Religious pluralism

“ What has brought unity to nations, morality to peoples and benefits to mankind? If we reflect upon it we will find that establishing the divine religions has been the greatest means toward accomplishing the oneness of humanity. The foundation of divine reality in religion has done this; not imitations of ancestral religious forms. Imitations are opposed to each other and have ever been the cause of strife, enmity, jealousy and war. The divine religions are collective centers in which diverse standpoints may meet, agree and unify. They accomplish oneness of nativities, races and policies. ”

“ It is this inevitable consequence which impels many among liberal Protestants to reject all external worship, nay, all external religious community, and makes them advocate what they call, individual religion. ”

“ Have not the gods often been conceived as tribal deities, and so simply as representatives of the welfare and of the will of the community over against the waywardness and the capriciousness of the individual? Was not the transition from polytheism to the various forms of pantheism and of monotheism determined by the social processes that formed kingdoms or empires, and that finally led over to the modern appreciation of the value of the {58} common interest of an ideally united humanity? ”

“ We are on the threshold of an era of a brotherhood transcending religious differences, transcending even national differences and of which one of the dominant notes is a unity of purpose in which religious differences of race and customs are to be merged and harmonised. ”

“ Though we may profess different creeds and worship in different manners and places, we respect each other’s humanity and expression of faith. People with diverse views can practice their faiths here while living together in peace and harmony, carrying on our Nation’s noble tradition of religious freedom. ”

“ If we desire to adopt religious life in its entirety and fullness, we must not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all nations and races; if we can take in all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings; if we are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great men of all nations and races; then certainly, but not till then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion as it exists in God. ”

“ Thus we see for the first time in history bodies of men and women banded together, irrespective of nationality and social rank, for the purpose of religious observances, and religion becoming recognized as the affair of the individual rather than of the state, while each member of the association was directly interested in its extension. ”

“ Wherever they meet to worship, there they will meet to consult of their plans, hopes, and progress, as at once a distinct race and a part of the American people. Their religion is tinged with political thought, and their political thought shaped by religious conviction. ”

“ We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing {214} prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? ”

“ We need our moral force, our Catholic spirit, our sense of equality with our neighbors, in order to accomplish much of the good that is before us in both the social and the religious sphere. It will help this spirit of noble independence to become familiar with the history of our church in this country and of its unique achievements. ”

“ But I have contrived an explanation which has every advantage; is inviting to Christians of every communion; gradually frees them from all religious prejudices; cultivates the social virtues; and animates them by a great, a feasible, and speedy prospect of universal happiness, in a state of liberty and moral equality, freed from the obstacles which subordination, rank, and riches, continually throw in our way. ”

“ And the necessity, in order to agreement, of marking out for each, not a separate geographical beat, but a distinct religious and ethnologic ground, shows that, with external mutual toleration, there is yet wanting the inner unity of an identic faith. Only in the absence of a common Gospel would each party have to take its own, and spare the other. ”

“ Would that our unfortunate countrymen, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and torn by endless divisions, could be persuaded to set aside pride and prejudice, and to accept the true principle of religious unity and peace established by God. ”

“ An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. ”

“ Why is it that there has been so singular a religious movement as that which has taken place within the last thirty years, introducing views that are contrary to the commonly established views of the whole religious world? ”

“ We have now, we conceive, shown that it may be proper to form men into combinations for important purposes, which combinations shall have unity and common interests, and shall be under the direction of rulers intrusted with great power and lying under solemn responsibility, and yet that it may be highly improper that these combinations should, as such, profess any one system of religious belief, or perform any joint act of religious worship. ”

“ Certainly a family can become a religious organisation; and some of the most ancient traditions of mankind have demanded that it should be one. There is also, and justly, a religion of patriotism, which regards the country as a divine institution. Such a religion serves the unity of the spirit in a perfectly genuine way. ”

“ This is not the place for extended biblical interpretation, but I am convinced that the whole course of scripture will testify to this, that in the peaceful, continuing, social unities men have found God, and in the differences, in their group conflicts, in their wars, and in the oppositions to their enemies, there has been found no religious experience. That is, such conflict has intensified unity, and the resulting unity has been ever richer in religion: but the thoughts for God have come forth clothed always in terms and titles of fellowship, unity and kinship. ”

“ It is true that such communal character belongs, in some degree, to all religious life—no person's religion is wholly independent of the thought of his community; but in the lower strata the acceptance of the common customs is unreflective and complete. When definite individualism sets in, ceremonies begin to lose their old significance, though they may be retained as mere forms or with a new interpretation. ”

