Religion Becomes a Fad

THE greatest religious boom in history is now on. The evidence is overwhelming, especially in America. Not only does the American president open his cabinet meetings with silent prayer, not only is there a meditation room for prayer in the Capitol in Washington, not only do religious books appear week after week on best-seller lists, not only have the words “In God we trust” been inscribed on United States postage stamps, but what is more significant is that church construction has reached an all-time high as the pews of established churches overflow. Moreover, statistics in the Yearbook of American Churches for 1956 show that 97,482,711 Americans are now church members—about 60 per cent of the population. This compares with a figure of only 16 per cent a century ago. “Apparently people are interested in religion,” stated yearbook editor Dr. Benson Y. Landis, “to an unprecedented degree in modern times.” What does all this mean?

The consensus of opinion among prominent clergymen who have recently spoken on the subject is that the religious boom means little because it is more hollow than sound, more of a fad than of faith.

Thus it was that cleric C. Newman Hogle of New York’s First Methodist Church in Jamaica, Queens, agreed with Billy Graham that the current religious boom is in a member of ways “hollow.” (New York Times, September 12, 1955) And preacher-writer Bernard Iddings Bell, canon of the Episcopal Church, said: “Religion has become a fad. There’s an awful lot of people joining the church, but what it means I don’t know. I’m not sure it means anything. . . . It’s too easy to be in the church.” (Time, January 17, 1955) Also expressing the view that the religious boom may be just a “fad” or a “shadow” is Dr. Eugene G. Blake, a leading Protestant spokesman and president of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. Writing in a feature article in Look magazine for September 20, 1955, Dr. Blake raised the provocative question: “Is the religious boom a spiritual bust?” His answers, too, suggested that religion has become a fad.

But why should religion become a fad? Because people are finding that religion can often get them what they want. This is the opinion of leading clergymen. Declared cleric Henry Knox Sherrill, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America: “Much of the revival of religious interest seems to place the emphasis on using God for our own purposes of success, of health, of freedom from burdens and strain.” (Look, September 20, 1955) Agreeing with this is cleric James A. Pike, dean of New York city’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Said Dean Pike: “In the realm of personal religion, there is a tendency to seek to use God as one of a number of resources to enable us to get what we want and enjoy life as we would. True religion puts God first and us second; its true prayer is: ‘Thy will be done with our help; not my will be done with Thy help.’”—New York Times, September 6, 1955.

A similar appraisal of the religious boom was expressed by Dr. Blake in his Look magazine article. It has become fashionable now, says cleric Blake, to “make an instrument out of God” by using religion for selfish ends. Explains Dr. Blake: “Concern is expressed today that many people with a new religious interest are attempting to turn that interest into magic; to use God for their own purposes rather than to serve God and find his purposes. To try to use God for any purpose, however noble, is always wrong. . . . The concern of the churches is that there appears to be a growing interest in what a religion can do for a man, without an accompanying moral concern about what a religious man ought to be and do.”

In what ways are the masses using religion for their own selfish gain? Rabbi William F. Rosenblum of New York’s Temple Israel suggested that much of the revival is “just a flight from fear.” Dr. Landis, editor of the American churches yearbook, suggested that “the awesome destructive power of atomic energy may have something to do with it.” And Dr. Blake aptly raised the question whether the religious boom is the “parallel of foxhole religion in the age of atomic fission.”

Closely related to those who use religion to escape from fear are the peace-of-mind seekers, those who go to church to be soothed and lulled by music, prayer and psychology. Of these Dr. Blake writes: “Perhaps the most popular religious movement in American churches today is the effort to purvey ‘peace of mind’ to anxious men. Here again, we need to remember that a Christian ought to be poised in spirit, an integrated person above the fear and anxiety neuroses that affect so many modern men. . . . The Christian Gospel must not be distorted to give a sense of peace to men where there is no peace and ought not to be.”

Another reason why religion is becoming a fad is its use in the quest for success, the kind of success qualified by the word “financial.” Of this Dr. Blake writes: “Mammon is dressed up in modern clothes and the word of Jesus is changed from: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,’ to the slightly different but idolatrous, ‘Believe in “the Man upstairs” and he will make you prosperous and successful.’”

Also throwing light on the fad for religion is the increase in the number of people who crowd the offices and haunts of the Father Divines, the Oral Roberts and the Prophet Joneses and the hundreds of other purveyors of faith who suggest that they have direct commissions from God to provide everyone with health. Of the teeming adherents of faith healers, Dr. Blake writes: “Modern man, worried about the security of his job, is also neurotically concerned about his health. . . . People would not go to healers unless they believed themselves sick and knew nowhere else to go.”

The dread of communism also illuminates the religious fad, for people have come to view religion as the instrument to combat communism. “Here again,” says Dr. Blake, “to try to use God or religion even for this vital purpose is to make an instrument out of God.” Similarly, Dean Pike comments: “We are told that we should return to religion to strengthen us against communism. Of course we are against communism and if as a people we were truly devoted to God—with Him first in our lives—we would be secure and nothing would disturb our peace. But to seek to use God, who is everlasting, as a means to attain something that is earthbound—something that is part of the passing show, namely, our particular national interest—is to turn things completely around.”—New York Times, September 6, 1955.

Then there is the feeling prevalent among religious faddists that church attendance is a useful family practice and not unhelpful to one’s reputation. Of this gleaming cloak of respectability furnished by religion, philosopher John Dewey wrote: “It seems to me that the chief danger to religion lies in the fact that it has become so respectable. It has become largely a sanction of what socially exists—a kind of gloss upon institutions and conventions.” (The Christian Century, July 13, 1955) It is this mantle of respectability that many religious faddists find expedient to wear.

But the use of religion as a cloak of respectability does not conceal the world’s moral rottenness. The greatest morals decline in history brands the present religious revival as “hollow.” Though church membership in the United States has grown faster than the population the grim fact remains that crime has grown faster than church membership. Thus Dr. Blake writes: “Today in our country, it is a cause of worry that morality seems to be on a decline at the moment when there appears to be a religious boom.” Then he declares: “Religion without morality is no religion at all.”

So using religion as a blind for moral badness is another of the instruments used by faddists. Of course, there is nothing wrong with such things as the desire for health, the desire for success and the desire for peace. But when they are “made into objects of man’s ultimate concern,” declares Dr. Blake, “then they become idols and their devotees fanatics. Then religion is just a fad, the ‘thing to do.’ Then our faith is but a shadow, a spiritual bust.”

What the modern world is experiencing, then, is a boom all right, but it is a boom in false religion. This in itself is most significant. For a boom of false religion, an precedented number of religious faddists—all this constitutes further evidence of the “last days” sign: “Know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, . . . having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power.”—2 Tim. 3:1-5, NW.

[Picture on page 36]

RELIGIOUS BOOKS, BEST-SELLER LIST

POSTAGE STAMPS

97,482,711 AMERICAN CHURCH MEMBERS

[Picture on page 37]

USE OF RELIGION

TO ESCAPE FEAR

FOR SUCCESS

FOR HEALTH

TO COMBAT COMMUNISM