A Statement: On the Future of This Church | Page 5

peace and
surety in my church relations. Outside, in the denomination at large, I
found myself in almost constant conflict with my fellows. There were
few meetings or conferences in which I did not speak in protest and
vote with minorities. Here in the Messiah parish there was no trouble,

thanks to your forbearance, friendship, and scrupulous loyalty to
freedom; but almost from the beginning there was uncertainty,
wonderment, at times unrest, on the part of those longest associated
with this society; and the records show a melancholy tale of
withdrawals of those, not unable to endure differences of opinion, but
impelled to turn away when the institution, long precious in their sight,
no longer presented the recognizable attributes of a Unitarian church.
That my own shortcomings as a man and a minister were responsible
for much of this disturbance inside and outside the parish, I have no
doubt. But as I look back over the years, I also have no doubt that there
was something much more fundamental here, at the heart of the trouble.
That I was a heretic on the social question was insignificant, for
Unitarians have long since learned not only to tolerate but to respect
their heretics. What was infinitely more important, as I now see, was
the fact that unconsciously through these years, I was coming to
question not the church itself, as I have explained, but the whole order
and purpose of the church as it now exists. Every ecclesiastical
institution today is denominational in character. It belongs primarily to
some particular sectarian body, and is pledged to the service of this
body. Sometimes the central body is narrow, as in the case of the more
orthodox Protestant denominations; sometimes it is liberal, as in the
case of the Unitarians and Universalists. [11] But always there is a
distinctive form of organization, or type of ritual, or doctrine of belief,
or spirit of association, which binds these separate churches into a
single group; and always this distinctive feature is something which
had its origin, and still finds its vitality, in the thought and experience
of an earlier age. Every one of our denominations, and every one of the
churches in our denominations, is representative of past controversies,
not of present interests and duties. No one sect can be distinguished
from any other, except by a reference to the text books of Christian
history.
Now with the intrusion of the social question into religion, a new
concept of church organization came immediately to the fore. The unit
of fellowship was now no longer the denomination, but the community.
The centre of life and allegiance was no longer the challenge of ancient
controversy, but the cry of present day human need. The more I became

interested in questions of social change, the less I was concerned with
questions of denominational welfare. The more I became absorbed in
the people of New York City, the closer became my fellowship with
other ministers similarly absorbed, and the remoter my fellowship with
those who were bound to me only by the accident of the Unitarian
tradition. More and more my hand and heart went out directly to men
who saw and labored for the better day of which I dreamed; and only
indirectly to those with whom I was appointed to serve, but who could
not or would not catch the vision of my dreams. An irreconcilable
conflict was here being joined--the old, old conflict between a dead and
a living fellowship. It was my intuitive, although unconscious
knowledge of this fact, which made me a rebel in every Unitarian
gathering of the last ten years. It was a similarly unconscious instinct of
self-preservation which taught my Unitarian brethren, to whom the old
association was still central, to resent the things I sought. We had been
born together, and we lived together; our past and our present were
joint possessions. But when we faced the future, we divided; my [12]
colleagues, many of them, were content with old, familiar ways, while I
sought new associations.
What was dimly felt in those days, was suddenly transformed into
something clearly seen by the impact of the Great War. If this
stupendous conflict has revealed anything in religion, it is that the
sectarian divisions of Christendom are no longer to be tolerated. In the
fusing fires of battle, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Unitarian,
even Catholic, Protestant and Jew, have been melted, and now flow in a
single flaming stream into the mould which shall fashion them into a
single casting. Man after man has returned from the front, to tell us that
the denominational church is dead. A new ordering of Christendom is
at hand. The unit of organization will be not the one belief, nor even the
one spirit, but the one field