Religion

Preface

A striking feature of contemporary thought is the widespread awakening of interest in the deeper questions of religion. There has been a general clearing up _ of the controversies over the problems of historical criticism, evolution, and authority, and there are other signs of the passing of the warfare between science and religion. A calmer and more constructive spirit of inquiry has appeared which is providing the means for a more adequate assessment of the nature of religion, both in its practice and in its doctrines.

This book endeavors to present certain aspects of religion as they appear in the light of its history and of social psychology. Religion is here viewed as a natural, social, cultural process. The doctrines, which have often been regarded as the essence of religion, are seen to have intimate relation to the religious activities, being at once deposits or products and also instruments of such activities. Religion arises as a phase or quality of the complex life of the human spirit in its idealistic outreach, and is continually subject to restatement under the influence of the flowing stream of that life.

The conception of religion as a social process was clearly stated by John Stuart Mill, but the rapid and extensive development of the social sciences since his time has vastly enriched that conception. I have attempted to use the point of view and the method of these sciences throughout this work. After considering the origins and the values of religion, a comparison is ¥v vi PREFACE made between religion and other interests such as science, philosophy, art, and morality, in the conviction that such comparisons are the most helpful means of defining and revealing the nature of religion.

The second main problem of this study is the nature of God. Here again the history of religion and social psychology have been employed as the best aids in discovering the meaning of God. From this approach, the question of the existence of God is no more and no less perplexing than the question of the existence of life, or the existence of the cosmos, but the nature of God and the processes with which God is involved become intelligible and meaningful in new and appealing ways. Whatever illuminates the idea of God also throws light upon all other phases of religion, upon prayer and worship, upon religious institutions, upon the quest of the good life and the salvation which it affords.

The chapters on “Religion and Philosophy” and on “Religion and Art” were recently published in the Journal of Religion; and the substance of the chapter on “Religion and Morality” appeared in the International Journal of Ethics.

I am indebted to Van Meter Ames, of the department of philosophy in the University of Cincinnati, for reading the manuscript and making valuable criticisms and suggestions.

EO SHR The University of Chicago

Contents

. RELIGION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS . THE VALUES OF RELIGION . RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY .

RELIGION AND SCIENCE .

. RELIGION AND MORALITY . RELIGION AND ART . . THe Gops oF RELIGION . . GOD AND THE SELF .

Chapter I The Springs Of Religion

- Jt is not uncommon to find scientifically trained and otherwise emancipated persons who regard religion as outgrown. They think it but a matter of time and general education when religion will be relegated to the limbo of superstition and magic. It arose in primitive culture and that culture is rapidly disappearing. All manner of practices, now felt to be revolting, have been conducted in the name of religion—cannibalism, polygamy, infanticide, human sacrifice. Wars have sprung from it. The pioneers of science have been persecuted and put to death by it. Priests and prophets have opposed innovations and have slain those who championed new standards and experiments.

Even wise people do not often enough pause to reflect that these things are true also of politics, of trade and commerce, of family organization. Every phase of society and of human life suffers from the survival and inertia of old customs. It is not easy to introduce innovations in business, in industry, in education, in domestic service, in politics, or in religion. Human nature operates much the same in all interests of life. Ordinarily it is subject to habit and custom, and many customs are irrational but persistent. If those who reject religion because of attributing to it the evils mentioned were to judge the rest of life in the same manner

3 | they would logically become thoroughly pessimistic concerning human nature and the world itself.

The immediate answer to the pessimistic critics of religion is to say that there are different kinds of religion as there are different kinds of government and systems of education. Religion, like other interests, undergoes change from age to age and from land to land. There are various forms of any one religion and each has its conservative and progressive parties. In Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, in every sect, it is the same. Innovation, modification of mores, modernism, come about in time, although in religion the resistance to change is more stubborn because the values involved are the most important and the most intimate. They do not submit themselves to analysis as easily as do other social values. When changes are made they are apt to be less conscious and direct. Religion may be said to be the last great human interest to feel the scrutiny of scientific method. It is only within a generation that the methods of scientific study have been applied to it and there are many enlightened people who still think that the subject is inaccessible and unamenable to scientific treatment. All social affairs were formally under this dominance of custom. They had no rational justification and they permitted no questioning.

