Labor and the Church

...There is a feeling among the masses that if war comes again the churches will, as in the past, line up with the devil and forsake their Master and His teachings...

...The Commission on Social Service of the Federal Council has participated in several surveys in mines and mills and when the findings have been published the Council has been accused of going over to the labor group "bag and baggage...

...As a matter of fact the writers express themselves on the church rather more than on religion...

...Lansbury is the most outstanding leader of the Socialist group in the British Labor movement-one finds one of the most violent indictments of the church in the symposium...

...There is also a very strong feeling that the Catholic Church has always been and is today the mother and friend of the working man and that her heart yearns for him...

...Therefore, men who from 1914 to 1918 saw the churches of all denominations taking part in recruiting, in singing hymns of war and offering prayers to a God of war, revolt against such a travesty of Christ's teaching...

...Of course nothing is farther from the truth...

...Arthur Henderson-- now in the British Cabinet-is a good Methodist, a lay preacher in that communion and pays fine tribute to the churches for all they have done for labor...

...It stands for the existing social order...

...In other words, they try to chloroform us with stories of heaven while the robbers plunder the world...

...AREAL service has been rendered to the Church by Professor Jerome Davis through the symposium on labor's attitude toward religion recently published by the Macmillan Company under the title: Labor Speaks for Itself on Religion...

...It defends imperialism, war and economic injustice...

...My own experience has been that in most churches the laboring man is as cordially welcomed as the business man, and where he thinks he is not, it is a fancied grievance...

...I do not propose to review the book here, but I should like to jot down some impressions I got from reading it which may be of interest to those who are seriously concerned over the relations of the churches and the masses...

...Most of the contributors write with great frankness but one is not altogether sure just to what degree they represent their constituency...

...Of all this there is hardly a mention by these leaders...

...The organized robbers and organized beggars support each other...

...One of the Communist leaders-Mr...

...It teaches people to be content with their lot...

...Now it is not at all true that all the fights of labor, their combined efforts, their frequent strikes, are after these high things...

...One is a little surprised that so many labor leaders attack, or at least look with contempt upon, an organization which has been the best friend labor has had...

...Most of the criticism of the church, especially that which can be read between the lines, is that it is not always the champion of labor...

...The Communist party believes in a planned and conscious social economic activity of all the masses, and this demands a complete extinction of all religious prejudices...

...Thirty-one labor leaders are represented in the symposium, of whom thirteen are from America, the others from Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, China, Austria, Australia, Belgium and Japan...

...Anyhow, one cannot quite get away from the impression that the chief reason these labor leaders have no interest in the church is because it is not a labor church, not part of the union...

...The party is striving to break the bonds between the exploiting classes and religious propaganda...

...The various national conferences of the churches have come out with some very strong pronouncements on industry, and the criticism has always been that they leaned far toward labor...

...It is largely concerned with sin, forgiveness, judgments, reward and punishment...

...Yet it is a fact that many close observers of industrial changes believe that the churches have done more by their pronouncements and sympathy to win for labor its higher wages, its shorter hours, its improved conditions, its recognition than has labor itself with all its strikes and agitations...

...One would never learn from most of them that the church had ever spoken or worked for that justice for which labor has been striving in the last fifty years...

...Even the last message of a few weeks ago was sharply criticized by one of our finest religious journals on the ground that it implied a recognition of the union and said nothing about the non-union laborer...

...Banish it...

...The chapters by the Communists and the extreme Socialists exhibit unmitigated scorn of the church, and generally of religion itself...

...His words on this point are significant because they undoubtedly reflect a rapidly growing feeling among the masses: The late war destroyed many hoary-headed lies and vain illusions...

...No Christian can possibly accept the blasphemous notion that it is God's will that man should invent poison gas or spend time and energy inventing the hellish machinery of tanks and caterpillars and all the latest destructive devices of hell itself...

...One thing the symposium certainly reveals to us- that labor does not understand the church...

...It is the church's attitude toward war almost more than its condoning of the present economic order that stirs him to wrath...

...These messages have often leaned so far to the side of labor that they have been bitterly assailed...

...It is a great mistake to think that it is only out of Russia that this determined attack on all forms of religions is coming...

...The church is supposed to be the home of all people, and the only time she can take the side of labor is when labor is the victim of some injustice or is working to rid industry of some abuse or is striving for a living wage...

...Quite recently the Southern Methodist Churches have expressed themselves very freely on hours, wages, child labor and unhealthful conditions in the southern mills...

...We believe that his conclusion is accurate...

...For many years the Federal Council of Churches has been issuing a Labor Sunday message...

...It is the great buttress of the rich and the bourgeoisie...

...Most of the writers actually believe that the church is on the side of the capitalist, or is often in league with him, or is an association of capitalists rather than of all the people, and so on...

...The Editors...

...It is "the opiate of the people...

...The established church has always been on the side of the rich and powerful...

