[ p. 258 ]
Partisan loyalty is one of the easiest and cheapest virtues to acquire in any realm, and in religion, as our denominational situation long has shown, it is so cheap and easy that in its results it is hardly distinguishable from vice. Just now some of its unhappy consequences are seen in the strained relations between the fundamentalists and modernists. Men are reluctantly but, under present conditions, quite inevitably being forced into one group or the other. ‘Then, wearing a tag, they must display it; following a banner, they must be true to it; their party becomes a ‘cause’; and at last they achieve the summum bonum of all partisanship—the ability to believe everything evil about the other side and everything good about their own. Half of our fiery controversies would die out for lack of fuel if it were not for that sort of partisanship. In the present juncture of religious affairs, in particular, few things are more needed than fundamentalists [ p. 259 ] with some honest doubts about fundamentalism and modernists with some searching misgivings about modernism.
One of our leading American liberals has recently summed up the present situation as a division between “arid liberalism” and “acrid Iiteralism.” The trouble with that statement is that there is so much uncomfortable truth in it. Modernists are naturally alive to the reprehensible qualities of the “acrid literalism” which is alienating large areas of intelligent youth from Christianity; but one of the most beneficent enterprises in which any modernist can now engage is the painstaking and perhaps painful facing of his own party’s glaring faults —and, above all, the notorious spiritual aridity of some of our liberalism.
The perils into which modernism commonly runs are inevitably associated with the sources from which it springs. For one thing, the liberal movement in religion is a protest against the fundamentalist assault upon intelligence. That assault is real and dangerous. If it should succeed it would bring on a twentieth-century replica of the dark ages in religion. In Geneva, Switzerland, I recently read in one [ p. 260 ] of the leading journals of the city an article on the situation in America, in which the public was informed that the fundamentalists had “succeeded in prohibiting in all the universities and schools of the state of New York the teaching of the theories of Hinstein.” Doubtless, that is a mere journalistic inference from our experiment in Tennessee, but it does help an American to feel the shocked amazement with which the intelligence of the rest of the world regards our present orgy of medievalism. Modernism feels acutely the danger of this situation, sees clearly—as it began to see long before this present crisis came—that the divorce of religion from intelligence is fatal to religion. The application of historical methods to the understanding of the Bible, painstaking, unprejudiced research into the development of Christianity and its institutions, the sympathetic study of other religions, hospitality to modern science even when that means discarding old forms of thought, the restatement of religious experience in terms of new views of the world, the endeavor to apply Christian principles to contemporary social situations— all these typical activities of modernism spring [ p. 261 ] from the desire to preserve a cordial alliance between religion and intelligence.
That this alliance must be fought for if we are not to lose it seems clear, and the fundamentalists have no one but themselves to blame for the insistence with which modernists force the issue. A short time ago in New York, a prominent fundamentalist brought a mass meeting of his fellows to tumultuous cheers by the climactic assertion, “I would rather have my son learn his A B C’s in heaven than know his Greek in hell.”” Well, who wouldn’t? But why the dilemma? Why this constant intimation that education and Christianity are incompatible? It was not a small man, but the most towering fundamentalist figure of this generation, who insisted before thousands of audiences from coast to coast that it was more important to know the Rock of Ages than the ages of the rock. Who doubts it? But why the contrast? Why this tireless insinuation that an intelligent man who knows the ages of the rock cannot know the Rock of Ages too? The nemesis of this sort of thing is already upon us in many of our youth who believe what they are being told and, not willing [ p. 262 ] to forswear intelligence, are surrendering Christianity.
This, then, is one of the major origins of modernism. It takes up the cudgels for intelligence in religion. ‘The central interest of many a modernist minister more and more gathers at that point. In his idealistic and spiritually minded: youth his dominant ambition in religion may have been to keep fellowship with God and be a channel for new life to men, but now it gravitates increasingly toward one end—he does wish to stand for modern intelligence in his community. And there, where one of his greatest virtues lies, is also his pitfall. A fundamentalist minister who, with all his fundamentalism, loves men and is centrally interested in the inward life which men live with God and their own consciences, will do much more good than a modernist who, in desperately trying to be modern, forgets what religion is all about.
Here arises that “arid liberalism” which, after all, is fundamentalism’s best friend. Becoming a modernist because he believes that real religion and the scientific view of the world are not incompatible, a man proceeds diligently [ p. 263 ] and zealously to set forth the scientific view of the world, as though, if people would only believe in evolution, the reign of law, the new psychology, the historical method of dealing with sacred literatures, and other such matrices of modern thought, religion would be safely preserved for the future generations. But that is a foolish reliance. Such mental frameworks, whether old or new, are not the deep springs from which religion rises in the human heart. St. Francis of Assisi had world-views that any child in a grammar school could easily correct, but that did not prevent his being a glorious saint, and many a modern man is as up-to-date as the last news from the laboratory can make him but that does not prevent his being an abysmal pagan.
