The Church's attitude towards truth

Front matter

THE

CHURCH'S ATTITUDE <o TOWARDS TRUTH

THE

III. The Coming Faith

FOREWORD

I HAVE a friend who has many times said to me, *'We are all cowards. We do not say what we think and, by our silence, we allow it to appear that we agree with a thousand things with which we really do not agree at all. In politics, in society and in rehgion we are all cowards and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. "

This is certainly a serious indictment and in defense we are forced to plead the complexity of the matters involved, the profound ignorance and prejudice we should have to meet, as well as the popular lack of interest in truth as such. We say that we fear lest by speaking we may do some harm to society, that we may tear down and be unable to rebuild something better in its place. We say that no one wants to listen to us and that, in being silent, we do but obey the Church. But the silence really springs from the desire to secure personal peace, from the unwillingness to face unpopularity, from the desire for preferment. The easy life is one of conformity to what is conventional and, in viii

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the case of reflecting men, this conformity necessitates silence, which is the price paid for social ease. We say that there are many who can speak more clearly and forcibly than we could, that we have no pedestal to speak from, that our attempt to speak would savor of impertinence and that we are justified in deferring to such great institutions as the Church. We say that the individual is so obscure and weak that he need feel no responsibility in these matters. But while we urge these and countless similar excuses we know that at the root of the whole business is cowardice and we are secretly ashamed of it, however bold a face we assume in public. In all departments of life there are too many men who know and think and see clearly who, in a large degree, keep silent through a cowardly fear of the men who do not know or think or see. I know that all this is true and so I propose to summon up courage and say what for many years I have been wishing some one else would say.

I shall be obliged to criticize some remarkable utterances made by the prelates of a great Church. I am aware that it is an unusual thing for a layman to criticize the statements of such an august body as the House of Bishops. I do not know that there

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ix is any precedent, but, if there is none, it seems to me desirable to create one so far as it is in my power so to do. Since their Pastoral of 1894 I have waited for more than a decade hoping that some one else would speak; but my waiting has been in vain. I therefore propose to break the silence with which that utterance was received, for in 1904 in another Pastoral they requested and directed all who do not agree with that document to keep silent or withdraw.

Now I should much prefer to keep silent and I can certainly derive no sort of advantage from any utterance I may make, but it does seem cowardly to be thus requested to withdraw and never even to state your own side of the case. The clergy with whom I sympathize are called traitors and perjurers and it is cowardly to submit to this without a word of protest.

It is a remarkable survival of the old medieval spirit that a man, who in every other way is entirely free from it, is still conscious of the all-pervading idea that it is improper for a layman to argue with a priest or question the soundness of his doctrinal statements or decline to obey his commands. But however clearly I see that in practice all has been aimed at the complete subordination of the laity, I know well that such is not the theory of the great Church

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of England, from which the Protestant Episcopal Church sprang and of which it is truly a part. If then, in criticizing this august body, I violate the common and customary etiquette, I do this in obedience to the higher spirit of the Church which places on every member, even the humblest, his full share of responsibility for her safety, her welfare and her sanity.

In the midst of so much utter indifference on the part of the great mass of people and so much prejudice and bitterness on the part of those who claim to be the only true type of Christians, it must always seem as if the human and rational ideal of life was likely to be extinguished and lost; but it is still true that every age sees a steady gain and that progress, not retrogression, is the law. This is now established by the history of so many centuries that we cannot doubt. The conservative temperament and the reactionary tendency are simply the governor or speed regulator on the social engine. They will not stop the machine but operate to keep its speed within safe limits.

But that the social status should improve demands at least a modicum of intellectual honesty in a minority, and this cluster of men is likely in every age to be sacrificed on the altar of progress as a constantly recurring crucifixion of the Christ, which is thus a fixed element

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xi in our social life. The high priest is always the typical persecutor, for it is a constant struggle between the Church and the advancing thought of the world.

In the face of all this we must needs recognize from a social point of view the value of silence and conformity, and I indeed have long realized this to such an extent that I have repeatedly made the most serious effort to banish from my mind all thought upon the subject of theology. I have tried to see that it was foolish to struggle against so vast an aggregation of wealth and social power as lies back of the popular theology. I have seen that not to keep silent sacrificed great social advantages and, most subtle argument of all, that it diminished my influence and opportunity for service. But despite all this, I have never been able to renounce this study. I have been compelled to see more and more clearly the hollowness of the conventional thought and the superior dignity and value of certain ideas which are branded as heresy.

