William Montgomery Brown, a former Episcopal bishop, opens this 1920 booklet with a dedication to the proletariat, claiming his wealth came from their labor rather than divine providence. The work explicitly aims to advance what he calls 'saving Laborism' and 'leveling Unionism' against 'robbing Capitalism' and 'lying Supernaturalism.' Brown adopts Marx and Engels as his scientific gospel, framing his analysis from both Marxian and Darwinian points of view. The catalog subjects list 'Communism and Christianity,' but the excerpts reveal a more combative stance: Brown treats Christianism as a supernaturalist obstacle to be replaced, not reconciled.

A Former Bishop's Revolutionary Dedication

The dedication page is unusually direct: Brown thanks the proletariat for his own wealth, leisure, and opportunities, explicitly rejecting divine providence. This personal framing—a bishop turned Bolshevik sympathizer—colors the entire argument. The title page includes the epithet 'Episcopos in partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium,' signaling his break with orthodox Christianity. The catalog subject 'Christian socialism' might imply a synthesis, but Brown presents Christianism and Communism as irreconcilable systems. His language is militant: he calls for 'banishing' gods from the skies and capitalists from the earth. The dedication is not merely rhetorical; it grounds the book in class struggle rather than theological debate.

Parallels Between Jesus and Thomas Mooney

In one excerpt, Brown draws a direct analogy between Jesus and the labor activist Thomas Mooney, then imprisoned for a bombing. He argues that both were revolutionaries condemned by unjust authorities—Pilate and the California governor, respectively. This comparison is not a theological claim about Jesus' divinity but a political one: both were victims of capitalist justice. Brown uses the Mooney case to illustrate his broader argument that wars and legal systems serve capitalist interests. The excerpt shows his method of juxtaposing biblical narratives with contemporary labor struggles, though the full book likely extends this pattern. The catalog subject 'Communism and Christianity' is here reframed as a shared revolutionary heritage, not a doctrinal one.

Rejecting Theism While Keeping a Materialist Frame

Brown recounts his correspondence with Dr. Williamson Smith, whose book convinced him to abandon even a revised conception of God. He states that he 'ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity' and with it any hope for a spiritual afterlife. Yet he does not embrace atheism as a positive creed; instead, he adopts a materialist position that matter, force, and motion are sufficient explanations. He criticizes orthodox theologians for positing creation out of nothing without evidence, while acknowledging his own inability to trace the origins of matter. This section reveals Brown's intellectual journey from theism to a Darwinian-Marxist worldview, but the excerpts do not show how he resolves the tension between materialism and his earlier faith.

Readers should approach this book as a polemic rather than a systematic theology. Brown's arguments are embedded in early 20th-century labor movements and his personal ecclesiastical history. The catalog subjects may suggest a balanced comparison, but the text is unapologetically partisan. Pay attention to how Brown uses biblical references as political allegories and note the frequent shifts between doctrinal critique and economic analysis. The book's value lies in its historical specificity—a bishop's radical turn—rather than in philosophical originality.