The Social Problems of Religion

99:6.1Sec­tar­i­an­ism is a dis­ease of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion, and dog­ma­tism is an en­slave­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture. It is far bet­ter to have a re­li­gion with­out a church than a church with­out re­li­gion. The re­li­gious tur­moil of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury does not, in and of it­self, be­to­ken spir­i­tual deca­dence. Con­fu­sion goes be­fore growth as well as be­fore de­struc­tion.

99:6.2There is a real pur­pose in the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion. It is the pur­pose of group re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties to dra­ma­tize the loy­al­ties of re­li­gion; to mag­nify the lures of truth, beauty, and good­ness; to fos­ter the at­trac­tions of su­preme val­ues; to en­hance the ser­vice of un­selfish fel­low­ship; to glo­rify the po­ten­tials of fam­ily life; to pro­mote re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion; to pro­vide wise coun­sel and spir­i­tual guid­ance; and to en­cour­age group wor­ship. And all live re­li­gions en­cour­age hu­man friend­ship, con­serve moral­ity, pro­mote neigh­bor­hood wel­fare, and fa­cil­i­tate the spread of the es­sen­tial gospel of their re­spec­tive mes­sages of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

99:6.3But as re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized, its power for good is cur­tailed, while the pos­si­bil­i­ties for evil are greatly mul­ti­plied. The dan­gers of for­mal­ized re­li­gion are: fix­a­tion of be­liefs and crys­tal­liza­tion of sen­ti­ments; ac­cu­mu­la­tion of vested in­ter­ests with in­crease of sec­u­lar­iza­tion; ten­dency to stan­dard­ize and fos­silize truth; di­ver­sion of re­li­gion from the ser­vice of God to the ser­vice of the church; in­cli­na­tion of lead­ers to be­come ad­min­is­tra­tors in­stead of min­is­ters; ten­dency to form sects and com­pet­i­tive di­vi­sions; es­tab­lish­ment of op­pres­sive ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity; cre­ation of the aris­to­cratic “cho­sen-peo­ple” at­ti­tude; fos­ter­ing of false and ex­ag­ger­ated ideas of sa­cred­ness; the rou­tiniz­ing of re­li­gion and the pet­ri­fi­ca­tion of wor­ship; ten­dency to ven­er­ate the past while ig­nor­ing pres­ent de­mands; fail­ure to make up-to-date in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gion; en­tan­gle­ment with func­tions of sec­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions; it cre­ates the evil dis­crim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious castes; it be­comes an in­tol­er­ant judge of or­tho­doxy; it fails to hold the in­ter­est of ad­ven­tur­ous youth and grad­u­ally loses the sav­ing mes­sage of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

99:6.4For­mal re­li­gion re­strains men in their per­sonal spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties in­stead of re­leas­ing them for height­ened ser­vice as king­dom builders.