E ven our most private beliefs are not devoid of social effects, for if the belief has any importance at all it affects our behavior: and if it is not communicated to others it either fades away or else creates a sense of isolation from our fellows which is psychologically and socially unhealthy. Further, as was pointed out at the beginning of the previous chapter, beliefs that are shared, if they concern matters of common interest, tend to create psychological groups. The chief characteristic of the psychological group is that it tends to co-operate in the pursuit of certain common ends. A church, a nation, a political party, a football team, a street corner gang and a trade union are examples of such groups. It is not necessary that they should come together in one place to form a crowd, though they tend to do so as opportunity and need arise. All that is necessary is that they should have a common purpose, and have succeeded in communicating this fact to each other so that they recognize each other as persons animated by a common purpose. The result will be a tendency to co-operative action. Such action may be more or less coordinated, the degree of co-ordination depending chiefly on the recognition of common leaders, upon the clarity and unity with which tfie end and the means to it are grasped, and upon the efficiency of communication.
The problem into which we must now inquire is how far certain differences in religious belief need affect the unity and co-ordination of effort of those who hold to the same religious [ p. 179 ] ideal. In particular, if, in the terms of our analysis, it is agreed that it is the will of God that the fullest possible measure of value should be realized in the lives of all mankind, and that it is the religious duty and privilege of each of us to devote the self to that ideal, then is it necessary that we should be agreed on the questions of the transcendence of God and the ultimate destiny of human personality? Must the church excommunicate as heretics all who cannot accept its majority beliefs upon these great questions? Must those who do not accept these majority beliefs of the church feel themselves obliged to withdraw from membership and co-operation with it and pursue the realization of the same ideal alone or in separate groups?
We have been so accustomed to thinking of religion in terms of doctrinal beliefs, and of the distinctions between religious groups in terms of creed, that it may at first seem strange to consider the unity of religious groups in any other terms. But it is really the unity of ideal or purpose that matters most for the creation of a psychological unity among people. And this unity exists over a wide range of people inside and outside of the present churches. Yet this great number of people who possess this common ideal fail to achieve co-operation, and thus they also fail to give to the ideal the power it would have if it were recognized as the ideal of so great a number. Thus there already exists a real religious unity which fails of being implemented because intellectual disunity is given the greater prominence. What is needed is to give the greater prominence to the real element of religious unity, the common ideal, that it may have the power that comes from such demonstration of support. This means that those who hold this ideal must succeed in communicating the fact to each other, in recognizable and convincing terms, so that all may feel the fact that they are animated by this common purpose. From that communication and recognition, tendencies to co-operative implementation [ p. 180 ] of the ideal will inevitably grow. The rest becomes a matter of developing and recognizing common leaders and finding agreed means to the common ends.
Differences of belief inevitably involve differences in choice of leaders and of means. So if the religious society (the church) is able to recognize itself as one (one body, a psychological, or spiritual, unity) in spite of great differences of opinion, it must allow of much liberty to individuals and subgroups within the larger whole in the choice of leaders and means of work. Co-ordination of effort in any co-operative enterprise can never be made complete in every detail except at the cost of a surrender of freedom and initiative which is injurious to the finer flowers of personality. Yet where there is a common ideal, a large measure of unity, common recognition and co-operation is possible; and the power of that ideal is enhanced in the degree to which this is achieved. Religion suffers much from the petty divisions that are due to relatively minor differences of belief. But it suffers more from branding as irreligious those persons and organizations which, though they pursue the religious ideal, do not share the typical metaphysical convictions of the church concerning God and the soul. The question for the more orthodox Christians therefore is whether the church cannot extend its fellowship to include all those who share its ultimate ideal, and do this without departure from the essential character of historic Christianity. The question for those who share the church’s ideal, but not its metaphysical beliefs, is whether they should welcome such an invitation where and when it comes, asserting the common character of the religious ideal, joining in one great religious body that holds that ideal and allows freedom of belief and action, and co-operating so far as possible in the attainment of that ideal.
[ p. 181 ]
Ought not the unity of the Christian faith to be conceived as a unity of purposes and ideals rather than as a unity of beliefs on questions of history and metaphysics? Faith is a believing in something, and only incidentally a believing about something. It is primarily an acceptance of certain evaluations and only secondarily, if at all, an acceptance of alleged cold facts. And one of the primary evaluations of the Christian faith is the evaluation of truth itself. This evaluation was never put into the creeds. It was accepted unquestioningly, and the church never seems to have thought it necessary to put into its formal creeds the things that nobody doubted. Even the Old Roman Symbol, from which the socalled Apostles’ Creed developed, was drawn up primarily to keep Marcion and his followers out of the church,[1] and each addition was made to refute some heresy. In all this the church thought it was defending truth. To maintain its primary faith in the value of truth it sought to make final decisions and exclude error. But the sad history of succeeding centuries has shown that this is not the way to attain the primary end, that the only way to attain and maintain truth is by the completest freedom of thought and discussion. Thus loyalty to truth calls for the relegation of creeds to the student’s study and the opening up of the forum of free discussion. A church that is truly Christian must adopt the best method to attain and disseminate truth. That means that it must open its doors to all who adopt its own ideal, of which one part is the love of truth; so it must place no barriers in the way of seeking truth.