The state promulgated its customs as laws which were given and received as if subject to no change or exception. The king ruled by divine right and the edicts of the throne were as the voice of God. To question them would have been treason; to disobey them was punishable by death. Anything like consti-

~ tutional rights for the common man has been a late achievement and is yet only imperfectly accomplished. In the old world-view all the really significant experiences of life were thought of as emanating from a superhuman source. The inspirations of poets, the insights of thinkers, the achievements of leaders, were accredited to divine visitations. Likewise all established customs carried an authority and sanction which identified them with an order above and outside the ordinary experience of men. This is yet a strangely persistent and widespread attitude toward great men. They are called “geniuses,” and the word carries the survival of the feeling that they are gifted with unique endowments indicating a nature different from that of their fellow mortals.

Religion is traditionally accounted for on this principle. The great religious geniuses, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, are regarded by their followers as

" supernaturally sent, if not themselves actual incarnations of deity. They have thus been able to bring revelations and to impose their teaching as authoritative and unconditional. Common men, by implicit faith in the prophets and by strict obedience to them, have been able to share in the salvation offered. With marvelous devotion masses of followers have adhered to these leaders and when the followers differed among themselves their differences were not ascribed to any limitations in the revelations, but to the misunderstandings and weaknesses of mortals. In the tragic conflicts and wars of religious sects, each party held unwaveringly to its own supposedly infallible standards and sought to impose them by logic and by force.

At last the civilized world has come upon the historical method of studying these faiths, and has been able to discover something of the genesis and social exfoliation of various systems. Knowledge of the sacred texts, of their discrepancies, of their successive stages, of their reflection of varying mores and ideals, has shown the fallacy of their claims to infallibility and complete perfection. They now appear to all critical, competent students as the products of the human spirit in the quest for satisfying principles of thought and conduct. They are the records of the spiritual aspirations of the cultures in which they appear, and carry the strength, as well as the limitations, of their respective settings. It is as great a mistake to reject them wholly as it was to accept them unquestioningly. Taken with discrimination they afford knowledge of the sources and the nature of religious faith.

The psychology of religion, working upon the nature of the individual in the total process of his experience, has furnished new clues to an empirical and scientific understanding of religion. The same genetic inquiry which has thrown light upon the origin of language, of social customs and institutions, has clarified many problems of religion. In particular it has shown that the most important single task is the discovery of the springs of human action, and the sources of those forms of human association through which fundamental needs have been mediated.

Psychology has greatly modified its answer to this question since that science adopted a genuinely empirical method. The discussion has centered largely about the subject of instinct. It is only within the last decade that the psychologists have definitely abandoned the term. Until that time, while differing widely in the specification of the number and character of the instincts, the concept was generally accepted. It has been discarded for several reasons. That no two scholars agreed concerning the number of instincts tended to create skepticism concerning their existence, but it was the tendency to formulate a more and more precise definition which led to abandoning the search. As instinct was described as a ready-made, inherited response or chain of responses of the organism, on occasion of appropriate stimuli, it became increasingly obvious that no such finished and effective responses could be discovered. Even in the lower biological forms it became evident, upon careful observation, that the nestbuilding of birds, for example, and the hunting and fighting reactions of animals, involved a learning process. These ends were achieved under the tutelage of parents, and were developed and elaborated in play activities. ‘They did not arise in full strength and efficiency within the isolated organism, or in equal perfection in different individuals of a species. It was particularly apparent that no specific instinct could be found to account for complex phenomena like morality and religion. The more instinct was conceived as highly organized response to definite stimulus the less applicable the term became to the highly wrought, intricate process designated by religion. Its variability in individuals and races demanded a more free and flexible principle than instinct.

The outcome has been the substitution of impulses and reflexes to indicate original tendencies to action.

The propulsive, dynamic energy of all living forms is the first element. In the lower orders, simple reflexes, extending early into settled habits, prevail. Nature produces immense numbers of individuals in a species, as among fishes, and in that way accomplishes the continuity of its kind. In the higher types, a longer period of infancy, and greater flexibility in the learning process provide the possibility of better adaptation. John Fiske gave a permanent contribution to the “meaning of infancy” in the human species. He showed that the very helplessness of the infant and its years of dependence furnish opportunity for variation in habit and consequent adjustment to varying degrees of complexity in the environment. It is in the process of education, often carried on into scores of years and capable of extension to the whole span of life, that the human being achieves increasing power in meeting the demands of a changing physical and social world.

