The Christian crusade for world democracy

Front matter

ICOCK

Class JSJ^^2l^52)

Book. His

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword 7

I. Making Democracy Safe for the World 11

Foreword

Two men stood in the Colosseum at Rome.

^ ^ Think of the men who have stood here ! ' ' said one.

^' Think of the men who ivill!" said the other.

That is the Christian outlook in all ages. It fronts the dawn. Its word of command is "Eyes Front!"

The one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Methodist Missions in 1819 is not being celebrated by a history of the past, but by a program for the future. The Centenary World Program of Methodism is an expression of the only answer which the Christian Church can make to a world at war — a vigorous and world-wide extension of the kingdom of God.

Two volumes dealing with the place of Christianity in the world situation are published as part of the observance of the Centenary of Methodist Missions.

The present volume deals with the relation of Christian missions to world democracy. A companion volume, "Christian Democracy for America/^ considers the place of the church in strengthening the forces of Christian democracy in our own land.

The books are designed for use in Mission Study Classes in Epworth Leagues, Young People's Societies, Church groups, and Sunday Schools, as well as for general reading.

Acknowledgment is made to Miss Gail M. Kennedy for assistance in the collection of material.

This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation. . . . And we live in it.

— H. G. Wells, in Mr. Britling Sees It Through.

Would that men could see that we are living not only in the crisis of the greatest war that has ever afflicted mankind, but also in the Advent of Revolution, at once material, moral, and spiritual; wider, I believe, and deeper than any which in some thousand years has transformed civilization on earth. We are on the eve of what must prove to be a revaluation of our habits and thoughts. Now, in a state of revolution things move, change, appear, and disappear with lightning velocity. Things which we imagine to be trifles suddenly swell up into incalculable forces. Changes which in normal times could hardly be worked through in generations spring up completed in months or weeks. New things which were Utopian dreams of yesterday are truisms and facts to-day. A state of revolution is a social earthquake, in which neither things nor persons remain what they were. All are inverted.

' — Frederic Harrison.

All the world is in the melting pot. Old things are passing away. All things may become new, not as a result of magic, not because of chance, not because of the war, but because through the Christian churches there shall be sufficient leadership to take hold of these nations of the Near East, of all parts of Europe that may need our ministry, as well as the Far East, Southern Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to lead them out into the new and better age.

— John B. Mott.

Trumpeter, sound for the splendor of God I Sound the Music whose name is law.

Whose service is perfect freedom still. The august order that rules the stars! Bid the anarchs of night withdraw.

Too long the Destroyers have worked their will. Sound for the last, the last of the wars ! Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us. On to the City of God.

— Alfred Noyes.

Chapter I Making Democracy Safe For The World

In the years of the great war the world has crossed a new International Date Line. It is impossible for anyone to estimate accurately the full significance of the time in which he lives, but there is a widespread unanimity of opinion that only one date has surpassed in importance to mankind these days in which we live. That date is the shining peak of time which separates A. D. from B. C. In 1910 the world's missionary conference at Edinburgh declared, ^'The next ten years will in all probability constitute a turning point in human history." If ever a prophecy was fulfilled beyond the farthest dream of those who made it, it was that one. For while it would doubtless have proved true from the natural development of forces then in sight, even had there been no war, the convulsion which has shaken civilization to its foundations is effecting changes so momentous and has brought into action forces so powerful that no mind can gauge their possibilities. The future will in all probability look back on these years, not merely as a turning point in history, but as determining the destiny of mankind for ages to come.

A World Situation

It is not an exaggerated use of language to say that for the first time in history there has developed a ivorld situation. The phrase has often been used before, but until the present conflict drew the whole world into its vortex, no one train of events has ever bound up the destinies of all nations together. During the early days of the war the question was frequently asked, ^'What shall it be called! By what name shall it be known in history?'' Some, with pathetic optimism, proposed to call it ^'The War of 1914." For a

12 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY

long time we vainly imagined it might be called, ^^The European War." The question is asked no longer. The titanic explosions of the conflict have burst the bonds of geography: It has named itself — ' ' The World War." And that very name, ^'The World War," is more than a geographical measurement. It is history. For it records one of the greatest results of the war so far, the discovery of the ivorld as a ivhole. It is prophecy as well. For the conflict is not only an appalling war of the world, hut a ivar for a tvorld, a new ivorld. The hope of mankind for that new order of life, is gathered up in the words in which President Wilson has voiced the mind and heart of the allied nations — ^'The world must be made safe for democracy."

