cults

• foster and gratify emotion
• strengths › provide symbolism to preserve religious loyalties

87:7.1The cult type of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion per­sisted be­cause it pro­vided a sym­bol­ism for the preser­va­tion and stim­u­la­tion of moral sen­ti­ments and re­li­gious loy­al­ties. The cult grew out of the tra­di­tions of “old fam­i­lies” and was per­pet­u­ated as an es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tion; all fam­i­lies have a cult of some sort. Ev­ery in­spir­ing ideal grasps for some per­pet­u­at­ing sym­bol­ism—seeks some tech­nique for cul­tural man­i­fes­ta­tion which will in­sure sur­vival and aug­ment re­al­iza­tion—and the cult achieves this end by fos­ter­ing and grat­i­fy­ing emo­tion.

• dangers › greatest obstacle to spiritual progress
• rituals › the more unconscious the growth, stronger its grip

87:7.2From the dawn of civ­i­liza­tion ev­ery ap­peal­ing move­ment in so­cial cul­ture or re­li­gious ad­vance­ment has de­vel­oped a rit­ual, a sym­bolic cer­e­mo­nial. The more this rit­ual has been an un­con­scious growth, the stronger it has gripped its devo­tees. The cult pre­served sen­ti­ment and sat­is­fied emo­tion, but it has al­ways been the great­est ob­sta­cle to so­cial re­con­struc­tion and spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• of new revelation must › cannot be manufactured; must grow

87:7.3Not­with­stand­ing that the cult has al­ways re­tarded so­cial prog­ress, it is re­gret­table that so many mod­ern be­liev­ers in moral stan­dards and spir­i­tual ide­als have no ad­e­quate sym­bol­ism—no cult of mu­tual sup­port—noth­ing to be­long to. But a re­li­gious cult can­not be man­u­fac­tured; it must grow. And those of no two groups will be iden­ti­cal un­less their rit­u­als are ar­bi­trar­ily stan­dard­ized by au­thor­ity.

• Christian c. most appealing, enduring ever conceived

87:7.4The early Chris­tian cult was the most ef­fec­tive, ap­peal­ing, and en­dur­ing of any rit­ual ever con­ceived or de­vised, but much of its value has been de­stroyed in a sci­en­tific age by the de­struc­tion of so many of its orig­i­nal un­der­ly­ing tenets. The Chris­tian cult has been de­vi­tal­ized by the loss of many fun­da­men­tal ideas.

• of new revelation must › symbolize spiritual experience, significance of home; embody mystery; be elastic; not be overly complex

87:7.5In the past, truth has grown rapidly and ex­panded freely when the cult has been elas­tic, the sym­bol­ism ex­pan­sile. Abun­dant truth and an ad­justable cult have fa­vored ra­pid­ity of so­cial pro­gres­sion. A mean­ing­less cult vi­ti­ates re­li­gion when it at­tempts to sup­plant phi­los­o­phy and to en­slave rea­son; a gen­uine cult grows.

• of new revelation must › be predicated on Fatherhood of God, brotherhood

87:7.6Re­gard­less of the draw­backs and hand­i­caps, ev­ery new rev­e­la­tion of truth has given rise to a new cult, and even the re­state­ment of the re­li­gion of Je­sus must de­velop a new and ap­pro­pri­ate sym­bol­ism. Mod­ern man must find some ad­e­quate sym­bol­ism for his new and ex­pand­ing ideas, ide­als, and loy­al­ties. This en­hanced sym­bol must arise out of re­li­gious liv­ing, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. And this higher sym­bol­ism of a higher civ­i­liza­tion must be pred­i­cated on the con­cept of the Fa­ther­hood of God and be preg­nant with the mighty ideal of the broth­er­hood of man.

• foster and gratify emotion
• of new revelation must › be outgrowth of applied love

87:7.7The old cults were too ego­cen­tric; the new must be the out­growth of ap­plied love. The new cult must, like the old, fos­ter sen­ti­ment, sat­isfy emo­tion, and pro­mote loy­alty; but it must do more: It must fa­cil­i­tate spir­i­tual prog­ress, en­hance cos­mic mean­ings, aug­ment moral val­ues, en­cour­age so­cial de­vel­op­ment, and stim­u­late a high type of per­sonal re­li­gious liv­ing. The new cult must pro­vide su­preme goals of liv­ing which are both tem­po­ral and eter­nal—so­cial and spir­i­tual.

