Sequachee Valley news. (Sequachee [Sequatchie], Tenn.) 1896-1952, 1911-05-18
SOCIALIST MINISTER
DESERTS UNITaRIGNISJII

D
above knowledge, and found the
source of its inspiration in the past.
The men in Unitarian puIpits who
furnish exceptions to this rule have
always been heretics in the eyes OF
their own alleged brethen. The Uni
tartan body has as little use for her
etic-a live one-as any other. And
this in spite of the fact that Unitari-
anism began as heresy.
"Our churches are uniformly the de-
tenders and bulwarks of tradition, of
old and outgrown ideas, They are so
because they are made up of and sup
ported by those classes in society
whose material interests are served by
maintaining the moral and political
status quo. They are made up of and
supported by those classes from which
no real moral advance can be expect
ed. The people of our church do not
know the rudiments of that knowledge
which is indispensable to intelligent
and fruitful action on the problems of
the present.
"The people of our churches do not
study the facts of real life. They do
not think about them. And they will
not listen to anyone who would try to
tell them the facts. So they are main
tanning the same attitude toward
Marx and his associates as their faith
ers did toward Darwin. The energies
of our churches are exhausted in futile
things, in things totally unrelated to
the real evolution of life toward high
er things No wonder this is an age
in which the most transparent frauds
and charlatans can become rich from
the fees paid them by people who have
not the faintest glimmer of intelli-
gence as to the real meaning and pur-
pose of this life of ours This is exact
ly what is taking place right now and
in our midst
"The thing which the churches fail
to see-and which | think they will
fail to see to the end of their chapter
that is this movement of the human
spirit which marks our own time, this
uprising of the proletariat the world
over, this advance of Socialism to the
conquest of the world, is the divinest,
sacredest, most spiritual thing our
eyes can see or our souls put forth
their powers in The men whom our
churches regard as safe and sane and
spiritual, as the preachers of religion,
are blind men-blind to the most Won
derful exhibitions of spirituality the
world has ever known; are deaf men
deaf to the holiest voices that have
ever been heard among men The hope
and faith and psychology of the mod
ern working class cannot be matched
for moral majesty or spiritual power
in all history But these favored
teachers of the churches are merely
modern scholsstics, the inevitable pro-
duct of this age of capitalistic materi-
alism because they have made the mis-
take of adjusting themselves to the de-
mands and customs and moral stand
ards of an age of decadence, instead of
functioning in the new age of democ
racy and freedom already coming to its
dawn. The men whom the church
will not tolerate are the men who are
finding right now and here, in the hu-
man struggle that is on, in the facts
and forces of the world today, in its
most significant movement, the one
thing that must be for them the su-
preme manifestation of Divine Life,
the one thing that commands their 10y
atty and their devotion, and which
crowds their lives with a sense of i'm
mortal worth. They are the men whom
no church will or can support, simply
because all churches are made up of
men and women, large measure,
whose minds are fossilized and petrif-
ed by the customs and creeds of capi-
talism, and because the minister can
be maintained as member of a priv.
ileged class only by the money of men
a nd women who belong to that class
whose economic doom is sealed, a class
which possesses no moral dynamic ad-
equate to the tremendous tasks of
higher civilization.
"For four years l have been field
secretary of the American Unitarian
Association for the Rocky Mountain
Statees The churches of these States
know me we'll They know l am sim
cere. in earnest, reverent. loyal to my
From several of them
have received urgent requests to come
and take charge as their minister.
And yet some of the members and min
isters of tn se churches have protested
against my remaining as field secretar-
y, on the ground that my social teach
ing is injurious to these churches
We're these protests made by men who
had studied Socialism and from that
study were convinced that it is untrue
and harmful Not in single case
Not single person in the whole lot
has ever studied Socialism or knows
more about it that what he
or she has derived from the misrepre-
,entations of those whose interests are
served by wholesale lying. Did they