Paper 99 Overview: The Social Problems of Religion

Religion accomplishes its highest social service when it has the least connection with secular societal institutions. Historically, religion's primary challenge was replacing evil with good within existing social structures, indirectly perpetuating established civilization. However, modern religion must adapt to rapid social reconstruction while opposing violence as an evolutionary technique, yet not directly involving itself in creating or preserving specific social orders.

Religion faces significant challenges in navigating its relationship with rapidly changing social and economic structures. It must function as a moral stabilizer and spiritual guide during societal transitions, avoiding entanglement in secular affairs while simultaneously evolving to remain relevant. The fundamental mission of religion, creating personal spiritual experience and fostering brotherhood among humans, can only be fulfilled when religion remains uncorrupted by institutional rigidity, political entanglements, and social conformity, yet remains engaged as a dynamic force for cosmic loyalty and spiritual progress.

Religion achieves its highest social ministry when it is least connected with secular institutions. In past ages, social reforms were largely confined to moral realms, and religion focused on replacing evil with good within existing social orders, thus indirectly perpetuating established civilization. Religion appropriately opposes violence as a technique of social evolution while supporting intelligent societal adaptation to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.

Religion endorsed occasional social reforms of past centuries, but twentieth-century conditions necessitate rapid institutional adjustments to extensive social reconstruction. As living conditions change rapidly, institutional modifications must accelerate, requiring religion to quicken its adaptation to the new and continuously evolving social order. Religion must maintain its moral foundations while demonstrating flexibility in addressing evolving human needs and social structures.

Mechanical inventions and knowledge dissemination are transforming civilization, necessitating economic adjustments and social changes to prevent cultural disaster. This emerging social order will not settle complacently for a millennium, but requires humanity to reconcile itself to continual changes and adjustments as the race progresses toward a new and unrevealed planetary destiny. Religion must become a forceful influence for moral stability and spiritual advancement, functioning dynamically amid ever-changing conditions and continuous economic adjustments.

Urantia society cannot hope to settle down as in the past, having departed from established harbors into evolutionary destiny's high seas. In these dangerous transition times between sweeping changes in civilization and culture, religion's paramount mission is stabilizing human ideals. Although religion has no new duties, it must function as a wise guide and experienced counselor in increasingly mechanical, complex, and interdependent social situations. Religion must prevent these new and intimate interassociations from becoming mutually retrogressive, acting as cosmic salt preserving civilization's cultural savor. Only through religion's ministry can new social relations and economic upheavals result in lasting brotherhood.

A godless humanitarianism may be noble from the human perspective, but only religion can sensitize one social group to the suffering and needs of other groups. In past eras, institutional religion remained passive while upper social strata ignored lower strata's suffering and oppression, but modern lower social orders possess greater knowledge and political empowerment. Religion must avoid organic involvement in social reconstruction and economic reorganization work, yet actively keep pace with civilization's advances by clearly restating its moral mandates, spiritual precepts, and progressive philosophy of human living and transcendent survival. While religion's spirit remains eternal, its expression must be restated with each revision of human language.

Institutional religion cannot inspire or lead effectively in the impending worldwide social reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has unfortunately become an organic socio-economic system that it needs to transform. Trapped in a vicious circle, institutional religion cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself, yet being integral to the established order, it cannot accomplish self-reconstruction until society undergoes radical transformation. This interdependence creates a significant impediment to religion's role in social evolution.

Religionists must function in society, industry, and politics as individuals rather than as groups, parties, or institutions. When religious groups operate beyond religious activities, they transform into political parties, economic organizations, or social institutions. Religious collectivism must limit its efforts to advancing religious causes. Religionists offer no greater value in social reconstruction than nonreligionists except when their religion has enhanced their cosmic foresight and endowed them with superior social wisdom born from loving God supremely and loving every person as a brother in the heavenly kingdom. The institutionalized church that previously served society by glorifying established political and economic orders must cease such activity to survive, adopting instead teachings of nonviolence and peaceful evolution.

Modern religion struggles to adjust to rapidly shifting social changes precisely because it has allowed itself to become excessively traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. In contrast, the religion of living experience encounters no difficulty keeping ahead of social developments and economic upheavals, amid which it functions as a moral stabilizer, social guide, and spiritual pilot. True religion carries forward from one age to the next the worthwhile cultural elements and wisdom derived from experiencing God and striving to emulate him.

