THE SOCIAL CONSERVATISM OF MODERN RELIGION
The charge against religion most frequently made by critics who are
interested in social reconstruction is that it is a conservative
force which impedes social progress. If it has resources which are
indispensable for the life of society, social idealists will not
appreciate them if its contemporary forms are invariably aligned
with the social forces most intent upon preserving the status quo.
Contemporary liberal Christianity refutes the charge of social
conservatism by appealing to the social radicalism of Jesus which it
alleges to have appropriated. By this appeal liberal Christianity
exhibits one of the very tendencies of religion which subjects it
to the criticism of social liberals. Religion is easily tempted to
make devotion to the ideal a substitute for its realization and to
become oblivious to the inevitable compromise between its ideal and
the brute facts of life. The absolute nature of the ethics of Jesus
and the perfect harmony between his religion and his ethics may be
the guarantee of the perennial spiritual and ethical renewal of the
Christian religion; but it is also occasion for the self-deception of
many professed disciples. Many streams of thought have contributed to
the current of modern liberal Christianity and it contains alluvial
deposits from all Western civilizations. Yet it imagines that it
represents a simple return to radical and dynamic ethics of the
religion of Jesus. By this deception it easily becomes the façade
behind which the brutal facts of modern industrial civilization may be
obscured rather than a force by which they might be eliminated. The
Protestant Reformation suffered from the same deception. It thought of
itself as a return to the original ideal when it was, as a matter of
fact, a new type of compromise.
Catholicism was a compound of early Christianity and the thought and
life of Græco-Roman civilization. The medieval church was a kind of
ghostly aftermath of the Roman empire and the popes were inspired by
the genius of Cæsar as much as by the spirit of Christ. The north
European peoples first accepted this latinized Christianity, partly
because they were attracted by those universal elements in it which
have made their appeal to all peoples, and particularly those of
the Western world, and partly because it was for them the symbol
of the ordered civilization of Rome which they first envied, then
destroyed, and finally tried to rebuild. In time they reacted against
the ecclesiastical, international and feudal solidarities of this
whole politico-religious world, prompted no doubt by the untamed
spirit of liberty which characterized the northern peoples and which
resented the tyranny by which the middle ages achieved their high
measure of social cohesion. Thus Protestantism became the handmaiden
of a budding nationalism which was impatient of the restraints of
an international papacy, as it has since been impatient of every
other type of international control. In time it also came to be the
peculiar spiritual possession of those classes among the northern
peoples who developed modern commerce and industry. The affinity
between its sanctification of the principle of liberty and the
necessary individualism of classes which were intent upon destroying
the traditional restraints of the ancient world for the sake of giving
unhampered play to a growing commercial and industrial life, has been
so perfect that it is hardly possible to decide which of the two is
cause and which effect. Max Weber[6] has made an interesting analysis
of commercial and industrial superiority of Protestant nations. It
may be that the aptitude for commercial and industrial pursuits and
an inclination to the Protestant form of the Christian faith are
concomitant characteristics of north European peoples rather than
casually related phenomena. Yet they have become so intimately related
in history that the most typical commercial classes and nations are
most generally Protestant, and most uniquely Protestant. In England
the nonconformist sects are almost identical with the commercial
middle classes, while the established church with its semi-Catholic
genius has spiritual affinities both with the old Tories and the
new world of the industrial worker. In Germany there is a similar
alignment with Catholic and agrarian Bavaria on the one hand and
the highly industrialized and Protestant Prussia on the other. The
contrast between Protestant and industrial Ulster and Catholic and
agrarian south Ireland is equally significant. Everywhere in Western
civilization, and nowhere more than in America, Protestantism with its
individualism became a kind of spiritual sanctification of the peculiar
interests and prejudices of the races and classes which dominate the
industrial and commercial expansion of Western civilization.
