Communism and Christianism: Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of ViewBrown, William Montgomery
Religion
Communism and Christianism: Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
Brown, William Montgomery
Christian socialism; Communism; Communism and Christianity
The prime of my life has been wasted in preaching as truths the dogmas
of the Christian theology, the representations of which I now believe,
with the overwhelming majority of educated people, to be at best so many
symbols and at worst superstitions.
But though I do not now and probably never shall again believe in the
existence of a conscious, personal god, a knowledge of and obedience to
whose will is necessary to salvation, yet an injustice is done me by
those who say I have abandoned god and religion.
Every one who desires and endeavors to fulfill the requirements of a law
which is independent of his will and beyond his control has a god and a
religion. I desire and endeavor this in the case of two such laws and so
have two gods and two religions. Both of my divinities are trinities.
One is in the physical realm and the other in the moral one.
In the physical realm my triune god is: matter, the father; force, the
son, and motion, the spirit.
In the moral realm, my triune god is: fact, the father; truth, the son,
and life, the spirit.
For me the triune divinity of Christianity is a symbol of these
trinities and it is my desire and effort to discover and fulfill what
they require of me, in order that I may make my own physical, psychical
and moral life as long, happy and complete as possible and help others
in doing this for themselves. This desire and effort is at once my
morality and religion, my politics and patriotism, and they are
spiritual realities.
On account of the first of these sets of spiritual virtues (morality and
religion) I claim to be a Christian of the highest type, and that any
accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty to
any essential of Christianism is an injustice.
On account of the second of these sets of spiritual virtues (politics
and patriotism) I claim to be an American of the highest type, and that
any accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty
to an essential of Americanism is an injustice.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Christians,
I am a betrayer of Brother Jesus because I do not believe that he ever
had any existence as a god and that, if he was at any time a man, the
world does not now and never can know of one thing that he did or of one
word that he said.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Americans, I
am a traitor to Uncle Sam, because I did oppose his going into the
English-German war, and because I do object to the partiality which he
shows to his rich nephews and nieces.
Still Jesus and Uncle Sam are as dear to me as ever and indeed dearer,
yet not as objective, conscious personalities, but as symbols, ideals or
patterns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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