PAPER 99
THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RELIGION
99:0.1 RELIGION achieves its highest social ministry
when it has least connection with the secular institutions of society. In past
ages, since social reforms were largely confined to the moral realms, religion
did not have to adjust its attitude to extensive changes in economic and
political systems. The chief problem of religion was the endeavor to replace
evil with good within the existing social order of political and economic
culture. Religion has thus indirectly tended to perpetuate the established
order of society, to foster the maintenance of the existent type of
civilization.
99:0.2 But religion should not be directly concerned
either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old
ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution,
but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages
and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural
requirements.
99:0.3 Religion did approve the occasional social
reforms of past centuries, but in the twentieth century it is of necessity
called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social
reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so rapidly that institutional
modifications must be greatly accelerated, and religion must accordingly
quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order.
1. RELIGION AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
99:1.1 Mechanical inventions and the dissemination
of knowledge are modifying civilization; certain economic adjustments and
social changes are imperative if cultural disaster is to be avoided. This new
and oncoming social order will not settle down complacently for a millennium.
The human race must become reconciled to a procession of changes, adjustments,
and readjustments. Mankind is on the march toward a new and unrevealed
planetary destiny.
99:1.2 Religion must become a forceful influence for
moral stability and spiritual progression functioning dynamically in the midst
of these ever-changing conditions and never-ending economic
adjustments.
99:1.3 Urantia society can never hope to settle down
as in past ages. The social ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of
established tradition and has begun its cruise upon the high seas of
evolutionary destiny; and the soul of man, as never before in the world's
history, needs carefully to scrutinize its charts of morality and
painstakingly to observe the compass of religious guidance. The paramount
mission of religion as a social influence is to stabilize the ideals of
mankind during these dangerous times of transition from one phase of
civilization to another, from one level of culture to another.
99:1.4 Religion has no new duties to perform, but it
is urgently called upon to function as a wise guide and experienced counselor
in all of these new and rapidly changing human situations. Society is becoming
more mechanical, more compact, more complex, and more critically
interdependent. Religion must function to prevent these new and intimate
interassociations from becoming mutually retrogressive or even destructive.
Religion must act as the cosmic salt which prevents the ferments of
progression from destroying the cultural savor of civilization. These new
social relations and economic upheavals can result in lasting brotherhood only
by the ministry of religion.
99:1.5 A godless humanitarianism is, humanly
speaking, a noble gesture, but true religion is the only power which can
lastingly increase the responsiveness of one social group to the needs and
sufferings of other groups. In the past, institutional religion could remain
passive while the upper strata of society turned a deaf ear to the sufferings
and oppression of the helpless lower strata, but in modern times these lower
social orders are no longer so abjectly ignorant nor so politically
helpless.
99:1.6 Religion must not become organically involved
in the secular work of social reconstruction and economic reorganization. But
it must actively keep pace with all these advances in civilization by making
clear-cut and vigorous restatements of its moral mandates and spiritual
precepts, its progressive philosophy of human living and transcendent
survival. The spirit of religion is eternal, but the form of its expression
must be restated every time the dictionary of human language is revised.
2. WEAKNESS OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
99:2.1 Institutional religion cannot afford
inspiration and provide leadership in this impending world-wide social
reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has unfortunately become
more or less of an organic part of the social order and the economic system
which is destined to undergo reconstruction. Only the real religion of
personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the
present crisis of civilization.
99:2.2 Institutional religion is now caught in the
stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society without first
reconstructing itself; and being so much an integral part of the established
order, it cannot reconstruct itself until society has been radically
reconstructed.
99:2.3 Religionists must function in society, in
industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups, parties, or
institutions. A religious group which presumes to function as such, apart from
religious activities, immediately becomes a political party, an economic
organization, or a social institution. Religious collectivism must confine its
efforts to the furtherance of religious causes.
99:2.4 Religionists are of no more value in the
tasks of social reconstruction than nonreligionists except in so far as their
religion has conferred upon them enhanced cosmic foresight and endowed them
with that superior social wisdom which is born of the sincere desire to love
God supremely and to love every man as a brother in the heavenly kingdom. An
ideal social order is that in which every man loves his neighbor as he loves
himself.
