El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1917-06-18
IS CHALLENGE
To RELIGIONS
Religious Reinterpretation
Is Made Necessary by
Changed Conditions.

who eagerly ask and so often fail TO
get proper response. In other
words the call Of religion for the i'm
mediate present and future is the
call social the demand to meet the
pressing demands Of living men and
women.
And in so doing religion is simply
casting aside the theOlogic accretiOns
OF the past and assuming its more
primitive function. Has il ever ap-
pealed to you in your Bible reading
that there is very little said of faith
as the savior OF the soul and so much
OF deed as the savior of men Have
you noticed that the commands refer
20 the relations Of men and women to
their environment and comparatively
seldom TO their relations to the great
hereafter Do YOU realize that these
laws are social laws and need men
and women with social instincts to
realize them?
And whatever failure may be
aSCrIbed to the religion of the past
must be ascribed to its failure to live
up to these laws of the bible. Can you
imagine such war as is now going
on. if the nations at war had realized
their Bible teaching; if they had fully
understood the meaning of the cove
nant that ye shall love the stranger
If. instead OF emphasizing differences
which are strictly theological. they
had emphasized agreements which are
truly religious? Then national am
billions would have given way to
world welfare and citizen would have
meant more than fellow nationalist
Religion Not bankrupt.
1T has thus become my firm con-
viction that religion is not bankrupt
but that it must change its emphasis
Religion is the Call Social il is the
demand for service for others And
this can be accomplished by making
rrrr rafa nF Toe =
ering places for one or two days in
the week but workshops busily en-
gagged every day in the week in ere
ating character and fellowship in
youths and men. This can be realized. |
not by closing our doors for all pur-
poses except prayer and eXhortatiOn, l
but by realizing that joy is prayer; |
that health is happiness, and every /
effort that makes for fuller human /
development is an approach to the I
Diety' who dwells in the human form 1
divine.
7 know there are some who can
not see anything religious in the /
broader functioning of the churches /
but these read religion in terms of |
theology and not in terms of life:
these would emphasize differences in
stead OF agreements: these cannot IN
aerstand how a Methodist church can
invite rabbi to give religious les
son on Sunday morning. But those 4
whose vision pierces the future in
stead of the past can and do see that
nothing human is foreign TO religion.
that the more human we make il. the
more divine it really is.
There is a call social in the world
that We must heed and understand.
1t viii not undermine my faith or
your faith, but it will broaden both
until We realize a common fellowship
n the Fatherhood Of God and the
Brotherhood of Man
when our youths return from the
firing lines of Europe, even as the
European youths have done for the
'ast three years. they viii come with
new religious message and a new
-ision. They may not know the con-
essiOn of faith which their comrades
ecited, but they will know whether
T not they were full blooded men
Nth love in their hearts and hope in :
heir souls. They will learn to judge