The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1938. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION.

Evening Star, Issue 23059, 10 September 1938, Page 16

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1938. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION.

It would be interesting to search out and discover when tho Labour Party first began to assert its peculiar identification with religion. We should be surprised if any record of the claim could be found before its comparatively recent advent to office. It did not derive this pretension, any more than its Socialism, from Mr Seddon, for though tho great Liberal Prime Minister, adopting an American phrase, spoke often of “God’s Own Country,” no monopoly of a divine character was ever claimed by him for his party. Nor, in the light of history, can that special association be claimed as a Socialistic heritage. It was Marx, founder of the main sect of Socialists, who described religion as “the opium of the people,” a definition frequently repeated down to quite recent days by his disciples even in this country. Times have, ' however, changed, and we are becoming used to an assertion or assumption that would certainly have caused surprise' if it had been heard three years ago. Since then it has not been limited to the sphere of general politics. It was a municipal luminary of the Labour Party who claimed for himself and his colleagues that they had repeated the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, and, he might almost •have said, surpassed.it, since they-had made it continuous. In the first days of this session Dr M’Millan defined the issue to be contested at the forthcoming elections as “ the Labour Party’s, policy of the practical application of the teaching of Christianity versus" the selfish Materialism of the Nationalists.” This may have sounded better to some ears than the simpler description ■of Mr Roberts, M.P., when he said; almost at the same time, “ We accept, the issue of, private enterprise against Socialism.” The latest extension of the practice hardly comes as a surprise, therefore, when we find the fight between Mr Savage and Mr Hamilton represented as one between divine and human characters who, for the sake of susceptibilities that may still be rife, need not be here further particularised. It springs logically, if not decorously, from the unique association of Labour politics with Christianity which we are expected by this time to take for granted. Rut is there any reason why that special association should bo taken for granted, or even, on consideration, accepted? The pretension may be good politics. It is surely a strange reading of religion. The Labour Party prides itself that it is making a redistribution ol wealth by taking from some members of the community and giving to others. That may. be. a ,justifiable policy in some circumstances, when an inordinately unequal division of wealth in a State may have dangers for its stability. Wealth is more evenly divided in New Zealand than in almost any country in tho world, but suppose that the redressing were necessary, the enforcement of it, by those who, for their own part, gave up nothing in the process, would fall far short of a Christian virtue. Christianity requires those who have to share. It they refuse to share, Christianity to that extent is denied. Rut it is not fulfilled when those who want more band themselves together in the strength of a majority vote, which U the modern equivalent of Robin Hood’s force, to take it. That is not Christianity; it is only politics. It may be good politics or bad, according to degree, but it is the easiest thing in the world, the majority vote once secured, and as the exercise of tho power by those who lead a political party promises its reward in votes, it has no necessary connection even with unselfishness. It is certain also that the benefits that are promised to some at the expense of others are purely materialistic. The politics that mo most religious will abstain from religious language.