In general it is this adaptation, and consequent satisfaction of its needs, which the organism seeks. These needs, wants, wishes, ideal ends, as they are variously called, are the springs of action, the dynamos of behavior. They impel to self-preservation, to expansion and enrichment of life. Certain needs, like the satisfaction of hunger and sex, are basic and persistent through all grades of culture, but the manner of their satisfaction is modified by an indescribable wealth of associated interests, and by the emergence of new and complex ends. Men are so bound up with their fellows in this endeavor to fulfil their needs that the ends sought are common to groups of persons living together in family, tribe, and nation. A man strives for the welfare of his mate as identified with himself; parents seek the good of their offspring as part of their own ends; patriots sacrifice for their country as for their larger selves. There is no limit to this sense of participation and social solidarity. It may include the whole con- ‘ceivable world of mankind and the illimitable ranges of imaginable sentient beings. The scope of this social sense varies according to the experience and sensitiveness of people, but it is difficult to conceive any one so dead to companionship and natural ties that he is completely ‘‘selfish” and without the broadening influences of social feeling. What men seek are the satisfactions of felt needs experienced in maintaining life which in all normal circumstances is an associated life with fellow human beings.

Religion is the quest for the largest and the fullest satisfaction of felt needs. These needs vary enormously at different levels of society but in fundamental, persisting patterns, interwoven with all manner of conventionalizations. As the human face is of a fundamental structure, though varying among races and groups in size, shape, color, slant of eyes, and lines of the nose and mouth, so the human organism craves food, the mind is curious for knowledge, and the heart longs for companionship through varying customs and institutions. Religion is this outreaching for the satisfaction of felt needs, and its expression in objects and ceremonials associated with these needs. It cannot be identified with any one set or system of needs nor with any particular objects or ceremonials. These are as various as the faces of the races and the tribes of mankind. It is doubtful whether there are any peoples entirely without religion. There may be some whose life is so easy, or so close to the edge of existence as in the far north, that they are without the incentives or the leisure which make for organization and the play of imagination. But certainly no people has attained a significant culture, marked by arts, social customs, and widespread intimate tradition, without some appreciable religion. In all the great civilizations it has been conspicuously and vitally a large and focal interest.

It is a common fallacy to regard social institutions as the sources rather than the products of great human concerns. Schools are easily thought of as the origin of knowledge, whereas they are the expressions of the desire for wisdom and are centers in which are gathered and made available for youth the deposits of information and intelligence. Schools feed and guide the learning activity but they cannot create it. If the existing institutions of learning were destroyed, others would arise in time; but if the desire for what they represent were to perish, the schools could not supply it. The same could be said of all forms and organizations in society, in family, state, industry, and religion. They are ultimately voluntary associations for the better realization of common wants. Such institutions quicken and vitalize for many individuals the interests which they represent, and they give continuity and power to the impulses from which they spring, but these institutions are secondary and not primary. They enhance and extend, elevate and objectify normal cravings and activities of the human spirit, but the foundations and the sustained meaning of social institutions are in this human spirit, and are without significance except as they express and satisfy it.

It is one of the main tasks of the psychology of religion and of the history of religion to discover and to show just how religion and religious institutions have sprung from the impulses and desires of men. For this purpose the study of early and simple forms of religion has been extremely fruitful. What is the nature of religious objects? How do they attain their sanctity and holiness? How do men come to have religious ceremonials and priesthoods and sacred places and temples? What and who are the gods; whence do they arise and what is their significance? ‘The answers to these questions involve the whole mental and social life of man. ‘The partial, special-interest statements made by scientists and travelers, missionaries and diplomatists, require interpretation in more adequate perspective. The total genius and concrete history of a people in relation to its complex environment would be needed for complete understanding of their religion. Materials and suggestions toward such understandings have been gathered in great abundance during the past fifty years. The natural history of religion has gained scientific standing, and a method is being developed which is applicable to all religions, to their different stages and forms. These religions have been reviewed in relation to their economic and social history, and the correspondence in every case is so organic and functional, so natural and illuminating, that it recasts entirely their meaning and value.

In the first place, the vital interests of a people are the central concerns of their religion. Their “daily bread” is an insistent problem. The food objects and the activities involved in securing them are dominant in their rites. All this is interestingly written down in the records of the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. As nomads and hunters they celebrated the events of the shepherd’s and the hunter’s life; as migrating tribes in search of grass lands and living water, they told the stories and sang the songs of their roaming adventures; as husbandmen and tillers of the soil they introduced new rituals and new conceptions of God. All the time their family health and tribal integrity were cherished, and their wars and feuds were echoed in songs like those of Deborah and in exploits like those of David. They needed children for man power, and the occasions of birth, marriage, and death deeply marked their hopes and prayers.

