Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Americans are very suspicious, too, of any interference on the part of the government. If a system demands an army, a palace, lands, it must pay for them out of its own private means. A generation or more ago it was possible for an administration to give for a merely nominal sum, in the very heart of a large city, great estates to one denomination. This is possible no longer. Every sect must vindicate itself, and stand on its own feet; this alone would make it impossible for a church so poor as the Catholic to establish itself in this country on any terms of supremacy.

The desire for change which is inherent in the American mind must also prove fatal in the end to any claim of absolute stability. Protestantism is therefore better for Americans than Romanism is, because it is more portable, more various, more accommodating to popular tastes and inclinations.

There is no disposition to undervalue the work of the Catholic Church. Its great saints, its heroic martyrs, its stupendous missions, its enormous philanthropy, its influence in educating and controlling masses of people, cannot be exaggerated; and still it is destined to wield an immense influence as a spiritual power over the human race; but it never again can be the absolute system it once was. However it may commend itself to certain classes in our population, it must always be simply one department in the universal church.

But it will be said that the Catholic Church may accommodate itself to republican institutions. M. Renan doubts whether any radical change can be made. He says:

Catholicism, persuaded that it works for the truth, will always endeavor to enlist the state in its defence or its spread.... Catholicism is, in fact, the believer's country, far more than is the land of his birth. The stronger a religion is, the more effective it is in this way.... More and more have Catholics been brought to think that they derive life and salvation from Rome. It is especially worth remarking that the new Catholic conquests exhibit the most sensitiveness on this point. The old provincial Catholic, whose faith belonged to the soil, has less need of the Pope, and is much less alarmed at the storms that menace him, than the new Catholics, who are coming fresh to Catholicism, and regard the Pope, after the new system, as the author and defender of their faith.... Catholicism has been seduced into becoming a religion essentially political. The Pope becomes the actual sovereign of the church.

But supposing that such an alteration is possible, that the church can abase its pretensions to supremacy over all other sects, that Romanism simply melts into our society,—in this case, the papacy, as usually understood, becomes simply a form of church government like Presbyterianism or Congregationalism or Episcopacy; Catholicism becomes a purely spiritual faith, and, as such, is not only harmless but beneficent.

The religion, therefore, of America cannot be ecclesiastical; neither can it be dogmatic. I was on the point of saying theological; but there is a great difference between theological and dogmatical. Dogmatism is theology raised to power. Theology there always must be; some account of the Supreme Power in the world; some report of the contents of the Divine Mind. The present indifference to theology is hardly a good sign, unless it be an indifference to theology as usually regarded—that is, to the old systems of theology. The future religion, for this reason, cannot be Protestantism. For Protestantism is essentially dogmatical. It claims superiority to Romanism on the one hand and to infidelity on the other. Furthermore, it is identified with the Bible. Now, modern scientific criticism has so riddled the Bible, that it no longer can serve as a foundation. And this foundation being taken away, Protestantism must lose its corner-stone, and rest entirely on a rational basis. Likewise, Protestantism encourages sectarianism. It exists, in fact, only in numerous parties, each jealous of the rest and seeking to build up its own establishment without regard to the well-being of opposing bodies. There is a dream of unity amid all this diversity. But such unity can be gained only by the sacrifice of the very peculiarity of division, and the admission of certain things which all have in common; and such a reconciliation, besides the tyranny it engenders, cannot be desired, as it would be fatal to all activity. Sectarianism itself, apart from the "hatred, malice, and uncharitableness" which accompany it, may not of necessity be an evil; but sectarianism as it exists now is an evil of very great moment, and yet, without something of this alienation between sects Protestantism would decline.

Is Unitarianism then to be the coming religion? I cannot think so. Unitarianism is but a form of Protestantism; the most attenuated form. It is committed to the Bible; held to it indeed by a very fine thread, but still held to it. No doubt it has gained greatly in the last years. The annual circulation of its tracts has risen in twenty-five or thirty years from fifteen thousand to three hundred thousand copies. A quarter of a century ago there was but one Unitarian church on the Pacific coast, now there are eighteen. A generation since it had, in the whole region from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, only fourteen churches, now there are ninety; and in the same period, sixty-three new societies have come into being in the New England and Middle States. Still, as compared with the great sects, it is very small, and never can be their rival. And this because, however interesting and precious it may be to some people, it lacks, and must ever lack, owing to its critical character, the elements of a great religion, the passionateness that charms the people, and the moral enthusiasm that catches up the few men of genius. The period of "pale negations" is past; but in proportion as the system becomes positive it tends more and more towards the principle that animates the ethical societies, namely, its supreme devotion to the moral law. Thus it stands at the beginning, not at the end, of the line of advance, and has all the work of building up to do, before it can grow in general influence.

No, the religion of the future in America must be of the spirit; not merely as being independent of form and dogma, but as cherishing a great hope for the soul, and a great aspiration after perfection. No doubt every spirit must have a form of some kind, but it need not be a fixed, established, dominant imposition. M. Renan touched the matter exactly when commenting on the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria: "Woman, the hour is coming and now is, when men shall worship neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem, but when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Renan says:

When the Christ pronounced this word, he became really a Son of God, and for the first time spoke the word upon which eternal religion shall repose. He founded the worship without date, without country, which shall endure to the end of time. He created a heaven of pure souls, where one finds what one asks in vain for on the earth, the perfect nobleness of the children of God, absolute purity, total abstraction from the impurities of the world, the liberty which has its complete amplitude only in the world of thought.... The love of God conceived as the type of all perfection, the love of man, charity, his whole doctrine is reduced to this; nothing can be less theological, less sacerdotal, nothing more philosophical, more profound, or more simple.