Christianity

• promises salvation from sin

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

• weaknesses › Old Testament incorporated into

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

• weaknesses › perpetuated myth of fiat creation

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

• weaknesses › error to regard marriage as a sacrament

83:8.1Mar­riage which cul­mi­nates in the home is in­deed man’s most ex­alted in­sti­tu­tion, but it is es­sen­tially hu­man; it should never have been called a sacra­ment. The Sethite priests made mar­riage a re­li­gious rit­ual; but for thou­sands of years af­ter Eden, mat­ing con­tin­ued as a purely so­cial and civil in­sti­tu­tion.

83:8.2The liken­ing of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions to di­vine as­so­ci­a­tions is most un­for­tu­nate. The union of hus­band and wife in the mar­riage-home re­la­tion­ship is a ma­te­rial func­tion of the mor­tals of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. True, in­deed, much spir­i­tual prog­ress may ac­crue con­se­quent upon the sin­cere hu­man ef­forts of hus­band and wife to pro­gress, but this does not mean that mar­riage is nec­es­sar­ily sa­cred. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is at­ten­dant upon sin­cere ap­pli­ca­tion to other av­enues of hu­man en­deavor.

83:8.3Nei­ther can mar­riage be truly com­pared to the re­la­tion of the Ad­juster to man nor to the fra­ter­nity of Christ Mi­chael and his hu­man breth­ren. At scarcely any point are such re­la­tion­ships com­pa­ra­ble to the as­so­ci­a­tion of hus­band and wife. And it is most un­for­tu­nate that the hu­man mis­con­cep­tion of these re­la­tion­ships has pro­duced so much con­fu­sion as to the sta­tus of mar­riage.

83:8.4It is also un­for­tu­nate that cer­tain groups of mor­tals have con­ceived of mar­riage as be­ing con­sum­mated by di­vine ac­tion. Such be­liefs lead di­rectly to the con­cept of the in­dis­sol­u­bil­ity of the mar­i­tal state re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances or wishes of the con­tract­ing par­ties. But the very fact of mar­riage dis­so­lu­tion it­self in­di­cates that De­ity is not a con­join­ing party to such unions. If God has once joined any two things or per­sons to­gether, they will re­main thus joined un­til such a time as the di­vine will de­crees their sep­a­ra­tion. But, re­gard­ing mar­riage, which is a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, who shall pre­sume to sit in judg­ment, to say which mar­riages are unions that might be ap­proved by the uni­verse super­vi­sors in con­trast with those which are purely hu­man in na­ture and ori­gin?

• nominal acceptance by New Zealand tribe

92:2.5Races of men only su­per­fi­cially ac­cept a strange and new re­li­gion; they ac­tu­ally ad­just it to their mores and old ways of be­liev­ing. This is well il­lus­trated by the ex­am­ple of a cer­tain New Zealand tribe whose priests, af­ter nom­i­nally ac­cept­ing Chris­tian­ity, pro­fessed to have re­ceived di­rect rev­e­la­tions from Ga­briel to the ef­fect that this self­same tribe had be­come the cho­sen peo­ple of God and di­rect­ing that they be per­mit­ted freely to in­dulge in loose sex re­la­tions and nu­mer­ous other of their olden and rep­re­hen­si­ble cus­toms. And im­me­di­ately all of the new-made Chris­tians went over to this new and less ex­act­ing ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity.

• Reformation disrupted unity of

92:5.157. The fif­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ. This pe­riod wit­nessed two re­li­gious move­ments: the dis­rup­tion of the unity of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent and the syn­the­sis of a new re­li­gion in the Ori­ent. In Eu­rope in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian­ity had at­tained that de­gree of in­elas­tic­ity which ren­dered fur­ther growth in­com­pat­i­ble with unity. In the Ori­ent the com­bined teach­ings of Is­lam, Hin­duism, and Bud­dhism were syn­the­sized by Nanak and his fol­low­ers into Sikhism, one of the most ad­vanced re­li­gions of Asia.

• strengths › greatest religion ever known

92:6.119. Chris­tian­ity.

• strengths › greatest religion ever known

92:6.16The great in­ter­na­tional, in­ter­ra­cial faiths are the He­braic, Bud­dhist, Chris­tian, and Is­lamic. Bud­dhism stretches from Cey­lon and Burma through Ti­bet and China to Japan. It has shown an adapt­abil­ity to the mores of many peo­ples that has been equaled only by Chris­tian­ity.

• weaknesses › Occidentalized; non-Europeans look upon as strange

92:6.18The Chris­tian re­li­gion is the re­li­gion about the life and teach­ings of Christ based upon the the­ol­ogy of Ju­daism, mod­i­fied fur­ther through the as­sim­i­la­tion of cer­tain Zoroas­trian teach­ings and Greek phi­los­o­phy, and for­mu­lated pri­mar­ily by three in­di­vid­u­als: Philo, Pe­ter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evo­lu­tion since the time of Paul and has be­come so thor­oughly Oc­ci­den­tal­ized that many non-Eu­ro­pean peo­ples very nat­u­rally look upon Chris­tian­ity as a strange rev­e­la­tion of a strange God and for strangers.

