CONCLUSION
At the risk of unnecessary repetition it may be well to capitulate the
most important conclusions which emerge from our study of religion in
contemporary civilization. Religion is dying in modern civilization not
only because it has not yet been able to restate its affirmations so
that they will be consistent with scientific fact, but also because it
has not been able to make its ethical and social resources available
for the solution of the moral problems of modern civilization. Its
rejuvenation therefore waits upon a reorientation of its ethical
traditions as well as of its theological conceptions. It is under the
necessity of finding some metaphysical basis for its personalization of
the universe, but its scientific and philosophical respectability will
be of no avail if the moral fruits which issue from its affirmations
and experiences do not actually qualify the brute struggle of life, so
largely determined by natural forces.
Religion is scientifically verified if freedom and purpose are found to
have a place in the cosmic processes, and it is ethically justified if
it helps to create and maintain creative freedom and moral purpose in
human life. The present moral impotence of Protestant Christianity is
partially derived from the inadequacy of some of its traditions which
it inherited out of periods of history which had different moral needs
than our own day. Its individualism rendered a universal service at the
dawn of the modern era but survives to-day chiefly as a sanctification
of the peculiar interests and prejudices of one particular class in
Western society. The limitations of its ethical traditions are easily
obscured not only because all religion easily gives the semblance
of finality to the relativities of history, but because a religion
which imagines itself devoted to the spirit of Jesus is under the
temptation of exploiting the prestige of his absolute ethics without
approximating his ethical position.
The moral effectiveness of religion depends upon its ability to detach
itself from the historical relativities with which its ideals are
inevitably compounded in the course of history. The avowed loyalty
of the Christian church to the spirit of Christ may become the basis
of such a detachment, since there is little in the gospel of Jesus
which conforms to the dominant interests of modern life. But the very
reverence in which Jesus is held may operate to obscure the essential
genius of his life. Religion is therefore under the necessity of
developing the critical faculty even while it maintains its naïvete
and reverence. The necessity of coöperation between the naturally
incompatible factors of reason and imagination, of intelligence
and moral dynamic, is really the crux of the religious and moral
problem in modern civilization. The complexity of modern life demands
that moral purpose be astutely guided; but moral purpose itself is
rooted in ultra-rational sanctions and may be destroyed by the same
intelligence which is needed to direct it. Both humility and love,
the highest religious virtues, are ultra-rational; yet they cannot
be achieved in an intricate social life without a discriminating
intelligence which knows how to uncover covert sins and to discover
potential virtues. The incidental limitations which every historic type
of religion reveals can be dealt with only if the religious devotee
can be persuaded to regard the values of his religion critically;
yet the cultivation of such a critical spirit may easily lead to the
enervation of the religious spirit itself. If the highest values of
religion are themselves conditioned rather than absolute, it must be
possible to assign them a place in the hierarchy of values, without
encouraging a complete loss of confidence in them. Such a task is
difficult but not impossible. A robust moral idealism will help
to create a spiritual fervor which will not be easily defeated by
any superficial intellectualism. If institutions of religion gave
preference to the ethical rather than the intellectual problem of
religious faith, it might be possible to create a religious spirit
sufficiently vigorous to permit the free play of the critical faculties
without a loss of moral or spiritual dynamic. Obviously civilization
cannot afford to dispense with either the irrational moral will or
the critical intelligence by which it is made effective in complex
situations. Men need to subject all partial moral achievements to
comparison with the absolute standards of truth, beauty and goodness of
their religious faith, and yet be able to see and willing to concede
the relativities in the absolute values of their devotion. They can
be saved from a morality of mere utilitarianism only by the religious
quest for an absolute moral standard; yet they need to be discerning
enough to see that every ethical achievement, even when inspired by
religious motives, is tinged with prudential self-interest. They must
continue to strive after freedom and yet realize that human life and
character is largely determined by environment. If they seek happiness,
divorced from fortune, they nevertheless cannot escape the duty of
making the material world serve human welfare. Their ability to
discover the transcendent values in human personality has value only
if they maintain faith in human nature after they have discovered its
imperfections. They must search after the perfect goodness in God and
yet be prepared to face the cruelties of life without either denying
their reality or being driven to despair by them.
