Newspaper Page Text
Page 20
The Southern Israelite
Our Impious Age Needs a Creed of
Relief and a Code of Morals
By RABBI LOUIS I. NEWMAN
Wishing you
the season's
greetings
AMERICAN
MAIN 1-0-1-6
CAPITAL CITY
WALNUT 7-1-2-1
DECATUR
DEARBORN 3-1-6-2
EXCELSIOR
WALNUT 2-4-5-4
GUTHMAN
WALNUT 8-6-6-1
MAY’S
HEMLOCK 5300
PIEDMONT
WALNUT 7-6-5-1
TRIO
JACKSON 1 -6-0-0
TROY-PEERLESS
WALNUT 5-10-7
Williams-Flynt
Lumber
Co.
Retail Dealers in
LUMBER AND
BUILDERS’
SUPPLIES
250 Elliott, N. W.
JAckson 1094
“Our impious age needs a creed of
belief and a code of morals,” said Rabbi
Louis T. Newman of Temple Emanu-El,
San Francisco, preaching at the Free
Synagogue, Carnegie Hall, on the sub
ject, ‘We Moderns—Can We Accept a
Creed?’ ‘‘We have been too greatly
interested in what to reject in religion;
it is important now that we learn what
to accept. Religious Liberals have kept
faith with liberalism, but they have
not kept the faith. They have been
more concerned with being liberal than
with being religious. The hour has
come for us to codify the essentials of
our beliefs and standards of conduct.
We must emancipate ourselves from
prejudice against formulas and slogans.
We arc an unstable generation be
cause we are creedless and codeless.
Hitherto the first item in our system
of opinions is: T must have no creed;
I must observe no code. It is entirely
in keeping, however, with the spirit of
modernity for us to organize our re
ligious and ethical views so that they
will form a firm foundation on which
to rear the structure of personal life.
For over forty years we have experi
mented with every form of disbelief.
The epoch of experimentation must
now give way to otic of organization.
We need not return to dogmatism, but
we must accept a degree of formalism.
T.aissezfaire in matters religious has
proved as inadequate and destructive
as in the domain of economics and
politics. Our children and young peo
ple must be taught not what to repu
diate, hut what to adopt as valid. When
young people are instructed in agnos
ticism and atheism, they lapse quickly
into a cynical contempt for all basic
patterns of belief and behavior.
“Our poets, playwrights, and phi
losophers have been led by their own
thought and experience to revolt
against the machine and the mechan
istic interpretation of man and the uni
verse. Religion refuses to think of man
as a robot, and of the universe as a
huge toy in the hands of an idiot. Re
ligion seeks for unity, orderliness,
beauty, and harmony. The signs of the
times point not to the enthronement
of materialism and mechanism, but of
mysticism. A genuine mystical revival
is under way. Modern life needs sev
eral new points of emphasis. Class
icism, mysticism, culturism, pietism,
prophetism, and Messiaism can leaven
our intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual
activity so that we may be redeemed
from the blunders of the past. Whether
liberal religion can remain liberal with
the reintroduction of these elements is
debatable, but for the time being they
must be restored in order that religion
may regain its lost sway. Through
classicism we can have a renaissence
of tradition and a re-acceptance of
the major literary sources of all great
faiths. Through mysticism men and
women can recapture the sense of one
ness and communion with the invisible
forces ruling the universe. Prayer will
acquire new potency; faith will become
personal and immediate. We moderns
will discover substantive meaning for
the supreme symbol of God, without
which, as Walter Lippman has indi
cated in the “Preface to Morals”, no
generation can fashion its doctrinal and
moral moorings.
“Culturism will endow our new faith
with creative expressions in art, music,
poetry, and social organization. Reli
gion has become civilized, but it is more
necessary that civilization become re
ligionized. Our contemporary culture
has set religion in a category apart,
competing in the arena of amusement
with the numerous distractions of mo
dernity, hut culturism in religion will
make it a topmost peak of our life.
Through pietism, modern religion can
become practical and individual. We
must all feel that we share directly in
the acts of faith through ceremony,
ritual, home observances, and habits of
regular and sincere worship. We must
build about the performance of rites
and customs the sentimental associa
tions which endear religion to our chil
dren and ourselves. Collective worship
can once more become colorful and
vivid. We moderns must not be ashamed
to call ourselves pious and observant,
for without pageantry and personal
observance, practical religion is doomed.
“Prophetism is required in the faith
of us moderns in order that our doc
trines may socialize our conscience and
impel us to humanitarian service. Upon
the prophetic ideals of justice, peace,
brotherhood, and mercy, we must re
construct our shattered social order.
Messiaism will contribute to the new
liberalism a powerful evangelical and
apostolic force. Striking personalities
must turn to religion as a dominant
field of activity-. They must bring to
it not merely great gifts of reason,
but unbounded resources of emotional
strength. Religion can he disseminated
among the multitudes without losing its
unique fineness. It should become a
flaming credo of righteousness; it
should become an irresistible gospel for
the redemption of the individual, the
community and mankind. It should
galvanize our age into consecrated ef
forts on behalf of the kingdom of God
on earth.
“We must brook no obstacle of faint
heartedness or despair. We have wit
nessed the rise of rationalism, eco
nomic determinism, mechanism, and
skepticism. Their day is passing and a
new religious epoch is dawning. Per
haps it may enslave us anew in the
shackles of orthodoxy; perhaps it will
make us neo-obscurantists. But our
freedom has brought us only anarchy
of mind and heart. The march of hu
man progress has led us to a new
stage, and we must obey its summons.
Religion remains an imperative demand
of the human psyche. We must follow
(Continued on Page 37)
screen grid
superheterod) ne
o/KfUe&ti
V RADIO
8 powerful tubes — 3
Screen Grid Amplifiers
— Super-Selectivity—
New Speaker — New
COLORFUL TONE
$119.75 COMPLETE
Installed in your home
Terms if desired.
q A. B L E
' "Piano Company
84 Broad St., N. W. At’anta
SAM R. GREENBERG, Pre.ident
P. J. BLOOMFIELD, Secretary
Sam
Greenberg
& Company
Funeral Directors
AMBULANCE
CHAPEL
95 Forrest Ave., N. P-
Phone WAInut 7909
ATLANTA, GA.