It is remarkable how far the churches have advanced in recent decades toward this bold attitude.[2] But there will still [ p. 182 ] be many who hesitate to admit into the circle of optional opinions even the ideas of God and immortality, which have so often been regarded as the essential minimum of all religion. So we must recall that our analysis, if sound, has shoXvn that no specific beliefs constitute the essential minimum of religion. The essential minimum, as Protestantism has emphasized since its inception, is an experience. Our of that experience there grows an ideal. The expression of that ideal is the essential religious activity. It becomes an attitude — the attitude of faith, which if well maintained constitutes faithfulness to the ideal.
Some kind of belief about the source and consequences of this experience is, inevitably, a part of the activity (thus of the attitude, or faith) that results from this experience. But it is plain that metaphysical explanations concerning its source, and hopes concerning its distant implications for another world, are not the most important part of this faith. The really important part for the present relations of that individual to others, and of others to him, is his understanding of what his religious experience implies regarding those human relations, and his willingness to follow the promptings of the reality discovered within his religious experience — the altruistic or disinterested will. This understanding and willingness constitute the religious ideal and attitude. For the enlightened Christian and for the humanist it is essentially the same. They have the one faith. It is only when they pay attention to what each thinks are its more far-reaching cognitive implications and content that differences appear.
Now when people have a common attitude to reality, a common faith — i.e., when they believe in the same idekl — it requires only that they communicate that faith or ideal to each other and recognize each other, for them to find themselves spiritually bound together in a psychological group, a communion of faith. When it is a religious faith that is thus communicated [ p. 183 ] and recognized they become a church. If they subsequently discover differences within the intellectual content of their faith these constitute a certain divisive element within the spiritual group, a lesion of the spiritual body. But unless emphasized to the point of refusal of recognition they do not tear the psychological corporate whole asunder. The question, therefore, that the church has to face is whether the discovery of differences of belief on personal immortality and the divine transcendence justifies the destruction of the unity of the whole religious body in the pursuit of its common ideal. The early Christian church thought that loyalty to truth demanded that it do so. Surely two thousand years of history have sufficiently shown the error of that way of supporting truth. It becomes evident then that the church, in support of orthodoxy, should not cut off (refuse recognition to) those who are unorthodox even as to these beliefs, but should invite them to co-operate in loyalty to the common faith.
The word “faith” has been so often used with reference to an exclusively cognitive content, or belief, that perhaps some explanation of the usage here adopted is required. That usage is, I think, essentially in accord with the Christian concept, except when a certain dogmatism or careless emphasis upon the intellectual content distorts the fundamental notion. St. James vigorously rejected such intellectualism. Faith, he asserted, is something that can be demonstrated only by “works.” It is no mere belief, for “the devils also believe, and tremble.” [3] In the magnificent phrase of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is ‘‘ the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” [4] which means, in the terminology of modern philosophy, that it is the realization of ideal values. For Jesus, faith was an attitude of trust in God that gives man the power to move mountains. For Paul, the Christian [ p. 184 ] faith was, in particular, an attitude toward Christ that overcomes the destructive power of sin in the human heart. We shall have more to say, in another chapter, about faith, but these references are sufficient to show how secondary in it is the element of belief. Faith in God, or in Christ, or in the Christian and humanitarian ideal, like faith in a friend or in a bank, is an active attitude of the whole person toward the object in question, as an object of value; and it is based primarily upon a judgment concerning the value of that object.
The fundamentalist revival that occurred in the first two decades of this century has already faded out. The Barthian movement [5] arose in the postwar pessimism of Germany, crossed the seas with the rising tide of post-Versailles disillusionment, and created an impression upon minds distressed by scenes of economic injustice and disorder. But its effect appears to be no more than to cause a wholesome re-examination of features of religion that the liberal theologians had been neglecting. Thus we may expect the spirit of toleration to continue to grow within the Christian church and, throughout the greater part of Protestantism at least, to find the barriers to free belief within the church continuously set aside.
But it is not enough that the orthodox become tolerant if the unorthodox remain intolerant. It is not likely that the theistic metaphysic and belief in immortality will disappear, for while it must be admitted that many of the arguments for these beliefs have been robbed of their cogency by the advance of science, it must also be admitted that the same advance is showing that science has no arguments against them. So if there is to be unity in the religious pursuit of the ideal the unorthodox must be prepared to manifest the same tolerance [ p. 185 ] they have always asked of the orthodox. And that tolerance must not stop short of active co-operation. It is therefore necessary to examine the position from this angle also.
In his Terry Lectures [6] Professor Dewey maintained that historic Christianity, with its belief in the supernatural, is committed to an aristocratic and exclusive attitude toward those who do not share its beliefs, and also to such a reliance upon the supernatural that it tends to adopt a laissez faire attitude with respect to natural and human intervention in the social process in support of human values. The latter accusation seems to me to betray a strange ignorance or lack of appreciation of what the religious forces of the world have been doing, especially in the last quarter of a century, toward the solution of social problems; but with that aspect of the religious life we were concerned in the previous chapter. The assertion that Christianity must always divide the sheep from the goats according to their metaphysical beliefs we will take pains to refute. But, assuming that these charges against the orthodox are not true or should cease to be true, what then should be the attitude toward the church of those who, like Professor Dewey, “feel the stir of social emotion” and would devote themselves to that “common faith of mankind” which he has so finely stated?
