Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/81

 CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY.

INTRODUCTION.

I. term Christian Sociology is unfortunate in certain of its applications. The names of many sciences may be used in two ways: (1) they may indicate the method by which results are obtained, and (2) they may indicate the formulation of such results. Thus history may be a method science or it may be a descriptive science. In the former case it would be absurd to unite with it any word having a moral content. A method of investigation may be ill or well fitted to produce the best results, but ethically it can be neither good nor bad. The same is perhaps even clearer of such objective sciences as chemistry and geology. To speak of a Christian method of sociological investigation is quite as impossible. The investigation of social forces and results, the discovery of the true nature of society, can no more have an ethical—still less religious—character than the study of a crystal or a chemical compound.

But in the other sense in which the name of a science is used, no such criticism can hold. The moment an investigator attempts to formulate his results in propositions, that moment he injects into them his own characteristics. While the method of investigation may be morally neutral, the statement and the application of its results may be largely tinged with ethics. This is less obvious in the case of physical sciences, but admittedly true of the social. Thus in a true sense there may be a Christian view of history, and, so to speak, a Christian history. This is even more obvious in the case of philosophy. In this sense of the formulation and application of results derived by Christian students, sociology may be said to be Christian.

It is, however, not altogether clear that such a terminology