New Thought : Part 8

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
by Gaius Glenn Atkins

(Page 16 of 19)

One may say, then, that the God of New Thought is always immanent, always force and law and sometimes intimate and personal. However this force may be defined, it carries those who commit themselves to it toward definite goals of well-being. The New Thought of today reflects the optimistic note of the scientific evolution of a generation ago. It is not exactly "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world," but it is the affirmation of streams of tendency whose unfailing direction is toward happiness and success.

If an element of struggle be implied in the particular sort of salvation which New Thought preaches, it is not at least clearly brought out. There has been amongst us of late a new and a very dearly bought recognition of the element of struggle which seems to be implicit in all life. The optimistic evolutionary philosophy in which New Thought roots itself is on the whole justified neither by history nor the insight of those who have been most rich in spiritual understanding, nor, indeed, by the outcome of that philosophy in our own time. The happy confidence that we do not need to struggle, but rather to commit ourselves to forces which make automatically for happiness and well-being, has only involved us more deeply in a struggle where in some ways the smug happiness and well-being of representative New Thought literature seem more remote than ever.

This elimination of the element of moral struggle and the need for deliverance which has so greatly colored the older theologies gives a distinct character to New Thought theology. There is no place in it for a scheme of redemption; there is no place in it for atonement, save as atonement may be conceived as a vicarious sharing of suffering incident to all struggle for better things; there is no place in it for the old anthropologies of Christian theology. It has on the whole little to say about sin. Says Allen, in a very thoughtful short article on New Thought in Hastings' "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," "New Thought excludes such doctrines as the duality of man and God, miracles in the accepted sense, the forgiveness of sins and priestly mediation.

It seeks to interpret the world and nature as science has recorded them, but also to convey their finer and esoteric meanings to the human understanding. The fundamental purpose of religion and science is the same - namely, the discovery of truth." "New Thought does not teach the moral depravity of man. Such thoughts demoralize and weaken the individual. Miracles, in the accepted sense, New Thought does not conceive as possible in a universe of law. The only miracles are phenomena not understood, but nevertheless the result of law. It applies the pragmatic test to every religion and philosophy. Are you true? What do you give to a man to carry to his daily task?" "New Thought recognizes no authority save the voice of the soul speaking to each individual. Every soul can interpret aright the oracles of truth."

Tends to Become a Universal and Loosely-Defined Religion

Worship becomes, therefore, contemplation rather than adoration, and a vast deal of the liturgical material which Christianity specifically has heretofore supplied becomes useless for this cult. Christian hymnology would need much editing before it would serve New Thought purposes; the whole conception of prayer would need to be altered. Naturally, then, on its more distinctly religious side New Thought is at once fluctuating and incomplete. It is the proclamation, to quote one of its spokesmen, of a robust individualism and, in the individual, mind is supreme. Right thinking is the key to right living. New Thought affirms the limitless possibilities of the individual. Here perhaps it is more loose in its thinking than in any other region. It makes free use of the word "infinite" and surrounds itself with an atmosphere of boundless hope as alluring as it is vague.

The interest of New Thought is most largely in the present tenses of life; its future in an eternal progress which should, of course, imply immortality. New Thought is hospitable to truth from whatever source derived. It is particularly hospitable to the suggestions of oriental religions and, as far as it has taken form as a distinct religious movement, it is becoming more and more markedly a kind of syncretism, a putting together of religious elements drawn from widely universal sources and it patently seeks nothing less than a universal religious fellowship in which the values of all true faith are recognized and which is to be under the control of what science has to say about the world without and psychology of the world within. In a sentence New Thought is an outstanding aspect of the unconquerably religious in human nature, seeking to subdue to its own ends and inform with its own spirit the new material which science, psychology and comparative religion have put at our service in the last two generations.

If New Thought diverges from the accepted Christian theology in many ways, it runs parallel in other regions with what is enduringly true in the Gospels, and it runs parallel also with not a little of that endeavor after theological reconstruction which is loosely known as the New Theology. We are generally under a compulsion to reconstruct our creeds and adapt our religious thinking to whatever is true about us in our understanding of our world and its history and its mechanism and the laws of our own lives. Theology must take account of a creative evolution and a humanity which has struggled upward from far-off beginnings along a far-flung front and the findings of Science and the intimations of Psychology.

It will need a deal of pioneering to find roads through these new regions and such adventurous souls as seek new paths, with a daring disregard for ancient landmarks and a true passion to find religious meanings in new facts and forces, are really serving us all. There is the danger, however, that in the very freedom of their speculation they may be too impatient of old experiences and hallowed certainties, for these old experiences themselves are deeply rooted and testify to realities which we may be compelled to let in by the window, once we have put them out at the door.

Copyright 1923 by Fleming H. Revell Company