" Were men and women actuated throughout the length and breadth of human relations with the faith and ardor that have at times marked historic religions the consequences would be incalculable. To achieve this faith and elan is no easy task.” [7] Thus Dewey clearly recognizes the need and the fact that there is something in religion that gives a unique power to personality. But the way to achieve this dynamic and canalize it in the right direction is not to destroy the organization in which it is characteristically known to rise and [ p. 186 ] flourish. The unorthodox religionist must meet the more orthodox part way. Instead of calling upon the believer to give up cherished and helpful beliefs against which there is no valid scientific objection, he should respond to the believer’s expression of welcome and tolerance wherever it is made. He should not demand that the believer in the supernatural give no expression to his beliefs, but should join in an organization where all may express their beliefs and all co-operate in all that they can find in common. Increasingly the Christian churches are letting down the barriers of creeds, making possible a fellowship of spiritual culture and a community of social service where each is free to speak the truth as he sees it and a wholesome respect for the opinions of others is shown by all. The response of unorthodox religious persons has as yet been slow. Yet the extension of this invitation and a willing response to it is the only way to the creation of that dynamic implementation of human ideals that is visualized in the quotation with which this paragraph begins.
It is the only way, first, because mutual respect for honest and intelligent opinion and open-minded seeking of truth is part of the ideal; and second, because no social ideal can be implemented unless it be first incorporated as the activating principle of a group of people who stand for it, publicly declare their adhesion, cultivate their own enthusiasm for it, train the oncoming generation in the knowledge and appreciation of it, and co-operatively seek to put it into effect. If an ideal contains nothing that is not accepted by everybody then it is either already achieved or utterly meaningless. “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” If an ideal contains something that is good and true but not universally accepted then it will meet with opposition. And if it is in the vanguard of human progress it will meet with much opposition. It is not true liberalism to shrink from being a partisan. There is need, as Dewey says, for faith and [ p. 187 ] ardor. But unless they form a party, an active striving group, acutely conscious of its distinctive goal, the faith and ardor are an ineffective flash in the pan. There must be a church, a church militant and, as far as possible, a church united.
If we would learn the psychological (i.e., the spiritual) conditions of the existence of such a church we must learn our lesson from history; and we must not scorn to take our place in the historic movement of religion, the historic church. This does not mean that anyone should bow to an authority that he believes wrong, or be silent on a concept he believes false. The church, if it is to be powerful, militant and united, must give freedom for expression of opinion, for independent forms of organization within it, and for large differences in form of corporate spiritual culture and worship. It can keep clear the unity of its central ideal and give it power by mutual recognition of the multitude of people of different types and points of view who uphold it, and yet develop a rich and varied life of individual and corporate expression. But organization and corporate expression there must be; and this expression must take the forms that have proved their power over the human mind throughout the history of religion. Ceremonial, symbol, witness in words, meditation and public speech we still must have. The modern attempt to develop a religious life without these is as crass as the modern attempt to write poetry without rhythm or rhyme and without metaphor, simile or verbal beauty. The spirit of religion, like the spirit of poetry, requires something more than that we should try to be clever.
(a) Leadership. — The conditions of group activity may be briefly stated as follows: (1) the possession of a common desire, purpose or interest; (2) the communication of this fact to each other and reciprocal recognition of the fact of association; [8] [ p. 188 ] (3) a concrete objective and means to its attainment suflRciently clear to direct co-ordinated activity, or else a recognized leader whose words and example point to such concrete objectives as occasion rises; (4) a recognized organization or pattern for division of labor in the pursuit of the concrete objectives wherein the common interest is attained. On the basis of our previous analysis we may take the disinterested will to the good of others as the common interest that creates the religious association. But we have seen that this will is very vague and ill defined in most people, so that its implementation in pursuit of concrete objectives is extremely difficult. And even supposing that its general nature has been made fairly clear and is accepted in terms such as we have used, the kind of concrete objectives to be sought, the leadership to be followed and the organization needed are questions so difficult that differences as to both means and subsidiary ends are inevitable. But one fact becomes clear. Freedom of individual thought and the moral responsibility of the individual are a part of the goal. So organization for its attainment must be entirely free. Co-ordination must be sought for the sake of efficiency, but not at the cost of destroying that liberty of thought and freedom of conscience which are essential to the realization of the goal. The spontaneity and vigor that come from freedom of organization in the long run produce more power than a uniformity attained through suppression.
The chief practical problems therefore center on the means of communication and recognition and on the selection of concrete objectives and leadership. And here, I would suggest, [ p. 189 ] is the great contribution to the cause of religion that has been and may still be made by historic Christianity. We shall return again [9] to an interpretation of the significance of the work of Christ, but enough may be said here to show the significance of the Christian recognition of his leadership. The early Christians saw the nature of God revealed in him as in no other person in history. And whether God be merely immanent or also transcendent this insight must be recognized as sound. Jesus’ place in history is unique. The richest and noblest succession of religious leaders and teachers in human history, that of the Hebrew prophets, culminated in his personality. The great religious leaders who have adequately and unprejudicedly known him, in all the centuries since his day, from Paul and Marcion to Mahatma Gandhi, have found in him both inspiration and guidance. The particular concrete objectives of religious effort must change with time and place. No set terms can define them. But the broad principles Jesus enunciated, and the magnificent example of his life, illuminate our successive problems and, in reflection, define for us our successive goals, in a way that no other concrete object or person can do. Further, no mode of succession of local and temporary leaders is so likely to be sound as that of a group that keeps clearly in mind the picture of Christ as the leader and selects its subsidiary leaders by their likeness to him. In so far as the church has failed to select well its particular objectives and leadership, its failure is due not to its recognition of the supreme leadership of Christ, but rather to its inattention to the meaning of an acknowledgment of his leadership, or to sheer lack of understanding of the persons and situations involved.
