Religious innovation

“ It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step in creating a more truly spiritual society. ”

“ If there had been no Apostolic practice and example in this case, if the Gospel knew nothing of such a day, as we call the Christian Sabbath, the first observers of it were introducing an innovation—an important innovation. And could the innovation universally be adopted? ”

“ And this modern discovery will, at no distant day, revolutionize all systems of religious faith in existence, and either dissolve and dissipate them, or modify and establish them upon a more natural and enduring basis, expurgated of their dogmatic errors. ”

“ In a country that has stood still for twenty-five centuries, worshipping the past and bowing down to nineteen thousand filthy gods, you can hear 'My Faith Looks Up to Thee' and 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name' sung by congregations so big that they have to meet out doors. And yet I understand from reading one or two high-browed religious magazines printed in this country that the old gospel has lost its power and that the world must have a new brand of religion of the hermetically canned variety suited to the elevated culture and new thought of the times. ”

“ They lie far deeper than the national squabbles of the day. A thousand years hence those national results may matter little, but the religious result will rule the world. That religious result is the reform of the decadent Christianity of to-day, its simplification, its purification, and its reinforcement by the facts of spirit communion and the clear knowledge of what lies beyond the exit-door of death. ”

“ Many assume that the new status of religion in our day is due not only to market pressure and obsession with consumption, but also to the advancement of science. Supposed to debunk the rationality of faith and offer its own rationality as the basis of new ways of understanding the origin of life, the role of human beings, the source of good and evil, and the nature of transcendence, science introduces a positivist conception of facts, irreconcilable with that of the relativity of religious images. ”

“ The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed by them to the gods ”

“ The modern opposers of Christianity, reasoning in a retro-grade motion—that is, going backwards—ascribe every improvement to science and philosophy, but it was religion that took the lead in both the great revival of learning and the reformation. ”

“ If it were possible to thus bring together and utilize the vast amount of religious energy which lies without the pale of all present churches, unrecognized by the most, warred upon by the many; if it were possible to gather all believers in God together where they may strengthen their faith by communion and worship; extend their knowledge by research in every field, spiritual and material, secular and religious, what a mighty recruit would thus be added to those powers that are working for the world's salvation! ”

“ Sometime in his religious development—it is impossible to settle precisely when or where—he read the writings of the spiritual Reformers, and received from them formative influences which turned him powerfully to the cultivation of inward religion for his own soul and to the expression and interpretation of a universal Christianity—a Christianity of the inward Word and of an invisible Church. ”

“ Just as established results do not hinder the progress of science, just so do the doctrines of faith not form an obstacle to progress and evolution. The fixed doctrines of the faith themselves, in themselves and in their application to the conditions of life, offer rich material for the growth of religious knowledge. ”

“ Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and science: while new investigators had mainly given up the medieval method so dear to the Church, they had very generally retained the conception of direct creation and of design throughout creation—a design having as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of man. ”

“ The relaxation of standards in religious matters invites the growth among people of Christian up-bringing of the many modern forms of ancient non-Christian faiths which are gaining wide acceptance in our land. Mormonism, Theosophy, Bahaism, New Thought and other cults because of their apparent intellectuality, mysticism and spirituality appeal to hundreds and thousands of women who do not think deeply, and who are carried away by the seeming depth and power of the appeal of these new faiths. ”

“ The net result of the whole is to put evolution in harmony with religious thought,—not necessarily in harmony with particular religious dogmas or theories, but in harmony with the great religious drift, so that the antagonism which used to appear to exist between religion and science is likely to disappear. ”

“ This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression. The non-religious motive which has entered into modern religious thought is the desire for a comfortable organisation of modern society. Religion has been presented as valuable for the ordering of life. ”

“ If we are really desirous of obtaining information regarding present religious phenomena, it is plain that we should adopt the scientific method and turn our attention to the remote past, where, by careful and systematic investigation, we are enabled to perceive the earliest conception of a creative force and the fundamental basis of all religious systems, from which may be traced the gradual development of the god-idea. ”

“ They lie open, on the one hand, to the danger of getting afloat on the tide of innovation, and so drifting from the fixed position in which Churches, as exponents of the mind of Christ, possess an authoritative voice, into the giddy vortices of some revolving eddy of speculation, in which they can at best assume but the character of mere advocates of untried experiment ”

“ The progress in the arts, science, agriculture, political economy, the mechanic arts, the fine arts, &c., has far outstripped the improvement of our religious institutions, and their relinquishment of the errors and superstitions of the past, and nothing but the most absolute compulsion by the moral force of the progressive spirit of the age has induced the churches to make any improvement in their creeds and doctrines. The spirit of improvement is manifested in every department of business, and in all our numerous institutions but that of our religion. ”

