Part 14

There must be a clearer recognition of the things in the Christian faith which are of vital significance. The really great truths must be seen in their proper perspective. The simplicity of the Gospel must be increasingly recognized. We have too often elevated relatively subordinate convictions to an equality with the fundamentals of the faith. In this clearer perception of proportions the experiences of the religious work of the war is greatly aiding. We are seeing that in the Christian life we need not so many things as much.

No less necessary is it that a spirit ready to sacrifice the important, but relatively subordinate, be developed. No denomination is called upon to sacrifice alone. If unity is to be achieved, each must feel a willingness to subordinate that which though precious by custom or antiquity or cherished possession is yet divisive.

Even more imperative is it that American religious bodies know each other better. Existing side by side, laboring in the same communities, it is amazing how little real comprehension of each other's spiritual life now exists. In mutual acquaintance by common association, wherever such intercourse can be brought about, lies the corrective of much present misunderstanding that separates us. All that aids a common acquaintance is an aid to ultimate unity.

The consideration just mentioned makes it probable that the most promising present step is in the direction of federal cooperation. Religious bodies that are far from willing to sink their present differences may yet work in harmony, and by working together increase that mutual understanding and thereby confidence in each other's Christian spirit which is so essential a preliminary to unity. That is what makes the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ and similar movements eminently worthy of support. They are not ends in themselves. They are means of utmost significance to a larger end.

The war is showing a vision of our need and of the goal of our effort. That the road to a larger and more effective unity of the religious forces of America is full of difficulties is no reason why a Christian man should hesitate to tread it. It is as true now as when the Master said it, that "with God all things are possible."

X

THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF WORLD RE-ORGANIZATION[1]

E. HERSHEY SNEATH

When we reflect upon the situation of the race today, with the leading nations in the throes of a war of unparalleled dimensions and destructiveness, we are appalled at the impotency of those forces that heretofore have tended toward world-organization. Time was when international treaties and laws seemed to have at least a semblance of inhibiting sanctity, but in recent years they are regarded in certain quarters as mere "scraps of paper," and the supposed "rights" of nations are treated with scorn and contempt. The black flag of piracy, hitherto regarded as the symbol of international outlawry, floats on the high seas, and the assassination of neutrals and noncombatants is regarded by some as a national virtue. For centuries humane considerations obtained with reference to prisoners of war and to partially conquered nations. Now, certain nations have substituted for such humanitarianism, outrage, brutality and enforced slavery. In short, international pact and law seem to have broken down. Their restraints have yielded to the unbridled force of national greed and lust for power.

Again, in the past, the moral imperatives, independent of political treaties and laws, have exercised a wholesome constraining and restraining influence on the relations of different peoples, and have made for fraternal world-organization. Man is constitutionally a moral being, and is, to a certain extent, governed by sentiments of justice and benevolence. These moral elements of our nature have led us to have regard for man as man, rather than for men as members of particular nations and races. Hence, in our interaction there has been a tendency to recognize and respect what we have been wont to call human rights as growing out of the essential constitution of personality. The same tendency has characterized our attitude toward men organized under political government. But alas! these fundamental moral claims are now flagrantly violated. The morally right has, with some nations, degenerated into the right of might.

Again, in the past, art has made for the unification of the race. The aesthetic consciousness is on the side of harmony. It hates chaos and loves order. It functions in the social and political spheres and tends toward unity rather than anarchy--toward peace rather than war. "Art binds together and unites the members of the nation; nay, all the members of a sphere of civilization; all those who have the same faith and the same ideals. Opinions and interests differ and produce discord; art presents in sensuous symbols the ideals which are cherished by all, and so arouses the feeling that all are, in the last analysis, of the same mind, that all recognize and adore the same ultimate and highest things."[2] When we deal with the ideal we are dealing with the universal. Thus art transcends both individualism and nationalism. It contributes toward international good will. But how ineffective it has proven along these lines during the last few tragic years. One of the first great outrages of the war was the wanton bombardment of the beautiful Rheims cathedral. The world protested against this iconoclasm, but it continued. Vandalism and robbing nations of their art treasures are features of _Kultur_; so the breach between nations widens despite the supposed unifying power of art. The nation of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Wagner grips with mailed fist the throat of the nation of Michelangelo, Titian, Da Vinci, Correggio and Raphael, and tries to strangle the nation of David, Delacroix and Millet. The nation of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller schools its children in a gospel of hate toward the nation of Shakespeare and Milton and a long line of glorious poets from Chaucer to Browning. The refining and organizing influences of art have given way to the brutal instincts of malevolence and greed, and a lofty idealism that bound the nations together in a golden chain of beauty finds the precious chain rudely broken. Art, like the other binding forces, has apparently failed in its work of unification.

