RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization—a unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.
If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.
Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than co-operation. The modern period of European history begins in disruption. Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers themselves. In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension, and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms. The Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines. They ceased to retain any international character in their constitution, while international intercourse became a diminishing influence. The Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial functions successfully asserted by Innocent III. No Christian Church to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or even adequately to criticize the claims of those states. The Churches no longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.
The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered at the time of the Reformation. If it be true that the Bible and the Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular. The European mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between religion and culture. A development of religion which should render to Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some reunion of the spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew prophecy.
Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated; we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may, however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance will inevitably vary.
While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example, has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread. The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes Dickinson's Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast, may be taken as an example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both would unite in the prayer
God send us men whose aim will be
Not to defend some outworn creed,
and some members of both entertain the suspicion that all creeds are outworn.
This dislike of dogma may cloak an unwarranted scepticism as to the possibility of reaching truth in religion, but it is symptomatic of the longing for larger sympathy and broader fellowship. It is but the extreme expression of a temper which has reduced the angularity of those who are very far from surrendering or belittling definite beliefs and doctrines. The denominationalist who used to have no hesitation in claiming a monopoly of the truth for his particular Church, now falters where he firmly stood. We are more ready to recognize our limitations. A growing number of thoughtful minds appreciate Lord Acton's position when he wrote to Mary Gladstone: 'I scarcely venture to make points against the religion of other people, from a curious experience that they have more to say than I know, and from a sense that it is safer to reserve censure for one's own which one understands more intimately, having a share in responsibility and action.' This more chastened mood opens the way to fresh understandings in the religious world. Whence does this change in atmosphere originate?