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To the Purchaser:
To the Purchaser:
Lying Supernaturalism is going; robbing Capitalism is falling; saving Laborism is rising, and leveling Unionism is coming. This booklet, Communism and Christianism, is a contribution by Bishop and Mrs. Wm. M. Brown, of Galion, Ohio, towards the furtherance of these downward, upward and forward movements, the most fortunate events in the whole history of mankind. We hope that you will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest its extremely revolutionary, comprehensive and salutary teachings concernin
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Editions and Their Dates.
Editions and Their Dates.
First Edition, 10,000 copies, October 11th, 1920. Second Edition, 10,000 copies, revised and enlarged from 184 to 204 pages, February 15th, 1921. Third Edition, 10,000 copies, March 2nd, 1921. Fourth Edition, 10,000 copies (2,000 in cloth binding), revised and enlarged from 204 to 224 pages, April 9, 1921....
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William Montgomery Brown
William Montgomery Brown
Fortieth Thousand...
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DEDICATION
DEDICATION
This booklet is gratefully dedicated to the Proletariat from whom Bishop and Mrs. Brown are sprung, and to whose unrequited labors (not to the good providence of a divinity) they owe their wealth, leisure and opportunities. Religion is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as the happiness of the people is the revindication of its real happiness. The invitation to abandon illusions regarding its situation is an invitation to abandon a situation which has need of illusions. Critici
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THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY.
THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of in
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FOREWORD[C]
FOREWORD[C]
The concept of God, as an explanation of the Universe, is becoming entirely untenable in this age of scientific inquiry. The laws of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter, and the unending interplay of cause and effect, make the attempt to trace the origin of things to an anthropomorphic God who had no cause, as futile as is the Oriental cosmology which holds that the world rests on an elephant, and, as an afterthought, that the elephant stands on a tortoise. The inflexibl
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Make the World safe for Industrialism by turning it upside down with Workers above and Owners below.
Make the World safe for Industrialism by turning it upside down with Workers above and Owners below.
My dear Brother and Comrade: Your letter of June 13th [D] relative to the meeting called for the 27th, in the interest of a more radical socialist movement in our church, came duly to hand, and its invitation to attend, or at least write, was highly appreciated. My days for attending things are, I fear, past. I did not feel able to go to the Annual Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, which met much nearer here on the same date, June 27th, and ended on the 29th with a great picnic—a commun
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I.
I.
Religion and politics are the two halves of the sphere in which humanity lives, moves and has its social being. Religion is the ideal and politics the practical half of this sphere. Both halves naturally exist as the result of the same natural law of necessity: the matter-force law which makes it necessary for a man to feed, clothe and shelter his body in order to preserve it and its life. Marxian socialism is at once this religion and politics, all there is of both of them which is for the good
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II.
II.
The overthrow of capitalism in Russia is the greatest event in the history of the world and it has converted International Socialism (the Marxian revolutionary kind) from a theory into a condition. Theories come and go. Conditions remain and work. From this on revolutionary socialism will be working, night and day, with might and main, here and there, everywhen and everywhere, and its three herculean tasks are: (1) to dethrone the great imperialist, competitive capitalism; (2) to enthrone the gr
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III.
III.
The salvation of the world from its unnecessary sufferings is dependent upon such an equitable sharing of the labor involved in the making and operating of the machines of production and distribution, and upon such an equitable sharing of the products as shall issue in a classless mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the class which lives by owning the means and machines of production and distribution. It is this advocacy of classless levelism which constitutes the theoretical core
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IV.
IV.
The church and the state are on the same level as to their origin and importance. Both are human institutions and each is indispensable to the other. It is not at all desirable or possible to rid the world of either, but it is absolutely necessary that both should be revolutionized, the church by having its bible and creed rewritten or at least reinterpreted, on the basis of truth as it is revealed by nature, and the state by having its institutions reorganized on the basis of service to all ins
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V.
V.
About three years ago I discovered that I had spent a long, strenuous and open-handed ministry in preaching lies to the permanent ruin of my health and the temporary embarrassment of my purse; therefore I had the unhappy experience of being forced to see that all this part of my life, its prime, had been mostly, if not wholly wasted and worse. What was to be done? My friends told me as plainly as they could, and some succeeded in making it brutally plain, that in losing my faith in the supernatu
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THE GRAND MARCH
THE GRAND MARCH
The hour has struck for the Grand March! Onward, Comrades, all together! Fall in line! Start the New Year with a cheer! Let us join the world's procession marching toward a glad tomorrow. Strong of hope and brave in heart the West shall meet the East! March with us, brothers every one! March with us to all things new! Climb with us the hills of God to a wider, holier life. Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to meet the Dawn! Leave behind you doubts and fears! What need have we for "ifs" and
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FOREWORD[G]
FOREWORD[G]
The contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is inevitably antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the class struggle. His policy (that of the Christian Socialist) is the conciliation of classes, the fraternity of robber and robbed, not the end of classes. His avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the Socialist movement of its materialism, and this means to purge it of its Socialism and to divert it from its material aims to the fruitless chasing of spiritua
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Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary Socialism.
Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary Socialism.
My Dear Brother: Your letter (April 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines, as is frequently the case....
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I.
I.
In the dispute between yourself and friend of which you speak, you are altogether right and he is entirely wrong. In the last analysis it is a disputation as to whether or not the Jewish-Christian bible contains an infallible revelation from an omniscient being, a triune god, Father, Son and Spirit. It does not. As an objectivity there is no such divinity. He is a subjectivity existing in the imagination of orthodox Christians. You do not agree with me in this, but every day of thought and study
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II.
II.
In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a god (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law, that a law is what nature does, not what a god has willed, and that a system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law. The matte
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III.
III.
You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses which have come from unconsciousnesses. Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can come out of nothing, and this is the
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IV.
IV.
If you ask why I continue to be a member of an orthodox church and its ministry, the answer is, there is no reason why I should not for (if they may be interpreted by myself, for myself, spiritually) I accept every article of the creed of catholic orthodoxy; but if the articles of this creed must be interpreted lit erally there is no one in our church (the Episcopal) or in any among the churches, who believes all of them. For example, who believes, that God created the heavens and the earth out
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ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW Appendix.
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW Appendix.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world; but paradoxical as it may seem, there is one greater thing, liberty—the liberty which is freedom to learn, interpret, live and teach the truth as it is revealed by the facts or acts of nature. Without this freedom there can be no morality, and of course no true religion, politics or civilization....
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I. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.
I. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of management of the industries into fewer a
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II. GOD AND IMMORTALITY.
II. GOD AND IMMORTALITY.
Many critics contend that socialism and supernaturalism are not, as I represent, incompatibilities; but they lose sight of four facts: (1) this is a scientific age; (2) Marxian socialism is one of the sciences; (3) the vast majority of men of science reject all supernaturalism, including of course the gods and devils with their heavens and hells, and (4) only in the case of one of the sciences, psychology, is this majority greater than in the science of sociology. The truth of the last two of th
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III. MYTHICAL CHARACTER OF OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT PERSONAGES.
III. MYTHICAL CHARACTER OF OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT PERSONAGES.
What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an husbandman? I believe that every man must hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is concealed.—Origen. One of the critics of Communism and Christianism whose representations are in alignment with several others says: While th
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IV. WOULD SOCIALISM CHANGE HUMAN NATURE?
IV. WOULD SOCIALISM CHANGE HUMAN NATURE?
My revolt against the existing capitalist system of economics and the capitalized political and religious systems which support it is complete, and the end which I have in view in this booklet is that of primitive Christianism, as it is taught by Mary in the Magnificat, the putting down of the owning masters of the world and the exaltation of the working slaves, only that I do not recommend, as she did, that the masters should be banished to starve but rather that they should be allowed to becom
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V. WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF THE WORKERS' STATE.
V. WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF THE WORKERS' STATE.
Hail Soviet Russia, the first Communist Republic, the land of, by and for the common people. We greet you, workers and peasants of Russia, who by your untold sacrifices, by your determination and devotion, are transforming the Russia of black reaction, of the domination of a few, into a land of glorious promise for all. Comrades in America, watch the bright dawn in the East; you have but your chains to lose, and a world to gain!—The Workers' Council. In general outline the form of the workers' s
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VI. WITHDRAWAL OF PRIZE OFFER.
VI. WITHDRAWAL OF PRIZE OFFER.
Never have anything to do with those who pretend to have dealings with the supernatural. If you allow supernaturalism to get a foothold in your country the result will be a dreadful calamity.—Confucius. Mrs. Brown and I hereby withdraw, for the present at least, our prize offer, and for two reasons: 1. We are convinced that it is as necessary to the welfare of the world to smite supernaturalism in religion as capitalism in politics, but while many are able and willing to attack the octopus of ca
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VII. AFTERWORD.
VII. AFTERWORD.
My title, given in Latin on the picture page, is bestowed upon me by some in jest and by others in reproach, and I am accepting it from both as compliments, because they prove that I have at least succeeded in making clear the general outlines of my religious and political position. The use of this title is due to the desire that those who pick up the booklet should not buy it, much less undertake to read it, under a mistaken impression as to its doctrinal trends. In English the Latin title is,
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