There are four great aspects of the present tumultuous days of conflict which have brought to the Church of Christ the largest opportunity and the gravest challenge which it has ever faced. The first is the agony and loss of battle, which can neither be conceived nor computed, the fact that we are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in the history of mankind. The second is the utterly new consciousness of the world as a whole. The third is that the world, both as a result of the war and of forces which preceded it, is in the most plastic and formative state it has ever had. The fourth is the fact that by far the larger portion of the human family has set out on a crusade for the winning and guarding of democracy. These four aspects of the present world situation intermingle and overlap at many points, but each brings its distinct and overwhelming call to the Christian Church.

A Shattered Civilization

Whatever may be thought of the causes of the war, or its outcome, a world engaged in slaughter on an unprecedented scale ; a world in agony, in mourning and in ruins presents a searching test to Christianity. The cost of the conflict in suffering, in death, in destruction, outruns the power of the fleetest imagination to conceive. Colossal and malignant forces of destruction have been at work which make all former wars, even those of Napoleon, seem like sham battles. Two thirds of the human race are directly involved in the conflict, and every other human being indirectly. Over forty-two million of men are under arms, notwithstanding the losses already met with. In no previous . war were there more than 2,000,000 men lined up against each other. At the close of 1917 more than 6,000,000 had been killed in action ; 1,000,000 men, women, and children had been brutally massacred; 3,000,000 had died of starvation; 6,000,000 were lying wounded in military hospitals and as many more were captives in prison. Unnumbered thousands have been sent home permanently crippled, blinded, or deformed. Think what these figures mean when translated into terms of human heartache ! The cost in money, the large burden of which future generations must bear, runs into billions in a way that simply numbs our senses and conveys little meaning. At the beginning of 1918 the daily cost was over $130,000,000. Three and a half years of war brought an increase of $111,700,000,000 in the public debt of the twelve leading war nations. During the first and cheapest year of the war the cost was greater than all the national debts in the world combined. To this must be added things which cannot be hinted at in figures at all, the burdens of future years, the legacies of hatred, and the setting-back of many forces of social progress. What message do these things spell out to the disciples of the Prince of Peace f

Has Christianity Failed?

It was but natural that many should jump to the conclusion that Christianity had failed. That after nineteen centuries of Christian influence, the so-called Christian nations should be involved in so terrible a carnage was for many a self-sufficient proof of the failure of Christianity. And, indeed, let it be confessed freely, no section of the Christian world is entitled with easy complacency to shove the entire guilt on any other section. There is in the crisis an element of judgment, which must bow all Christendom in humility and contrition.

The sober thought of men, however, has come to see that it is a travesty to call the forces which have launched the war Christianity. It is the distortions of and substitutions for Christianity which have failed to insure a peaceful and secure world order — the crass materialistic philosophy of life, a rampant and aggressive autocracy with an immoral theory of the state as above law, a pagan trust in power and the elevation of power as the supreme good with the denial of the claims of human brotherhood. When these forces run their course and produce a world holocaust, is it the gospel of the Son of Man which has failed! There is profound truth as well as brilliance in Mr. Chesterton's word: ^^Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried.'' Everything else has been tried. Commerce has been vaunted for a generation as the saviour of the world's peace. A writer^ in 1907, in a book called The New Internationalism, stated that ^'the dollar sign is rapidly supplanting the cross as a factor in international peace." That was the kind of thing multitudes of people were commencing to believe. We have been witnessing for four years the kind of ''new internationalism" the dollar mark creates, in Belgium and France, Poland and Armenia. Scientific progress, diplomacy, military power and Western civilization have all been exploited as the guarantee of the world's peace and plenty — and they have all gone up in smoke. One thing has to-day found a shining place in the sun and that is the everlasting truth that there is none other name given in heaven or earth whereby men must be saved but Jesus Christ. In clear, shining sunlight such as it has never been seen before during nineteen hundred years, is the truth that nothing can save individuals, homes, communities and the world except Christ — Christ a living reality in the whole life of the people throughout the world. ^'The

Harold Bolce.

world's supreme need demands the release of the world's supreme power for righteousness."