The validity of the honor thus paid to Jesus in no way depends upon theological conceptions of the peculiar nature of his personality, still less upon traditions concerning his [p. 190 ] birth. These beliefs should be treated in the spirit of scientific investigation and broad tolerance, but they do not affect the question of his leadership. That depends upon his actual place in religious history and the contribution of his life and teaching to religious thought and work. It rests also upon the actual, practical, psychological value found in giving him that place. The religion of intellectual people tends to be too coldly intellectual even for their own best personal development. For the general community, whose value judgments arise out of their concrete feelings rather than out of abstract principles, such intellectualism is hopelessly inadequate. The richness and strength of human feeling can, in most of us and most of the time, be aroused only by concrete objects.,[10] In Christ the ideals of love and service, of sacrifice and forgiveness, of kindness and courage, take on flesh and blood. His stature is heroic. His personality has proved itself capable of kindling a like response. And the day has not yet passed, if ever it can, when the cause of humanity calls for sentiments cast in the heroic mold.
(b) The Means of Communication. — Primitive peoples did not attempt to put into words the hopes and ideals that vaguely stirred them. For them, as Professor Marett says, religion was danced out rather than thought out. It is no disparagement of the value of thought to say that the elemental experiences out of which religion arises are “feelings that do lie too deep for words.” The primitive expressed them in gesture, and gesture became formalized in ceremonial. If we would retain the broadest possible foundations of religious unity, the simplest and most elementary communication of our religious experience and common ideal must also be in the language of gesture. Words are too specific. They miss [ p. 191 ] the deeper half of the meaning of that which is felt and place all the emphasis upon our interpretations of it, which are always more or less dubious. For this reason the unity of the faith can never be expressed in creeds. Creeds are divisive, and they are inevitably outgrown. They are as wrong as idolatry, and for the same reason. The idol gives too definite a form to the conception of God of those who first devise it. It is an inadequate instrument for the presentation of the idea; and the idea it presents in fixed outline, to rivet upon the future, is always an inadequate idea. Like the creed, it is divisive and perpetuates error. But the language of gesture, if simple, is not definite enough to perpetuate error. Moreover, it can be vivid enough to express the feelings that words cannot utter. If simple, vivid and appropriate it can be handed on from generation to generation; and each successive age reads into it the new meaning it has wrought out of its own religious experience, and reads out of it the continuity of experience of religious reality in every age and every land.
It is not always realized that in the primitive Christian church that communication and recognition which expressed the unity of its faith and bound individuals together in the community of one brotherhood, one religious society, was expressed in the symbolism of gesture rather than that of words. It is not exactly known just how and when its two principal ordinances originated, but before the church had completed the writing of the documents that it later gathered together to form the New Testament these ordinances had become so firmly established that, rightly or wrongly, their institution was attributed directly to Jesus himself. Thus they long antedated the formulation of the first creed. The informal expressions of acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Christ found in the New Testament cannot be regarded as a creed. [11] “In the [ p. 192 ] book of Acts it is obvious that it was by the act of baptism itself (a symbolic gesture) that the new convert declared his faith and the church recognized him as one of its own.
What gave the significance to the act was that it was done “in the name” of Jesus. The convert thus took on his name and received the recognition of the church as a kindred spirit, a member of the new religious society. Thereafter he periodically reaffirmed his faith, and joined in mutual recognition of his brethren in the fellowship of Christ, by taking part in a solemn ceremonial meal, symbolic of the “communion” existing between the brethren and between them and their Master. Thus the language of gesture first declared the faith and later continuously reaffirmed it. And the meaning of these solemn gestures was contained, not in any words of explanation, but in the personality of him toward whom they were directed. They were acts of affirmation of the religious leadership of Christ, of the adoption of his ideals. Simple and significant in themselves, they were made eloquent by his personality. As expressions of that community of ideal and purpose whereby a number of individuals may be made to feel their religious unity and inspired to work together in the service of a common concrete ideal, they, taken together with the personality of the leader in whose name they were performed, were peculiarly appropriate.
The church at that stage was not yet an organization possessing common metaphysical opinions. It was rather a group of persons bound together by common hopes and ideals which they found expressed in the personality of a great leader. They did not demand unity of opinion among themselves. As Professor McGiffert and other scholars have shown, they did not have it.[12] What they expected of each other was loyalty [ p. 193 ] to their leader in action, and the honoring of his name and expression of their common religious ideal in public ceremonial. The tragedy that underlies the church’s disunity is the effort that was later made, not merely to formulate the thought of God and of Christ more fully and exactly, but to insist that the acceptance of these verbal symbols, the creeds, should be a condition of admission to the symbols of gesture whereby loyalty to the common ideals embodied in the personality of the leader was declared. If the church had kept open access to its ordinances, independent of the acceptance of creeds, it would have saved itself much of the tragedy of division and the shame and injury of its heresy hunts.
