The Social Principles of Jesus - Walter Rauschenbusch

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It is the sin of Christendom that so few took this problem seriously until we were chastised for our moral stupidity and inertia. The young men and women of today will have to take this problem on their intellect and conscience for their lifetime, and propose to see it through.

      III

      Does religion create social unity or neutralize it? Does prayer isolate or connect? Has the force of religion in human history done more to divide or to consolidate men?

      Evidently religion may work both ways, and all who are interested in it must see to it that their religion does not escape control and wreck fraternity. Even mystic prayer and contemplation, which is commonly regarded as the flower of religious life, may make men indifferent to their fellows.

      [pg 027]

      It is worth noting that the prayer experiences of Jesus were not ascetic or unsocial. They prepared him for action. When he went into the desert after his baptism it was to settle the principles on which his Messianic work was to be done; his temptations prove that. When he went out from Capernaum to pray “a great while before day,” it was to launch his aggressive missionary campaign among the Galilæan villages. Prayer may be an emotional dissipation. Prayer is Christian only if it makes us realize our fellows more keenly and affectionately.

      It is one thing to praise love and another thing to practice it. We may theorize about society and ourselves be contrary and selfish units in it. Social unity is an achievement. A loving mind toward our fellows, even the cranky, is the prize of a lifetime. How can it be evoked and cultivated in us? That is one of the most important problems in education. Can it be solved without religious influences? Love will not up at the bidding. We can observe the fact that personal discipleship of Christ has given some persons in our acquaintance a rare capacity for love, for social sympathy, for peaceableness, for all the society-making qualities. We can make test of the fact for ourselves that every real contact with him gives us an accession of fraternity and greater fitness for nobler social unity. It makes us good fellows.

      IV

      The man who intelligently realizes the Chinese and the Zulu as his brothers with whom he must share the earth, is an ampler mind—other things being equal—than the man who can think of humanity only in terms of pale-faces. The consciousness of humanity will have to be wrought out just as the consciousness of nationality was gradually acquired. He who has it is ahead of his time and a pioneer of the future. The missionary puts himself in the position to acquire that wider sense of solidarity. By becoming a neighbor to remote people he broadens their conception of humanity [pg 028] and his own, and then can be an interpreter of his new friends to his old friends. The interest in foreign missions has, in fact, been a prime educational force, carrying a world-wide consciousness of solidarity into thousands of plain minds and hones that would otherwise have been provincial in their horizon.

      A world-wide civilization must have a common monotheistic faith as its spiritual basis. Such a faith must be unitive and not divisive. What the world needs is a religion with a powerful sense of solidarity.

      Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

       Table of Contents

      I. Solidarity in Human Life

      1. Are comradeship and team-work instinctive, or must they be learned?

      2. Do the symptoms of hatred prove or disprove social unity?

      3. Does a strong sense of social unity make a vigorous individualism harder to maintain?

      II. Christianity and Solidarity

      1. Give proof that Jesus felt a human hunger for companionship.

      2. How does the place assigned to love in the teachings of Jesus bear on solidarity? How does the duty of forgiveness connect with this?

      3. How does the spirit of the Lord's Prayer prove the place of solidarity in Christianity?

      III. Jesus and the Social Groups

      1. Where did Jesus treat communities as composite personalities? Would it be equally just today to hold cities responsible as moral units?

      2. How did Jesus trace a moral solidarity between generations?

      [pg 029]

      IV. Solidarity in Modern Life

      1. Where do you see the principle of solidarity accepted and where do you see it denied in modern social life?

      2. In what way does war outrage Jesus' principles of social unity? Does it ever promote fraternity and solidarity? If so how?

      3. Is class consciousness a denial of social solidarity or an approach to it? How can group loyalty be made to contribute to the common weal?

      4. How should we value the willingness of organized labor to stand together, particularly on strike? What light does bitterness toward scabs throw on social solidarity?

      5. Why is the feeling of antagonism between employer and employe so common? Does a wage system make this inevitable? Can a real sense of cooperation be secured? If so how?

      6. If a manufacturer has a monopoly, how much profit will loyalty to Christian principles permit him to make?

      7. When is competition unfraternal? Would socialism insure fraternity?

      8. Do college fraternities practice fraternity?

      V. Strengthening Solidarity

      1. How can the law of love be made the basis of modern business?

      2. Does religion create social unity or neutralize it? How about prayer?

      3. How does the Christian law of love bear on the relations of the races in America?

      4. What have Christian missions done to lead society from the nationalistic to the international and inter-racial stage?

      5. Can world-wide social unity be secured without the influence of Christianity?

      VI. For Special Discussion

      1. To what extent does our present commercial and [pg 030] industrial organization furnish a basis for experience of solidarity and education in it?

      2. What aspects of modern advertising are Christian and which are non-Christian?

      3. To what extent is the law of the market compatible with a fraternal conception of society?

      4. Would a successful socialist organization create a stronger sense of solidarity or would divisive interests get in by new ways?

      5. Which has the better inducements to loyalty, a college, or a trade union? Which has more of it?

      6. How does the team spirit go wrong among students?

      [pg 031]

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