World Religion: Fusion or Linkage?

January 19, 1964
Sermon Series: The Free Church in the Changing World

VI WORLD RELIGION AND OUTREACH
13. WORLD RELIGION, Fusion or Linkage?

Would individuals have resources for greater inspiration and be directed to more effective social actions if all religions were fused into one? Or, do our best hopes for vital religion remain in the various religions as they are divided within great cultural traditions, while we seek linkage wherever there can be meeting in fellowship, learning and shared action?

In this concluding sermon in the series, "THE FREE CHURCH IN A CHANGING WORLD," I wish to elaborate on one of the concluding paragraphs in last week's sermon: "Religious boundaries are present; they are as real as the Damascus Gate and the contradictory theologies. Yet to raise our sights above the barriers requires us to be receptive and generous, with a continuing sympathy for the goals and means of faith, as well as proper rejection of the many statements of faith from which we might properly dissent."

People in this world are beginning to know each other better. We are acquiring, more understanding of the convictions and passions of the people of many lands. I was keenly aware of this the other night when I was one of a small group meeting with "Teen-Age Diplomats," sponsored by the American Field Service. There was a girl from Malaysia, a boy from Venezuela and a boy from Rochester who had been in Switzerland. I could condense their comments and reports and reports of other world-travelers, into a sentence: "There are not different peoples, there are only people with differences; the world is getting together."

This being so, and I believe it to be, should not the case be stated for one universal religion which will melt and fuse all the religions into one all-encompassing unifying faith? I cannot accept this idea of indistinguishable fusion, even if it were possible, which it is not. Fusion would have to be contrived and could not endure. Linkage is possible; linkage is needed.

Consider three observations: look at the times; look for the timely; look to the timeless.

First, look at our times where a strong tide of unity is eroding many of the old beach-heads of religious prejudice. The search for Christian unity has been a great inspirational force among the Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches of the world, with real progress achieved and more sweeping unification possible. You know the unifying effects of the short, but remarkable pontificate of Pope John XXIII. Paul VI, his successor, has not only visited Israel and met the Patriarch of Istanbul, but also there have been Catholic official observers to Protestant meetings and Protestant observers invited to the recent Vatican Council sessions. Twenty years ago, I would have questioned the sanity of anyone who might have suggested that the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association would be invited to attend a Vatican Council; and that he would accept the invitation. Yet those were facts of 1963.

The signs are manifold of united religion in our time, not only on the World scene, but also in Rochester. An inner-city ministry is developing which crosses denominational lines; a college chaplaincy of similar breadth has just been announced. The future of common goals seems promising.

In general it can be said that between persons who hold different faiths, encounters are no longer combat rings, where each tries to demolish the faith-claims of the other, or strenuously attempts conversion. Encounter is for understanding and the search for issues which permit a common front.

But, a plain look at our times stirs awareness that there are sharp conflicts and unresolved differences. Rather than list all the jagged edges of current argument in fields of religion and public education, religion and population control, and so on, let me use one illustration by telling you the story of "Buddha Day," as the story appeared in "Liberty" magazine, in the Nov-Dec. issue of 1963.

Last year in Hawaii, State Senator Kazuhiza Abe, started controversy when he introduced a bill in the State Senate which would amend the law which made Christmas and Good Friday paid holidays for state employees. In another bill, Senator Abe proposed that the 3th day of April, a Buddhist religious day known as Wesak, be a paid holiday for state employees. This became known as Buddha Day.

Immediately, there was uproar. Evangelist Billy Graham, who was in Hawaii recuperating from illness, said, "Christmas and Good Friday are among our greatest traditions; if we take away these days, we are taking away the basis of our life, our religion." Msgr. Kekumani, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese pronounced, "The State of Hawaii and the other forty-nine states ought to be amazed at the arrogance of those who insult God-fearing people by stamping out the traditional observances of the greatest Christian feasts of the year."

What the Senator was doing was not to stamp out anybody's religion. He said, "I had hoped that I was bringing the question of true religious freedom in Hawaii into focus." He was right, for Hawaii is a pluralistic state, even as we are a pluralistic nation. The issue there was resolved inconclusively by recognizing April 3 as "Buddha Day," but not as a paid holiday for state employees; Christmas and Good Friday are still paid holidays.

All the tides of unity can not sweep away the question this dispute illustrated – has a minority religious group the same rights as the dominant religious groups? I choose to be linked with those who stand for equal treatment in this area too.

Linkage requires that we look at our times and be conscious of issues and principles as well as tides of good feeling and unity.

Look for the timely. Professor Philip Phenix (INTELLIGIBLE RELIGION, p. 29), wrote, "The most elementary factor in all human experience is that every moment brings to birth a new world...the fact of change is perhaps the most fundamental human experience." Linkage is better than fusion because the varieties of religious organization and faiths provide continuing environment of greater receptivity to change, than would one big religion.

Historically, this can be demonstrated. The reforms instituted by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent occurred only after the Protestant Reformation had shaken the change-resistant medieval church.

Martin Luther was aware that religion must be timely. He wrote, "what is it to serve God and do his will? Nother else than to show mercy to our neighbor. For it is our neighbor who needs our service, God in Heaven needs it not." quoted by McGiffert, PROTESTANT THOUGHT BEFORE KANT.)

