Religious Experience Through the Community

Experiments in Personal Religion: Study VIII
Religious Experience through the Church

H. N. Wieman

The Method of Spiritual Fellowship

The church and the home are designed to promote a precious fellowship. He who never experiences it, whether found in church or home or elsewhere, misses one of the greatest goods of life. But church and home should not monopolize this fellowship; rather they should be the nursery of it, where it is fostered and grows and whence it spreads out into other social groupings.

There are three kinds of association highly prized by men. All three can be found in the church at its best. We shall call the first sympathetic, the second instrumental, the third organic. The third kind is the best. It is described in the New Testament by such phrases as being members one of another, being branches of a single vine, or in such statements as: "Ye in me and I in you that ye all may be one." It is the rare and excellent kind of fellowship which constitutes the Kingdom of God. It does not exclude the sympathetic and instrumental types of association. On the contrary, it ought properly to include them; but it is more than they.

1. Sympathetic and Instrumental Association

Sympathy, taken in its original sense, means feeling together. Sympathetic association is one in which the people associated share the same feelings, the same thoughts, the same aspirations, the same hopes and purposes. A shared experience is deepened, sweetened, and intensified through the sharing of it. The psychology of this has been intensively studied and is now well understood. Each who has the experience acts as a stimulus on the others to intensify the feeling, if it is a feeling that is shared, or to make the thought more vivid and compelling, if it is a thought, to make the aspiration more absorbing and thrilling, if it is aspiration that is shared.

If it is a painful experience, such as a sorrow, a disappointment, a danger, the sharing of it somehow makes it sweet. Blessed are they that mourn if they mourn together as a beloved community, for in thus sharing the experience they shall be comforted. In sympathetic association there is q magic which transforms bitter grief or loss or disappointment or tragedy into something precious. The fellowship of sympathy touches the evils of life, and by the magic of that touch it makes them yield a fragrance. They become beatitudes. Jesus was speaking, not to isolated individuals, but to a beloved community when he said: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad. For so persecuted they the prophets that were before you." Not only would they have fellowship with one another in this persecution, but also with the great prophets that went before them.

Yet, if a fellowship were merely sympathetic and nothing more, if it did nothing to remove the causes of grief and pain and disappointment, and if it did not constructively change the evil situation resulting from these causes, save only to sympathize, it would be an inadequate kind of association. Precious as sympathetic fellowship may be, taken by itself alone it is not sufficient. It ought to be an accompaniment of instrumental and organic association. It is like a climbing vine; it needs these others to provide the strong-frame on which to climb.

Instrumental association might be called association for good works. It serves as an instrument for doing things. It does things which are helpful to its own members and to others. Almost all the charitable work of the church is of this sort. The church has sought to provide wholesome recreation, to improve education, to rectify some of the economic evils. It has applied itself as an instrument to fight the use of alcoholic liquors, to limit long hours of labor, to overcome corruption in politics, etc. It has also greatly improved its organization for helping its own membership in any time of need. All this belongs to the instrumental phase of association. It is so plain and simple and commonplace that it is probably the first thing which comes to the mind of anyone who considers the value of any association, whether in the church or outside.

2. Organic Association

Over against association for sympathy and association for service is association for personality-building. We call it organic. In organic association the members do not necessarily share the same feeling. Of c6urse they may, and often do; but this sharing belongs to the sympathetic, not the organic, aspect of their association. If the association is organic, each must have, over and above the feelings he shares with others, those feelings which are the peculiar expression of his own unique individuality. But the members interact on one another in such a way as to intensify and vastly enrich the feeling of each, however different their feelings may be from one another. In this association they have thoughts which are not shared. They may differ greatly in their ideas about things. But they interact on one another in such a way as to clarify and magnify the ideas of each. They have purposes and aspirations which are not shared; but they interact in such a way as to extend the scope and accuracy and effectiveness of the purpose and aspiration of each.

Nevertheless in organic association there is profound mutual understanding. While one does not think just as the others do, he knows what they do think. While one does not feel about things as the others, he knows. how they feel. While he does not strive for the same end they may strive for, he knows what is the aspiration and striving of their lives. This deep mutual understanding is what makes their interaction in difference so helpful, so clarifying, and so creative. This stimulating interaction of diverse personalities who have profound mutual understanding of one another fosters and magnifies the individuality of each. Yet each unique individuality is organically and co-operatively connected with the others; just as the limbs of the human body, while totally different from heart, lungs, yet are so organically connected that each in its own unique diversity fulfils a function that nourishes, sustains, and enriches all the others. Thus individuals who enter into organic association with one another are members one of another. They are branches of a single vine. Each abides in the other that they all may be one.

