. From Soviet Russia a definitely
anti-religious Communism is pushing west into Europe and America, East
into Persia, India, China and Japan. It is an economic theory, definitely
harnessed to disbelief in God. It is a religious irreligion... It has a
passionate sense of mission, and is carrying on its anti-God campaign at
the Church's base at home, as well as launching its offensive against its
front-line in non-Christian lands. Such a conscious, avowed, organized
attack against religion in general and Christianity in particular is
something new in history. Equally deliberate in some lands in its
determined hostility to Christianity is another form of social and
political faith--nationalism. But the nationalist attack on Christianity,
unlike Communism, is often bound up with some form of national
religion--with Islam in Persia and Egypt, with Buddhism in Ceylon, while
the struggle for communal rights in India is allied with a revival both of
Hinduism and Islam."

I need not attempt in this connection an exposition of the origin and
character of those economic theories and political philosophies of the
post-war period, that have directly and indirectly exerted, and are still
exerting, their pernicious influence on the institutions and beliefs
connected with one of the most widely-spread and best organized religious
systems of the world. It is with their influence rather than with their
origin that I am chiefly concerned. The excessive growth of industrialism
and its attendant evils--as the aforementioned quotation bears witness--the
aggressive policies initiated and the persistent efforts exerted by the
inspirers and organizers of the Communist movement; the intensification of
a militant nationalism, associated in certain countries with a
systematized work of defamation against all forms of ecclesiastical
influence, have no doubt contributed to the de-Christianization of the
masses, and been responsible for a notable decline in the authority, the
prestige and power of the Church. "The whole conception of God," the
persecutors of the Christian Religion have insistently proclaimed, "is a
conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a
conception quite unworthy of free men." "Religion," one of their leaders
has asserted, "is an opiate of the people." "Religion," declares the text
of their official publications, "is a brutalization of the people.
Education must be so directed as to efface from the people's mi