Christianity and Progress

by Harry Emerson Fosdick

LECTURE III

THE GOSPEL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

I

Our last lecture started with the proposition that the dominant influence in the intellectual and practical activity of the modern age is man's scientific mastery over life. This present lecture considers one of the consequences of this primary fact: namely, the humanitarian desire to take advantage of this scientific control of life so to change social conditions that mankind may be relieved from crushing handicaps which now oppress it. For the growth of scientific knowledge and control has been coincident with a growth of humanitarian sentiment. This movement for human relief and social reform, in the midst of which we live, is one of the chief influences of our time. It has claimed the allegiance of many of the noblest folk among us. Its idealism, its call to sacrifice, the concreteness of the tasks which it undertakes and of the gains which it achieves, have attracted alike the fine spirits and the practical abilities of our generation. What attitude shall the Christian Church take toward this challenging endeavour to save society? How shall she regard this passionate belief in the possibility of social betterment and this enthusiastic determination to achieve it? The question is one of crucial importance and the Church is far from united on its answer. Some Christians claim the whole movement as the child of the Church, born of her spirit and expressing her central purpose; others disclaim the whole movement as evil and teach that the world must grow increasingly worse until some divine cataclysm shall bring its hopeless corruption to an end; others treat the movement as useful but of minor import, while they try to save men by belief in dogmatic creeds or by carefully engineered emotional experiences. Meanwhile, no words can exaggerate the fidelity, the vigour, the hopefulness, and the elevated spirit with which many of our best young men and women throw themselves into this campaign for better conditions of living. Surely, the intelligent portion of the Church would better think as clearly as possible about a matter of such crucial import.

At first sight, the devotee of social Christianity is inclined impatiently to brush aside as mere ignorant bigotry on the Church's part all cautious suspicion of the social movement. But there is one real difficulty which the thoughtful Christian must perceive when he compares the characteristic approach to the human problem made by the social campaign, on the one side, and by religion, on the other. Much of the modern social movement seems to proceed upon the supposition that we can save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance. There are societies to change everything that can be changed and, because the most obvious and easy subjects of transformation are the external arrangements of human life, men set themselves first and chiefly to change those. We are always trying to improve the play by shifting the scenery. But no person of insight ever believed that the manipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems. Said Emerson, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." Said Herbert Spencer, "No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts." Said James Anthony Froude, "Human improvement is from within outwards." Said Carlyle, "Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of." Said Mrs. Browning:

"It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man
To move the masses even to a cleaner stye:
….. Ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within."

Now, religion's characteristic approach to the human problem is represented by this conviction that "life develops from within." So far from expecting to save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance, it habitually has treated outward circumstance as of inferior moment in comparison with the inner attitudes and resources of the spirit. Economic affluence, for example, has not seemed to Christianity in any of its historic forms indispensable to man's well-being; rather, economic affluence has been regarded as a danger to be escaped or else to be resolutely handled as one would handle fire—useful if well managed but desperately perilous if uncontrolled. Nor can it be said that Christianity has consistently maintained this attitude without having in actual experience much ground for holding it. The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a decent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one. The morals of Fifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is it possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of relative economic standing. It is undoubtedly true that folks and families often have their moral stamina weakened and their personalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is an open question whether more folks and families have not lost their souls by rising into wealth. Still, after all these centuries, the "rich fool," with his overflowing barns and his soul that sought to feed itself on corn, is a familiar figure; still it is as easy for a camel to go through a needle's eye as for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. When, therefore, the Christian, approaching the human problem, not from without in, but from within out, runs upon this modern social movement endeavouring to save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance, his cautious and qualified consent may be neither so ignorant nor so unreasonable as it at first appears.

As an example of manipulated circumstance in which we are asked to trust, consider the new international arrangements upon which the world leans so heavily for its hopes of peace. Surely, he would be a poor Christian who did not rejoice in every reasonable expectation which new forms of co-operative organization can fulfil. But he would be a thoughtless Christian, too, if he did not see that all good forms of international organization are trellises to give the vines of human relationship a fairer chance to grow; but if the vines themselves maintain their old acid quality, bringing out of their own inward nature from roots of bitterness grapes that set the people's teeth on edge, then no external trellises will solve the problem. It is this Christian approach to life, from within out, which causes the common misunderstanding between the social movement and the Church. The first thinks mainly of the importance of the trellis; the second thinks chiefly about the quality of the vine.

The more deep and transforming a man's own religious experience has been, the more he will insist upon the importance of this inward approach. Here is a man who has had a profound evangelical experience. He has gone down into the valley of the shadow with a deep sense of spiritual need; he has found in Christ a Saviour who has lifted him up into spiritual freedom and victory; he has gone out to live with a sense of unpayable indebtedness to him. He has had, in a word, a typical religious experience at its best with three elements at the heart of it: a great need, a great salvation, a great gratitude. When such a man considers the modern social movement, however beautiful its spirit or admirable its concrete gains, it seems to him superficial if it presents itself as a panacea. It does not go deep enough to reach the soul's real problems. The continual misunderstanding between the Church and the social movement has, then, this explanation: the characteristic approach of the Christian Gospel to the human problem is from within out; the characteristic approach of much of the modern social movement is from without in.