The Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming RenaissanceSellars, Roy Wood
Religion
The Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance
Sellars, Roy Wood
Christianity; Humanism -- History -- 20th century; Religion
The social conditions of salvation are just as necessary. They are the
presence of institutions and arrangements which give opportunity to the
individual to develop himself. The individual must have a certain
amount of leisure and a chance for a vital education. He should have
some contact with beautiful things and the stimulus of association with
great causes. A healthy and sane society makes possible healthy and
sane individuals. It is especially desirable that society put its
emphasis on the right things. If it is permissible to speak of
society's salvation, we would say that it consists in the wise relation
of means to ends, the subordination of the economic side of life to the
moral, intellectual and artistic activities. A society which does not
order itself in this way is called materialistic; and such a society is
certain to contain numberless individuals who live at a far lower
spiritual level than they should. It is the very nature of religion to
condemn this falling short of loyalty to the finer values of life.
We have said that religion must be catholic in its count of values.
Moral souls may still be comparatively starved souls. One of the great
mistakes religion has made in the past has been this very lack of
sympathy for values of all kinds. For this very reason, religion has
often displayed a certain narrowness and harshness. Its loyalty has
frequently been a one-sided loyalty which prided itself on its
asceticism. But the day of an irrational asceticism has passed.
Intensity {10} is good, but intensity and breadth are better still. A
humane religion will preach loyalty to many values, harmonized together
by the work of a concrete reason and a living art. When religion did
not consider itself of this world, it was passive and acquiescent
toward many features of human life. But a truer idea of the nature of
the spiritual, united with a decay of the old supernaturalistic
sanctions, will change all that. Religion will become active and
militant, intensely concerned with everything human, a loyal enthusiasm
for all the significant phases of life. It will cease to be a matter
of taboos, of ritual, of rather conventional routine and become a
spirit of vigorous search for whatever elevates and ennobles human
beings in their day of life. Into the service of such a religion
reason and art will gladly enter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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