and Lenin is sufficient for him. “The real function of the Church is to hold up steadily before both the conflicting forces the Christian standard of values.”[1] But it is evident that the Christian Churches must side with the owning classes in opposing as “revolutionary” any serious attempt of a democracy to reform the distribution of wealth. Everywhere the Christian Churches are found ranging themselves with the “Conservative classes,” and this sight everywhere saps their influence among the class-conscious workers. This does not imply a condemnation of the Churches for failure to carry out a social ethics of Christianity, but simply a recognition that the Churches belong to the “established order” and confer a certain sacredness on their cause.[2] The coincidence of Protestantism with the rise of modern capitalism was no accident of history. Capitalism could not have found its necessary freedom under the dominion which the Romish Church exercised over the conduct of secular life. Its prohibition of usury, its principle of a fair. price, its claim to regulate on spiritual rules the processes of bargaining and markets, though punctured by various evasions and exceptions, were hostile to the free play of capitalist industry, commerce, and finance. The removal of Papal authority from the
