The Revolutionary Function of the Modern Church

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Preface

THIS book is at once a survey, an argument, and a plea. It is a survey of much of the best thought of our time upon many of the phases of what is known as the social question ; it is an argument for the essential identification of religion and the social question; and it is a plea for the recognition of this identification upon the part of those who control the church.

Many books have been written during the last few years upon the social aspects of religion, and this book may perhaps be regarded as only one more. No one of these books, however, so far as I know, (i) has gathered up the lessons learned of late in other fields of social experience and shown their meaning in terms of religion; (2) has shown that the question of the church is thus not something apart by itself, but only one phase of the modem social question as a whole ; (3) or has shown the one f undamentalreason why, in dealing with the individual, the church, like every other redemptive agency, must go behind the individual and grapple with the social organism itself. It is these three things that this book attempts to do ; and it may therefore not imjustly be described, perhaps, as breaking some new ground in this much-ploughed field.

vi Preface

The substance of this book has been stated many times during the past year in public addresses in the pulpit and on the platform. The material, however, has been rearranged, and much new material added; so that the work, as here presented, is practically new. It is sent forth to that larger audience of readers, which can never be reached by the spoken word, with much misgiving and many fears, but in the fervent hope that it may at least quicken some minds to a new tmderstanding of reUgion, and awaken some hearts to a new service of the Kingdom of God on earth.

J. H. H.

Church of the Messiah New York City.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. — Introductory — ^The Religious Unrest i

(A)— The New Theology— A New

Chapter I Introductory— The Religious Unrest

TO say that we are living in an age of strange transition and disorder, is to repeat one of the most familiar commonplaces of the times ; and yet no other statement is adequate as a description of the present day. It is to be supposed that centuries hence the historians of human progress will be able to characterise our era with that same degree of exactitude with which contemporary historians characterise the various epochs of the past; but to-day it is impossible to say anything more precise than that the old is going and the new is not yet come. Institutions which we had come to regard as in some sense divinely ordained and thus destined to endure so long as humanity should exist upon the earth seem now to be crumbling away before our very face and eyes, and we know not what institutions are to be planned and reared in their stead. Principles of government, education, and business which we had learned to accept as ultimate achievements of humaa wisdom and hence as final formulations of social order, are falling daily into ever greater disrepute, and in our failure to discover any new and safer principles we seem to be drifting straight into a condition of general anarchy. Even our ethical and spiritual ideals are being called into question, and the demand is being heard upon every hand for new standards of individual and social morality. What it aU means and where it is all going to take us, no man can say. But that the present state of chaos just as surely means the ending of one epoch of htunan history and the beginning of another as the great upheaval of the Renaissance meant the close of the Middle Ages and the opening of modem times, is perfectly evident to even the most casual observer of social evolution.

(a) the new theology — ^A NEW CREED

Sharing with every other institution in the transition character of the age, is of course the church. In the realm of religion, as in every other realm of human activity, there are confusion and disorder, and the apprehension of impending change; but beyond the certainty that the old religion is no longer expressive of the thoughts and aspirations of modem times, and that a new religion must come to match the new age as the old religion matched the old, if religion in its organised form at least is not to disappear altogether, nothing

Introductory — The Religious Unrest 3

seems to be at all sure as regards the future. That man is "incurably religious/' and that religion is therefore destined to endure in some form or other, amid all vicissitudes and transforations, as "an everlasting reality," — ^to quote the famous phrase of John Fiske, — seems to be as firmly believed to-day as ever. And therefore are many of the acutest minds and bravest hearts of our time giving themselves to the study of religion in the light of the new knowledge and new aspirations of this modem Renaissance, and attempting to formulate, as best they can, a new religion which shall be a vital expression of the present age and hence a worthy successor to the old.

Quite naturally, as religion in the past has always been so closely identified with theology, it is in the field of thought that the new religion of our time is working itself out with the greatest degree of clearness and with the largest promise of success. "The New Theology," by Dr. R. J. Campbell, of the City Temple, London, "The Rebirth of Religion," by Dr. A. S. Crapsey, of the Brotherhood, in Rochester, New York, "The Coming Religion," by Dr. C. F. Dole, of Boston, and the famous address on "The Religion of the Future," by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard, are only a few of the more conspicuous and notable illustrations of the endeavours which have been made in this direction within recent years; and of all these revolutionary theological utterances, perhaps the last is the most radical and for that reason the most characteristic of the intellectual unrest of the age.

