Paper 99 Overview: The Social Problems of Religion

Religion functions at its highest level when it maintains independence from secular institutions of society. Throughout history, religion has primarily operated within the realm of morality, focusing on replacing evil with good via existing social structures rather than challenging the broader political and economic systems. This approach has inadvertently helped perpetuate established social orders and existing civilization types. In contemporary society, religion faces the challenge of adapting to extensive social reconstruction while maintaining its core spiritual mission.

True religion must find a delicate balance, neither directly creating new social orders nor preserving outdated ones, yet still providing moral guidance during periods of social transformation. While opposing violence as a method of social evolution, religion should support intelligent social adaptation to new economic conditions and cultural requirements. As society undergoes rapid change, religion must serve as a stabilizing force for human ideals while simultaneously evolving its own expressions to remain relevant in changing times.

Religion achieves its highest social ministry when it has the least connection with society's secular institutions. In past eras, social reforms were primarily limited to morality realms, which meant religion did not need to adjust its position regarding significant economic and political system changes. The primary challenge for religion was replacing evil with good within the existing social framework of political and economic culture. This approach indirectly reinforced established social orders and helped maintain existing civilization types.

However, religion should not be directly involved either in creating new social systems or preserving old ones. While true religion opposes using violence as a technique for social evolution, it does not resist society's intelligent efforts to adapt its customs and institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements. Although religion has supported occasional social reforms throughout history, in the twentieth century, it faces the necessity of adapting to extensive and ongoing social reconstruction as living conditions rapidly change, requiring institutions to accelerate their modifications and religion to quicken its adaptation to this evolving social order.

Technological innovations and knowledge dissemination are fundamentally altering civilization, making certain economic adjustments and social changes essential to prevent cultural disaster. The new and advancing social order will not remain static but will continue evolving, requiring humanity to accept ongoing changes, adjustments, and readjustments as part of life. The human race is progressing toward a new and as-yet-unrevealed planetary destiny that will involve continuous adaptation rather than stability.

Religion must become a dynamic force promoting moral stability and spiritual progress amid these constantly shifting conditions and never-ending economic adjustments. Society on Urantia can never return to the settled patterns of previous ages, as humanity has moved beyond the protected harbors of established tradition into uncharted evolutionary waters. In this unprecedented historical moment, people must carefully examine their moral principles and attentively follow religious guidance. Religion's essential social mission is stabilizing human ideals during these dangerous transitions between one phase of civilization and one cultural level to another.

Institutionalized religion cannot provide the inspiration and leadership needed for the impending worldwide social reconstruction because it has unfortunately become integrated with the social order and economic system that must undergo change. Only authentic religion based on personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively during civilization's current crisis. Institutional religion faces a paradoxical situation: it cannot help reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself, yet as an integral part of the established order, it cannot transform until society itself has been fundamentally reconstructed.

Religious individuals must function in society, industry, and politics as individuals rather than as part of organized groups or institutions. When religious groups attempt to function outside religious activities, they immediately transform into political parties, economic organizations, or social institutions. Religious collective efforts should focus exclusively on advancing religious causes. Religious people offer no greater value in social reconstruction than non-religious people except when their religion provides enhanced cosmic insight and superior social wisdom born from genuinely loving God and treating all people as spiritual family in a divine kingdom.

Early Christianity existed completely free from civil entanglements, social commitments, and economic alliances. Only later did institutionalized Christianity become integrated into Western civilization's political and social structure. The kingdom of heaven is neither a social nor economic system but exclusively a spiritual brotherhood of individuals who know God. Nevertheless, such a brotherhood creates a remarkable social phenomenon with significant political and economic consequences in the broader society.

Religious individuals remain sensitive to social suffering, civil injustice, economic concerns, and political oppression. Religion influences social reconstruction directly by spiritualizing individual citizens and indirectly as these individuals become active and influential members in various social, moral, economic, and political organizations. Achieving an advanced civilization requires first developing ideal citizens and then creating adequate social mechanisms through which these citizens can manage the economic and political institutions of their society. Religious motivation, often unrecognized even by the individuals themselves, plays a significant role in contemporary social reconstruction efforts.

