Minor Cults: The Meaning of the Cults for the Church : Part 3

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
by Gaius Glenn Atkins

(Page 14 of 19)

Chicago, or rather Wilmette, is now the center of the movement in America and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in Eskabad, Russia. This is to be a temple of universal religion, symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness, all will become one.... At night it will be brilliantly lighted and the light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of peace and unity rising high above Lake Michigan."

This study has led us into many curious regions and shown to what unexpected conclusions the forces of faith or hope, once released, may come, but surely it has revealed nothing more curious than that the old, old controversy as to the true successor of Mohammed the prophet should at last have issued in a universal religion and set the faithful to building a temple of unity on the shores of Lake Michigan.

If this work were to be complete it should include some investigation of the rituals of the cults. They are gradually creating hymns of their own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with meditations on the immanence of God, the supremacy of the spiritual and related themes. In general they dispense with the sacraments; they have no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the Catholic priesthood or the Protestant ministry, though the Christian Science reader has a recognized official place. They meet in conferences; they depend largely upon addresses by their leaders. Spiritualistic movements organize themselves around séances. They use such halls as may be rented, hotels, their own homes; they have not generally buildings of their own save the Christian Science temples which are distinctive for dignity of architecture and beauty of appointment in almost every large city.

General Conclusions; the Limitations of the Writer's Method

It remains only to sum up in a most general way the conclusions to which this study may lead. There has been a process of criticism and appraisal throughout the whole book, but there should be room at the end for some general statements.

The writer recognizes the limitations of his method; he has studied faithfully the literature of the cults, but any religion is always a vast deal more than its literature. The history of the cults does not fully tell their story nor does any mere observation of their worship admit the observer to the inner religious life of the worshipers. Life always subdues its materials to its own ends, reproduces them in terms of its own realities; there are endless individual variations, but the outcome is massively uniform. Religion does the same thing. Its materials are faiths and obedience and persuasions of truth and expectations of happier states, but its ultimate creations are character and experience, and the results in life of widely different religions are unexpectedly similar. Both theoretically and practically the truer understanding or the finer faith and, particularly, the higher ethical standards should produce the richer life and this is actually so. But real goodness is everywhere much the same; there are calendared saints for every faith.

There is an abundant testimony in the literature of the cults to rare goodness and abundant devotion, and observation confirms these testimonies. Something of this is doubtless due to their environment. The Western cults themselves and the Eastern cults in the West are contained in and influenced by the whole outcome of historic Christianity and they naturally share its spirit. If the churches need to remember this as they appraise the cults, the cults need also to remember it as they appraise the churches. Multitudes of Catholics and Protestants secure from a religion which the cults think themselves either to have corrected or outgrown exactly what the cults secure - and more. Such as these trust God, keep well, go happily about their businesses and prove their faith in gracious lives. There is room for mutual respect and a working measure of give and take on both sides.

The writer is inclined to think the churches at present are more teachable than the more recent religious movements. For a long generation now the churches have been subject to searching criticism from almost every quarter. The scientist, the sociologist, the philosopher, the publicist, the discontented with things as they are and the protagonist of things as they should to be, have all taken their turn and the Church generally, with some natural protest against being made the scapegoat for the sins of a society arrestingly reluctant to make the Church's gospel the law of its life, has taken account of its own shortcomings and sought to correct them. The cults are as yet less inclined to test themselves by that against which they have reacted. But this is beside the point. The movements we have been studying can only be fairly appraised as one follows through their outcome in life and that either in detail or entirety is impossible. But it is possible to gain from their literature a reasonable understanding of their principles and interrelations and this the writer has sought to do.

The Cults Are Aspects of the Creative Religious Consciousness of the Age

Certain conclusions are therefore made evident. These movements are the creation of the religious consciousness of the time. They are aspects of the present tense of religion. Since religion is, among other things, the effective desire to enter into right relationships with the power which manifests itself in the universe there are two variants in its content; first, our changing understanding of the power itself and second, our changing uses of it. The first varies with our knowledge and insight, the second with our own changing sense of personal need. Though God be the same yesterday, today and forever, our understandings of Him cannot and should not to be the same yesterday, today and forever.

Our faith is modified by, for example, our scientific discoveries. When the firmament of Hebrew cosmogony has given way to interstellar spaces and the telescope and the spectroscope plumb the depths of the universe, resolving nebule into star drifts, faith is bound to reflect the change. The power which manifests itself in the universe becomes thereby a vaster power, operating through a vaster sweep of law. Our changed understandings of ourselves must be reflected in our faith and our ethical insights as well. And because there is and should to be no end to these changing understandings, religion itself, which is one outcome of them, must be plastic and changing.

Copyright 1923 by Fleming H. Revell Company