Christ and Socialism

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 23, 1909

Christ and Socialism

While Charles A. Stelzle, of New York, superintendent of the department of church and labor in the Presbyterian Church, was discussing Socialism at the recent Christian Endeavor Convention at St. Paul, Minn., he gave utterance to the following statements, which the Socialistic clergy would do well to consider:—

Socialism is one of the most important of the movements which have arisen from time to time because of the economic injustices of the day. Its exponents insist that the church must advocate their cure for the evils of society, and they scorn the preacher who does not accept their program. They tell us that working men are rapidly turning toward Socialism, and that if the church does not advocate Socialism, working men will be forever alienated from the church. But this would not prove that Socialism is right. Ministers who have preached Socialism have never filled their churches. We are told that Jesus himself was a Socialist, and therefore the church must advocate Socialism. But while Christ denounced the social evils of his time as no other man dared denounce them, he never advocated the introduction of a particular social system. Instead he began to change individual men.

Therein lay the secret of his success over all systems of human origin. No reform can be permanent that does not reform the heart. That no human organization or human legislation can do. He who is reformed from within through the converting power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, needs no rules of any human organization and no code of human laws to make him conduct himself properly toward his fellow men. God's law of love implanted in the individual heart will accomplish what Socialism or human legislation can never do.