In this remarkable essay, Dr. Eliot enumerates the marvellous advances which have been achieved even during the comparatively brief period of his own lifetime. "My point of view," he says, in explaining why it is necessary for him to believe in a new religion of the future

is that of one whose observing and thinking life covers the extraordinary period since ** The Voyage of the Beagle" was published, anaesthesia and the telegraph came into use, Herbert Spencer issued his first series of papers on evolution, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, and Wellhausen developed and vindicated Biblical criticism, J. S. Mill's " Principles of Political Economy" appeared, and the United States by going to war with Mexico set in operation those forces which abolished slavery on the American continent — ^the period within which mechanical power came to be widely distributed through the explosive engine and the applications of electricity, and all the great fundamental industries of civilised mankind were reconstructed.

In other words, as he puts it in another place, his address was written from the point of view of what had been accomplished by the nineteenth century, which "immeasurably surpassed all the preceding centuries in the increase of knowledge."

Now the theology which was possible at the opening of this period is impossible to-day. With

Introductory — The Religious Unrest s

brilliant intellectual acumen, Dr. Eliot lays bare the fallacies of the old doctrinal beliefs — ^the impossibilities of the traditional teachings of the chtu^ch — ^and shows how inevitable it is that "all of these former things shall pass away." A gardener pruning a tree of its dead and withered limbs, or a surgeon cutting away the diseased parts of a human organism, could not proceed with greater precision or thoroughness. He shows, for example, how the old ideas of authority are no longer acceptable to the modem mind, whether authority be lodged, as with the Catholic, in the hierarchy of the church, or, as with the Protestant, in the pages of a holy book. Identifying God with that *'one omnipresent eternal energy, informing and inspiring the whole creation at every instant of time, and throughout the infinite spaces," he eliminates from the religion of the future every element of the supernatural or miraculous, contending that henceforth religion must be wholly natural, conforming "like all else to natural law, so far as the range of law has been determined." With almost ruthless candour, he discards all the consolations which the church for untold ages has offered in times of sorrow and disaster. The idea of evil as preventive or curative or pimitive, the idea of heaven as the abode of the blessed and the happy, the idea of interpreting all phenomena whether good or evil as expressions of the all-wise and allbeneficent will of God, — ^all of these cherished doctrine^ Dr. Eliot puts aside as superstitions which can no longer bring satisfaction or comfort ; and asserts that in the future the church will teach men not to bow down and submit to evil, but to rise up and conquer it, and will prepare men not to anticipate compensations for suffering in some future worid, but to accomplish the alleviation and if possible the destruction of the causes of this suffering ia this present worid.

And lastly, Dr. Eliot shows that, in the ultimate analysis, religion does not consist of belief in the abstract truth of any theological dogmas but in the practice of the concrete ideals of "love toward God and brotherliness toward man"; and, in the supreme exaltation of this conception of spiritual goodwill, as contrasted with the traditional conception of intellectual conformity of opinion, he sees the hope of the realisation of that Christian imity for which the worid has so long been waiting. These are radical utterances; and it is no wonder, periiaps, that they were met by wide-spread discussion and indignant protest. But they constitute a definition of the "religion of the future" which is being held in greater or less degree by all of the courageously progressive theologians of our time, and which is destined ultimately to be accepted, in its general outlines, by all of the Christian world. Even to-day we find as conservative a scholar as Prof. William Adams Brown, a member of the faculty of as conservative an institution as the Union Theological Seminary, tmfavourably contrasting "the theology which ignores the modem scientific

Introductory — ^The Religious Unrest 7

movement and is unaffected in method by the results of that movement" with "the new theology whose method is determined by the new scientific movement and which is hospitable to its results" ; and showing, in a lengthy and weighty article,' how the latter is not only destined to supersede the former, but how this "new theology" itself is destined in due course of time "to give place to a newer."