“ Or we may imagine an unbroken continuance of the epoch of saintly aspiration, the building of churches, the illumination of holy books, so dividing the religious from the secular community as almost to make two nations in one, a nation altogether absorbed in the present life, with another nation living [pg 284] in its midst, but dwelling wholly in the thought of the other world. Religion would have grown to superstition, ecstasy would have ruled in the hearts of the religious devotees, weakening their hold on the real, and wafting them away into misty regions of paradise. ”

“ The potency inherent in things is the object of observation, its laws are studied, and it is used for purposes of life. The diversities in the form of ceremonies, in the conception of the characters of the Powers, and in the general tone and coloring of worship arise from economic and cultural differences, and are as numerous as the tribes of men; the unity of cults is a result of the psychological unity of the human race—the religious needs of men in all stages of culture are the same; there is nothing in the highest religious systems that is not found in germ in the lowest. ”

“ To every social gathering around the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance in the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual adaptation of laws, customs, morality, and institutions! ”

“ Side by side also with the great political communities, and sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce, and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings which the public religion did not satisfy. ”

“ Far from wishing to add to the number of the religious systems, whose conflicting loyalties have for so many generations disturbed the peace of mankind, this Faith is instilling into each of its adherents a new love for, and a genuine appreciation of the unity underlying, the various religions represented within its pale. ”

“ It is an attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in their faith. ”

“ That many antagonistic forms of religious faith, some the most degraded, others the most exalted, should live on the same soil, among the same people, is indeed a disheartening truth, enough almost to shake one’s belief in the common origin and the common destinies of the human race. ”

“ When, however, the State is not permitted to derive any further advantage from religion, or when people think far too variously on religious matters to allow the State to adopt a consistent and uniform procedure with respect to them, the way out of the difficulty will necessarily present itself, namely to treat religion as a private affair and leave it to the conscience and custom of each single individual. ”

“ A natural consequence of the coexistence of religion and ethics in human life has been that each has influenced the other. Advance in the purity and clearness of social ethical ideals has had the effect of modifying not only religious codes but also religious dogmas. The old belief (founded on the conception of social solidarity) that 579a family, tribe, or nation was punished by the deity for the sin of one of its members vanished before the recognition of individual responsibility. ”

“ The object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern pretenders to revelation. ”

“ Where ordinary virtue fails, one may ask,—Why does not religion come in to bridge the gulf between two races, both of whom, as in the Southern States, worship the same God? Christianity has proclaimed in the most solemn and exalted terms the absolute equality and brotherhood of all men. ”

“ Modern civilized communities are believed capable of existing without an official religion; the citizens being free to form themselves into self-governed religious bodies, as various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. ”

“ Were we truly reasonable human beings, we should perhaps provide openly and as a matter of course within the Christian frame widely different types of ceremonial religion, suited to different levels of mind and different developments of the religious consciousness. To some extent this is already done: traditionalism and liberalism, sacramentalism, revivalism, quietism, have each their existing cults. ”

“ This kind of unity without liberty, or compulsory religious unity conceived as an instrument of social control and as essential to political stability, was the expression of a social philosophy which was carried over from medieval Roman Catholic Europe to the modern European nations, both Catholic and Protestant. The idea of unity as an important characteristic of the church did not need to be invented 16 or even discovered in modern times. ”

“ We believe in the mutability of religious systems, but the imperishable character of the religious affections;—in the progressiveness of opinion within, as well as without, the limits of Christianity. Our forefathers cherished the same conviction: and so, not having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave our successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine can never prevail, we seek to attain its only good,—peace on earth and communion with heaven,—without it. ”

“ We have come at length to understand that the human spirit expresses itself in various ways in its upward striving, that the language of worship may vary for different races, for different men within the same race, for the individual himself with his changing needs, and that in differing we need not always condemn each other. So, too, it seems that men are ceasing to feel that uniformity in Church government is possible or even desirable. ”

“ Whatever be the imperfections of human agents, is there not enough in all this to make us behold the working of a Divine and supernatural power? Should we not each, in our several spheres, labour and pray for reconciliation and unity—the adjustment of differences—the mutual understanding of Christendom? ”

“ As civilization progressed, we are told that a separate order of men, with a liberal provision for their subsistence, was set apart for religious service, and a minute and magnificent ceremonial contrived, which challenged comparison with that of the most polished nations of Christendom. ”

“ Therefore, in the name of humanity, and virtue, and religion,—in the name of the great God, our common Creator and our common judge, we appeal to the nations of Christendom, and earnestly and respectfully ask of them that they will regard us with the sympathy and friendly consideration to which the peculiarities of our condition entitle us, and to extend to us that comity which marks the friendly intercourse of civilized and independent communities. ”