Excerpt from Do We Need: A New Idea of God?

That there is need for a reinterpretation of life and a restatement of religious faith in the light of demo cratic outreach and impulse would seem unquestion able. There is a whole world of difference between the philosophy and world-view of the ages that gave us the historic creeds of Christendom and the philo sophy and world-view of the present day. We live, indeed, in an entirely new world of thought; science has reconstructed the story of creation and written it anew in the language of the most thrilling romance, and democratic triumphs have gone far toward revolutionizing the social aims and conceptions of the world's politics. And yet in spite of these facts conventional religious teachers for the most part persist in proclaiming their message in the language and thought-forms of the early and darker ages, with the result that instead of interpreting life in a way that gives men courage and enthusiasm to face its responsibilities, the teaching of religion more often serves to confuse their thoughts, muddle their minds, and dissociate their common activity from the great life struggle of the universe.

If religion is to remain a vital force in the lives ofmen, some sort of A restatement of its leading ideas in the terms of democratic outreach and in harmony with the modern wor d-view is imperative, and any such restatement that does not show a vital relation between every man's heart throbs and the master struggle that has brought him to manhood must be pronounced inadequate. Both within and Without the churches there is a growing dissatisfaction with conventional forms of credal belief and a consequent lack of reality in the forms of worship which depend upon them. Not only do many people not find spiritual inspiration, help, and vision in religious forms and services intended to promote these ends, but there are not a few who find themselves in a state of open revolt against what to them are the insincerities which a conventional worship forces upon them, - that many of these are people of true earnestness and passionate moral enthusiasm does but serve to make more serious the problem. That of the great number who own a nominal allegiance to their faith there are all too many who are insincere in the utterance of the beliefs which the creeds force upon them and repeat the most definite words Aof belief with all sorts of mental reservations is a most serious problem for the churches of Christendom to-day.

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