Since liberal Christianity is the product of an adjustment of the main
tenets of orthodox Protestantism to the sophistication of the cities
and the growing intelligence of the privileged and therefore educated
classes, its whole moral atmosphere is much more determined by the
special interests of these classes than it is willing to admit. The
authority of Jesus, to which it appeals, has indeed been given a new
emphasis, but this has been done because liberal Christianity valued
the theological simplicity rather than the moral austerity of his
gospel. In the same way many liberal Jews have appealed from the law
to the prophets, not because they had a great passion for the ethical
rigors of an Amos or Isaiah but because they found obedience to the
minute exactions of the law too onerous in a sophisticated age. Jesus
is valuable to the modern Christian because he offers an escape from
the theological absurdities of the ancient creeds; meanwhile his
ethical and religious idealism will not leave the lives of those who
profess to follow him unaffected. In time it may become the instrument
of the regeneration of Western society; but this will not be possible
if the liberal church does not overcome its self-deception and realizes
that its religious and moral life is a composite into which have
entered the imperialism of Rome, the sophistication of the Greeks, the
fierce tribalism and individualism of the Nordics and the prudential
ethics of an industrial civilization.
Religion can be healthy and vital only if a certain tension is
maintained between it and the civilization in which it functions. In
time this tension is inevitably resolved into some kind of compromise.
The tendency of religion to become a conservative social force is
partly derived from its ambition to defend the resultant compromise in
the name of its original ideal. Thus all partial values, determined
by geographic, economic, social and political forces, are given a
pseudo-absolute character by the religious elements which entered
into the compromise; and their defects are sufficiently obscured and
sanctified to make them comparatively impregnable to the attacks
of the critics of the status quo. The Russian moujik was more than
ordinarily docile under the tyranny of the czars and more than
ordinarily patient with the imperfections of his society, because his
obedience was claimed not by Russia but by “holy Russia,” the historic
incarnation of his religion. In the same way the medieval church
became organically involved with feudalism and forced the critics of
feudal society to undermine its influence before they could hope to
change the feudal social order. Orthodox Protestantism is intimately
related to this day with Nordicism, with the racial arrogance of north
European peoples. The Ku Klux Klan, which thrives in the hinterlands
of America, maintains its influence over simple minds by screening
racial prejudice against Slavic, Latin and Semitic peoples behind
a devotion to the spiritual treasures of Protestantism and their
defense against the fancied peril of allegedly inferior religions. In
Ireland the racial pride of Ulstermen expresses itself in a passionate
espousal of the Presbyterian religion and a contemptuous attitude
toward the Catholicism of the Irish. In modern prewar Germany there
was a curious partnership between “Thron und Altar,” the interests
of the nationalist German state, as integrated by the Prussian royal
house, with the interests of Protestantism. To this day the fanatic
monarchists of Germany are also Protestant extremists who imagine that
the monarchy was undermined by religiously motivated conspiracies of
Jews and Catholics. Incidentally the Lutheran type of Protestantism
which flourishes in Germany has always been less intimately aligned
with the commercial classes than the Calvinistic sects of other Western
nations. While the German socialists include the Lutheran church among
the forces of reaction with which they must contend, the church’s real
strength is among the peasants and junkers, who are also the strongest
support of monarchist opinion and who abhor the democratic liberalism
of commercial and industrial Germany as much as they despise socialist
radicalism; and they imagine both to be inspired by Semitic designs
upon their national integrity. The real inspiration of this liberalism
with its emphasis on international conciliation and coöperation is
born out of the economic and political necessities of an industrial
and commercial state which cannot afford to indulge in the fanatic
nationalism to which peasants and agrarian aristocrats are prone.
Liberal Christianity as it has developed in the urban centers of the
Western world grew out of the intellectual and religious needs of
the privileged classes and bears the marks of its social environment
just as much as the other types of religion which have preceded it
and with which it is historically related. It is in the same danger
of becoming a spiritual sublimation of the peculiar interests and
prejudices of these classes while it imagines itself the bearer
of an unconditioned message to its day. It has preserved the same
individualistic ethics which has characterized orthodox Protestantism
and which is so dear to the hearts of the commercial classes, and so
unequal to the moral problems of a complex civilization in which the
needs of interdependence outweigh the values of personal liberty. The
supposed devotion of the privileged classes to a religion in which the
sacrifice rather than the stubborn preservation of individual rights is
enjoined and in which the prudential and utilitarian root of morality
is completely plucked out is one of the incongruities which frequently
occur when a civilization harks back to the spiritual visions of its
childhood in order to obscure the sober and disenchanted practicality
of its maturity.
