Toward a world Christian fellowship
"Is there any justification for attempting to make Christianity world wide? Is not one religion about as good as another? Does not each people in the course of time build up a religion adapted to its culture? Do not serious-and unhappy dislocations follow when a folk of one cultural heritage abandons its inherited faith for another that has developed under a different set of circumstances? Have Christians any right to make "proselytes" from adherents of other religions? Is it not narrow-minded, provincial, arrogant, and impertinent to strive for a world-wide Christian fellowship? If we are to have a universal religion at all, should it not come out of a common search for truth? Ought not those of various religious traditions to pool what they think they have learned of ultimate reality, and without any assumption of superior insight embark, in a spirit of humility and of reciprocal sharing, upon a joint exploration of whatever may lie back of the religions of mankind? Is not the dream of a world-wide Christian fellowship fantastic? From practically the beginning, the followers of Jesus have been divided. Though professing a religion whose primary precept for conduct is love, Christians have bitterly denounced and persecuted one another. They have been divided into many churches and denominations. Today these divisions are more numerous than ever before. Within denominations and local congregations, outwardly united, dissensions are frequent. In light of these hard facts, is not any effort to create a world-wide fellowship that will include all Christians foredoomed to failure? These are honest questions. They are asked by many intelligent people, including numbers of those who call themselves Christians. It is partly to answers to these questions that the following pages are devoted. The answers, like the questions, are honest. They are not meant to be argumentative. The issues are too basic and too important to be handled as an intellectual exercise or for the pleasure of debate. The welfare of hundreds of millions of individuals and the future of civilization and of the entire human race are involved. Anyone who attempts to deal with them seriously owes it to his fellows to face them with candor and with as much rigor and integrity of thought as he can command. Yet answers, if they are to be frank and something more than superficial, must embody convictions. Even tentative replies and expressions of ignorance must be not careless, but positive, based upon an unhurried examination of the facts. No one can meditate long on any body of data without reaching certain conclusions. These may be tentative. They may be clear-cut affirmations. Common honesty, of course, demands that they be not blindly or stubbornly adhered to just because they have once been reached. One should always be ready to revise or even to discard his most cherished and basic beliefs if these be disproved by new facts or by fresh light on old facts. It is a false pride or a mistaken loyalty that seeks to maintain obstinately a position to which one has been publicly committed and which declines to look at it again open-mindedly from time to time, particularly if it be challenged by thoughtful people. However, a readiness to re-examine the principles on which one may have based his life does not preclude a quiet inward assurance of the validity of these principles or an unreserved dedication of all that one has to some cause. Indeed, an unwillingness to reopen a question may arise from a lurking fear that the foundations of one's faith will not bear scrutiny. The following pages, then, are not a series of questions. They are made up chiefly of affirmations. They are an attempt at a forthright expression of convictions and hopes to which many are gladly devoting all that they have--of time, of ability, of reputation. Necessarily they are stated in summary fashion. The announced purpose of this series of little books excludes an elaborate treatise. To meet the purpose of the series, technical terminology has been shunned. What is said is being expressed in as clear and as simple language as possible. It is as though one were attempting, in a circle of friends in a long evening by the fire, to state unreservedly some of his most cherished dreams and at least some of the reasons for the faith that is in him. A logical order in which to treat our topic seems to arrange itself as follows. (1) First we shall attempt to set forth the reasons for striving to develop a world-wide Christian fellowship. (2) Then we shall seek to discover the characteristics essential to such a fellowship. (3) We shall follow this with a description of the progress that is being made toward bringing into being a world-wide Christian fellowship. (4) That will be succeeded by an enumeration of the problems that must be solved if the dream of this fellowship is to come to full fruition. (5) Finally we shall seek to discover the next steps that are at once feasible and necessary if our generation is to make the progress toward this goal which can reasonably be expected." -- Introduction
Print Book, English, 1938
Association Press, New York, 1938