The Urbane Intolerance of Americans

I

THERE is a familiar story oftenest ascribed to Disraeli, though I have seen it — as is the way with all good stories — in different settings. The Prime Minister, it is said, answered some careless, or perhaps impertinent, question concerning his creed by saying that it was the religion of all sensible men. ‘But what,’ persisted his interrogator, ‘is the religion of all sensible men?’ ‘Ah,’ replied the sphinxlike defender of Church and State, ‘that is what no sensible man ever tells.’

It sounds like Disraeli; but if he said it he voiced a sentiment which was even then rapidly disappearing from the world. In 1896, fifteen years after his death, the Honorable Augustine Birrell observed that religion was being widely and loudly discussed by people who, thirty years before, would have considered the topic unfitted for polite conversation. The nervous dread of religious enthusiasm, of expressed emotion, of anything appertaining to spirituality, which had characterized the eighteenth century (ce siècle sans âme) had gradually given place to a lively and chattering interest in matters once relegated to the clergy, and which even the clergy — unless they were Methodists — were expected to keep closely confined to the pulpit.

It may be that this reticence concerning religious belief was an unconscious survival from earlier — but not much earlier — days, when confessions of faith were liable to lead the confessors into trouble. A fifteenth-century money-lender in Spain was not likely to make public his formula, ‘Why I am a Jew.’ Men of original views, but of sober understanding, who found themselves in Constance in 1415, or in Geneva in 1553, would not have seized these inauspicious occasions to state in print ‘Why I am a Heretic.’ No one was disposed to publish a paper saying ‘Why I am a Protestant’ when Mary Tudor reigned; or ‘ Why I am a Papist’ when Elizabeth took the helm; and, when the father of these ladies ruled rampageously, it was best to call no attention to one’s religious views, whatever they might have been. On the thirtieth of July, 1540, six men were executed at Smithfield. Three were ‘Reformers’ who were burned for heresy, and three were Catholics who were hanged, drawn, and quartered for nonconformity. Justice could not have been more impartially administered. I say nothing of the fourteen Dutch Anabaptists who were burned five years earlier, because everybody who had a chance burned Anabaptists. It was one of the few points on which all churches agreed.

There is a wide gulf between such earnest and vigorous ecclesiastical discipline and the kind of intolerance which we lament to-day, and which the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick has branded as an obstacle in the path of civilization. So stern is his disapproval that the Crusaders are obnoxious to him because they could not tolerate Turks; and the mere notion that ‘a church should be a group of people holding the same opinions in religion’ is, in his eyes, ‘suicidal,’ though to some of us it seems a natural and reasonable conception. He even regards intolerance as ‘ungentlemanly,’ an interesting criticism, and one on which conflicting testimony can be brought to bear. Charles the Second, who had undergone some severe experiences with Presbyterianism before he pronounced it a religion ‘unfit for gentlemen,’ would have agreed with Dr. Fosdick; but Horace Walpole, who abominated ‘fractions of theology and reformation,’ stoutly maintained that ‘Mahomet and the Popes were gentlemen and good company.’ Now some of the Popes may have been fairly tolerant (two hundred and sixty-one prelates must in the course of nineteen hundred years have exhibited varieties of temperament); but Mahomet never yielded a canonical inch, and his followers have reverently followed his example. The essence of religious intolerance is contained in the speech of a Moor of Tangiers, who was denouncing the Jews to George Borrow: ‘Fools, they trust in Muza when they might believe in Mohammed, and therefore their dead shall burn everlastingly in Jehinnim.’

A great deal that passes for intolerance to-day has little to do with religion. Who can believe that distaste for Judaism as a creed is, or has ever been, the motive power of anti-Semitic agitation? This irrational conceit has survived because both Christians and Jews have preferred, for reasons of their own, to cherish it. What is called religious antagonism in the United States is largely political antagonism, based solidly and securely upon the affiliation of religious groups with governmental measures. Americans have, as a rule, a strong and sound mistrust for any alliance of Church and State. It is too much the habit of reformers to call upon a body of churchmen to ‘get behind’ their particular reform, thus alienating other bodies of churchmen, to say nothing of a great number of people who are content to let all churches go their way, but who do not want to be ruled in mundane matters by any of them. No issue which is exclusively moral can survive political handling. The lust for power degrades it. From a desire to benefit mankind, it sinks into a determination to coerce mankind, and such coercion brings dry rot. into healthy human activities. Of what avail is any virtue which is not the virtue of the free?

