The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age — Inside the Classic

Labor as the Unacknowledged Church

Bland’s most provocative claim is that labor does not need to become Christian—it already is. He points to the British Labour Party’s 1917 Draft Report on Reconstruction as “a thousand times more Christian than the ordinary ecclesiastical pronouncement,” even though the name of Christ never appears in it. The argument hinges on a redefinition: Christianity is not a set of doctrines but a commitment to brotherhood, the right of every person to human conditions, and the denial of anyone’s right to live on others’ labor without equivalent service. Bland insists that the working-class consciousness, rooted in the experience of Jesus as a working man, is uniquely fitted to interpret Christianity. The high, the served, the rich, and the mere scholars, he writes, are not fitted to understand it—a direct inversion of traditional religious authority.

A Racial and Historical Evolution

Bland situates his argument within a sweeping historical framework, tracing Christianity through successive racial embodiments. He begins with Jewish Christianity, which he characterizes as “a Christianized Judaism”—the apostles remained strict Jews, merely accepting Jesus as the fulfillment of national hope. This evolutionary lens allows Bland to argue that Christianity has always been shaped by its social and racial environment, and that the current moment demands a new incarnation: an American Christianity (by which he means a Christianity of the Americas, with Canada as a potential pathfinder). The war, he suggests, has revealed both the weaknesses and the possibilities of nations, and the struggle between what he calls the Jekyll and Hyde in every nation is nowhere keener than in Canada.

The Prophetic Task of Interpreting Labor to Itself

Bland’s closing sections shift from diagnosis to exhortation. The supreme mission of the prophetic spirit, he writes, is to interpret labor to itself, lest it miss its path in the hour of consummation. He warns that turning away from Christianity would be for labor to turn away from the throne, but he expresses confidence that mankind is in the grasp of divine currents too strong to be resisted. The book’s structure—moving from social order to new Christianity, from democracy to brotherhood—mirrors its argument that the two revolutions are inseparable. Bland does not provide a detailed program; he offers a vision, insisting that the way may not prove so hard to find as it has sometimes seemed. The tone is urgent but hopeful, grounded in a specific national context yet reaching for universal significance.

Readers should approach The New Christianity as a document of its moment—a post-war Canadian sermon that blends social gospel, nationalism, and labor politics. Bland’s reliance on the Mount Nebo metaphor signals that he is offering perspective, not policy. The book’s value lies less in its specific proposals than in its attempt to fuse religious and economic language into a single prophetic register. Those interested in the history of the social gospel in North America, or in early twentieth-century attempts to reconcile Christianity with socialism, will find here a passionate, if sketchy, case for a labor Christianity that still awaits its full realization.

The last time this struck me, I was in my grandfather’s basement, listening to him argue with the radio about Sunday sermons. The New Christianity brought that back—how he saw the union hall as a more honest church. I found the same ache in Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality? A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society, Chicago — Context and Discussion, that quiet faith in something just beyond the institution.