The New Christianity Part 7

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 Religion dans la Societe 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.

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"Therefore it is not Protestantism.... The t.i.tle of Christianity is the only one broad enough to designate it; yet this must be taken in its evangelical sense.... The American religion is living and fruitful because it is national."

To discern a distinct American Christianity in 1902 showed much more insight than its recognition indicates to-day. American Christianity has developed greatly since then and is now developing still more rapidly under the forcing conditions of the war and the great reconstruction. The work of reconstruction will not have been carried very far before the incongruity of this new type of Christianity with the hard, individualistic, militant spirit of Teutonic Christianity will become apparent to all.

When American Christianity comes to full and clear self-consciousness, when it, so to speak, finds itself, it will be found to have a very simple and brief and intelligible creed. Not a shallow creed, however, but a deep and vital one. It will put, probably, no other question to candidates for members.h.i.+p than the Apostolic Church put, Dost thou believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?

Its emphasis will be where Jesus placed it, not on opinions, but on spirit, the spirit of brotherhood.

Democratic it will, therefore, be as well, for democracy is bound up with brotherhood.

Finally, with a little creed it will have a big programme. It will live to establish the Kingdom of G.o.d on the earth. Its helpful, healing, redeeming, Christ-like activities will be infinite in the Christian and in the heathen lands.

And as pre-eminently practical, clericalism will die out of it.

Preachers, teachers, missionaries there will be, but the gulf that has divided these from the laity will be closed. Sacerdotalism, even in its most attenuated and vestigial forms, will disappear.

Throughout this chapter, it is, perhaps, hardly necessary to add, the word, American, is used in its proper continental sense. By American Christianity is meant the new and distinct type of Christianity which is developing in the Protestant churches of the United States and Canada and also, though less markedly, in the Roman Catholic. Politically distinct as these countries are likely to remain, socially and religiously they cannot escape the influences of neighborhood.

In some respects, as has been noted, the United States, on account of its republican const.i.tution, its political rupture with the old world, and its more strongly developed self-consciousness, has been more favorable than Canada to the growth of that new form of Christianity, yet signs are not wanting, especially in that western section in which the coming Canada seems to be most clearly discernible, that the younger and smaller and so, perhaps, the more mobile country may outstrip her older and greater neighbor in the formation, out of, at least, the Protestant denominations, of a national Christianity, simple, yet free and varied, practical, democratic, brotherly, in a word, truly catholic.

Inst.i.tutions which have outlived their usefulness usually retain an appearance of strength until the hour of collapse. Denominationalism in Canada is still a stately tree, but the heart is dust.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT CHRISTIANITY

But American Christianity is not final Christianity, nor even the highest and richest form of Christianity in sight, unless it blossom into a yet richer and more varied loveliness than it at present gives promise of. Of all actual forms of Christianity it seems to have the fairest promise, but it will probably prove to be only a tributary, though a great one, of a still mightier river.

Is it possible for us at this stage to discern at least the outline of the Great Christianity that is to be?

Certainly, every great historic form of Christianity has been tried by history and found wanting. As much of primitive Jewish Christianity as refused to merge in the large Catholic Christianity of the Greco-Roman world dried up into an unfruitful, bigoted, and eccentric heresy and perished.

Greek Christianity emphasized doctrine and tore itself by doctrinal disputes into a shattered, helpless welter of vituperative sects, powerless to spread the Gospel, powerless to withstand the Mohammedan,--the shame and tragedy of Christian history.

Latin Christianity emphasized the organization and became the enemy of freedom and progress which, with few exceptions, every Roman Catholic people has had to fight and dethrone to escape intellectual and moral decay and death.

Teutonic Christianity has emphasized freedom and the rights of the individual. Like Islam, it has been a fighting faith. And judgment has fallen on it in its loss of unity, its bitter and wasteful sectarian wrangles, and the ferocious strife between labor and capital, the outcome of which may be one of the great tragedies of history.

[#] It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remark that Protestantism is here being compared, not with Roman Catholicism, but with ideal Christianity. Roman Catholicism, too, has been a fighting faith, and in the appalling century and a half of religious wars that set in with the Protestant Reformation it was the older faith that first resorted to force. [Transcriber's note: there was no reference to this footnote in the source book.]

Protestantism has taught her people to fight for their rights and now is helpless before the selfish conflict of her own children that have learned too well her spirit.

In the great industrial conflict now reaching its height, one may safely prophesy Protestantism will perish--or be transformed.

She has taught her children to think; she has taught them to cherish freedom; she has not taught them to love.

Since by far the most of any readers this little book may be fortunate enough to find will be Protestant, it may be fitting and useful to point out more specifically the defects of Protestantism than the defects of other forms of Christianity among whose adherents, probably, the writer can scarcely hope to find many readers.

