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SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1935. Volume 6. Number 8.

Christianity Fails

Christianity Fails.

Dear "Smad"—

Christians are funny people, In the same breath they deplore the irreligion of the age, they protest that Christianity "lives on" with its lustre and influence undimmed. Your correspondent, F.C. falls into this contradiction. Deploring the apathy of students to a "definite attempt to interest students in the search for spiritual truth," F.C. falls back on the merely historical fact that Christiantiy has struggled through 2000 years of existence, drawing the inference that "what was good enough for our fathers is good enough," etc. This, of course is black reaction.

F.C. labours the point that all young social reformers should consider Christianity. The answer to this is easy: most have. Most of these people, he will find, have gone through a religious phase, or at least been familiarised with religious teachings. For them, the solemn hocus-pocus of God-seeking no longer suffices. The reason for "this unrest" is plain. If we are at all thoughtful, our attentions are to-day riveted on the social problem. We are in need of a clear lead. Christianity—or any other religion—fails in its treatment of social problems, fails to give such a lead, because it is shot through with the point of view of subjective idealism, which denies or minimises the existence of material (and therefore) social problems in favour of the existence of God and the individual religious experience.

Despite its 2000 years, the current ineffectuality of Christianity in the face of the social problem, to say nothing of its influence as a social narcotic, force the conclusion that Christianity has outlived its time and usefulness. "We no longer need that hypothesis"—it constricts and misleads us. It results in the futile confusion of social and political naivete typified in the fantastic Christian attitude that the conflicts between capital and labour will disappear through the growth of love and mutual understanding. One would like to carry this theme further—to show how a religious view of things always results in a perilous misinterpretation of social issues.

The statement of the former Commissar of the Soviet Union is interesting. One wonders by whom and in what circumstances the statement was made, and from what source the quotation was gleaned. Because all other observers, among them Max Riske, inform us that religion is a dead force in Russia—dead because it no longer has the active support of the State and its propaganda machine.

—Lazarus.