This stimulating, sustaining, diversifying spiritual co-operation and mutual understanding need not exclude sympathy and service; but it is far more than they. It is the kind of fellowship Jesus and the disciples had with one another. These individuals were not all molded according to the same pattern. They did not come out of the process of fellowship like so many bricks, each thinking, feeling, saying, doing the same. Quite the contrary was the case. Under the stimulus of this fellowship each began to grow into a full-orbed individual. Each thought about matters in a different way; each felt differently, spoke differently, reacted differently. Yet each was so organically related to the others in profound mutual understanding, at least so long as Jesus was with them, that each fulfilled his own peculiar function and made his own valuable contribution. Each brought the whole group to a focus in himself, yet the focusing in each was very different from the others.

It should be noted that the early church was not primarily an instrumental association. It was not first of all devoted to service or good works. We do not find that it concentrated its efforts immediately on providing wholesome recreation, or fighting political corruption, or bringing justice into the economic system, or improving the schools, or opposing slavery, or d6ing any good works in marked degree except to dispense charity. It was organic rather than instrumental. It was an association devoted to saving souls; that is, it fostered, enriched, and exalted the individualit;es of its members until these outcasts, these down trodden and crushed, these slaves and riff raff rose up in towering strength to dominate the age. Such magnified and developed personalities could and did, in the course of time, enter into instrumental association for the purpose of doing good works, removing causes of evil, transforming conditions, and reconstructing the world.

We do not mean to suggest that the church should refrain from good works. On the contrary, it should do even more than it is doing. It should be an instrumental association as well as organic. But first of all, we claim, it should be organic. Its first and greatest function in the world is to bring people together in such a way that they can interact in deep organic community, with profound mutual understanding. It should quicken to life and to abundant growth those impulses, aspirations, and personal attitudes wherein the individual comes to largest fulfilment of his utmost possibilities. This is individual salvation; but it is also profoundly social. The individual finds fulfilment through interaction with his fellows. And as he increases in spiritual stature his interaction becomes increasingly creative of greater personality in himself and others.

It should be noted that this kind of association does not exclude solitude. On the contrary, it rqquires seasons of solitary, private meditation and worship; for only in solitude can one assimilate the suggestions he has received from others. Only in solitary "waiting on God" can he organize the new impulses which association has stirred within him. He must digest what he has gathered. If he does not do this, he becomes superficial. He ceases to have originality. He becomes incapable of interacting creatively. His capacity for association sinks to the level of the sympathetic and the instrumental. Only as seasons of solitary, private assimilation and organization alternate with seasons of association can his interaction with others serve to develop the powers and possibilities of himself and his associates. Only so can he participate in organic association.

3. Organic Association as Adjustment to God

Organic association is the most profoundly religious kind of association. Through it the individual and the group share most fully in the cosmic working of God. There is a cosmic process which works to make the whole universe more organic. It is God. It works to develop individuals, both human and subhuman; and it works to interrelate these individuals so that they all can be members one of another, tach in diversity fulfilling a function of vital importance to all the others, each sustaining the others and magnifying them, and in so doing finding itself most richly nourished and magnified. Trees and grass and sky and water and earth and beasts and men become increasingly interdependent and mutually supporting. The goal of this movement toward organic interdependence and mutual development of individuals is poetically expressed in the words- "The lion shall lie down with the lamb." The ultimate value of all good works and instrumental service is to provide conditions which are favorable to this work of God--the development of organic interaction between all men and between men and the rest of the universe.

4. The Personal Experiment

The personal experiment which we propose consists in the individual participating in the associations and activities of the church in such a way as to find or achieve the kind of fellowship we have called organic. The personal technique by which this is accomplished is too subtle, intimate, and variable to put into any set of rules or to describe to another. But certain suggestions can be made to guide the experiment.

One should occasionally take time to look back over his experience and examine himself to ascertain whether he has actually attained this fellowship in some measure. He should endeavor to discover and cultivate in himself those attitudes, that way of approaching and dealing with people, talking and listening to them, which will enable him to enter into organic association with them. Above all, he should have seasons of solitude and private worship to use in the way previously described.

If one earnestly seeks this most precious fellowship we believe he can find it. It will grow with him through the years, transforming the world for him and making all things more dear. Through it he enters into organic fellowship with God who works to make the universe more organic. Through organic fellowship with men and beasts and things a man finds God and lives in God and God in him. It is necessary to the best religion; it is indispensable to us.