(b) the new reugion— a new program of

ACTION

More important than the new theology of our time, however, is the new conception which is being formed of the kind of work which the church ought to accomplish as the organised expression of religion. Not only is a new creed being written to-day for the intellectual acceptance of the church, but a new program is being laid down for its practical activity. For what the church thought yesterday about the concepts of theology is no more antiquated to the modem mind than what the church did yesterday in the name of religious idealism. This new idea of the kind of work in which the church must be engaged is partly the result, of course, of the new theology of the time. New conceptions of God and the human soul, and of the relation existiag between the two, have resulted in new conceptions of the particular task which

« See "Harvard Theological Review," January, 191 1.

the church is set to perform in the world of men. But more important in this direction than the influence of the new theology has been the influence of the age itself. A new world, brought into being within fifty years, has laid upon the church, as upon every other human institution, a new responsibility and challenged it to a new and unfamiliar opportimity. The methods which were practised in the old world with success are proving to be failures in this new world by which we find ourselves confronted. The ends and aims which were sought yesterday with eagerness and avidity no longer arouse to-day even the most languid interest. The chturch, in its present condition, like every other traditional institution of organised society, seems more like a survival of the ages that are gone than a real and vital force in the age that now is. Everywhere is it coming to be recognised that the chturch, if it is not to perish utterly, must not only adapt itself to the new knowledge of the times, but to the new ways and means of the times as well, — ^that it must be reconstructed from the bottom up, — ^that it must adopt new methods, walk new paths, and seek new goals. Hence the flood of books which has been poiuing from otu: printing-presses during the last halfdozen years or more, dedicated to the consideration of the great question of the chturch and the present age, of which Prof. Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question" was perhaps the first, Prof. Simon N. Patten's ''The Social Basis

Introductory — ^The Religious Unrest 9

of Religion" is for the moment the last, and Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch's "Christianity and the Social Crisis" by all odds the most remarkable. The hour seems to have struck for the churches, as for the other traditional institutions of society, when "new occasions teach new duties"; the moment seems to have arrived again, in the unceasing course of time, when "ancient good" is made "uncouth." With the marvellous advances of the last century in the knowledge of the material world, in the discovery and command and application of natural laws and forces, in the understanding of the powers and needs of the individual life, and in the organisation of political and industrial and social relationships, have come new ideas and ideals of truly revolutionary import. These new ideas and ideals, to-day as formerly, are reacting upon every instrument of human activity, both personal and institutional; and the chtu-ch, whether regarded as divine or htunan in its origin and character, is by no manner of means exempt. These new conceptions of our day, says Dr. Eliot, in his "Religion of the Future," "have modified and ought to modify not only the actual work done by the churches, but the whole conception of the function of the churches."

Now right here, to my mind, and not at all in the field of theology, with its vexing controversies and dissensions, is the real storm-centre of present-day Christianity. The pressing problem of our time is not the writing of a new creed for the new theology, but the formulation of a new plan of action for the new religion. The churches of our age, in their organisation and methods of work and principles of action, are not churches of to-day at all, but churches of yesterday. They are still performing old and traditional "functions," which may have accomplished something in the old world, but which can accomplish little or nothing in the new world in which we find ourselves at this hour. They are still canying on a type of work which is as ill adapted to the conditions of contemporary life as the shoemaker's awl and hammer to the modem condition of boot and shoe mantifacture. They are driving the stage-coach in the age of the steam railroad, and commtmicating by post-rider in the age of the telegraph and telephone. Take the t3rpical churches in our cities and towns to-day with their antiquated buildings, their out-of-date equipment, their time-worn methods, and their medieval theory of practical action — ^and what hopelessly inefficient instruments of religion they really are! If we were not used to them as we are used to a hundred and one out-worn and outgrown things which have not yet disappeared, we should recognise, as our descendants will surely recognise, that these churches are as out of place in the modem world as a knight of King Arthur on the modem battle-field, or a Gutenberg press in a modem newspaper office. It is for this reason, to my mind, far more than for its reluctance to rewrite its statements of theological belief in

Introductory — ^The Religious Unrest ii

accordance with the new science and philosophy of our time, that the church has forfeited the confidence of the majority of men, and thus lost its grip upon contemporary life. What wonder that churches are empty, that divinity schools are languishing for lack of students, that ministers are discouraged, and that the institution itself no longer wields any influence in society commensurate with its vast wealth and its estimated membership! The churches of to-day are not worthy of support, for the simple reason that they are not doing twentieth-centtiry work for a twentieth-century world. What we need is a waking up in the field of ecclesiastical practice as well as in the field of theological speculation. What we must have, if the church is to survive another hundred years, is a movement of "modernism" in the world of action as well as in the world of thought, and in Protestantism as well as in Catholicism. With a new theology which means thought, we must have a new religion which means life — a practical struggle for the establishment of justice, righteousness, and peace in human society. And this means, as I need not point out, a new church with new ''functions" for the realisation of the new religion.