The tolerance of American colleges for ‘Freethinkers’ Societies,’ the tolerance of the American public for ‘Associations for the Advancement of Atheism,’ the tolerance of American audiences for wandering Buddhists who adjure them to close their churches and seek religion in the field and in the market place, would seem to indicate a large and easy unconcern. Suppose Shelley, instead of being ‘sent down’ from Oxford, had been invited to become the chairman of a collegiate freethinkers’ society, to work off his steam in speeches, and to have his Necessity of Atheism printed at the society’s expense — how different his life might have been! Less keen perhaps, and certainly less enjoyable; but free — for a time at least — from tragic complications. The New Yorkers who listen to fluent Orientals may make them an excuse for not going to church; but the urban substitute for field and market place is the subway; and the subway, while teeming with human interests, lacks the serene atmosphere of spirituality. It is too hurried and too bewildering. If we paused to think about our souls, we should get into the wrong train.

With the ‘Association for the Advancement of Atheism’ the case is different. Already it is following the lead of the churches, and treading the familiar path to politics. The move to stop the payment of salaries to army and navy chaplains is purely political. It may be in accord with the Constitution, but it is out of harmony with the sentiment of the nation. The army and navy chaplains are deservedly popular. They are seldom idle and never rich. Soldiers and sailors hold them in esteem. Shane Leslie says that in the Boer War the British sent a special train to take a priest to a dying Irish private. Human nature will have to change considerably before such an incident fails to touch our hearts.

For a long time past, sermons have been the order of the day. One does not need to go to church to hear them. There are societies formed for no other purpose than to preach sermons unrelated to religion. Magazines which we have read and loved and trusted for years publish sermons under misleading titles, and we have been sore at heart over such betrayal. They also publish appeals to Christian churches to please eliminate dogma (‘no dogma, no deans’), and substitute that flexible adjustment of mind to mood which will harmonize with fleeting points of view. ‘Any habitual and regulated enthusiasm is worthy to be called a religion,’ said Sir John Seeley; and who would forbear, or who could escape, being religious on such terms?

As a matter of fact, the passion for religion is deep bedded in the human heart. ‘Man,’ said Disraeli, ‘is born to believe.’ He has learned in the course of centuries that actively combating his neighbors’ beliefs is unprofitable labor; and when he is told that one hundred and eighty varieties of creeds may be found in the United States to-day, he has a shameful impulse to laugh. Much has been said concerning the boldness of mind, the singleness of soul, the sympathy with time and place, which impel a man, or a group of men, to launch a new religion; but, in view of the numbers launched, it must be easier than we think. The changing framework of society is favorable to novelties; the restlessness of the human mind prepares it for hastily drawn and loudly voiced conclusions.

II

The really remarkable thing to-day is the lively interest which is taken in confessions of faith, and which seems to me as remote from intolerance as from enthusiasm. Mr. Edgar Lee Masters has entitled his confession ‘In Search of a Better Religion,’ which leaves the way open to all followers. A Moslem gentleman, who claims to be descended from the Prophet, has confided to us in Collier’s why he is a Mohammedan. He says that Islamism is a creed of universal kindness and ‘spiritual democracy,’ that it has a ‘Wilsonian modernity’ and a ‘Jeffersonian simplicity,’ all of which should recommend it to Americans if they can get their wives to assent. The Forum has published twelve papers by leading members of eleven churches, and by one member of no church. They are amiably written and have been very amiably received. They are not technically controversial, inasmuch as they do not seek to score ‘under set conditions,’ which is the aim and object of controversy. They are prefaced, curiously enough, by a paper from Bishop Manning, who expresses a certain bleak regret that Christian faith should have so many interpretations, and who calls for greater unity of belief. ‘The time has come for the churches to repent of their schisms and divisions, and to find the way to fellowship and reunion.’