Early Christianity existed entirely free from civil entanglements, social commitments, and economic alliances; only later did institutionalized Christianity become organically integrated into Occidental civilization's political and social structure. The kingdom of heaven represents neither a social nor economic order but exclusively a spiritual brotherhood of God-knowing individuals. However, this brotherhood is a remarkable social phenomenon that also has profound political and economic repercussions.

The religionist remains sympathetic to social suffering, mindful of civil injustice, engaged with economic thinking, and sensitive to political tyranny. Religion influences social reconstruction directly by spiritualizing individual citizens and indirectly through the actions of these individuals in various social, moral, economic, and political groups. High cultural civilization requires both ideal citizens and adequate social mechanisms through which such citizens can control society's economic and political institutions. Religious motivation, whether acknowledged or unrecognized, plays a significant role in current social reconstruction efforts, though unrecognized and unconscious religious activity suffers from an inability to benefit from open religious criticism and self-correction.

Religion can remain free from unholy secular alliances only through critically corrective philosophy, freedom from socioeconomic and political alliances, creative and love-expanding fellowships, progressive spiritual insight, and prevention of fanaticism through scientific mental attitudes. Religionists as a group must focus exclusively on religion, while individual religionists may become leading figures in social, economic, or political reconstruction movements. Religion's function is to create, sustain, and inspire cosmic loyalty in individual citizens, directing them toward success in advancing challenging but desirable social services.

Genuine religion renders the religionist socially fragrant and creates insights into human fellowship, while formalization of religious groups often destroys the very values for which the group was organized. Human friendship and divine religion mutually enhance each other when their growth remains equalized and harmonized. Religion introduces new meaning to all group associations—families, schools, clubs—and imparts new values to play while exalting genuine humor. Social leadership transforms through spiritual insight, as religion prevents collective movements from losing sight of their true objectives. Together with children, religion constitutes the great unifier of family life when it embodies living, growing faith.

True religion constitutes a meaningful way of dynamic living in the face of everyday realities. For religion to stimulate character development and personality integration, it must resist standardization. If religion is to encourage experience evaluation and serve as a value-lure, it cannot be stereotyped; to promote supreme loyalties, it cannot be formalized. A religion is worthy only if it fosters experiences where truth, beauty, and goodness prevail, becoming meaningful through fellowship with humanity and sonship with God. Personal beliefs rather than knowledge determine conduct and dominate performances, with factual knowledge exerting minimal influence unless emotionally activated. Religion's activation transcends emotion, unifying the entire human experience on transcendent levels through contact with and release of spiritual energies in mortal life.

During the the current psychologically unsettled times, amid economic upheavals and scientific transitions, people have become anxious and unsettled; more than ever, they need the comfort and stabilization of religion. Religion can increasingly become a private matter, a personal experience, as long as it preserves the inner motivation for loving and unselfish service. Religion has suffered from secondary influences including sudden culture mixing, declining eclessiastical authority, changing family life, and increased urbanization and mechanization. Humanity's greatest spiritual jeopardy lies in partial progress: abandoning fear-based evolutionary religions without embracing love-based revelatory religion. Modern science, particularly psychology, has weakened only religions heavily dependent on fear, superstition, and emotion. There is a great struggle between three philosophies of religion: the spiritistic belief in a providential God; the humanistic and idealistic beliefs; and the mechanistic and naturalistic beliefs. All of these philosophies can be harmonized through revelatory religion that discloses the spiritual nature of the cosmos.

While religion exists primarily as a personal spiritual experiencem, knowing God as Father, its corollary of knowing humanity as brothers entails self-adjustment to others, involving religion's social aspect. Human gregariousness naturally leads to religious group formation, whose development depends significantly on intelligent leadership. In primitive society, religious groups often resembled economic or political groups. Religion has consistently conserved morals and stabilized society despite contrary assertions from modern socialists and humanists. True religion involves knowing God as Father and humanity as brotherhood, transcending slavish belief in threats of punishment or promised mystical rewards.

The religion of Jesus represents the most dynamic influence to activate humanity, shattering tradition, destroying dogma, and calling people to achieve their highest ideals in time and eternity—being perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect. Religion has little opportunity to thrive until the religious group becomes distinct from other social groups, forming a spiritual community united by shared values and a common purpose. When Jesus restored human dignity by declaring all people God's children, it was counter to the prevailing view about humans' inherent depravity. Any religion that spiritually energizes the believer produces powerful changes in that believer and is eventually seen in the "fruits of the spirit" in their daily life.

