Religion and the War

by Yale University. Divinity School

The consideration just mentioned makes it probable that the most promising present step is in the direction of federal coöperation. Religious bodies that are far from willing to sink their present differences may yet work in harmony, and by working together increase that mutual understanding and thereby confidence in each other's Christian spirit which is so essential a preliminary to unity. That is what makes the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ and similar movements eminently worthy of support. They are not ends in themselves. They are means of utmost significance to a larger end.

The war is showing a vision of our need and of the goal of our effort. That the road to a larger and more effective unity of the religious forces of America is full of difficulties is no reason why a Christian man should hesitate to tread it. It is as true now as when the Master said it, that "with God all things are possible."

X
[THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF WORLD RE-ORGANIZATION][1]
E. HERSHEY SNEATH

When we reflect upon the situation of the race today, with the leading nations in the throes of a war of unparalleled dimensions and destructiveness, we are appalled at the impotency of those forces that heretofore have tended toward world-organization. Time was when international treaties and laws seemed to have at least a semblance of inhibiting sanctity, but in recent years they are regarded in certain quarters as mere "scraps of paper," and the supposed "rights" of nations are treated with scorn and contempt. The black flag of piracy, hitherto regarded as the symbol of international outlawry, floats on the high seas, and the assassination of neutrals and noncombatants is regarded by some as a national virtue. For centuries humane considerations obtained with reference to prisoners of war and to partially conquered nations. Now, certain nations have substituted for such humanitarianism, outrage, brutality and enforced slavery. In short, international pact and law seem to have broken down. Their restraints have yielded to the unbridled force of national greed and lust for power.

Again, in the past, the moral imperatives, independent of political treaties and laws, have exercised a wholesome constraining and restraining influence on the relations of different peoples, and have made for fraternal world-organization. Man is constitutionally a moral being, and is, to a certain extent, governed by sentiments of justice and benevolence. These moral elements of our nature have led us to have regard for man as man, rather than for men as members of particular nations and races. Hence, in our interaction there has been a tendency to recognize and respect what we have been wont to call human rights as growing out of the essential constitution of personality. The same tendency has characterized our attitude toward men organized under political government. But alas! these fundamental moral claims are now flagrantly violated. The morally right has, with some nations, degenerated into the right of might.

Again, in the past, art has made for the unification of the race. The æsthetic consciousness is on the side of harmony. It hates chaos and loves order. It functions in the social and political spheres and tends toward unity rather than anarchy—toward peace rather than war. "Art binds together and unites the members of the nation; nay, all the members of a sphere of civilization; all those who have the same faith and the same ideals. Opinions and interests differ and produce discord; art presents in sensuous symbols the ideals which are cherished by all, and so arouses the feeling that all are, in the last analysis, of the same mind, that all recognize and adore the same ultimate and highest things."[2] When we deal with the ideal we are dealing with the universal. Thus art transcends both individualism and nationalism. It contributes toward international good will. But how ineffective it has proven along these lines during the last few tragic years. One of the first great outrages of the war was the wanton bombardment of the beautiful Rheims cathedral. The world protested against this iconoclasm, but it continued. Vandalism and robbing nations of their art treasures are features of Kultur; so the breach between nations widens despite the supposed unifying power of art. The nation of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Wagner grips with mailed fist the throat of the nation of Michelangelo, Titian, Da Vinci, Correggio and Raphael, and tries to strangle the nation of David, Delacroix and Millet. The nation of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller schools its children in a gospel of hate toward the nation of Shakespeare and Milton and a long line of glorious poets from Chaucer to Browning. The refining and organizing influences of art have given way to the brutal instincts of malevolence and greed, and a lofty idealism that bound the nations together in a golden chain of beauty finds the precious chain rudely broken. Art, like the other binding forces, has apparently failed in its work of unification.

Another force that has been operative in world-organization is religion, and especially the Christian religion. With its proclamation of the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man; with the law of love as its law of social interaction; with its "Go ye into all the world and preach my gospel"—a gospel of universal membership in a kingdom of supreme values—in which every member is on a moral equality with his neighbor—the Christian religion has been promotive of a spirit of good will among men, and of harmony among the nations. But what is the case today? A nominally Christian nation joins bloody hands with a traditionally murderous nation of Mohammedan faith in wholesale assassination of one of the most ancient Christian peoples, and attempts to incite the Moslem world to warfare against nations of Christian faith, merely to enhance her own selfish interests. Furthermore, in the present crisis we find Christian nation arrayed against Christian nation: Protestant against Protestant; Catholic against Catholic; Protestant and Catholic united against Protestant and Catholic. Peoples in whose ears for centuries have rung the glad tidings of "peace on earth, good will toward men" are today gripping one another in mortal combat. The star of the East that, according to the story, guided the Wise Men to the manger of the Prince of Peace seems to have lost its radiance and directing power. Never since the star is said to have shone were men apparently farther from beating their swords into plow-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. The unifying power of him whose life illustrated even better than his parable of the Good Samaritan the highest law of human relationship is not in evidence today. Where is the power of that cross, the vision of which carried with it still another vision of a world attracted to, and unified by, the power of self-sacrificing love—"And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me"? Is the power of sacrificial love drawing the hearts of men and of nations together in the fellowship of Jesus Christ? Are not the dominant forces operating today centrifugal rather than centripetal? It is not the skeptic, or cynic, or pessimist, who asks these questions. They are the questions of thousands of earnest men and women who face the supreme crisis of human history. They bring home to us the fact that religion, even in its highest form, like international law, like morality, like art, however promotive of human brotherhood it has been, has failed in this most crucial test to prevent the dreadful work of the destructive forces of mankind. This is a fact that the sincere believer in religion must face whether he wants to or not.