Many men seem unable to distinguish the Church as it is in its theory, as a great, comprehensive, national institution designed to include all men who aim at righteousness in life and conduct, from what it is practically in everyday life, as fashioned and determined by the men who control its administration. This xii

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latter aspect, in which it appears as a more or less exclusive club, is, of course, the Church we actually know and feel as a living thing and most men will not concede that there is or can be any other view of it.

Now all there is that seems splendid and attractive to me is just that side which, in this country at this present time, is only to be found in the higher literature of the Church, and of the existence of this you would not get so much as a hint or suggestion in any ordinary parish Church. Read this literature and you feel that a new day has dawned, that medievalism has at last passed away, as it truly has in the realm of all higher thinking. Enter, however, into almost any Church, and you will hear the unctuous repetition of the old platitudes before congregations that do not seem to suspect that such a literature even exists. In the literature there is a clear and sustained light which is attractive and compelling to the reason, while the Churches maintain for the people the same old medieval mysticism, repelling the reason and alienating reflecting men. To have seen this clear light and to so declare is to be ostracized in nearly all circles of conventionalists, and such constitute the vast majority. For this the clergy are alone to blame. To explain this matter so that such people shall come to really

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xiii understand it, shall see that it is not dangerous and destructive but glorious and truly constructive, is one of the great needs of our day. These conventionalists constitute the bone and sinew of the Church, and a reasonable fear of their present prejudices paralyzes a vast number of the clergy and arrests the normal development of the Church. To get into the popular mind the results of this rich and splendid literature should be our aim. Upon this literature of the Church I have mainly been nourished. Whatever ideas I have were secured by following the leadership of distinguished Churchmen. By them I have been stimulated, and in their company I have found entire sympathy. To them I owe a large part of the joy of living, but this companionship has been altogether confined to books. It is in the printed page that I have communed with all these men, for I have never as yet heard a living human voice express what seemed to me to be the higher intellectual ideas of the Church. My entire life in this direction has, therefore, been one of isolation marked by silence and conformity in all social relations as dictated by necessity. I found sympathy and inspiration in the literature of the Church, but most of those who spoke to me were dead. With those whose books I read and who were still living I had no possible personal xiv

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connection, so that all this commutiion has always lacked the personal touch.

A man of my type is not allowed to remain in doubt as to the fact that he is not wanted in the parish Church. He is told that all his ideas are heretical and dangerous, and that his presence, if he means freely to express those ideas, is a distinct embarrassment. To avoid unseemly strife, under conditions which seem to preclude any fruitful and beneficial results, he keeps silent and practically withdraws, losing all touch with the parish clergy. He is, however, merely forced out into a wider and larger field, where he lives in the spirit with a group of Archbishops and Bishops, Deans and Canons, including some of the greatest preachers of the Church, living or dead. He loses the parochial atmosphere, but he lives in the more generous and stimulating air of the universal Church. He lives with these greater men, for he may possess and read their books in which they have enshrined their spirits, and this to him is a true communion with the saints.

From this no bishops or clergy have any power to exclude him, and of this they cannot deprive him, for in this domain of the spirit they have no jurisdiction, not even the very slightest. They may control patronage, may punish with social and ecclesiastical ostracism, may

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XV stigmatize as heretic, and thus excite prejudice, which may cause pain, but there they must stop. In the realm of the spirit the humblest layman has the same right, duty and privilege to speak to them that they have to speak to him. He may deny all their ecclesiastical pretensions to any power, right or authority to cramp and fetter any Church member's mind or spirit, and this denial he may make as a member of the Church, justified by her laws and formularies.

I believe that the Broad wing of the Church, which it is now sought to brand as heretical, is destined in the future to become her main supporting colunm. If the Church is to continue into the distant future it must stand for true Catholicism and not medievalism. The Broad Churchman may seem to-day to be clinging to a forlorn hope, but it is not really so, for great forces are silently at work under the crust of appearances, and to avert the destructive consequences and in the future crisis to meet successfully the necessities of the hour is his mission. In the impending collapse of a discredited philosophy, the Broad wing is the constructive agency that will replace the old with a new and better system which, without break of historic continuity, will meet and satisfy the changed intellectual conditions.