If it is true that moral sincerity is even more necessary to a vital
religion in modern life than intellectual modernity, a strategy must
be developed to sever religious idealism from the unethical tendencies
in modern civilization. Any strategy which will succeed in such an
enterprise will savor of asceticism. The limitations of historic
asceticism may teach the present how to avoid inevitable pitfalls
in the task of detaching religious idealism from the corruptions of
society. An asceticism which flees the world and develops its saints at
the price of abandoning industrial civilization even more completely to
the natural and anarchic forces which operate in its life, is obviously
of no use to modern civilization. Yet a type of asceticism is needed,
if for no other reason, because greed is the dominant motive of Western
civilization and nothing less than an ascetic discipline will free
religious idealism from its entanglement with the covetousness of
modern life. Since Western life is intent upon material advantages,
no religious idealism can maintain any degree of purity if it does
not enter into a conscious conflict with the civilization in which it
functions and succeed in setting some bounds to the expansive desires
of men and of nations.
The church as such has sufficient spiritual resources to become the
recruiting ground for such a movement of detachment, but it is too
much to hope that it will take the leadership in it. It is too deeply
enmeshed with the interests and prejudices of contemporary civilization
to possess the insight and courage which the enterprise requires. Such
a movement of detachment must be, as it has always been, a minority
movement. But the minority ought not detach itself from the majority
so completely that it will sacrifice the possibility of acting as
a leaven in it. There is no force or strategy which can prevent the
great majority from using religion to give human personality dignity
and self-respect without a serious effort to approximate a moral
ideal which would justify religion’s estimate of human worth. Some
types of religion will continue to obscure the defects in nature and
human nature. They will reassure the perplexed soul by recounting the
victories of the past without seeking new triumphs. They will build
systems of faith upon past experiences without any effort to validate
or amend them in fresh experience. Thus rejuvenation and progress must
come from the few who understand the fuller implications of the faith
which they share with the multitudes whose eyes are holden and who lack
the courage to follow even such visions as may come to them.
A highly spiritual religion cannot be an esoteric possession to which
the multitudes may never aspire. It cannot afford to lose confidence
in the multitudes; yet it must resist the gravitation toward moral
mediocrity among them. It certainly must avoid the cultivation of
a priestly cult into which the layman cannot be initiated. If the
modern movement of detachment is to be effective it must in fact be
a layman’s movement; for it must express itself in rebuilding the
social order rather than in building new religious institutions. Its
most effective ministers will be laymen who will lack neither the
technical skill nor the spiritual resource to deal with the practical
problems of industry and politics. Religious teachers may help to
inspire such a movement, but its efficacy will depend upon those who
are engaged in the world’s work. If the greed of Western civilization
is to be qualified by religious idealism, it will be accomplished by
men who use and direct the machines of modern industry without making
mechanical efficiency an end in itself and without succumbing to the
lure of the material rewards which come so easily to those who are
proficient in the industrial enterprise. A revival of either puritan
or monastic asceticism will be unequal to the task which faces modern
religion. Puritanism sanctified economic power, and monasticism fled
its responsibilities. The new asceticism must produce spiritualized
technicians who will continue to conquer and exploit nature in the
interest of human welfare, but who will regard their task as a social
service and scorn to take a larger share of the returns of industry
than is justified by reasonable and carefully scrutinized needs. The
new asceticism must, in short, be in the world and yet not of the
world. It must be truly scientific in gauging the advantage to human
personality in the conquest of nature and truly religious in finding
a basis for human happiness beyond the material rewards which this
conquest returns.
If Christian idealists are to make religion socially effective they
will be forced to detach themselves from the dominant secular desires
of the nations as well as from the greed of economic groups. The
socially minded portion of the church has in fact made some progress in
this direction. The lessons of the World War have not been altogether
futile, and there is a wholesome mood of repentance in the church
for its easy connivance with an unethical nationalism in the past
centuries. The church has not yet had an opportunity to prove the
sincerity of its contrition in this matter, for the moment of crisis
has not yet come. In that moment, which will come inevitably, many
religiously inspired peace idealists will no doubt bow their knees to
Baal; but there is real reason to hope that there is a new conscience
in the church which will resist the claims of an unethical nationalism
to the utmost. Perhaps the greatest weakness of the religious idealists
who have become critical of an unethical nationalism is that they are
not sufficiently aware of the intimate and organic relation between
the imperialism of nations and the whole tendency of avarice which
characterizes Western life. Too few realize that it is not possible
to detach oneself from an unethical nationalism if one continues to
enjoy the material advantages which flow from the nation’s unqualified
insistence upon the right to hold its advantages against the world.
