Church versus Religion and Faith

[The following excerpt was part of the (long!) July 30, 1942 journal entry, which began with the journaling & WWII commentary that I published in the previous post. In this continuation of that day’s entry, my father shifts to a consideration of religion’s institutional failings. Like many of us, my father struggled throughout his life to reconcile his intellectual life with his faith (or lack thereof). If his commentary is to be believed, his disillusionment about the Christian church was shared by many of his contemporaries. As with many of my father’s observations, this early commentary could fit quite comfortably in our current world, where the interaction between religion and state affairs is pervasive and — more often than not — unfortunate.]

July 30, 1942 (Middlebury College), con’t.

… In spite of its claimed divinity, it would not be fair to criticize the church in the light of its own ideals, for it is administered by men, like any other institution. Yet the Christian church today seems to be like an old bitch with its teats gone dry and its suckling brood of denominations shriveling and dying at its belly. It lives on in its material forms, apparently as strong as ever; as a spiritual force it is in its death chokes. It has too long and too obviously followed its constituents, not led them, and all who have recognized its failure to lead have spurned it. This includes millions of young men and women in the world today, and if the power of the church is dead in them, it is dead as a power in the world.

No church can hand out religion to its members. It can inspire them to construct religion in themselves, by giving them a larger and truer picture of the world they live in than they can gain for themselves. It must win their confidence, that the picture it gives them is trustworthy and in accordance with the experience of other men. Then there is the basis for that social dynamism we call a common faith. The church is indeed the spiritual leader of its society, and is capable of bringing out the best that is in its members, for this best that is in them will everywhere win recognition and approval, and this is their religion. The church acts as the unifier of the religion in its individual members, by furnishing common standards and forms. As long as the men who administer this church have the intelligence and the will to keep the church abreast of the times, and the leader of the times, the people will not desert the church.

It is the church that deserts the people. Forms harden; standards become outmoded. However slow the process, there is a continual change going on in the world which the church must successfully represent to its members. The change is inevitable, and is inherent in the creative powers that exist in the mind of man: Hence the church must be alert to change, not balk change. It must willingly gather the change into itself, and interpret it to its members in its true light. This the Christian church, and probably every other organized church, has failed to do. Hence it is inaccurate to say that Christians are deserting the church. The church long ago deserted Christians.

Dogma is in the denial of change, and when dogma permeates the church, the church is doomed as a social and spiritual power, except it purge itself. A church must have a ritual, and when this ritual is rooted in the daily experience of its members, it is a beautiful means of common worship. But then daily experience changes, and ritual becomes rooted in dogma, its performance becomes hollow and without meaning. And when the church attempts to enforce its dogma as the rule of life, with actual life no longer admitting of such a rule, the church must be overthrown. The Reformation was the first such major explosion within the Christian church, and from this explosion and those that followed, it has never recovered. If the opportunity for recovery ever was in its grasp, it has now vanished and will not be met again.

There is no need here for criticism of the Christian Scriptures and myths. The very fact that they are widely criticized and ridiculed by millions now living in a supposedly Christian culture is criticism enough. The position of the various Christian denominations in this present war is but another chapter in their damnation. It is not pertinent to point out that the church has among its teachings the love of enemies, the abhorrence of war. During its long history, the church has led the way into war after war, justified them as it saw fit, and survived them with its spiritual power unimpaired. Witness the Crusades, which were the last of the successful holy wars, and which, of course, did contain some seeds of the church’s coming disruption. The important fact to note today is that the church is dragged to the support of this war. It is little more than a pawn of state.

This is my view of the church, and should explain why it wins no reverence and support from me. I am not without a religion. Religion lives in men independently of churches. In this individual manifestation it has the advantage that there is no obstacle but personal ignorance and prejudice to its being shaped continually anew to answer the needs which the impinging world imposes upon it, but it has this tremendous disadvantage, that it cannot any longer be a source of social and spiritual union among men. Its place today is taken today by such forces as nationalism, in which the moral level is typically lowered and warped.

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Journaling Rationale & Initial Thoughts on World War II

[One of my father’s first journal entries about World War II, written at the age of 20 while a student at Middlebury College. This entry gives a sense of my father’s objectives in writing a journal, and also illustrates how his own life’s experiences and concerns have eclipsed even momentous events such as the expanding war.]

July 30, 1942 (Middlebury College)

When this JOURNAL is read over some years from now, I may wonder why it contains so little mention of this present war. There are several reasons. In the first place, my affair with Dottie has obviously occupied a pre-eminent place in my mind. The second reason is allied to this; that the events, and among them a war that rends the whole world, have dwarfed beside this personal battle I have been fighting with my own self. I could have thrown in comments on the war, but they would have been oratorical only; and I have chosen to include in these pages what has had the realest significance in my daily life. Finally, the lack of contact with actual war and the limited information I have received concerning it do not form a basis for any intelligent discussion of its military aspects. Always possible, of course, is theorizing on the political, social, economic, or moral nature of the war, but during the past year I have carried the conviction that such theorizing was practically fruitless for me, my mind has been in such a flux, grounded on no standards which it dared trust. I could have brought my latent cynicism to bear upon it all, and could do so now, except that such a display seems now to me a fit exercise for a childish mind that would pamper itself. In short, I have not spoken, because I have felt that I had nothing in me worthy to be said.

This has been in part a ruinous attitude, for only by verbal articulation does my mind take those leaps forward which only can renew my confidence in its powers. Great thoughts may lash fitfully about it for weeks on end, but until I make the effort to crystallize them into written words, my mind is not free to move forward. It becomes more and more cluttered with these embryo thoughts, until its own sluggishness seems cause enough for its inactivity. Eventually it must force an opening and relieve itself, but too often these unplanned bursts are charged with emotion and take the form of melodramatic moods, when all expression is unprincipled, and hence fruitless, except insofar as it partially clears my mind for action. Usually this outburst comes as a confessional period, during which some other persons must stand before the flood of my mental flotsam, and perhaps think the worse of me for that not pleasant experience. All this social and spiritual waste would be unnecessary if I could consistently discipline myself to write out my thoughts at regular intervals, or whenever I feel the need. Principally for that purpose, this JOURNAL was begun.

And so tonight I confess that I feel more strongly than usual the tragedy of this war. It is never out of my thoughts, and is, in fact, more universal in the consciousness of all the people of the world than any other historical situation. The fear and suffering of war now breeds in the hearts of all of us a feeling, a kinship which centuries of the supposed fear, or love, of God could not breed. The people of Russia go down to death in the dirt by the millions, and as the magnitude of their suffering becomes more terrible, it becomes a part of a world-suffering, and we feel drawn together in a common fear. The agony begins in individuals, spreads through families, communities, states, and continents, and now overlays the whole world. A man’s heart is pierced and bleeds out its gushing blood; the world’s heart is pricked and trickles out its droplet for this man who dies. There it goes with every death, until ten million individual pricks have opened a great hole in the world’s heart and its blood boils forth and dries in the ground. But there is enough blood in the world’s heart to encrust the soil of whole nations, yet leave the world alive. And so it shall be now.

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