Distinctive Features
of the Ethical Movement
from an essay by that title by Alfred W. Martin
edited by Horace J. Bridges
At its very inception the Ethical Movement was a religious
movement. The group of men and women who met on that memorable Sunday morning, May 15th,
1876, were in search of something wherewith to consecrate their lives. They were of one
mind in the belief that the human spirit is all starved and forlorn save as it comes into
vital contact with an ideal of holiness. They were further persuaded that this spiritual
desideratum could not be derived from any traditional doctrines which, however true and
precious to others, had ceased to hold any meaning for them. Thus their prime concern was
not with any such scriptural and theological issues as absorbed contemporary liberalism;
not with any refutation of the dogmas of fundamentalism; not with any negative
iconoclastic program; rather was their souls' cry for something positive and constructive
wherewith to consecrate their own lives and still more, perhaps, the lives of their
children. Like him whom they called from his chair in Cornell University, and who
forthwith became the founder of the Movement and Leader of the first Society for Ethical
Culture, they were conscious of a deeply-felt need for a religion to replace that which
had failed to satisfy. In other words, Professor Felix Adler and his hearers at this
initial meeting, half a century ago, found themselves in the selfsame plight as were those
Palestinian Jews of the first century, referred to in the Book of Acts as
"God-fearers,"--men with a religious nature, but without a religious home; men
dissatisfied with the religious institutions and forms of their day and place, yet
conscious of the need of coming into vital touch with something transcendently holy. They
went from one organization to another, finding in each much that appealed to their
religious nature, but more that offended it. From the Synagogue they turned to the Meeting
House of the Mithraists and thence they moved on to the temple of the Roman state
religion, but nowhere was what they sought to be found. Religious wanderers they were,
seeking a religious home and finding none.
So was it with the "God-fearers" of 1876 in New York. They, too, went forth
in search of a satisfying religious home and found none. For, both the Jewish synagogues
and the Christian churches of that time were encrusted with dogmatism, ecclesiasticism,
formalism; woefully deficient they were in vital and vitalizing religion. Over against
these institutions stood the ultra-radicals--confirmed materialists, caring naught for
religion, so that affiliation with them was no more possible for these seekers of a
religious home than with the dogmatists and formalists. Thus these earnest dissatisfied
people, who did care for religion and who were eager to come into vital communion with
something supremely holy, had no alternative but to organize a religious association of
their own, one that would give a conspicuous place to moral and social reform and at the
same time put its members in touch with something transcendently holy,--an ideal of
ethical perfection with which indeed religion has to do,--an ideal, which depends for its
authority not on something alien to itself, but on its own sublime excellence when
contemplated and on the constraining influence it exerts upon the will.
I. SUPREMACY OF THE ETHICAL END
Foremost among the distinctive features of the Ethical Movement is the supremacy it
assigns to the ethical end. It declares that there is a sovereign end to be acknowledged,
one to which all the superior and inferior aims of men must be subordinated; and that this
supreme end can be none other than the ethical. To it all other ends, scientific,
aesthetic, economic, social, must be made tributary. And by the ethical end is meant the
formation of right relations between personalities. It is supreme because nothing under
heaven counts for so much as human personality with its latent potentialities and the
existence of right relations among beings so endowed. He is most entitled to be called
ethically-minded who believes, and acts on the belief that nothing exceeds in importance
the establishment of right personal relations, as between husband and wife, parents and
children, the social classes, nation and nation. Nor is this highest place assigned to the
ethical end because of the happiness that right relations, when established, may bring in
their train, for that would be to make the ethical end a means to something beyond itself.
No, the creating of right relations is valued above all else because such spiritual
activity is the very highest kind in which a human being can engage. The supreme good of
life is to be found in the act of creating harmonious relations. And for the dissemination
of this viewpoint touching ethical-mindedness--i.e., recognition of the supremacy of the
ethical end, the formation of right relations between personalities--for this an Ethical
Movement is indispensable. Why? Because the opposite viewpoint so widely obtains. Outside
the Ethical Movement morality is looked upon as a means to the securing of some
non-ethical objective as the real end. There are those who put scientific pursuits above
all else as being most worthy of human endeavor, but in the estimation of the Ethical
Movement science is only a superior, not a supreme end. It owes its worthwhileness chiefly
to the fact that it can increase the fund of knowledge wherewith right personal relations
may be established. Similarly, the creation of beautiful artworks is only a superior, not
the supreme human pursuit; for art derives its highest value from the power of the created
harmonies to put the mind into at-one-ment with the most entrancing harmony of all,--the
right interrelationship of personalities. Once more, there are persons for whom the real
ultimate end is prosperity or social position, and morality is made a means to the
securing of these non-ethical ends. But here again, the most that can be claimed for them
is that they are superior ends, not the supreme end. The daily press has just apprised us
of a startling instance of defalcation on the part of a prominent member of a Christian
church. Evidently it is possible for a man to be a Presbyterian and a defaulter, but it is
not possible for a man to be an ethical person and a defaulter, because the two are
mutually contradictory. And if the elders of the church reply, "It is not possible
for a man to be a good Presbyterian and a defaulter," they introduce an ethical
criterion and so admit the primacy of ethics. We speak of some persons as being
scientifically-minded, of others as artistically-minded. What we imply by the designation
is that for these persons something other than the moral end is esteemed of highest worth.
