CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

Evening Star, Issue 22454, 26 September 1936, Page 12

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

TO TBTB EDITOR. Sir.—“ Social Scientist” asks why Christianity has failed to cure the social evils. Christianity has done much, very much, for the world 1 , but to-day it is confronted with the greatest danger it has ever faced—viz., by Marxism and Communism, based on class hatred as the foundation stone of morality. It must be admitted that Christianity has failed to cure all o,unsocial ills, and also that it has failed to prevent the appearance of Marxism. It takes time for society, as well as for the individual, to grow up. Ihe great reason for the failure of Christianity to cure all oux* ills is tlie man has no.fc ' been sufficiently developed to understand Christ. Man has made of his teaching far too much a repressive force, so that, as is true wherever forcible repression is used, we are a-swing from one extreme to the other. Even in our own Dominion Christianity, in practice, relies in great measure on repression as a permanent solution of the difficulties in the individual and in society. Marxists and Communists preach to us another form of salvation to be gained by similar means—even more forcible repression. It is the search _ for salvation by repression that is driving the world, as well as many men in it, mad. What is needed is the recognition that Christ’s message to man was constructive and synthetic, and not repressive. He dined with publicans and sinners, turned, water into wine, and dealt gently with those taken in adultery. I do not suggest that our current Christianity is perfect. Far from it. I think the time is ripe for an advance in our moral conceptions for a reformation of the church that will make it drop its solution' by repression and seek salvation by developing the power of instructive synthesis of the conflicting impulses of the individual and of society.—l am, etc., Akti-Communist. September 23.