking an unconscionable long time to see the point. The plain truth was that, the movement for human emancipation which the democratic ideal represented was the direct creation of the Christian faith. Let them look at every country in the world, and they would find that the Christian Church had been the pioneer of all humane movements. It stood to reason that aiiy sound system of education must seek to make clear the inner meaning of those great movements. How could that- be done without a sympathetic understanding of the faith which inspired them? Christian Faith. Moreover, if the democratic spirit owed its origin to the Christian faith, it was that faith which could keep it alive. Why was it that anti-democratic movements always made the Christian faith the main object of their attacks, if that faith was not the citadel of the democratic spirit? There was one vital difference 'between the democratic faith in the ordinary man and the Christian faith. The democratic view tended to include a belief in the essential goodness of man, whereas Christianity with its deeper and- more realistic reading of human nature took into account the presence of evil and the tendency to evil in man. Democracy needed Christianity' 'because it needed for its effective working good men. If the democratic ideal was to live, it .must treasure the faith that gave it birth. It must find place for it in. the schools, for democracy wherever it was a real factor in social organization, made greater demands than any other form of government. It demanded men of high and noble ideals and to produce them the dynamic of its foundation faith was necessary. It was absurd to make much of the Magna Carta of John's reign in the educational curriculum and to exclude the Magna Carta of the human race, the faith of Christ and the freedom which was in His service.