Another force that has been operative in world-organization is religion, and especially the Christian religion. With its proclamation of the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man; with the law of love as its law of social interaction; with its "Go ye into all the world and preach my gospel"--a gospel of universal membership in a kingdom of supreme values--in which every member is on a moral equality with his neighbor--the Christian religion has been promotive of a spirit of good will among men, and of harmony among the nations. But what is the case today? A nominally Christian nation joins bloody hands with a traditionally murderous nation of Mohammedan faith in wholesale assassination of one of the most ancient Christian peoples, and attempts to incite the Moslem world to warfare against nations of Christian faith, merely to enhance her own selfish interests. Furthermore, in the present crisis we find Christian nation arrayed against Christian nation: Protestant against Protestant; Catholic against Catholic; Protestant and Catholic united against Protestant and Catholic. Peoples in whose ears for centuries have rung the glad tidings of "peace on earth, good will toward men" are today gripping one another in mortal combat. The star of the East that, according to the story, guided the Wise Men to the manger of the Prince of Peace seems to have lost its radiance and directing power. Never since the star is said to have shone were men apparently farther from beating their swords into plow-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. The unifying power of him whose life illustrated even better than his parable of the Good Samaritan the highest law of human relationship is not in evidence today. Where is the power of that cross, the vision of which carried with it still another vision of a world attracted to, and unified by, the power of self-sacrificing love--"And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me"? Is the power of sacrificial love drawing the hearts of men and of nations together in the fellowship of Jesus Christ? Are not the dominant forces operating today centrifugal rather than centripetal? It is not the skeptic, or cynic, or pessimist, who asks these questions. They are the questions of thousands of earnest men and women who face the supreme crisis of human history. They bring home to us the fact that religion, even in its highest form, like international law, like morality, like art, however promotive of human brotherhood it has been, has failed in this most crucial test to prevent the dreadful work of the destructive forces of mankind. This is a fact that the sincere believer in religion must face whether he wants to or not.

In view of the failure of all of these more or less harmonizing and synthesizing forces to prevent such a gigantic war, what are we to say about world-organization after the conflict? Nations must live and sustain relations to one another. They must establish some _modus vivendi_, and it must be founded on justice. The necessity of righteousness and good will in international relations has been made more apparent than ever by this most tragic conflict. And the question arises: What organized forces are to establish such righteousness and good will among the nations? We must depend upon the very same forces that have been operative in the past; that is, upon international law, morality, art and religion, but they must be made more effective. How this may be done in the case of religion it is the aim of this paper to try to explain.

In the first place, if religion is to become powerfully effective in this direction, it must take a really ethical view of God. He must be regarded as essentially moral in his constitution; as ruling in absolute righteousness, and a being whose ultimate aim with reference to men and the world is the realization of a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness is to dwell. Much as believers in religion have said on this subject, the conceptions of many as expressed in belief and conduct have contradicted their words. When the nation of Martin Luther, including not merely the docile masses, but the spiritually enslaved clergy and servile university professors,[3] among whom may be numbered such religious leaders as Harnack, can accept and pray for the success of the war program of a ruler who regards himself to be the vicegerent of the Almighty, cooperating with him in a scientifically organized movement for the triumph of the most diabolical forces the human race has ever witnessed--approving the vices of hell as though they were the virtues of heaven--this nominally Christian nation is either guilty of awful blasphemy or it has lost its vision of an ethical God. Such a conception of the Deity proves divisive rather than unifying. It recognizes merely a partisan tribal Deity who cooperates with a people to realize its own ends, however unworthy and debasing those ends may be. Its influence is promotive of national selfishness, and makes against a brotherhood of nations. Professor Leuba speaks of the utilitarian ends for which men believe in God--making him hardly more than a meat purveyor;[4] but the German conception of God is much crasser than this.[5] "_Gott mit uns_" is a God that is asked and believed to cooperate in the most damnable atrocities the human mind ever conceived in order to further low national aims.

Now, there is an important psychology here that we must reckon with. Professor Stratton, in his work on "The Psychology of the Religious Life," calls attention to the fact that religion breeds conflict, it gives birth to opposites or antitheses, and he devotes nearly the entire volume to a consideration of these conflicts. In one of his most interesting chapters[6] he points out the fact that religion is productive of both breadth and narrowness of sympathy, of both social and anti-social feelings, of both egoism and altruism. He illustrates this in pointing out the exclusiveness of some religions, such as that of the Jews, and of the catholicity of others, such as Buddhism and Christianity. He points out, also, the jealousy and intolerance of the monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, as compared with polytheistic religions, like Buddhism. The former, like Elijah, are very jealous for their Lord, and such jealousy breeds narrowness and intolerance. It breeds exclusiveness, strife and often persecution. Now most of the conflict between narrowness and breadth of sympathy to which religion gives rise is due to wrong conceptions of the ethical nature of God. This manifests itself in many ways. God is conceived as a God of one people, rather than of others; or of one people particularly and peculiarly, and of other peoples merely generally; or a God choosing and rewarding the elect and damning the non-elect; or a God favoring only one mode of salvation peculiar to a certain people or sect, and hostile to all others; or a God of one revelation rather than of another. In short, God is a God of favoritism instead of the impartial God and father of all mankind. Such a God is not a God of justice, much less of love. Such a conception is productive of division, rather than of unity in the race. It begets strife, rather than harmony. Witness the religious wars that history records. Witness, for example, the history of the conflict between Mohammedanism and Christianity; between Protestantism and Catholicism. As a rule, religion is so involved in the life of a people that it becomes an integral part of their nationalism. Historians call attention to the fact that the monotheism of the Jews was largely the outgrowth of reflection upon their own history as a people. They saw in this history a Divinity that had shaped their ends, however roughhewn they may have been. They regarded themselves a "peculiar" people, specially chosen of God. For more than a century a similar belief prevailed in America. Our wonderful history led people to believe that we are a favored nation. God's providential government reveals a partiality for America when compared with other nations. With such conceptions of a partial God, it is but a short step to making use of God for national ends, and, as illustrated in the case of the German nation today, only another step to conceiving God's willingness to cooperate in realizing ends which, in the judgment of the world, as expressed in international law, as well as in its own unwritten verdict, are regarded as unrighteous. Until the God of the race supersedes in actual belief and practice the God of nationalism; until the God and father of all mankind displaces in our belief the God of sect or of one religion rather than of another; until the God of absolute and universal righteousness takes the place in our minds and hearts of the God of partiality and favoritism, which is the God of injustice; men and nations will not be bound together in one great and glorious fraternity. The root idea of religion is the idea of God, and as is our idea of God, so will our religious life be. If it is the idea of an unrighteous Deity, our individual, national and international life will be unrighteous. A fundamental necessity in the determination of the religious basis of world-organization is an ethical conception of God.

In the second place, in our religious efforts at world-organization we must entertain and put in practice a far more ethical conception of man than we have in the past. The inalienable rights of personality must be recognized and their sanctity remain inviolable. That valuation which Christianity places on man as man must be seriously reckoned with in our reconstructive efforts after the war. Or, as Kant states it, every man must be regarded as an end in himself. He must not be used merely as a means to an end. The significance of this is, that there is an essential moral equality among men. On it all political relations, whether national or international, must be based. This means, first, that within each nation a true form of government, under whatsoever name it may be known, must be democratic. "It must derive its authority and power from the consent of the governed." Autocracy is opposed to moral and political equality. It treats its subjects as tools or instruments. It builds governments of force that ignore the moral and political claims of their own people, reducing them to a docility in which they are little more than "dumb driven cattle." Thus subjugated, they are schooled from childhood in a creed of jealousy and hatred of other nations. They can be hurled in masses "into the jaws of Death" in an unrighteous war of conquest. Autocracy is upheld by militarism, and militarism means strife. On the other hand, militarism is upheld by autocracy. It first robs the people of its own nation of their rights and then proceeds to plunder other nations. It is essentially anti-social in character, and it is so because it is anti-moral. It overlooks the moral equality of men. The religion of the future must set its face like flint against this immoral view of man. It must emphasize the autonomy of the human spirit--the essential value of a soul that can determine its own conduct in the light of ideals of worth. Once it does this, democracy will assert itself in government, and autocracy, responsible for so many of the wars that have afflicted the race, will be abolished.

In the next place, this essential moral equality of men, when recognized, means that their mutual relations will become more ethically articulate, and the law of social interaction will be at least the law of justice, and in a measure the law of love,--"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,"--which being interpreted means, that just as one is under obligations to labor for the realization of the highest good in one's own person, so he is under obligations to work for the realization of the highest good in the person of others. And this highest law of human relationship must be recognized, not merely as obligatory upon individuals in their relations to other individuals, but also upon nations in their mutual relations. Morality is transcendental in its character. It overleaps the bounds of individualism. It knows not men merely, nor nations merely, nor groups of nations merely;--it knows the race. It knows man, rather than men. It is difficult for us to realize this. Just as it was hard for primitive tribes to realize any obligations to other tribes, so today, notwithstanding centuries of so-called civilization, somehow or other an international morality fails to have the binding force either of personal, community, or national morality. The righteousness that exalts a people seems largely to be a righteousness within its own borders. Egoism in a nation is just as blameworthy as egoism in an individual. In the vast group of nations, no nation liveth unto itself alone, if it is to live according to the moral law of benevolence, or according to the Christian law of love. The religion of the future must, in its practical belief, emphasize this fact far more than it has in the past. Nations are simply larger human units, and the moral law in its obligations applies just as truly to their interrelations as it does to those of individuals. Its demands are no more Utopian in the former case than in the latter. It can at least serve as an ideal or guide to conduct. As in the case of individuals, so in the case of nations, each has its rights, and in their mutual relations the moral law or the law of love requires the recognition of the rights or just claims of each. As President Wilson said in his memorable message to Congress on April 2, 1917: "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among individuals of civilized states." And again: "It is clear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals." Of course the cynical political philosopher and "practical" stateman will regard this as "unpractical idealism." But the ethics of the Nazarene will prove far more effective in promoting a satisfactory _modus vivendi_ among the nations than the revived Machiavellianism of modern Germany, or the ethics of a Nietzsche, a Treitschke, and a Bernhardi. We see the inevitable outcome of the latter in the most ghastly war of all history. There never will be peace on such a brutally egoistic basis as that laid down in the political philosophy of these writers so prized by many Germans. The doctrines of the superman with their contempt for the weak, and of war as a "biological necessity," so dear to Junkerdom, are confessedly the affirmation that "might makes right." If peace be attainable and preservable on such a basis, and the lion and the lamb are to lie down together, it will only be as the lamb lies inside of the lion. Some lamb-like pacifists and "conscientious objectors" to war may be content with such a place of residence; but physically and morally red-blooded and self-respecting men and nations not only prefer, but feel it a moral obligation to maintain the individual and national self against an unscrupulous and barbarous aggressor and destroyer. They feel so, too, in obedience to the Christian command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"--a command that not only includes self as the object of moral regard, but that makes it the norm according to which we are to determine our duty to others. Men and nations do feel morally responsible for their own preservation and development, and will, as a rule, defend the essential conditions of these against unjustifiable attack. Hence, as long as nations exist, war will remain a possibility. The only way to avert it is through mutual respect for fundamental rights. Both the law of benevolence and the Christian law of love demand this. Indeed, they demand more! They call for a manifestation or fuller expression of good will and fraternal regard both in feeling and in conduct.

Now, in the work of establishing a real brotherhood among individuals and among nations, religion has the advantage over mere morality, for it can avail itself of the power of the religious sanctions in trying to realize the kingdom of righteousness. But, on the other hand, a subtle danger lurks in religion which it may be well to point out here, and which must be guarded against in our future efforts at community, national and world-organization, for it tends to subordinate the ethical element in religion, and often degenerates into an anti-social program. According to the sanest views of the psychology of religion, the whole mind as intellect, sensibility and will functions in the religious consciousness. Because of this, there is a possibility of developing a wrong sense of values in the religious life. There has been a notable tendency in human history to stress the intellectual element in religion. This has resulted in a large body of doctrine which frequently assumes extraordinary significance. The main thing, then, is to give intellectual assent to dogma and creed. Orthodoxy of belief rather than orthodoxy of life becomes the primary thing. The ethical element in religion is subordinated to intellectual belief. And how divisive and anti-social, rather than unifying, dogma has been, and how deadening to real moral endeavor! This constitutes a long and very tragic chapter in the history of Christianity, as well as of other religions.