Genuine religion makes believers socially appealing and develops insights into human fellowship, while the formalization of religious groups often destroys the very values they were organized to promote. Human friendship and divine religion become mutually beneficial when growth in both areas remains balanced and harmonious. Religion adds new meaning to all group associations—including families, schools, and clubs—while bringing new value to recreation and elevating genuine humor. Religion transforms social leadership through spiritual insight and prevents collective movements from losing sight of their true objectives.

True religion represents a meaningful approach to life that engages dynamically with everyday realities. For religion to stimulate character development and personality integration, it must not become standardized. If religion is to promote evaluation of experience and serve as a value-attractant, it must resist stereotyping. Genuine religion remains valuable during social and economic upheavals when it fosters experiences where truth, beauty, and goodness prevail—the authentic spiritual concept of supreme reality. What people believe influences their behavior more than what they know, especially when knowledge becomes emotionally activated. Religion operates at a superemotional level, unifying human experience through contact with spiritual energies.

While religion is at its core a personal spiritual experience of knowing God as Father, it also carries a vital social implication: recognizing others as spiritual siblings. This broader realization requires individuals to adjust themselves to others, giving rise to the group or social dimension of religious life. Religion begins with an internal, personal alignment and then expands into social service and communal adaptation. Human social tendencies inevitably lead to the formation of religious groups, whose development depends significantly on intelligent leadership. In primitive societies, religious groups often resembled economic or political groups, but religion has always preserved morality and stabilized society—a function it continues to serve despite contrary arguments from modern socialists and humanists.

The true essence of religion is knowing God as your Father and mankind as your brothers, not fearful adherence to punishment threats or magical promises of future mystical rewards. Jesus' religion represents the most dynamic influence ever to activate humanity, as he broke traditions, dismantled dogma, and called people to achieve their highest ideals in both temporal life and eternity. Religion functions effectively only when religious groups maintain separation from other group types, representing the spiritual membership of the kingdom of heaven. Religious belief that effectively spiritualizes believers inevitably produces powerful repercussions in their social interactions, consistently yielding the "fruits of the spirit" in daily life.

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 characterizing the twentieth century does not necessarily indicate spiritual decline, as confusion often precedes growth as well as destruction. Religious socialization serves legitimate purposes: dramatizing religious loyalties, highlighting truth's appeal, fostering supreme values' attractiveness, enhancing unselfish fellowship, glorifying family life's potential, promoting religious education, providing guidance, and encouraging collective worship.

When religion becomes institutionalized, its potential for good diminishes while its capacity for harm multiplies significantly. Formalized religion creates numerous dangers: rigid beliefs, crystallized emotions, vested interests, secularization, standardized truth, diverted focus from serving God to serving institutions, administrative leadership replacing ministry, sectarian divisions, oppressive authority, elitist attitudes, exaggerated sacredness, routinized worship, past veneration at the expense of present needs, outdated interpretations, entanglement with secular institutions, religious caste discrimination, orthodox judgmentalism, and youth disengagement. Formal religion often inhibits personal spiritual development rather than releasing individuals for heightened service as kingdom builders.

While religious organizations should maintain distance from secular activities, religion should never impede the social coordination of human institutions. Life must continue growing in meaning as humanity reforms philosophy and clarifies religious understanding. Political science must reconstruct economics and industry using techniques derived from social sciences and insights provided by religious living. During social reconstruction, religion provides stabilizing loyalty to transcendent goals beyond immediate temporal objectives, offering perspective amid confusing environmental changes. Religion inspires courageous and joyful living, combining patience with passion, insight with enthusiasm, and ideals with energy.

Humans cannot wisely address temporal issues or overcome selfish interests without also contemplating divine sovereignty and considering spiritual values and meanings. Economic interdependence and social fraternity will eventually lead to brotherhood among humanity. Though humans are naturally inclined toward dreams and ideals, science grounds human thinking, allowing religion to activate people with a reduced risk of triggering fanatical reactions. Economic necessities connect people to reality, while personal religious experience brings them face-to-face with the eternal realities of an expanding cosmic citizenship that transcends temporal concerns.