It is therefore fairly clear that, without a departure from the spirit of historic Christianity — indeed rather through a restoration of its early spirit and practice — the conditions of unity with liberty within the church can be fulfilled. It is plain, of course, that before the ancient ceremonies can function again in this way they must be cleared of the magical beliefs that have been associated with them. This, however, would be only a part of that broadening of understanding which is necessary before a church is ready to remove all creeds from its requirements for membership; and in many churches this attitude to both creeds and ordinances is already attained. With similar tolerance, and a proper recognition of the real values of ancient tradition in ceremonial, it should be possible to secure sufficient agreement on the time and mode of performance of the ordinances to make them real expressions of that unity of the Christian community, amidst wide freedom in belief and action, which offers the brightest hope for the future of the church and the world.
Here is an inspiring vision of Christendom, united in one great brotherhood around the personality of Jesus, welded [ p. 194 ] into unity of purpose by a common loyalty to the ideal, the way of life, embodied in his person. It would be a brotherhood in which each was free to think and to speak his thoughts on the deepest things of life, and within which groups would be free to organize their religious and social life to meet their differing needs. Such freedom would not interfere with unity, for it would be a part of the common purpose that all should thus be free. Further, all would express, in acknowledged common symbols, their faith in a common leader as source and inspiration of common ideals, and would unite in many ways in common practical programs for the implementation of those ideals. Organization and institutionalization are inevitable if group purposes are to be put into execution, but they can be so designed as not to restrict essential freedom of thought and worship. To create that sense of unity which makes for the reality of brotherhood all that is necessary is that there should be a genuine common purpose, periodic common witness to that purpose in terms that all understand and appreciate, and real co-operation in its practical execution. From such basic unity there may grow a superstructure with great freedom of form.
Today we have freedom of form in the superstructure and, to a larger extent than is generally realized, an underlying unity of spirit. What is needed is to give more concrete form and expression to the underlying unity and more explicit recognition to the rights of freedom.[13] Such unity cannot be achieved by trying to tear ourselves out of our roots in history, though the history of Christendom has for centuries been divisive. It can be achieved only by digging to the depths of the underlying unity of Christendom. In that underlying [ p. 195 ] unity the Jew shares with the Christian and, with the growing recognition among Jews[14] of the significance of their great contribution to the world in the person of Christ, it is not too much to hope that they too may yet share in that united devotion to the spirit of one great leader which would make one brotherhood of all Christendom and set its face toward the creation of one brotherhood for the world.[15]
But the realization of such a vision, while it needs clear thinking and tolerance, requires something more also. Such brotherhood is not merely an intellectual state of mind, to be achieved by learning and logic; it is a dynamic attitude that must incorporate feeling, habit and will. It is here that so much liberal religious thinking fails. It begins and ends with thinking. It fails to touch the life of feeling and practice. If there is to be real human brotherhood it must consist of personalities that have grown in an atmosphere of brotherhood. If an ideal is to come alive in personalities they must breathe its expression in their daily associations. And if they are to do that they must periodically come together in groups for its expression. For clear thinking one must think alone and unemotionally. But the ideal endorsed by clear thinking can be socially implemented, it can be made to grip and mold the personality even of the thinker, only by being given public [ p. 196 ] expression. Religious idealism and other forms of idealism can be refined in quiet meditation, but they acquire power by being expressed in company. This is the reason for public worship. Where it is neglected religion wilts and fades. If religion is to be revived as a power to instill into the community a sense of brotherhood, of social solidarity and of Christian idealism, it cannot be done without measures that will call the multitude back into the organized worship of the churches. To wish, as does Professor Dewey,[16] for the manifestation of a typically religious faith and devotion throughout the length and breadth of human relations, while neglecting the typically religious means of spiritual culture, is wishful thinking of a very futile kind.
But if public religious devotion is to perform its function well it must not merely be urged as a duty. It must be carefully planned to meet varying human needs. Here, as in thought, there must be ample room for individuality and for different types of personality to find, among those of like mind, the kind of spiritual exercise most helpful to their own souls. Those of refined sensibilities must not be shocked at the apparent crudity of the religious expressions found helpful by those of coarser or tougher stripe. Nor should they seek to impose upon them forms of worship lacking in the emotional vigor and strong appeal that they need. Religious unity does not require that the whole form of worship be everywhere the same. Even in the performance of those symbolic ceremonies which, as the fundamental language of mutual recognition within the religious society, ought to be universal, there must be wide liberty. It is necessary only that there be sufficient uniformity to secure mutual recognition. But in other phases of worship no such conformity to common patterns is even desirable. What is desirable is only that those means of spiritual culture be adopted which shall [ p. 197 ] be found most helpful to those concerned. So far as this is concerned, all that I would wish to say further here is to point out some general considerations concerning the place of art in spiritual culture.
When we speak of the use of art for some ulterior purpose, even that of spiritual culture, we enter a field of controversy in the theory of art. Between the advocates of “art for art’s sake” and those who would regiment the artists as instruments of social propaganda there are fierce battles waging. Into this strife we need not enter, except so far as to claim that art is a part of life, not apart from life, and that, like everything organic, it can contribute to the wholesome functioning of the whole and be the better for it. It is art in isolation that is artificial, not art in functional relation to the rest of life. The distinction between nature and art is not really fundamental. All true art must be natural, and nature is by no means devoid of art. That which is artificial is unnatural only because it is bad art. The artificial is something intended to have the appearance of art, but it is not produced or enjoyed naturally as an expression of life. It is an imitation of art for the sake of money or praise or for some other ulterior motive. The true work of art is a natural outpouring of the soul, and it is an activity that must be an end in itself. The artist may need money and may take money for his work. But if he works merely for money he destroys his artistic soul, just as surely as the minister, if he merely serves for money, destroys his spiritual life. The pursuit of beauty, like the pursuit of holiness, is the pursuit of a spiritual value; and it turns to gall and bitterness if it is made subservient to Mammon or to any lesser thing.