87:7.8No cult can en­dure and con­tribute to the prog­ress of so­cial civ­i­liza­tion and in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual at­tain­ment un­less it is based on the bi­o­logic, so­ci­o­logic, and re­li­gious sig­nif­i­cance of the home. A sur­viv­ing cult must sym­bol­ize that which is per­ma­nent in the pres­ence of un­ceas­ing change; it must glo­rify that which uni­fies the stream of ever-chang­ing so­cial meta­mor­pho­sis. It must rec­og­nize true mean­ings, ex­alt beau­ti­ful re­la­tions, and glo­rify the good val­ues of real no­bil­ity.

87:7.9But the great dif­fi­culty of find­ing a new and sat­is­fy­ing sym­bol­ism is be­cause mod­ern men, as a group, ad­here to the sci­en­tific at­ti­tude, es­chew su­per­sti­tion, and ab­hor ig­no­rance, while as in­di­vid­u­als they all crave mys­tery and ven­er­ate the un­known. No cult can sur­vive un­less it em­bod­ies some mas­ter­ful mys­tery and con­ceals some worth­ful unattain­able. Again, the new sym­bol­ism must not only be sig­nif­i­cant for the group but also mean­ing­ful to the in­di­vid­ual. The forms of any ser­vice­able sym­bol­ism must be those which the in­di­vid­ual can carry out on his own ini­tia­tive, and which he can also en­joy with his fel­lows. If the new cult could only be dy­namic in­stead of static, it might re­ally con­tribute some­thing worth while to the prog­ress of man­kind, both tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual.

• of new revelation must › foster spiritual progress

87:7.10But a cult—a sym­bol­ism of rit­u­als, slo­gans, or goals—will not func­tion if it is too com­plex. And there must be the de­mand for de­vo­tion, the re­sponse of loy­alty. Ev­ery ef­fec­tive re­li­gion unerringly de­vel­ops a wor­thy sym­bol­ism, and its devo­tees would do well to pre­vent the crys­tal­liza­tion of such a rit­ual into cramp­ing, de­form­ing, and sti­fling stereo­typed cer­e­mo­ni­als which can only hand­i­cap and re­tard all so­cial, moral, and spir­i­tual prog­ress. No cult can sur­vive if it re­tards moral growth and fails to fos­ter spir­i­tual prog­ress. The cult is the skele­tal struc­ture around which grows the liv­ing and dy­namic body of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence—true re­li­gion.

• fetishism ran through all primitive c.

88:3.1Fet­ish­ism ran through all the prim­i­tive cults from the ear­li­est be­lief in sa­cred stones, through idol­a­try, can­ni­bal­ism, and na­ture wor­ship, to to­tem­ism.

• primitives’ attempt to control material world

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

90:3.2Viewed in this light, much of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble and ir­ra­tional in the an­cient cults is un­der­stand­able. The cer­e­monies of the cult were prim­i­tive man’s at­tempt to con­trol the ma­te­rial world in which he found him­self. And many of his ef­forts were di­rected to the end of pro­long­ing life and in­sur­ing health. Since all dis­eases and death it­self were orig­i­nally re­garded as spirit phe­nom­ena, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the shamans, while func­tion­ing as med­i­cine men and priests, should also have la­bored as doc­tors and sur­geons.

• rituals
• rituals › have cursed civilization, been intolerable burden
• rituals › perfection of performance is essence of

90:5.1The essence of the rit­ual is the per­fec­tion of its per­for­mance; among sav­ages it must be prac­ticed with ex­act pre­ci­sion. It is only when the rit­ual has been cor­rectly car­ried out that the cer­e­mony pos­sesses com­pelling power over the spir­its. If the rit­ual is faulty, it only arouses the anger and re­sent­ment of the gods. There­fore, since man’s slowly evolv­ing mind con­ceived that the tech­nique of rit­ual was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in its ef­fi­cacy, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the early shamans should sooner or later evolve into a priest­hood trained to di­rect the metic­u­lous prac­tice of the rit­ual. And so for tens of thou­sands of years end­less rit­u­als have ham­pered so­ci­ety and cursed civ­i­liza­tion, have been an in­tol­er­a­ble bur­den to ev­ery act of life, ev­ery racial un­der­tak­ing.