...There is, on the other hand, constant testimony on the part of the Catholic leaders to the help their church has been to them in sustaining them in times of great crisis...

...It is concerned more with one's eternal spiritual welfare than his temporal and material...

...In the light of all this the Catholic thinks of the church quite apart from the labor movement, as is noticeable at once in reading this symposium...

...We all know that victory came to the strongest side-the side with most man-power, money and up-to-date armaments...

...Perhaps it is the training they have had in statesmanship, perhaps because they are readers of good books...

...Perhaps the church does not understand labor...

...Few among us now believe in the "God of Battles...

...It has no help for the people in the things that count...

...Perhaps the immediate and most pressing duty is the cultivation of mutual understanding...

...For this support the ruling classes donate liberally to the church...

...This is natural, I suppose, but rather misses the point, inasmuch as the church is not supposed to be the champion of any class-capitalists, agriculturists, professional men, workers in industries and business artizans or day laborers...

...The church baptizes, confirms, marries and stands by your bedside when you depart this life...

...The chapter by James P. Thompson, the national organizer of the I. W. W. in America is just as virulent...

...He insists that the working-men admire Jesus and that Socialism is largely the attempt to apply this teaching to society...

...The National Welfare Conference of the Catholic Church has taken some very advanced stands in its pronouncements-and always in favor of labor...

...It is not at all true that in the various industrial disputes labor is always right and capitalism always wrong...

...No true follower of the Jesus of history or any of those who accept the teachings of the early Fathers of the church think it possible the Founder of our faith could ever be found driving an airplane in the skies in order to bomb women, children and men, or even flocks and herds, as is done in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the East, or sailing beneath the sea, launching torpedoes against shiploads of human beings...

...And if labor ever achieves that industrial partnership, that share in the running of industry, for which she is now striving, it will largely be by the demands of the churches that she be represented, just as the first claim for it came from outstanding churchmen...

...But he thinks the churches have departed from Him and His teachings...

...He tells us that many of the most influential labor leaders are active religious workers, and that here the explanation is to be found of the fact that the spirit of the British trade union movement has its roots firmly embedded in the soil of religion, and that the movement differs in this respect very markedly from similar movements in other parts of the world...

...The Communist party does not limit itself to a separation of church and state...

...Yet one might easily get the impression from many of these labor leaders that labor is always right, and that they have no interest in the church because it is not "beside labor fighting all her battles...

...The Commonweal discussed the book from its own point of view some time ago, and is now glad to welcome the following statement from a non-Catholic clergyman...

...The next thing one observes is the totally different attitude the Catholic leaders take toward the church from that taken by the Protestants...

...Evidently, so far as one can gather from this symposium, the Catholic leaders and Catholic working-men are as devout and as regular in attendance at church as any other class in the community...

...In the articles by the British labor leaders one finds a sharp division of opinion...

...Even now, with all the experience of the past thirteen years, the churches do not as an organized body declare against war...

...The All-union Communist party in the thirteenth article of its program demands of all its members an active anti-religious propaganda...

...It talks about the soul instead of the body...

...Yaroslavsky, the Secretary of the Central Control Commission of the Soviet government-represents the main contentions of them all: The All-union Communist party is the vanguard of the proletariat and leads the workers and peasantry by means of Socialism toward the final victory over the international bourgeoisie...

...The average Catholic does not think of the church except in terms of spiritual ministration...

...It ridicules all religion: This organization designed to praise God and help Him run the universe is known as the church...

...My first impression was that most of the labor leaders would think very highly of the church if it were always on their side and always stood behind them in their demands...

...One cannot help feeling here and there that the writer is very anxious to urge his individual opinions about the church and has forgotten his compatriots...

...On the other hand, in George Lansbury's chapter- Mr...

...The world would be better off without it...

...It must of necessity spread anti-religious propaganda, using the principles and methods of Comrade Lenin...

...Today under capitalism they teach the working class the doctrine of humility: tell them that if they get a slap on one cheek to turn the other-and "blessed are the poor...

...The status of religion in the world of economic and social facts is not clear, and there is certainly need for "the cultivation of mutual understanding...

...It takes the mind off this world and focuses it on future worlds of which we know nothing...

...By the way, why is it that these British labor leaders, Macdonald, Henderson, Snowden, Webb, Clynes and the rest, can write so much more powerful English than our American leaders, exhibit real distinction of style-in other words, write like real statesmen...

...The average church throughout the country and in Europe tries to be the church of all the people, and generally is...

...They tell us to bear the cross and wear the crown, that we will get back in the next world what is stolen from us in this...

...The next impression I got was that the labor leaders are either very ignorant of the advanced stand great sections of the church, as well as many of its most eminent leaders, have taken on industrial matters, or they did not like to recognize it...

...There is little criticism of its attitude toward labor, none of that silly talk about the domination of the church by the capitalist, so to the front in the Protestant critics...

...Lynch has profited by a great deal of experience in working for social peace...

...Religion is the enemy of all progress...