Measuring the Trivial and the Vital Religious Dimensions

February 5, 1961
Rochester

I would talk with you today about the distinction between the trivialities and the essentials of religion. My objective is to tempt you to schedule a program of research in the laboratory of your own totality of self – mind, emotions, hopes and satisfactions. To that end I want to tell an old Hindu fable, review something of the amazing statistics of religious life in America, speak of the strains that may have been a cause of religious prosperity and attempt to frame a statement of what is vital in religion.

“A tigress was attacking a herd of goats,” an old Indian fable goes, “when she gave birth to a cub and died. The cub grew up among the goats, so that all it ever knew were goat ways. It ate grass like a goat and it bleated like a goat. And one day when it was grown and a big tiger came to attack the herd, the grass-eating tiger was terrified. When the goats bleated in terror and ran away so did the grass-eating tiger. But the other tiger, dumbfounded to see such a strange fellow creature, bounded after it and caught it. While the grass-eating tiger set up a fearful bleating, and tried unsuccessfully to but its head against its captor, the other tiger dragged it to a pool and made it stare at its reflection in the water. ’See!’ the big tiger commanded, ’You are just like I.’ Then after a short hunt, it gave the grass-eating tiger some meat to eat. And while the grass-eating tiger chewed it with relish, marveling that it ever could have been contented with grass the other tiger exclaimed softly, ’Ah, now you begin to see there is no difference between us. Come – follow me in the life to which you belong!’

“So,” the sages of India say, “you should attend only to those who know who you are and what your true nature is. Be not misled into believing yourself a goat when you are truly a tiger.” (JOURNEYS ON THE RAZOR-EDGED PATH, Simons Roof, Crowell, 1959, p. 7/8).

The tiger found the life to which he belonged. But for persons, the appeasement of immediate hungers and instinctual satisfactions, which are enough for the tiger, are not enough. We are seeking what we call spiritual values and rewards. Recent American religious patterns portray designs which demonstrate that Americans are seeking a religious life to which they can belong and in which they can find satisfactory meaning.

[Inserted from marginal note: When religion participates in moral fraud it is worse than trivial.] Any candid new form of religion on the American scene will cause mixed emotions. Consider a little news item that appeared in a metropolitan newspaper not long ago (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 5). “A Lexington, KY minister announced today that he would name five persons in his Sunday night sermon he would like to see go to hell.”

“The Reverend E. Ray Jones of Gardenside Christian Church said ’I will mention the names of five living, active members I would like to see go to hell. I’ll probably have some of them mad at me before I’m through.’”

But religion on the American scene is more impressive than this kind of headline hunting. Religion has been accorded a recognition of status, for in the Feb. 1961 issue of FORTUNE, the expensive, expansive slick paper eulogy of business, science and recreation, the noted writer Russell Kirk writes on Protestantism in modern America – and whether it can hold its own. I recommend the article in its fullness to you, but let me also review a few of the author’s facts and conclusions.

There is visible testimony to the success, prestige and affluence of Protestantism in America. 35% of all Americans belong to Protestant Churches (in 1850, only 12% belonged). The Protestant Churches may receive as much as three billion dollars in 1961. The various denominations have a greater or lesser degree of control over more than five hundred colleges and universities. In the post-war period, particularly Protestant churches have boomed.

The growing suburbs have been the source of thousands of new churches, and Sunday schools have recorded fantastic increases in enrollment with corresponding pressure to construct new facilities.

Religion has become an institution with which America by and large considers affiliation necessary.

Ancient and bitter differences in doctrine have been smoothed out and there is a strong trend toward wider church union. This tendency is demonstrated both by denominational merger and the more audacious dreams of one big Church of Christ for all the major Protestant denominations.

However conservative Russell Kirk sounds a number of warning notes. Behind the impressive facades of concrete, brick and steel may reside a religiosity masked more by shallow sentimentality than serious theology; piety may be a role to be played on certain show occasions. The urge to union may indicate a bland imperviousness to real issues than a strong will to unite in the beauty of holiness. Kirk quotes a co-ed, “Yes, I believe in God, but I’m not nuts about him.”

There is another story making the rounds which indicates something of the trivial. The Pulpit Committee of the new church – hundreds of members, bursting Sunday school, bustling organization – is interviewing a candidate. The Chairman speaks to the prospective minister who has visions of lush living dancing in his head, “Now we don’t care what you talk about so long as you don’t preach about politics or religion.”

What’s it all about? Are the signs of life – buildings, budgets, bustlings – pointing like the fable of the tiger to the life to which we belong? Or, is American religious prosperity merely the sure index that religion has been diluted to an inoffensive status symbol of an acquisitive, competitive culture which would not and could not tolerate the condemnatory judgments of a truly prophetic religion? Are the American churches, in the words of liberal theologian James Luther Adams, guilty of “organized irrelevance?”

Questions such as these can only be between ambiguity and contradiction unless we take a look at the needs which have led to the resurgence of religion in America – a spurt which has characterized all of the main branches – Jewish and Roman Catholic as well as Protestant.

All periods of history have borne the pain of tension and uncertainty – but the 20th century has experienced far greater anxiety. Social change has moved at a more rapid pace than any period of history. In about fifty years we have changed from a horse and rail culture to 10 mile-a-minute jets. Families no longer live close but are scattered to far places. Changes have been innumerable and drastic. Change always is a disturbing experience and this unavoidable dynamism intensifies our anxieties and increases our yearning for that which will abide beyond all change. Religion has been a symbol of certainty amid change.

