The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic InterpretationSinclair, Upton
Religion
The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
Sinclair, Upton
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Do I mean that I expect to see the Church--all churches--perish
and pass away? I do not, for I believe that the Church answers
one of the fundamental needs of man. The Social Revolution will
abolish poverty and parasitism, it will make temptations fewer,
and the soul's path through life much easier; but it will not
remove the necessity of struggle for individual virtue, it will
only clear the way for the discovery of newer and higher types of
virtue. Men will gather more than ever in beautiful places to
voice their love of life and of one another; but the places in
which they gather will be places swept clean of superstition and
tyranny. As the Reformation compelled the Catholic Church to
cleanse itself and abolish the grossest of its abuses, so the
Social Revolution will compel it to repudiate its defense of
parasitism and exploitation. I will record the prophecy that by
the year 1950 all Catholic authorities will be denying that the
Church ever opposed Socialism--true Socialism; just as today they
deny that the Church ever tortured Galileo, ever burned men for
teaching that the earth moves around the sun, ever sold the right
to commit crime, ever gave away the New World to Spain and
Portugal, ever buried newly-born infants in the cellars of
nunneries.
The Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian,
Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their
formalists and traditionalists. If there is any church that
refuses so to adapt itself, the swift progress of enlightenment
and freedom will leave it without followers. But in the great
religions, which have a soul of goodness and sincerity, we may be
sure that reformers will arise, prophets and saints who, as of
old, will preach the living word of God. In many churches today
we can see the beginning of that new Counter-Reformation. Even in
the Catholic Church there is a "modernist" rebellion; read the
books of the "Sillon", and Fogazzaro's trilogy of novels, "The
Saint", and you will see a genuine and vital protest against the
economic corruption of the Church. In America, the "Knights of
Slavery" have been forced by public pressure to support a "War
for Democracy", and even to compete with the Y. M. C. A. in the
training camps. They are doing good work, I am told.
This gradual conquest of the old religiosity by the spirit of
modern common sense is shown most interestingly in the Salvation
Army. William Booth was a man with a great heart, who took his
life into his hands and went out with a bass-drum to save the
lost souls of the slums. He was stoned and jailed, but he
persisted, and brought his captives to Jesus--
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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