They are not ethically-minded in the strict usage of the term, for to be ethically-minded
means to believe and to act on the belief that right personal relations are the most
important thing in the world, that "the distress caused by wrong, twisted relations
to other persons is more intolerable than any other, far more poignant in the anguish it
gives rise to than want, or sickness, or any other kind of suffering."
When we consult the great historic religions with reference to this first distinctive
feature of the Ethical Movement, we find they all alike subordinate morality to one or
another ulterior end. In the Greek religion, for example, morality is made subservient to
an aesthetic end. The ideal of personal life to which the ancient Greeks aspired was
simply the harmonious development of the physical and the intellectual self. The summum
bonum was the acquisition of mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body; the
end for which they strove above all else was an aesthetic end; and all their architecture,
sculpture, painting, poetry, music, bear witness to the fact. Even sin and virtue were
interpreted by Plato in terms of an aesthetic end. Sin, he said, was to be avoided because
it is ugly, because it does violence to our aesthetic sensibilities; virtue is to be
practiced because it insures the harmonious balanced order of those sensibilities.
"The good is the beautiful." Again, in the Confucian religion we see the ethical
end subordinated to order, itself one of the products of order. To reproduce in human life
the calm, unbroken order of Nature--that, according to Confucius, is the desideratum to be
sought after more than aught else. In the Christianity of the New Testament the ethical
end is clearly made subordinate to "faith,"--the mystical "putting on of
the Lord Jesus Christ," as expounded by the Apostle Paul in his letters to the Romans
and to the Galatians. Even in Judaism, the most markedly ethical of all the historical
religions, morality is not supreme; for everywhere in the Old Testament, we find morality
subordinated to the will of Yahweh, He being conceived as the determiner of ethical
standards and relations. But, so far as morality is concerned; Infinite Will cannot change
one jot or tittle of the eternal Right. It is prior to all else. God himself cannot be
more ultimate than the uncreated eternal Right. He can be but its faultless mirror. To it
both finite and infinite will alike must bow. Thus in this sense, also, morality is the
supreme end, and it is, therefore, no mark of irreverence to respond to the mandate:
"Do this because I, Yahweh, say so," with the words, "No, not even though
thou be God who speakest." But to the command, "Do this because it is
right," we give our wholehearted assent though it be uttered by the feeblest child
that ever lisped.
II. DEED AND CREED
In its reversal of the relation of creed to deed as it has stood throughout the
Christian centuries, a second distinctive feature of the Ethical Movement is revealed. The
part played by belief in the Christianity of Paul,--who created the new religion as his
substitute for Judaism--is familiar to all readers of his Epistles, and will be readily
contrasted with the part played by character in the teaching of Jesus. The Ethical
Movement, sympathizing with the latter and enlarging upon its content, holds that the
value of any creed consists above all in the relation it bears to the moral life. Do you,
for example, believe in the doctrine of the Atonement because it is "in the
Bible," or because it helps you to make progress in the upper zones of your being? Do
you accept the doctrine of the Incarnation because you regard it as "a divinely
revealed truth" and therefore to be accepted, or because through it you are helped to
worthier manhood or womanhood? In other words, the final test of a doctrine's worth is not
the Bible, but life; not revelation, but moral growth. Prof. Adler has compared the moral
life to a mansion of many locked chambers and the creeds to a set of keys. The Christian,
the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the Parsee,--each comes with his creed-key, claiming that it
and it only can open the doors. The Ethical Movement allows the dispute over the keys to
go on, because it cares for the opening of the doors. And this marks a far-reaching
contrast between the Ethical Movement and the historical religions. For, while the latter
have been concerned about the key, describing it, setting up claims for it, securing
converts to belief in its fitness for the locks, the prime concern of the Ethical Movement
has been entrance to the chambers. It has no dogmas to defend, no creed to mend or amend;
it has the problem of the closed doors and a spiritual passion for getting into the
unentered rooms of the moral life. The best creed a man can have is that which character
shapes and which enlarges and deepens with his own moral growth. For the creed that issues
from deed, from moral experience, for that creed the Ethical Movement cares most of all.
And when the three great missionary religions, with their respective reachings out to
Buddhist unity, Mohammedan unity, Christian unity, shall have learned to reverse the rank
they all alike have assigned to creed and deed, their dreams of brotherhood will be
realized. For the religious rivalry and jealousy that obtain in each of the sects of each
of these great religions are fundamentally due to the precedence given to creed over deed.
Touch the sectarian sores and instantly the sectarian nerves respond. When, for example,
we hear it claimed that Christianity is "the only true religion"; Protestantism,
"the only true Christianity"; Episcopalianism (or any other sect) "the only
true Protestantism"; the "High" Church, "the only true, Episcopal,
Protestant, Christian religion,"--we see sectarianism doing its deadly work, we see
creed superseding deed and paralyzing all earnest effort to make human brotherhood a
reality in the world. Hence the practical importance of a movement which refuses to fall
in line with the traditional ranking of creed and deed, which reverses it and estimates
the essential value of the former solely in terms of the latter. In other words, a man's
moral worth does not depend upon his theological beliefs, but the value of those beliefs
depends on the degree to which they develop moral worth in him.
