RELIGION AND THE INTEL L EC TU A LS
133
In view of the fact that religions in the degree in which they
have depended upon the supernatural have been, as history demon–
strates, the source of violent conflict, and destructive of basic human
values; and in view of the fact that even now differences of
religion divide the peoples of the earth, one summary answer to
this question is that values will be sustained-effectively supported by
a religion that is free from dependence upon the supernatural.
Not that anti-supernaturalism suffices, but that freedom from it
will provide an opportunity for a religious experience to develop
that is deeply and pervasively human and humane. Accordingly,
when it is asked: "Will not the religious tradition of any civilization
have to be essentially pluralistic?" my reply is that just as man–
kind may become all the richer when there is an assured ability on
the part of each people to develop in its own preferred way, so it is
with religious pluralisms among the peoples of the earth, provided
there is freedom of inter-communication.
ROBERT GRAVES
Religion, to deserve of the name, must be both prophetic
and institutional.
If
believers reject their prophet because his demands
on their faith or works are too severe, and engage a docile ecclesiast
as his substitute, religion degenerates into mere church-going. The
steady increase in American church-going since 1900 seems a social,
rather than a religious, phenomenon: a national urge to parochial
respectability. Old-fashioned prophetic salvationism is left to the
poor whites and the Negroes. In England, on the other hand, Church
membership is no longer generally regarded as a social asset, and
there has been a steady fall in church-going since 1900- a reaction
against parochial respectability. The ordinary Englishman is un–
selfconsciously agnostic. English society is now maintained not by
Christian, but by what may be called Common-law, morality. This is
a concept of fair dealing between man and man, which has been
embodied in the moralistic, though originally anti-ecclesiastical lan–
guage of sportsmanship. Since World War I almost all Englishmen
