The Urantia Book
PAPER 99
THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF RELIGION
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
99:0.1 RELIGION achieves its highest social
ministry when it has least connection with the secular
institutions of society. In past ages, since social reforms were
largely confined to the moral realms, religion did not have to
adjust its attitude to extensive changes in economic and
political systems. The chief problem of religion was the
endeavor to replace evil with good within the existing social
order of political and economic culture. Religion has thus
indirectly tended to perpetuate the established order of
society, to foster the maintenance of the existent type of
civilization.
99:0.2 But religion should not be directly
concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with
the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence
as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the
intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust
its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural
requirements.
99:0.3 Religion did approve the occasional
social reforms of past centuries, but in the twentieth century
it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive
and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter
so rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly
accelerated, and religion must accordingly quicken its
adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order.
1. RELIGION AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
99:1.1 Mechanical inventions and the
dissemination of knowledge are modifying civilization; certain
economic adjustments and social changes are imperative if
cultural disaster is to be avoided. This new and oncoming social
order will not settle down complacently for a millennium. The
human race must become reconciled to a procession of changes,
adjustments, and readjustments. Mankind is on the march toward a
new and unrevealed planetary destiny.
99:1.2 Religion must become a forceful
influence for moral stability and spiritual progression
functioning dynamically in the midst of these ever-changing
conditions and never-ending economic adjustments.
99:1.3 Urantia society can never hope to
settle down as in past ages. The social ship has steamed out of
the sheltered bays of established tradition and has begun its
cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny; and the soul
of man, as never before in the world's history, needs carefully
to scrutinize its charts of morality and painstakingly to
observe the compass of religious guidance. The paramount mission
of religion as a social influence is to stabilize the ideals of
mankind during these dangerous times of transition from one
phase of civilization to another, from one level of culture to
another.
99:1.4 Religion has no new duties to perform,
but it is urgently called upon to function as a wise guide and
experienced counselor in all of these new and rapidly changing
human situations. Society is becoming more mechanical, more
compact, more complex, and more critically interdependent.
Religion must function to prevent these new and intimate
interassociations from becoming mutually retrogressive or even
destructive. Religion must act as the cosmic salt which prevents
the ferments of progression from destroying the cultural savor
of civilization. These new social relations and economic
upheavals can result in lasting brotherhood only by the ministry
of religion.
99:1.5 A godless humanitarianism is, humanly
speaking, a noble gesture, but true religion is the only power
which can lastingly increase the responsiveness of one social
group to the needs and sufferings of other groups. In the past,
institutional religion could remain passive while the upper
strata of society turned a deaf ear to the sufferings and
oppression of the helpless lower strata, but in modern times
these lower social orders are no longer so abjectly ignorant nor
so politically helpless.
99:1.6 Religion must not become organically
involved in the secular work of social reconstruction and
economic reorganization. But it must actively keep pace with all
these advances in civilization by making clear-cut and vigorous
restatements of its moral mandates and spiritual precepts, its
progressive philosophy of human living and transcendent
survival. The spirit of religion is eternal, but the form of its
expression must be restated every time the dictionary of human
language is revised.
2. WEAKNESS OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
99:2.1 Institutional religion cannot afford
inspiration and provide leadership in this impending world-wide
social reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has
unfortunately become more or less of an organic part of the
social order and the economic system which is destined to
undergo reconstruction. Only the real religion of personal
spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in
the present crisis of civilization.
99:2.2 Institutional religion is now caught in
the stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society
without first reconstructing itself; and being so much an
integral part of the established order, it cannot reconstruct
itself until society has been radically reconstructed.
99:2.3 Religionists must function in society,
in industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups,
parties, or institutions. A religious group which presumes to
function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately
becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social
institution. Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to
the furtherance of religious causes.
99:2.4 Religionists are of no more value in
the tasks of social reconstruction than nonreligionists except
in so far as their religion has conferred upon them enhanced
cosmic foresight and endowed them with that superior social
wisdom which is born of the sincere desire to love God supremely
and to love every man as a brother in the heavenly kingdom. An
ideal social order is that in which every man loves his neighbor
as he loves himself.
