Strengthening Personal Religion

February 25, 1962
Rochester

More than you may think, your personal religion is vital to your happiness and destiny. By “personal religion” I mean what a person believes in the solitary integrity of mind and heart. By “personal religion” I refer to the faith a person cherishes himself, not the creed of his orthodox church or the consensus held by members in a non-creedal church. By “personal religion” I would have you consider what would be enduring in your religion if all church buildings and functioning societies were to disappear suddenly from the human scene.

This is not to deprecate the worth of the church as a society functioning for the religious purposes of its members. There is always great need to work on and give to the great cause of organized, functioning, inspiring churches. But perhaps part of the reason why the church does not enter deeply enough into the life-centers of its people may involve the wrong practice of seeking to gather one’s faith from the religious society, rather than bringing to the organized religion the questions and persuasions of a strong, productive, individual religious conviction.

The purpose of this sermon is to suggest that it makes all the difference in the world if one’s personal faith is able to withstand both distracting experiences of prosperity and disheartening events of misfortune.

In his HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, historian V.J. Muller makes a comment about the decay and downfall of the Roman Empire in the West: “We can never be certain, either, that a really free citizenry would have saved the Roman Empire. We can say positively that the Empire was weakened by a dispirited populace, lacking the energy, resolution and self-reliance that freedom might have maintained.” Now, historical circumstances neither parallel nor repeat. Our civilization is different in many ways from the grandeur that was Rome. ... we can be assured that history never presented greater opportunities for fulfillment than our age while at the time offering the chance for irresponsibility. This was brought home to me in an article in [the] March 1962 Atlantic, which I recommend to you. Judge John J. Murtagh, Chief Justice of the Court of Special Sessions in our state – Judge Murtagh writes movingly of the plight of the homeless men on the Bowery – derelicts found in every city. The painting I am making is not the thesis of his essay, but in telling of a tour of the Bowery streets littered with sodden alcoholics and their empty bottles, police officers called attention to the “Muni” (the men’s shelter of the Department of Welfare). At this accommodation, anyone can get food and a warm place to sleep. In the winter several thousand stand in line for a meal. When the 600 beds are filled the other thousand of homeless men are sent to commercial flophouses with the city paying for the lodging.

People are not all homeless men. People in our country can orbit an astronaut, send a Philharmonic to the Soviet Union, and discover prevention for polio and ways to hold diabetes in check.

Thus, if we have no motivation for achievement, we will be able to get chow and a bed at the Muni – it will be handed out to us because we are persons. We can also strive for self-realization through purpose, thought, and achievement. We can contribute to the general welfare rather than draw from it. One can place different labels on the attitude that makes the difference, but I would have you consider that one’s personal religion makes the difference. This is not to be judgmental on those broken by circumstances. There is no one of us who may not echo the ancient acknowledgment, “there but for the grace of God, go I.” Yet there are those who master disastrous events, whose ability to confront misfortune seems to grow when things go badly. What can we learn from persons whose lines demonstrated this strong, inward faith?

First of all, we must not place all our dependence for strength on the organized institution – even the organized church. Obviously, persons in my profession point to the church as an institution to be supported and upheld as a functioning organization which meets great needs for common worship, religious education, group service, societal relationships. Yet one should not depend on any institution for all resources, because institutions, religious institutions not excepted, can sometimes permit one to be busy and pre-occupied with externals, while the internals of conviction and resolution are neglected. We can be so busy with the outward institution that the inward faith is paralyzed from disuse. We need to remember Whitehead’s definition that religion is what man is in his solitariness.

Roger Williams, the exemplar of liberty of conscience, is a persuasive example of one who held great personal faith almost to the exclusion of organized institution. Coming to colonial New England for reasons of conscience, again and again he endured great trouble because he placed conscience first and the institution second. he denounced the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony because (in his view) it falsely represented the King as a Christian and gave away title to land – the King didn’t own – the Indians did. Furthermore he stood squarely opposed to the practice of citizen’s oath of loyalty.

So his faith was strong enough to direct him to the wilderness, where he was banished to live with the Indians; to establish Providence Plantation wherein majority civil rule and liberty of individual conscience were established in the founding days. Roger Williams’ life and goals are still worth your thought.

Recognizing that churches and religious denominations no less than municipalities are political institutions with all the promise and weakness that this implies, we will strengthen our personal religion by not permitting institutions to become an idol to worship.

In Wordsworth’s lines from A Poet’s Epitaph,

“The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

“In common things, that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart, -
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.”

Following from that should be an awareness, to paraphrase Luther’s great hymn, “though goods and kindred” go, this mortal life also “there is that which abideth still.” In the reign of Nero, according to Muller, (FREEDOM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, p. 279), the famed stoic philosopher Seneca fell out of favor with Nero and that despot commanded Seneca to commit suicide. Seneca obeyed with calm and strength. “Tacitus reports that when Seneca was not allowed to leave a will, he told his friends he would leave his only, but fairest possession, the pattern of his life.” Now some might view this manner of farewell a bit pretentious, but it did encompass that which is durable. The pattern of a life is formed not only by the cuts and sluices of institutional order, but more basically by the long process of character formation. Changing the analogy, when one cuts down a tree, which is the crucial stroke – the first one which bites into bark or the last which severs the trunk? So it is with the pattern of individual character, it is never completed at a stroke and what endures is the pattern of a life strong at the core.