III. INDEPENDENCE OF MORALITY
Without attempting to assign to the distinctive features of the Ethical Movement an
order of relative importance, let the third feature for consideration be the independence
of morality as to origin, sanction and binding force. We start with the fact that man has
moral experience, and that the most awe-inspiring and commanding of all his moral
experiences is the authority with which the moral law speaks, an authority inherent in the
moral law itself. The one most certain item of our moral experience is this pressure of
the "ought" impelling us to acknowledge the higher of two rival claims upon the
will. Just as the authority of reason is both real and binding is relation to alternatives
of truth and error, so the authority of conscience is real and binding in relation to
alternatives of right and wrong. And precisely as the law of reason forbids our
"thinking as we like," so the law of conscience prohibits our acting as we like.
In other words, the inherent constitution of our personality as rational and as moral
beings constrains us to acknowledge the law and make our choice. Morality is thus
independent of any external pressure upon us; it has its basis in the very law of our
nature as moral beings, and needs no power beyond itself to authenticate its claim upon
us. The Ethical Movement, however, forced into controversy on the issue, took a position
quickly recognized as distinctive, holding to the complete independence of morality and
ascribing to it a threefold connotation. In the first place, by the independence of
morality is meant that so far as Ethical Societies are concerned, the question of the
basis of ethics--scientific, philosophic or whatever else,--is entirely an aside, i.e., a
matter upon which members are wholly free to think as they choose, and when speaking on
the issue, bound to speak only for themselves, never for the Society. Leaders, too, are
free to discuss the basis of ethics from the Sunday platform, but bound to do so with
scrupulous regard for others' freedom as well as their own, avoiding even the semblance of
an attempt to commit the Society to the Leader's point of view. Truly does the genius of
the Ethical Movement and its sole safety as a vital and progressive institution, depend
upon its refusing, and with adamantine inflexibility, to stand committed to any one of the
rival bases of ethics put forth in the fields of science, philosophy and theology. A
second signification attaching to the independence of morality is that in itself morality
has binding force, be its alleged philosophical or theological implications what they may.
In other words, the validity of the moral law is not, as was just now intimated,
contingent upon any theological sanction; because moral obligation belongs to "the
nature of things," by which we mean that totality of necessary and universal
relations without which nothing could exist. Deeper than this no plummet can sink. The
moral obligation to be just does not depend upon any decrees, divine or human, but carries
within itself its constraining influence. Precisely as there is an absolute condition
without conformity to which a square cannot be drawn, so there is an absolute condition
without conformity to which no moral being can exist in social relation. As the formation
of the square depends upon its diagonal dividing it into two equal triangles, so the
coming of two moral beings into social relationship depends upon mutual moral obligation.
The two moral beings might never have existed, in which case moral obligation would have
had only potential existence, as the predetermined law of social relation for moral
beings; but the moment that relation became objective, the necessity of moral obligation
was made manifest as part of "the nature of things." No alleged celestial origin
ascribed to a command can make it right, nor can "Infinite Will" change, to even
the slightest degree, the eternal relation of right and wrong. If a divine command be
cruel or vindictive, as we find it in some of the older books of the Bible, that command
cannot be deemed right just because it is "the word of God." In other words,
there is an ethical standard by which we have to judge even the recorded "word of
God."
Thus in this second sense in which we speak of the independence of morality there are
implied the mighty convictions (a) that man has, as his most priceless possession, both
that which calls to duty and that which answers the call; (b) that he is never permitted
to go unpunished if he disobey; (c) that the obligation to strive for the good life is
inherent in man as part of his nature as a human being; (d) that the moral sense is an
organic part of his nature, a fundamental reality in him, like the sense of sight or the
gift of reason; (e) that in proportion as one lives the moral life deeply and intensely
one gains spiritual insight. Instead of viewing morality as derivative from theism, after
the manner of the synagogues and churches, the Ethical Movement reverses the point of
view, holding that the highest spiritual beliefs result from living the moral life.
"Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see God."
First purity of heart and then the beatific vision. Let it be clearly understood that
toward any and all philosophical and theological bases for morality the Ethical Movement
takes a position of strict neutrality. But it would be a sorry mistake to construe either
its specialization in morality apart from theology, or its refusal to stand committed to a
theistic basis for ethics, as tantamount to a confession of atheism. So prevalent is the
false notion that Ethical Societies are atheistic, that one is warranted in putting the
reader on his guard against it. Because these Societies do not require of members belief
in God as a condition of fellowship, either explicitly, in a creed, or implicitly, through
participation in prayers and hymns that are essentially theistic; because Ethical
Societies are differentiated from "Free" synagogues that retain a minimum of
Hebrew ritual, and from "Community" churches in which "central to all
activities is the Sunday morning service of worship," it does not follow that they
are atheistic. The truth is that Ethical Societies are neither atheistic nor theistic, but
of necessity neutral, because the freedom of Ethical fellowship requires it. Were these
Societies to commit themselves either to theism or to atheism, they would automatically
exclude from fellowship all those persons who could not accept one position or the other.
It is just because of its strict neutrality or non-committedness that it is possible for
both atheists and theists to be included in the fellowship of the Movement. Among the
members the greatest diversity of belief exists and is encouraged. "As individuals we
have all sorts of creeds; as a Society we have none." So spoke Dr. Adler in response
to an inquirer on the subject, succinctly stating one of the cardinal and distinctive
features of the Ethical Movement, clearly differentiating it from all kinds of existing
synagogues and churches which implicitly, if not explicitly, commit their members to
theism.
