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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.