I wonder if the time has come, and if our friendly unconcern brings us nearer to assent than did the old ferocious arguments of stake and fagot. That in unity we should find peace and strength, no Christian doubts. It was the dream of Cardinal Mercier’s life, though he had seen the utmost that rage and hate could do. ‘Agreement,’ says Santayana, ‘is sweet, being a form of friendship. It is also a stimulus to insight, and helpful, as contradiction is not.’

If differences of creed were like hurdles which brave men could leap, we might all be riding in the open road together. Three hundred years ago Robert Burton lamented as loudly as Bishop Manning laments to-day that while the Turks counted all giaours as dogs and all Moslems as brothers, and while the Jews stuck together like so many burrs, Christians could not be persuaded or coerced into unanimity. But Burton’s idea of unanimity was universal acquiescence in the ‘pure Protestant faith’ of England. For all other creeds he had a hearty and sincere aversion. Never did he dream of moving one step in their direction. And if tolerance has become a milder sentiment than in Burton’s day, his notion of Christian unity is familiar to us now. We are all ready to open our doors to those who repent of their errors.

When we remember that theological disputes are as old as theology, we understand how the very intensity of men’s regard inclines them to disagreement. Northern Africa, in the first centuries of the Christian era, had almost as many varieties of religious experience as has the United States to-day; and their upholders were more ardent and more implacable. Indeed it is safe to say that only in our own time, which Dr. Fosdick finds so intolerant, have theologians displayed the faintest symptoms of that urbanity which makes them appear gentlemanly in his eyes. The great religious upheavers did not care a rap about gentlemanliness. Scherer says that Luther and Calvin were ‘virtuosos of insult’; yet Luther and Calvin were soft-spoken by comparison with John Knox. There is a quality about Knox’s abuse which, while undecipherable, makes all other vituperation seem pallid and polite. His description of a polemical opponent as a ‘fed sow’ carries with it a dreadful — and unreasonable — sense of indignity. It is useless to ask ourselves why ‘fed,’ why ‘sow’ (‘O gloriosa femina!’), or why a worthy animal, quietly fulfilling the duties of its station, should be the sign and symbol of degradation.

The moral element involved in taste is not always apparent to men of angry mood. Neither are they quick to share the generous belief that convictions which are not their convictions, and emotions which are not their emotions, may yet have in them elements of beauty and of grace. It is a far cry from Scotland in the sixteenth century to the United States in the twentieth, from the furious preacher ‘dinging the pulpit to blads’ to the genial and goodhumored gentlemen whose confessions of faith in the Forum have been received with genial and good-humored tranquillity. It seems needless to bemoan the intolerance of churches whose representatives claim so little and grant so much. It seems absurd to bemoan the indifference to religion of a public which stands ready to read eleven semitheological papers in order to know why eleven men believe in their respective creeds. Perhaps if the eleven theologians emphasized points of difference, rather than points of resemblance, controversy might take a keener edge. As it is, Mr. Gilbert Chesterton is the only one who has so far provoked acrimonious rejoinders from that portion of the public which has the leisure and inclination to write letters to an editor. Having been a Catholic for only a short time, his arguments are all on the firing line.

The able churchmen who confide to us why they are Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and so forth, steer as clear of dogma as confessions of faith permit. Most of them have been born in their folds, and have seen no occasion to stray. ‘I have suspected,’ writes Bishop Slattery of Massachusetts, ‘that, if I had been born in some other communion, I might have stayed there just as contentedly.’ Mr. Edgar Young Mullins, President of the Baptist World Alliance, is the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. His reactions are as strong as heredity can make them. Dr. Frank Mason North’s conscious acceptance of Methodism dates from his eighth year. Mr. Rufus M. Jones, teacher of philosophy and ethics at Haverford College, listened as a child to the preaching of a Quaker uncle and two Quaker aunts. He went as a boy to a Quaker school, and as a youth to a Quaker college. He taught as a young man in two Quaker schools, and he edited a Quaker periodical. He has never in his life stepped out of the Quaker atmosphere, and he has never wanted to. He believes that people are better for being Quakers; and he has gone by invitation to ’interpret his views’ in China, where goodness knows they are needed.