99:2.5 The institutionalized church may have
appeared to serve society in the past by glorifying the
established political and economic orders, but it must speedily
cease such action if it is to survive. Its only proper attitude
consists in the teaching of nonviolence, the doctrine of
peaceful evolution in the place of violent revolution -- peace
on earth and good will among all men.
99:2.6 Modern religion finds it difficult to
adjust its attitude toward the rapidly shifting social changes
only because it has permitted itself to become so thoroughly
traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. The religion
of living experience finds no difficulty in keeping ahead of all
these social developments and economic upheavals, amid which it
ever functions as a moral stabilizer, social guide, and
spiritual pilot. True religion carries over from one age to
another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of
the experience of knowing God and striving to be like him.
3. RELIGION AND THE RELIGIONIST
99:3.1 Early Christianity was entirely free
from all civil entanglements, social commitments, and economic
alliances. Only did later institutionalized Christianity become
an organic part of the political and social structure of
Occidental civilization.
99:3.2 The kingdom of heaven is neither a
social nor economic order; it is an exclusively spiritual
brotherhood of God-knowing individuals. True, such a brotherhood
is in itself a new and amazing social phenomenon attended by
astounding political and economic repercussions.
99:3.3 The religionist is not unsympathetic
with social suffering, not unmindful of civil injustice, not
insulated from economic thinking, neither insensible to
political tyranny. Religion influences social reconstruction
directly because it spiritualizes and idealizes the individual
citizen. Indirectly, cultural civilization is influenced by the
attitude of these individual religionists as they become active
and influential members of various social, moral, economic, and
political groups.
99:3.4 The attainment of a high cultural
civilization demands, first, the ideal type of citizen and,
then, ideal and adequate social mechanisms wherewith such a
citizenry may control the economic and political institutions of
such an advanced human society.
99:3.5
The church, because of overmuch false sentiment, has long
ministered to the underprivileged and the unfortunate, and this
has all been well, but this same sentiment has led to the unwise
perpetuation of racially degenerate stocks which have
tremendously retarded the progress of civilization.
99:3.6 Many individual social
reconstructionists, while vehemently repudiating
institutionalized religion, are, after all, zealously religious
in the propagation of their social reforms. And so it is that
religious motivation, personal and more or less unrecognized, is
playing a great part in the present-day program of social
reconstruction.
99:3.7 The great weakness of all this
unrecognized and unconscious type of religious activity is that
it is unable to profit from open religious criticism and thereby
attain to profitable levels of self-correction. It is a fact
that religion does not grow unless it is disciplined by
constructive criticism, amplified by philosophy, purified by
science, and nourished by loyal fellowship.
99:3.8 There is always the great danger that
religion will become distorted and perverted into the pursuit of
false goals, as when in times of war each contending nation
prostitutes its religion into military propaganda. Loveless zeal
is always harmful to religion, while persecution diverts the
activities of religion into the achievement of some sociologic
or theologic drive.
99:3.9 Religion can be kept free from unholy
secular alliances only by:
1. A critically corrective
philosophy.
2. Freedom from all social,
economic, and political alliances.
3. Creative, comforting, and
love-expanding fellowships.
4. Progressive enhancement of
spiritual insight and the appreciation of cosmic values.
5. Prevention of fanaticism by the
compensations of the scientific mental attitude.
99:3.10 Religionists, as a group, must never
concern themselves with anything but religion, albeit any
one such religionist, as an individual citizen, may become the
outstanding leader of some social, economic, or political
reconstruction movement.
99:3.11 It is the business of religion to
create, sustain, and inspire such a cosmic loyalty in the
individual citizen as will direct him to the achievement of
success in the advancement of all these difficult but desirable
social services.
4. TRANSITION DIFFICULTIES
99:4.1 Genuine religion renders the
religionist socially fragrant and creates insights into human
fellowship. But the formalization of religious groups many times
destroys the very values for the promotion of which the group
was organized. Human friendship and divine religion are mutually
helpful and significantly illuminating if the growth in each is
equalized and harmonized. Religion puts new meaning into all
group associations -- families, schools, and clubs. It imparts
new values to play and exalts all true humor.
