The opinions of these men who are daily in contact with the problem of
social justice the world over surely furnish a tremendous amount of
information regarding both the unconcern of religion upon the
furtherance of social justice and its actual negative and harmful
influence. The devout Sherwood Eddy, a sincere and noble exponent of
social justice, is forced to exclaim; "But I saw that there would be
much more opposition from professing Christians if I preached a gospel
of social justice, than ever there had been from so called 'heathen'
nations in calling them to turn from their idols. Indeed, Mammon is a
much more potent idol, it is more cruel, smeared with more human blood,
than Kali of Siva. They sacrifice goats to Kali and we shudder; we
sacrifice men to Mammon and justify our 'rights.' In simple fact, though
they are not worthy of mention, I have met with more opposition and
misrepresentation, ten times over, in 'Christian' America, than I ever
met in fifteen years in India, or in repeated visits to China, Turkey,
or Russia." (_Sherwood Eddy: "Religion and Social Justice."_)
Religious philosophy is slave philosophy; it teaches of a God who is
personally interested in the individual and who will reward present
misery with future bliss. The demoralizing effect of this infamous
fraud is apparent everywhere. If a worker is constantly assailed with
this nonsense from the pulpit, the result is the production in him of a
mental as well as a physical slavery; it aggravates his mental inertia,
and the force of repetition achieving its effects, he soon resigns
himself to his present miserable state drugged with the delusion of a
better life in the hereafter. He believes that his destiny is
predetermined by God and that he will be rewarded in heaven for his
sufferings on earth.
What a marvelous opiate the ecclesiastics have been injecting into the
minds of the masses! It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that
capital has aided throughout the ages and has stood by religion. The
irony of the situation lies in the fact that the slave will fight so
valiantly for his tyrannical master, that the unscrupulous few who
derive all the benefits, can, like a malignant parasite, suck the
life-blood of its victims while their still living prey submits without
a struggle! The worker, inebriated with his religious delusion, calmly
allows his very substance to be the means through which his parasitic
employer grows fat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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