This same period of disrupting social change has been deeply scarred by two world wars whose effect will be enduring.

The social crisis of the conflict of interest – we want peace and we dislike to yield an iota of national privilege or possession – stirs us. We have not yet really achieved the balance between a world order of law and the particular interests of individual nations. Until we do, there will be continuing political anxiety and hostility.

This is of course complicated by the imminent threat of destruction by nuclear fission, disease broth or silent, odorless, paralyzing nerve gas. Ham the chimpanzee has pushed buttons in space and returned. But when human astronauts plunge into space, our anxiety will increase because of the utter destruction that awaits the pushing of certain buttons by astronauts. With no secrets in science, we know that every threat is matched with counter-threat and that to call a bluff may call down unspeakable havoc from stations in space.

Strain sits with us at our desks and agitates our nerves in time of decision. We don’t want to face the real responsibilities of citizens, yet it is quite clear that irresponsible leaders can do more damage than plundering a treasury – they can blunder into mistakes which cannot be redeemed.

Under this strident sense of strain, people have turned to religion seeking solace and the strength to live in anxious times. The mass, the communion, the sabbath – the ceremonies of life, growth, and death offer promise, surety, and speak of the worth of life.

These are our times and certainly if religion can be either trivial or vital, it becomes more and more imperative to devote ourselves to the vital and let the trivial lapse. But, nothing could be more deceiving than to assume that all virtue and promise lies with our particular approach. We will not separate the trivial from the vital by comparing the RC mass with Universalist symbolic communion. We will not identify permanent truth and transient error by placing Episcopal liturgy and evangelical testimonies on a rating scale. We will fail to find the secret of abundant faith merely by measuring the deficiencies of others against the virtues we allege for ourselves. What is vital in religion calls for more basic interpretation than the righteousness asserted by any one group, for such claim may have more than a little vein of self-righteousness. These times are both too somber and too promising.

Somewhere I clipped this quotation from children’s writing (Manas quoting NY publication called BIRTH), “Why were the saints saints? Because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, and patient when it was difficult to be patient, died because they pushed on when they wanted to stand still and keep silent when they wanted to talk and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all. it was quite simple and always will be.”

Saints were never the sole possession of any religion. There have been saints, too, who disavowed all usual ways of faith. Similarly there is both triviality and vitality in all ways of worshiping. There are good and bad adherents of all religions.

Think again of the words of Jesus from Matthew, “Go in by the narrow gate. For the wide gate has a broad road which leads to disaster, and there are many people going that way. The narrow gate and the hard road lead out into life, and only a few are finding it.”

To me, this scripture suggests two enduring religious vitalities. First, if religion is to be vital it must call forth the best of our potentialities, the positive part of our strength. This is a narrow gate, for it sets requirements beyond the usual. We can be respectable communicants of our faith and still resist the expression of our nobler impulses. In moments when we stand on a mount of vision we know full well that the life to which we belong demands more of our best selves. Speaking of the strait [sic?] gate, historian William Alva Gifford said, “the way is very strait and narrow. It leads towards love for one’s enemies, prayers for the persecuted, a preference for giving before receiving.” (STORY OF THE FAITH).

Consider the tragic but momentous life of Dr. Dooley. His life was brief and his suffering great. Certainly he shared a large portion of the misery that can be the human lot. Yet also consider the splendor of the good he did, the sufferings he eased and the lives he saved. Himself he could not save but the vitality of his life-spirit, his religion, moved him to exhibit the best he was; he lined up to the best he knew and it was a high standard indeed. It was a strait gate for Dr. Dooley for it called for his best in what he believed and in performing the action which was a consequence of his belief.

The second vitality of which I would speak is a hard road because it calls us to find some supreme loyalty, inclusive enough to include the good and evil of experience. This demands thought; this requires that we confront not only the joys, but the terrible mysteries of life in the search for that which is supreme and to which we confidently give our loyalty. Men have always called this the search for the presence of God or sometimes the quest for the good life, or the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

This vitality may be called spiritual, for one is deceived when one points to this or that and says “Lo, it is here; lo, it is there.”

Arthur E. Morgan, one time administrator of the TVA, educator and valiant advocate of community service, speaks of the powers of human thought and energy as a powerplant. We need to re-examine obsolete theologies with discrimination of thought and historical accuracy, fortified by our emotional drive, but the power “must be directed by the rudder of critical intelligence.” Human power directed by a rudder is vital to honest inspiring religion.

We have given to us a sense of strain in these times wherein the old faults of enmity, selfishness, greed are confronted with unthinkable weapons for their indulgence. The ways of religion are diverse, the new buildings and programs, the growing congregations and activated groups can be either trivial or momentous. The difference lies in the will to abide a faith which calls for the best that is in you; and in the persistent pursuit of a supreme loyalty – a Creator – and creative force – to which (or to whom) you can entrust your hopes and in the assurance of which you can overpower your fears of life and death. To such purpose and in such strength we may abide and in all our turning asides to lesser things, we may remember that we are ever called back to the best. We, too, can find the life to which we belong.