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

by Roy Wood Sellars

What is striking about the present situation is the increase of the positive elements in the outlook which is forming in men's minds. In the past, the traditionalist had some justification in speaking of the opposed ideas as largely negative. What positive doctrine there was in the physical science which theology had to meet, to its discomfort, had only an indirect bearing upon life. But the nineteenth century was the witness of a distinct revolution in this regard. I do not refer merely to the fact that the idea of evolution was applied to man. That was prophetic and strategic rather than revolutionary. It symbolized the passage of science from the periphery to the center, from the outlying regions of the universe to man's very self. All the time, however, a new perspective had been arising in man's interests and values. The possibilities and needs of this life were replacing the dream of another life in another world. A busy concern with the things of this world was everywhere evident. Man was seeking to master his environment.

During the first stage of this revolution, the industrial and political changes were the most prominent. A change in the instrumentalities of life, physical, economic and political, occupied men's thoughts to a larger degree than ever before. But as the nineteenth century circled to the twentieth, deeper notes became audible. Humanitarianism, constructive reform, social democracy became the watchwords of the day. I do not think that it has yet been clearly realized how completely these new aims and interests fit in with the results of science and yet pass beyond them to the service of human values. The truth seems to be that, by an imperceptible process, new values and hopes have been replacing the traditional ones, and that these values and aims both find themselves in harmony with the new knowledge and rest upon it.

In spite of the conflict between the rising view of man and nature and the traditional religious conception, there is yet, I believe, a profound continuity in the genuinely spiritual achievements of humanity. It is a pity to be so ridden by the new that the noble in the old is forgotten. Tenderness and love, however obscured at times by formalism and bigotry, owe much to their nurture by Christianity. Hence, the deeper and truer interpretation of all past movements regards them as varying expressions of humanity's growth in social and mental stature. There is, in other words, no real discontinuity in human history. The only difference is, that the dynamic of social conditions and intellectual heritage has varied.

But this acknowledged continuity does not preclude that presence of genuine and effective newness which is revolutionary in its effects. The perspective, intention, and elements of religion are about to alter. In the following pages, I shall argue that the attachments of past religion were determined by a mythological, and essentially magical, idea of man's environment. Such attitudes and expectations as prayer, ritual, worship, immortality, providence, are expressions of the pre-scientific view of the world. But as man partly outgrows, partly learns to reject, the primitive thought of the world, this perspective and these elements will drop from religion. That this alteration has, in surprisingly large measure, already taken place can be seen from the following excerpts from the writings of the best known American authority on Church History: "Traditional Christian ideas, in fact, are undergoing extensive transformation as a result of the new social emphasis. The individualism of evangelicalism, with its primary concern for the salvation of the individual soul, is widely discredited. The old ascetic ideal is everywhere giving way to the social. Instead of holding themselves aloof from the world Christians are throwing themselves into it and striving to reform it. Holiness in the traditional sense of abstinence from sin is less highly valued than it was. The test of virtue is more and more coming to be the social test. The virtuous man is he who makes his influence tell for the improvement of society. Personal probity and uprightness, dissociated from the active service of one's fellows, is frequently regarded to-day as 'mere morality' was by the Evangelicals. As virtue had value to them only in union with and subordination to piety, so without the spirit of service personal morality seems to many a modern social reformer a mere empty husk."[[1]] Obviously, the center of religious gravity has altered tremendously from what it was in the Victorian Age. We are on the brink of a new period, the period of a realistic, and yet spiritual, social democracy.

"But," I will be asked, "do you advocate a religion of humanity? That is an old effort weighed in the balance and found wanting." Comte's reform was, in a way, premature. Society had not developed enough to give his effort a concrete basis. But, more than this, his mistake was that he did not see that the elements of religion, as well as its perspective, must be altered. Humanity is not an object to be worshiped. The very attitude and implications of worship must be relinquished. In their place must be put the spiritually founded virtue of loyalty to those efforts and values which elevate human beings and give a quality of nobility and significance to our human life here and now.

The positive note of the present work can now be given in a few words: Religion is loyalty to the values of life. The idea of the spiritual must be broadened and humanized to include all those purposes, experiences and activities which express man's nature. The spiritual must be seen to be the fine flower of living, which requires no other sanctions than its own inherent worth and appeal. We must outgrow the false notion that religion is inseparable from supernatural objects, and that the spiritual is something alien to man which must be forced upon him from the outside. The spiritual is man at his best, man loving, daring, creating, fighting loyally and courageously for causes dear to him. Religion must be concrete instead of formal, and catholic in its count of values. Wherever there is loyal endeavor, the presence of the spiritual must freely be acknowledged. It would seem to follow that religion will have objects only in the sense of purposes to fulfill. It will no longer have need of a special view of the world.

The religion of the past has had much to say about salvation. Salvation was only too often something which happened to a man from outside. It was something capricious and uncontrollable like sudden fortune. Let us see what the religion of the present with its more realistic conception of life has to say about salvation. I have written in the book as follows: "Only that soul is saved which is worth saving, and the being worth saving is its salvation. Salvation is no magical hocus-pocus external to the reach and timbre of a man; it is the loyal union of a man with those values of life which have come within his ken." Whatever mixture of magic, fear, ritual, and adoration religion may have been in man's early days upon this earth, it is now increasingly, and henceforth must be, that which concerns his contact with the duties and possibilities of life. Such salvation is an achievement which has personal and social conditions. It is not a label nor a lucky number for admission into another world, but something bought and paid for by effort. It is like character and education, for these are but special instances of it.

The personal conditions of spiritual life are sanity, health, and a capacity to be fired by consuming purposes. No one can be greatly saved who has not a soul capable of being touched in some measure by what is sterling and significant. But one of the discoveries of democracy is the wide distribution of this sensitiveness. The spiritual is not something painful, but it is something which concerns the quality of human life.

The social conditions of salvation are just as necessary. They are the presence of institutions and arrangements which give opportunity to the individual to develop himself. The individual must have a certain amount of leisure and a chance for a vital education. He should have some contact with beautiful things and the stimulus of association with great causes. A healthy and sane society makes possible healthy and sane individuals. It is especially desirable that society put its emphasis on the right things. If it is permissible to speak of society's salvation, we would say that it consists in the wise relation of means to ends, the subordination of the economic side of life to the moral, intellectual and artistic activities. A society which does not order itself in this way is called materialistic; and such a society is certain to contain numberless individuals who live at a far lower spiritual level than they should. It is the very nature of religion to condemn this falling short of loyalty to the finer values of life.