The Social Problems of Religion

99:5.1While re­li­gion is ex­clu­sively a per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence—know­ing God as a Fa­ther—the corol­lary of this ex­pe­ri­ence—know­ing man as a brother—en­tails the ad­just­ment of the self to other selves, and that in­volves the so­cial or group as­pect of re­li­gious life. Re­li­gion is first an in­ner or per­sonal ad­just­ment, and then it be­comes a mat­ter of so­cial ser­vice or group ad­just­ment. The fact of man’s gre­gar­i­ous­ness per­force de­ter­mines that re­li­gious groups will come into ex­is­tence. What hap­pens to these re­li­gious groups de­pends very much on in­tel­li­gent lead­er­ship. In prim­i­tive so­ci­ety the re­li­gious group is not al­ways very dif­fer­ent from eco­nomic or po­lit­i­cal groups. Re­li­gion has al­ways been a con­ser­va­tor of morals and a sta­bi­lizer of so­ci­ety. And this is still true, not­with­stand­ing the con­trary teach­ing of many mod­ern so­cial­ists and hu­man­ists.

99:5.2Al­ways keep in mind: True re­li­gion is to know God as your Fa­ther and man as your brother. Re­li­gion is not a slav­ish be­lief in threats of pun­ish­ment or mag­i­cal promises of fu­ture mys­ti­cal re­wards.

99:5.3The re­li­gion of Je­sus is the most dy­namic in­flu­ence ever to ac­ti­vate the hu­man race. Je­sus shat­tered tra­di­tion, de­stroyed dogma, and called man­kind to the achieve­ment of its high­est ide­als in time and eter­nity—to be per­fect, even as the Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.

99:5.4Re­li­gion has lit­tle chance to func­tion un­til the re­li­gious group be­comes sep­a­rated from all other groups—the so­cial as­so­ci­a­tion of the spir­i­tual mem­ber­ship of the king­dom of heaven.

99:5.5The doc­trine of the to­tal de­prav­ity of man de­stroyed much of the po­ten­tial of re­li­gion for ef­fect­ing so­cial reper­cus­sions of an up­lift­ing na­ture and of in­spi­ra­tional value. Je­sus sought to re­store man’s dig­nity when he de­clared that all men are the chil­dren of God.

99:5.6Any re­li­gious be­lief which is ef­fec­tive in spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing the be­liever is cer­tain to have pow­er­ful reper­cus­sions in the so­cial life of such a re­li­gion­ist. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence un­fail­ingly yields the “fruits of the spirit” in the daily life of the spirit-led mor­tal.

99:5.7Just as cer­tainly as men share their re­li­gious be­liefs, they cre­ate a re­li­gious group of some sort which even­tu­ally cre­ates com­mon goals. Some­day re­li­gion­ists will get to­gether and ac­tu­ally ef­fect co-op­er­a­tion on the ba­sis of unity of ide­als and pur­poses rather than at­tempt­ing to do so on the ba­sis of psy­cho­log­i­cal opin­ions and the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify re­li­gion­ists. Since true re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that each in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist must have his own and per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of that spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Let the term “faith” stand for the in­di­vid­ual’s re­la­tion to God rather than for the creedal for­mu­la­tion of what some group of mor­tals have been able to agree upon as a com­mon re­li­gious at­ti­tude. “Have you faith? Then have it to your­self.”

99:5.8That faith is con­cerned only with the grasp of ideal val­ues is shown by the New Tes­ta­ment def­i­ni­tion which de­clares that faith is the sub­stance of things hoped for and the ev­i­dence of things not seen.

99:5.9Prim­i­tive man made lit­tle ef­fort to put his re­li­gious con­vic­tions into words. His re­li­gion was danced out rather than thought out. Mod­ern men have thought out many creeds and cre­ated many tests of re­li­gious faith. Fu­ture re­li­gion­ists must live out their re­li­gion, ded­i­cate them­selves to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man. It is high time that man had a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence so per­sonal and so sub­lime that it could be re­al­ized and ex­pressed only by “feel­ings that lie too deep for words.”

99:5.10Je­sus did not re­quire of his fol­low­ers that they should pe­ri­od­i­cally as­sem­ble and re­cite a form of words in­dica­tive of their com­mon be­liefs. He only or­dained that they should gather to­gether to ac­tu­ally do some­thing—par­take of the com­mu­nal sup­per of the re­mem­brance of his be­stowal life on Uran­tia.

99:5.11What a mis­take for Chris­tians to make when, in pre­sent­ing Christ as the su­preme ideal of spir­i­tual lead­er­ship, they dare to re­quire God-con­scious men and women to re­ject the his­toric lead­er­ship of the God-know­ing men who have con­tributed to their par­tic­u­lar na­tional or racial il­lu­mi­na­tion dur­ing past ages.