Secondly we can strengthen our personal religion by knowing our loyalties in new situations. You are aware that the striking characteristic of our time is accelerated change. Where ten years ago, there were wide pastures for dairy herds, now there are colonies of ranch houses and split levels; where once we wandered routes 20 and 5 through the traffic of valley cities, now we traverse the throughway. Where not long ago, breaking the sound barrier represented astonishing speed, now a manned rocket travels 17,000 miles an hour. The list of recent drastic change could be elaborated interminably, from automation to Zend.

Two formidable realities are central. First, change will continue irresistibly; second, we need to possess stable controls to assimilate change and use it productively. Crane Brinton in his HISTORY OF WESTERN MORALS (p. 221) provides an illustration to which people will respond differently when he commented, “the spirit of Capitalism is discernible in the late Medieval world before the Protestant revolt. There is a good symbol here: the ledgers of the 14th century Florentine merchant, two centuries before Calvin were headed ’in the name of God and of profit.’” You may analyze easily the weaknesses of capitalism, but one must concede that this Renaissance merchant had shaken down to simplicity the nature of his loyalties in a world where change was accelerating. Perhaps an even more ancient reference is more universal.

In the time of the Roman republic when the eternal city was at its best, the object of loyalty was the family. One significant custom practiced by wealthier families was the wearing of ceremonial masks. These masks were representations of ancestors and were worn by living persons at funerals and on some other significant occasions. The intention was to symbolize thee impression that all the generations of the family were observers and judges of the conduct of the succeeding generations (see Henry Bamford Parkes, GODS AND MEN, p. 318). The practice was the reminder of that to which central loyalty was due.

Not only are we confused by the rapidity of social change, many of us are far from ... the assurance of central loyalty. Our personal religion will be immeasurably strengthened when we have wrestled, each of us, with the problem of where to place our basic allegiance amid all the social explosion. Theologically this is the search for God and the by-passing of transient idolatries. He is strong within who has pledged his loyalty in faith and freedom.

Lastly I would suggest to you that our personal religion grows stronger when we have opened our minds and our hearts to the inter-relationships between the great, primary experiences and our personal faith. This is the sort of basic encounter with real life which led the psalmist to sing, (Psalm 8, 3/9_

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou has ordained;

What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that thou visiteth him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor.”

One can picture a shepherd-singer, perhaps young David, watching his sheep on a clear night in the Judean hills. No glow of city lights dims the brightness of the stars, no search-light promoting a drive-in or car lot obscures the moon’s bright luminescence. We can be but dimly aware of the profound impact on the lonely poet/shepherd overawed by the explicit brilliance and implicit mystery and power. But we know from this hauntingly beautiful psalm that he was wonderfully sensitive to the overwhelming great realities of his existence; and who can doubt that strong, personal faith “shines through the great lines.”

Our personal faith, too, will grow in its power to sustain us through lonely nights and the puzzles of destiny, when we embrace the large world of our experience, willing to learn of its ways.

As George Buttrick eloquent teacher and preacher at Harvard University commented on the matter of “... miracle, by which is meant not any rendering of the natural order, but an event through which the light of mystery streams in on us.”

John Glenn’s marvelous experience this week should provoke in us the old song of the lonely shepherd, although our vocabulary and inquiry will be in terms of our time.

“When I consider the moon and the stars,
What is man that though art mindful of him.”

Colonel Glenn experienced a universe for several hours in which the duration of a day was but 45 minutes; he circumnavigated the space around earth in less time than we could drive to Buffalo the quickest way; he was freed from the anchoring gravity which keeps us to Mother Earth. If you witnessed the press interview Friday, perhaps you, like I, were both amused and somewhat disturbed by the astronauts’ anecdote of the camera. After snapping a picture, Glenn realized that he did not have to place it down as we would. Rather he just released his grip, turned to his immediate task with buttons and switches. Then when he had another chance, he grasped the camera which had remained suspended in that we would call mid-air – except that it wasn’t mid-air.

This impinges directly on the imperative need for strong personal faith. When I consider zero gravity and weightlessness, the energies and forces which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him?

When I consider 45 minute days and nights and time-space, what are time and space and how shall we embrace them in our thoughts and reconcile them in our hearts?

When I consider the heat shield and how if it had become detached John Glenn and his ... would have been incinerated, how neat are the responsibilities of the theoretical scientist, engineer, and mechanic.

When I consider the mystery and power of what we call electronics, electrical telemetry, tapes and all manner of technical marvel and organizations, how great and pure must be man’s goal to be able to live behind the doors his ingenuity has unlocked.

When I consider the social ferment of new nations, staking claims for a civilization of canals all over our planet; and nations full of power and fear honing [new] weapons, where else is man’s salvation but in a commonwealth of peoples everywhere who must both find their place and discard ancient ideas of brutal conquest.

This is but a sample of our world so vast that the most long-range devices can find no end to things; so tiny that the most sensitive microscopes have yet to penetrate to the basic stuff of cell and atom. But this macrocosm and this microcosm are the big experiences of our time and we like the ancient shepherd must find a song to sing that sounds the notes of a universe both real to our minds and uplifting to our spirits.