In view of the failure of all of these more or less harmonizing and synthesizing forces to prevent such a gigantic war, what are we to say about world-organization after the conflict? Nations must live and sustain relations to one another. They must establish some modus vivendi, and it must be founded on justice. The necessity of righteousness and good will in international relations has been made more apparent than ever by this most tragic conflict. And the question arises: What organized forces are to establish such righteousness and good will among the nations? We must depend upon the very same forces that have been operative in the past; that is, upon international law, morality, art and religion, but they must be made more effective. How this may be done in the case of religion it is the aim of this paper to try to explain.

In the first place, if religion is to become powerfully effective in this direction, it must take a really ethical view of God. He must be regarded as essentially moral in his constitution; as ruling in absolute righteousness, and a being whose ultimate aim with reference to men and the world is the realization of a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness is to dwell. Much as believers in religion have said on this subject, the conceptions of many as expressed in belief and conduct have contradicted their words. When the nation of Martin Luther, including not merely the docile masses, but the spiritually enslaved clergy and servile university professors,[3] among whom may be numbered such religious leaders as Harnack, can accept and pray for the success of the war program of a ruler who regards himself to be the vicegerent of the Almighty, coöperating with him in a scientifically organized movement for the triumph of the most diabolical forces the human race has ever witnessed—approving the vices of hell as though they were the virtues of heaven—this nominally Christian nation is either guilty of awful blasphemy or it has lost its vision of an ethical God. Such a conception of the Deity proves divisive rather than unifying. It recognizes merely a partisan tribal Deity who coöperates with a people to realize its own ends, however unworthy and debasing those ends may be. Its influence is promotive of national selfishness, and makes against a brotherhood of nations. Professor Leuba speaks of the utilitarian ends for which men believe in God—making him hardly more than a meat purveyor;[4] but the German conception of God is much crasser than this.[5] "Gott mit uns" is a God that is asked and believed to coöperate in the most damnable atrocities the human mind ever conceived in order to further low national aims.

Now, there is an important psychology here that we must reckon with. Professor Stratton, in his work on "The Psychology of the Religious Life," calls attention to the fact that religion breeds conflict, it gives birth to opposites or antitheses, and he devotes nearly the entire volume to a consideration of these conflicts. In one of his most interesting chapters[6] he points out the fact that religion is productive of both breadth and narrowness of sympathy, of both social and anti-social feelings, of both egoism and altruism. He illustrates this in pointing out the exclusiveness of some religions, such as that of the Jews, and of the catholicity of others, such as Buddhism and Christianity. He points out, also, the jealousy and intolerance of the monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, as compared with polytheistic religions, like Buddhism. The former, like Elijah, are very jealous for their Lord, and such jealousy breeds narrowness and intolerance. It breeds exclusiveness, strife and often persecution. Now most of the conflict between narrowness and breadth of sympathy to which religion gives rise is due to wrong conceptions of the ethical nature of God. This manifests itself in many ways. God is conceived as a God of one people, rather than of others; or of one people particularly and peculiarly, and of other peoples merely generally; or a God choosing and rewarding the elect and damning the non-elect; or a God favoring only one mode of salvation peculiar to a certain people or sect, and hostile to all others; or a God of one revelation rather than of another. In short, God is a God of favoritism instead of the impartial God and father of all mankind. Such a God is not a God of justice, much less of love. Such a conception is productive of division, rather than of unity in the race. It begets strife, rather than harmony. Witness the religious wars that history records. Witness, for example, the history of the conflict between Mohammedanism and Christianity; between Protestantism and Catholicism. As a rule, religion is so involved in the life of a people that it becomes an integral part of their nationalism. Historians call attention to the fact that the monotheism of the Jews was largely the outgrowth of reflection upon their own history as a people. They saw in this history a Divinity that had shaped their ends, however roughhewn they may have been. They regarded themselves a "peculiar" people, specially chosen of God. For more than a century a similar belief prevailed in America. Our wonderful history led people to believe that we are a favored nation. God's providential government reveals a partiality for America when compared with other nations. With such conceptions of a partial God, it is but a short step to making use of God for national ends, and, as illustrated in the case of the German nation today, only another step to conceiving God's willingness to coöperate in realizing ends which, in the judgment of the world, as expressed in international law, as well as in its own unwritten verdict, are regarded as unrighteous. Until the God of the race supersedes in actual belief and practice the God of nationalism; until the God and father of all mankind displaces in our belief the God of sect or of one religion rather than of another; until the God of absolute and universal righteousness takes the place in our minds and hearts of the God of partiality and favoritism, which is the God of injustice; men and nations will not be bound together in one great and glorious fraternity. The root idea of religion is the idea of God, and as is our idea of God, so will our religious life be. If it is the idea of an unrighteous Deity, our individual, national and international life will be unrighteous. A fundamental necessity in the determination of the religious basis of world-organization is an ethical conception of God.