uniformity

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

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.

103:5.12When a mem­ber of a so­cial re­li­gious group has com­plied with the re­quire­ments of such a group, he should be en­cour­aged to en­joy re­li­gious lib­erty in the full ex­pres­sion of his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the truths of re­li­gious be­lief and the facts of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The se­cu­rity of a re­li­gious group de­pends on spir­i­tual unity, not on the­o­log­i­cal uni­for­mity. A re­li­gious group should be able to en­joy the lib­erty of free­think­ing with­out hav­ing to be­come “free­thinkers.” There is great hope for any church that wor­ships the liv­ing God, val­i­dates the broth­er­hood of man, and dares to re­move all creedal pres­sure from its mem­bers.

92:7.4All these re­li­gions have arisen as a re­sult of man’s vari­able in­tel­lec­tual re­sponse to his iden­ti­cal spir­i­tual lead­ing. They can never hope to at­tain a uni­for­mity of creeds, dog­mas, and rit­u­als—these are in­tel­lec­tual; but they can, and some day will, re­al­ize a unity in true wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all, for this is spir­i­tual, and it is for­ever true, in the spirit all men are equal.

103:1.1The unity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence among a so­cial or racial group de­rives from the iden­ti­cal na­ture of the God frag­ment in­dwelling the in­di­vid­ual. It is this di­vine in man that gives ori­gin to his un­selfish in­ter­est in the wel­fare of other men. But since per­son­al­ity is unique—no two mor­tals be­ing alike—it in­evitably fol­lows that no two hu­man be­ings can sim­i­larly in­ter­pret the lead­ings and urges of the spirit of di­vin­ity which lives within their minds. A group of mor­tals can ex­pe­ri­ence spir­i­tual unity, but they can never at­tain philo­sophic uni­for­mity. And this di­ver­sity of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­li­gious thought and ex­pe­ri­ence is shown by the fact that twen­ti­eth-cen­tury the­olo­gians and philoso­phers have for­mu­lated up­ward of five hun­dred dif­fer­ent def­i­ni­tions of re­li­gion. In re­al­ity, ev­ery hu­man be­ing de­fines re­li­gion in the terms of his own ex­pe­ri­en­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the di­vine im­pulses em­a­nat­ing from the God spirit that in­dwells him, and there­fore must such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion be unique and wholly dif­fer­ent from the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of all other hu­man be­ings.

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.