socialist, in his younger years.

Now this shows that we have here a double answer, not a utopian answer: “The demonic^a will never be banned from earth completely,” and on the other hand, the preliminary answer, “In the fight of the Church^b and of every individual Christian^c against this, we will have a victory, a partial victory, and will become greater in Spiritual^d power ^eby this fight.''

These were the fundamental ideas. And with these ideas I believe we have actually done something which should be done always, if such controversies between religion^f and social and political culture^g appear.

Now let me add something which I don’t want to forget--although it is already time to stop--namely, religious socialism^h was not a matter of the churchesⁱ. We always kept it away from the claim to be official message of the churches, for the following reason: the word “socialism'' is not only a word of prophetic^j criticism, but it is also a word in which concrete suggestions are implied, and these suggestions may be erroneous. And the Church cannot go into the situation of positive suggestions about social transformation. As [a] minister, I can criticize very badly, when milk is officially spilled, if children are hungry--as a preacher in Chicago did--[I can] give, in the name of my pulpit, or what the pulpit stands for, a suggestion how this best can be avoided, by a better organization of trucking. That is not the matter of Christianity^k. Now this was a very important protection against a pitfall of American Christianity when it believed that it is