secularism

103:5.3All men rec­og­nize the moral­ity of this uni­ver­sal hu­man urge to be un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic. The hu­man­ist as­cribes the ori­gin of this urge to the nat­u­ral work­ing of the ma­te­rial mind; the re­li­gion­ist more cor­rectly rec­og­nizes that the truly un­selfish drive of mor­tal mind is in re­sponse to the in­ner spirit lead­ings of the Thought Ad­juster.

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

195:8.4It re­quired a great power, a mighty in­flu­ence, to free the think­ing and liv­ing of the West­ern peo­ples from the with­er­ing grasp of a to­tal­i­tar­ian ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal dom­i­na­tion. Sec­u­lar­ism did break the bonds of church con­trol, and now in turn it threat­ens to es­tab­lish a new and god­less type of mas­tery over the hearts and minds of mod­ern man. The tyran­ni­cal and dic­ta­to­rial po­lit­i­cal state is the di­rect off­spring of sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism and philo­sophic sec­u­lar­ism. Sec­u­lar­ism no sooner frees man from the dom­i­na­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church than it sells him into slav­ish bond­age to the to­tal­i­tar­ian state. Sec­u­lar­ism frees man from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal slav­ery only to be­tray him into the tyranny of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic slav­ery.

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

195:8.6Sec­u­lar­ism can never bring peace to man­kind. Noth­ing can take the place of God in hu­man so­ci­ety. But mark you well! do not be quick to sur­ren­der the benef­i­cent gains of the sec­u­lar re­volt from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion to­day en­joys many lib­er­ties and sat­is­fac­tions as a re­sult of the sec­u­lar re­volt. The great mis­take of sec­u­lar­ism was this: In re­volt­ing against the al­most to­tal con­trol of life by re­li­gious au­thor­ity, and af­ter at­tain­ing the lib­er­a­tion from such ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal tyranny, the sec­u­lar­ists went on to in­sti­tute a re­volt against God him­self, some­times tac­itly and some­times openly.

195:8.7To the sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt you owe the amaz­ing cre­ativ­ity of Amer­i­can in­dus­tri­al­ism and the un­prece­dented ma­te­rial prog­ress of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. And be­cause the sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt went too far and lost sight of God and true re­li­gion, there also fol­lowed the un­looked-for har­vest of world wars and in­ter­na­tional un­set­tled­ness.

195:8.8It is not nec­es­sary to sac­ri­fice faith in God in or­der to en­joy the bless­ings of the mod­ern sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt: tol­er­ance, so­cial ser­vice, demo­cratic gov­ern­ment, and civil lib­er­ties. It was not nec­es­sary for the sec­u­lar­ists to an­tag­o­nize true re­li­gion in or­der to pro­mote sci­ence and to ad­vance ed­u­ca­tion.

195:8.1But even af­ter ma­te­ri­al­ism and mech­a­nism have been more or less van­quished, the dev­as­tat­ing in­flu­ence of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury sec­u­lar­ism will still blight the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of mil­lions of un­sus­pect­ing souls.

195:8.2Mod­ern sec­u­lar­ism has been fos­tered by two world-wide in­flu­ences. The fa­ther of sec­u­lar­ism was the nar­row-minded and god­less at­ti­tude of nine­teenth- and twen­ti­eth-cen­tury so-called sci­ence—athe­is­tic sci­ence. The mother of mod­ern sec­u­lar­ism was the to­tal­i­tar­ian me­dieval Chris­tian church. Sec­u­lar­ism had its in­cep­tion as a ris­ing protest against the al­most com­plete dom­i­na­tion of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion by the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian church.

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.

• godless philosophy leading only to war, world-wide disaster

195:8.5Ma­te­ri­al­ism de­nies God, sec­u­lar­ism sim­ply ig­nores him; at least that was the ear­lier at­ti­tude. More re­cently, sec­u­lar­ism has as­sumed a more mil­i­tant at­ti­tude, as­sum­ing to take the place of the re­li­gion whose to­tal­i­tar­ian bond­age it one­time re­sisted. Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury sec­u­lar­ism tends to af­firm that man does not need God. But be­ware! this god­less phi­los­o­phy of hu­man so­ci­ety will lead only to un­rest, an­i­mos­ity, un­hap­pi­ness, war, and world-wide dis­as­ter.