“ Christianity, being as it is, a religion of documents and of interpretation, must utterly exclude from its precincts the adventurous spirit of innovation. Theology offers no field to men fond of intellectual enterprise: the Church has no work for them; or none until they have renounced the characteristic propensity of their mental conformation. True religion, unlike human science, was given to mankind in a finished form, and is to be learned, not improved ”

“ The fact is, as far as I am able to judge, every recent discovery of science tends to sustain the essential truths of the Bible, and confirm the religious concept.
Those who think that religion is losing its power should remember that thousands of converts are added to the churches daily, and fifteen church buildings on an average are erected every day in the United States alone. ”

“ When the gods were represented by idols, these tended to become merely the symbols and reminders of their divine originals. The elastic character of this theistic system permitted the widest variety of cults, with the possibility of bringing any new social tendency or idea into immediate connection with a divine patron, so that human life became religious with a degree of intelligence and intensity that has perhaps not existed under any other system. ”

“ There is a second question that we may expect the rural church some time to consider—must not the Church make more of modern science as a means of developing social and individual character? This question is likely to reveal different ideas as to what religion is. One who thinks of the spiritual as the flower of complete living, who wishes every possible wholesome condition provided for character-formation, will naturally regard science as the friend of religion and the basis for moral progress. ”

“ The part played by Christianity in the development of Western civilization and its position as chief representative of the religious interpretation of the universe makes our selection of it for study natural. To identify traditional religion with a low stage of its development, in which it is inextricably bound up with crude myth and ritualistic magic, is not a fair procedure. We must take theology at its best and place it over against science and philosophy before we can rightly judge it. ”

“ N'est-ce pas la Pensée qui créa les arts et les sciences, qui, s'élevant jusqu'à la cause première, terme de ses conquêtes, y découvrit la Divinité, dont elle établit le culte universel, comme le plus puissant mobile de la civilisation? ”

“ With the further secularisation of Man's life, the need for religion to make effective the control of Nature, by pointing out to it its own ideal and so co-ordinating and organising all its forces, will gradually make itself felt, and the regeneration of religion will at last have begun.
For many centuries the current of religious belief in the West was almost entirely confined to the one channel of Catholic Christianity. ”

“ Do you think the Lord Almighty will reveal the great improvements in the arts and sciences which are being constantly made known and will not revive a pure religion? If any man imagines that with the mighty strides which the sciences have been making for a few years past, there will be no improvement in religion that man is vain in his imagination. God will improve the religion of the nations of the earth in proportion to the improvement made in the sciences. ”

“ The idea that the Church would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations of revealed fact, but in the living and energising spirit of the Church; why should not dogmatic theology become elastic, changing periodically in correspondence with the development of human knowledge, and no longer stand in irreconcilable contradiction with the ascertained laws of nature? ”

“ And it will continue till the antithesis of Christianity, engendering the limited forms of a national or tyrannical religion, yields to the church established by the Nazarene Prophet and maintained on the spiritual foundation of Christ's healing.
Good, the Anglo-Saxon term for God, unites Science to Christianity. It presents to the understanding, not matter, but Mind; not the deified drug, but the goodness of God—healing and saving mankind. ”

“ And thus, in the expression of the [48] biographer of Charles V., the barbarous nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. ”

“ In the tenth and eleventh centuries, as remarked already, studiously inclined people made no particular selection of one study rather than another. But men discriminated sharply between religious devotion and all profane pursuits. Energies which were regarded as religious might have a political-ecclesiastical character, and be devoted to the purification and upbuilding of the Church ”

“ The triumph of science involves the ruin of every supernatural system. Revelation is necessarily miraculous, and when the belief in miracles expires the death-knell rings for every Book of God. We are then left to the discipline of culture.
And what is culture? It is steeping our minds in the wisest and loveliest thoughts of all the ages. And each of us may thus make his own Bible for himself—a true Bible of Humanity. ”

“ Through ancient records and yet more ancient Ento spirits we have learned that centuries previous to the establishment of our national religion, the arts and sciences had attained a high degree of excellence, and that among the different races were various phases of religious beliefs, with universal tolerance of the same. ”

“ Therefore the church is the ultimate dispenser of all science, no matter of what nature; and as the reign of the Holy Ghost shall be more and more established in the now perfectly-defined status of her infallibility, so will she increasingly take up unto herself, within her own arena, all the gifts of knowledge and science which are her essential prerogatives. Once more she will become the queen of nations, the guide and pioneer of the world. ”

“ To talk to them seriously about the incapacity of any physical Science or its methods to cope with the problems of Religion is to waste precious time. Let them have their Evolution, Convolution, or Devolution, by all means. The more they welter in it, the more my pupils on earth have a welcome chance of success. The official clergy think wonders of their cleverness in trying to make Religion into a Centaur, half man, half horse, or half Science and half Belief. ”