Facs
Transcript
socialist, in his younger years.
Now this shows that we have here a double answer, not a utopian answer: “The demonic 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 against this, we will have a victory, a partial victory, and will become greater in Spiritual power by 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 appear.
Now let me add something which I don’t want to forget – although it is already time to stop – namely, religious socialism 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 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. Now this was a very important protection against a pitfall of American Christianity when it believed that it is