99:2.5 The institutionalized church may have
appeared to serve society in the past by glorifying the established political
and economic orders, but it must speedily cease such action if it is to
survive. Its only proper attitude consists in the teaching of nonviolence, the
doctrine of peaceful evolution in the place of violent revolution -- peace on
earth and good will among all men.
99:2.6 Modern religion finds it difficult to adjust
its attitude toward the rapidly shifting social changes only because it has
permitted itself to become so thoroughly traditionalized, dogmatized, and
institutionalized. The religion of living experience finds no difficulty in
keeping ahead of all these social developments and economic upheavals, amid
which it ever functions as a moral stabilizer, social guide, and spiritual
pilot. True religion carries over from one age to another the worth-while
culture and that wisdom which is born of the experience of knowing God and
striving to be like him.
3. RELIGION AND THE RELIGIONIST
99:3.1 Early Christianity was entirely free from all
civil entanglements, social commitments, and economic alliances. Only did
later institutionalized Christianity become an organic part of the political
and social structure of Occidental civilization.
99:3.2 The kingdom of heaven is neither a social nor
economic order; it is an exclusively spiritual brotherhood of God-knowing
individuals. True, such a brotherhood is in itself a new and amazing social
phenomenon attended by astounding political and economic
repercussions.
99:3.3 The religionist is not unsympathetic with
social suffering, not unmindful of civil injustice, not insulated from
economic thinking, neither insensible to political tyranny. Religion
influences social reconstruction directly because it spiritualizes and
idealizes the individual citizen. Indirectly, cultural civilization is
influenced by the attitude of these individual religionists as they become
active and influential members of various social, moral, economic, and
political groups.
99:3.4 The attainment of a high cultural
civilization demands, first, the ideal type of citizen and, then, ideal and
adequate social mechanisms wherewith such a citizenry may control the economic
and political institutions of such an advanced human society.
99:3.5 The church, because of overmuch false
sentiment, has long ministered to the underprivileged and the unfortunate, and
this has all been well, but this same sentiment has led to the unwise
perpetuation of racially degenerate stocks which have tremendously retarded
the progress of civilization.
99:3.6 Many individual social reconstructionists,
while vehemently repudiating institutionalized religion, are, after all,
zealously religious in the propagation of their social reforms. And so it is
that religious motivation, personal and more or less unrecognized, is playing
a great part in the present-day program of social reconstruction.
99:3.7 The great weakness of all this unrecognized
and unconscious type of religious activity is that it is unable to profit from
open religious criticism and thereby attain to profitable levels of
self-correction. It is a fact that religion does not grow unless it is
disciplined by constructive criticism, amplified by philosophy, purified by
science, and nourished by loyal fellowship.
99:3.8 There is always the great danger that
religion will become distorted and perverted into the pursuit of false goals,
as when in times of war each contending nation prostitutes its religion into
military propaganda. Loveless zeal is always harmful to religion, while
persecution diverts the activities of religion into the achievement of some
sociologic or theologic drive.
99:3.9 Religion can be kept free from unholy secular
alliances only by:
1. A critically corrective philosophy.
2. Freedom from all social, economic, and
political alliances.
3. Creative, comforting, and love-expanding
fellowships.
4. Progressive enhancement of spiritual insight
and the appreciation of cosmic values.
5. Prevention of fanaticism by the compensations
of the scientific mental attitude.
99:3.10 Religionists, as a group, must never concern
themselves with anything but religion, albeit any one such religionist,
as an individual citizen, may become the outstanding leader of some social,
economic, or political reconstruction movement.
99:3.11 It is the business of religion to create,
sustain, and inspire such a cosmic loyalty in the individual citizen as will
direct him to the achievement of success in the advancement of all these
difficult but desirable social services.
4. TRANSITION DIFFICULTIES
99:4.1 Genuine religion renders the religionist
socially fragrant and creates insights into human fellowship. But the
formalization of religious groups many times destroys the very values for the
promotion of which the group was organized. Human friendship and divine
religion are mutually helpful and significantly illuminating if the growth in
each is equalized and harmonized. Religion puts new meaning into all group
associations -- families, schools, and clubs. It imparts new values to play
and exalts all true humor.
99:4.2 Social leadership is transformed by spiritual
insight; religion prevents all collective movements from losing sight of their
true objectives. Together with children, religion is the great unifier of
family life, provided it is a living and growing faith. Family life cannot be
had without children; it can be lived without religion, but such a handicap
enormously multiplies the difficulties of this intimate human association.