It may be impossible to arrive at a complete equalization of living
standards among all individuals who desire to achieve and express the
ideal of the brotherhood of man. But a religious idealism which does
not move in that direction will be convicted of insincerity and moral
confusion. Unrepentant political realists may well pour contempt upon
it and justly accuse those who profess it of profiting from policies
which they ostensibly condemn. Religious idealism is in desperate need
of a strategy which will express its detachment from the dominant
desires and impulses of modern civilization by something more than
desultory and usually qualified criticism of unethical political ideals
and industrial policies.
The old challenge “be ye not conformed to this world” must be accepted
anew in a more heroic fashion than is customary in enlightened
religious circles. The policy of building a Kingdom of God by
regenerating individual lives has become discredited, not because
moral character is dispensable to a wholesome social life, but
because the criteria of moral character have been too individualistic
to serve the needs of modern society. It is important enough that
men gain some control over their immediate desires and discipline
their momentary passions. Society is always in need of integrated
personalities. But the validity of the religious ideal must finally
be judged by its capacity to create not only unified personalities
but personalities which know how to restrain their expansive desires
for the sake of social peace. Religion intensifies selfishness
when it adds sanctity to a respectable selfish life and creates a
self-respect which is impervious to emotions of contrition. If the
religious ideal is to gain any potency in modern life it must be able
to convict men of sin and inspire them to a conversion. But the sins
of which they need most to be convicted are those which are covert
in the social and economic relations which custom has hallowed;
and the conversion of life which is most needed is that which will
express itself in terms of the economic and political relationships
in which men live. Not to be conformed to this world, if it is to
have any real meaning in modern life, will mean that the religiously
inspired soul knows how to defeat the avarice and to overcome the
indifference to the worth of human personality which inheres in the
whole economic and industrial structure of modern society. Practically
and individually such a detachment from the world will express itself
in the sacrifice of material advantages for the sake of realizing a
more intimate fellowship with the underprivileged, in the careful
analysis of industrial policies from the standpoint of their effect
upon personality, in an unwillingness to profit by social and economic
practices and policies which are fundamentally unethical and in a
willingness to bear some pain for the sake of expressing loyalty to the
community of mankind as against all lesser and conflicting loyalties.
The hope of persuading any large number of religious people to
express their spiritual convictions in any such socially tangible
and revolutionary terms is made rather desperate by the fact that
the modern church seems no more inclined to undertake the task of
spiritual regeneration than the orthodox church. The orthodox church
still possesses some of the religious fervor which is required to
defy the world, but it is too anti-rational in its theology to gain
the respect of the intelligent classes and too individualistic in its
ethics to express religious idealism in socially helpful terms. The
modern churches are not acutely conscious of any serious defects in
contemporary civilization. If they do recognize limitations in the
social order, they give themselves to the pleasant hope that time
and natural progress will bring inevitable triumph to every virtuous
enterprise. They have relegated the eschatological note of the gospel,
by which Jesus expressed his sense of the tragic, to the limbo of
theological antiquities. The possibility of a catastrophe seems never
to arouse their fears or to give energy to their ambitions. Life,
according to their gospel, goes automatically from grace to grace and
from strength to strength.
Though neither the orthodox nor the modern wing of the Christian
church seems capable of initiating a genuine religious revival which
will evolve a morality capable of challenging and maintaining itself
against the dominant desires of modern civilization and yet expressing
itself in terms relevant to civilization’s needs, there are resources
in the Christian religion which make it the inevitable basis of any
spiritual regeneration of Western civilization. Christianity, as Dr.
Ernst Troeltsch has observed, is the fate of Western society. Spiritual
idealisms of other cultures and societies may aid it in reclaiming its
own highest resources; and any universal religion capable of inspiring
an ultimately unified world culture may borrow from other religions.
