page_title: Samuel Dwight Chown
section_title: Views
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Dwight Chown / Views
caption_attribution_description: English: S.D. Chown center rear with residents of Norway House, 1925
context_page_description: Samuel Dwight Chown was a Methodist minister who led the Methodist Church of Canada into the United Church of Canada in 1925.
context_section_description: Chown supported the change in emphasis in sermons from stern teachings about sin and repentance to a more optimistic message with greater stress on the redeeming love of Christ. He thought this would create a revival of religious belief, and wrote, "The preaching that shall produce it may not be nearly as dramatic as that of the past, and therefore the results may not be so sensationally and superficially striking. We shall not see an angry God laying upon His innocent Son punishment for our sins that we escape punishment, but we shall see a loving sin bearing God pouring out his life for us in the person of his Son."
  Chown called the Social Gospel "the voice of prophecy in our time."
  He supported public welfare and state ownership of public utilities. He was against political socialism with a narrow economic focus based on a monopolist and materialistic state. He said, "Socialism needs the steady, untiring consecration and the dynamic power of the most vigorous type of Christianity attainable; and Christianity would be helped by the outlook of Socialism to attain a practical social objective. Linked in this way, they may become fellow-helpers to the truth which makes men free."
  Chown welcomed the scientific methodology of the 20th century, and thought social sciences would support rather than replace Christianity.
  He wrote that modern social science would,
  show the young men of our country that the theological student is not a recluse, and that, in its essence, Christianity is ethical, altruistic and aggressive. The associations of the preacher today incline him too much to the feminine side of religion. The minister should know the down-town life of men, and the message it needs. He should be a good mixer ... Ministers, in the best sense of the word, must be free to be men of affairs, promoters. The Church, to attract virile young men, must blazon forth the possibility of a career, which will justify their consecration to the ministry; and the outstanding fact is that their full equipment is impossible unless they know the world in which they live.
  In his view modern Canadians were still attracted by religious experience, but to survive the Protestant churches had to stress a "saving faith" based on the personality and experiences of Jesus.
  He was against elaborate traditional theology, which he thought separated the church from popular culture and society. 
  He said, "Theology is thought. Religion is life.
  Chown attacked the way students at the church colleges were taught, saying the curriculum was irrelevant in its focus on ancient systems of theology. 
  Future ministers had to be taught to "enter into dynamic relation" with the modern world, rather than being made "miniature theological professors."
  He wrote sarcastically of theological studies,
  Then we took a balloon, for flying machines were not yet invented, and we sailed sublimely upward, landing on the mountain of eschatology, or the science of the last things - the end of the world, heaven, hell, the judgment and hereafter. These subjects were illuminated by all the lamps which shone in the great field of speculation, and impressed upon us by a formidable body of descriptured philosophy. In this way we were carried in our historical study of theology away up out of sight of the whole realm of sociology.
  Chown's thought religious truths were not solely based on holy writings. He thought, "They rest upon nature ... They rest upon our moral constitution, upon conscience, upon history, upon the corporate religious consciousness of the church and upon the experience of each individual Christian."
  He believed that personal salvation was essential, not just social reformation. He preached, "Regeneration consciously experienced and testified to by the spirit of God was the outstanding doctrine of Methodism, and it is still our paramount mission to proclaim it."
  On church union, he said "The movement toward the union of the Churches of Christendom, in order that they may speak with moral authority to divided and sometimes hostile nations, is part of the divine plan for t
caption: S.D. Chown center rear with residents of Norway House, 1925
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