CHRISTIANITY v. COMMUNISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21920, 4 April 1933, Page 8

CHRISTIANITY v. COMMUNISM

TWO PLANS OF SALVATION. (Feom Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 21. The Bishop of Eipon (Dr E. A. Burroughs, who will be remembered in New Zealand) has addressed to people in his diocese a pastoral letter in which _he emphasises the challenge of Communism to Christianity and the responsibility of the Church for meeting that challenge by a better witness to the Christian faith. The Bishop writes:— Lenin, the father of modern Russian Communism, foresaw that it would be a life and death struggle between Communism and Christianity and laid iiis plans for the world domination of Communism long before they seemed likely to have any chance of being realised. His faith in the future isin itself a challenge to us. Now the battle is joined in nearly every country of the world. The real struggle is not between rival economic systems but between two plans of salvation; two missionary religions which are, by their very nature, world religions. Apart from their diametrically opposite first principles, the two plans have much in common; far more in common than many Christians recognise who have never seen Christianity except in the cramping framework of a capitalist society. The significant and alarming thing about Communism to-day is the religious fervour which it succeeds in kindling. . . . , . “ Evangelism and Education ” together sum up the needed programme; a programme parallel to that of the Communists themselves, and needing to be pushed forward with the same whole-souled enthusiasm.

. Spiritual force must meet spiritual force. Unless somehow we of His Church can wake up living, corporate enthusiasm for His “ plan of salvation,” on the same scale as that with which young Russia has watched and worked for the Soviet’s “Five-Year Plan,” there are already signs that we shall see (and deserve to°see) many of the best of our own younger folk go over to Communism. Why ? Not because its philosophy is a better one but because it seems to be able to call out something more like the fervour of early Christianity than is found as a rule within the churches, and because it does not shrink from the risks and pains of revolution where reform has failed. Not that there is any fear of Communism crushing out Christianity in the end. . . . The question is: When will Christianity prevail? In our time? lu the twentieth century? Or perhaps many hundreds of years hence, after a triumph of Communism lias first brought in a new dark age, bright (perhaps) with unparalleled material efficiency, but doomed in the end to ruin because “ the light that was in it was darkness” and it was found to be fighting against God? That is the question which the Christian Church of to-day can no longer evade. By all the signs we have our opportunity of revival now, if we will prepare ourselves and go to meet it.