h as the one now in progress in
Russia and the one which Capitalism in England and America is daily and
diligently provoking.

At such moments it becomes the duty of the Churches to evoke all the
powers of destruction against the existing order. But if they do this,
the existing order must forcibly suppress them. Churches are suffered
to exist only on condition that they preach submission to the State as
at present capitalistically organized. The Church of England itself is
compelled to add to the thirty-six articles in which it formulates its
religious tenets, three more in which it apologetically protests that
the moment any of these articles comes in conflict with the State it is
to be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abrogated and abhorred,
the policeman being a much more important person than any of the
Persons of the Trinity. And this is why no tolerated Church nor
Salvation Army can ever win the entire confidence of the poor. It must
be on the side of the police and the military, no matter what it
believes or disbelieves; and as the police and the military are the
instruments by which the rich rob and oppress the poor (on legal and
moral principles made for the purpose), it is not possible to be on the
side of the poor and of the police at the same time. Indeed the
religious bodies, as the almoners of the rich, become a sort of
auxiliary police, taking off the insurrectionary edge of poverty with
coals and blankets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the
victims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happiness in another
world when the process of working them to premature death in the
service of the rich is complete in this.

CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM

Such is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army nor
the Church of England nor any other religious organization whatever can
escape except through a reconstitution of society. Nor can they merely
endure the State passively, washing their hands of its sins. The State
is constantly forcing the consciences of men by violence and cruelty.
Not content with exacting money from us for the maintenance of its
soldiers and policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to
take an active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming
ourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a
sensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has been
celebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a