ON THE RELIGIOUS FRONTIER

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ON THE RELIGIOUS  FRONTIER: From an Outpost of Ethical Religion 

BY  PERCIVAL CHUBB 

of the Ethical Society of St. Louis 

FOREWORD 

THIS little book is precisely characterized by the title. It is written on the religious frontier by one who has long sojourned there, early found a home there, and has for many years been engaged in commending it to the homeless. He tries to report the present situation there, and the predicament of those who are today finding their way to this border land between the zone 

of orthodox religion and the region beyond, where men live unattached to any distinctively religious institution and are not united in any religious fellowship. 

While the main thesis of the book is the prime need of religious fellowship, most of it is devoted to a presentation of what is offered in the writer's new-found and recently established home, where a religion of ethical fellowship has stayed the flight of some of the estrays. Here the modern-minded may find a new simplified type of religion which exacts no conformities of 

creed, is hospitable to new knowledge, fronts the challenges and perplexities of the life of today in all their concreteness, and allows for fluctuating diversities of individual conviction. 

He has tried to profit by his experiences on two frontiers, English and American; and has drawn on the former when they aided understanding. If England drew upon America for the new ethical inspiration, America has drawn liberally upon England for its exponents. The alliance has been close and the influences complementary. 

Should the method of the book seem unduly discursive, the plea must be that religion is not a matter to be neatly disposed of ; and particularly the religion,  new-born on the frontier, which it is the purpose of this book to interpret in its vital rather than its formal features. 

CONTENTS 

FOREWORD vii 

PART I 

THE FRONTIER: ITS REPUDIATIONS AND THEIR POSITIVE IMPLICATIONS

1. The Frontier 3 

2. The Repudiations of the Frontier 14 

3. Liberation : A New Fellowship 24 

PART II 

ORIENTATIONS 35 

1. Introductory: Concerning Words 37 

2. Ethical, Not Moral 42 

3. Youth on the Frontier 48 

4. Fellowship and Solitariness 53 

5. Fellowship and Worship 63 

6. Background : Anglo-American 71 

PART III 

NEW AND OLD: RENOVATION AND REINTERPRETATION 81 

Renewal and Reinterpretation 83 

The New and the Old 94 

A Reinterpretation : Thanksgiving 104 

The New Spirit 126 

Acceptance 138 

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Now, for the bearing of this upon such a conception of fellowship in an Ethical Religion as we have been supporting. That conception postulates neutrality. It calls for no exclusion nor unfriendliness toward any experiences of this kind, nor any interpretations of them, short of affecting the values and validities of the conduct that makes for worthy and harmonious living. If such interpretations of mystical experience impel a man to a more limited religious association with others who also entertain them, he may conclude to unite with them in a new cult or group, which will be sectarian in cutting itself off from a large fellowship of the unlike. Or he may remain in the larger fellowship of diversified types for the sake of the greater inclusiveness that ensures a wider range of contacts and of sympathy. The test, we say, would come in the effects of his particular belief upon conduct. That must have the first place. And this is the crux of the matter whether this supreme regard for right conduct, for worthy and open living demanding reverence for other personalities in their potential worth and their best possibilities, whether this has the first place in his heart and his endeavor. Loyalty to one's fellows and the human task, carrying with it loyalty to those virtues of truth and justice and integrity which are the conditions of human welfare, must be his first solicitude ; and all his beliefs must be brought to that ethical touchstone. 

Such is the answer to the charge that a social-minded religion of ethical fellowship allows no place nor recognition for the mystical bent in human nature. Such a fellowship, we repeat, is collectively neutral as to all those complementary views and attitudes which its members may favor beyond the margin of the common denominator of conduct, in our large sense of the 

word. And this is the very interest of diversity and growth. If a member should press his private view into the first place, he would be self-excluding. He would become sectarian. He would forsake the conviction that it is desirable to protect oneself against finality and fixation and the conceit of exclusivism; he would relinquish the ideal of unity in difference, of breadth with depth, of open-minded and tolerant converse with other types of mentality. He has given the first place to something else...............