Yet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out about
God. They want to share this great thing with all mankind.
Why should they not shout and share?
Let them express all that they desire to express in their own fashion
by themselves or grouped with their friends as they will. Let them shout
chorally if they are so disposed. Let them work in a gang if so they
can work the better. But let them guard themselves against the idea
that they can have God particularly or exclusively with them in any such
undertaking. Or that so they can express God rather than themselves.
That I think states the attitude of the modern spirit towards the idea
of a church. Mankind passes for ever out of the idolatry of altars,
away from the obscene rites of circumcision and symbolical cannibalism,
beyond the sway of the ceremonial priest. But if the modern spirit holds
that religion cannot be organised or any intermediary thrust between God
and man, that does not preclude infinite possibilities of organisation
and collective action UNDER God and within the compass of religion.
There is no reason why religious men should not band themselves the
better to attain specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics,
there is no objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not
against subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations
that may claim to be comprehensive.
For example there is no reason why one should not--and in many cases
there are good reasons why one should--organise or join associations
for the criticism of religious ideas, an employment that may pass very
readily into propaganda.
Many people feel the need of prayer to resist the evil in themselves and
to keep them in mind of divine emotion. And many want not merely prayer
but formal prayer and the support of others, praying in unison. The
writer does not understand this desire or need for collective prayer
very well, but there are people who appear to do so and there is no
reason why they should not assemble for that purpose. And there is
no doubt that divine poetry, divine maxims, religious thought
finely expressed, may be heard, rehearsed, collected, published, and
distributed by associations. The desire for expression implies a sort
of assembly, a hearer at least as well as a speaker. And expression has
many forms. People with a strong artistic impulse will necessarily want
to express themselves by art when religion touches them, and many arts,
architecture and the drama for example, are collective undertakings. I
do not see why there should not be, under God, associations for building
cathedrals and suchlike great still places urgent with beauty, into
which men and women may go to rest from the clamour of the day’s
confusions; I do not see why men should not make great shrines and
pictures expressing their sense of divine things, and why they should
not combine in such enterprises rather than work to fill heterogeneous
and chaotic art galleries. A wave of religious revival and religious
clarification, such as I foresee, will most certainly bring with it a
great revival of art, religious art, music, songs, and writings of
all sorts, drama, the making of shrines, praying places, temples and
retreats, the creation of pictures and sculptures. It is not necessary
to have priestcraft and an organised church for such ends. Such
enrichments of feeling and thought are part of the service of God.
And again, under God, there may be associations and fraternities
for research in pure science; associations for the teaching and
simplification of languages; associations for promoting and watching
education; associations for the discussion of political problems and
the determination of right policies. In all these ways men may multiply
their use by union. Only when associations seek to control things
of belief, to dictate formulae, restrict religious activities or the
freedom of religious thought and teaching, when they tend to subdivide
those who believe and to set up jealousies or exclusions, do they become
antagonistic to the spirit of modern religion.