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Essay on Christianity
Although most people feel that they are well enough acquainted with Christianity to know what it is, they are often at a loss to define it. The churches are a respected part of the American scene. Our nation prides itself in having Christian forebears. In fact, Christianity is often publicly identified with the American way of life. But what is Christianity? There are two extreme and almost opposite definitions, and between them various intermediary ones combining features of both, shading gradually from one to the other.
One of the extreme positions is that Christianity is nothing more nor less than doing good to one's fellow men. After all, it is frequently asked, did not Christ go about doing good, and did he not place more emphasis on how a man acted rather than on the way he thought? So, argue people taking this position, the Christian is not one who professes some stereotyped creed, but one who lives decently, obeying the laws and showing kindness to his neighbor. Many holding this position will assert further that the church is no essential part of Christianity, that anyone trying to lead a good and useful life is in reality a Christian, even though, like the late Mahatma Gandhi, he denies it.
Such a view develops as a reaction in any period when the subtlety of creedal statements comes to dominate the religious scene, drawing boundaries between believer and nonbeliever much narrower than those found in human experience. In this country, the profusion of denominations led directly to this view. There was a time, no doubt, when one could seriously believe that none but those in his little group could be classed as Christian. But as people were forced together in communities and could see at firsthand that denominational label had little effect in itself on a person's daily conduct, the concept of what Christianity actually is had to be broadened beyond denominational bounds......