It is these new and revolutionary "functions" of this new church of the new religion which I propose to set forth in these pages. I propose to ask. What is the particular work which this new church must do in this particular period of htunan history? — and why? What are the ends which this new chtirch must try to achieve in the world of men as it exists and is organised to-day? — and why? What are the methods which this new church must employ for the practical achievement of these ends? — ^and why? That the church of our day and generation must do a wholly new work in a wholly new way is quite generally recognised, and has been asserted again and again in I know not how many recent addresses and books. But just what this new work is — ^just why this particular kind of work must be done in this particular kind of way — ^and just what relation all of these new "functions," to use Dr. Eliot's phrase again, bear to the general character of modem society, has not yet been adequately explained — at least to my knowledge ! To meet these questions, and thus to set forth the revolutionary function of the modem church, is the purpose of this little book!

Chapter II The Work Op The Church In The Past— Indi- Vidualism

(a) THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION

IT is fortunate that, at the very opening of our discussion of this momentous problem, which is very likely to lead to some more or less violent expression of opposition, we find a statement to which everybody can assent. For I imagine that there can be no disagreement, at this late day, as to what constitutes the real work in the world of the organised forces of the Christian religion. This work, if I mistake not, concerns itself first, last, and all the time with the individual soul; and its fimdamental character is perhaps best stunmed up in that great word which was so impressed upon the CSuistian imagination by the genius of St. Paul — ^the word, "Salvation!" The one specific work of the church, in all ages of its history, has rightly been to *'save" the individual — ^and I venture to prophesy that this will continue to be the church's function so long as humanity endures. ''I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," wrote St. Paul to the Romans, "for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth"; and from that day to otir own, Christianity has always been regarded as this "power of God unto salvation," and the church as the instrument of this power!

This conception of the function of the church, as concerned with the individual and the problem of his moral and spiritual salvation, has its foimdation in that which is distinctive of Christianity among all the great religions of the world — namely, its reverence for human nature, its faith in the perfect dignity and eternal worth of the human soul per se. That this is a imique feature of the Christian religion has of course been very frequently disputed; but it would seem that the great weight of critical and prophetic opinion was overwhelmingly in its favour. Thus, it is William Ellery Channing who says, that "he who has never looked through men's outward condition to the naked soul and there seen God's image commanding reverence, is a stranger to the distinctive love of Christianity." Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his famous Divinity School Address, declares that true Christianity means "a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man " ; and, in paying tribute to the prophet of Nazareth, he asserts that "alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man." Hegel, the German idealist, says that in Christianity "the individual has an infinite worth, as being the aim and object of God's love." James Martineau, in England, voices a similar opinion, when he declares that "the true meaning of the Christian faith" lies'in its "reverential estimate of the human soul" — its "sense of the infinite worth there is in man." Dr. Hatch, in his Hibbert Lectures, confiirms these statements, when he refers to "the Christian doctrine of the inestimable value of each immortal soul" as the "distinguishing and transcendent characteristic of every society into which the spirit of Christianity has passed." And Prof. G. B. Foster, in his "Finality of the Christian Religion," adds the influence of his scholarly word in the assertion that "faith in the infinite worth of the human personality in the sight of God — ^if there was anything new in the thought of Jesus, it was this ! " ' Here are only a few of the witnesses who might be cited in support of this assertion that faith in the eternal and infinite worth of the human soul — ^in other words, reverence for the individual — ^is the one absolutely distinctive feature of Christianity. This was the one original thought perhaps which Jesus contributed to the world; it was the secret of the power which was behind his heroic life and those of his disciples; and it is the one great principle which has animated the Christian church from the beginning even tmtil . now.

