The Builder Magazine October 1922 - Volume VIII - Number 10
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The Builder Magazine October 1922 - Volume VIII - Number 10 The Religion of America By BRO. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, NEW YORK America belongs to the soul as much as to the body, and therefore, like Olympus in the Homeric poems, is rightly found in the geography of the spiritual world. It would be better, perhaps, if we learned to think of it in this wise oftener than we do - better for America as well as for ourselves, and that in ways the most practical. At any rate such is the theme of the author of this beautiful essay, and he has won such fame as an interpreter of the religious implications of the American ideas as gives his words great weight. Readers of THE BUILDER will he interested to know that Brother Newton has recently produced a brilliant book entitled "Preaching in London"; it is published by The George H. Doran Company, 244 Madison Avenue, New York. In due time it will be reviewed in the Library Department. RELIGION is a universal and elemental power in human life, and to limit its scope by restrictive adjectives would seem, at first glance, to be self-contradictory. For this reason, the idea of an American religion borders on inconsistency. Since all souls are alike genetically, and the divine life flows into all similarly; since human life pulsates to the same great needs, the same great faiths, the same great hopes, why speak of the religion of one nation as if it were unique? Is not the religious sentiment a supreme revelation of the essential unity of humanity, and the ultimate basis of brotherhood? Exactly, but the very fact that religion is the creative impulse of humanity promises variety of form, of accent and expression. While humanity is one, in the economy of progress a distinctive mission and message is assigned to each great race, for the fulfilment of which it is held accountable before the bar of history. Naturally, in the working out of that destiny the impulse common to the race is given form, colour and characteristic expression by the social, political and intellectual environment in which it develops. Thus the religion of Greece with its myriad gods, albeit springing from the same impulse as that of Egypt, is yet different. And the modern man looks with a new wonder upon the various costumes in which the religious sentiment has appeared in different ages and nations, and rejoices in its variegated life as adding infinitely to its picturesque reality and philosophic interest. By the same token, no one can read the story of mankind aright unless he sees that our human life has its basis and inspiration in the primary intuition of kinship with God. The state, not less than the church, science equally with theology, have their roots in this fundamental reality. At the center of human life is the altar of faith and prayer, and from it the arts and sciences spread out, fanwise, along all the avenues of culture. The temples which crowned the hills of Athens were works of art, dreams come true in stone; but they were primarily tributes to the gods - the artistic genius finding its inspiration and motif in religious faith. Until we lay firm hold of the truth of the essential religiousness of human life, we have no clue to its meaning and evolution. So and only so may anyone ever hope to interpret the eager, aspiring, prophetic life of America, whose ruling ideas and consecrating ideals have their authority and appeal by virtue of an underlying religious conception of life and the world. For, it becomes increasingly manifest that this republic of ours - this melting-pot of all nations an races - has its own unique and animating spirit, its mission, and its destiny to fulfill. Just as to the Greeks we owe art and philosophy, to the Hebrews the profoundest religion, to the Romans law and organization, and to the Anglo-Saxons laws that are self-created from the sense of justice in the people; just so this nation has a distinct contribution to make to the wealth of human ideals. America is not an accident. It is not a fortuitous agglomeration of exiles and emigrants. Nor is it a mere experiment to test an abstract dogma of state. It is the natural development of a distinct life - an inward life of visions, passions, and hopes embodying itself in outward laws, customs, institution ways of thinking and ways of doing things - a mighty spiritual fact which may well detain us to inquire into its meaning. Because we are carving a new image in the pantheon of history it behooves us to ask whether or not from this teeming, multitudinous life there is not emerging an interpretation of religion distinctively and characteristically American. In a passage of singular elevation both of language and of thought, Hegel explains why he did not consider America in his Philosophy of History, written in 1823: "America is the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world's history shall reveal itself. It is the land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of old Europe. It is for America to abandon the ground on which hitherto the history of the world has developed itself. What has taken place in the new world up to the present time is only an echo of the old world - the expression of a foreign life; and as a land of the future, it has no interest for us here, for, as regards history, our concern must be with that which has been and that which is." Written by a great - thinker who studied the history of the world as an unfolding of the divine life of man, and who searched every age for the footprints of God, those words are truly memorable. They are a recognition of the unique and important mission of our republic, and its unescapable responsibility in the arena of universal history. Much has happened since Hegel wrote, and the drama of our national destiny, as so far unfolded, is a fulfilment of his prophecy, as witness these words wherein one also of our own poets has set that history to music: "This is the new world's Gospel: Be ye men! Try well the legends of the children's time; Ye are a chosen people, God has led Your steps across the desert of the deep As now across the desert of the shore; Mountains are cleft before you as the sea Before the wandering tribes of Israel's sons; Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, Its coming printed on the western sky A cloud by day, by night a pillar of flame; Your prophets are a hundred to one Of them of old who cried, 'Thus saith the Lord'; They told of cities that should fall in heaps, But yours of mightier cities that shall rise Where yet the lowly fishers spread their nets The tree of knowledge in your garden grows, Not single, but at every humble door." THE RELIGIOUS QUALITY OF AMERICA What, then, is the quality of the religious America as it has revealed itself in our national life? Socrates was right when he said that the real religion of Greece was not to be found in its temples. Emerson made a like remark with respect to the religion of England. Just so, much of the theology taught among us, even today, was transplanted to our shores from lands and times alien to our own, and, if taken literally, it would be incompatible with our fundamental national principles. It was the product of minds whose only idea of the state was that of an absolute monarchy, a shadow of vanished empires, a reminiscence of ages when the serfdom of the people and the despotism of constituted authorities were established conditions. Its idea of God, of man, of salvation are such as would naturally occur to the subjects of a monarchy, and this may be one reason why they hardly touch the actual life of men in our land. Fortunately our fathers kept their theology and their politics apart, seemingly un-aware of the conflict between them. If Puritanism crystallized in grotesque forms about the idea of conscience, the genius of the Cavaliers was individualism. Out of these apparently antagonistic ideals, nurtured each upon its own soil within our national domain, has come that life which is destined to embody the religious spirit in a form peculiar to America. So that, if we would know the theology of America, to say nothing of its religion, we must go further than to the creeds of our churches, and find it in the life of the people, their temper, spirit and character. Obviously, if we are to know the religion of America we must seek it in the Spirit of America, and what may that spirit be? Here we find an unusual diversity of judgment, both among native and foreign students, but they fall into two general classes. There are those who tell us that we are a crude, sordid folk, sodden in materialism, and others who are equally sure that we are a race of incurable idealists. Let us hasten to admit that both classes of our critics are right, and that it is precisely this blending of self-interest with other-selfness, this robust realism working on a basis of the ideal, seeking to make tangible the unbrought grace of life and its finer values, which constitutes the chief glory of our nation.