99:4.2 Social leadership is transformed by
spiritual insight; religion prevents all collective movements
from losing sight of their true objectives. Together with
children, religion is the great unifier of family life, provided
it is a living and growing faith. Family life cannot be had
without children; it can be lived without religion, but such a
handicap enormously multiplies the difficulties of this intimate
human association. During the early decades of the twentieth
century, family life, next to personal religious experience,
suffers most from the decadence consequent upon the transition
from old religious loyalties to the emerging new meanings and
values.
99:4.3 True religion is a meaningful way of
living dynamically face to face with the commonplace realities
of everyday life. But if religion is to stimulate individual
development of character and augment integration of personality,
it must not be standardized. If it is to stimulate evaluation of
experience and serve as a value-lure, it must not be
stereotyped. If religion is to promote supreme loyalties, it
must not be formalized.
99:4.4 No matter what upheavals may attend the
social and economic growth of civilization, religion is genuine
and worth while if it fosters in the individual an experience in
which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails,
for such is the true spiritual concept of supreme reality. And
through love and worship this becomes meaningful as fellowship
with man and sonship with God.
99:4.5 After all, it is what one believes
rather than what one knows that determines conduct and dominates
personal performances. Purely factual knowledge exerts very
little influence upon the average man unless it becomes
emotionally activated. But the activation of religion is
superemotional, unifying the entire human experience on
transcendent levels through contact with, and release of,
spiritual energies in the mortal life.
99:4.6 During the psychologically unsettled
times of the twentieth century, amid the economic upheavals, the
moral crosscurrents, and the sociologic rip tides of the
cyclonic transitions of a scientific era, thousands upon
thousands of men and women have become humanly dislocated; they
are anxious, restless, fearful, uncertain, and unsettled; as
never before in the world's history they need the consolation
and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of
unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development
there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos.
99:4.7 There is no danger in religion's
becoming more and more of a private matter -- a personal
experience -- provided it does not lose its motivation for
unselfish and loving social service. Religion has suffered from
many secondary influences: sudden mixing of cultures,
intermingling of creeds, diminution of ecclesiastical authority,
changing of family life, together with urbanization and
mechanization.
99:4.8 Man's greatest spiritual jeopardy
consists in partial progress, the predicament of unfinished
growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without
immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love. Modern
science, particularly psychology, has weakened only those
religions which are so largely dependent upon fear,
superstition, and emotion.
99:4.9 Transition is always accompanied by
confusion, and there will be little tranquillity in the
religious world until the great struggle between the three
contending philosophies of religion is ended:
1. The spiritistic belief (in a
providential Deity) of many religions.
2. The humanistic and idealistic
belief of many philosophies.
3. The mechanistic and naturalistic
conceptions of many sciences.
99:4.10 And these three partial approaches to
the reality of the cosmos must eventually become harmonized by
the revelatory presentation of religion, philosophy, and
cosmology which portrays the triune existence of spirit, mind,
and energy proceeding from the Trinity of Paradise and attaining
time-space unification within the Deity of the Supreme.
5. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGION
99:5.1 While religion is exclusively a
personal spiritual experience -- knowing God as a Father -- the
corollary of this experience -- knowing man as a brother --
entails the adjustment of the self to other selves, and that
involves the social or group aspect of religious life. Religion
is first an inner or personal adjustment, and then it becomes a
matter of social service or group adjustment. The fact of man's
gregariousness perforce determines that religious groups will
come into existence. What happens to these religious groups
depends very much on intelligent leadership. In primitive
society the religious group is not always very different from
economic or political groups. Religion has always been a
conservator of morals and a stabilizer of society. And this is
still true, notwithstanding the contrary teaching of many modern
socialists and humanists.
99:5.2 Always keep in mind: True religion is
to know God as your Father and man as your brother. Religion is
not a slavish belief in threats of punishment or magical
promises of future mystical rewards.
99:5.3 The religion of Jesus is the most
dynamic influence ever to activate the human race. Jesus
shattered tradition, destroyed dogma, and called mankind to the
achievement of its highest ideals in time and eternity -- to be
perfect, even as the Father in heaven is perfect.
99:5.4 Religion has little chance to function
until the religious group becomes separated from all other
groups -- the social association of the spiritual membership of
the kingdom of heaven.
99:5.5 The doctrine of the total depravity of
man destroyed much of the potential of religion for effecting
social repercussions of an uplifting nature and of inspirational
value. Jesus sought to restore man's dignity when he declared
that all men are the children of God.
