The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation,
have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements
largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and Protestantism. One
of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more
rapidly in proportion than most of the Christian communions. The
influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. Some of
them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science
and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what
one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time.
There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing
with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt
to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers
around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really
organize themselves.
What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very
great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever
undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations.
Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves
are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own prejudices, no
matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions,
particularly in the region of religion. The really vast subject matter
also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student
unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he
would need to ask the charity of his readers.
Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different
directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious
Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive
analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may
take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for
the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity--and
Protestantism more largely than Catholicism--has been to narrow
religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient
of forms. It has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between the
acceptance of what Sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the
one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on
the other. Those who find their religion in such regions--one might
perhaps call them the border-land people--discover the authority for
their faith in philosophies which, for the most part, have not the
sanction of the schools and the demonstration of the reality of their
faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof except
their own testimony--and their testimony itself is often confused
enough.
But James made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to
particular organizations and movements save in the most general way.
His fundamentals, the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and
the "twice-born," between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the
need of the sick soul, the psychological bases which he supplies for
conversation and the rarer religious experiences are immensely
illuminating, but all this is only the nebulae out of which religions are
organized into systems; the systems still remain to be considered.
There has been of late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land
word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the
persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines--commonly called
the mystic way--we may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the
spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony.
Some modern movements are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be
fairly included in any history of mysticism. Neither can they be
included in any history of Christianity; some of them completely ignore
the Christian religion; some of them press less central aspects of it
out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast Christianity in
its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it
which cannot be supported by any critical examination of the Gospels or
considered as the logical development of Christian dogma. Here are
really new adventures in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new
creeds. They need to be twice approached, once through an examination of
those things which are fundamental in religion itself, for they have
behind them the power of what one may call the religious urge, and they
will ultimately stand as they meet, with a measure of finality, those
needs of the soul of which religion has always been the expression, or
fall as they fail to meet them. But since some limitation or other in
the types of Christianity which are dominant amongst us has given them
their opportunity they must also be approached through some
consideration of the Christianity against which they have reacted.
Unsatisfied needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through
which they have made their abundant entry. Since they also reflect, as
religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in Philosophy,
Science, Ethics and Social Relationship, they cannot be understood
without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact
inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly
breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been taking
a new form.
A rewarding approach, then, to Modern Religious Cults and Movements must
necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience
and faith is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book:
patience enough to follow through the discussion of general principles,
and faith enough to believe that such a discussion will in the end
contribute to the practical understanding of movements with which we are
all more or less familiar, and by which we are all more or less
affected.