Indeed, one can push this statement farther. The fundamentalists are right in thinking that assiduously acquired knowledge is often a positive burden on spontaneous, creative, spiritual life. That is a startling statement of Ruskin that “Raphael painted best when he knew least.” Take it with a grain of salt, as one must generally take Ruskin’s sweeping aphorisms, but, for all that, truth is there. After his pp264 glorious early work Raphael nearly ruined himself trying to imitate Michelangelo and acquire the latest Renaissance style. If by ‘knowing’ one means his strenuous endeavor to acquire the mode of Renaissance Rome, then it is true that Raphael did paint best when he knew least.
That sort of thing is true of many a liberal preacher. He is so anxious to be rational that he forgets to be religious. For religion is not created, saved, nor propagated by the rationality of its thought-forms, much as that ought to help. Religion’s central and unique property is power to release faith and courage for living, to produce spiritual vitality and fruitfulness; and by that it ultimately stands or falls. That is the bread which man’s hunger tirelessly seeks in religion and will accept in every conceivable form of thought, from Roman Catholic veneration of the saints to the metaphysics of Mrs. Eddy. If as modernists we believe that we have rational world-views as vehicles for our faith, well and good. I agree. Moreover, we must not trim about the matter and, if need be, must fight for liberty within the churches to think the priceless experiences [ p. 265 ] of religion through in terms that modern-minded people comprehend. But to rely on our mere modernism for the furtherance of vital religion, with which we should be preéminently concerned, is absurd. The issue of that is desiccation and barrenness. Liberal Christianity will never win the day merely because it is intelligent but because, being intelligent, it proves able in this new generation to inspire ardent faith in God, open men’s lives to his sustaining companionship, make Christ and all that he stands for the burning center of imagination and devotion, release men from the tyranny of fear, sickness, and sin, create robust, serviceable character, transform social, economic, international life, produce saints, martyrs, prophets, and apostles worthy to stand in the succession of those long acknowledged by the Church Universal.
Such is the test of any Christianity, and modernism need expect no special favors. Our chief enemy is not “acrid literalism.” That — cannot last. The stars in their courses fight against that Sisera. Our chief enemy is “arid liberalism.”
[ p. 266 ]
Modernism has another origin in profound dissatisfaction with the present denominational situation. The nearly two hundred sects into which the Christian movement in America is to-day divided present a spectacle at once so pathetic and so ridiculous that Christian people who deeply care about the fortunes of religion cannot be expected to be silent. To be sure, it is easy in general to defend denominationalism. Are not differences of opinion inevitable? Are not political parties and schools of medicine diverse and various? Why, then, expect religion to exhibit a tranquil, undifferentiated unity?
That sort of generality, however, misses the real issue. Nobody should expect that any magic of Christian charity or comprehensive organization will subdue the diversities of religious thought and bring in an era of theological and ecclesiastical unanimity. If for a day such a heavenly consequence could be achieved, the next morning would see the trouble start again —the placid surface of artificial unity would [ p. 267 ] crack into new fissures. As far ahead as we can see there will be denominations.
What has that to do, however, with the defense of these existent sects? Parties in politics, medicine, law or religion that represent living issues serve an indispensable function; but parties that represent nothing worthy of serious thought, that persistently endeavor to galvanize into life issues properly dead generations ago, that waste the loyalties of men, crucially needed for large matters, on trivial discriminations of belief and practice which have no consequence one way or another in personal and social character—what can be said in defense of them?
Wearing hooks and eyes but not buttons, being baptized with much water, not with little, excluding preachers, however gifted with prophetic power, who are not ordained in tactual apostolic succession, signing, even though one interpret it to shreds, the Westminster Confession or some other ancient creed as a sine qua non of being a minister, modeling church government on direct rather than representative democracy or vice versa—such matters underlie most of our present divisions. Will [ p. 268 ] some one please rise up to explain just what pertinent relationship these things have to the deep spiritual needs of men and the moral welfare of the nation?
Not all who feel the shame of this situation are modernists, but all modernists feel the shame of this situation. It is one of the characteristic marks of modernism to care little or nothing for present denominational divisions, to think them negligible, even contemptible, to wonder how intelligent people can be excited over them when such tremendous issues face Christian thought and such challenging causes call for Christian loyalty. Once New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were engaged in bitter tariff disputes, were divided by unappeasable jealousies, and almost came to open war. But now, when the real issue is America’s relationship with the international progress of the world, who would dream of laboriously whipping up old controversies like that in politics?) Yet our denominations are most expensively and deliberately doing just that sort of thing in religion.
