Religion With Reservations

January 12, 1956
Akron

During certain busy seasons if you wish to travel by air, you will not get far or fast unless you have reservations. Religion is just the opposite. The more reservations you hold, the shorter spiritual distance you will travel. You may not get off the ground.

Consider that story-teller’s masterpiece, the vivid tale of Namaan the leper found in 2nd Kings (5). Elisha the Hebrew prophet is a miracle worker who because of his intercession with Yahweh is responsible for the miracle which transformed the leprous Syrian warrior to one whose flesh was “like that of a little child.”

This story is a reminder that there was no common belief among our religious ancestors that there was only one god. God was god of Israel only, to be worshipped only on the soil of Israel. The existence of other deities seemed to be taken for granted. Each nation had its particular god whose national supremacy was accepted. Thus, the Syrian Namaan, standing on the Israeli soil which had been carted to him, becomes a convert to Israel.

But, says Namaan, “when I go into the house of the god of another nation, Rimmon, there I will bow the knee.”

Namaan accepted his new religion with reservations. He worshipped Yahweh, but still bowed knee in the house of Rimmon. Whether Namaan ever came to regret this safety-first policy, history does not disclose. There is some relevance, however, in considering the consequences of religions with reservations.

The early Christian communities were organized by Peter, Paul and the others. Considerable courage was infused as well as the beliefs about Jesus. The early Christians soon found their deep religious convictions tested in at least two ways.

Christianity was not very old when rival sects began to preach and teach strange variations of the Christian scheme of redemption. Although some of the cultish ideas permeated Christian doctrines, by and large Pauline Christianity (which is not the religion of Jesus) triumphed over the philosophical movements known as Gnosticism.

The primitive Christian communities also encountered the occasional, but ferocious persecutions of the Roman Caesars. The martyrs could have survived if they made one small concession. They would have maintained their Christian gatherings if they had just been willing to scatter incense on the imperial chafing dish and mutter a prayer to a self-deified Caesar. A mental reservation could have been made as the lips chattered the invocation. But these courageous religious radicals would not do this. They were torn by beasts in the arena and crucified on flaming, oil-soaked crosses, but would not divide their allegiance to the one god they believed revealed in Jesus.

Their intellectual rivals, the Gnostics, had no such single-mindedness. Basilides, a leading Gnostic philosopher, said that “it was permitted to throw incense on a pagan chafing dish and mutter a prayer to Caesar with a mental reservation.” Historian J. H. Allen remarks that this reservation might have preserved Basilides’ life, but the “doom of Gnosticism was sealed.” A religion with reservations did not persist, -- and will not now.

Western civilization generally apprehends the dimension of time as linear, rather than circular. While history does not repeat itself, there are some startling similarities. Proposing what may be some modern parallels of bowing the knee in the House of Rimmon or throwing incense on Caesar’s chafing-dish, I would like to ask the question, “If our religion is valid, what shall we do to make it persist?”

In our country religion supposedly is in the midst of its most influential and prosperous period. Church building construction has reached record levels with the end not in sight. It is popular to be pious. Billy Graham drew a larger crowd to Yankee Stadium than Casey Stengel and his Yankees ever did.

But serious questions are being asked. The December, 1957 COSMOPOLITAN carries a fascinating article by T.F. James. Consider just one or two of many salient comparisons made in this feature. These are provocative in considering to what extent Americans are the most religious people in the world, -- with the most reservations.

Four-fifths of Americans questioned in one survey said they believed the Bible to be the revealed word of God, but only 35% could name the four gospels, and 56% could not even name one. In another survey it was discovered that 80% believed that Christ is God, but when asked to rate the one hundred most significant events in history, the birth of Christ came fourteenth, tied with the discovery of the x-ray and the flight of the Wright brothers at Kittyhawk, NC. “Probably the most significant was a poll in which Americans were asked whether they felt religion was ‘very important.” A vast majority said it was. Then they were asked, ‘Would you say that your religious beliefs have any effect on your ideas on politics and business?’ Fifty-four percent said, ‘No.’” This prevailing sentiment of religion with reservations cuts across the boundaries of all major religious bodies, Protestant, Jew, Catholic. The statistics apply to all.

Not only may the so-called religious boom be a bubble made fragile by reservations, but also religious aberrations are growing rapidly. Usually these strange cults which have such wide appeal can be lumped together as “cults of re-assurance.” Mr. James tells us of the 1814 representatives of such positive thinking movements as Religious Science, Divine Science, Church of Understanding, and Science of Mind, who gathered in Washington to exchange happy thoughts and annihilate negative ideas. Among their activities was the Telegraphic Word Prayer game, in which players used the initials of a negative statement to make a positive one. For instance, “My Life is Miserable Since John Left Me” became “Much Love is Mine so Joy Leads to Miracle.” (I’ll take Scrabble.)

To consider another shibboleth of our times, to my way of thinking, it is either deceitful or immature to ring changes on the “dangers of materialism.” Homes, food, heat, medicine, hospitals and hymnbooks are “material” things. But in America we have stimulated what seems to be a never-ending appetite for luxury goods and shiny gadgets which are far more vital to many people than religion. Bernard Baruch says that if America ever crashes, it will be in two-tone convertibles.