The Only Hope of Peace

Men may devise ^^ Leagues to Enforce Peace" of a hundred different varieties, and should devise them. But at the heart of it peace means brotherhood, and to say that brotherhood has become the superlative necessity of the world is to say that Christ is the sole hope of the world because none other has been found to be a dynamic of brotherhood among mankind.

The Church of Christ has not come to an hour of apology. Above the crash of the guns and through them has sounded the call for aggression, to let loose in force and dimensions as never before the only true peace-making power on earth, the gospel of Christ. The United States is committed, in the words of her President, to a war to end war. ^'We shall fight," he says, *^for a universal dominion of right, by such a consent of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and shall make the world itself at last free." Such a program involves nothing less than the evangelization of the world. Only religion can kill war, for religion alone creates the new heart. In the words of Dr. Fosdick, already become classic, ^^the missionary enterprise is the Christian campaign for international good will. We must see that it is so and handle it as though it were so. What the nations through their governments will slowly learn to do, loath to leave old precedents, bound by the sectarian narrowness of national loyalties. Christians must do now, and do with a lavish generosity that they have not practiced hitherto. " ^

The Discoveky of the Wokld

The earthquake which has shaken the world down has shaken it together. It may seem like a paradox to say that

^ H. E. Fosdick, The Challenge of the Present Crisis.

out of the bitterest strife of the ages has emerged the discovery that the world is one, but it is the truth. That discovery places upon the Christian Church an inescapable responsibility to shape and accomplish a program for the evangelization and emancipation of that united world.

Millions of men have had in these last few years the experience of Keats :

"Then felt I like some watcher in the skies When a new planet swings into his ken."

The new planet is our old world, but it has swung into the consciousness of men as a whole as never before.

It has long been a commonplace that steam and electricity have made the world a neighborhood, but the war has seized the old commonplace and made it bewilderingly vivid. The figure of a neighborhood is too spacious. The war is not so much a neighborhood quarrel as a fire in a tenement house where men are crowded together for life or death. A family in a tenement house has a highly substantial interest in the question whether the children across the hall play with matches. You cannot very well quarantine a fire in a tenement house. Nor can a war in this compacted and crowded home of the human family be quarantined. The flames of war which started in northern Europe soon spread down the corridors till two thirds of the race were involved in it.

Terrible as has been the occasion which has brought the world together, there is a profound spiritual significance in such vast portions of the world uniting in eif ort and thought. It raises the curtain on a new era. On that frontier of freedom which stretches from the English Channel clear down into Africa and Mesopotamia over twenty-five nations on the Allied side have answered ''Here" to the great roll call of democracy. If ''politics makes strange bed-fellows," the war has made still stranger trench-fellows. The Gurkha from India and the Arab, the Algerian, and Hottentot from Central Africa have spilled their blood along with the New Zealander, the Canadian and the Belgian in the cause of

18 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY

freedom. The American airman fights with a British gun from a French machine. The Fiji Islander has gone over the top with his French and American brothers. The Sikh from India rightly wears the Victoria Cross for high valor along with his English comrade in arms. Each in his own tongue repeats that glorious watchword of France — ^ ^ They shall not pass.''

Hunger, one of the strongest bonds that tie men together, is playing its part too, as well as danger and hope, in bringing this new world-consciousness to the forefront. We cannot be parochial in our food. Hunger is teaching the world in a stern and memorable way the old truth that Grod Almighty has made all men of one blood to live together and to eat together. The war has given a mighty emphasis to President Wilson's words: "The world no longer consists of neighborhoods. The whole is linked together in a common life and interest such as humanity never saw before and the starting of wars can never again be a private and individual matter for nations."

The thundering call to the Christian Church is plain — if the luorld is one whole and a scourge in it cannot he quarantined, the cure for that scourge must not he. No part of the world is safe till all is safe. Democracy cannot be safe anywhere until it is safe everywhere. Ignorance and darkness and vice and degradation can no more be quarantined than war. We cannot save the world by homeopathic portions of the gospel, here a little and there a little. A united world demands of a world church, a world-program.