That this must finally involve an entire change of the xvi

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theological point of view, that it must inevitably lead to what many will consider a new conception of God and man, ought no longer to be concealed or denied. The issue goes to the very roots of Church life and necessitates a scrutiny of its fundamental bases. It is to be a second Reformation, which has been presaged and foreshadowed by a remarkable Church literature which has as yet but partially reached the great mass of its members, but which is destined some day to reach and influence them in a marked degree. The duty of the Broad wing is to work patiently and wait, never admitting for a moment, in the presence of any clamor whatever, that the work cannot properly be done inside the Church under a correct imderstanding of its present laws and formularies.

If the Church had been true to its own fundamental ideal and theory it would long ago have relegated to studious and reflective men, who alone are vitally interested, the whole matter of theology for free and unfettered treatment. It is really the philosophy of religion and is only fitted for the consideration of such men. It can never be adequately grasped by those who begrudge time and effort. The Church should concentrate all its energy upon the promotion of righteousness in life and conduct, which can be fully

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xvii realized under many variant theologies. Do we not know as a fact that righteousness is possible for manydegrees of intelligence and many stages of culture? Its promotion should never be hindered by dissensions about systems of philosophy and metaphysics.

The Church test should not be a matter of intellectual opinion but a desire to attain unto righteousness. The well-nigh universal disregard of this is the chief cause dividing the Church into wrangling sects and weakening its hold upon the conscience of man. The Church has persistently hindered the growth of the Jarger thought and clearer insight and this has alienated thousands who should stand, and otherwise would have stood, in its foremost ranks. To seek now to accentuate this unfortunate tendency, to seek to expel men whose only offense is that they eagerly devote themselves to the conscientious pursuit of philosophic truth, is nothing less than an ecclesiastical crime, and it can only lead to intellectual decadence and paralysis in the Church. We must not acknowledge or believe that such is to be the fate of the great, historic English Church. The dogmatic yoke is to be broken and, when this is completely accomplished, theology will find its true place as a form of philosophic thought. Freed from ecclesiastical restraints the mind will go on to xviii

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achieve still greater and nobler results, seeking the secret of the universe and reaching a more adequate interpretation of the terms God " and " Man." With entire freedom will come a more general and profounder interest as the ever-increasing light of knowledge promises more definite results. Its studywill enlist energies that are now cramped and held in check by fear.

This ideal of the Church will finally be recognized and accepted. It may and will be delayed, but it is not ultimately to be crushed or defeated.

THE church's attitude TOWARDS TRUTH.

I.

THE church's attitude TOWARDS TRUTH.

In 1891 Rev. Howard Macqueary was tried for heresy in the diocese of Northern Ohio. In 1906 Rev. A. S. Crapsey was similarly tried in the diocese of Western New York. Each was tried for the same alleged divergencies from the common and popular interpretation or understanding of the creed, for having gone beyond conventions and traditions, for having been true to personal convictions rather than to dogma. Each was found guilty despite the fact that his life disclosed a fine type of Christian character. It was useless to appeal to the formularies or to anything else. Each had published a book which throbbed with the desire to improve existing conditions and uplift society. Each book was written in a sane and intelligent manner and proved the writer to be a sincere, conscientious and high-minded gentleman of a type that is indeed scarce in this age of commercial greed. No Church even pretends to desire a finer type of character than these men disclosed. They would have commanded and received the courtesies of refined Christian society the world over and their right to this would not have been questioned for a moment by a single person except on the most technical ecclesiastical and dogmatic grounds.

Such cases operate to the scandal and evil repute of the Church at large. If the Church were really what is implied by the degradation of such clerics, it would, for all reflecting men, cease to be an object of interest. Such cases do not, however, reflect the spirit of the Church, but are due to purely local influences and in any large way have no significance whatever. They do not indicate the spirit of the greater Church of which these dioceses are a small part and yet there is no constitutional way in which the Church as a whole can prevent' such displays of pure ecclesiasticism. This is so because the Protestant Episcopal Church is merely a federal union of sixty-three dioceses, each of which is independent and sovereign, except so far as affected by legislation in the General Convention. The union is similar to that by which, in our national fife, the Articles of Confederation sought to bind together sovereign states. This sort of union has served admirably for religious purposes, although in political life it was weak and ineffective.