But the task of redeeming Western society rests in a peculiar sense
upon Christianity. It is congenial to the energy and activism of
Western peoples and is yet capable of setting bounds to their expansive
desires. It has reduced the eternal conflict between self-assertion and
self-denial to the paradox of self-assertion through self-denial and
made the cross the symbol of life’s highest achievement. Its optimism
is rooted in pessimism and it is therefore able to preach both
repentance and hope. It is able to condemn the world without enervating
life and to create faith without breeding illusions. Its adoration
of Jesus sometimes obscures the real genius of his life but cannot
permanently destroy the fruitfulness of his inspiration. If there is
any lack of identity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of
religious experience, the Jesus of history is nevertheless more capable
of giving historical reality to the necessary Christ idea than any
character of history. Intelligence will gradually soften prejudices and
allay the conflict between Christianity and the Judaism out of which it
emerged and with which it is organically related so that the religions
of the prophetic ideal may make common cause. Such a coöperation will
probably never lead to complete fusion because Christianity cannot
afford to sacrifice the Christ idea and the Jews will continue to
regard this as a Hellenistic and unacceptable element in the Christian
religion. Christianity will not disavow it, for it gives dramatic
force and historical concretion to its theism and dualism. The God
of our devotion is veritably revealed most adequately in the most
perfect personality we know, as he is potentially revealed in all
personal values; and his conflict with the inertia of the concrete and
historical world is expressed most vividly in the cross of Christ.
When dealing with life’s ultimates, symbolism is indispensable, and a
symbolism which has a basis in historic incident is most effective. The
idea of a potent but yet suffering divine ideal which is defeated by
the world but gains its victory in the defeat must remain basic in any
morally creative world view.
It is possible of course that the resources of the Christian religion
will not be made available in time to save Western civilization from
moral bankruptcy. It is possible that life will continue to run its
course of conflict between the unrestrained ambitions and desires of
individuals and groups until unqualified self-assertiveness will issue
in mutual destruction. It is possible that cynicism will continue
to discount the moral potentialities of human nature while science
continues to give plausibility to a depreciation of the moral factors
in life by arming the brute in man and making his vices more deadly.
Civilization may be beyond moral redemption; but if it is to be
redeemed a religiously inspired moral idealism must aid in the task.
A purely naturalistic ethics will not only be overcome by a sense
of frustration and sink into despair, but it will lack the force to
restrain the self-will and self-interest of men and of nations. If life
cannot be centered in something beyond nature, it will not be possible
to lift men above the brute struggle for survival. Intelligence may
mitigate its cruelties and prudence may prompt men to eliminate its
worst inhumanities; but the increased power which the conquest of
nature supplies merely substitutes unintended cruelties for those which
have been consciously abolished. Living on the naturalistic level men
are bound to contend for life’s physical prizes and to use physical
force in the contest with more and more deadly effect.
It is the virtue of a vital religious idealism that it lifts life
above the level of nature and makes the development of an ethical
personality the ultimate goal of human existence. Without the vivid
and realistic other-worldly hopes and fears with which the medieval
church disciplined life and which the modern church cannot restore,
it may seem that religion possesses no force which could counteract
the primitive impulses which move men and nations. But these hopes
and fears were merely crude ways of expressing the idea that life
is fundamentally moral and that its destiny transcends the animal
conflict. Life will continue to develop in the direction of the ideal
implicit in it and every organism is impelled to move toward the
goal of its own completeness. The ideal implicit in human character
is that of ethical freedom; and awakened personalities will seek to
realize that ideal. They will seek to realize it even at the expense
of physical sacrifices and pain. They will learn how to find life by
losing it. It is the quest for what is not real but is always becoming
real, for what is not true but is always becoming true, that makes man
incurably religious. Modern religion is therefore not without resource
in contending against the forces of nature. The great difficulty is
that the struggle for ethical integrity is so painful that most men are
tempted to seek some short-cut to it; and organized religion generally
expresses the hopes and desires of this easygoing multitude. In the
medieval church magic provided the short-cut. In the modern church
it is provided by a sanctified prudence which teaches men how to be
unselfish and selfish at the same time, how to gain moral self-respect
without sacrificing too many temporal advantages. The hope of a revival
of ethical religion and of an ethical reconstruction of society
therefore depends, as it did in the past, upon a renunciation of the
religious short-cuts which lead to hypocrisy.