• weaknesses › has overlooked Joshua the human hero

92:7.12These in­ter­me­di­ate stages of idol­a­trous hes­i­ta­tion in the trans­fer of ven­er­a­tion from the hu­man and the vis­i­ble to the di­vine and in­vis­i­ble are in­ev­i­ta­ble, but they should be short­ened by the con­scious­ness of the fa­cil­i­tat­ing min­istry of the in­dwelling di­vine spirit. Nev­er­the­less, man has been pro­foundly in­flu­enced, not only by his con­cepts of De­ity, but also by the char­ac­ter of the heroes whom he has cho­sen to honor. It is most un­for­tu­nate that those who have come to ven­er­ate the di­vine and risen Christ should have over­looked the man—the valiant and coura­geous hero—Joshua ben Joseph.

• influence on Buddhism, Hinduism
• weaknesses › Occidentalized; non-Europeans look upon as strange
• well adapted to mores of white races

94:4.1With the pass­ing of the cen­turies in In­dia, the pop­u­lace re­turned in mea­sure to the an­cient rit­u­als of the Vedas as they had been mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies and crys­tal­lized by the later Brah­man priest­hood. This, the old­est and most cos­mopoli­tan of the world’s re­li­gions, has un­der­gone fur­ther changes in re­sponse to Bud­dhism and Jain­ism and to the later ap­pear­ing in­flu­ences of Mo­hammedanism and Chris­tian­ity. But by the time the teach­ings of Je­sus ar­rived, they had al­ready be­come so Oc­ci­den­tal­ized as to be a “white man’s re­li­gion,” hence strange and for­eign to the Hindu mind.

• weaknesses › Occidentalized; non-Europeans look upon as strange
• well adapted to mores of white races

94:4.10To­day, in In­dia, the great need is for the por­trayal of the Je­su­so­nian gospel—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship and con­se­quent broth­er­hood of all men, which is per­son­ally re­al­ized in lov­ing min­istry and so­cial ser­vice. In In­dia the phil­o­soph­i­cal frame­work is ex­is­tent, the cult struc­ture is pres­ent; all that is needed is the vi­tal­iz­ing spark of the dy­namic love por­trayed in the orig­i­nal gospel of the Son of Man, di­vested of the Oc­ci­den­tal dog­mas and doc­trines which have tended to make Mi­chael’s life be­stowal a white man’s re­li­gion.

• influence on Buddhism, Hinduism

94:9.3Bud­dhism, later on, was much af­fected by Tao­ism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Chris­tian­ity in Ti­bet. Af­ter a thou­sand years, in In­dia Bud­dhism sim­ply with­ered and ex­pired. It be­came Brah­man­ized and later ab­jectly sur­ren­dered to Is­lam, while through­out much of the rest of the Ori­ent it de­gen­er­ated into a rit­ual which Gau­tama Sid­dhartha would never have rec­og­nized.

• weaknesses › miraculous interpretation of history

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

97:8.6New Tes­ta­ment au­thors and later Chris­tian writ­ers fur­ther com­pli­cated the dis­tor­tion of He­brew his­tory by their well-meant at­tempts to tran­scen­den­tal­ize the Jew­ish proph­ets. Thus has He­brew his­tory been dis­as­trously ex­ploited by both Jew­ish and Chris­tian writ­ers. Sec­u­lar He­brew his­tory has been thor­oughly dog­ma­tized. It has been con­verted into a fic­tion of sa­cred his­tory and has be­come in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound up with the moral con­cepts and re­li­gious teach­ings of the so-called Chris­tian na­tions.

• weaknesses › long since ceased to be religion of Jesus
• well adapted to mores of white races

98:7.11As the orig­i­nal teach­ings of Je­sus pen­e­trated the Oc­ci­dent, they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, and as they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, they be­gan to lose their po­ten­tially uni­ver­sal ap­peal to all races and kinds of men. Chris­tian­ity, to­day, has be­come a re­li­gion well adapted to the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the re­li­gion of Je­sus, al­though it still valiantly por­trays a beau­ti­ful re­li­gion about Je­sus to such in­di­vid­u­als as sin­cerely seek to fol­low in the way of its teach­ing. It has glo­ri­fied Je­sus as the Christ, the Mes­sianic anointed one from God, but has largely for­got­ten the Mas­ter’s per­sonal gospel: the Fa­ther­hood of God and the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of all men.

• weaknesses › sponsors Western social systems

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.

• weaknesses › ministry to the unfortunate from false sentiment

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.

• weaknesses › should not require God-conscious men to reject their historic leadership

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.

• strengths › founded upon fact of Michael’s bestowal

121:5.163. The mys­ter­ies were built upon myths. Chris­tian­ity, as Paul preached it, was founded upon a his­toric fact: the be­stowal of Mi­chael, the Son of God, upon man­kind.

• Pauline version of life, teachings of Jesus
• weaknesses › long since ceased to be religion of Jesus

149:2.2The Apos­tle Paul, in his ef­forts to bring the teach­ings of Je­sus to the fa­vor­able no­tice of cer­tain groups in his day, wrote many let­ters of in­struc­tion and ad­mo­ni­tion. Other teach­ers of Je­sus’ gospel did like­wise, but none of them re­al­ized that some of these writ­ings would sub­se­quently be brought to­gether by those who would set them forth as the em­bod­i­ment of the teach­ings of Je­sus. And so, while so-called Chris­tian­ity does con­tain more of the Mas­ter’s gospel than any other re­li­gion, it does also con­tain much that Je­sus did not teach. Aside from the in­cor­po­ra­tion of many teach­ings from the Per­sian mys­ter­ies and much of the Greek phi­los­o­phy into early Chris­tian­ity, two great mis­takes were made:

• weaknesses › teachings about women

149:2.9In one gen­er­a­tion Je­sus lifted women out of the dis­re­spect­ful obliv­ion and the slav­ish drudgery of the ages. And it is the one shame­ful thing about the re­li­gion that pre­sumed to take Je­sus’ name that it lacked the moral cour­age to fol­low this no­ble ex­am­ple in its sub­se­quent at­ti­tude to­ward women.

