Christianity and Democracy

Extract

Whatever the outcome of the war, it has already rendered the world an immense service in defining with unexampled clearness and on a hitherto unmatched scale an ethical issue of the profoundest and most far-reaching significance. I do not mean the old issue raised by every war since the time of Christ—whether war is ever right and to engage in it ever Christian. That question is largely academic and in existing circumstances of altogether minor importance. In a situation like the present, Christian men as well as other men will fight, and fight with a good conscience, whatever may be said as to the abstract right or wrong of war, or as to its consonance with Christian principles. It would be easy to show that to identify Christianity with pacifism, as many devout and eager Christians are doing, is profoundly to misinterpret it and to lose sight altogether of its great controlling principles. But I am concerned this morning with another matter altogether—the fundamental moral issue raised by this particular war and Christianity's relation to that issue. I refer—to put it in a single phrase—to the issue between autocracy and democracy.