d. American Christianity compared with Teutonic.
It may seem absurd to try to compare Protestantism and American Christianity, since the American Christianity that is here being discussed is mainly the Protestantism of America. But it is not exclusively the Protestantism of America. The Roman Catholicism of the United States shows, though less markedly, the same traits. And within the Protestant Churches of America another kind of Christianity is growing up as the butterfly develops within the chrysalis. And, moreover, it is not wholly within the organized Protestantism of America that the new Christianity is developing. There is an unknown but vast amount of the new American Christianity outside the organized Churches of America. A part of this was once in the organized Churches but has lost interest in their spirit and aims. A part of it has never been attracted by the organized Churches. Another great--probably the greatest--element in the coming American Christianity is the Labor movement which, as it has been suggested, needs only to be broadened and more consciously spiritualized to be identical with the coming true and indigenous Church of America. It is, indeed, a grave question whether the coming American Christianity will gradually capture and transform the present Churches or whether, as in the Protestant Reformation, the new wine will have to be poured into new bottles, and a new Church arise distinct from, and even in conflict with, the present Churches.
One thing, at least, is clear.
Protestantism in its present form will not survive. The very name is inadequate. It is not self-explanatory. It can only be understood by reference to another and earlier Church. It is negative. It has no positive or vital content. It carries with it the unhappiness and partialness of division. It is essentially and incurably sectarian. The more extensive and comprehensive the body becomes, the less intelligible becomes the name. If Protestantism should become really catholic, that is, universal, the name would become a complete misnomer.
American Christianity, so far as it still calls itself Protestant, only continues to bear the name through unthinking habit. As soon as it reflects upon the name, it must disown it. American Christianity is too essentially catholic and comprehensive, too little concerned with the past, too impatient of the old outworn disputes, to be content with a name that must always convey a flavor of division and controversy.
Protestantism, sectarian in its nature as in its name, is inadequate to express the genius of American Christianity. The dominating principle of Protestantism has been individualism, and the dominant note of American Christianity is fraternity. America is the chosen home of fraternal societies. It is Rudyard Kipling, I think, who has said that of the famous revolutionary motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the Frenchman cares only for equality, the Englishman is resolute for liberty and despises both equality and fraternity, while the American who knows neither liberty nor equality will forgive a man for anything if only he is a good fellow. The American loves a "good mixer." A shrewd French observer nearly twenty years ago in "La Réligion dans la Société aux Etats-Unis" caught the spirit of this nascent American Christianity.
He found it, first, a social religion, and, as such, concerning itself more with society than with individuals; secondly, a positive religion, in its interest in what is human rather than in what is supernatural. It stands chiefly, he thought, for the idea of morality. It encourages a strong recognition of the fact that good people, without professing the same faith, are governed by the same rules of conduct, and that, if dogma divides, morality unites.
"The Americans," he said, "make fraternity, the actual form of which is social solidarity, the essence of Christianity. The moral unity for which they strive under the name of Christian unity is only the co-operation of all for the increased establishment of fraternity and solidarity. High above sects whose diversity seems a matter of indifference to them, they organize a religion which pervades society throughout its length and breadth, and tends towards being only a social spirit touched by the evangelical feeling.
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"This moral unity is indeed a religious unity and a Christian unity; this positivism is a Christian positivism. American humanism has received from Christianity all the traditional, sentimental, and poetical elements which distinguish a religion from a philosophy. American positivism is only a Christianity which has evolved.... The American religion may be called a Christian positivism or a positive Christianity. It has received from the past the traditional and the evangelical spirit. Traditional, it preserves the names and the forms of the Churches even when it changes their customs; it develops them from the interior. Evangelical, it keeps the figure of Jesus Christ before all, even when it does not recognize his divinity.