All-Church Symposium

Challenged by charges of cowardice and indifference, the Church issued a manifesto on the subject of " Industrial Relations and the Churches." It is the Church in the sense of all American churches of any considerable membership. The manifesto is in the form of a symposium collected by the American Academy of Political and Social Science and edited by Rev. John A. Ryan, a director in the National Catholic Welfare Council, and by Rev. F. Ernest Johnson, a secretary of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America.

The symposium explains Catholic, Jewish, Protestant teachings.

The Catholics emphasize: " Industrial relations are human relations, and therefore subject to the moral law. Inasmuch as the Church is the accredited interpreter and teacher of the moral law, her authority and function in the field of industrial relations are quite as certain as in domestic relations, or in any other department of human life." Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical (Berum Novarum, May 15, 1891) on the conditions of labor. In it he rejected and condemned socialism and said " no practical solution of this question can be found apart from the intervention of religion and the Church." Wages must be sufficient to support the wage earners in reasonable and frugal comfort. Labor organizations are permitted.

Judaism points out that the primary purpose of industry is not to create profits but to free men and equip them for " the larger life."

The Protestant position: 1) The intrinsic worth of personality. This makes " even the least" to be of greatest important to God and to society. 2) The organic unity of human society. 3) The motive of service, which makes property subordinate to spiritual ends.

The majority of the contributors to the symposium agreed that the church is directly concerned with industrial conflict and opined that the church will be called upon to investigate and pronounce upon industrial disputes.

Significance. The importance of this symposium is considered to lie in the fact that it marks a line of duty from which individual churches cannot retreat with honor. But the symposium is not a program, it carries no seal of responsibility; it is, however, prophetic of the church, seeking a new creed for a new day, or at least a more valiant and effective application of creeds which are old.