The Social Problems of Religion

99:3.1Early Chris­tian­ity was en­tirely free from all civil en­tan­gle­ments, so­cial com­mit­ments, and eco­nomic al­liances. Only did later in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian­ity be­come an or­ganic part of the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial struc­ture of Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion.

99:3.2The king­dom of heaven is nei­ther a so­cial nor eco­nomic or­der; it is an ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als. True, such a broth­er­hood is in it­self a new and amaz­ing so­cial phe­nom­e­non at­tended by as­tound­ing po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic reper­cus­sions.

99:3.3The re­li­gion­ist is not un­sym­pa­thetic with so­cial suf­fer­ing, not un­mind­ful of civil in­jus­tice, not in­su­lated from eco­nomic think­ing, nei­ther in­sen­si­ble to po­lit­i­cal tyranny. Re­li­gion in­flu­ences so­cial re­con­struc­tion di­rectly be­cause it spir­i­tu­al­izes and ide­al­izes the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen. In­di­rectly, cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is in­flu­enced by the at­ti­tude of these in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists as they be­come ac­tive and in­flu­en­tial mem­bers of var­i­ous so­cial, moral, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal groups.

99:3.4The at­tain­ment of a high cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion de­mands, first, the ideal type of cit­i­zen and, then, ideal and ad­e­quate so­cial mech­a­nisms where­with such a cit­i­zenry may con­trol the eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions of such an ad­vanced hu­man so­ci­ety.

99:3.5The church, be­cause of over­much false sen­ti­ment, has long min­is­tered to the un­der­priv­i­leged and the un­for­tu­nate, and this has all been well, but this same sen­ti­ment has led to the un­wise per­pet­u­a­tion of racially de­gen­er­ate stocks which have tremen­dously re­tarded the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion.

99:3.6Many in­di­vid­ual so­cial re­con­struc­tion­ists, while ve­he­mently re­pu­di­at­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized re­li­gion, are, af­ter all, zeal­ously re­li­gious in the prop­a­ga­tion of their so­cial re­forms. And so it is that re­li­gious mo­ti­va­tion, per­sonal and more or less un­rec­og­nized, is play­ing a great part in the pres­ent-day pro­gram of so­cial re­con­struc­tion.

99:3.7The great weak­ness of all this un­rec­og­nized and un­con­scious type of re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity is that it is un­able to profit from open re­li­gious crit­i­cism and thereby at­tain to prof­itable lev­els of self-cor­rec­tion. It is a fact that re­li­gion does not grow un­less it is dis­ci­plined by con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, am­pli­fied by phi­los­o­phy, pu­ri­fied by sci­ence, and nour­ished by loyal fel­low­ship.

99:3.8There is al­ways the great dan­ger that re­li­gion will be­come dis­torted and per­verted into the pur­suit of false goals, as when in times of war each con­tend­ing na­tion pros­ti­tutes its re­li­gion into mil­i­tary pro­pa­ganda. Love­less zeal is al­ways harm­ful to re­li­gion, while per­se­cu­tion di­verts the ac­tiv­i­ties of re­li­gion into the achieve­ment of some so­ci­o­logic or the­o­logic drive.

99:3.9Re­li­gion can be kept free from un­holy sec­u­lar al­liances only by:

99:3.101. A crit­i­cally cor­rec­tive phi­los­o­phy.

99:3.112. Free­dom from all so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal al­liances.

99:3.123. Cre­ative, com­fort­ing, and love-ex­pand­ing fel­low­ships.

99:3.134. Pro­gres­sive en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual in­sight and the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cos­mic val­ues.

99:3.145. Pre­ven­tion of fa­nati­cism by the com­pen­sa­tions of the sci­en­tific men­tal at­ti­tude.

99:3.15Re­li­gion­ists, as a group, must never con­cern them­selves with any­thing but re­li­gion, al­beit any one such re­li­gion­ist, as an in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen, may be­come the out­stand­ing leader of some so­cial, eco­nomic, or po­lit­i­cal re­con­struc­tion move­ment.

99:3.16It is the busi­ness of re­li­gion to cre­ate, sus­tain, and in­spire such a cos­mic loy­alty in the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen as will di­rect him to the achieve­ment of suc­cess in the ad­vance­ment of all these dif­fi­cult but de­sir­able so­cial ser­vices.