90:5.2Rit­ual is the tech­nique of sanc­ti­fy­ing cus­tom; rit­ual cre­ates and per­pet­u­ates myths as well as con­tribut­ing to the preser­va­tion of so­cial and re­li­gious cus­toms. Again, rit­ual it­self has been fa­thered by myths. Rit­u­als are of­ten at first so­cial, later be­com­ing eco­nomic and fi­nally ac­quir­ing the sanc­tity and dig­nity of re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. Rit­ual may be per­sonal or group in prac­tice—or both—as il­lus­trated by prayer, danc­ing, and drama.

90:5.3Words be­come a part of rit­ual, such as the use of terms like amen and se­lah. The habit of swear­ing, pro­fan­ity, rep­re­sents a pros­ti­tu­tion of for­mer rit­u­al­is­tic rep­e­ti­tion of holy names. The mak­ing of pil­grim­ages to sa­cred shrines is a very an­cient rit­ual. The rit­ual next grew into elab­o­rate cer­e­monies of pu­rifi­ca­tion, cleans­ing, and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. The ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies of the prim­i­tive tribal se­cret so­ci­eties were in re­al­ity a crude re­li­gious rite. The wor­ship tech­nique of the olden mys­tery cults was just one long per­for­mance of ac­cu­mu­lated re­li­gious rit­ual. Rit­ual fi­nally de­vel­oped into the mod­ern types of so­cial cer­e­mo­ni­als and re­li­gious wor­ship, ser­vices em­brac­ing prayer, song, re­spon­sive read­ing, and other in­di­vid­ual and group spir­i­tual de­vo­tions.

• rituals › become substitute for religion

90:5.6The priests have al­ways sought to im­press and awe the com­mon peo­ple by con­duct­ing the re­li­gious rit­ual in an an­cient tongue and by sundry mag­i­cal passes so to mys­tify the wor­shipers as to en­hance their own piety and au­thor­ity. The great dan­ger in all this is that the rit­ual tends to be­come a sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

• assimilable only if compatible with current status

92:2.4But it is only fool­ish to at­tempt the too sud­den ac­cel­er­a­tion of re­li­gious growth. A race or na­tion can only as­sim­i­late from any ad­vanced re­li­gion that which is rea­son­ably con­sis­tent and com­pat­i­ble with its cur­rent evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus, plus its ge­nius for adap­ta­tion. So­cial, cli­matic, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nomic con­di­tions are all in­flu­en­tial in de­ter­min­ing the course and prog­ress of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion. So­cial moral­ity is not de­ter­mined by re­li­gion, that is, by evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion; rather are the forms of re­li­gion dic­tated by the racial moral­ity.

• formed to promulgate creeds, not to discover truth

92:3.1The study of hu­man re­li­gion is the ex­am­i­na­tion of the fos­sil-bear­ing so­cial strata of past ages. The mores of the an­thro­po­mor­phic gods are a truth­ful re­flec­tion of the morals of the men who first con­ceived such de­i­ties. An­cient re­li­gions and mythol­ogy faith­fully por­tray the be­liefs and tra­di­tions of peo­ples long since lost in ob­scu­rity. These olden cult prac­tices per­sist along­side newer eco­nomic cus­toms and so­cial evo­lu­tions and, of course, ap­pear grossly in­con­sis­tent. The rem­nants of the cult pre­sent a true pic­ture of the racial re­li­gions of the past. Al­ways re­mem­ber, the cults are formed, not to dis­cover truth, but rather to pro­mul­gate their creeds.

