Gordon Clark: Has Protestantism Lost its Conscience? (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1956. Has Protestantism Lost its Conscience? The Southern Presbyterian Journal. Aug. 8: pgs. 4-5.

Has Protestanism Lost Its Conscience?

By Gordon H. Clark

The Protestant Reformation was both a doctrinal and a moral movement. And to this day predominantly Protestant countries have maintained a higher standard of morality than the Romish nations. But inasmuch as ecclesiastical organizations deteriorate, especially when they become rich and have need of nothing, one may wonder whether it may not be possible for Protestantism to lose its conscience.

Consider an article published in Foi Education (January - March 1956), the periodical of the Federation Protestant de l'Enseignment.

The author writes on Education in the New China. He holds that the key to the under- standing of the new China is its agricultural reform. Along with this goes a great cultural effort — schools, universities, museums — which is no merely secondary aspect of socialistic construe lion. Public service needs men and women who are not robots, but who are responsible individuals capable of developing popular democracy. Culture is at the center of socialism, and the new China has taken seriously these imperatives which determine socialistic policy.

The author continues by praising the introduction of an alphabet to take the place of the ancient characters. Then he sketches the (alleged) workings of primary and secondary education, distinguished, he says, by attention to good health, good instruction, good morality, and good character. The children are taught patriotism, internationalism, and love of peace.

The author then concludes with praise for the Universities, the system of adult education, the socialist edification of the peasants, the building of libraries, and all the marvelous instruments of culture.

But the author in this Protestant periodical has not one word of adverse criticism. There is no suspicion of the brutality, the torture, the massacre of fifteen or twenty million people. All is sweetness and light.

In the United States also there are Protestants who seem to admire Red China. They want it seated in the United Nations. They dislike to hear it criticized. Can it be that Protestants are losing their conscience? Can liberalism preserve any sense of social responsibility? Or does lax theology tend toward a callous disregard of human rights? Could it be that the tendency toward a centrally controlled ecclesiastical organization finds its blood brother in the totalitarian state?