But Martin Luther demonstrated also an insensitivity to change. By his own rigidity he helped fan to a hotter spark, numerous reform and revolutionary groups which splintered off from the mainstream of the Reformation. One might say that he believed his changes were timely; other people's changes, untimely.

On July 21, 1620, just before the Pilgrims embarked on the Mayflower to sail to America, their minister, John Robinson, who was not to go with them, gave them advice which is timely still: "I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word.

"I bewail the condition of the reformed churches who are come to a period in religion and will go no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; for whatever part of God's will has been imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists as you see, stick where Calvin left them. This is a misery much to be lamented; for though Luther and Calvin were precious shining lights in their times, yet God did not reveal his whole will to them; I beseech you to remember your church covenant, at least that part of it whereby you promise and covenant with God and with one another to receive whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to you...." (quoted, GREAT COMPANIONS, vol. 1, p.39)

There is another plain teaching of history which can be amply illustrated, that in different times and places, speaking to unlike problems, one religious group may speak in much more timely fashion than another. In the 9th and 11th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church spoke much more effectively to the scandals of feudal warfare than it later did to the resurgent nationalisms of the 16th and 17th centuries. Martin Luther was much better in the role of Reformer of church practices than in the role of reactionary to Peasants Wars. The Puritans made a much more wholesome contribution in their non-conformist stand in England, than in their oppression of Quakers and others in New England. So it would go. The opportunity for intolerance usually finds recruits ready to be mustered for organized fanaticism.

Thus in every age there seems a need for a religious group which will stand and say, "I will tolerate the man even though I utterly reject what he believes." This is always a timely principle. We need plurality of religions in order to insure that there always will be such defenders of people.

There is merit in a pluralistic framework for religions so that when one group refuses to go "further than the instruments of their own reformation," other movements may be receptive to "whatever light or truth shall be made known...."

Third, look to the timeless. Beyond the rhythms of change and transcending the limitations of time, religions have usually reached for the ineffable, creative force in which we live and move and have our being. Many persons have reported how they have been grasped by this mysterious spirit; but also they have found words inadequate to express the inner reality they experienced.

There is linkage between those sensitive souls who have known the religious experience, but there is no fusion. Isaiah knew the God of Israel in his mystic experience; the Hindu has the experience of Brahma; the Moslem encounters Allah; The Christian mystic, God in Christ or the Trinity. What is shared is the experience; there can be no fusion of the different interpretations by mystics of varied places, cultures, religions. A Moslem poet once had his words inscribed on the walls of the Mosque of Akbar in India (ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY, Grant, p. 81.)

"O God, in every temple I see people that seek Thee, and in every language I hear
people praise Thee!
Polytheism and Islam feel after Thee,
Each religion says, 'Thou art one, without equal,'
If it be a mosque, people murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian Church,
people ring the bell from love of Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque.
But it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple."

When we look to the timeless, we should be aware that fusion of externals would do nothing to advance our intimations of the deep mysteries of creation, perception, destruction. We are part of some larger whole; we would seek to know more of the mystery; we would engage linkage with all who are on the quest; but the burden and the glory is that only the individual in his inwardness can apprehend the source of all, as he looks to the timeless.

In summary, there was observed in Rochester this week, one of the great yearly uniting occasions for the clergy. Every year, Temple Br'th Kodesh sponsors a seminar for the clergy, inviting Roman Catholic priests, Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabbis to hear a nationally-known lecturer in the field of religion. The seminar always brings together more Protestant clergymen than gather on any other occasion. Rabbi Phil Bernstein takes just pride in that success. The increasing attendance and participation by Roman Catholic priests are additional indications that there is strength and fellowship in linkage, even when fusion is neither possible nor desirable. The lecturer this year, Dr. Samuel Sandmel, Provost of Hebrew Union Seminary and noted scholar, made the point perfectly, "it is a mighty cheap good-will that exists only in identity; real good-will is achieved when it exists amid differences."

The religions should be linked in action, where united effort attempts to master problems which beset human values in the social order. The religions should be separated when differences of thought, culture, tradition have created for each, areas where distinctions are both real and believed to be important.

An illustration from American history is instructive. The turbulent quest by the Republican party for the best candidate for nomination for President is not new. The contest in 1860, eventually won by Lincoln, was a political hurly-burly in which that brilliant, but eccentric Universalist editor, Horace Greeley, played an active role. Among the leading Eastern candidates was Senator William H. Seward, the distinguished upstate New Yorker, who might have had a better chance if there had not been a breach between himself and Greeley. In an effort to repair his friendship with Greeley, Seward wrote to a friend, (HORACE GREELEY, VOICE OF THE PEOPLE, William Harlan Hale, Harpers, p.208),

"I. know how hard it is for Greeley to bear with me. Only one thing in all this matter has given me any concern, namely that persons who don't like the Tribune nor love Greeley as I do – and who wish to undermine that great paper – seek by sympathies with me in a matter upon which I differ from him to excite prejudices between us. I regret this and it gives me anxiety. Though I never have pretended to agree with Greeley nor he with me in all things, yet I regard his paper as a great and reliable agency of this great revolution .... I have supposed that we should go on together while I continue differing where we must differ as friends, and so rather making the common cause stronger."

So it is with the religions of the world and the denominations and sects within the religions. There can be no pretense of common belief — the differences are too many and too marked. We will continue to differ; but we do have the power to "differ as friends" to the end that the common cause of the survival of the whole human family will flourish in ways ever more abundant, peaceful and self-determining.