Art, then, is both spiritual and natural. It is found in the homes and the cathedrals of men and it is displayed in the [ p. 198 ] song of a bird and the prancing of a horse. Nor is it a paradox to see this manifestation of the spiritual even in the humbler creatures around us, for the life of man is only a finer development of the life below him. But of all creatures it is man who is the supreme artist. Art is not only the flower of the finest civilizations; it is among the lively interests of the humblest races of mankind. No student of primitive man can fail to be impressed by the amount of attention that people who are constantly under pressure for the very means of existence devote to these labors that produce no bread. Weapons, utensils, clothes, houses, canoes are everywhere adorned with pictures and designs; dance and drama are elaborately developed; as much ingenuity is shown in the construction of musical instruments as in that of weapons of war and the chase. And to no phase of life has art been more assiduously applied than to religion. From the primitive to the highest civilizations, it is on his religion that man has lavished the highest products of his artistic genius. Art is thus shown to be a manifestation of characteristics deeply rooted in human nature. When we consider its essentially spiritual character and remember how closely, all through the ages, it has been associated with religion we see that it is a sphere of human activity which no program of spiritual culture can afford to neglect.
But when we inquire more closely as to the place which art should occupy in religious life and work we find ourselves in a realm of thought in which there is still much confusion. The problem of the nature of the beautiful was discussed to some extent by Plato and Aristotle, but was not very seriously investigated until that task was undertaken by Immanuel Kant. Kant’s theory definitely connected aesthetic experience with the activity of the imagination and suggested that it was further dependent upon the harmony of the object with the cognitive activity that contemplates it, and of the imagination [ p. 199 ] with the rest of the activity of the mind. This theory, however, is obviously too intellectualistic to account for all the facts, and it was largely ignored in the romantic era, which followed close upon Kant’s own age. In more recent times Ruskin has preached the prophetic mission of art. Croce has interpreted it as self-expression. Lipps has attributed it to the development of sympathetic insight and feeling. Among leading recent investigators we find that Professor Prall[17] has claimed that it depends on a distinctive type of highly active and peculiarly heightened awareness, and Professor Collingwood[18] has returned to a theory somewhat akin to Kant’s. For my own theory[19] I am indebted to both these writers.
These two thinkers call attention to two different types of aesthetic experience: Prall to the enjoyment of purely sensuous beauty, such as color and melody, and Collingwood to the higher, more intellectual types of beauty, such as are found in poetry and drama. Collingwood points to two requirements for beauty in the object: it must stimulate the imagination, and it must direct a self-harmonious process of imagination. The capacity of the subject to appreciate the beauty of an object therefore depends on three things: first, on his imaginative capacity; second, on his readiness to respond to the suggestions of the beautiful object; third, on his capacity to dismiss from his mind any practical concern with the object, any concern with his own particular desires, with truth and reality or even with moral interests, and to allow the aesthetic object to have its own way with his imaginative responses. Thus we enjoy the beauty of an object [ p. 800 ] to the fullest when we give ourselves up to contemplation of it, losing ourselves in the imaginary world that it creates for us.
Now imagination, we may point out, is an incomplete cognitive activity, yet a very important one. The complete act of constructive thought must begin with the creation of imagery and the weaving of this into significant patterns of thought; but it remains incomplete unless it passes on to test the truth or reality of these patterns by reference to previously known truths or present experienced fact. In aesthetic contemplation, however, we are not concerned with truth or reality, but only with the self-consistency of the web of imagination being woven. Yet nature rewards us for this activity with the joy of aesthetic experience. The reason for this would seem to be that imaginative activity, so long as it is self-consistent, is activity of a kind which contributes to the realization of the fuller values of life in the discovery of truth. No student of the methods of science can fail to recognize the importance of what we call the scientific imagination in the weaving of hypotheses, and thus in the search for knowledge.
These higher types of aesthetic experience are then to be explained as obtained in the exercise of an incomplete but important cognitive activity, the incomplete act of thought which is imagination. But there is a form of cognitive activity, lower than that of thought, which we call perception. And here, too, we can distinguish two stages of operation. The first is the sheer awareness of sensory quality, such as color or sound. This, as Prall emphasizes, can be a very active and intense process. But perception is not complete until we go on to give meaning to this color or sound as indication of the presence and nature of real things. In true and complete perception we never merely perceive green or blue; we perceive green grass or blue sky. However, in aesthetic [ p. 201 ] appreciation, Prall says, the elementary activity of sheer awareness of color quality or tone quality is greatly heightened, while we become less concerned with the realities or objects which the colors or sounds present to us. Then, providing there is an intrinsic harmony within the sensory data presented, the experience is one of beauty, the harmonies being smoothness of line, balance of form, harmony of musical tones and of colors.
