Among those who are beginning to realise the differences and identities
of the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions
of organisation and assembly are being discussed. Every new religious
development is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces,
and it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their
faith there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to
determine sources and to form original congregations, especially among
people with European traditions.
These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are
imitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there
is no claim to a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men
have thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology
has cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers
or a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem
to insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church
is particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its
sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful
interpolations there is no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood
sacrifices or the mysteries of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses
were superadded after his martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a
gospel; he sent out not medicine men but apostles.
No doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to God. They become
naturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise God, each will be
disposed in his own fashion to call his neighbour’s attention to what
he sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a
post card; this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells
positively but because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little
doubt have I that we do) need special propagandas and organisations to
discuss errors and keep back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free
speech and restrain the enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want
a church to keep our faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for
that there is no need for orthodoxies and controlling organisations of
statement. It is for each man to follow his own impulse, and to speak to
his like in his own fashion.
Whatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name
of the true God must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of
religion.
The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation
in dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the
unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by
robes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom
Christ detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of
a church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs
of men, for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the
collecting of eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution
of bread, the notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and
suchlike affairs. The better we organise such things, the freer and
better equipped we leave men’s minds for nobler purposes, for those
adventures and experiments towards God’s purpose which are the reality
of life. But all organisations must be watched, for whatever is
organised can be “captured” and misused. Repentance, moreover, is the
beginning and essential of the religious life, and organisations (acting
through their secretaries and officials) never repent. God deals
only with the individual for the individual’s surrender. He takes no
cognisance of committees.
Those who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most
mistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to
purchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one’s
sense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you
know where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of God for ESPRIT
DE CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to
keep anniversaries and establish sacramental ceremonies. The disposition
to form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all
too strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such
organisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living
faith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so
much as a definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for
worship and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little
manifest good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for God to
irradiate your soul.
All these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition.