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

by Roy Wood Sellars

The shadow of the Great War will lighten to the coming generation soon after peace is declared. Then will come the time for the taking of stock and the revaluation of human endeavor. Man must ask himself more seriously than ever before what things are worth while, and thereupon bend his political and economic instrumentalities to their furtherance. And here the religion of human values must be the leader. Does democracy yet accord with such a religion? Or is it still too timid, negative, thin and uninstructed? America, for example, has a soul; but it is a soul which needs discipline, instruction, contemplation. The religion of human possibilities needs prophets who will grip men's souls with their description of a society in which righteousness, wisdom and beauty will reign together. It is hard to say what thought such a society calls up before us. Yet does it not mean that, more than now and increasingly, selfish luxury will be scorned, property subordinated to welfare, economic fear lessened to the utmost, knowledge unenviously exalted, and art called into service? Loyalty to such an ideal will surely constitute the heart of the humanist's religion.

The ideals of a religion can never be easy. The prophets were stern critics and hard taskmasters; Jesus knew that his true followers would find their way no primrose path; the Mediæval saints were hard on themselves and their disciples. We can generalize this history for the future.

And yet a larger measure of joy and human satisfaction will play around religion in the future than has been the case in the past. Because of its supernaturalisms and distortions, religious demands have often been morbid and full of unnecessary friction. Religion has sought to thwart and repress human nature rather than to guide and express. But a religion of human loyalty can be kindly as well as exigent, mirth-loving as well as stern.

As never before, spiritual values sing to us from life. They sing to us of the patient love of the parent for the child, of the conquest of nature by trained intellect, of the quiet labor of the skilled workman, of the steady loyalties of every-day life, of the willing coöperation of citizens, of the sweetness of music, of plans for greater social justice, and of a world made free from war. Spiritual values are everywhere around us inviting our service. He who asks where they are is like a man who asks for water when a spring is bubbling beneath his feet. And yet we have been so blinded by the old ascetic supernaturalisms that we are slow to realize that these simple human things are nobly spiritual. So long as there are things worth while, there will be spiritual values. Is not this positive enough? Need he who has an inalienable treasure fear robbery?

To put the situation bluntly, religion must be separated from the other-worldly pull of the traditional theologies and be sanely grounded in the outlook of modern knowledge. There is no need for a rabid anti-theism. The truth is, rather, that mankind is outgrowing theism in a gentle and steady way until it ceases to have any clear meaning. This is a hard saying and requires justification. In part, I have given the justification in the preceding pages; in part, I have given it elsewhere.[[1]] But the drift among thinking people is unmistakable. With the imminent solution of the mind-body problem, the last bulwark of the old supernaturalism will have fallen. Man will be forced to acknowledge that he is an earth-child whose drama has meaning only upon her bosom. It is my firm conviction that the clear realization of this fact will startle men into insights and demands of far-reaching import. May it not remove a dead-weight of inhibitions which has kept the human spirit under bonds to past attitudes and methods? There will no longer be a divided interest and an uncertain horizon. To many it will come like a plunge in cold water: but may not such a plunge do them good by waking them from their dogmatic slumbers?

The interpretation of the physical world of which man is a part must be left to the coöperative work of science and philosophy. These will give to us tested and critical knowledge of the processes which go on around us, of the drift of the stars in the world-spaces, of the spiral movements of nebular matter, of the evolution of the elements, of the integration of organic forms, of the development of historic life. The universe is: it is meaningless to ask whence it came, for it always was, and time is but a term for the changes which go on within it.

But, having explored the universe by telescope and microscope, and having thus come to some understanding of his world, man must return again to his own pressing problems and possibilities, to his need to interpret his own good, to his desire to further and maintain those interests and activities in which he finds self-expression. His own life, as a realm of affection and action, must rightly be for him the significant center of the universe. These urgencies, interests, possibilities, satisfactions, loyalties are inalienably human and valid. He can no more ignore them than he can his hunger for food and his thirst for water. Nothing can rob him of the values which he has created, nor can any one take from him the burden of courageous endeavor. He is the master of his own destiny and the prompter in his own drama. In his tenser moments, the physical spaces around his planet will but contain

"The endless, silly merriment of stars."

As religion learns to relinquish theology and accept the modern view of the world, the spirituality which it has fostered will mate with reason. Reason by itself is not enough; feeling by itself is not enough. What the world awaits is the sane and kindly ministry of a concrete reason to the goods of human life. Thinking and experimentation must be instrumental to the progressive betterment of life. This idea is not new. Many have grasped it before in whole or in part; but the setting has not always been simple enough. Comte meant just such a humanism in his religion of humanity, but he was unable to cut himself loose from his associations with organized Christianity. There is no adequate motive for the retention of the ritualism and worship of Comtism, nor is there any good reason for the deification of humanity. Humanity is not an entity, nor is it a sort of supreme personality which may be worshiped. Religion will mean the valuing of experiences and activities, the striving for their realization, the loyalty to their call. Taken in this way, religion will agree with and commend the purpose expressed by Huxley: "To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off." This outlook has been called the marriage of naturalism with philanthropy; it is better to speak of it as the marriage of naturalism with humanism. It is the belief that a rational spirituality is possible, natural to man, and, above all things, desirable.