The Church and Modern Life

by Washington Gladden

The redemption of the physical order will be the result of the socialization of mankind. It is an integral part of the work that Christ came into the world to do. It is part of what he meant when he said that he came to save the world. When we realize this, we get some idea of the scope of the redemption which he proclaims. It is not a superficial or a sentimental thing that he proposes; it takes hold of life with the most comprehensive grasp; it proposes to redeem not only man but his environment.

It is not, however, the redemption of the physical order to which Christ primarily addresses himself. He begins in the spiritual realm. He begins with the individual. His first concern is to reveal to every child of God the great fact of the divine Fatherhood, and to bring him into filial relations. His whole programme for humanity rests on this simple possibility of realizing the Fatherhood of God. If this can be realized, everything else will follow. If any man is in the right filial relations with his Father in heaven, he cannot be in wrong social relations with his brother on the earth. If he is in harmony with God in thought and feeling, he must think God's thoughts about his neighbor, and the law of love will be the law of all his conduct. No man can love the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with heart and soul and mind without loving his neighbor as himself. Heartily to believe what Jesus has told us about the Father, and fully to enter into fellowship with him, is to put ourselves into such relations with our fellow men that every duty we owe them will be spontaneously performed. In a society composed of men who were thus in harmony with God the only social question for each man would be, "How can I best befriend and serve my neighbor?"

That the religion of Jesus begins here, in the heart of the individual, cannot be questioned. And it must never be forgotten that there can be no sound social construction which does not build on this foundation. But it is well to remember also that here, as everywhere, a foundation calls for a building, and is useless and unsightly and obstructive without it. The foundation of Christianity is the reconciliation of individual souls to God, and the establishment of friendship between these individual souls and God; but what is the structure for which this foundation is laid? It is the establishment of the same divine friendship among men. That is the building for which the foundation calls. If the building does not go up, the foundation is worthless. If the building does not go up, the foundation itself will crumble and decay. The only way to save a foundation is to cover it with a building.

Fault might be found with the figure, but the fact which it imperfectly illustrates is beyond gainsaying. The right relation to God, which Jesus always makes fundamental, cannot be maintained except as it issues in right relations with men. Here is the apostle John's blunt way of putting it: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also."

The commandment is, in fact, only the statement of a logical necessity. How could any human being enter into a loving communion with that great Friend whose love is always brooding over our race, who is seeking to do us good and not evil all the days of our lives, who is kind even to the unthankful and the evil,--and not be a lover of his fellow men and a servant of all their needs?

It is evident, therefore, that a religion which has no room in it for social questions cannot be the Christian religion. The social question is the one question which Christianity--genuine Christianity--never ceases to ask. The first thing it wishes to know about your religious experience is, how it affects your relations with your fellow men. It insists that your relations must first be right with God, but in the same breath it declares that there is no way of knowing whether or not your relations are right with God except by observing how you behave among your fellow men. Faith is the root, but faith without works is dead, being alone; and works concern your human relations.

These principles enable us to determine what is the business of the church. Its business is to foster and propagate Christianity, and Christianity exists to establish in this world the kingdom of heaven. The church is not, therefore, an end in itself; it is an instrument; it is a means employed by God for the promotion, in the world, of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not an ecclesiastical establishment; it includes the whole of life,--business, politics, art, education, philanthropy, society in the narrow sense, the family: when all these shall be pervaded and controlled by the law of love, then the kingdom of heaven will have fully come. And the business of the church in the world is to bring all these departments of life under Christ's law of love. If it seeks to convert men, it is that they may be filled with the spirit of Christ and may govern their conduct among men by Christ's law. If it gathers them together for instruction or for inspiration, it is that they may be taught Christ's way of life and sent out into the world to live as he lived among their fellow men. Its function is to fill the world with the knowledge of Christ, the love of Christ, the life of Christ. That is what Christ meant by saving the world. The world is saved when this is true of it, and it is never saved till then. The work of the church is successful just to the extent to which it succeeds in Christianizing the social order in the midst of which it stands.

If by means of its ministrations, the community round about the church is steadily becoming more Christian; if kindness, sympathy, purity, justice, good-will, are increasing in their power over the lives of men; if business methods are becoming less rapacious; if employers and employed are more and more inclined to be friends rather than foes; if politicians are growing conscientious and unselfish; if the enemies of society are in retreat before the forces of decency and order; if amusements are becoming purer and more rational; if polite society is getting to be simpler in its tastes and less ostentatious in its manners and less extravagant in its expenditures; if poverty and crime are diminishing; if parents are becoming more wise and firm in the administration of their sacred trust, and children more loyal and affectionate to their parents,--if such fruits as these are visible on every side, then there is reason to believe that the church knows its business and is prosecuting it with efficiency. If none of these effects are seen in the life of the community, the evidence is clear that the church is neglecting its business, and that failure must be written across its record.

Even though it be true that large numbers are added to its membership, that its congregations are crowded, its revenues abundant, its missionary contributions liberal, and its social prestige high; yet if the standards of social morality in its neighborhood are sinking rather than rising, and the general social drift and tendency is toward animalism and greed and luxury and strife, the church must be pronounced a failure: nay, even if it be believed that the church is succeeding in getting a great many people safely to heaven when they die; yet if the social tendencies in the world about it are all downward, its work, on the whole, must be regarded as a failure. Its main business is not saving people out of the world, it is saving the world. When it is evident that the world, under its ministration, is growing no better but rather worse, no matter what other good things it may have the credit of doing, the verdict is against it.

This judgment rests, of course, against the collective church of the community or the nation, rather than against any local congregation. It may be that there are a hundred churches in a city, and that ten of them are working efficiently to leaven society with Christian ideas and principles, while the other ninety are content to fill up their membership lists and furnish the consolations of religion to the people who make up their congregations. The church of that city would probably be a failure, but the ten congregations which had accepted Christ's idea of the church and were striving to realize it could not be charged with the failure. They would have done what they could to prevent it. If the rest had been working in the same way, the results would have been different.