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

by Roy Wood Sellars

As we have already pointed out, the alterations introduced on the theological side were by no means revolutionary from an intellectual standpoint. And yet the spirit and mood of religion was deeply altered. The process of salvation was differently conceived, and this led to the thought of a more direct relation between man and God than had been admitted in the older Church. God was believed to have guaranteed redemption to those who had faith in Jesus Christ as the redeemer. This tenet led to an emphasis on the bible and on personal experience. It was through a study of the bible that men were led to this personal faith, and the bible was accordingly conceived as the representative of God upon earth. What wonder that it was substituted for the Church and tradition as an infallible and unchanging authority! The logic of the movement is clear. It has been pointed out by one scholar that Protestantism introduced the doctrine of infallibility before the Roman Catholic Church did. Calvinism selected the Augustinian dogmas of election and original sin as its foundation, and used them in such a way as to become a fighting church, a congregation of the elect, fearless and self-reliant.

Bibliolatry soon flourished, and sects sprang up on every hand, ready to suffer persecution for their particular interpretation of passages. Theology became a series of fanatically held dogmas supported by copious quotations. And the intellectual atmosphere within which these dogmatic theories arose was of the most conventional and limited sort. Broadness of outlook upon life was the exception rather than the rule. The general assumption of the Christian scheme of the world remained unchallenged, while the bitterest disputes broke out in regard to points which seem to the educated man of to-day quite unimportant. Such a course of events was to be expected, and could not have been prevented. Perhaps it did more good than harm, because it encouraged independence on the part of the masses. Its only cure was not authority but education. And the world was not yet ready for universal education. At certain periods, a tremendous waste of mental and moral energy is simply inevitable: men cannot help going around and around in the same circle of ideas in the most pathetically earnest fashion. The conditions of progress are not always ready. Take the knowledge of the clergy. It was confined to the classics, the patristics, to massive tomes of theology, to the bible in its Hebrew and Greek original. It was not from these fields that enlightenment was to come. The truth is, that Protestantism was slowly modified and mellowed, almost in spite of itself, by the pervasive influence of the great world civilization that grew up around it and to which it was more susceptible than was the reorganized Catholic Church. Let us look at this point more closely.

The reformation was an effect as much as a cause. The nations were coming to their own in the midst of a more complex social life full of human interests and values. The Confessional Churches which sprang up were unable to establish themselves securely enough to dominate the civil powers. The consequence was, that secular civilization was released from the sway of religion and its supernaturalism. Government, science, art, industry, and literature flourished in a freedom they had seldom before experienced. The disorganization of religious institutions enabled many tendencies, hitherto kept in the background of men's consciousness, to push to the front and reveal their power over the human soul. Do we not know that many great mediæval doctors had to fight against their love of literature and art? Protestantism may be said to have been an unintentional cause of the modern world.

Protestantism broke up into an array of sects and tendencies as it fell upon the prism of human temperament. Radical sects appeared, like the Independents, the Quakers, the Baptists, the Pietists, and the Congregationalists. These were radical in a social way rather than in an intellectual way. They were subjective variations of the inherited motives. Largely, they represented a revolt against authoritism, and emphasized the inner light or a very mild appeal to reason. Yet we must call them sects, just because they had much the same spirit and assumptions, and exaggerated what must be regarded as slight differences. Still their very number gave a milder direction to religion and made the idea of toleration more natural. There was safety in numbers. On the intellectual side, the Unitarian movement deserves attention for its aid in the dethronement of the old dogmatic structure. Alongside of these more subjective and emotional offshoots of Protestantism arose philosophical idealism to add a touch of vague pantheism and a flavor of kindly mysticism. In short, the confessional type of Protestantism mellowed under the influence of a more rational social organization with its gentler life. Reason was gaining in concreteness and power, and human values were gaining in attractiveness. The Old Testament gradually gave way to the synoptic gospels of the New, while asceticism dropped away like a mantle. I, myself, well remember when religion was largely a matter of taboos on the moral side. "Thou shalt not" outbalanced by far the suggestion of concrete lines of positive endeavor. Such spiritualism was passive and suspicious rather than active and creative. During the last thirty years, Protestantism has passed insensibly into a gentle religion of the spirit, sentimentally inclined toward life and permeated with popular notions of science and philosophy. The sermon of the Puritan concerned itself with the two dispensations; the sermon of the modern minister is full of quotations from the poets and reveals the growing influence of the social sciences. The negative note is hardly audible. This world and its spiritual problems occupies the focus of attention.