During the early decades of the twentieth century, family life, next to
personal religious experience, suffers most from the decadence consequent upon
the transition from old religious loyalties to the emerging new meanings and
values.
99:4.3 True religion is a meaningful way of living
dynamically face to face with the commonplace realities of everyday life. But
if religion is to stimulate individual development of character and augment
integration of personality, it must not be standardized. If it is to stimulate
evaluation of experience and serve as a value-lure, it must not be
stereotyped. If religion is to promote supreme loyalties, it must not be
formalized.
99:4.4 No matter what upheavals may attend the
social and economic growth of civilization, religion is genuine and worth
while if it fosters in the individual an experience in which the sovereignty
of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails, for such is the true spiritual
concept of supreme reality. And through love and worship this becomes
meaningful as fellowship with man and sonship with God.
99:4.5 After all, it is what one believes rather
than what one knows that determines conduct and dominates personal
performances. Purely factual knowledge exerts very little influence upon the
average man unless it becomes emotionally activated. But the activation of
religion is superemotional, unifying the entire human experience on
transcendent levels through contact with, and release of, spiritual energies
in the mortal life.
99:4.6 During the psychologically unsettled times of
the twentieth century, amid the economic upheavals, the moral crosscurrents,
and the sociologic rip tides of the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era,
thousands upon thousands of men and women have become humanly dislocated; they
are anxious, restless, fearful, uncertain, and unsettled; as never before in
the world's history they need the consolation and stabilization of sound
religion. In the face of unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical
development there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos.
99:4.7 There is no danger in religion's becoming
more and more of a private matter -- a personal experience -- provided it does
not lose its motivation for unselfish and loving social service. Religion has
suffered from many secondary influences: sudden mixing of cultures,
intermingling of creeds, diminution of ecclesiastical authority, changing of
family life, together with urbanization and mechanization.
99:4.8 Man's greatest spiritual jeopardy consists in
partial progress, the predicament of unfinished growth: forsaking the
evolutionary religions of fear without immediately grasping the revelatory
religion of love. Modern science, particularly psychology, has weakened only
those religions which are so largely dependent upon fear, superstition, and
emotion.
99:4.9 Transition is always accompanied by
confusion, and there will be little tranquillity in the religious world until
the great struggle between the three contending philosophies of religion is
ended:
1. The spiritistic belief (in a providential
Deity) of many religions.
2. The humanistic and idealistic belief of many
philosophies.
3. The mechanistic and naturalistic conceptions of
many sciences.
99:4.10 And these three partial approaches to the
reality of the cosmos must eventually become harmonized by the revelatory
presentation of religion, philosophy, and cosmology which portrays the triune
existence of spirit, mind, and energy proceeding from the Trinity of Paradise
and attaining time-space unification within the Deity of the
Supreme.
5. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGION
99:5.1 While religion is exclusively a personal
spiritual experience -- knowing God as a Father -- the corollary of this
experience -- knowing man as a brother -- entails the adjustment of the self
to other selves, and that involves the social or group aspect of religious
life. Religion is first an inner or personal adjustment, and then it becomes a
matter of social service or group adjustment. The fact of man's gregariousness
perforce determines that religious groups will come into existence. What
happens to these religious groups depends very much on intelligent leadership.
In primitive society the religious group is not always very different from
economic or political groups. Religion has always been a conservator of morals
and a stabilizer of society. And this is still true, notwithstanding the
contrary teaching of many modern socialists and humanists.
99:5.2 Always keep in mind: True religion is to know
God as your Father and man as your brother. Religion is not a slavish belief
in threats of punishment or magical promises of future mystical rewards.
99:5.3 The religion of Jesus is the most dynamic
influence ever to activate the human race. Jesus shattered tradition,
destroyed dogma, and called mankind to the achievement of its highest ideals
in time and eternity -- to be perfect, even as the Father in heaven is
perfect.
99:5.4 Religion has little chance to function until
the religious group becomes separated from all other groups -- the social
association of the spiritual membership of the kingdom of heaven.
99:5.5 The doctrine of the total depravity of man
destroyed much of the potential of religion for effecting social repercussions
of an uplifting nature and of inspirational value. Jesus sought to restore
man's dignity when he declared that all men are the children of
God.
