often suspect that the labor movement is not understood by the Church, that laboring-men are not heartily welcomed to its worship and membership, that money or the want of it controls the Church. As to the less thoughtful, the Church is often not in their thoughts at all. Nor is this all, or the worst. The Church, in much the same sense, is estranged from the wage-earners. While church-people are not, of course, positively hostile to laboring people, it is yet true that indifference and impatience too often mark the attitude of churchmen toward the labor movement. The Church thinks about as much and about as little of the union as the union does of the Church. Important as it is that workingmen should have a better appreciation of the Church, it is at least as important that churchmen should have a better appreciation of the labor movement. 3. The causes of this evil are not far to | seek. It is only blind uncharity that attributes it to the "sinfulness of laboring men." In that case all classes would be estranged from the Church, "for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." The chief cause of the workingman's indifference is probably his complete preoccupation with other things. Exhausting labor and the menace of poverty, the break-up of household regularity, the clatter of traffic and transportation, the brilliancy, variety and excitement of life in the modern city, are more than enough to pre-engage the mind and overcharge the life of the workingman in advance of the somewhat tardy and not too-pressing solicitations of the Church. And when the indifference awakens into conscious dissatisfaction, it is chiefly by way of reaction against the seeming indifference of the Church toward the labor movement. This reaction may be greatly in excess of its occasion, but what should concern Christian men is that it should have any occasion at all. Another chief cause of the evil is immigration, bringing to us, as it has, millions of workingmen who lose their old-world ideals of religion without acquiring the new. We note with devout gratitude a tendency toward a better understanding on both sides. The Outlook recently said: "Certainly a few years ago there was abundant reason for the belief that most wage-earners, and particularly members of trades-unions, felt either unwelcome or unregarded in church, and, on the whole, when not indifferent, rather resentful that the churches had so little to say about their problems of life and about the relation of religion to their peculiar struggles. Within a few years, however, there has occurred a marked change." Marking this change are such signs as the organic declarations of the religious denominations concerning the labor problems, the observance of Labor Sunday, the opening of labor gatherings with prayer, the exchange of fraternal delegates between ministerial bodies and labor unions, the mutually gratifying utterances of Church press and labor press, and the work of the social service organizations of the several denominations and the Social Service Commission of the Federated Churches. Probably no man can speak in speak in this regard with more authority than Charles Stelzle, who who says: "While there is still considerable alienation of the workingman from the Church, there is no other class of men among whom there is this conspicuous movement toward the Church." And yet the breach is not closed. 6 "The Church and Labor," p. 33. III LABOR'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE CHURCH "Let judgment begin at the house of the Lord." The Church can save neither the social order nor itself unless it shall recognize its own short-comings. Of these the most perilous is its estrangement from the labor movement, an estrangement largely due to mutual misunderstandings. Hence it is a primary necessity that churchmen should give a full, patient, and candid hearing to the complaints of laboring men against the Church. In so doing, our purpose must not be to controvert our critics, but to get a sympathetic understanding of their views, to judge and mend our own ways, and to find the common ground where they and we can work together for that grand-total of all human interests which we call the Kingdom of God. A statement follows of labor's complaint against the Church. It may not be all the truth nor even all true, but it is urged by men who speak in good faith, and hence it should help us to know the truth. 1. It is charged that the Church "has always stood by the ruling classes, because-it did not dare to oppose the men or the government which gave it support." In Richard Heath's phrase, it is "the captive City of God," and in the younger Henry George's, "the Nobles of Privilege are the chief patrons of the Church and have an overmastering influence."2 In evidence of such charges they cite the coincidence of ecclesiastical wealth and popular poverty during the middle ages; the opposition of Luther to the rising of the German peasants; the alliance of King and Church against the Commons of England; Adam Smith's arraignment of the Church in the Eighteenth Century for its servility to wealth,3 the attitude of American churches toward the anti-slavery movement; the almost unanimous vote of the English bishops in the House of Lords against the Workingmen's Compensation Act, the anti-liquor bills, and the Lloyd-George budget; the familiar clerical apologies for Standard Oil, and the opposition of prominent laymen to child-labor laws and social legislation of almost every sort. It might seem easy to argue that all this 1 See C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 9. 2 "The Menace of Privilege," p. 321. 3 See "The Wealth of Nations," Book V, Ch. I, Part III, Art. III. |