Modern Protestantism is not over certain of its creed. In fact, so uncertain is it of the doctrines it wishes to champion that it much prefers to discuss human problems, and to expend its enthusiasm in the advance of a gentle code of ethics attached to the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. In a very real sense, this attitude is to its credit, for it is positive and genuinely spiritual. Moreover, it bears witness to a consciousness of the decay of the supernaturalistic perspective which dominated and misled the world for so many centuries. The spirit and knowledge of the present age has undermined the traditional beliefs, and the average protestant is too well educated and too much in touch with current movements to be unaware of this situation. He is not certain whither he is being led nor does he so very much care; he is content to drift with the tide of human development, assured that the world is becoming better and broader in its purposes and possibilities. Creed and dogma are dropping into the background and will soon be discarded, while the spiritual values which grow out of, and express, human nature and life are steadily forging to the front.

The church as an institution is only one among many. And it must further be remembered that the life of society reaches beyond institutions, much as the life of an organism is greater than the habits and structure which it uses. Religious institutions did not create the modern world with its gigantic advances in commerce, its acute applications of science, its subtle art, its daring adventures in living, its bold philosophies, its high level of education, its experiments in new social forms. They have had their share in the work, no doubt; but they have been acted upon even more than they have acted. Because of its lack of internal unity and its antagonism to authority, Protestantism could offer no effective barrier to the growth of the new outlook. Often suspicious, it yet fought in the open. The trial of strength went against it ultimately because its foundation was inadequate. Myth cannot fight against science and hope to win. The verdict of the hard-fought contest is becoming evident to both winner and loser. Let us hope that the loser will take his defeat manfully and gradually adapt himself to the New World that is dawning. The Protestant Churches may then become groups of voluntary associations filled with high spiritual purpose and ministering to the growth of a finer social and economic life. The main necessity is to find a function that is real and vital in the judgment and conscience of the time.

It is undeniable that the various churches will long play a beneficent role in the social economy, but the question may well be asked whether this role would not be more significant and sanely creative if the hampering traditions and beliefs of the past were shaken off. For these traditions are the shelter of interpretations and social habits which are ill-adapted to the needs of the present. They slow down the energy of institutions and cloud their vision. They lead the sincerest of people to use tools which have lost edge. For instance, is not civic and moral education far more effective than melodramatic revivals which stir people's emotions and leave them without chart and compass before the problems of their every-day life? The church must learn prevention; it must go to school to the social and mental sciences. Only so will it conquer that dilettantism which accompanies the absence of methodical intelligence.

But the churches have the right to respond that they are not the only sinners in this regard. Institutions of all kinds display the same tendency to retardation, to conservatism, to waste of energy, the beliefs and habits of the past clinging heavily about them as impedimenta. It is seldom that a new life wells up quickly enough within them to break this inertia. Perhaps all that the younger generation has the right to ask is a spirit of tolerance and even respect for all loyalties which attach themselves to things of good repute, and a more catholic admission of all human values into the class of spiritual things. The scientist is working for things of the spirit, and so is the artist, and so is the social reformer, and so is the educator, and so is the day-laborer who does his work for the sake of some dear one.

The sea of faith of which Matthew Arnold sang is indeed at its ebb; but a new sea of faith is welling up in the human soul, faith in humanity, in this life here and now, a faith in common things and common people, a faith in noble things and their gifted creators, a faith founded in sympathy and in mental integrity and rooted in the actualities of life. It is a faith grounded on the high will to assimilate and carry further the spiritual values which the human race has slowly achieved in its travail of the centuries. Not to relinquish but to surpass, not to deny but to transform: thus will the new day be won. Let the spiritual forces which have grown up around religion, industry, science, philosophy, citizenship and art fall to with a will, to bring some fuller measure of the long-dreamed-of Kingdom upon this earth, which has been and forever will be man's sole home.