If the modern church is really to become an instrument of social
redemption, it must learn how to divorce itself from the moral
temper of its age even while it tries to accommodate itself to the
intellectual needs of the generation. The religion of Jesus is free
of theological absurdities. Its very simplicity saves it from undue
entanglements with discredited cosmologies. But those who espouse it
chiefly for this reason easily miss its real genius. Its essential
assumptions may not outrage the mind, but neither are they readily
accepted by an age which has sanctified cool and careful, moral
prudence. Its solemn injunction, “Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ... but seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you,” is strangely anachronistic in a day which worships
obvious and tangible success and appreciates virtue only as it
insures those advantages of health and prosperity which are its
highest desiderata. Prudential morality has its own uses. Few men have
either the imagination or the courage to pursue an ideal if it does
not justify itself by some fairly immediate advantage. Society is not
altogether the loser if men discover that “Godliness is profitable
unto all things,” and espouse an ideal because they have their eye
upon the concrete and obvious advantages which flow from it. But a
prudential morality has its limitations and these will prove less
detrimental to society if they are not sanctified by religion. It is
better therefore to seek no other basis for utilitarian ethics than the
social experience from which it is really derived. Honesty will prove
itself the best policy without the authority of religion. The function
of religion is to nerve men for an ethical achievement when it promises
no immediate returns. From the perspective of an impartial observer
there is an element of hypocrisy in all prudential morality. The cool
intelligence which computes selfish advantage which may flow from
moral action is not imaginative enough to include all persons who are
affected by an action and not dynamic enough to balance the drive of
self-interest which influences it.
In modern industrial society those who are in position of power and
privilege are most inclined to espouse an ethical ideal because it
tends to stabilize social life and thus insures the perpetuation of
privilege. They are also most easily tempted to restrict ethical action
so that it will prompt to no sacrifices which are not consistent with
a wise self-interest. Since they are also the classes which have, for
reasons previously discussed, maintained their loyalty to religion,
the church can avoid connivance with their prudential morality only by
a continual regeneration of its religious life. Failing to maintain
a distinction between utilitarian ethics and a religiously inspired
moral life, the church cannot escape the fate of becoming a useful
adjunct of the forces of privilege in the social and economic conflict
in which modern society is engaged. It may be good business to pay
high wages, but social good may demand an increase in the wages of
workers beyond the point where economic advantage is derived from an
enlightened wage policy. It may be wise to share some privileges so
that all of them will not be lost, but sensitive ethical insight will
detect the selfishness and insincerity in such a course. A religion
which sanctifies such social prudence is ultimately a hindrance to the
ethical reconstruction of modern society. A religion which discovers
and amends the limitations of prudential morality by the elements of
its reverence for personality and its quest for the absolute is a
necessary factor in social reconstruction.
The question which faces the modern church is whether it will help
to hide or to discover the limitations in the ethical orientation of
modern life. Its devotion to the gospel of Jesus may serve either
purpose. The contempt for ethical opportunism implied in the whole
idealism of Jesus and its scorn for immediate advantages are the
very ethical values which the generation needs, but they are also
the values which have given the Christian religion its great moral
authority and prestige which the church can so easily misuse. If the
authority of Jesus prompts men to a courage and imagination which
escapes the defects of contemporary morality, its influence will be
redemptive; if it is used merely to hide the defects, the critics of
the church will be justified in regarding it as detriment to social
progress. The religion which is socially most useful is one which
can maintain a stubborn indifference to immediate ends and thus give
the ethical life of man that touch of the absolute without which all
morality is finally reduced to a decorous but essentially unqualified
self-assertiveness. The paradox of religion is that it serves the world
best when it maintains its high disdain for the world’s values. Its
social usefulness is dependent upon its ability to maintain devotion
to absolute moral and spiritual values without too much concern for
their practical, even for their social usefulness. The church is in a
very favorable position to make a necessary contribution to social
life, for it reveres as Lord one whose life incarnates the strategy
which saves morality from insincerity. But its assets easily became
moral liabilities when it compounds the pure idealism of Jesus with the
calculated practicalities of the age and attempts to give the resultant
compromise the prestige of absolute authority.