A New Woeld at Birth

The plastic condition of a world in ferment, in the melting pot of revolution and change, presents a providential but fleeting opportunity to the church to furnish a Christian foundation for the new structure. The world has never stood still, and ever since the days of Pentecost there has been abundant opportunity for Christian influence. But never have there been at one time such revolutionary forces of different character at work throughout the whole world. What the character of the new structure will be no one can prophesy ; but that it will be new no one can doubt.

"The rudiments of Empire here Are plastic yet and warm.

The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form."

^^When God rubs out/' said Bousset, ^4t is because he is beginning to write. ' ' If there ever was a time in the history of the Christian Church when the establishment of the world-wide kingdom of God should be the dominating thought and purpose of the united body of Christ, that hour has just dawned upon us in these tragic, pregnant days. Everywhere we look, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, men and nations are in upheaval and we see conditions which demand the concentration of the unifying and guiding forces of Christendom. If the church as a great missionary force does not rise to a great occasion now, it will not be because she can ever hope to get a bigger or a better one.

Not all the changes of these days are on the credit side of the ledger. Many are terrible liabilities which will be a peril and obstacle to the Kingdom for years to come. But the very threatening of those new evils is itself an urgent call to Christian campaigning.

Nor are all the revolutionary changes, particularly in the Far East and Africa and South America, the result of the war. They have been increasing in momentum for a decade and more. But they have been vastly accelerated and increased by the war. The revolution in Eussia, with all that it means for good and ill, moved forward by a leap of a generation at least, under the forcing process of the upheaval.

The New Day iit America and England

In England and America, what tokens of a new world are already before our eyes ! The passage by Congress of the prohibition amendment, called by Bishop Bashford ''the greatest piece of constructive legislation in American history since the amendment prohibiting slavery;" the rapid extension of woman suffrage in America and the admission of six million women to suffrage in Great Britain; the new status of women industrially in both countries ; the progress of collective effort; the wide extension of government control of industry; the progress of industrial democracy in the greater participation of labor in the profits and direction of industry ; the undreamt of revelation of resources in patriotism, generosity, and humanity — all these are indisputable signs of a new day.

In Non-Cheistian Lands

And if, as Kipling expresses it, taking ''hold of the wings of the morning," we "flop around the earth," what do we see? Not only a new Europe, but also a new Asia, and in many respects a New Africa will emerge from the war. In India a new national consciousness is awake and large political changes are imminent ; China is searching for the ideas and the men that are to shape its future destiny ; Japan has gained a new position as a world-power and is experiencing within its own life great industrial changes. In the near and middle East the collapse of Islam's political power is bringing far-reaching changes in political and economic life of the peoples ; the Jews have won a new freedom and have been deeply stirred by the hope of regaining after two thousand years an independent national existence in their ancient home ; conservatism and prejudice are being broken down through new and wide contacts ; non-Christian nations are in a serious mood, of which dissatisfaction with the tra • ditional faiths of Asia and Africa is a convincing evidence. The masses of plain people practically everywhere are moving toward Christ in larger numbers and with greater momentum at this present time than at any time within the last fifty years. We are learning from the mass movement in India and the revivals in Korea that there is such a thing as the Cliristianizing of families, villages, and tribes. ^^ There is such a thing as the conversion of national aspirations and ideals. There is a sudden turning of the vast streams of human history. It was seen in the days of Constantine, again in the days of Luther ; again under Napoleon. That stream is turning massively, irresistibly to-day. " ^

Now OE Nevek

This vast shifting to new foundations is more than opportunity which Christianity can take or reject at its will. It is menace. The cause of Christ hangs in the balance. For the church, as far as we are concerned, it is now or never. If once this period of upheaval passes, and the new world which is now in the making, builds itself upon foundations which are as hostile or indifferent to Christ as were the foundations of the age which has gone down in ruins, the future of the church in this and the next generation will be an unutterable darkness. Christianity has now her chance, the great chance of all her long existence. She holds the key to humanity's unsolved problems. She is the steward of that which the world supremely needs. This is no time for a Christian leadership whose only military command is, ^^ As you were ! ' ' The world will never be as it was. The church cannot afford to be as it was. It must respond in an adequate way to this God-given day.