• weaknesses › emphasis upon struggle between soul and body

157:6.4Thus did Je­sus ex­em­plify in his life what he taught in his re­li­gion: the growth of the spir­i­tual na­ture by the tech­nique of liv­ing prog­ress. He did not place em­pha­sis, as did his later fol­low­ers, upon the in­ces­sant strug­gle be­tween the soul and the body. He rather taught that the spirit was easy vic­tor over both and ef­fec­tive in the prof­itable rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of much of this in­tel­lec­tual and in­stinc­tual war­fare.

• weaknesses › teachings about women

167:6.4Woman’s sta­tus in Pales­tine was much im­proved by Je­sus’ teach­ing; and so it would have been through­out the world if his fol­low­ers had not de­parted so far from that which he painstak­ingly taught them.

• strengths › church is inevitable and useful social result of Jesus’ life

170:5.7The church, as a so­cial out­growth of the king­dom, would have been wholly nat­u­ral and even de­sir­able. The evil of the church was not its ex­is­tence, but rather that it al­most com­pletely sup­planted the Je­sus con­cept of the king­dom. Paul’s in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church be­came a vir­tual sub­sti­tute for the king­dom of heaven which Je­sus had pro­claimed.

• strengths › church is inevitable and useful social result of Jesus’ life

170:5.10The church was an in­ev­i­ta­ble and use­ful so­cial re­sult of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings; the tragedy con­sisted in the fact that this so­cial re­ac­tion to the teach­ings of the king­dom so fully dis­placed the spir­i­tual con­cept of the real king­dom as Je­sus taught and lived it.

• weaknesses › sects are pitiful subdivision of believers, a weakness to Oriental peoples

170:5.20It is just be­cause the gospel of Je­sus was so many-sided that within a few cen­turies stu­dents of the rec­ords of his teach­ings be­came di­vided up into so many cults and sects. This piti­ful sub­di­vi­sion of Chris­tian be­liev­ers re­sults from fail­ure to dis­cern in the Mas­ter’s man­i­fold teach­ings the di­vine one­ness of his match­less life. But some­day the true be­liev­ers in Je­sus will not be thus spir­i­tu­ally di­vided in their at­ti­tude be­fore un­be­liev­ers. Al­ways we may have di­ver­sity of in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion, even vary­ing de­grees of so­cial­iza­tion, but lack of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood is both in­ex­cus­able and rep­re­hen­si­ble.

• church is larval stage of thwarted spiritual kingdom

170:5.21Mis­take not! there is in the teach­ings of Je­sus an eter­nal na­ture which will not per­mit them for­ever to re­main un­fruit­ful in the hearts of think­ing men. The king­dom as Je­sus con­ceived it has to a large ex­tent failed on earth; for the time be­ing, an out­ward church has taken its place; but you should com­pre­hend that this church is only the lar­val stage of the thwarted spir­i­tual king­dom, which will carry it through this ma­te­rial age and over into a more spir­i­tual dis­pen­sa­tion where the Mas­ter’s teach­ings may en­joy a fuller op­por­tu­nity for de­vel­op­ment. Thus does the so-called Chris­tian church be­come the co­coon in which the king­dom of Je­sus’ con­cept now slum­bers. The king­dom of the di­vine broth­er­hood is still alive and will even­tu­ally and cer­tainly come forth from this long sub­mer­gence, just as surely as the but­ter­fly even­tu­ally emerges as the beau­ti­ful un­fold­ing of its less at­trac­tive crea­ture of meta­mor­phic de­vel­op­ment.

175:2.1The fact that the spir­i­tual lead­ers and the re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jew­ish na­tion one­time re­jected the teach­ings of Je­sus and con­spired to bring about his cruel death, does not in any man­ner af­fect the sta­tus of any in­di­vid­ual Jew in his stand­ing be­fore God. And it should not cause those who pro­fess to be fol­low­ers of the Christ to be prej­u­diced against the Jew as a fel­low mor­tal. The Jews, as a na­tion, as a so­ciopo­lit­i­cal group, paid in full the ter­ri­ble price of re­ject­ing the Prince of Peace. Long since they ceased to be the spir­i­tual torch­bear­ers of di­vine truth to the races of man­kind, but this con­sti­tutes no valid rea­son why the in­di­vid­ual de­scen­dants of these long-ago Jews should be made to suf­fer the per­se­cu­tions which have been vis­ited upon them by in­tol­er­ant, un­wor­thy, and big­oted pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who was, him­self, a Jew by nat­u­ral birth.

175:2.2Many times has this un­rea­son­ing and un-Christ­like ha­tred and per­se­cu­tion of mod­ern Jews ter­mi­nated in the suf­fer­ing and death of some in­no­cent and un­of­fend­ing Jew­ish in­di­vid­ual whose very an­ces­tors, in the times of Je­sus, heart­ily ac­cepted his gospel and pres­ently died un­flinch­ingly for that truth which they so whole­heart­edly be­lieved. What a shud­der of hor­ror passes over the on­look­ing ce­les­tial be­ings as they be­hold the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus in­dulge them­selves in per­se­cut­ing, ha­rass­ing, and even mur­der­ing the later-day de­scen­dants of Pe­ter, Philip, Mat­thew, and oth­ers of the Pales­tinian Jews who so glo­ri­ously yielded up their lives as the first mar­tyrs of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom!