Jack Mabley, columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal, devoted a column to our voracious appetite for luxury goods. Quoting Vance Packard, author of The Hidden Persuaders (which should be required reading for liberals), Mabley called attention to such facts as these: Ten Billion advertising dollars are spent each year to persuade us to buy certain products. We are brain-washed to feel dissatisfied with a year-old car or three-year old appliance. An analysis of products advertised nationally indicates (says Mabley) that “by any standard of measurement we are becoming obsessed with material things. No one person or agency is to blame, but certainly we are in critical need of a re-examination of our objectives. American kids are growing up with their goal in life as security, a home, a car, hi-fi set, out-door barbecue. Russian kids want to become scientists. Six times as many Mexican kids as Americans have a life ambition of service to their nation.”

Now to a comfort-loving fellow like I, there is nothing wrong with good automobiles, charcoal grills, and suburban living. However, the concern arises when there looms the possibility that we are willing to cast aside the true values of our Judeo-Christian civilization as it evolved toward democratic living and ideals.

Prime Minister Nehru said a few days ago, “The United States and Soviet Union are today more like each other than any two countries... the similarity is based on the faith the people of these two countries have in power, science, and technology. They both bow down to the machine.”

If Prime Minister Nehru speaks with wisdom and insight, then indeed the religious boom which should exalt the great values of individual freedom, self-sacrifice, and spiritual dedication is held with reservations indeed.

Obsession with luxury gadgets may be only a symptom of an anti-religious infection which may have a stronger clutch on us than we think. George Bernard Shaw once said, “We do not judge a man by the confession of his lips; but we judge him by the assumptions upon which he habitually acts.”

There is some evidence that there are basic changes occurring in America’s character. Such valuable studies as David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd and William H. Whyte Jr.’s The Organization Man point to trends which are moulding us in the likeness of Basilides and his Gnostics, rather than in the spirit of the early Christians who held their religion without reservation.

There are noticeable differences in the present generation of college students, for example. All sociological studies have limitations, but at least they represent some wide-spread attitudes. A profile constructed of college students indicates that they are “gloriously contented,” “unabashedly selfish,” “they cheerfully expect to conform to the status quo.” Although these students assert that they value loyalty, honesty, and sincerity, it is generally found that systematic academic cheating is common. The average student feels no political responsibility. In fact he is politically illiterate. They express a “need for religion,” but “do not expect this religion to guide and govern decision in the secular world.”

These students are symptomatic of much of the whole adult American world. We are directed by the trends of the times. We seek to place moral foundations under “group harmony” even at the expense of freedom, integrity, and individuality. A common example is the TV commandment which retains or cancels programs because of popularity only, without reference, generally, to talent or cultural contribution. Evidence can be found where you live to support the frightening fact that the real Protestant ethic of fellowship with freedom is in danger of extinction.

We no longer get excited over grave moral issues. We look upon world affairs as though the issues of our day were a boring stage presentation, rather than realizing that Dulles, Sputnik, U.N., atomic fallout, and all the other provocative elements in life today are centering in on our lives, our children and the continued existence of our society which outwardly cherishes the great religious values.

One of Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln stories seems appropriate. Lincoln told about the pioneer wife who, seeing her husband wrestling with a bear, shouted, “Go to it husband. Go to it, bear.” Her neutrality indicated reservations in her scheme of family values.

What can we do about it? We could exhort self-righteously, -- not an agreeable solution. We could say, “Oh, the pity of it all,” and go on being fat and happy. I, for one, could not honestly say that I yearn either to be torn by wild beasts in a Roman arena or live without modern plumbing. Yet, I believe that it is possible to cherish a religion without having along with it the kind of reservations which will seal its doom as Gnosticism was doomed. Alfred North Whitehead said, “to give up solving problems because they are difficult, is to give up thinking.”

Liberal religion is one religion, at least, to which we can yield devotion.

We prize individual contributions to human knowledge and accept individual interpretations of human experience. The effort is to gather loyalty to religious values which have been critically examined, rather than those which have acquired current popular acceptance. Neither unanimity nor even general agreement are absolute goals.

Our whole civilization needs to reach a level of maturity where individual creativity accepts wide diversity. On the occasion of the recent royal visit to these shores, another minister quoted the Duke of Edinboro [sic] as saying in Ottawa, “I don’t pretend to understand the stresses and strains, the pushes and pulls which people living in industrial communities have to put up with, but I know one thing. Man has got to remain in charge of the industrial monster he is building.”

The best part of the Hebrew-Christian religious heritage is a challenge to high human causes. To keep that precious heritage as a dynamic rhythm in our lives, there must be a continued re-assertion of its most radical insistence: Individual rights enfolded in a moral, spiritual community where the spirit of Jesus will prevail, rather than doctrines about him. (Ethical passion, not continuous comfortable compromise)

To achieve this we will not be able to keep to the morally neutral position of John Bunyan’s Mr. By-Ends who “never went against the wind and tide and was most zealous when religion goes in silver slippers (and) people applaud.”

History presents some stern disciplines if we but read its pages. There was one a great nation. The whole world talked about the wonders of its luxury, the brilliance of its jewels, the fashion and quality of the clothing. This nation was the most powerful of the world, with only one serious rival – a disciplined nation of strength and power. These luxury items became more frequent as the generations passed. This was a nation, which because of its opportunities and outreach, had created a melting pot of different people. Strikingly enough, this nation for several hundred years had been members of a great religion which worshipped one god.

As wealth, magnificence and power increased, poorer government became the rule. Successive leadership became weaker and more deluded. There came a time, the historian tells us, that this remarkable and glorious empire of Persia “choked on its own luxury, - an empire which already believed in one god, but did not survive long enough to witness the birth of Jesus. (Judgment of God???)

The future of our world lies in realm of the unknown future. To the extent, however that each of us maintains our highest religious convictions without reservations, we will be living at our best and for the best.