It cannot be too plainly indicated at the very start, therefore, that Christianity, in origin and essence, is the supreme religion of individualism,

' I am indebted for this admirable series of quotations to Rev. Charles A. Allen, of Waverley, Mass. See his article in the "Harvard Theological Review," April, 191 1, Page 266.

as Jesus was the supreme prophet of individualism. Starting with the Nazarene's sublime conception of the infinite and eternal worth of the individual soul, which constitutes in many ways the whole sum and substance of his message, Christianity has ever been inspired with reverence of that sotil, and concerned with the practical problem of its salvation. To describe the teaching of Jesus and the gospel of Christianity in other terms than this of the absolute and everlasting worth of every man and woman bom into the world and the immediate necessity of their salvation, would be an utterly groimdless and therefore inexcusable misinterpretation of history. It is from this point of view that Christianity is primarily to be distinguished from ancient paganism upon the one hand and from both ancient and modem orientalism upon the other. If there is anything which was pre-eminently characteristic of the civilisations of Greece and Rome it was the emphasis which was always placed upon the importance of the state as compared with the importance of the individual citizen. The practical philosophy of Greek Platonism, as exemplified by the "Republic," was at one with the practical philosophy of Roman Stoicism, as exemplified by Seneca and Aurelius, in its interpretation of life in terms of a social solidarity in which the individual played little or no part. It is common in these days to refer to the extreme individualistic tendencies of a Nietzsche or a Bernard Shaw, as seen in the doctrine of the Superman, as a recrudescence of paganism; and yet, in many ways, such an extravagant exaltation of the rights and privileges of the individual is wholly foreign to anything ever known to the ancient world. And an even more complete submerging of the individual is seen in the mystic philosophies of the oriental world, which find their fruitage in the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana. Emphasis upon the dignity and worth of the individual as an individual is peculiar to our western and more modem civilisation; and that it is so peculiar, is because this civilisation is very largely the product of the religion which had its origin in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The distinctive feature of Christian thought, therefore, is its exaltation of the individual. And this being the case, it is of course inevitable that the distinctive work of the church should assume the form of seeking the salvation of this individual. "The special work which awaited Christianity," says Dr. Matheson, in his "Spirit of Christianity," " was the transfusion into the mind of the world of its own distinctive principle of the value of the human sotil." To save the individual, whose worth was thus beyond all earthly computation, — to educate him if ignorant, to uplift him if degraded, to civilise him if barbarous, to moralise him if sinful, to redeem him if lost — ^this has been the work of the church from the day when Jesus was first called Saviour down even to the present moment. Nor can I conceive of the time ever coming when the church shall find it necessary to alter its purpose or change the direction of its practical activities. With the weak, tempted, imperfect individual, the work of the church must begin; and beyond this weak, tempted, and imperfect individual, I cannot see that this saving work can ever go. When the church has said to the great host of individual men and women, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," it has spoken the last and highest word both of ethics and religion.

(b) the methods of salvation

It is perfectly evident, however, from the most casual reading of religious history, that while the work of the church has always been that of individual salvation, this work has never been regarded in the same way in all ages and by all branches of the organisation. On the contrary, salvation as the end to be achieved has been very differently apprehended, and the means of salvation very differently defined. Numerous as these differences are, however, we may classify them roughly under the three great historic heads of Catholicism, Protestantism, and modem Liberalism.

(i) Catholicism

To the Catholic, salvation has always meant membership within the one true church, reception of the sacraments, and, in its perfect form, withdrawal from the world of every-day affairs. At

Individualism I9

the hour of birth the Catholic receives the sacrament of Baptism; throughout all the years of his life he partakes regularly of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; upon his death-bed, before consciousness has wholly flown, he is given the sacrament of the Last Unction; and it is by means of these sacraments that his position within the church is maintained and his salvation sectu^d. The person, however, who would win salvation in the most direct and certain way, retires wholly from the society of his fellows and enters a monastery or a convent; and therefore is it that in these sects of monks and nuns we find the perfect expression of the Catholic idea of individual salvation. In the Middle Ages, when the Roman church was the most powerful institution in the world, monasteries and convents were scattered all over the face of Europe. Upon every highway were to be seen the Dominicans and Franciscans; at every crossroads and in every forest glen was to be found the solitary cell of some devout hermit, who was reverenced by all who saw him as a holy man ; and in every royal court were the high dignitaries of these sacred orders. Even now, in most of our great cities, are to be seen the quiet sisterhoods and brotherhoods, which are the strange survival of the enormous medieval societies. And all of these monks and nuns, to-day as in former times, are held in especial esteem, because, according to the Catholic idea, they are the saved — ^those who have put away the world and entered ujkmi complete and perfect fellowship with God right here and now upon the earth.