Christianizing the social order Author:Walter Rauschenbusch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III SOCIAL CONSERVATISM AND THE CHURCH We are apt to think that progress is the natural thing. Progress is more than natural. It is divine. Men ... more »are impatient with the moral forces which are changing the social order, because they have never comprehended the terrible tenacity and vigor of the social forces that resist progress. We are to smite a pathway for the Almighty in human affairs. What powers of resistance will we encounter? With what obstacles must we reckon ? When a railway engineer plans a cut through a mountain-side, he first finds out what material must be removed. Is it loose dirt and gravel ? A steam shovel will serve. Is it granite ? He must order up drills and dynamite. The most important and persistent obstacle of progress, is the conservative stupidity and stolidity of human nature. In history, as in physics, the vis inertia rules. Possession is nine points of sociology as well as of law. There are nations and races that have not changed appreciably for ages. To a student of history the astonishing thing is not that the people occasionally rioted and raged, but that they stood all this awful oppression and injustice with such patience and passiveness. Even a highly sensitive and mobile nation like our own rarely budges when the house next door is burning. It waits till its own roof is on fire. For proof I refer to the history of our tariff and labor legislation. The passive indifference of the mass of men is backed by the active conservatism of the most influential socialclasses. In every social order the ablest individuals rise to controlling positions and intrench themselves in the places they have attained. Their effort is to preserve for themselves and their children the power and wealth which they have acquired. Knowing the power of ...« less