WHEN we refer to the self-adjustment of religion to modern conditions, our concern is not with the vast hinterland of ignorance and superstition that is still inhabited by large numbers of the unthinking of all creeds, Jewish as well as Christian. The destiny of religion is, primarily, in the hands of those who are in the vanguard of intellectual progress, and as long as its place in their lives is a problematic one its future is uncertain. Since the days of the Renaissance, religion has practically been busy adjusting itself to the ever enlarging human experience. It was otherwise during the middle ages, when the men of intellect threw the weight of their influence on the side of tradition and authority. They devoted their mental powers to the support of truths that were accepted at their face value without further scrutiny and analysis. All the resources of intellect were spent in interpreting the few facts they had in their possession. Many centuries elapsed before the cry was raised for more facts; but when, at last, the cry was answered, and new knowledge concerning the world in which men lived began to pour in, the foundations of tradition were shaken. Since then the religion of the intellectuals has no longer been marked by the naiveté and self-assurance of its earlier years. Its existence has been one of storm and stress. It has resisted all attempts to crowd it out from the new world that man has conquered for himself, and in order to be accorded a place in that world it has submitted to considerable change and self-adjustment. We may note three distinct stages in these efforts of religion to accommodate itself to life, corresponding in a large measure with the great thought movements of the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries respectively.
The first stage in the process was the rationalistic. With Copernicus and Galileo defeated by the Vatican, with Descartes having to defend his orthodoxy, it seemed to the English and French philosophers of the eighteenth century that the only way man could save his spiritual nature from falling a prey to animalism or materialism was by consigning to destruction the special forms in which religion existed in the established faiths. The dreamers and the visionaries of that day, who were moved by a sincere desire to further man's higher life, entertained the hope that natural religion would revive with the downfall of revealed religion. But human events have taken a different turn. Life does not adapt itself to preconceived logical systems. The rationalistic method of adjusting religion to life failed because it was based upon a false reconstruction of the rise and growth of religion. However logical and plausible such a reconstruction might have appeared, the fact that it could not be verified by study and observation of religious phenomena invalidated the practical inferences drawn from it.
The Failure of the Rationalistic School
ALTHOUGH by that time science had made sufficient strides to know how futile it was to reconstruct fact by means of reason, the territory of religion was still considered exempt from the need of resorting to experience. The thinkers of the rationalistic age were to a certain extent still under the dominance of the medieval regard for abstract reasoning, and applied it to man's spiritual existence. They reasoned thus: The human being is naturally gifted with an intuition that enables him to discover for himself the truth about God and his relation to the world. If man had only been left alone and had not had the stream of his ideas muddied by outside interference, he would have continued professing a religion that would have been both pure and simple. But human depravity did not permit the natural religion of primitive life to continue. The fanatics with their delusions and the priests with their love of power distorted man's primitive faith in God. They invented dogmas and practices by means of which they could hold the masses in subjection. In course of time these extraneous elements came to be looked upon as the main content of revealed religion. The various established faiths and revealed religions were little more than wilful fabrications that were bound to crumble before the onslaughts of reason. Thus, by bringing the established cults into disrepute, men like Voltaire and Hume hoped to restore religion to its original state of purity and simplicity, bare of all artificialities of forms and institutions.
However superficial the rationalistic method may appear to us, nothing but supercilious ingratitude could prompt us to disparage the service it has rendered. The rationalists are the men to whom the world is indebted for being the pioneers in the work of breaking down the impassable barrier of hatred and disdain which divided the followers of one faith from those of another. Rationalism began to lift the curse of intolerance and persecution which lay heavily upon the human race. No one who values the freedom to live his own life in his own way should cast aspersions upon the influence of that school of thought. Though they argued erroneously about the nature and essence of religion, we must not forget that they emancipated the human soul from the shackles of spiritual bondage.
On the other hand, our gratitude to them cannot blind us to their superficiality and inexperience in the matter of religion. Nineteenth century thought, with its emphasis upon historic development, exposed the fallacies and weaknesses of the method they employed to interpret religious phenomena. The distinction between natural and revealed religion was an arbitrary one, and the conception of priestly fabrications a mere figment of the imagination. Historical research has established that all the great world faiths or revealed religions have followed laws of development that have been in accord with the circumstances and mentality of those who professed them, and in that sense have been perfectly natural. Instead of being the product of fraud and wilful deceit, the established religions were seen to be the outcome of a healthy enthusiasm and deep sincerity. The limitations of knowledge and experience, which marked the earlier expressions of religious life, were, from the historical point of view, more than atoned for by the inner worth and sincerity that had prevailed in former days. In fact, so far did the historical conception change men's attitude that, upon finding themselves sophisticated and torn by doubt, they looked back longingly to former ages, when religion had brought inward calm and serenity. As a consequence of this reaction to the disintegrating tendencies of eighteenth century rationalism, a renewed appreciation for the religion of the past made itself felt among the circles of the cultured, particularly those of Germany and England, and the institutions in which the spirit of the past clothed itself were given a new lease of life.
The Historic Method Is Found Wanting
THE adoption by religion of the historic method thus represents the second stage in its process of self-adjustment. It now appealed to man's natural desire not to allow his past to sink into oblivion. Nothing is so humanizing as memory. He that is engrossed only in the future and would make it the only standard of value, he who has no patience with anything that interferes with practical utility—and memory is certainly a source of such interference—lacks the main ingredient of humanity and has something beaverish about him. Thus taught the historical school during the nineteenth century, and the rationalistic ideal that would have destroyed the established faiths no longer held sway.
But while the historic method stemmed the tide of rationalism, it failed to give back to religion its native vigor. It removed forever the stigma of insincerity that was attached to the origin and development of the dominant faiths; it illumined the past and incorporated it into man's spiritual life; but it was unable to restore to religion its most important function, that of shaping the future. The fundamental paradox which the historic method harbors, and which has prevented it from contributing adequately to the process of adjustment, is the fact that the spiritual experiences of the past, which it asks us to love and revere, were at the time of their enactment not memories, but vital responses to immediate and pressing needs. In the past religion dealt with its own present. That at all times the past did play an important rôle cannot be denied; but in all effective religion it can only be a means to an end. The historic method, on the other hand, succeeds in nothing but in revitalizing the past for its own sake. It provides no guidance for the future. A religion must not only write history—it must make history. This is why the historic method has been found wanting and has had to be supplemented by a new method of adjustment, which for want of a better term we may designate the socio-psychological.
The New Way—the Social and Psychological Viewpoint