The Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance

by Roy Wood Sellars

In the chaotic West, overrun by barbarians, society lost its ancient form and became stratified in accordance with a decentralized, military régime. The strongly organized, international Church maintained itself and saw an opportunity to realize its ideal, a civilization, or order, guided by itself and obedient to religious values. Should not the vice-regent of God rule upon the earth and make the divine law the law of the nations? In the conflict between the Roman Church, as reorganized by Hildebrand, and the Holy Roman Empire, we have a striking instance of that recurrent struggle between the supernatural and the secular so peculiar to the Christian world. Had not the emperors possessed some religious sanction for their claims and authority, they would have been completely overridden by the popes. It was the growth from beneath of national and human interests and of a more varied and stimulating social life that ultimately defeated the political aims of the Church. Humanism always flourishes when peace and contentment are abroad, and humanism is the deadliest enemy that supernaturalism has to meet. Thus the tradition of the Roman Empire tided secular authority over until the rise of vigorous nations with distinct customs, languages, and loyalties ceased to make the imperial and theocratic aspirations of the Church practical. But we must never forget that these aspirations of the Mediæval Church were natural outgrowths of the religious view of the world. If man is but a sojourner here, undergoing his tests for the life to come, who can be a better guide in all things than the divine institution established by God himself? The center of gravity of man's life falls outside this world.

But social tendencies and relations are always more complex and uncontrollable than theory or doctrine wishes to allow. Human values have a way of asserting themselves in all sorts of unexpected ways. The very act of living forces man to feel and achieve, to strive for this thing and for that, to enter into warm human relations which lead out into ambitions and desires. So, in spite of the official, and generally accepted, denial of human values, these sprang up at the least encouragement and flowered in custom and art. Thus, even during the Middle Ages, social activities had their innings and fair measure of attention. Men loved, and sinned, and fought, and dreamed much as they did in other days and do now. The thought of another world only tempered their moments of reflection and deepened their periods of contrition. There is good reason to believe, moreover, that men alternated between extremes of mood more than we do to-day with our settled horizon. The mediæval outlook did not favor that quiet temperance which the Greeks achieved in their happiest days.

With the rise of the cities and the national states came the revival of learning and a fresh interest in all phases of human life. The complete control of human life by a supernaturalistic religion was then no longer even a theoretical possibility. Life became a thing of interest for its own sake, something frankly to be enjoyed. Humanism had once more appeared in the world.

But the Church had an organized breadth which went far beyond the purely religious functions which Protestantism is inclined to associate with the institution. Within this socially flexible organization arose the monastic orders whose ideals varied from age to age. To establish industries, to clear the land, to preach the nobility of work and to foster commerce, to nurse the sick, to found schools and universities, to distribute charity, to offer hospitality to wayfarers, to nourish art and literature, all these activities grew out of the initiative of noble men who found the atmosphere or associations of organized Christianity favorable to their endeavors. It was under the shelter of religion that the finer phases of morality manifested themselves. Secular life did not possess a stability or organs adequate to the tasks of social ethics. Whatever new movement appeared naturally drifted into contact with the Church, even though the Church was not certain what to do with it. Sometimes these vital movements, in which ethical idealism of a rare type was displayed, almost threatened the existence of the hierarchical body which was in control of the organization through which they had to work. This was the situation which developed as a result of the spread of the ideals of the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century. Such an occurrence makes us realize that the social life of the time was creative, and that this creativeness could with difficulty be kept within the control of the formal Church; yet the organs which were necessary for the application of these ideas and enthusiasms were molded in accordance with ecclesiastical institutions, because no other model was at hand. Secular life was too narrow to give either financial support or suggestions. It had so long been accustomed to assign the moral field to religious institutions.

In spite of the undercurrent of criticism against the worldliness of the clergy which discovers itself to the historian of the later Middle Ages, the social movements connected with incorporated Christianity were vital enough to justify the existence of the Church. It acted as the traditional center of philanthropy, and its immense wealth made this feature a real force among the poor. But the other associated functions were slowly separating themselves from their original connection and striking roots in the secular life of the time. In place of the cathedral towns clustered around the cathedral and the bishop's palace, the commercial towns pushed to the front both in wealth and importance. The wealthy merchant or banker vied in riches with the churchman. Art and literature passed from the hands of the Church to the laity. This process was very gradual, but steady and persistent. By the time of the reformation, it was in full swing. Beneath the framework of feudalism and the Mediæval Church, a new society had been forming, far more complex than the old and full of potentialities which we are only now beginning to measure. Industry, commerce, geographical discovery, national literature, guilds, municipal governments, courts, science, secular art, philosophy, all were present either in bud or in full flower. Out of the fertile and fearless life which came from the interplay of these tendencies and activities, new ideas and values were born and soon found or created appropriate organs for their expression apart from the Church. Try as it would, Mother Church could not cover them with her wings. Many of these activities were alien to her genius and, as they waxed in strength and confidence, stepped boldly out into the arena of secular life.

One has only to take a broad survey of modern society to realize how completely secular life has found means to perform functions which were formerly carried by the Church. The very control which the Church wished to exercise repelled them and drove them into the world with its freedom and tolerance. Free association, individual enterprise, the creative fervor of genius, and, later, governmental policy have worked wonders in overcoming the meagerness of secular life. Education is now almost universal, and so the masses live lives which touch a myriad interests never known to them in other days. Art has broadened its scope and now touches with magic fingers all phases of human life, nature and man being alike raised to a higher spiritual level by her work. Science has reached out into all parts of nature and thrown a transforming light upon all things. Philosophy has left the old scholastic concepts and mated with science to explain the world in which we live. Charity is giving way to a broader conception of social justice. In short, the old division of life into two spheres, the earthly and the spiritual, no longer has its old significance. The spiritual has made its home in man's daily life, in his reading, his art, his thinking and his doing. Wherever there are genuine values, there is the spiritual. Is not loyalty to these spiritual values of human life coming to be the sole meaning of religion? Is it within the power of an institution, still dominated by beliefs hostile to this frank humanism, to cherish and guide the unfolding of the spiritual life of the present? That is the query which I bring with me when I contemplate the Church. Has not the free life of the present outgrown any centralized and institutionalized control?

To-day, ideas and enthusiasms find their organs in the teeming secular world. Moral idealism is at home upon the earth in fellowships and loyalties in which men discover much of their reason for being. The pulse of society beats time to the songs of its true poets, and throbs at the call to battle for some noble achievement, while the Church dreams of the past and the days of her greatness, or tenderly stoops to comfort those who cling to her sanctions and her vision of a heavenly kingdom, not of this world. She played her part, and she played it greatly—that much we must avow, even while we point out her present limitations—but the world has passed beyond her tutelage and runs lithesomely and courageously into fields where she cannot bring herself to follow. Thus is it, and thus has it always been—institutions and ideas have their period of usefulness when they serve as organizing centers for social tendencies; but the time inevitably comes when they lose their creative power and are outgrown by the life which has made them and is greater than they. And yet there is hope. Will the dethroned monarch recognize the inevitableness of the massive revolution which is surging round her and give up her outgrown pretensions, willingly consenting to play a lesser role in full harmony with the spirit of the time? Not yet will this voluntary abdication come. But, some time in the future, the new loyalties will surely seep into the Church and prepare it for the great sacrifice in which it will find its saving service. Modernism can afford to wait patiently, for time fights on its side.