If religious aspiration can be united with perfect moral sincerity a
fruitful partnership may again be established between religion and
morality. The moral struggle will give meaning to the affirmations
of religion and the religious experience will strengthen the
moral purpose. While religion does not issue automatically in
moral action and the moral enterprise does not inevitably create
religious experience and hope, there is nevertheless a relation of
interdependence between religious aspiration and moral endeavor. This
relationship is due to the fact that a perfect ethical freedom is
possible only if personality is withdrawn from or lifted above the
immediate necessities of the physical life. The other-worldly hopes and
the mystical experience of religion by which the strategy of withdrawal
and transcendence has been effected is momentarily discredited because
it has resulted too frequently in absolving the soul of its moral
responsibilities in the specific problems of society. But the fact that
religious hopes and religious experiences may help people to escape the
onerous duties of the moral enterprise cannot permanently obscure the
need of religious experience and religious hope for the development of
an ethical life. If men are to center their life in moral purpose they
must reassure themselves periodically on the moral purpose in life
itself. That is mysticism and prayer. If they are to develop a perfect
ethical freedom which makes no compromises with life’s immediate
necessities, they must find a content and a meaning in life beyond its
present conflict of interests and desires. That is other-worldliness.
If the quest for ethical freedom and integrity does not lead to
religious experience and religious hope, it will issue in despair.
If the assurances of religious hope and the certainties of religious
experience are not accompanied by sincere moral effort, they result in
hypocrisy. The hope of an ethical society is therefore bound up in the
possibility of restoring ethical integrity to religion and religious
dynamic to the moral effect.
[Footnotes]
[1] Professor Alfred Whitehead, in his _Science and the Modern World_
and _Religion in the Making_, indicates the inevitable anti-mechanistic
trend of philosophical thought as it achieves mastery of the varied
fields of modern science.
[2] _Prospects of Industrial Civilization_, page 218.
[3] Matthew v. 43–48.
[4] _The Decline of the West._
[5] Stuart Mill’s refutation of LePlay’s thesis that the salvation of
the working classes can come only through the benevolence of their
superiors is worth quoting in this connection: “No times can be pointed
out in which the higher classes of this or any other country performed
a part even distantly resembling the one assigned to them in this
theory. All privileged and powerful classes have used their power in
the interest of their own selfishness. I do not affirm that what has
always been must always be. This at least seems to be undeniable, that
long before superior classes could be sufficiently inspired to govern
in the tutelary manner supposed, the inferior classes would be too much
improved to be governed.”
[6] _Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religions-Sociologie._
[7] _Religion and the Rise of Capitalism._
[8] Quoted by Tawney, _op. cit._
[9] The relation of puritanism to modern capitalism has been most
exhaustively treated by Max Weber in his essay on “Die Protestantische
Ethic und der Geist des Kapitalismus.”
[10] Quoted in Southey’s _Life of Wesley_, Chapter xxix.
[11] Both Max Weber and E. Troeltsch make much of the relation of
Calvinism to medieval asceticism. See Max Weber, _op. cit._, and E.
Troeltsch, _Sociallehren der Christlichen Kirche_.
[12] Romans vii. 19–25.
[13] _Grosser Sermon vom Wucher_ (_Werke_, Vol. IV, page 49).
[14] Article 3 in Twelve Articles, quoted by J. S. Shapiro in _Social
Reform and the Reformation_.
[15] In his _Education of Henry Adams_, Chapter x.
[16] Commenting on the first Hague conference Count Holstein of the
German foreign office made some realistic observations which may not
have justified his obstructive conclusions but which are nevertheless
pertinent. He wrote: “Subjects of international law are states and not
individuals. It will therefore be formally difficult and practically
impossible to isolate the individual judge from the passions and
interests of the whole in a way that happens or is supposed to happen
in private law. Of all conceivable judges Great Powers are least
disinterested, for in every conceivable question of any importance that
may come up all Great Powers are interested _à un degre quelconque_. An
impartial decision is therefore excluded by the nature of things....
Small disinterested states as subjects, small questions as objects of
arbitral decision are conceivable; great states and great questions are
not.” (Quoted by Dickinson in _International Anarchy_, p. 351.)
[17] _Social Evolution_, page 140.
[18] James iv. 2–4.
[19] II Corinthians iv. 16.
[20] In _Civilization and Ethics_ and _The Decay and Restoration of
Civilization_.
[21] _Christianity and Other World Religions._
[22] _Religion in the Making_, page 50.
[23] George Santayana in _Religion and Reason_, page 176.
[24] In _Development and Purpose_, page 360.
[25] In _Religion in the Making_.