There remains a third meaning attaching to the independence of morality that must be
elucidated. It will be understood best when seen in relation to the Pauline doctrine that
supernatural grace is an indispensable aid to fulfillment of the law of righteousness. In
that most remarkable of all self-revelations in sacred literature--the seventh chapter of
Paul's epistle to the Romans, he confesses his utter inability to live the moral life by
his own unaided effort. He must fall back for help upon Jesus Christ. Let me borrow,
thought Paul, of the superabundant righteousness that is in Jesus the Christ, and I will
then be enabled to "do the good that I would." He believed himself morally
impotent to rise from his dead self to higher things; someone must lift him, someone who
has succeeded in fulfilling the "law of righteousness." In contradistinction to
this Pauline doctrine, the Ethical Movement holds, with Jesus, that there are latent
potentialities in every human being, that there resides in even the lowest of our kind a
constant residuum of capacity for improvement, no matter how many times they fail. How
else could Jesus have enjoined "Repent," "Be ye perfect," "Strive
to enter in"? How meaningless these appeals apart from faith in man's power to
improve, apart from the conviction that the morality in man is sufficient to make him
independent of reliance on such help as was for the Apostle an indispensable prerequisite
for living the moral life!
IV. FREEDOM OF FELLOWSHIP
Since morality is independent of theology and since there is no theology on which all
good men agree, but only a morality upon which all are agreed, it follows that it is
possible to organize a fellowship on the basis of that morality, leaving men and women
free to entertain any theology they choose, or none if they so prefer. And it is here that
we touch a fourth distinctive feature of the Ethical Movement--the freedom of its
fellowship. An illustration or two will make clear the real distinctiveness of this
feature. All the way from the most orthodox of the Christian Churches and synagogues to
the most liberal, we find that there is required of anyone who would identify himself
therewith, assent either to a creed, or to a creedlet; a tacit, if not explicit,
confession of faith or form of worship. Even the great religions themselves--from which
the sects derive--condition fellowship on acceptance of their respective Founders. Islam
presents its infallible Mohammed; Buddhism, its deified Gotama; Parsism, its inspired
Zoroaster; Christianity, its supernatural Jesus. The fellowship of none is cosmopolitan
and free. Mohammedanism, for instance, seeks to unite all men in the bonds of Mohammedan
love; it does not aim to unite Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, and the rest in the bonds of
human love. Christianity admits to it fellowship all Christians on equal terms, but no
Christian denomination ever voted, as a body, to stand for a strictly free fellowship with
no theological terms whatever in its constitution. But the Ethical Movement absolutely
refuses to break the bond of brotherhood by imposing on applicants for membership any such
requirements. It leaves its individual members entirely free to hold whatever religious
beliefs they choose and to worship or not as they choose, binding them only to that
morality which all men accept. And if brotherhood is ever to be anything other than the
grim caricature we see in the rival sects with their conflicting creeds and claims, then
it is of the utmost importance that there should exist at least one Movement which
exemplifies union on the only basis practicable and universal; viz., devotion to "the
ever-increasing knowledge, love and practice of the right." Nor should it be at all
surprising that while we of the Ethical Movement are not accepted as brothers by any of
the sects, Jewish or Christian, we accept them as brothers, because we are not a sect, but
a fellowship. As its derivation (from the Latin sectum) implies, a sect is a part of
humanity that has cut itself off from all the rest in order to live for itself and to
convert all the rest into material for its own growth. But a part of humanity that lives
both for itself and for the whole in one universal aim is not a sect at all, but a
fellowship. Whether few or many, the part is nonsectarian and universal if the end it
lives for be such. And so, while the vast Christian Church is but a sect, the Ethical
Movement is not a sect at all, because it exists for no sectarian end but rather to help
the world to grow for itself into its own ideal form, without presuming to dictate what
that form shall be. What a gratuitous insult it would be to ask representatives of the
non-Christian religions, for example, Prince Chung, the Confucian; or Dharmapala, the
Buddhist; or Swami Abhedananda, the Hindu; or Rabbi de Sola, the orthodox Jew (all of whom
have been in this country), to accept the "Apostles' Creed" or the
"Bible" or the "Westminster Confession" or "the religion of
Jesus." Surely the only religion we can rightly ask them to accept is the religion of
universal Man, the religion that pays due homage to Moses, to Jesus, to the Buddha, to
Confucius, according to the amount of truth each has to teach and the inspiration we can
derive from the record of his life. Hence, every Ethical Society opens its doors and says,
in the language of the New Testament Apocalypse: "Whosoever will, let him come";
whereas the Episcopalians say: "Whosoever will accept the 'Apostles' Creed,' let him
come"; the Unitarians say: "Whosoever will accept 'the religion of Jesus,' let
him come"; the Congregationalists say: "Whosoever will accept 'the Bible,' let
him come"; the Free Synagogue says: "Whosoever will accept a minimum of Hebrew
ritual and agree to worship on Sundays, let him come"; the New York Community Church
says, "Whosoever will join in 'the Sunday worship central to all the activities' of
the Church, let him come." But the Ethical Movement, rejecting all these
fellowship-restrictions and taking its stand on the morality which all good men accept,
simply says: "Whosoever will, let him come."
Doubtless individual representatives of each of these sects will repudiate the claim
that the Ethical Movement is distinguished by this freedom of its fellowship; but the fact
remains that not one of these sects, as a body, ever voted to adopt a strictly free basis
of fellowship. A distinguished Unitarian recently pointed with pride to the personnel of
his church, including in its fellowship Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists!