175:2.3How cruel and un­rea­son­ing to com­pel in­no­cent chil­dren to suf­fer for the sins of their pro­gen­i­tors, mis­deeds of which they are wholly ig­no­rant, and for which they could in no way be re­spon­si­ble! And to do such wicked deeds in the name of one who taught his dis­ci­ples to love even their en­e­mies! It has be­come nec­es­sary, in this recital of the life of Je­sus, to por­tray the man­ner in which cer­tain of his fel­low Jews re­jected him and con­spired to bring about his ig­no­min­ious death; but we would warn all who read this nar­ra­tive that the pre­sen­ta­tion of such a his­tor­i­cal recital in no way jus­ti­fies the un­just ha­tred, nor con­dones the un­fair at­ti­tude of mind, which so many pro­fessed Chris­tians have main­tained to­ward in­di­vid­ual Jews for many cen­turies. King­dom be­liev­ers, those who fol­low the teach­ings of Je­sus, must cease to mis­treat the in­di­vid­ual Jew as one who is guilty of the re­jec­tion and cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. The Fa­ther and his Cre­ator Son have never ceased to love the Jews. God is no re­specter of per­sons, and sal­va­tion is for the Jew as well as for the gen­tile.

• weaknesses › Remembrance Supper reduced to set formula

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.

• strengths › gospel will emerge from C. to transform world
• weaknesses › gospel of ransom to purchase man from devil

194:2.8Je­sus lived a life which is a rev­e­la­tion of man sub­mit­ted to the Fa­ther’s will, not an ex­am­ple for any man lit­er­ally to at­tempt to fol­low. This life in the flesh, to­gether with his death on the cross and sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion, pres­ently be­came a new gospel of the ran­som which had thus been paid in or­der to pur­chase man back from the clutch of the evil one—from the con­dem­na­tion of an of­fended God. Nev­er­the­less, even though the gospel did be­come greatly dis­torted, it re­mains a fact that this new mes­sage about Je­sus car­ried along with it many of the fun­da­men­tal truths and teach­ings of his ear­lier gospel of the king­dom. And, sooner or later, these con­cealed truths of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men will emerge to ef­fec­tu­ally trans­form the civ­i­liza­tion of all man­kind.

• strengths › greatest religion ever known

194:4.6Christ was about to be­come the creed of the rapidly form­ing church. Je­sus lives; he died for men; he gave the spirit; he is com­ing again. Je­sus filled all their thoughts and de­ter­mined all their new con­cepts of God and ev­ery­thing else. They were too much en­thused over the new doc­trine that “God is the Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus” to be con­cerned with the old mes­sage that “God is the lov­ing Fa­ther of all men,” even of ev­ery sin­gle in­di­vid­ual. True, a mar­velous man­i­fes­ta­tion of broth­erly love and un­ex­am­pled good will did spring up in these early com­mu­ni­ties of be­liev­ers. But it was a fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers in Je­sus, not a fel­low­ship of broth­ers in the fam­ily king­dom of the Fa­ther in heaven. Their good will arose from the love born of the con­cept of Je­sus’ be­stowal and not from the rec­og­ni­tion of the broth­er­hood of mor­tal man. Nev­er­the­less, they were filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique lives that all men were at­tracted to their teach­ings about Je­sus. They made the great mis­take of us­ing the liv­ing and il­lus­tra­tive com­men­tary on the gospel of the king­dom for that gospel, but even that rep­re­sented the great­est re­li­gion man­kind had ever known.

• Pauline version of life, teachings of Jesus

195:0.18Many of the great truths taught by Je­sus were al­most lost in these early com­pro­mises, but they yet slum­ber in this re­li­gion of pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity, which was in turn the Pauline ver­sion of the life and teach­ings of the Son of Man. And Chris­tian­ity, even be­fore it was pa­ganized, was first thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. Chris­tian­ity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It was a Greek, from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fear­lessly chal­lenged this as­sem­bly that it dared not so ob­scure the con­cept of the na­ture of Je­sus that the real truth of his be­stowal might have been in dan­ger of be­ing lost to the world. This Greek’s name was Athana­sius, and but for the elo­quence and the logic of this be­liever, the per­sua­sions of Ar­ius would have tri­umphed.

• weaknesses › church is institutionalized to spiritual barrenness

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.

• weaknesses › mystic C. bordered on unreality; akin to pantheism

195:4.1The church, be­ing an ad­junct to so­ci­ety and the ally of pol­i­tics, was doomed to share in the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­cline of the so-called Eu­ro­pean “dark ages.” Dur­ing this time, re­li­gion be­came more and more monas­ti­cized, as­ceti­cized, and le­gal­ized. In a spir­i­tual sense, Chris­tian­ity was hi­ber­nat­ing. Through­out this pe­riod there ex­isted, along­side this slum­ber­ing and sec­u­lar­ized re­li­gion, a con­tin­u­ous stream of mys­ti­cism, a fan­tas­tic spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence bor­der­ing on un­re­al­ity and phil­o­soph­i­cally akin to pan­the­ism.

