Religion: Man Proposes

In the mountains of Washington last summer, Walter Marshall Horton (in his own words) “saved civilization on paper just as it broke down in fact.” Professor Horton is a softspoken, sparse-haired theologian who teaches at Oberlin College. He likes to travel, often turns his trips into theological travelogues (Contemporary English Theology, Contemporary Continental Theology). When he took a sabbatical leave in 1938-39 he toured Australia, the East Indies and Asia, attended the decennial meeting of the International Missionary Council at Madras (TIME, Dec. 26, 1938). That busman’s holiday stirred up notions which thoughtful Theologian Horton had long pondered in his heart. A summer’s meditations and World War II’s outbreak merely spurred him on.

Last week appeared the result: Can Christianity Save Civilization? (Harpers; $2). The Religious Book Club snapped it up as its July choice—the sixth time since 1930 that the R. B. C. had picked a Horton tome. Whether or not they accepted Theologian Horton’s answer (a determined “Yes”), believers of all creeds—and of none—found his latest book as full of close-knit arguments as a Jonathan Edwards sermon was full of hellfire. U. S. controversialists who wish to argue with Dr. Horton, however, must wait until fall: he is on another jaunt.

To Dr. Horton, “saving” civilization is not “preserving it as it is” or “restoring it as it was” but “carrying forward its enduring values into a new social order.” “Civilization” itself is “both the means by which and the ends for which any literate culture group carries on its common life.” Man, he implies, can do with fewer bathtubs and blueprints. No cut-&-dried plan can save world civilization and Christianity; a religious rebirth is necessary. “Christ planted the seeds of a new humanity [which] saved Roman civilization without even intending to do so.”

Among Dr. Horton’s proposals for civilization-saving :

¶ An elimination of Nationalism. It is “already . . . the ‘other religion’ of most of the human race; and when the Christian churches become just a little more inert than they now are in any particular country, nationalism then will become the sole religion of that country.”

¶ The preservation of individuality, for nations and individuals alike.

¶ The reforging of links between Church and Community. Example: the lona Community, a group of young Scottish Presbyterians living on the holy isle of lona off the west coast of Scotland, whence St. Columba first brought Christianity to Scotland in 563. Declares the Community: “Never again is the Church going to dominate education or physical fitness or social life or the care of the poor; we have Christianized society sufficiently for it [society] to take over these functions. But it is still our work to permeate them, influence them and direct them.”

¶ Church unity. “A new burst of vitality without a simultaneous drive for unity may very easily split the Church wide open.”

¶ Continued spread of the missionary ideal and absorption from other faiths of whatever may help Christianity. “So long as Christianity remains a European religion, in its governing characteristics, it cannot reanimate world culture.”

Dr. Horton concludes that “Our world is in its autumn, and apparently destined to pass through some kind of winter before its Easter comes.” But he also believes that “autumn is a good time for planting winter wheat.”