The only federal body is the General Convention which meets every third year. It corresponds to

Congress and is composed of two houses. The House of Bishops, corresponding to our national Senate, represents the conservatism of age, superior dignity and social position. The House of Deputies consists of clerical and lay delegates from the dioceses, there being an equal number of each class. Every diocese, whether it be large or small, has the same number of deputies. This body corresponds to our national House of Representatives. All legislation must receive the approval of both houses. In the Deputies, the dioceses vote as units and also the clergy and laity vote separately, a concurrence of the two orders being needed to constitute effective action by that house. It is easy to see that such a plan reduces the restraint upon the dioceses to the minimum point. There is no executive federal head and no body with executive functions so that when the Convention has adjourned there is no machinery that can operate upon the dioceses to enforce obedience to the general laws passed by the Convention. It is as if in our national life there were no President or other executive officers, no army or navy, no federal courts of any description, so that when Congress adjourned there would be literally no person to speak with authority for the idea of federal union, and even when Congress were in session there would be no officers to execute its commands. Under such circumstances it is clear that the states would be very nearly as sovereign as if there were no union at all.

In the diocese the bishop stands as a governor elected for life and there is a diocesan convention which corresponds to our state legislature. The general constitution provides in express terms that every bishop shall confine the exercise of his functions to his own proper diocese, and that in every diocese the mode of trying presbyters and deacons may be instituted by the diocesan convention. Thus there is complete diocesan autonomy which gives free scope for the development of diocesan peculiarities. As in political life one state is known as irrecoverably Republican or Democratic and at any election its vote is always counted upon as certain, so one diocese may be irrecoverably High, another may be just as certainly Low, and over all this there is no possible control any more than in the case of the states.

If a man is lynched in Georgia there is nothing that Maine can do about it except to regret it. Although the two are members of the federal union, the fact that a man is lynched in Georgia does not show that he would have been lynched in Maine and it certainly is not significant of the law or opinion prevalent throughout the union. So if there is a heresy case in Ohio, it is as purely local as a case of lynching and the decision has no general significance. Because the man was found guilty of heresy and degraded does not show that it was approved by the Church as it exists in the sixty-two other dioceses. Nothing can be done about it any more than in political life other states can do anything about lynching. In this respect the diocese is sovereign, for there is no federal Supreme Court to which an appeal may be had on the merits. The Church at large has had no machinery which would enable it to guarantee righteous treatment of a member by any diocese. If a diocese has chosen ecclesiastically to lynch a member it has been able to do so with impunity, for his fate has rested entirely in local hands. What will be the outcome of the recently instituted departmental courts of review it is hard to say, but it is not at all likely that they will operate as any considerable check on diocesan abuses.

It is easy, therefore, to exaggerate the importance and significance of heresy trials in such a Church, for it is not really one body acting as a unit but sixty-three independent and sovereign bodies loosely held together by ties that in a legal and coercive sense are feeble. The Church at large is not powerful enough to protect an individual member from a perversion of Church laws in any diocese. In fact there is no Church at all in the larger sense, for it is merely a sentimental tie that unites the dioceses, a mere mental conception of a national Church which is an ideal and not a living body with executive functions and coercive authority. If in all this, there are disadvantages, there are also corresponding advantages which are genuine blessings. No sensible man wants to change it and put the fetters of a hierarchy on the dioceses. All that is needed is to remember always the facts and never judge as significant in a large way what is purely local and transitory. What leads in rare cases to repression and abuses operates all the time in a large and broad way for freedom and progress; so that it seems clear that the founders of the federal Church union did well to leave the dioceses where we now find them, free and independent.

The unity of spirit and loyalty to the General Convention has, however, been very remarkable. This in a large degree is due to the fact that all these really independent dioceses have looked to the Church of England as the type of what was normal and excellent in a spiritual and intellectual sense, have received and absorbed her literature as their own, have been influenced by her current thought and have shared her hopes and fears. And yet, despite this, the Church in the United States exemplifies and expresses the national spirit in a striking way. Its organization reflects the political ideals that characterize the country at large. Its history is a testimony to the singular value of the federal principle and shows that coercive authority is not needed when men are dominated by the same general ideals. It is true that nothing would at any time have been more repugnant to the Churches in this country than even the very slightest degree of subjection to any control by the Church of England.

