Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 70:277 (Jan 1913)
Article: The Christian Church and Democracy
Author: A. A. Berle

BSac 70:277 (Jan 1913) p. 40

The Christian Church and Democracy

A. Berle, D.D.

Christianity assumes as one of its primary postulates the regeneration of human society. This appears on every page of the Gospels, and is apparent to the most casual reader of Jesus’ teachings concerning the Kingdom of God. There is no longer any need for discussing this phase of the relation of the Christian religion to the social order prevailing in any state of society. Whether the method chosen be by the personal reformation of the individual man through conversion or through the Christianizing of the great social agencies by which human life is more and more largely being directed and controlled, the underlying assumption must be that the end to be achieved is a society as regenerate as the individuals that compose it. Moreover, this assumption appeared from the moment the Christian church attained any consciousness of itself as a part of the social life of the world. Its earliest disciples not only saw that this was the end to be achieved but took immediate steps for its attainment. With such knowledge as they had and with such instruments as they could command, they undertook the task of regenerating the world.

It is also clear that the very largeness of this undertaking spurred them on to extraordinary activities, and these activities in turn reacted upon them to such a degree that they not only undertook to regenerate the world, but believed that it might be accomplished within their own time. From

BSac 70:277 (Jan 1913) p. 41

the period of the immediate followers of Jesus to this very time there has never been wanting a considerable number of Christians who have believed that they would see the world made over into the actual demonstration of the Kingdom of God. It is true that this has usually been allied with some expectation of supernatural intervention of one kind or another, notably with the return of Christ to rule and reign in the world; but whatever the particular form of the hope it has always been present in the church and is present now. Even when it has not been openly confessed and preached, this lurking expectation of the final visible triumph of Jesus Christ and his actual rule in the world has held a large place in the Christian thinking of men. Even in its most grotesque forms it commands a certain measure of respect, because of the underlying idea that Christianity assumes that the world both can be and will be regenerated and made coextensive with the Kingdom of God.

Viewed in a broad sense, the course of history has justified the hope and the expectation. Society since the advent of Christianity has been and is steadily becoming increasingly moral. There is no evil so great, no social wrong so heartrending, no difficulty so colossal, tha...