195:4.2Dur­ing these dark and de­spair­ing cen­turies, re­li­gion be­came vir­tu­ally sec­ond­handed again. The in­di­vid­ual was al­most lost be­fore the over­shad­ow­ing au­thor­ity, tra­di­tion, and dic­ta­tion of the church. A new spir­i­tual men­ace arose in the cre­ation of a galaxy of “saints” who were as­sumed to have spe­cial in­flu­ence at the di­vine courts, and who, there­fore, if ef­fec­tively ap­pealed to, would be able to in­ter­cede in man’s be­half be­fore the Gods.

• strengths › recent relative rehabilitation
• weaknesses › sects are pitiful subdivision of believers, a weakness to Oriental peoples

195:4.3But Chris­tian­ity was suf­fi­ciently so­cial­ized and pa­ganized that, while it was im­po­tent to stay the on­com­ing dark ages, it was the bet­ter pre­pared to sur­vive this long pe­riod of moral dark­ness and spir­i­tual stag­na­tion. And it did per­sist on through the long night of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and was still func­tion­ing as a moral in­flu­ence in the world when the re­nais­sance dawned. The re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Chris­tian­ity, fol­low­ing the pass­ing of the dark ages, re­sulted in bring­ing into ex­is­tence nu­mer­ous sects of the Chris­tian teach­ings, be­liefs suited to spe­cial in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual types of hu­man per­son­al­ity. And many of these spe­cial Chris­tian groups, or re­li­gious fam­i­lies, still per­sist at the time of the mak­ing of this pre­sen­ta­tion.

• weaknesses › secular materialism

195:4.4Chris­tian­ity ex­hibits a his­tory of hav­ing orig­i­nated out of the un­in­tended trans­for­ma­tion of the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a re­li­gion about Je­sus. It fur­ther pre­sents the his­tory of hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced Hel­l­eniza­tion, pa­gani­za­tion, sec­u­lar­iza­tion, in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion, in­tel­lec­tual de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, spir­i­tual deca­dence, moral hi­ber­na­tion, threat­ened ex­tinc­tion, later re­ju­ve­na­tion, frag­men­ta­tion, and more re­cent rel­a­tive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Such a pedi­gree is in­dica­tive of in­her­ent vi­tal­ity and the pos­ses­sion of vast re­cu­per­a­tive re­sources. And this same Chris­tian­ity is now pres­ent in the civ­i­lized world of Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples and stands face to face with a strug­gle for ex­is­tence which is even more omi­nous than those event­ful crises which have char­ac­ter­ized its past bat­tles for dom­i­nance.

195:4.5Re­li­gion is now con­fronted by the chal­lenge of a new age of sci­en­tific minds and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies. In this gi­gan­tic strug­gle be­tween the sec­u­lar and the spir­i­tual, the re­li­gion of Je­sus will even­tu­ally tri­umph.

• weaknesses › secular materialism

195:8.3At the time of this rev­e­la­tion, the pre­vail­ing in­tel­lec­tual and phil­o­soph­i­cal cli­mate of both Eu­ro­pean and Amer­i­can life is de­cid­edly sec­u­lar—hu­man­is­tic. For three hun­dred years West­ern think­ing has been pro­gres­sively sec­u­lar­ized. Re­li­gion has be­come more and more a nom­i­nal in­flu­ence, largely a rit­u­al­is­tic ex­er­cise. The ma­jor­ity of pro­fessed Chris­tians of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion are un­wit­tingly ac­tual sec­u­lar­ists.

• strengths › river of truth running through the centuries

195:9.1Do not over­look the value of your spir­i­tual her­itage, the river of truth run­ning down through the cen­turies, even to the bar­ren times of a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic and sec­u­lar age. In all your wor­thy ef­forts to rid your­selves of the su­per­sti­tious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eter­nal truth. But be pa­tient! when the pres­ent su­per­sti­tion re­volt is over, the truths of Je­sus’ gospel will per­sist glo­ri­ously to il­lu­mi­nate a new and bet­ter way.

• weaknesses › languishes for lack of new vision of Master’s life

195:9.2But pa­ganized and so­cial­ized Chris­tian­ity stands in need of new con­tact with the un­com­pro­mised teach­ings of Je­sus; it lan­guishes for lack of a new vi­sion of the Mas­ter’s life on earth. A new and fuller rev­e­la­tion of the re­li­gion of Je­sus is des­tined to con­quer an em­pire of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic sec­u­lar­ism and to over­throw a world sway of mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism. Uran­tia is now quiv­er­ing on the very brink of one of its most amaz­ing and en­thralling epochs of so­cial read­just­ment, moral quick­en­ing, and spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment.

195:9.3The teach­ings of Je­sus, even though greatly mod­i­fied, sur­vived the mys­tery cults of their birth­time, the ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion of the dark ages, and are even now slowly tri­umph­ing over the ma­te­ri­al­ism, mech­a­nism, and sec­u­lar­ism of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. And such times of great test­ing and threat­ened de­feat are al­ways times of great rev­e­la­tion.

• weaknesses › neglects spiritual mission for social problems

195:9.4Re­li­gion does need new lead­ers, spir­i­tual men and women who will dare to de­pend solely on Je­sus and his in­com­pa­ra­ble teach­ings. If Chris­tian­ity per­sists in ne­glect­ing its spir­i­tual mis­sion while it con­tin­ues to busy it­self with so­cial and ma­te­rial prob­lems, the spir­i­tual re­nais­sance must await the com­ing of these new teach­ers of Je­sus’ re­li­gion who will be ex­clu­sively de­voted to the spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly sup­ply the lead­er­ship and in­spi­ra­tion req­ui­site for the so­cial, moral, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the world.

