The Social Problems of Religion

99:1.1Me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tions and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge are mod­i­fy­ing civ­i­liza­tion; cer­tain eco­nomic ad­just­ments and so­cial changes are im­per­a­tive if cul­tural dis­as­ter is to be avoided. This new and on­com­ing so­cial or­der will not set­tle down com­pla­cently for a mil­len­nium. The hu­man race must be­come rec­on­ciled to a pro­ces­sion of changes, ad­just­ments, and read­just­ments. Man­kind is on the march to­ward a new and un­re­vealed plan­e­tary des­tiny.

99:1.2Re­li­gion must be­come a force­ful in­flu­ence for moral sta­bil­ity and spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion func­tion­ing dy­nam­i­cally in the midst of these ever-chang­ing con­di­tions and never-end­ing eco­nomic ad­just­ments.

99:1.3Uran­tia so­ci­ety can never hope to set­tle down as in past ages. The so­cial ship has steamed out of the shel­tered bays of es­tab­lished tra­di­tion and has be­gun its cruise upon the high seas of evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny; and the soul of man, as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory, needs care­fully to scru­ti­nize its charts of moral­ity and painstak­ingly to ob­serve the com­pass of re­li­gious guid­ance. The paramount mis­sion of re­li­gion as a so­cial in­flu­ence is to sta­bi­lize the ide­als of man­kind dur­ing these dan­ger­ous times of tran­si­tion from one phase of civ­i­liza­tion to an­other, from one level of cul­ture to an­other.

99:1.4Re­li­gion has no new du­ties to per­form, but it is ur­gently called upon to func­tion as a wise guide and ex­pe­ri­enced coun­selor in all of these new and rapidly chang­ing hu­man sit­u­a­tions. So­ci­ety is be­com­ing more me­chan­i­cal, more com­pact, more com­plex, and more crit­i­cally in­ter­de­pen­dent. Re­li­gion must func­tion to pre­vent these new and in­ti­mate in­teras­so­ci­a­tions from be­com­ing mu­tu­ally ret­ro­gres­sive or even de­struc­tive. Re­li­gion must act as the cos­mic salt which pre­vents the fer­ments of pro­gres­sion from de­stroy­ing the cul­tural sa­vor of civ­i­liza­tion. These new so­cial re­la­tions and eco­nomic up­heavals can re­sult in last­ing broth­er­hood only by the min­istry of re­li­gion.

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

99:1.6Re­li­gion must not be­come or­gan­i­cally in­volved in the sec­u­lar work of so­cial re­con­struc­tion and eco­nomic re­or­ga­ni­za­tion. But it must ac­tively keep pace with all these ad­vances in civ­i­liza­tion by mak­ing clear-cut and vig­or­ous re­state­ments of its moral man­dates and spir­i­tual pre­cepts, its pro­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy of hu­man liv­ing and tran­scen­dent sur­vival. The spirit of re­li­gion is eter­nal, but the form of its ex­pres­sion must be re­stated ev­ery time the dic­tio­nary of hu­man lan­guage is re­vised.