The Social Problems of Religion

99:7.1Though churches and all other re­li­gious groups should stand aloof from all sec­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, at the same time re­li­gion must do noth­ing to hin­der or re­tard the so­cial co-or­di­na­tion of hu­man in­sti­tu­tions. Life must con­tinue to grow in mean­ing­ful­ness; man must go on with his ref­or­ma­tion of phi­los­o­phy and his clar­i­fi­ca­tion of re­li­gion.

99:7.2Po­lit­i­cal sci­ence must ef­fect the re­con­struc­tion of eco­nomics and in­dus­try by the tech­niques it learns from the so­cial sci­ences and by the in­sights and mo­tives sup­plied by re­li­gious liv­ing. In all so­cial re­con­struc­tion re­li­gion pro­vides a sta­bi­liz­ing loy­alty to a tran­scen­dent ob­ject, a steady­ing goal be­yond and above the im­me­di­ate and tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive. In the midst of the con­fu­sions of a rapidly chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment mor­tal man needs the sus­te­nance of a far-flung cos­mic per­spec­tive.

99:7.3Re­li­gion in­spires man to live coura­geously and joy­fully on the face of the earth; it joins pa­tience with pas­sion, in­sight to zeal, sym­pa­thy with power, and ide­als with en­ergy.

99:7.4Man can never wisely de­cide tem­po­ral is­sues or tran­scend the self­ish­ness of per­sonal in­ter­ests un­less he med­i­tates in the pres­ence of the sov­er­eignty of God and reck­ons with the re­al­i­ties of di­vine mean­ings and spir­i­tual val­ues.

99:7.5Eco­nomic in­ter­de­pen­dence and so­cial fra­ter­nity will ul­ti­mately con­duce to broth­er­hood. Man is nat­u­rally a dreamer, but sci­ence is sober­ing him so that re­li­gion can pres­ently ac­ti­vate him with far less dan­ger of pre­cip­i­tat­ing fa­nat­i­cal re­ac­tions. Eco­nomic ne­ces­si­ties tie man up with re­al­ity, and per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence brings this same man face to face with the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of an ever-ex­pand­ing and pro­gress­ing cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

99:7.6[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]