The War for Democracy

The heart of the urgent call to us in the United States for world-wide Christian advance lies in the fact that we are engaged in a war for democracy; not merely for our own defense, but to make the world safe for democracy. To that sacred task we have dedicated our hearts, our money, our lives. Underlying all the thinking and acting of individuals and the nation must be the winning of the war.

But thoughtful men have come in increasing numbers to

see that we have set our faces as a nation to a task which no military victory, howeA^er complete, can accomplish. The victory of arms which we pray and believe that God will bring to the allied nations, will remove the hindrance to a world free for democracy which lies in an aggressive autocracy bent on conquest. But with that hindrance removed, no mass of armies can bring into being the inner mental and moral and spiritual forces which must be created if safe democracies are to exist and flourish on the earth. No merely military victory can protect the two thirds of the world which lies distant from the battlefields from its internal weakness and disorder. No military victory can foster the intelligence and moral character which are the foundations of democracy. Only the emancipating, educating, and stabilizing forces of the Christian religion can do that. The task of the hour is one task. In it the two great passions of the human heart join and fuse — patriotism and religion.

On the patriotic side it is to rid the world of the menace of the rampant despotism of Germany and her allies ; to free democracy from the material obstacle of aggressive autocracy.

On the religious side it may best be stated by the reversal of President Wilson's words, to malve democracy safe for the ivorld; to set at work those forces of education, moral control and religion among the backward peoples of the world without which democracy is ^^a destruction walking at noonday. ' '

The Patriotic Task

Never must it drop from the mind that the cause of Christ has an overwhelming stake in the winning of the war. Some of the fairest hopes of the kingdom of God are bound up in it. The true freedom of the world cannot exist under the rule of materialistic power. The kingdom of God cannot tolerate a world where nations live by swagger and threat, where the ambition and philosophy of a few make miserable all mankind. We fight ^'to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power . . . for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included : for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.'' ^ ^^We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against oncoming democracy. We see it now. It is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism — ^the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village beneath. ' ' ^

Sadly as Christian men draw the sword, we need be, in no confusion. We find in the New Testament no surrender of the chief aim of all, the commonwealth of humanity ; no substitution of lesser loyalties for justice, truth, and right. We find, rather, as its climax a call to arms. There is to be battle, but without hatred to human foe. There is to be participation in the age-long, bitter struggle against an unseen foe that makes his stronghold in the minds of men, inciting them to war and conquest and the lust of selfish power. To such times as ours comes the message of Ephesians: ^^Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."

The nation has embarked on a great, unselfish, spiritual crusade to clear the pathway for God and it follows its sons across the sea with prayer.

^ President Wilson, April 2, 1917.

"" Franklin K. Lane, "Why We Are At War.'

Where are you going, Great-Heart ?

"To cleanse the earth of noisome things, To draw from life its poison-stings.

To give free play to Freedom's wings." Then God go with you, Great-Heart 1

Where are you going, Great-Heart ?

"To lift To-day above the Past; To make To-morrow sure and fast; To nail God's colors to the mast."

Then God go with you, Great-Heart I^

The Missionaky Task

To complete the task of the soldier demands an adequate and aggressive program for the world-wide extension of the kingdom of God.

Two slogans of the third Liberty Loan campaign, when deeply studied, make this clear. One was ' ' Halt the Hun. ' ' The other was ^'To make the world a decent place to live in. ' ' The second is the larger and longer task, and without its accomplishment success in the first will be largely fruitless. The Allied armies, please Grod, will ^'Halt the Hun.'' But nothing can make the world ^^a decent place to live in'' except the fundamental qualities of the spirit of Christ.

The war is essentially a war for opportunity. The overthrow of tyranny means that the nations will be safe from outside interference. But only the extension of vital Christianity throughout the world will ever mean that moral and spiritual forces will be unchained which will create the possibility of world safety, save nations from internal sin, weakness, and disorder, and undergird them with purity and the spirit of justice and brotherhood.

We are in this war in behalf of the democracy of the world. The greatest needs throughout this bleeding planet are, after all, those which touch the ideals and future of humanity. It is the function of the religion, the ethics, the

' From "The Vision Splendid," by John Oxenham. George H. Doran Company, Publishers.