Religion and the WarYale University. Divinity School
Religion
Religion and the War
Yale University. Divinity School
World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
willingness to coöperate in realizing ends which, in the judgment of
the world, as expressed in international law, as well as in its own
unwritten verdict, are regarded as unrighteous. Until the God of the
race supersedes in actual belief and practice the God of nationalism;
until the God and father of all mankind displaces in our belief the
God of sect or of one religion rather than of another; until the God
of absolute and universal righteousness takes the place in our minds
and hearts of the God of partiality and favoritism, which is the God
of injustice; men and nations will not be bound together in one great
and glorious fraternity. The root idea of religion is the idea of God,
and as is our idea of God, so will our religious life be. If it is the
idea of an unrighteous Deity, our individual, national and
international life will be unrighteous. A fundamental necessity in the
determination of the religious basis of world-organization is an
ethical conception of God.
In the second place, in our religious efforts at world-organization we
must entertain and put in practice a far more ethical conception of
man than we have in the past. The inalienable rights of personality
must be recognized and their sanctity remain inviolable. That
valuation which Christianity places on man as man must be seriously
reckoned with in our reconstructive efforts after the war. Or, as Kant
states it, every man must be regarded as an end in himself. He must
not be used merely as a means to an end. The significance of this is,
that there is an essential moral equality among men. On it all
political relations, whether national or international, must be based.
This means, first, that within each nation a true form of government,
under whatsoever name it may be known, must be democratic. "It must
derive its authority and power from the consent of the governed."
Autocracy is opposed to moral and political equality. It treats its
subjects as tools or instruments. It builds governments of force that
ignore the moral and political claims of their own people, reducing
them to a docility in which they are little more than "dumb driven
cattle." Thus subjugated, they are schooled from childhood in a creed
of jealousy and hatred of other nations. They can be hurled in masses
"into the jaws of Death" in an unrighteous war of conquest. Autocracy
is upheld by militarism, and militarism means strife. On the other
hand, militarism is upheld by autocracy. It first robs the people of
its own nation of their rights and then proceeds to plunder other
nations. It is essentially anti-social in character, and it is so
because it is anti-moral. It overlooks the moral equality of men. The
religion of the future must set its face like flint against this
immoral view of man. It must emphasize the autonomy of the human
spirit--the essential value of a soul that can determine its own
conduct in the light of ideals of worth. Once it does this, democracy
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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