99:5.6 Any religious belief which is effective
in spiritualizing the believer is certain to have powerful
repercussions in the social life of such a religionist.
Religious experience unfailingly yields the "fruits of the
spirit" in the daily life of the spirit-led mortal.
99:5.7 Just as certainly as men share their
religious beliefs, they create a religious group of some sort
which eventually creates common goals. Someday religionists will
get together and actually effect co-operation on the basis of
unity of ideals and purposes rather than attempting to do so on
the basis of psychological opinions and theological beliefs.
Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists. Since true
religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is
inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own
and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual
experience. Let the term "faith" stand for the individual's
relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what
some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common
religious attitude. "Have you faith? Then have it to yourself."
99:5.8 That faith is concerned only with the
grasp of ideal values is shown by the New Testament definition
which declares that faith is the substance of things hoped for
and the evidence of things not seen.
99:5.9 Primitive man made little effort to put
his religious convictions into words. His religion was danced
out rather than thought out. Modern men have thought out many
creeds and created many tests of religious faith. Future
religionists must live out their religion, dedicate themselves
to the wholehearted service of the brotherhood of man. It is
high time that man had a religious experience so personal and so
sublime that it could be realized and expressed only by
"feelings that lie too deep for words."
99:5.10 Jesus did not require of his followers
that they should periodically assemble and recite a form of
words indicative of their common beliefs. He only ordained that
they should gather together to actually do something --
partake of the communal supper of the remembrance of his
bestowal life on Urantia.
99:5.11 What a mistake for Christians to make
when, in presenting Christ as the supreme ideal of spiritual
leadership, they dare to require God-conscious men and women to
reject the historic leadership of the God-knowing men who have
contributed to their particular national or racial illumination
during past ages.
6. INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
99:6.1 Sectarianism is a disease of
institutional religion, and dogmatism is an enslavement of the
spiritual nature. It is far better to have a religion without a
church than a church without religion. The religious turmoil of
the twentieth century does not, in and of itself, betoken
spiritual decadence. Confusion goes before growth as well as
before destruction.
99:6.2 There is a real purpose in the
socialization of religion. It is the purpose of group religious
activities to dramatize the loyalties of religion; to magnify
the lures of truth, beauty, and goodness; to foster the
attractions of supreme values; to enhance the service of
unselfish fellowship; to glorify the potentials of family life;
to promote religious education; to provide wise counsel and
spiritual guidance; and to encourage group worship. And all live
religions encourage human friendship, conserve morality, promote
neighborhood welfare, and facilitate the spread of the essential
gospel of their respective messages of eternal salvation.
99:6.3 But as religion becomes
institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the
possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of
formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization
of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of
secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth;
diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of
the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators
instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive
divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority;
creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering
of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of
religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate
the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make
up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with
functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil
discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant
judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous
youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of
eternal salvation.
99:6.4 Formal religion restrains men in their
personal spiritual activities instead of releasing them for
heightened service as kingdom builders.
7. RELIGION'S CONTRIBUTION
99:7.1 Though churches and all other religious
groups should stand aloof from all secular activities, at the
same time religion must do nothing to hinder or retard the
social co-ordination of human institutions. Life must continue
to grow in meaningfulness; man must go on with his reformation
of philosophy and his clarification of religion.
99:7.2 Political science must effect the
reconstruction of economics and industry by the techniques it
learns from the social sciences and by the insights and motives
supplied by religious living. In all social reconstruction
religion provides a stabilizing loyalty to a transcendent
object, a steadying goal beyond and above the immediate and
temporal objective. In the midst of the confusions of a rapidly
changing environment mortal man needs the sustenance of a
far-flung cosmic perspective.
99:7.3 Religion inspires man to live
courageously and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins
patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, and
ideals with energy.
99:7.4 Man can never wisely decide temporal
issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless
he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and
reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual
values.
99:7.5 Economic interdependence and social
fraternity will ultimately conduce to brotherhood. Man is
naturally a dreamer, but science is sobering him so that
religion can presently activate him with far less danger of
precipitating fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie man
up with reality, and personal religious experience brings this
same man face to face with the eternal realities of an
ever-expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship.
99:7.6
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