195:9.5The mod­ern age will refuse to ac­cept a re­li­gion which is in­con­sis­tent with facts and out of har­mony with its high­est con­cep­tions of truth, beauty, and good­ness. The hour is strik­ing for a re­dis­cov­ery of the true and orig­i­nal foun­da­tions of pres­ent-day dis­torted and com­pro­mised Chris­tian­ity—the real life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

195:9.6Prim­i­tive man lived a life of su­per­sti­tious bond­age to re­li­gious fear. Mod­ern, civ­i­lized men dread the thought of falling un­der the dom­i­nance of strong re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Think­ing man has al­ways feared to be held by a re­li­gion. When a strong and mov­ing re­li­gion threat­ens to dom­i­nate him, he in­vari­ably tries to ra­tio­nal­ize, tra­di­tion­al­ize, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ize it, thereby hop­ing to gain con­trol of it. By such pro­ce­dure, even a re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes man-made and man-dom­i­nated. Mod­ern men and women of in­tel­li­gence evade the re­li­gion of Je­sus be­cause of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does, in­deed, dom­i­nate and trans­form its be­liev­ers, de­mand­ing that men ded­i­cate their lives to seek­ing for a knowl­edge of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and re­quir­ing that the en­er­gies of liv­ing be con­se­crated to the un­selfish ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man.

195:9.7Self­ish men and women sim­ply will not pay such a price for even the great­est spir­i­tual trea­sure ever of­fered mor­tal man. Only when man has be­come suf­fi­ciently dis­il­lu­sioned by the sor­row­ful dis­ap­point­ments at­ten­dant upon the fool­ish and de­cep­tive pur­suits of self­ish­ness, and sub­se­quent to the dis­cov­ery of the bar­ren­ness of for­mal­ized re­li­gion, will he be dis­posed to turn whole­heart­edly to the gospel of the king­dom, the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• strengths › greatest religion ever known

195:9.8The world needs more first­hand re­li­gion. Even Chris­tian­ity—the best of the re­li­gions of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury—is not only a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but it is so largely one which men ex­pe­ri­ence sec­ond­hand. They take their re­li­gion wholly as handed down by their ac­cepted re­li­gious teach­ers. What an awak­en­ing the world would ex­pe­ri­ence if it could only see Je­sus as he re­ally lived on earth and know, first­hand, his life-giv­ing teach­ings! De­scrip­tive words of things beau­ti­ful can­not thrill like the sight thereof, nei­ther can creedal words in­spire men’s souls like the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing the pres­ence of God. But ex­pec­tant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man’s soul open for the en­trance of the eter­nal spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the di­vine val­ues of the worlds be­yond.

• weaknesses › secular materialism

195:9.9Chris­tian­ity has dared to lower its ide­als be­fore the chal­lenge of hu­man greed, war-mad­ness, and the lust for power; but the re­li­gion of Je­sus stands as the un­sul­lied and tran­scen­dent spir­i­tual sum­mons, call­ing to the best there is in man to rise above all these lega­cies of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion and, by grace, at­tain the moral heights of true hu­man des­tiny.

195:9.10Chris­tian­ity is threat­ened by slow death from for­mal­ism, overor­ga­ni­za­tion, in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism, and other non­spir­i­tual trends. The mod­ern Chris­tian church is not such a broth­er­hood of dy­namic be­liev­ers as Je­sus com­mis­sioned con­tin­u­ously to ef­fect the spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion of suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of man­kind.

195:9.11So-called Chris­tian­ity has be­come a so­cial and cul­tural move­ment as well as a re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice. The stream of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity drains many an an­cient pa­gan swamp and many a bar­bar­ian morass; many olden cul­tural wa­ter­sheds drain into this pres­ent-day cul­tural stream as well as the high Galilean table­lands which are sup­posed to be its ex­clu­sive source.

• futile to talk about revival of primitive C.

195:10.1Chris­tian­ity has in­deed done a great ser­vice for this world, but what is now most needed is Je­sus. The world needs to see Je­sus liv­ing again on earth in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born mor­tals who ef­fec­tively re­veal the Mas­ter to all men. It is fu­tile to talk about a re­vival of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity; you must go for­ward from where you find your­selves. Mod­ern cul­ture must be­come spir­i­tu­ally bap­tized with a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus’ life and il­lu­mi­nated with a new un­der­stand­ing of his gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. And when Je­sus be­comes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to him­self. Je­sus’ dis­ci­ples should be more than con­querors, even over­flow­ing sources of in­spi­ra­tion and en­hanced liv­ing to all men. Re­li­gion is only an ex­alted hu­man­ism un­til it is made di­vine by the dis­cov­ery of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

195:10.2The beauty and sub­lim­ity, the hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity, the sim­plic­ity and unique­ness, of Je­sus’ life on earth pre­sent such a strik­ing and ap­peal­ing pic­ture of man-sav­ing and God-re­veal­ing that the the­olo­gians and philoso­phers of all time should be ef­fec­tively re­strained from dar­ing to form creeds or cre­ate the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems of spir­i­tual bond­age out of such a tran­scen­den­tal be­stowal of God in the form of man. In Je­sus the uni­verse pro­duced a mor­tal man in whom the spirit of love tri­umphed over the ma­te­rial hand­i­caps of time and over­came the fact of phys­i­cal ori­gin.

