in this book neither of these emphases will encourage the
kind of illusion that hides the truth in the other. I hope
to make it clear that this dual approach to Communism
does not mean that one should call attention to both the
good and the evil of Communism in such a way as to
steer a middle course in relation to it. The good in its
idealism and in its achievements makes it more effective
and so more dangerous than a movement that can be
shown to be rotten and cynical at its center.

The emphasis in this book upon Communism as a
promise of a more just order of society and upon Com-
munism as a corrective of the attitudes of the conventional
Church, while not implying that it is any less important
to resist the extension of Communism, does have an im-
portant bearing on the conditions and methods of re-
sistance. If the judgments upon which this emphasis is
based are correct, the extension of Communism cannot
be prevented by negative propaganda governed by religious
hostility or inspired by the beneficiaries of western cap-
italism, nor can it be prevented primarily by military
power. It can be prevented only by those who have a
sounder faith and a better program to meet human needs
and unsolved problems.

Communism has been strong where Christians and
Churches have often been weak, in providing a means of
changing unjust institutions in the interests of their vic-
tims. Communism is weak in not foreseeing the extent
of the new forms of oppression to which its own program
gives rise, and this weakness, on the deepest level, is re-
ligious. Unconsciously it offers false solutions to religious
problems, the existence of which it does not recognize.
What that sentence means, and what the Christian solu-
tions are to those same religious problems, will be the
main subject of the chapters which follow.

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