The faith of Archbishop Söderblom, Primate of Sweden, is also an inheritance. As the devout little son of a devout Lutheran minister, he believed naturally and happily that all Christians were Lutherans. When he discovered his error, he was none the less satisfied to remain where he belonged. The thrill afforded by Luther’s catechism to his childish mind bore lifelong fruit, and the only thing which is not to his liking is the name ‘Lutheran.’ It suggests a narrow confine, a party bias, which displeases him. Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin of New York concludes an appeal for breadth of vision with these remarkable words: ’I may say finally that I am a Presbyterian only temporarily. The name carries many hallowed memories and associations; but it seems to me to belong to the past rather than to the present. It connotes primarily a particular mode of church government.’

III

Now it is impossible to doubt the sincerity of such writings, and it is difficult to charge them with intolerance. Societies for the promotion of religious persecution are not nourished on arguments like these. The far-flung challenge of Augustine Birrell: ‘What, then, did happen at the Reformation?’ has not been taken up by any of the disputants. Yet to ignore it is to leave unexplained the extraordinary vehemence with which men slaughtered their fellow men in the august name of religion. We cannot even account for the clear-cut antagonism which for centuries divided creed from creed. Andrew Lang says that the Calvinistic Synod of Poictiers was of the opinion that Satan stood responsible for the English liturgy — which was one way of looking at things. Dr. Johnson, who loved and reverenced the English liturgy, said comprehensively of Catholics: ‘In everything in which they differ from us, they are wrong’ — which was another, and very conclusive, way of looking at things. And Dr. Johnson’s dictum was borrowed from Dr. Heath, Catholic Archbishop of York, deposed by Queen Elizabeth for contumacy. ‘Whatever is contrary to the Catholic faith,’ wrote the prelate, ‘is heresy; whatever is contrary to unity is schism.’ As Dr. Heath suffered the displeasure of his sovereign (they had been friends of a sort), the loss of his see, and three years’ imprisonment, rather than move an inch from this position, his way of looking at things must have seemed to him a sacred and inviolable truth. ‘Men believe a thing,’ said Spinoza, ‘when they behave as if it were true.’ There is no other test.

Santayana, who does not suffer his love for agreement to impair his understanding of dissent, writes luminously: ‘The attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no particular religion.’ This clear-cut thinking is more suggestive of the last century than of our own. When we soften the edges of things until they blur, we become mannerly, but inexact. There is a sentence of Sir Andrew Macphail’s, in Essays in Puritanism, which has long provoked my interest and curiosity: ‘To one who has tasted and found the richness of Calvinism it is no use appealing with the doctrine of Wesley.’ Now Sir Andrew, who is Scotch, and has a Scotchman’s innate grasp of controversy, must have had some definite outline, some closely knit reasoning, in his mind when he used that brilliant and comprehensive word, ’richness.’ ’The richness of Calvinism.’ There is nothing in Dr. Coffin’s Forum article to elucidate the phrase. The American says confidently: ‘ Communities under Presbyterian influence are God-fearing, law-abiding, intelligent, and independent.’ But this is probably more than the Scotchman is prepared to grant. He is thinking of theology, not of behavior. If any one Christian church could prevail upon its members to behave better than the members of other churches (not in their own eyes, but in the eyes of the world), there would be a stampede to that fold. Unhappily, the imperfections of human nature are not incidental; they are fundamental; they may be trusted to subvert intelligence and nullify endeavor.