Religionists will eventually cooperate based on unified ideals and purposes rather than psychological opinions or theological beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists, with faith representing individual relationships with God rather than group-agreed creedal formulations. The New Testament definition showing faith as the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen demonstrates faith's concern with ideal values. Primitive humans expressed religious convictions through dance rather than thought, while modern humans have developed numerous creeds and religious faith tests. Future religionists must live their religion through wholehearted service to humanity, experiencing personal and sublime spiritual encounters expressible only through "feelings that lie too deep for words." Jesus did not require followers to periodically assemble and recite formulaic beliefs, but did ordain that they should gather to actually do something such as partaking of the communal supper of the remembrance of his life.

Sectarianism is institutional religion's disease, while dogmatism enslaves the spiritual nature. Having religion without a church is preferable to having a church without religion. The twentieth century's religious turmoil does not inherently indicate spiritual decadence, as confusion precedes both growth and destruction. Religious socialization serves legitimate purposes: dramatizing religious loyalties, magnifying truth's lures, fostering supreme value attractions, enhancing unselfish fellowship service, glorifying family life potentials, promoting religious education, providing spiritual guidance, and encouraging group worship. All living religions encourage human friendship, conserve morality, promote neighborhood welfare, and facilitate the spread of their respective eternal salvation messages.

As religion becomes institutionalized, its positive potential diminishes while its negative possibilities multiply significantly. Formalized religion's dangers include belief fixation, sentiment crystallization, vested interest accumulation with increased secularization, truth standardization and fossilization, diversion from God's service to church service, leaders becoming administrators rather than ministers, competitive divisions, oppressive ecclesiastical authority, fostering exaggerated sacredness ideas, worship routinization, past veneration at the expense of present demands, failure to update religious interpretations, entanglement with secular institutions, religious caste discrimination, orthodoxy judgment, youth interest loss, and gradual abandonment of eternal salvation's gospel message.

Formal religion constrains personal spiritual activities rather than releasing individuals for heightened service as kingdom builders, ultimately undermining its foundational purpose of spiritual transformation and cosmic citizenship. The extensive catalog of institutional religion's dangers illustrates how organizational structures intended to preserve religious values can paradoxically subvert religion's essential purpose of personal spiritual liberation and social brotherhood. When religious institutions become ends in themselves rather than means of spiritual advancement, they inevitably impede the very spiritual growth and social progress they ostensibly aim to promote. Only by recognizing these institutional pitfalls can religionists work to mitigate their effects and reclaim religion's transformative potential in both individual lives and evolving society.

Though churches and religious groups should remain detached from secular activities, religion must not hinder human institutions' social coordination. Life must continue growing in meaningfulness while humans reform philosophy and clarify religion. Political science must reconstruct economics and industry through social science techniques and insights motivated by religious living. Religion provides stabilizing loyalty to transcendent objects and steady goals beyond immediate temporal objectives, offering critical cosmic perspective amid rapidly changing environmental confusions.

Religion inspires courageous and joyful earthly living, combining patience with passion, insight with zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy. Humans cannot wisely decide temporal issues or transcend personal interest selfishness without meditating in God's sovereign presence and considering divine meanings and spiritual values. Economic interdependence and social fraternity ultimately foster brotherhood. Humans naturally dream, but science sobers them, allowing religion to activate them with reduced fanatical reaction risk. Economic necessities connect humans to reality, while personal religious experience brings them face-to-face with eternal realities of expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship.

Religion's ultimate contribution lies in its unique capacity to synthesize material existence with spiritual aspiration, tempering scientific advancement with spiritual insight, and grounding social relationships in transcendent values. By sustaining cosmic perspective during periods of rapid social change, religion ensures that material progress remains tethered to enduring spiritual principles. When properly functioning, religion neither impedes social evolution nor becomes entangled in temporal affairs, but rather infuses the evolutionary process with spiritual significance. Through this balanced approach, religion facilitates humanity's advancement toward increasingly enlightened social structures while simultaneously nurturing individuals' spiritual development toward ever-expanding cosmic citizenship. This dual contribution at both societal and personal levels represents religion's irreplaceable function in human civilization.