Prall here, I think, calls attention to something that is lacking in Collingwood’s account of aesthetic experience; for Collingwood scarcely does justice to our appreciation of sheer sensuous beauty, though his theory is much more nearly adequate than Prall’s if we had to take one theory to the exclusion of the other. They can be brought together by the recognition that in both cases aesthetic experience is seen to rise in the harmonious exercise of an incomplete though valuable cognitive activity, i.e., imagination or incomplete thought, and sensory awareness or incomplete perception. Delight is felt in these activities because, when thus exercised incompletely and for their own sake, they can attain a greater degree of intensity and continuity. But this aesthetic delight is felt only so long as this exercise is not only intense but harmonious.
In much of our aesthetic experience, of course, both sensory appreciation and imaginative activity are at work together, the one helping the other. But it should be noted that the higher forms of aesthetic enjoyment are to be attributed, as in Collingwood’s theory, to the imagination. The weakness of Prall’s theory is shown in his inability to give any satisfactory account of the higher types of beauty, such as that of poetry. Sensory appreciation, we may agree, is an important part of aesthetic experience and can be enjoyed alone and for its own sake, as perhaps it sometimes is in listening to music which has no words and conjures up no pictures. But the most important [ p. 202 ] aspects of the beautiful are those which call into vivid play the activity of imagination.
From this analysis of the nature and conditions of our experience of the beautiful we pass to the question of the place of aesthetic activity in the cultivation of the spiritual life. But it will first be necessary to say something of the general features involved in the growth of character.
Character consists of an organization of habits and sentiments which overlays the native endowment of impulsive tendencies. But habits are more than mere motor reactions of the conditioned reflex type. Or rather, such motor habits exist but explain only the skill with which an action is performed, not the motive which prompts the action. Habit, in the sense of an acquired motive, is due to the acquirement of meaning on the part of the object, especially the attribution of values to the object. The burned child avoids the fire, or at least approaches it more cautiously, because the fire has come to mean for it " something that burns.” It is because objects acquire meaning for us in this way that we build up our habitual reaction-tendencies in relation to all the familiar things of our world. And it should be noticed that we respond to an object in accord with its acquired meaning without needing explicitly to recall that meaning; e.g., we avoid stepping into water because we know it is wet, although we do not need to think of that fact explicitly in order for its known meaning to affect our reaction. Thus we step aside from the puddle without thinking of the wetness and yet we are perfectly sure that the reason why we stepped aside is because we know that water is wet. Similarly a host of objects have for us acquired meanings of which we rarely stop to think, and which we would probably find difficult to recall, but which nevertheless affect our conduct in regard [ p. 203 ] to them. This is so in all our normal behavior as well as in those abnormal cases where certain elements of meaning attributed to an object are repressed.
Character, however, consists not only in habits, but in something of a more far-reaching nature which many psychologists, following A. F. Shand, call “sentiments.” These are love, hate, and respect.,[20] They are usually regarded as merely very complex types of habit, but seem to me to be better explicable, along lines suggested by William James, as due to the development of the idea of the self. Habits depend on the acquirement of meaning on the part of objects. Sentiments are due to acquirement of meaning on the part of self. It was a very valuable insight of the great Harvard psychologist, much neglected by the stimulus-response theorists, that the idea of the self tends to enlarge to include other persons within it. We grow to identify ourselves with others so that their pleasures are our pleasures, their pains our pains, their triumphs and their shame ours too. For such others we seek good as we do for ourselves; we fear and fight against their evil as we do our own. They are our larger self, and at our best we put our larger self before our narrower self.
This enlargement of the self to gather others into it is the ground of the attitude we commonly call “love.” It is distinctly a growth of meaning in the idea of the self. Its antithesis is hatred — a development in which a person comes to think of himself as a being whose good is wrought by another’s pain or suffering, and one to whom it is an ill that a certain other person should have cause to rejoice. Hatred is too sweeping to be explained, like a habit, as merely the growth of a certain meaning attached to the other person. When a hatred is formed it is the hater’s own idea of himself that has changed. Yet another feature of our typical attitudes is that of respect. This too is sentiment rather than habit, [ p. 204 ] in that it depends on the development of the idea of the self. We learn to attach to ourselves certain ideas of rank and worth in various scales of value, and we attach similar ideas to others. Respect is the valuation of a self (our own or another) as having the rank or scale of worth it ought to have, or the valuation of some other self as having great worth in comparison to our own. That evaluation of one’s own worth which we call self-respect is of very great importance for character.
Now this growth of meaning, on the part of both external objects and the self, depends upon experience. But “experience” is a broad term. For our purposes here we may recognize three types: (a) experience in actual relation with persons and things: (b) the experience of hearing things talked about (and hearing ourselves talked about) in a way which suggests to our minds that those things possess certain qualities or that we ourselves possess certain qualities; © imaginative experience. Experience in the first sense, which we may distinguish as experience proper, is, of course, the greatest of all teachers and tends most strongly and vividly to affect the meanings which we give to things and the development of the idea of the self. Yet the range of this type of experience is very limited compared to that of the other two, to which we must, therefore, pay more particular attention.
