1928

I think I ought to repent of the many unkind things I have said about various ministers. We liberal preachers (I am thinking of social liberalism now) are too ready to attribute conventional opinions to cowardice. What we don’t realize is that the great majority of parsons simply don’t share our radical convictions. If they get along very handsomely in the kind of a civilization in which we live, that is simply because they are in sincere general agreement with the prevailing ideas of our day. Of course I think we have a right to wonder a little how one can claim discipleship to one who disturbed history so much and yet be such a thorough conformist. Yet it is usually not cowardice but mental inertia which creates the conformity; and sometimes the conformity is the honest fruit of a finely poised rather than a daring mind. After all most of us are conformists in some sense, and it is rather presumptuous on our part to condemn every type of conformity except our own.

I am moved to this reflection by the insistence of such men as the editor of the Christian Register that every liberal who remains in an evangelical communion and does not immediately join the Unitarian church must be prompted by cowardice. When it is theological rather than social liberalism that is made the test of conformity or radicalism, it is my ox that is gored, and I begin to recant my previous harsh opinions. If the editor of the Register can go so far wrong in gauging the motives of evangelical liberals we social radicals may be wrong in explaining why parsons fail to be thoroughgoing pacifists. Great achievement! I learn how to be tolerant when I become the victim of somebody else’s spiritual pride.