"What could be more free than such a fellowship?" To which we make answer that
Unitarianism in 1894 took a definite position as a Protestant sect, in terms so precise
that any member who objects to it for himself has no alternative but withdrawal. Many who
are Unitarians in private belief are admitted members of Episcopalian churches. Does that
make those churches any less Episcopalian? So the admission of Jews, agnostics, etc., to
Unitarian Societies does not make the latter any less Unitarian, any less Protestant, any
less Christian. Such confusion is patent to every thoughtful observer. The masquerading of
Unitarians as Episcopalians is not admirable, and Unitarian preachers there are who have
hotly denounced it. But we have yet to hear them denounce Jews, agnostics, etc., when they
masquerade as Unitarians. Is it not high time to have manliness in religion and only one
rule of honor and sincerity for all men alike?
Toward worship, theism, prayer, Ethical Societies take an attitude of strict
neutrality, in order that the freedom of ethical fellowship may be kept absolutely
inviolate. Some of us are theists, but none of us could ever be induced to join or to lead
a Society that made belief in God a condition of membership. Freedom of thought has led
some thinkers in every community into theism, others into agnosticism, and still others
(fewer in number) into atheism. Yet all three classes of thinkers may find themselves
consistently at home in the Ethical Fellowship, because in its bond of union, or statement
of purpose, there appears nothing that commits its members to worship, or to religion as a
confession of faith in things superhuman. In the "bond of union" of every
Ethical Society stands the statement that neither acceptance nor denial of any theological
or philosophical opinion precludes one from membership. Therefore at the Sunday morning
meetings of Ethical Societies only that "minimum of public observance" is
adopted in which all the members, with their divergent theological and philosophical
views, can consistently participate. And if it be said of these Sunday
"services" that they are "cold and barren," it most be conceded that
they have at least the grace of consistency, doing no violence to the reason or conscience
of members by the intrusion of elements that nullify the professed freedom of fellowship.
Incidentally it may be well to recall the fact that it took three hundred years of
Christianity for the beautiful prayers of Chrysostom to crystallize. It ought not, then,
to surprise us that adequate substitutes for such Christian sources of inspiration have
not as yet been created by Ethical Societies. Fifty years ago the founder of the Ethical
Movement foresaw that its distinctive character would disappear were its members committed
to "worship," or to acceptance of theism and prayer. Therefore, to insure the
perfect freedom of the Movement, he kept his "Statement of purpose" absolutely
devoid of these elements. Let theistic members, if they will, organize within the Society
a group for the holding of theistic services, even as Socialistic, Individualistic,
Kantian, Hegelian and other groups might be formed; but never let the Movement as a whole
be committed to the position of any group. In such wise did he safeguard the freedom of
fellowship. He compared the Movement and its groups to a cathedral with its chapels, the
integrity of the Movement depending inexorably upon the persistent refusal to permit the
particular cult of any of the chapels to represent the cathedral.
Let it not be supposed that the Ethical Movement aims to unite all men in its
fellowship. Rather does it seek to draw into fellowship all those who would enjoy
spiritual freedom and yet feel themselves bound to the claims which the moral ideal makes
upon them. It aims to unite all those who would live upward toward the supreme realities
of life--truth, love, duty. Those who deliberately prefer to live the downward life of
irreligion, it cannot gather into fellowship while that choice persists, because morality
excludes immorality by an irreconcilable antagonism. Only weak and confused minds will
flinch from admitting this fact. We are bound to distinguish things that differ and not
swamp all sense and sanity by a refusal to recognize essential differences. But, let it be
borne in mind, and very clearly, that while we cannot hope to unite all men in one
fellowship, we can hope, and ever more must hope, to rouse indifferentists to warm
interest in the ideal life, to redeem the deliberately immoral and win them over to
morality; to rescue those who have chosen to live downward, and so include them, at last,
in the religious fellowship. Remembering that in the best of us is something bad and in
the worst of us something good; remembering that the most immoral man is not always
immoral, but has his better moments in which he looks down with shame and horror on his
life, we are bound to maintain hope and to strive to help him rise and fit him to enter
the fellowship of imperfect people whose pole-star is the perfect.
V. ETHICAL PROGRESS
When the Ethical Movement was born it was intended to be, and it still is, above all
else a forward-looking movement morally. And this fact brings us to a fifth of its
distinctive features, its belief in the possibility and the imperative need of ethical
progress. But by this is not to be understood the popular notion of more adequate and more
widespread practice of the moral precepts preserved in the Scriptures of the Jewish and
Christian faith. To insist on this desideratum would not be distinctive of the Ethical
Movement. All synagogues and churches are agreed on the necessity of moral progress in
this sense. What the Ethical Movement contemplates, and what it means by its belief in
moral progress, is the acquisition of new ethical conceptions, insights, new moral
formulas, to supplement those which have been found inadequate for many a modern moral
need; the attainment of new ideals of righteousness beyond those revealed by the great
moral teachers of the past, ideals--mental pictures of what it is supremely desirable to
have in the relations that subsist between personalities. The distinctive feature of the
Ethical Movement is the conviction that the moral standards set up by the illuminated
seers of the past are not sufficiently comprehensive to cover the new moral situations
that have been created by economic, social and other conditions, unknown to the Great
Masters of antiquity. Over against this conviction that we need more light on the moral
life than has been furnished by any of the historic Guides, stands the conviction
characteristic of Jewish and Christian bodies alike, that within the pages of their
respective sacred scriptures all the moral guidance man needs is to be found; that in the
teaching transmitted by the prophets of their respective faiths all necessary moral truth
is encompassed, making superfluous anything beyond the all-sufficing moral
"revelation" of their religion. It is precisely at this point that the
distinctiveness of the Ethical Movement appears. For, the very "revelation"
which to the devotees of these faiths is a terminus ad quem--a final and complete
statement of ethical truth--is to those of the Ethical Movement a terminus a quo, a
station from which new journeyings into the realm of ethical insight are to be undertaken.
