A New Movement for World Union
By C. M. S.
THERE was held in the city of Philadelphia, Pa., from the sixteenth to the twentieth of the present month, the first convention of what is to be a world-wide movement for making Christianity a matter of law in all the nations, putting religion by legal process into all the functions of government. The convention was attended by delegates from all the nations, and these delegates were chosen from the mission workers of the various denominations. The scope of the convention’s object puts it at once in the class of the great movements of the day. The whole world is acquainted with the international peace congresses, and the proposed Supreme Court of the Nations, for which the peace delegates are agitating. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America is, in its ultimate, a movement looking to the same end. The proposed International Brotherhood of Union Laborers is a movement for world union, though along a somewhat different line from the others mentioned. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is now a world organization, as is also the Layman’s Missionary Movement. Fraternal and secret societies no longer confine themselves within the boundaries of single nations; while churches have long since ceased to think of their members as speaking one or two languages only. While this movement toward internationalization of everything tangible has been going on, there has been arising in this country an organization whose purpose is not only to overturn the basic principles of this government, so as to bring in the kingdom of God through legislation and politics in this nation, but ultimately so to inoculate the whole world with its ideas as to bring the kingdom of God in all the nations through the same modus operandi. Said one of the strongest allies of that organization: “The kingdom of Christ must enter the realm of law through the gateway of politics.” And again: “Christ and his gospel, as universal King and code, should be sovereign in our government and political affairs.”11 Another strong supporter of the movement puts it in this way: “I want to see the day come when the church shall be the arbiter of all legislation, State, national, and municipal; when the great churches of the country can come together harmoniously, and issue their edict, and the legislative powers will respect it, and enact it into laws.” Catholic as well as Protestant organizations in this country have given their indorsement to the idea. We are firm believers in Christian unity and in gospel methods, and have no purpose to oppose any movement designed to better the condition of the world in either a spiritual or a material sense; but the work planned for, and the methods adapted for, this new world movement must raise a query at once in every thoughtful mind. Since the year 1864 that organization has been working for the accomplishment of its purpose in this land, and has succeeded in converting multitudes of religious people to its purpose and the feasibility of its plans. To such an extent has this been true that at the last congress of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, that great and representative body took a position in complete harmony with the purposes and modes of procedure of that organization. This has been due to persistent and systematic education of the clergy of all denominations, which that organization—the National Reform Association—has been carrying on for many years. Said a prominent delegate at the last Federal Council of the Churches of Christ of America: “I trust that one of the practical results of this conference will be the organization of a force that lawbreakers and lawmakers will respect and heed. . . . It is our province, in the name of our supreme King, to ask rulers to respect the code of our kingdom. Rulers may ignore sects, but they will respect the church. This federation will compel an audience, and it will speak with power if it will put aside its differences, and make its agreement its argument.” The idea in this is that with the federated churches moving as one man upon the lawmaking bodies, the latter will yield to the demands of the churches, and enact whatever laws the combined church may dictate or demand. That has long been the aim of the organization which is calling this World’s Conference on Christian Citizenship. That organization, the National Reform Association, has now undertaken the greatest task in its history. Persons from the far-away mission fields, and from the members of nearly all denominations, will be in attendance as delegates, and are expected, after the close of the institute, to return to their respective fields of labor to carry out in the different nations the same program and the same principles which the National Reform Association has been promulgating in this country. The scope of the proposed undertaking makes a close scrutiny of the project an eminently proper thing. It rests on a basis which Americans long ago discarded, and this fact accounts for the name of the organization,—the National Reform Association. The reformation of the nation in such a manner as to unite religion and the state again in this country, is the project which brought the organization into being; and that organization hopes, through the influence of this nation, thus reformed, to reform the whole world in the same particulars; that is, to unite religion and the state in every nation, thus establishing in every country a national religion,—the Christian religion,—and outlawing whatever does not conform to it. This would be a union of church and state in fact if not in name. This method of evangelizing the world would be a strenuous one, unique in missionary methods, and utterly opposed to the spirit of the gospel. But there are very many indeed who believe that such a type of strenuousness is in no sense conducive to real piety and spirituality. As it takes more than ceremony to make a saint, so it takes more than the establishment of religion by compulsion of law to bring in the kingdom of God in any nation. The nations have had many lessons in these matters; and if history has demonstrated anything, it has demonstrated the fact that wherever religion has been forced upon the people, it has dwarfed them in character, and relegated them to the rear in industrial accomplishments. Where religion and the individual have been left free, religion has maintained its purity, and the individual has progressed industrially, mentally, morally, and spiritually. Before sanctioning such a movement for our own country, or recommending it to the people of other lands, Americans should give serious study to the questions involved. We have read the histories of various individual nations that have united religion and the state, and the exhibition has been one from which we have instinctively recoiled. When the proposition is to do that for the entire world, the seriousness of the undertaking can not be too greatly emphasized. This conference brings us one step nearer the great crisis depicted in the message of Revelation 14. C. M. S.