Not a shadow of it would have been tolerated in any administrative sense. No deference to the parent Church, no respect however profound, no sense of historic continuity would have availed to induce the Church in this country to diminish in the least its independence and autonomy. While all this is true, what is really a cluster of Episcopal State Churches has been held in the bond of unity by the contemplation of the great Church the other side of the ocean as embodying their common ideal. More than any and all other influences this explains the success of the experiment of a federal union between these independent dioceses. Each diocese has felt not only that it was a part of the national Church but that this itself was also a part of a racial Church and that yet each diocese sacrificed no valuable feature of its own diocesan life by its relation to these greater and broader conceptions of the Church any more than the individual member sacrifices any valuable feature of his individual life by his relation to his own diocese. The thought disclosed through it all is separate individual lives, independent and self-controlled but unconsciously dominated and united by a common spirit, ideal and purpose. This concept is peculiarly English: conscious independence coupled with unconscious subjection to the ideal whereby voluntarily and gladly is surrendered that which might render individualism vulgar, offensive and dangerous.

We may therefore say truly that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States is, in every intellectual and spiritual sense, an integral part of the Church of England. Free and independent as it is, in all the administration of affairs, it nevertheless has been, and is, essentially loyal to the ideas, theories and aspirations of the great body from which it sprang, and has always reflected, in the main, even its prejudices, passions and fears.

It formally declared in the preface to its Prayer Book that it did not intend to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship. The General Convention of 1814 declared that ^^the Church conceives herself as professing and acting on the principles of the Church of England but it would be contrary to fact were any one to infer that the discipline exercised in this Church or that any of its proceedings therein are dependent on the will of the civil or ecclesiastical authority of any foreign country." It feels, therefore, that it enters into and shares fully the life of the parent Church, that the history of the one is the history of the other, whereby the younger institution feels that it is as old as the English race itself, that all the records of the earlier days are but its own chronicles, showing how its own life unfolded and what has been the genesis of its own thought. If it could read the future destiny of the English Church, it would feel that it was certainly beholding its own.

It is therefore proper to regard the two as parts of one great racial Church, existing independently in different lands under widely divergent social and political conditions but animated by one spirit and taking the same attitude towards truth.

It claims to express and represent the spiritual consciousness of the English race and to be adequate for the religious needs of that race. This is a great and even unique claim and it must be a matter of great interest to discover what is the attitude taken by such a Church towards truth. It does not claim to speak the final word for all races but to embody the religious consciousness of the English race, to define its position towards the complex problems of theology and the practical duties of a religious life. So far as in England the tendency to develop along emotional, sentimental and mystical lines is somewhat checked by the secular common sense of the State, this in itself is an expression of the English religious consciousness which sees such to be on the whole a wise course. The same is true so far as the State has sought to check any tendency towards an excess of a purely sacerdotal, ecclesiastical or dogmatic spirit, for it is all the expression of English spirit and EngUsh thought, whether it be uttered strictly in the domain of the Church or in the domain of the State. It is what Englishmen have, on the whole, deemed to be best and wisest whether it be in propounding a theory or in carrying the theory out in daily Ufe or in disregarding it wholly or partially. The theory is what they consider to be the best theory, while the practice is what, at the time and under all the circumstances, they consider the best practice. To study these Churches is to see the English mind at work in the field of religion and it is a curious and interesting study.

Whatever else it is and whether it be wise or foolish, it is English to the core. We see whatever is great and commanding in English character and also whatever is petty and mean. Formalism, clannishness and bigotry are blended with a marked spirit of comprehension, tolerance and inclusion, and this latter seems, on the whole, even buried as it has been at times, to be the real characteristic note. After the analogy of English political life, parties arose in the Church and by their clashing the problem is worked out in religion as in politics. As in the political field partisans differ exceedingly and use hard words towards each other and about each other's views and yet at the bottom, they are all loyal Englishmen, so in the Church the partisans do the same thing; yet while differing from each other, they are all loyal Churchmen. Thus many years ago the then Dean of Ripon, an earnest Low Churchman, declared publicly that Dr. Temple as a Broad Churchman was a total leper and not dangerous because he was so evidently a leper that all men would instinctively avoid him. He declared that Dr. Pusey as a High Churchman was a partial leper, less deeply tainted but on that account more dangerous because less likely to terrify people from coming near him and becoming infected. We all know that Dr. Temple, the total leper, became bishop and then archbishop, while Dr. Pusey has been and is regarded as a saint by an entire section of the Church. This shows the futility of such abuse.