99:5.6 Any religious belief which is effective in
spiritualizing the believer is certain to have powerful repercussions in the
social life of such a religionist. Religious experience unfailingly yields the
"fruits of the spirit" in the daily life of the spirit-led mortal.
99:5.7 Just as certainly as men share their
religious beliefs, they create a religious group of some sort which eventually
creates common goals. Someday religionists will get together and actually
effect co-operation on the basis of unity of ideals and purposes rather than
attempting to do so on the basis of psychological opinions and theological
beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists. Since true
religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that
each individual religionist must have his own and personal interpretation of
the realization of that spiritual experience. Let the term "faith" stand for
the individual's relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of
what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious
attitude. "Have you faith? Then have it to yourself."
99:5.8 That faith is concerned only with the grasp
of ideal values is shown by the New Testament definition which declares that
faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not
seen.
99:5.9 Primitive man made little effort to put his
religious convictions into words. His religion was danced out rather than
thought out. Modern men have thought out many creeds and created many tests of
religious faith. Future religionists must live out their religion, dedicate
themselves to the wholehearted service of the brotherhood of man. It is high
time that man had a religious experience so personal and so sublime that it
could be realized and expressed only by "feelings that lie too deep for
words."
99:5.10 Jesus did not require of his followers that
they should periodically assemble and recite a form of words indicative of
their common beliefs. He only ordained that they should gather together to
actually do something -- partake of the communal supper of the
remembrance of his bestowal life on Urantia.
99:5.11 What a mistake for Christians to make when,
in presenting Christ as the supreme ideal of spiritual leadership, they dare
to require God-conscious men and women to reject the historic leadership of
the God-knowing men who have contributed to their particular national or
racial illumination during past ages.
6. INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
99:6.1 Sectarianism is a disease of institutional
religion, and dogmatism is an enslavement of the spiritual nature. It is far
better to have a religion without a church than a church without religion. The
religious turmoil of the twentieth century does not, in and of itself, betoken
spiritual decadence. Confusion goes before growth as well as before
destruction.
99:6.2 There is a real purpose in the socialization
of religion. It is the purpose of group religious activities to dramatize the
loyalties of religion; to magnify the lures of truth, beauty, and goodness; to
foster the attractions of supreme values; to enhance the service of unselfish
fellowship; to glorify the potentials of family life; to promote religious
education; to provide wise counsel and spiritual guidance; and to encourage
group worship. And all live religions encourage human friendship, conserve
morality, promote neighborhood welfare, and facilitate the spread of the
essential gospel of their respective messages of eternal salvation.
99:6.3 But as religion becomes institutionalized,
its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are greatly
multiplied. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and
crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase
of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of
religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of
leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects
and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical
authority; creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering of
false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the
petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present
demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement
with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of
religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to
hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message
of the gospel of eternal salvation.
99:6.4 Formal religion restrains men in their
personal spiritual activities instead of releasing them for heightened service
as kingdom builders.
7. RELIGION'S CONTRIBUTION
99:7.1 Though churches and all other religious
groups should stand aloof from all secular activities, at the same time
religion must do nothing to hinder or retard the social co-ordination of human
institutions. Life must continue to grow in meaningfulness; man must go on
with his reformation of philosophy and his clarification of
religion.
99:7.2 Political science must effect the
reconstruction of economics and industry by the techniques it learns from the
social sciences and by the insights and motives supplied by religious living.
In all social reconstruction religion provides a stabilizing loyalty to a
transcendent object, a steadying goal beyond and above the immediate and
temporal objective. In the midst of the confusions of a rapidly changing
environment mortal man needs the sustenance of a far-flung cosmic
perspective.
99:7.3 Religion inspires man to live courageously
and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins patience with passion, insight
to zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy.
99:7.4 Man can never wisely decide temporal issues
or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the
presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine
meanings and spiritual values.
99:7.5 Economic interdependence and social
fraternity will ultimately conduce to brotherhood. Man is naturally a dreamer,
but science is sobering him so that religion can presently activate him with
far less danger of precipitating fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie
man up with reality, and personal religious experience brings this same man
face to face with the eternal realities of an ever-expanding and progressing
cosmic citizenship.
99:7.6 Presented by
a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