195:10.3Ever bear in mind—God and men need each other. They are mu­tu­ally nec­es­sary to the full and fi­nal at­tain­ment of eter­nal per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence in the di­vine des­tiny of uni­verse fi­nal­ity.

195:10.4“The king­dom of God is within you” was prob­a­bly the great­est pro­nounce­ment Je­sus ever made, next to the dec­la­ra­tion that his Fa­ther is a liv­ing and lov­ing spirit.

• strengths › willingly goes the first mile

195:10.5In win­ning souls for the Mas­ter, it is not the first mile of com­pul­sion, duty, or con­ven­tion that will trans­form man and his world, but rather the sec­ond mile of free ser­vice and lib­erty-lov­ing de­vo­tion that be­to­kens the Je­su­so­nian reach­ing forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on un­der spir­i­tual guid­ance to­ward the higher and di­vine goal of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Chris­tian­ity even now will­ingly goes the first mile, but man­kind lan­guishes and stum­bles along in moral dark­ness be­cause there are so few gen­uine sec­ond-mil­ers—so few pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus who re­ally live and love as he taught his dis­ci­ples to live and love and serve.

195:10.6The call to the ad­ven­ture of build­ing a new and trans­formed hu­man so­ci­ety by means of the spir­i­tual re­birth of Je­sus’ broth­er­hood of the king­dom should thrill all who be­lieve in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his com­pan­ions in the flesh.

• weaknesses › sects are pitiful subdivision of believers, a weakness to Oriental peoples

195:10.7No so­cial sys­tem or po­lit­i­cal regime which de­nies the re­al­ity of God can con­tribute in any con­struc­tive and last­ing man­ner to the ad­vance­ment of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. But Chris­tian­ity, as it is sub­di­vided and sec­u­lar­ized to­day, pre­sents the great­est sin­gle ob­sta­cle to its fur­ther ad­vance­ment; es­pe­cially is this true con­cern­ing the Ori­ent.

• weaknesses › church is unconscious obstacle to real gospel
• weaknesses › ecclesiasticism incompatible with living faith

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• strengths › Jesus has fostered C. as best exponent of his work

195:10.9Many earnest per­sons who would gladly yield loy­alty to the Christ of the gospel find it very dif­fi­cult en­thu­si­as­ti­cally to sup­port a church which ex­hibits so lit­tle of the spirit of his life and teach­ings, and which they have been er­ro­neously taught he founded. Je­sus did not found the so-called Chris­tian church, but he has, in ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with his na­ture, fos­tered it as the best ex­is­tent ex­po­nent of his life­work on earth.

195:10.10If the Chris­tian church would only dare to es­pouse the Mas­ter’s pro­gram, thou­sands of ap­par­ently in­dif­fer­ent youths would rush for­ward to en­list in such a spir­i­tual un­der­tak­ing, and they would not hes­i­tate to go all the way through with this great ad­ven­ture.

• living Jesus is only hope of unification

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.

• strengths › one of greatest powers for good on earth

195:10.12But the Chris­tian­ity of even the twen­ti­eth cen­tury must not be de­spised. It is the prod­uct of the com­bined moral ge­nius of the God-know­ing men of many races dur­ing many ages, and it has truly been one of the great­est pow­ers for good on earth, and there­fore no man should lightly re­gard it, not­with­stand­ing its in­her­ent and ac­quired de­fects. Chris­tian­ity still con­trives to move the minds of re­flec­tive men with mighty moral emo­tions.

• weaknesses › involvement in commerce and politics

195:10.13But there is no ex­cuse for the in­volve­ment of the church in com­merce and pol­i­tics; such un­holy al­liances are a fla­grant be­trayal of the Mas­ter. And the gen­uine lovers of truth will be slow to for­get that this pow­er­ful in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church has of­ten dared to smother new­born faith and per­se­cute truth bear­ers who chanced to ap­pear in un­ortho­dox rai­ment.

195:10.14It is all too true that such a church would not have sur­vived un­less there had been men in the world who pre­ferred such a style of wor­ship. Many spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent souls crave an an­cient and au­thor­i­ta­tive re­li­gion of rit­ual and sa­cred tra­di­tions. Hu­man evo­lu­tion and spir­i­tual prog­ress are hardly suf­fi­cient to en­able all men to dis­pense with re­li­gious au­thor­ity. And the in­vis­i­ble broth­er­hood of the king­dom may well in­clude these fam­ily groups of var­i­ous so­cial and tem­per­a­men­tal classes if they are only will­ing to be­come truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this broth­er­hood of Je­sus there is no place for sec­tar­ian ri­valry, group bit­ter­ness, nor as­ser­tions of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity and spir­i­tual in­fal­li­bil­ity.

• weaknesses › sects are pitiful subdivision of believers, a weakness to Oriental peoples

195:10.15These var­i­ous group­ings of Chris­tians may serve to ac­com­mo­date nu­mer­ous dif­fer­ent types of would-be be­liev­ers among the var­i­ous peo­ples of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, but such di­vi­sion of Chris­ten­dom pre­sents a grave weak­ness when it at­tempts to carry the gospel of Je­sus to Ori­en­tal peo­ples. These races do not yet un­der­stand that there is a re­li­gion of Je­sus sep­a­rate, and some­what apart, from Chris­tian­ity, which has more and more be­come a re­li­gion about Je­sus.

