[591] 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 and of every individual Christian^b AGAINST this, we will have a victory, a partial victory, and will become GREATER in Spiritual^c power ^dby 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 and social and political culture^e appear. Now let me add something which I don’t want to forget--although it is already time to stop--namely, religious socialism^f was not a matter of the churches. 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^g 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^h. Now this was a very important protection against a pitfall of American Christianity when it believed that it is