The sacred places were those in which success was won, and the spots where the clans gathered for feasts and councils. The sacred objects were those upon which their life depended, the sheep, the bull, the well, the flowing spring, and the fertile earth. The moon, the stars, the mountains, and the rich valleys also focused their attention and elicited their awe and reverence. All these gained sanctity as they accumulated significance in the furtherance of life and well-being. Objects became sacred as they were felt to function in the fulfilment of primal needs. As social organization was seen to be important, the tribal chiefs and kings engaged attention and secured loyalty and affection. From these patterns of the daily, corporate life the whole world was modeled and the invisible beings of the imagination were the glorified figures of their eventful communal life. These sacred objects came to be regarded as the sources and the ends of existence. There was a natural and insistent tendency to transfer attention from ends to means, to lavish devotion upon the things which satisfy desire and to overlook the fact that the desires and their satisfaction are the determining factors in the selection and esteem of sacred objects. The psychology of the process of evaluation shows that ends which are attained with difficulty, through prolonged intense effort and associated endeavor, gain importance thereby. Because shepherd people had to exert themselves to care for their flocks, seeking grazing land for them, protecting them against wild animals, nursing them at yeaning time, watching over them by day and night in order to gain from them food, clothing, and shelter, they came to prize the sheep as sacred.

It seemed to be the center of magical power. At the feast where its flesh was eaten, men who were faint with hunger and worn with labor gained new energy and spirit. In the communal meal where the sheep was shared by all, there was a sense of strengthened ties of kinship among the tribesmen, and between them and the sacred mysterious power resident in the sacrifice. During the feast, the stories of the tribal history were told, memories of heroic ancestors were revived, and the circle of the tribe extended in imagination to include all who were thus remembered. The same may be said of the Central Australians celebrating their totems, and of the American Indians gathered in ceremonial circles about the maize—the altar covered with it, their bodies sprinkled with it, and the ground marked in conventional figures with it. The whole ceremonial of ‘‘sacrifice’” needs a reinterpretation to free it from the notion that the sacrificial object was offered to a deity, and to stress the fact that the sacred object was itself the center of power radiated to all who partook of it. That this is truer to the meaning of such ceremonials in developed and in early rituals may be emphasized by the observation that the highest point of Christian ceremonials is reached in the Mass or the Lord’s Supper. What is the purpose and meaning of this rite in the minds of the strictest churchmen? It is that here men actually feast on the body and the blood of the Lamb of God. To Roman Catholics it is the literal appropriation of the living flesh and blood; through it the participants are infused with the life of deity. This is the great mystery and the supreme act of the communicants. By it they renew their life and overcome sin, weakness, and death. Their relation of intimate oneness with God is re-established, not by an offering to him, but by possessing themselves of his actual being through the literal assimilation of him into themselves. To Protestants the ceremony is observed with more or less rationalization. They have been taught doctrines of consubstantiation, of spiritual participation, of meditative union, but the idea is still that of renewing the bonds of power with the Sacred Being in which religious attention and affection focus.

Some of the imagery introduced into the Christian tradition has tended to exaggerate the conception of the Divine Being residing above the sky and outside the world. The writings of Plato and Aristotle represent the abode of the gods in that way. In the New

Testament, especially in the apocalyptic literature, God is pictured on a throne beyond the clouds. John Milton gave to this imagery the vividness of his poetic imagination. Religious ceremonials have been built around a high altar, remote and suggestive of a majestic divinity before whom incense and praise should be offered up. All this, and much more of the same, have contributed to the impression that religion is derived from a supernatural source and revealed to man; that man brings his gifts to exchange for blessings; that man does not grow his religion out of the depths of his life, but is endowed with it from the unknown and the invisible.

There is the further important trait of human nature, the tendency to substitute the symbol for the thing symbolized. The flag may easily be mistaken for something sacred in itself, but it is the heroism and devotion of the citizens which give sanctity to the flag. As the expression of those qualities, the flag does possess a certain derived sacredness, but it cannot generate or convey them. Likewise, sacred books, like the Bible, have their value from the life which produced them and which is portrayed in them. To a large extent, important individuals in great causes are great in so far as they embody the will and represent the achievement of numbers of men. It is the loyalty and support of the army which gives the general his greatness.