195:8.9But sec­u­lar­ism is not the sole par­ent of all these re­cent gains in the en­large­ment of liv­ing. Be­hind the gains of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury are not only sci­ence and sec­u­lar­ism but also the un­rec­og­nized and un­ac­knowl­edged spir­i­tual work­ings of the life and teach­ing of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

195:8.10With­out God, with­out re­li­gion, sci­en­tific sec­u­lar­ism can never co-or­di­nate its forces, har­mo­nize its di­ver­gent and ri­val­rous in­ter­ests, races, and na­tion­alisms. This sec­u­lar­is­tic hu­man so­ci­ety, not­with­stand­ing its un­par­al­leled ma­te­ri­al­is­tic achieve­ment, is slowly dis­in­te­grat­ing. The chief co­he­sive force re­sist­ing this dis­in­te­gra­tion of an­tag­o­nism is na­tion­al­ism. And na­tion­al­ism is the chief bar­rier to world peace.

195:8.11The in­her­ent weak­ness of sec­u­lar­ism is that it dis­cards ethics and re­li­gion for pol­i­tics and power. You sim­ply can­not es­tab­lish the broth­er­hood of men while ig­nor­ing or deny­ing the fa­ther­hood of God.

195:8.12Sec­u­lar so­cial and po­lit­i­cal op­ti­mism is an il­lu­sion. With­out God, nei­ther free­dom and lib­erty, nor prop­erty and wealth will lead to peace.

• terrible destruction of s. yet to come

195:8.13The com­plete sec­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­try, and so­ci­ety can lead only to dis­as­ter. Dur­ing the first third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury Uran­tians killed more hu­man be­ings than were killed dur­ing the whole of the Chris­tian dis­pen­sa­tion up to that time. And this is only the be­gin­ning of the dire har­vest of ma­te­ri­al­ism and sec­u­lar­ism; still more ter­ri­ble de­struc­tion is yet to come.

• blights spiritual experience of millions

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.

102:7.4True, many ap­par­ently re­li­gious traits can grow out of non­re­li­gious roots. Man can, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, fil­ial, hon­est, and even ide­al­is­tic. Man may graft many purely hu­man­is­tic branches onto his ba­sic spir­i­tual na­ture and thus ap­par­ently prove his con­tentions in be­half of a god­less re­li­gion, but such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­void of sur­vival val­ues, God-know­ing­ness and God-as­cen­sion. In such a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence only so­cial fruits are forth­com­ing, not spir­i­tual. The graft de­ter­mines the na­ture of the fruit, not­with­stand­ing that the liv­ing sus­te­nance is drawn from the roots of orig­i­nal di­vine en­dow­ment of both mind and spirit.

95:3.3Thou­sands of years be­fore the Salem gospel pen­e­trated to Egypt, its moral lead­ers taught jus­tice, fair­ness, and the avoid­ance of avarice. Three thou­sand years be­fore the He­brew scrip­tures were writ­ten, the motto of the Egyp­tians was: “Es­tab­lished is the man whose stan­dard is righ­teous­ness; who walks ac­cord­ing to its way.” They taught gen­tle­ness, mod­er­a­tion, and dis­cre­tion. The mes­sage of one of the great teach­ers of this epoch was: “Do right and deal justly with all.” The Egyp­tian triad of this age was Truth-Jus­tice-Righ­teous­ness. Of all the purely hu­man re­li­gions of Uran­tia none ever sur­passed the so­cial ide­als and the moral grandeur of this one­time hu­man­ism of the Nile val­ley.

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.

195:6.7The mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism of some sup­pos­edly ed­u­cated men and the thought­less sec­u­lar­ism of the man in the street are both ex­clu­sively con­cerned with things; they are bar­ren of all real val­ues, sanc­tions, and sat­is­fac­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture, as well as be­ing de­void of faith, hope, and eter­nal as­sur­ances. One of the great trou­bles with mod­ern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion and re­li­gious de­vo­tion.

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.