• living Jesus is only hope of unification

195:10.16The great hope of Uran­tia lies in the pos­si­bil­ity of a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus with a new and en­larged pre­sen­ta­tion of his sav­ing mes­sage which would spir­i­tu­ally unite in lov­ing ser­vice the nu­mer­ous fam­i­lies of his pres­ent-day pro­fessed fol­low­ers.

195:10.17Even sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion could help in this great spir­i­tual re­nais­sance if it would pay more at­ten­tion to the work of teach­ing youth how to en­gage in life plan­ning and char­ac­ter pro­gres­sion. The pur­pose of all ed­u­ca­tion should be to fos­ter and fur­ther the su­preme pur­pose of life, the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jes­tic and well-bal­anced per­son­al­ity. There is great need for the teach­ing of moral dis­ci­pline in the place of so much self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Upon such a foun­da­tion re­li­gion may con­tribute its spir­i­tual in­cen­tive to the en­large­ment and en­rich­ment of mor­tal life, even to the se­cu­rity and en­hance­ment of life eter­nal.

• weaknesses › extemporized religion; operates in low gear

195:10.18Chris­tian­ity is an ex­tem­po­rized re­li­gion, and there­fore must it op­er­ate in low gear. High-gear spir­i­tual per­for­mances must await the new rev­e­la­tion and the more gen­eral ac­cep­tance of the real re­li­gion of Je­sus. But Chris­tian­ity is a mighty re­li­gion, see­ing that the com­mon­place dis­ci­ples of a cru­ci­fied car­pen­ter set in mo­tion those teach­ings which con­quered the Ro­man world in three hun­dred years and then went on to tri­umph over the bar­bar­ians who over­threw Rome. This same Chris­tian­ity con­quered—ab­sorbed and ex­alted—the whole stream of He­brew the­ol­ogy and Greek phi­los­o­phy. And then, when this Chris­tian re­li­gion be­came co­matose for more than a thou­sand years as a re­sult of an over­dose of mys­ter­ies and pa­gan­ism, it res­ur­rected it­self and vir­tu­ally re­con­quered the whole West­ern world. Chris­tian­ity con­tains enough of Je­sus’ teach­ings to im­mor­tal­ize it.

195:10.19If Chris­tian­ity could only grasp more of Je­sus’ teach­ings, it could do so much more in help­ing mod­ern man to solve his new and in­creas­ingly com­plex prob­lems.

• weaknesses › sponsors Western social systems

195:10.20Chris­tian­ity suf­fers un­der a great hand­i­cap be­cause it has be­come iden­ti­fied in the minds of all the world as a part of the so­cial sys­tem, the in­dus­trial life, and the moral stan­dards of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion; and thus has Chris­tian­ity un­wit­tingly seemed to spon­sor a so­ci­ety which stag­gers un­der the guilt of tol­er­at­ing sci­ence with­out ide­al­ism, pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ples, wealth with­out work, plea­sure with­out re­straint, knowl­edge with­out char­ac­ter, power with­out con­science, and in­dus­try with­out moral­ity.

195:10.21The hope of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity is that it should cease to spon­sor the so­cial sys­tems and in­dus­trial poli­cies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion while it humbly bows it­self be­fore the cross it so valiantly ex­tols, there to learn anew from Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the great­est truths mor­tal man can ever hear—the liv­ing gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

• weaknesses › fears exposure of unconsecrated fellowship?

196:1.2The time is ripe to wit­ness the fig­u­ra­tive res­ur­rec­tion of the hu­man Je­sus from his burial tomb amidst the the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tions and the re­li­gious dog­mas of nine­teen cen­turies. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth must not be longer sac­ri­ficed to even the splen­did con­cept of the glo­ri­fied Christ. What a tran­scen­dent ser­vice if, through this rev­e­la­tion, the Son of Man should be re­cov­ered from the tomb of tra­di­tional the­ol­ogy and be pre­sented as the liv­ing Je­sus to the church that bears his name, and to all other re­li­gions! Surely the Chris­tian fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers will not hes­i­tate to make such ad­just­ments of faith and of prac­tices of liv­ing as will en­able it to “fol­low af­ter” the Mas­ter in the dem­on­stra­tion of his real life of re­li­gious de­vo­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and of con­se­cra­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man. Do pro­fessed Chris­tians fear the ex­po­sure of a self-suf­fi­cient and un­con­se­crated fel­low­ship of so­cial re­spectabil­ity and self­ish eco­nomic mal­ad­just­ment? Does in­sti­tu­tional Chris­tian­ity fear the pos­si­ble jeop­ardy, or even the over­throw, of tra­di­tional ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity if the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee is re­in­stated in the minds and souls of mor­tal men as the ideal of per­sonal re­li­gious liv­ing? In­deed, the so­cial read­just­ments, the eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tions, the moral re­ju­ve­na­tions, and the re­li­gious re­vi­sions of Chris­tian civ­i­liza­tion would be dras­tic and rev­o­lu­tion­ary if the liv­ing re­li­gion of Je­sus should sud­denly sup­plant the the­o­logic re­li­gion about Je­sus.

• strengths › religion of faith, hope, and charity

196:3.19The He­brews had a re­li­gion of moral sub­lim­ity; the Greeks evolved a re­li­gion of beauty; Paul and his con­fer­ees founded a re­li­gion of faith, hope, and char­ity. Je­sus re­vealed and ex­em­pli­fied a re­li­gion of love: se­cu­rity in the Fa­ther’s love, with joy and sat­is­fac­tion con­se­quent upon shar­ing this love in the ser­vice of the hu­man broth­er­hood.