• resist development because progress destroys cult itself

92:3.4Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion makes no pro­vi­sion for change or re­vi­sion; un­like sci­ence, it does not pro­vide for its own pro­gres­sive cor­rec­tion. Evolved re­li­gion com­mands re­spect be­cause its fol­low­ers be­lieve it is The Truth; “the faith once de­liv­ered to the saints” must, in the­ory, be both fi­nal and in­fal­li­ble. The cult re­sists de­vel­op­ment be­cause real prog­ress is cer­tain to mod­ify or de­stroy the cult it­self; there­fore must re­vi­sion al­ways be forced upon it.

• atheistic c. claim salvation by man’s unaided efforts

94:2.5Caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan re­li­gio-cul­tural sys­tem, and as the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can per­me­ated the north, there de­vel­oped an age of de­spair and hope­less­ness. It was dur­ing these dark days that the cult of tak­ing no life arose, and it has ever since per­sisted. Many of the new cults were frankly athe­is­tic, claim­ing that such sal­va­tion as was at­tain­able could come only by man’s own un­aided ef­forts. But through­out a great deal of all this un­for­tu­nate phi­los­o­phy, dis­torted rem­nants of the Mel­chiz­e­dek and even the Adamic teach­ings can be traced.

• rituals › better to reform than destroy group function
• strengths › religion rarely survives without institutions, as private practice of isolated individuals

97:10.7The Jew­ish re­li­gion per­sisted also be­cause of its in­sti­tu­tions. It is dif­fi­cult for re­li­gion to sur­vive as the pri­vate prac­tice of iso­lated in­di­vid­u­als. This has ever been the er­ror of the re­li­gious lead­ers: See­ing the evils of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized re­li­gion, they seek to de­stroy the tech­nique of group func­tion­ing. In place of de­stroy­ing all rit­ual, they would do bet­ter to re­form it. In this re­spect Eze­kiel was wiser than his con­tem­po­raries; though he joined with them in in­sist­ing on per­sonal moral re­spon­si­bil­ity, he also set about to es­tab­lish the faith­ful ob­ser­vance of a su­pe­rior and pu­ri­fied rit­ual.

• strengths › religion rarely survives without institutions, as private practice of isolated individuals

98:6.1Prior to the com­ing of the mys­tery cults and Chris­tian­ity, per­sonal re­li­gion hardly de­vel­oped as an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion in the civ­i­lized lands of North Africa and Eu­rope; it was more of a fam­ily, city-state, po­lit­i­cal, and im­pe­rial af­fair. The Hel­lenic Greeks never evolved a cen­tral­ized wor­ship sys­tem; the rit­ual was lo­cal; they had no priest­hood and no “sa­cred book.” Much as the Ro­mans, their re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions lacked a pow­er­ful driv­ing agency for the preser­va­tion of higher moral and spir­i­tual val­ues. While it is true that the in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion has usu­ally de­tracted from its spir­i­tual qual­ity, it is also a fact that no re­li­gion has thus far suc­ceeded in sur­viv­ing with­out the aid of in­sti­tu­tional or­ga­ni­za­tion of some de­gree, greater or lesser.

• destiny of c. depends on leadership

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.

• dangers › sectarianism, disease of institutional 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.

• of a frustrated philosophic era

100:5.1The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the the­o­logic sense but lost in the di­rec­tional mean­ing, wan­der­ing about in con­fu­sion among the isms and cults of a frus­trated philo­sophic era. Too few have learned how to in­stall a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing in the place of re­li­gious au­thor­ity. (The sym­bols of so­cial­ized re­li­gion are not to be de­spised as chan­nels of growth, al­beit the river bed is not the river.)

• Jesus avoided formal establishment of

120:3.6“5. As you may see fit, you are to iden­tify your­self with ex­ist­ing re­li­gious and spir­i­tual move­ments as they may be found on Uran­tia but in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner seek to avoid the for­mal es­tab­lish­ment of an or­ga­nized cult, a crys­tal­lized re­li­gion, or a seg­re­gated eth­i­cal group­ing of mor­tal be­ings. Your life and teach­ings are to be­come the com­mon her­itage of all re­li­gions and all peo­ples.

• dangers › sectarianism, disease of institutional religion

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.

• dangers › superiority of group consciousness

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

• dangers › sectarianism, disease of institutional religion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• dangers › superiority of group consciousness

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.

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.