The Protestant Reformation, so far as it was not a struggle for liberty, national and intellectual and religious, was a doctrinal reformation.

There was not much more of the spirit of Jesus, His gentleness, meekness, love, on one side than on the other. Erasmus understood Christianity on the whole better than Luther. Sir Thomas More was more Christian than John Calvin.

The Protestant Reformation was in its successful forms marked by little sympathy with the poor and the oppressed. It declined to recognize any duties to the serf except that of giving him the Gospel. Luther washed his hands of the peasants and calmly abandoned them to the savage vengeance of the princes when they refused to be satisfied with the liberty of Gospel preaching.

Protestantism has been, except in a few despised sects, militant, dogmatic, self-reliant, in a word, masculine. The gentler feminine characteristics of Christianity it has very slightly recognized.

When we think of the genius of Protestantism, we think of a humble monk, in the majesty of a conscientious conviction defying the two most powerful rulers of Europe, the Pope and the Emperor; we think of the indomitable sea-beggars of Holland and the heroic defence of Leyden; of the white-plumed Henry of Navarre and the battles of the League; of the splendidly audacious execution of Charles I., of Jenny Geddes' stool, the solemn League and Covenant and the b.l.o.o.d.y field of Drumclog; of the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, singing Luther's great hymn, _Ein'feste Burg ist unser Gott_, as they moved on to the glorious but dear-bought victory of Lutzen; we think of the ma.s.sacre of Drogheda and the undying defence of Derry; and of that typical Protestant and superb fighter, the rugged, dour, and unconquerable Ulster man whose unrelenting opposition and deep-rooted pa.s.sion for domination have been so great an obstacle to Irish peace and the unity of the English-speaking world. Protestantism has had a great and a beneficent and a heroic history, but it has reproduced only imperfectly the Christianity of Jesus.

Meekness and long-suffering were outstanding characteristics of Jesus and of His early followers; they have rarely been outstanding characteristics of Protestantism. Perhaps Protestantism has been of necessity a man of war from its youth. Yet primitive Christianity encountered fiercer persecution and did not take the sword.

Protestantism did not suffer long before she grasped the sword. She has, on the whole, followed Christ's precepts of non-resistance never when she had a fighting chance.

Primitive Christianity by patience and love conquered and Christianized the Roman Empire in three hundred years. Protestantism in more than three hundred years has gained not a foot beyond the territory won in the first rush of evangelical enthusiasm, and has lost territories she at first held. It is the demonstration of the futility of a fighting Christianity. Nowhere has the interaction of the two religions been a.s.sociated with more fighting than in Ireland, and nowhere has Protestantism as an evangelical missionary force been more of a failure.

Gentleness, patience, humility have not been the strong points of Protestantism. She has been proud, vigorous, masterful, impatient of control, and to her have been given the kingdoms of the world. But not to her has been given the Kingdom Jesus promised to the meek.

In short, in Protestantism there is much of Christianity but there is also much simply of the old Teutonic spirit. Protestantism is not pure or primitive or ultimate Christianity. It is Teutonic Christianity, no more fitted to prevail than Greek or Latin Christianity. It is the faith of the fighter, the wrestler, the individualist.

Perhaps no community calling itself Christian suggests so remotely the tender name Jesus gave His disciples, "my sheep." Who, looking on a prosperous Protestant congregation in town or country, with shrewdness, vigilance, self-reliance written on almost every face, would think of saying, "Fear not, little flock"? Freedom is what Protestantism has demanded and fought for, freedom to think for herself and take her own course and fight her own battles, every kind of freedom but one, the only freedom that need not be fought for, that can never be fought for,--freedom to love and to serve.

Protestantism in its original form is pa.s.sing away; it has run its course; its day is nearing its close. Where it has not caught the vision of the new and the Great Christianity, its churches are being deserted, its preachers are being seized with stammering lips and despondent heart,[#] Its spirit cannot solve the problems of the new age. It must become meek and lowly in heart. It must learn to love.

Rich man and poor man must stand in its churches as they stand in the sight of G.o.d. Like medieval Christianity, it calls for a new Reformation--not a new creed but a new heart, the heart of a little child, humble, self-distrustful, not quick to resent, or even to see a slight, eager to love, delighting to serve.

[#] These words are written with reverent recognition of the innumerable forms of ministry to the bodies and souls of men that are being carried on by devoted men and women in the Protestant Churches, but, also, with the full conviction that these are slight and partial compared with the outburst of devotion and service which will be aroused when the vision of the new Christianity seizes great ma.s.ses of men and women as the pa.s.sion for freedom seized Germany in the years 1517 to 1524 or France in 1789.

Never were the young men and women of Protestant lands so ready for a great task, but that task must be broadly Christian and broadly human.