Such in general is a typical modernist’s attitude and once more his virtue is likely to be his [ p. 269 ] undoing. For he is always tempted to turn his back on a situation so deplorable. If he is strong enough he may lead a schism, conducting a group of churches out of an old sect— only to face this singular nemesis that, if in this protest against denominationalism he succeeds, he founds a new denomination. Or if he is not strong enough for that, he is likely to become an isolated individualist, like Kipling’s cat “walking by his wild lone,” careless of Christianity’s organized expressions, contemptuous of those now existent, and not statesmanlike enough to plan hopefully for anything better. So out of modernist virtue comes modernist vice, and by another route men who ought to be the hope of the churches land in “arid liberalism.”
The fault in this attitude is primarily lack of insight. There is a great deal more in these old denominations than the trifling peculiarities which ostensibly distinguishthem. Around them and their traditions, their ways of worship, their habits of thought have gathered much of the finest spiritual quality and moral devotion that we have to rely upon. These churches have become more than the items of their creeds [ p. 270 ] and policies that can be reckoned up and counted; they have become to multitudes of people symbols of spiritual life, shrines of household memories and personal loyalty, Their wreck would involve much dependent flower and foliage, well worth preserving, which is growing on them. ‘To forget this is always the temptation of the radical. It was not a preacher but a professor at Columbia who recently commented on those extremists who “combine a singular sense of the literal absurdities of religious forms with a marked insensibility to their symbolic values.” Let modernists take note! It is one thing to recognize that a water-bucket is outmoded; it is another to appreciate that it still may carry living water.
I felt this recently about a form of religious | thought and practice as far as possible removed from my own, when, sitting in a Roman Catholic church, I watched a very young girl trying to teach her still younger brother to say his prayers before the altar. It was an impressive sight. It would have been impressive even if one of Bellini’s glorious madonnas, from above the altar, had not held out a radiant Christ [ p. 271 ] Child to the kneeling children. As it was, one easily could have wept to see symbolized there that deep virtue in Catholicism which Protestantism has so largely lost—prayer from our infancy up as an habitual discipline of the soul, the daily use of the churches for prayer, where rich and poor, old and young, come one by one to renew their fellowship with the surrounding, impinging, friendly, unseen world of saints and angels. : _ Nothing is to be done in this realm by scorn. No one is fit to handle these questions who has not learned the fine art of reverencing other people’s reverences. That is a lesson which impatient modernists need commonly to learn. The liberal movement in Christianity never can expect to arrive at any hopeful conclusion until it thus quits its superciliousness about the churches and, without abating one jot of its conviction about their follies, sets itself resolutely to build out of them the kind of church that this new generation needs. If it can do that it will win. If it cannot do that or refuses to try, it will evaporate. Its vagueness and nebulosity are its chief popular handicaps now; but wherever some church breaks through [ p. 272 ] the exclusive features of its own denominationalism, supersedes them, becomes inclusive of the community’s best spiritual life and so exerts a dynamic force for real Christianity which no right-minded person in the town can gainsay, there liberalism gets a local habitation and a name. That is an argument understood of the people. And to do that requires patience, sympathy, courage, and hard work to a degree that evidently overtaxes the resources of some modernists.
They try an easier road. Ministers and laymen, they quit. From outside any active responsibility for the churches they pour contempt upon the folly of denominations. Or else they try on paper to construct some ideal, theoretical church union, some grandiose scheme of universal creed and comprehensive organization that will include everybody—a method of procedure which, however educational in some of its effects, will never actually work. One way or another, too many modernists are evading the tasks of patient churchmanship in local communities.
The continuance of that means ruin to the liberal cause. There are no short-cuts to great [ p. 273 ] ends. The overpassing of our present ignoble denominationalism and the achievement of inclusive churches which will pave the way for ultimate unity on a larger scale, means tireless, persistent work and experimentation in local fields. Unless modernists see that clearly, the fundamentalists will wipe them off the religious map. The liberals are vehemently critical of the present churches; they are amply justified, but that is not the test. Can they themselves build churches that will meet the needs of this new generation, become shrines of devotion, centers of spiritual inspiration and practical service, worthy, as our children shall see them in retrospect, to be part of the “holy Church throughout all the world”? That is the test.
The sum of the whole matter is this: modernism up to date has been largely a movement of protest and criticism. It has originated in reaction against obscurantist assaults on Christian intelligence and against the continuance of meaningless denominational divisions. It inevitably has the faults of its qualities, but it is high time it recovered from them. If it is to serve any abiding purpose it must passthrough [ p. 274 ] protest to production, through criticism to creation. Whenever it does that, it wins. The most effective Christian churches that I know to-day are manned by liberals. Multiply such and the day is won.