Men have also been blinded to the fact that religion arises from themselves by the tradition of their own inferiority. They have been so conscious of their errors and limitations that they have been unable to think of noble things as emanating from their life. In the religions of salvation the doctrine of sin has been stressed and magnified until it has been regarded as inherent, innate evil from which there could be no escape except through the ministrations of priests and ceremonials. It made the institution more powerful and more commanding if it were thought of as the only medium through which hopelessly sinful men could overcome their vicious nature and gain deliverance. It has therefore been one of the first steps of these religions in dealing with the individual to make him conscious of his lost condition, his shameful and wicked alienation from virtue and goodness. There are enough facts in the experience of every one, enough conflicts of impulses, enough remorse and self-abasement to give force to the doctrine of original sin and total hereditary depravity. The Apostle Paul gave vivid expression to the suffering a person may endure through the conflict of aspiration and established habits. He exclaims, “That which I do I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” When such a dismal picture of human nature is presented, sharply contrasted with the perfection and beauty of the divine life, there is every justification for the assumption that the sources of the good life, even the desire for it, must lie outside of man himself. This traditional doctrine of the extreme sinfulness of man confronts every naturalistic account of the development of a refined religion. But the scientific study of human nature reveals a wealth of impulses and a wide range of stimuli within which a process of selection goes on. By the method of trial and error, by tests of happiness and welfare, by reflection and comparison, some ways are found to be good and others bad. Man is ever striving for a fuller and better life, yet often attributes the very desire for improvement to some other source than himself. A more adequate psychology and a freer assessment of his life show his nature to be mixed and uneven, but capable of self-criticism and of the pursuit of selected ends, even the ideal, spiritual ends which he sets up in his religious faiths.

Chapter II Religion As A Social Process

Religion, like other great human interests such as marriage, industry, art, and government, had a long history before men began to think critically of its nature. Communal feasts were celebrated, temples were built, and ceremonials flourished for ages before inquiries were made concerning their efficacy and before the nature of the gods was questioned. Such thoughts as floated through the minds of devotees were of desires to be satisfied and of the prescribed ways by which they could be fulfilled. In reverie and flowing imagery men remembered their sufferings and their triumphs, and recounted them in stories and legends, in vivid traditions, in pictures and songs. Religion reflected the labors of the hunt, the battle, and the field, the ardors of love and the pains of death. From its symbols and myths, comfort and courage were obtained. Slowly it changed with the shifting life of the tribe, rose with the growth of cultures, and fell with their fall. The great historic faiths —Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, and Christianity —move through vast cycles of change with the fortunes of the peoples to whom they belong. Within the ranges of these religions sacred literatures sprang up reciting the deeds of gods and men and sometimes rationalizing their customs and aspirations.

Eventually, with the birth of philosophy, a more critical type of thinking developed which sought to test the truth of religious ideas by its own methods of 18 analysis and proof. The Dialogues of Plato record the first significant efforts of western cultures to achieve an enlightened and systematic exposition of the central ideas of religion—God, the soul, evil, redemption, and the future life. From his time speculation has been busy with these problems, in explanation and argument, in criticism and defense. Often the relation of reason itself to the life of religion has been the crucial problem, and opinions have varied from the conviction that reason must be employed to determine what should be believed to the doctrine that faith alone can furnish the truth which reason expounds. Faith is sometimes thought to be above reason, and then the two may be held to be contrary or in harmony; again faith is subordinated to reason and all is held to be rational and open to understanding. The human mind still lies uneasy on this subject, unable to satisfy itself that an irrational religion can answer its needs but also doubtful whether a rational religion is possible.

Modern philosophy inherited these problems from the medieval thinkers and has largely been engaged with the questions of the nature, the extent, and the validity of human knowledge in all fields but with special reference, in nearly all systems, to the ultimate questions of religion. These inquiries still go on but there are signs now that they are coming into fruitage. The books on logic, psychology, and epistemology have become less controversial and more constructive and disclose more agreement.’ The course of modern philosophy has been steadily away from the dogmatic rationalism which

1 An excellent recent work of this kind is E. A. Burtt’s Principles and Problems of Right Thinking.

undertook to establish the power of pure reason to supply conclusive knowledge of the objects of religious concern. Although Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, remained largely within the shackles of the older rationalism, he made a significant gesture in the direction of a more empirical procedure. He deliberately cast aside the books of his Jesuit training and applied himself to the study of things, and of the “great book of the world.” He sought a beginning in indubitable fact and admirably illustrated his intention by a searching examination of all his inherited beliefs and habits of thought.