By the followers of the Old Masters in ethics their message is deemed the last word that
can be said on the moral life, so that development is possible only within the limits of
the prophetic vision. Thus, for example, the Christian, believing that all the moral help
man needs has been supplied by the New Testament revelation, conceives of development as
confined within the circle of scriptural teaching, whereas the Ethical Culturist, holding
that none of the ancient revelations shed the needed light on peculiarly modern moral
problems, construes development as reaching out for new ethical conceptions and formulas,
beyond the general maxims and precepts of the great Bibles, to new statements that will
cover the moral requirements of the new day. In short, the Ethical Movement actively
conceives of progress in the ideals of righteousness beyond the highest hitherto put
forth. Does any one question its distinctiveness in this respect?
In what synagogue is it unequivocally declared that the limits of Old Testament ethics
must be transcended if we are to meet the moral needs of the modern world in marriage, in
business, in politics, in international relations--to cite only the more conspicuous
fields in which existing conditions betray the insufficiency of the ancient codes? In
none. What we hear instead is the unqualified claim that the Hebrew prophets and poets
have given us all the moral guidance we need, and for all time. And what we see is the
pathetic and painful spectacle of learned rabbis straining the meaning of Old Testament
texts to make them teach something other than their authors plainly intended. Similarly,
we ask, in what Christian church is the contention clearly and unfeignedly put forth that
the ethics of Jesus, notwithstanding all its undisputed and eternally valid excellences,
yet needs to be supplemented if the moral problems confronting "a world morally out
of joint" are to be adequately solved? Again the answer must be, in none. Any liberal
Christian preacher who would dare to show forth the insufficiency of the ethics of Jesus
and illustrate it by examples from the gospel record would be in serious danger of losing
his pulpit. Indeed two such enforced resignations within the Unitarian fellowship have
been brought to notice within recent years. I know no Christian who hesitates to confess
that Jesus is the complete, perfect, all-sufficing Way, Truth, Life; that Christianity
includes the whole of religion, needing nothing outside itself to make it any truer,
higher, better. But whosoever attains a glimpse of Religion as truer and holier than
Christianity and dares to give utterance to that insight and to confess his allegiance to
that higher faith, would, to say the least, jeopardize his standing in any church, for
there would be those among the members who recognize the solemn command laid upon him who
took the view of Religion as holier than Christianity and yet sought to wear the Christian
name and hold a Christian pulpit. In our war with Germany a man might have worn the German
uniform in Germany yet have remained at heart a loyal American; yet it is difficult to see
how any man of conscience would ever consent to put inside and outside so at variance.
To synagogue and church alike is the idea intolerable that their Bible does not contain
all the moral teaching the world needs or ever will need; and, as a consequence, the
unethical practice prevails of putting constructions upon texts which were clearly not in
the minds of their authors. As among the rabbis so among the Christian clergy we see the
most astounding liberties taken with scriptural words, phrases, sentences, in order to
make them vehicles of the best ethical thought on moral problems for the solution of which
the record, fairly and unbiasedly interpreted, offers no help. And the inevitable result
of this pernicious practice of crowding new meanings into ancient statements is a
confusion of ideas and the defeat of all efforts at clarification in ethical thinking.
Orthodox Christians argue that the teaching of Jesus is complete and final because he was
God, and hence what he taught must be sufficient for all time. And though Unitarians and
other liberal Christians disown this doctrine of the deity of Jesus, they nevertheless
hold to the inference which their orthodox brethren have drawn from it. Both the liberal
synagogues and the liberal churches have abandoned the theological element of the orthodox
creeds because it has been utterly discredited by modern research, but neither synagogue
nor church has abandoned the idea that the ethical element of the creeds is fixed,
complete and final. On the contrary, each group sees in the ethical teaching of its
scriptures, the ultimate pronouncements of moral truth, valid for all people and all time,
progress being confined to fresh application of the precepts enunciated. Contrast with all
this the position of the Ethical Movement. It starts where the Jewish and Christian
communions stop, seeing in the ethical precepts of the Old Testament and in those of the
New, stages in the evolution of moral standards beyond which we are now to advance. It
takes the ground that moral truth, like scientific truth, is progressive, that in the
development of civilization new conditions have appeared, giving rise to new and vexing
problems for the solution of which more help is needed than either the Old or the New
Testament has supplied, thus making it imperative that the ethical element in the Hebrew
and in the Christian tradition, no less than the theological, be advanced upon. Our
civilization is not that of ancient shepherds, living a nomadic life in the wilderness;
nor is it that of settled farmers living in Judea two thousand years ago. Ours is an
industrial age, a scientific, a democratic age; an age of machinery and factories and
popular government. As a consequence new problems have arisen of which neither Moses nor
Jesus ever dreamed, and for the solution of these, new ethical concepts and formulas must
be furnished. As against the position taken by the synagogues and the churches, the
Ethical Movement insists (and herein its distinctiveness lies) that the same impulse which
animated Jesus to advance on the ethics of Moses must animate us, to supplement the ethics
of Jesus with new light for guidance on the unsolved problems of the modern world. Loyalty
to the acknowledged progressiveness of moral truth requires us, even as it required him,
humbly to press on to new moral concepts, while reverencing every great teacher of the
past for his contribution to the stock of moral knowledge. Thus the Ethical Movement is
marked by its conviction that excellent and of immortal worth as are the general maxim,
"love one another," "return good for evil," "judge not,"
etc., they are too general to serve our modern need; that new ideals of righteousness
beyond those already revealed must be set up; that never yet has the moral code been
completely revealed; that no one of the world's Bibles with all its imperishable
excellences is comprehensive enough to embrace the total of moral requirements in modern
society; that not merely better moral behavior on the basis of what ethical teaching we
have is needed, but also new moral knowledge to meet situations for which the historic
codes do not provide. When Matthew Arnold declared, "We have all the moral knowledge
we need, our only difficulty is in applying what we already possess," he uttered one
of those commonplaces of modern thought against which we need to be constantly on our
guard. For, not only is his statement incorrect but the exact opposite is the grim truth
that so often confronts us. Everyone who has grappled with the pressing problems
characteristic of our time knows that one reason why they are still with us is that we are
still without the needed moral light to shed upon them. The world has not advanced beyond
the stage of elementary moral practice because the teaching offered has not reached beyond
elementary moral ideas. And both free synagogues and free churches are vainly struggling
to make these do the work for which they are not fitted. Both institutions remind us of
the distinguished Viceroy of China who in 1909 had become thoroughly enamored of Western
ways of thought and life, yet sought to satisfy Oriental needs by formulas taken from
Confucian books written twenty-four centuries ago! So the liberal Christian churches,
while increasingly alive to the necessity of facing the social problems of our century,
yet rely exclusively on moral formularies drawn from the New Testament. How often have we
heard Unitarian clergymen urging the claim that the "Golden Rule gives us all the
help we need if only we would apply it faithfully." But the truth is that the Golden
Rule permits of only limited personal application. Situations there are, in the industrial
world for example; where this "rule" cannot be effectively applied, as
experience proves. Most unfortunate it is that the familiar maxim, "Do unto others as
you would that they should do unto you," was ever called the Golden Rule. For,
strictly speaking, it is not a rule at all. It does not tell us precisely what to do in
any given situation. It simply indicates the spirit that should control and animate our
action leaving it to us to find the appropriate deed. Beware of the shallow notion that
any reflection is cast upon the Bible or upon Moses, Isaiah and Jesus because what they
have bequeathed to mankind of moral precept proves insufficient for our time. They
regarded it as no part of their mission to legislate or prescribe for the moral needs of
centuries beyond their own era; nay more, they owed their success as teachers of ethics to
the very limitations they put upon their work. Surely, then, it ought not to surprise us
if, in relation to those issues upon which just now we are sorely in need of guidance, the
ancient codes fail us. To illustrate this fact, to make still clearer the truth that more
moral light is required than the historic guides supply, let us call to mind some of the
paramount moral needs of our time, touching briefly upon each.
One is an ethicized conception of the State (and its corollary, an ethics of
citizenship). In vain do we search for it in the Bible. Jesus did not touch upon it for
several reasons, but chiefly because it lay outside the sphere of his wisely-limited
mission as a teacher of personal ethics. Said an Episcopalian professor of Oxford
University in a recent issue of the Hibbert Journal: "Our Lord carefully refrained
from expressing an opinion on political and economic problems, which were beyond the scope
of his mission. His concern was not with the State but with the individual, not so much
with Humanity as with Man." With the State he was not concerned because, according to
his belief and that of all of his Jewish contemporaries, the State was a temporary
institution, destined soon to be replaced by the expected Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So
full of this great expectation was the apostle Paul that he could advocate a doctrine of
unrestricted submission to the dictates of the State. "The powers that be are
ordained of God," was his plea--a doctrine positively harmful for us who believe in
the persistence of this old world for many an eon yet, and who are fully persuaded that
"the powers that be" in the State are too often "ordained" by anything
but a divine Power.
A second paramount moral need of our day is an ethics of big-business, involving the
relation of employer to employees in unprecedented ways. The problem of the right
relationship between these parties in industry in only a century and a half old. It dates
from the time when the "domestic" system of industry gave place to the
"factory" system, when machinery was substituted for tools, and when the old,
close, personal relation of master and workmen was replaced by a cash nexus and the
wage-system. How, then, should we find in any Biblical record the necessary light on this
dark problem? The most that the ancient moral repositories can supply is a group of
general maxims, unquestionably true and precious, yet as plainly insufficient to be of
direct help.
Another of our paramount moral needs is more light on the spiritual significance and
purpose of marriage. Is it realized that there are only two verses (and their parallels)
in the Gospels that touch the subject of marriage, and neither sets forth its spiritual
meaning? Moreover, Jesus exemplified and exalted celibacy as against the marriage
relation--witness what we read in the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel according to
Matthew, at the twelfth verse. The plain truth is that Jesus left no direct teaching
wherewith to meet the marriage problem as we have it among us today. And the apostle Paul,
it will be remembered, saw in wedlock only a concession to human weakness. "It is
good for a man not to touch a woman, nevertheless to avoid fornication let each man have
his own wife and each woman her own husband." If they (the unmarried) "cannot
contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." Furthermore, as
against the spiritual conception of mutuality, reciprocity, complementariness of influence
in the marriage relation, Paul taught the subordination of the woman to the man--due
fundamentally to his inheritance of Hebrew tradition.
Still one other of the crying moral needs which must not be overlooked is that of an
international morality, to supplement the man-to-man morality which we find in the Old
Testament and the New. In neither book do we find any teaching on international morality,
and for very excellent reasons which cannot be here discussed. But the point to be noted
is that this lack has created the need of more light to help solve the vexing question of
international amity and peace. We need an ethicized nationalism to replace the narrow,
nefarious, chauvinistic nationalism now rampant throughout the world. But this ethicized
nationalism has to be worked out as part of a code of international morality; we do not
find it furnished in any of the ancient scriptures. It is essentially a modern concept,
and it lay wholly outside the range of Jesus's teaching, concerned as he was with the
ethics of personal life.
Here, then, is a group of great moral needs, bound up with economic, social, national
and international problems. On all of them there exists much difference of opinion. On
none of them have we as yet a consensus of moral judgment. In vain do we look for light on
them from the moral repositories of the past. Even as to the personal ideals that are held
up as patterns worthy of emulation an astonishing variety of opinion obtains. One finds
his ideal in the Christian saint; another, in the Greek sage; a third, in the Gothic
gentleman; a fourth, in the self-centered, strong, free Superman of Nietzsche. Hence a
literature of conflicting ethical ideals, a "chaos of ethical convictions," but
no consensus of opinion upon personal ideals. Hence, too, the conspicuous place given to
moral education in the Ethical Movement and the distinctiveness of its belief in ethical
progress. Precisely as the American Association for the Advancement of Science invites its
members, while enjoying absolute intellectual freedom, to explore the field of Nature and
make fresh discoveries there, so Ethical Societies bid their members go out into the field
of Duty, and with like intellectual freedom, shed new light on the open, unsolved problems
of the moral life.
If, now, the further question be raised, how is the needed new moral knowledge to be
acquired? The Ethical Movement answers in terms equally distinctive,--by moral experience.
VI. MORAL EXPERIENCE VS. REVELATION
When Brunelleschi, the famous Florentine architect, successfully competed for the
construction of the dome of the cathedral, he closed his series of specifications for the
structure with the following significant suggestion: When the dome shall have reached the
height of fifty-seven feet (that is, just before it is to be closed in), let the
masterbuilders, then in charge of the work, determine what the next step is to be. For,
said Brunelleschi, "la pratica insegna quello si ha da seguire,"--practice
teaches what the next step to be taken shall be. So in constructing the dome for the
cathedral of the moral life, inner experience is our teacher, practice in moral
architecture our basis of decision as to how we shall supplement the moral principles
transmitted from the past. Thus there is this very real sense in which practice precedes
theory. To know the spiritual meaning of love one must live the life of love. Only by
"doing the will" does one "know the doctrine." We of the Ethical
Movement take our stand with Brunelleschi. We believe that by striving to get into right
relations with our fellowmen we shall find just what these relations ought to be: by
working toward an ideal of justice in social and in business life, we shall learn what the
true ideal really is; by experiencing the deeper contents of the moral life we shall
approximate adequate statements of the moral Ideal.
Beginning with reverential and grateful appreciation of the immortal contributions made
by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus toward the upbuilding of the moral life,
cherishing and treasuring their teachings, making them an integral part of the moral
instruction given to the children and young people in its fellowship, every Ethical
Society proceeds to indicate the directions in which more light is needed and how it is to
be sought.
The Ethical Movement begins with the accepted norms of human conduct, i.e., with those
which by "the consensus of civilized peoples" have long since been put beyond
the pale of further question. That we should be kind, just, honest, grateful to our
benefactors, sympathetic towards the unfortunate,--that honor, justice, love bind us
regardless of our explanation of them, or of our fidelity to them,--these are moral
beliefs about which men generally agree. Here, then, is common standing-ground. Here we
can come together and work together, and push on thence into new and unexplored fields of
the moral life, no matter what our theological and philosophical opinions may be.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
II. What's special about Ethical Religion?
1) Martin describes the relationship between dissatisfaction and religion. What does
this point to in the picture of popular religion in our day (Peale, Liebman, Sheen)? What
about our own position in this matter?
2) Morality is a means or an end. Of these alternatives, which makes the more sense to
you? What does Martin say about his choice? Does he convince you?
3) What does Martin mean by a "supreme" end? Do you think there is such a
thing? Why, why not?
4) In the discussion of creed and deed, does Martin allow any legitimate place for
creed? Would you?
5) Review Martin's "three meanings of the independence of morality." What do
these show about the strengths and weaknesses of the Ethical Movement?
6) Martin says, "We are not a sect, but a fellowship." What does this mean?
Do you agree? Is this a good thing?
7) What is the "bond of union" in an Ethical Society? What does Martin mean
by "ethical progress"? Do you agree? Why, why not?
8) What "new" moral situations have arisen that require "new" moral
ideas?
9) What does Martin mean by "moral experience"? Describe, if possible, an
example of moral experience in an "unexplored" field.
[Discussion Questions]
This document is part of a larger document, "Understanding
Ethical Religion," edited by Howard B. Radest.
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