Christian Socialism

When the New York Times headlined last week SOCIALISM FAVORED BY RELIGIOUS GROUPS, many a conservative reader might have viewed indignantly the recurring initials Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. and fumed to himself: "Socialism, indeed!" Hastily next day, like a mother seeking to explain away a gaffe her child has uttered, the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A., in the persons of General Secretary Fred W. Ramsey and Board President Mrs. Robert E. Speer (respectively) explained that the report, Toward a New Economic Society, was no work of their organizations but a pamphlet published by the Economics Commission of the National Council of Student Christian Associations.

Nevertheless, the National Council of Christian Associations— child of the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A.—does represent the student groups of some 1,000 U. S. colleges. The Council meets annually. Unhampered by the viewpoint of its parents, it has been consistently, since the World War, veering leftwards. In Kalamazoo, Mich, in 1928, chafing (in its own words) "under its own unintelligent inconsistency of failing to square its practice with its radical profession/' it appointed the Economics Commission which reported last week.*

Purpose of this report is "tentatively to define some of the areas in which students may effect social and economic changes . . . [to] raise many questions, each requiring genuine thinking and honest research." Though the Socialist members of the Commission have a majority (seven-to-six), the report makes clear that individual members do not subscribe to all its premises. Seven separate subcommittees in the Commission wrote the seven sections: Christianity and the Economic Order; Economic Implications of Being a Student; Individual Spending, Income and Ownership; Economic Aspects of Vocational Choice and Planning; Students and Modern Industry; The Contribution of the Cooperative Movement: Toward a New Economic Order.

Creature of a student organization, the Commission is yet not a body of impulsive juvenile radicals. Many of its members are mature, experienced religious leaders. Its report is headed by a statement by one of Socialism's ablest, most trustworthy advocates—38-year-old, athletic Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, professor of applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary. Calling himself a "tamed cynic," he is still known as one who aims to shock the complacent, to kinetize the nation's youth with his own high-powered enthusiasm. Son of a Missouri pastor, he was ordained in the Evangelical Church in 1915, held a Detroit pastorate until 1928. He is an editor of The World Tomorrow, a popular, dynamic orator. In his introduction to the Commission's report he says: "No matter how the Christian ethic is defined it remains true that a wide abyss yawns between it and the facts and assumptions of our contemporary industrial civilizations. . . . Shall a Christian busy himself to change the social order and meanwhile accept its limitations and inequalities as a fate which he alone can not change? Do his Christian convictions require and imply action in the political field, and if so what kind of a political program is most consistent with a Christian ethic?

Dealing in some detail with many an economic problem as related to the life of the U. S. student, the report comes to its climax as follows: