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Urantia Book Paper 99 The Social Problems Of Religion
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 99 The Social Problems Of Religion
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Introduction
RELIGION achieves its highest social ministry when it has least connection with
the secular institutions of society. In past ages, since social reforms were
largely confined to the moral realms, religion did not have to adjust its
attitude to extensive changes in economic and political systems. The chief
problem of religion was the endeavor to replace evil with good within the
existing social order of political and economic culture. Religion has thus
indirectly tended to perpetuate the established order of society, to foster the
maintenance of the existent type of civilization.
But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new
social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose
violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the
intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions
to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.
Religion did approve the occasional social reforms of past centuries, but in
the twentieth century it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to
extensive and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so
rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly accelerated, and
religion must accordingly quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing
social order.
1. RELIGION AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
Mechanical inventions and the dissemination of knowledge are modifying
civilization; certain economic adjustments and social changes are imperative if
cultural disaster is to be avoided. This new and oncoming social order will not
settle down complacently for a millennium. The human race must become
reconciled to a procession of changes, adjustments, and readjustments. Mankind
is on the march toward a new and unrevealed planetary destiny.
Religion must become a forceful influence for moral stability and spiritual
progression functioning dynamically in the midst of these ever-changing
conditions and never-ending economic adjustments.
Urantia society can never hope to settle down as in past ages. The social ship
has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established tradition and has begun
its cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny; and the soul of man, as
never before in the world's history, needs carefully to scrutinize its charts
of morality and painstakingly to observe the compass of religious guidance. The
paramount mission of religion as a social influence is to stabilize the ideals
of mankind during these dangerous times of transition from one phase of
civilization to another, from one level of culture to another.
top of page - 1087
Religion has no new duties to perform, but it is urgently called upon to
function as a wise guide and experienced counselor in all of these new and
rapidly changing human situations. Society is becoming more mechanical, more
compact, more complex, and more critically interdependent. Religion must
function to prevent these new and intimate interassociations from becoming
mutually retrogressive or even destructive. Religion must act as the cosmic
salt which prevents the ferments of progression from destroying the cultural
savor of civilization. These new social relations and economic upheavals can
result in lasting brotherhood only by the ministry of religion.
A godless humanitarianism is, humanly speaking, a noble gesture, but true
religion is the only power which can lastingly increase the responsiveness of
one social group to the needs and sufferings of other groups. In the past,
institutional religion could remain passive while the upper strata of society
turned a deaf ear to the sufferings and oppression of the helpless lower
strata, but in modern times these lower social orders are no longer so abjectly
ignorant nor so politically helpless.
Religion must not become organically involved in the secular work of social
reconstruction and economic reorganization. But it must actively keep pace with
all these advances in civilization by making clear-cut and vigorous
restatements of its moral mandates and spiritual precepts, its progressive
philosophy of human living and transcendent survival. The spirit of religion is
eternal, but the form of its expression must be restated every time the
dictionary of human language is revised.
2. WEAKNESS OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
Institutional religion cannot afford inspiration and provide leadership in this
impending world-wide social reconstruction and economic reorganization because
it has unfortunately become more or less of an organic part of the social order
and the economic system which is destined to undergo reconstruction. Only the
real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and
creatively in the present crisis of civilization.
Institutional religion is now caught in the stalemate of a vicious circle. It
cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself; and being so
much an integral part of the established order, it cannot reconstruct itself
until society has been radically reconstructed.
Religionists must function in society, in industry, and in politics as
individuals, not as groups, parties, or institutions. A religious group which
presumes to function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately
becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social institution.
Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to the furtherance of religious
causes.
Religionists are of no more value in the tasks of social reconstruction than
nonreligionists except in so far as their religion has conferred upon them
enhanced cosmic foresight and endowed them with that superior social wisdom
which is born of the sincere desire to love God supremely and to love every man
as a brother in the heavenly kingdom. An ideal social order is that in which
every man loves his neighbor as he loves himself.
The institutionalized church may have appeared to serve society in the past by
glorifying the established political and economic orders, but it must speedily
top of page - 1088
cease such action if it is to survive. Its only proper attitude consists in the
teaching of nonviolence, the doctrine of peaceful evolution in the place of
violent revolution--peace on earth and good will among all men.
Modern religion finds it difficult to adjust its attitude toward the rapidly
shifting social changes only because it has permitted itself to become so
thoroughly traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. The religion of
living experience finds no difficulty in keeping ahead of all these social
developments and economic upheavals, amid which it ever functions as a moral
stabilizer, social guide, and spiritual pilot. True religion carries over from
one age to another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of the
experience of knowing God and striving to be like him.
3. RELIGION AND THE RELIGIONIST
Early Christianity was entirely free from all civil entanglements, social
commitments, and economic alliances. Only did later institutionalized
Christianity become an organic part of the political and social structure of
Occidental civilization.
The kingdom of heaven is neither a social nor economic order; it is an
exclusively spiritual brotherhood of God-knowing individuals. True, such a
brotherhood is in itself a new and amazing social phenomenon attended by
astounding political and economic repercussions.
The religionist is not unsympathetic with social suffering, not unmindful of
civil injustice, not insulated from economic thinking, neither insensible to
political tyranny. Religion influences social reconstruction directly because
it spiritualizes and idealizes the individual citizen. Indirectly, cultural
civilization is influenced by the attitude of these individual religionists as
they become active and influential members of various social, moral, economic,
and political groups.
The attainment of a high cultural civilization demands, first, the ideal type
of citizen and, then, ideal and adequate social mechanisms wherewith such a
citizenry may control the economic and political institutions of such an
advanced human society.
The church, because of overmuch false sentiment, has long ministered to the
underprivileged and the unfortunate, and this has all been well, but this same
sentiment has led to the unwise perpetuation of racially degenerate stocks
which have tremendously retarded the progress of civilization.
Many individual social reconstructionists, while vehemently repudiating
institutionalized religion, are, after all, zealously religious in the
propagation of their social reforms. And so it is that religious motivation,
personal and more or less unrecognized, is playing a great part in the
present-day program of social reconstruction.
The great weakness of all this unrecognized and unconscious type of religious
activity is that it is unable to profit from open religious criticism and
thereby attain to profitable levels of self-correction. It is a fact that
religion does not grow unless it is disciplined by constructive criticism,
amplified by philosophy, purified by science, and nourished by loyal
fellowship.
There is always the great danger that religion will become distorted and
perverted into the pursuit of false goals, as when in times of war each
contending
top of page - 1089
nation prostitutes its religion into military propaganda. Loveless zeal is
always harmful to religion, while persecution diverts the activities of
religion into the achievement of some sociologic or theologic drive.
Religion can be kept free from unholy secular alliances only by:
1. A critically corrective philosophy.
2. Freedom from all social, economic, and political alliances.
3. Creative, comforting, and love-expanding fellowships.
4. Progressive enhancement of spiritual insight and the appreciation of cosmic
values.
5. Prevention of fanaticism by the compensations of the scientific mental
attitude.
Religionists, as a group, must never concern themselves with anything but
religion, albeit any one such religionist, as an individual citizen, may become
the outstanding leader of some social, economic, or political reconstruction
movement.
It is the business of religion to create, sustain, and inspire such a cosmic
loyalty in the individual citizen as will direct him to the achievement of
success in the advancement of all these difficult but desirable social
services.
4. TRANSITION DIFFICULTIES
Genuine religion renders the religionist socially fragrant and creates insights
into human fellowship. But the formalization of religious groups many times
destroys the very values for the promotion of which the group was organized.
Human friendship and divine religion are mutually helpful and significantly
illuminating if the growth in each is equalized and harmonized. Religion puts
new meaning into all group associations--families, schools, and clubs. It
imparts new values to play and exalts all true humor.
Social leadership is transformed by spiritual insight; religion prevents all
collective movements from losing sight of their true objectives. Together with
children, religion is the great unifier of family life, provided it is a living
and growing faith. Family life cannot be had without children; it can be lived
without religion, but such a handicap enormously multiplies the difficulties of
this intimate human association. During the early decades of the twentieth
century, family life, next to personal religious experience, suffers most from
the decadence consequent upon the transition from old religious loyalties to
the emerging new meanings and values.
True religion is a meaningful way of living dynamically face to face with the
commonplace realities of everyday life. But if religion is to stimulate
individual development of character and augment integration of personality, it
must not be standardized. If it is to stimulate evaluation of experience and
serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereotyped. If religion is to promote
supreme loyalties, it must not be formalized.
No matter what upheavals may attend the social and economic growth of
civilization, religion is genuine and worth while if it fosters in the
individual an experience in which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and
goodness prevails, for such is the true spiritual concept of supreme reality.
And through love and worship this becomes meaningful as fellowship with man and
sonship with God.
top of page - 1090
After all, it is what one believes rather than what one knows that determines
conduct and dominates personal performances. Purely factual knowledge exerts
very little influence upon the average man unless it becomes emotionally
activated. But the activation of religion is superemotional, unifying the
entire human experience on transcendent levels through contact with, and
release of, spiritual energies in the mortal life.
During the psychologically unsettled times of the twentieth century, amid the
economic upheavals, the moral crosscurrents, and the sociologic rip tides of
the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era, thousands upon thousands of men
and women have become humanly dislocated; they are anxious, restless, fearful,
uncertain, and unsettled; as never before in the world's history they need the
consolation and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of unprecedented
scientific achievement and mechanical development there is spiritual stagnation
and philosophic chaos.
There is no danger in religion's becoming more and more of a private matter--a
personal experience--provided it does not lose its motivation for unselfish and
loving social service. Religion has suffered from many secondary influences:
sudden mixing of cultures, intermingling of creeds, diminution of
ecclesiastical authority, changing of family life, together with urbanization
and mechanization.
Man's greatest spiritual jeopardy consists in partial progress, the predicament
of unfinished growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without
immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love. Modern science,
particularly psychology, has weakened only those religions which are so largely
dependent upon fear, superstition, and emotion.
Transition is always accompanied by confusion, and there will be little
tranquillity in the religious world until the great struggle between the three
contending philosophies of religion is ended:
1. The spiritistic belief (in a providential Deity) of many religions.
2. The humanistic and idealistic belief of many philosophies.
3. The mechanistic and naturalistic conceptions of many sciences.
And these three partial approaches to the reality of the cosmos must eventually
become harmonized by the revelatory presentation of religion, philosophy, and
cosmology which portrays the triune existence of spirit, mind, and energy
proceeding from the Trinity of Paradise and attaining time-space unification
within the Deity of the Supreme.
5. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGION
While religion is exclusively a personal spiritual experience--knowing God as a
Father--the corollary of this experience--knowing man as a brother--entails the
adjustment of the self to other selves, and that involves the social or group
aspect of religious life. Religion is first an inner or personal adjustment,
and then it becomes a matter of social service or group adjustment. The fact of
man's gregariousness perforce determines that religious groups will come into
existence. What happens to these religious groups depends very much on
intelligent leadership. In primitive society the religious group is not always
very
top of page - 1091
different from economic or political groups. Religion has always been a
conservator of morals and a stabilizer of society. And this is still true,
notwithstanding the contrary teaching of many modern socialists and humanists.
Always keep in mind: True religion is to know God as your Father and man as
your brother. Religion is not a slavish belief in threats of punishment or
magical promises of future mystical rewards.
The religion of Jesus is the most dynamic influence ever to activate the human
race. Jesus shattered tradition, destroyed dogma, and called mankind to the
achievement of its highest ideals in time and eternity--to be perfect, even as
the Father in heaven is perfect.
Religion has little chance to function until the religious group becomes
separated from all other groups--the social association of the spiritual
membership of the kingdom of heaven.
The doctrine of the total depravity of man destroyed much of the potential of
religion for effecting social repercussions of an uplifting nature and of
inspirational value. Jesus sought to restore man's dignity when he declared
that all men are the children of God.
Any religious belief which is effective in spiritualizing the believer is
certain to have powerful repercussions in the social life of such a
religionist. Religious experience unfailingly yields the "fruits of the spirit"
in the daily life of the spirit-led mortal.
Just as certainly as men share their religious beliefs, they create a religious
group of some sort which eventually creates common goals. Someday religionists
will get together and actually effect co-operation on the basis of unity of
ideals and purposes rather than attempting to do so on the basis of
psychological opinions and theological beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should
unify religionists. Since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual
experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own
and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience.
Let the term "faith" stand for the individual's relation to God rather than for
the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree
upon as a common religious attitude. "Have you faith? Then have it to
yourself."
That faith is concerned only with the grasp of ideal values is shown by the New
Testament definition which declares that faith is the substance of things hoped
for and the evidence of things not seen.
Primitive man made little effort to put his religious convictions into words.
His religion was danced out rather than thought out. Modern men have thought
out many creeds and created many tests of religious faith. Future religionists
must live out their religion, dedicate themselves to the wholehearted service
of the brotherhood of man. It is high time that man had a religious experience
so personal and so sublime that it could be realized and expressed only by
"feelings that lie too deep for words."
Jesus did not require of his followers that they should periodically assemble
and recite a form of words indicative of their common beliefs. He only ordained
that they should gather together to actually do something--partake of the
communal supper of the remembrance of his bestowal life on Urantia.
What a mistake for Christians to make when, in presenting Christ as the supreme
ideal of spiritual leadership, they dare to require God-conscious men and
top of page - 1092
women to reject the historic leadership of the God-knowing men who have
contributed to their particular national or racial illumination during past
ages.
6. INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
Sectarianism is a disease of institutional religion, and dogmatism is an
enslavement of the spiritual nature. It is far better to have a religion
without a church than a church without religion. The religious turmoil of the
twentieth century does not, in and of itself, betoken spiritual decadence.
Confusion goes before growth as well as before destruction.
There is a real purpose in the socialization of religion. It is the purpose of
group religious activities to dramatize the loyalties of religion; to magnify
the lures of truth, beauty, and goodness; to foster the attractions of supreme
values; to enhance the service of unselfish fellowship; to glorify the
potentials of family life; to promote religious education; to provide wise
counsel and spiritual guidance; and to encourage group worship. And all live
religions encourage human friendship, conserve morality, promote neighborhood
welfare, and facilitate the spread of the essential gospel of their respective
messages of eternal salvation.
But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed,
while the possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of
formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments;
accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to
standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God
to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators
instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions;
establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the
aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas
of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship;
tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make
up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular
institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it
becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of
adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of
eternal salvation.
Formal religion restrains men in their personal spiritual activities instead of
releasing them for heightened service as kingdom builders.
7. RELIGION'S CONTRIBUTION
Though churches and all other religious groups should stand aloof from all
secular activities, at the same time religion must do nothing to hinder or
retard the social co-ordination of human institutions. Life must continue to
grow in meaningfulness; man must go on with his reformation of philosophy and
his clarification of religion.
Political science must effect the reconstruction of economics and industry by
the techniques it learns from the social sciences and by the insights and
motives supplied by religious living. In all social reconstruction religion
provides a stabilizing loyalty to a transcendent object, a steadying goal
beyond and above the immediate and temporal objective. In the midst of the
confusions of a rapidly changing environment mortal man needs the sustenance of
a far-flung cosmic perspective.
top of page - 1093
Religion inspires man to live courageously and joyfully on the face of the
earth; it joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power,
and ideals with energy.
Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of
personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of
God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values.
Economic interdependence and social fraternity will ultimately conduce to
brotherhood. Man is naturally a dreamer, but science is sobering him so that
religion can presently activate him with far less danger of precipitating
fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie man up with reality, and personal
religious experience brings this same man face to face with the eternal
realities of an ever-expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship.
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
top of page - 1094
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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