‘I have not yet discovered of what I am to die,’ wrote Sydney Smith in 1842, ’but I think I shall be burned alive by the Puseyites.’ Which characteristic jibe would seem to indicate some ill-will, or at least some lack of concord, between the Liberals and the estimable High-Churchmen, whom the equally estimable, but less welldisposed, Tupper denounced in his day as

Macaulay, who was an Erastian of Erastians, had somewhere in his comfortable constitution a penchant for old forms, old customs, old alliances between church feasts and cheerful feasting. He wrote to his little niece, Margaret Trevelyan, asking her if she had read ‘the beautiful Puseyite hymn on Michælmas-day.’ And as its beauties existed only in the depths of his own consciousness he proceeded to extract a verse for her edification: —

I am sure little Margaret loved that letter; but I am equally sure that doting uncles do not, in this era of civility, compose such poems for impressionable child nieces. Somebody might think them rude. I have seen anthologies from which one verse of Thackeray’s ‘White Squall’ was deleted, as impolite — which it certainly is — to the Jews.

IV

What makes the situation to-day a trifle paradoxical is the fact that we are painstakingly courteous on the one hand, and, on the other, unaccountably attentive to opinions which do not concern us. Take for example the case of Mr. Luther Burbank, which was widely discussed some months ago. Mr. Burbank had achieved a great reputation and a boundless popularity. He had produced so many new varieties of fruit and flowers and vegetables that the earth seemed hardly big enough to hold them. His exploits had been vaunted from ocean to ocean. The ever-ready name ‘wizard’ had been triumphantly applied to him. Then one day, for no particular reason, he confided to the world, through the medium of the San Francisco Bulletin, that ‘as a scientist’ he considered all religions to be built on a tottering foundation, and that he was an infidel ‘in the true sense of the word’; adding somewhat petulantly that, if this avowal awakened thoughts in ‘narrow bigots and petrified hypocrites,’ it would not have been made in vain.

Now what happened? The people who read the San Francisco Bulletin, instead of saying ‘Dear me!’ or ‘Oh my!’ which was all the occasion called for, repeated Mr. Burbank’s words with grief and consternation. Newspapers commented freely upon them. There seemed to be an unwarranted impression that a horticulturist and master of applied science ought to know more about the nature of God and the immortality of the soul than a banker or a mining engineer. When the incident was about to be forgotten, interest in it was suddenly revived by Mr. Burbank’s death. Kindhearted people then suggested that he had probably not meant what he said; and his friend, Mr. Henry Ford, undertook to set our minds at rest by assuring us through an interviewer that the ‘Plant Wizard’s’ religion was ‘much the same as anyone else’s.’ ‘He loved children, and thought that they should go to church to learn to think right. I am sure that his instinct told him that there was a hereafter.’

It is hazardous to disagree with a man whose views upon all subjects are sought as sedulously as are Mr. Ford’s. But really and truly the religion he outlines so sketchily is not ‘the same as anyone else’s.’ Mr. Burbank may have meant what he said, or he may have meant something entirely different. It is of no importance. His views were his own, and he was privileged to hold them. But there is more clear-cut thinking in the world than is dreamt of in Mr. Ford’s philosophy. Man’s mind is circumscribed, but not necessarily nebulous. ‘God did not create us to supplement His intelligence.’ But understanding of a sort is ours.

The American is said to be more emotional than logical, a characteristic which he shares with men of other nations. He is certainly more sentimental than emotional, more curious than self-absorbed, more reasonable than vehement. Therefore is he controversial after a fashion which the great ages of controversy would have disowned. Therefore is he ready to listen to the arguments put forward by men of varying creeds, by men of no creed, and by men who, creedless themselves, are disposed to share Frederick Locker’s gratitude ‘that woman is a churchgoing animal.’ He understands that variet ies of belief are closely related to varieties of temperament, and that varieties of temperament are as superabundant as varieties of weather. If he be a churchman and a man of parts, he accepts these differentiations with regret, as does Bishop Manning, but without belligerence. ‘It would be the death of controversy,’ says Hilaire Belloc, ‘to demand a real conquest. When people get into that mood, controversy ends, and fighting begins.’