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Show BAPTISTS DlT GLflSSSTHlFE Favor Legislation to Right Inequalities of Social Order. Divine Says Church Must Bend Efforts to Give Opportunities Op-portunities to All. Special to The Tribune. NEW YORK CITY, July 13. Calling the present labor situation essentially a class movement, the Rev. Dr. Ilsley Boone, who has been active in the $6,000,000 victory campaign just ended -by the national committee of northern Baptist laymen, tonight averred the Christian church should emphasize the fact that any struggle 'within society must not be a class struggle. Dr. Boone expressed the hone that the church, r both directly and indirectly, would espouse legislation and civil enactments which promise a just and feasible method meth-od of rigging those inequalities in our social order vh irh now afford ample ground for sincere and earnest protest on the part of workers. Commenting on the fact that the activities ac-tivities of the national committee of northern Baptist laymen have just been taken over by the newly organized general gen-eral board rif promotion, Dr. Boone said this radical readjustment within Baptist denoiuiuat ional affairs will be " paralleled by a corresponding readjustment readjust-ment on the part of tne church toward those great q it est ions which are now stirring the minds of all thoughtful men and women. Day of Readjustment. ''This is a day of great readjustments,'' readjust-ments,'' Dr. Boone said. "The social order is undergoing the most far-jvaehing far-jvaehing revolution since the signing of Magna Chnrca at Runnymedc, 700 years ago. But the changes of today are vastly more profound, for they are wll-nigh universal and ramify into every ev-ery department of social and civil life. ''The radical demands contemplate a complete reversal of ape-long customs, the demolition of institutions which civilization with tremendous energy, sacrifice and devotion has been centuries cen-turies in building. That many radical changes will take place in America, even as they have in Europe, no thoughtful man or woman will deny. Revolution Yes. But how? There is the big question of today. By what processes will the inevitable changes come to pass; and, for us who believe in God and the church, what part shall the church play in the days that lie immediately ahead? "The church must emphasize the fact that the struggle within society must not be a class struggle. In its inception incep-tion and in its present state the labor movement is essentially a class move' ment, and perhaps inevitably so, but it cannot remain such without the gravest danger to all, whether radical, conservative conserva-tive or reactionary. All Equally Concerned. "Til this struggle all are equally concerned. The rights of labor are -sacred. But so are the rights of the rich. Rights do not pertain to property as such, nor even to labor as such; but to men. And in this view there is no room for class struggle. There must be a common effort on the part of all men to readjust society, with due regard re-gard to the shortcomings of things as they are, and with a passionate devotion devo-tion to make them as they ought to be. For the workers to emphasize their rights and ignore the rights of those whom they regard as their oppressors, is just as vicious a mistake as that which they accuse the' capitalists of having made. "Within the American democracy there must be no classism, but a common com-mon purpose to work out a social order that shall be equitable, fair and just, to rich ami poor, to labor and capital, to high and low, to cultured and uncultured, uncul-tured, without regard to employment or .race or creed or any other marks by which men divide themselves into groups. ' ' A second emphasis of the church must be made upon the note of universal brotherhood. It was a great stride forward for-ward when the seer of ancient Israel announced the doctrine that Jehovah was not territorially limited to the land of the chosen people. To the ancient -lew this was a startlingly new truth, I but it was the forerunner of that day ! when the Greeks, representing the rioo-.Tewish rioo-.Tewish world, sought Jesus, and the latter announced Himself as the one who would attract all men to Himself and, create thereby a common human brotherhood. Christian Ties Superior. ( ( The ' One Big Union ' is not the property of the radicals. The ties of Christianity have always been held theoretically to stand superior to ties of race, language, nationality, or even of blood. But social and civil barriers have for twenty centuries, stood in the way of practical demonstration of this teaching on anything like a universal scale. The truth which the church has announced for all these years, the brotherhood broth-erhood of man, is today being forced to-the to-the forefront in our common consciousness, conscious-ness, and is demanding the world's attention. at-tention. The church cannot ignore this opportunity to stress a doctrine so fundamental fun-damental to human welfare and universal univer-sal happiness. "Finally, the church, both directly an'd indirectly, should espouse legislation legisla-tion ahd civil enactments which promise prom-ise a just and feasible method of righting right-ing those inequalities in our social order or-der which now afford ample ground for sincere and earnest protest on the part of workers. If the war has emphasized empha-sized any one thing, it has been the extreme liberality of the common people peo-ple and at the same time the utter selfishness of a minority group, who have availed themselves of every opportunity op-portunity to make themselves tremendously tremen-dously wealthy, without regard to the fact that indirectly Uieir wealth has been procured from the pockets of every ev-ery man, woman and child. Broken Brotherhood Fault. "The trouble with societ', as President Pres-ident Faunce of Brown university pointed out in his recent Denver address, ad-dress, is not so much a'matter of shorter short-er hours or larger pay or even of profit sharing, but a matter of broken brotherhood. broth-erhood. That is Tvhere we have failed. "We have broken faith with our brother man. The amelioration of the conditions of the poor, the furnishing of opportunity for all workers to share more eouitablv in the products of their toil and the limitation of those processes proc-esses by which wealth multiplies itself these are concerns of mankind, and tn the solution of the problems involved the church must devote itself henceforth hence-forth with a degree of sincerity and of earnestness that will admit of no misunderstanding mis-understanding and no misconstruction, either on the part of the workers themselves or oi. the part of others who may differ from them in respect In these fundamental questions of society. so-ciety. Tf the church succeeds here, she will rise in newness of power and win the world to her heart; but if she fails, an impenetrable darkness will settle upon the new order of human society. ' ' |