The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-02-21

has been set, it was expected
the hearing would be held here
early in the summer.
Secret Decision to Dust.
Bishop Brown intimated that the
decision to try him was made in
secret at the last meeting of the
House Of Bishops in the early Winter
of 1923. He asserted that news of
this leaked out thru remarks made
by Bishop Thomas F. Gailor of the
diocese of Tennessee in sermon.
Bishop Brown said that even if the
trial did take place it would affect
his status in the church but little,
since the sacramento graces of
! baptism and ordination are indelible."
He said that he could be as good
Christian on "atheistic and mater
ialistic lines" as could any other
member of the House Of Bishops on
'theistic and spiritistic lines"
Bishop Brown in the letter an
nounced his willingness to resign if
committee of three named by the
House Of Bishops argue the matter
out with him and still find him at
fault. He also said he would re-
sign if the House of Bishops placed
itself on record that the recently
promulgated declaration of ortho-
dox faith by the House of Bishops
at Dallas really was not such.
The extreme heresy" charged
against Bishop Brown consists of
twenty-three quotations from "Com-
munism and Christianism." Among
them are:
Doubts Christ Lived.
81 doubt that Christ lived"
"The Holy Ghost sees to it that
the slave class is kept in ignorance"
The birth, death, resurrection, de-
scension and ascension Of all the
Saviour-Gods not excepting Jesus,
are versions of the sun-myth."
There is no rational doubt about
the fictitious character of the Divine
/ Jesus"
Bishop Brown was accepted as
member Of the Modern Churchman'S
Union, even tho he took extreme
pains to acquaint its leaders with
his radical social ideas.
Evolution of Superstition.
The Bishops views on the evolu-
ton of religious thought are given
In the following excerpts from his
public statement:
THE works of Frazer, Tylor and
others have scientifically established
the revolutionary fact that the his
tory OF religion is continuous from
the savage upward, and that it
| Is the history of an evolution. From
the savage to ourselves there is no
break, one phase of religious belief
has given way to another. and there
has been the same revolt and the
same resistance to change at every
step.
"The history of religion becomes
more and more a question of phsy-
chology. 1t is not question of GER
tain events having occurred at some
particular date in history, and at
some particular place, but one of
what caused people to believe that
these things have occurred.
I'VE have the same problem, in
kind, presented to us by the growth
of new religious beliefs among saw
age and civilized people. 1t is re-
ally question of studying the Gull
ture stage at which a people are
living and relating the beliefs in the
supernatural to their existent stage
of culture. The question no longer
is. Did miracles occur?' The ques-
ton now is, what led people to
believe they occurred?'
Witchcraft and Religion.
I'm one direction the new view
point Is quite openly adopted. We
do not ask when did witchcraft cease
to exist. for no one believes that it
ever existed, but when did people
cease to believe in witchcraft? This
is distinction of first-rate impor-
tance,
/ "Ehe whole study of religion now
consists in an investigation of mans
intellectual evolution from the pre-
scientific stage, where he believed in
miracles, to the scientific one, where
he ceased to believe in them. Mir
acles are left-offs from the age of
traditionalism, and have no place in
that of scientism as realities, but
only as symbols.
Still Near Stone Age.
"Heresy charges are at this day
almost enough to make one despair
of human nature. They compel one
to realize how near we are to the
stone age, and how very thin is the
veneer Of civilization we have put
on.
"rhe fact is that we are in for
a wave of reaction toward tyranny
all over the world. The United States
is today at least fifty years behind
what 1t was before the war, and our
government can do with impunity
tyrannous things it would not have
dared to do twenty-five years ago.
There are few, comparatively, today
who have any real regard for free
dom as SUCH"
No Point Of Agreement.
While Bishop Brown stands so far
TO the left in the opposition move
ment inside the Protestant Episco-
| mol al,t.oI. tl.k I'm A