The second type of experience we may call hearsay or, better, suggestion. It is really extraordinary how habitual attitudes are instilled into people by the mere fact that certain ideas are constantly suggested to them. The power of sheer constant repetition of an idea is well recognized by advertisers, who make great use of it as a means of cultivating the habits of their customers. When the suggestions come from persons and institutions of high prestige, such as school and teacher, church and minister, they are very powerful. Yet [ p. 205 ] attitudes (whether habit or sentiment) which have been cultivated by suggestion can be unmade by suggestion. Everyone knows how readily the moral and religious attitudes of a young person, instilled by careful and constant suggestion in the home and the home church, can be broken down by countersuggestion when the young person goes away from the home environment to college or to a job in another town or city. The, trouble with the attitudes formed in this way is that the values which the person has been taught to attribute to the objects concerned have not been personally felt; they have formed no part of actual lived experience. Further, suggestion, while it can cultivate habits and form sentiments of respect, can do little to formulate the great sentiments of love and loyalty which are the most powerful and far-reaching elements in formed character. Love and loyalty grow only with the activity of the self, especially in actually living through the experiences in which it performs the deeds of love and loyalty. Likewise, any real strength of habit, against the influences of countersuggestion, comes only when the original formative suggestions are in some way frequently acted out. The problem of cultivating the higher loves and loyalties and finer habits of life in any strength is therefore that of finding spheres of action in which they can be displayed and their values actually felt.
It is here that the third type of experience comes to our aid. That which we cannot live through and experience in actuality we often can go through in imagination; and if the imagination be sufficiently strongly cultivated the values concerned can be very deeply felt and a strong impression made. The power of suggestion is therefore greatly intensified if it can stir the imagination. It is here that the fine arts come to our aid in the building of character. The effect of a work of art is to stimulate the imagination. It lures us to give ourselves up to the influence of its suggestions, to fly with [ p. 206 ] it into a world of imagination and live, with its own peculiar type of reality, in a new world, thinking the thoughts of the artist, entering into the experience of other minds, discovering and feeling for ourselves the values involved in experiences and activities that have never been ours in actual life. It stimulates us into an intensity of activity in living these strange experiences through, though it is only the activity of imagination. And it rewards us for this activity with the experience of the beautiful. But if the imaginary world into which we have thus entered be one of high and holy thoughts, of lofty deeds and fine resolves nobly executed, then it rewards us with something else as well. Because we have been made to feel for ourselves the glory of a high devotion, even though it has been only in imagination, those ideals take a stronger grip upon us. Art has enabled us to see their reality.
This is the function of art in religion. And to produce this effect in the community is one of the prime purposes of the public services of the church. It is not the only purpose. Combined with it are those of instruction and devotion, public pledge and witness, mutual support and fellowship. Nor is art the only medium. There is power in the silence of a Quaker meeting. There is virtue in the logic of sound discourse. It is in the combination of all these things in ways empirically found most helpful by different groups of people that the common religious life can best be cultivated. Nor must private meditation and devotion be neglected. There are few, however, who have the energy to maintain a private religious culture without the public. Above all, the nurture of the religious life of youth can be maintained only in the religious community, for religious growth is a process of social orientation. Thus it is true not only that the great society needs the religious devotion of the individual, but also that the religious life of the individual needs that of the religious community.
A. C. McGiffert: The Apostles’ Creed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902) . ↩︎
For an excellent account of this movement see W. M. Horton: Theism and the Modern Mood (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930) . ↩︎
Jas. 2:17-20. ↩︎
Heb. 11:1. ↩︎
For a sympathetic account of this movement see Adolph Keller: Karl Barth and Christian Unity (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1933) . ↩︎
A Common Faith, especially pp. So-Sy. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 81. ↩︎
I use this term in the technical sense defined by R. M. Mclver: Community (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1928) , chap. 2 and p. 155. It is “a body of social beings as organised for the pursuit of some common interest or interests.” As such it is distinguished from mere community,” the common life of social beings,” and from an institution, which is merely” an established form of relation between social beings.” ↩︎
Chap. 11, ↩︎
The great difference in strength of concrete and abstract sentiments is well brought out by W. McDougall: An Introduction to Social Psychology (rev. ed.; Boston: John W. Luce & Co., 1927) . ↩︎
The request for a brief creedal statement prior to baptism in Acts 8:37 is a late interpolation. ↩︎
Cf. McGiffert: The God of the Early Christians (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924) . It is here shown that there was no clear and consolidated opinion in the early church even on such important doctrines as the unity of God and the divinity of Christ. ↩︎
As a practical program this must, of course, begin with the liberal religious groups working out their own problems of unity and adopting a positive and vigorous program. By their active work and example of fraternal recognition of all other religious groups the spirit of unity and freedom would be spread. ↩︎
For example, see C. G. Montefiore: Liberal Judaism (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903) ; also Synoptic Gospels (rev. ed., 2 vols.; Macmillan, 1927) , especially II, 594. ↩︎
It is not arrogant for Christians to hope that the Christian religious brotherhood may become all-embracing. Brotherhood is a personal relationship and it must find its center of unity in loyalty to a common leader. No metaphysical conception, such as the idea of God, will suffice. No succession of contemporaries could attain the required prestige. And no historic personage could fill the role except Christ. Outside of Asia his place is already acknowledged. and he is gaining increasing recognition in that, his own, continent. The development of a new loyalty to Christ as religious leader of the world would not involve any disloyalty to teachers such as Mohammed, Confucius and Gautama. It would be incompatible only with religions that are narrowly nationalistic or otherwise exclusive. ↩︎
A Common Faith , p. 8i. ↩︎
D. W. Prall: Aesthetic Judgment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1929) . ↩︎
R. G. Collingwood: Outlines of a Philosophy of Art (New Yoik: Oxford University Press, 1925) . ↩︎
See my Reality and Value (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1937) » chap. 10. ↩︎
For a fuller discussion c£. my The Mind in Action, chap. 6. ↩︎