Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/625

 THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 605

mission is past, and an age which they created, but by which they have been outgrown, regards them with curiosity rather than reverence. Similarly, to many men working at the cost of infinite sacrifice for their less fortunate fellows the churches are pieces of bric-a-brac. Useful in the life of the past, doubtless of the utmost value as agents in the production of the life of today, they are now judged no longer needed. The age is believed to have outgrown them, except as reminders of a less perfect civilization. The teachings of Jesus, it is true, Christian ethics, and to some degree Christian theology, are honored, even though they may be judged impracticable. But a regard for Christian ethics does not imply a regard for Christian churches. Many an honest man, both within and without the ranks of the laboring class, is convinced that the time has come for self- respecting philanthropists to cut loose from the churches and form themselves into more efficient organizations. Charges of hypocrisy are frequently made against the churches by men who are passionate champions of the teaching of Jesus. It is easy to exaggerate, but it certainly seems within the bounds of proba- bility that, wholly apart from a materialistic hostility to super- naturalism, the majority of workingmen and their leaders, of socialists, and of professional sociologists are convinced that the churches at present are composed of the well-to-do fraction of the community ; that clergymen as a class have little or no sympathy with economic reform ; that political corruption is condoned in the case of wealthy church members ; and that it is useless to expect anything more of churches than that they will become religious clubs, limiting their support of social reform to words, to denominational missions, and conventional Sunday morning collections, untrue to the ideals of Jesus, as centers of social convalescence worthless.

But something even more unpleasant must be said. Below this distrust of the church as a social institution is a disregard for religion. The most important factors in the social awakening, socialism and sociology, at least in the past have been predomi- nantly materialistic, and, if not aggressively atheistic, somewhat patronizing in their attitude toward the deity. It may be that at