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c 1 -63 \{ -' rnlG"'mtfrt THOUGHTS ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY * At the present time, in spite of the conflicts aroused by the race issue, there are more cases before the Federal courts involving church*state relations than any other problem. In other countries, too, the finding of new patterns of satisfactory church-state relationship has come to consume more energy than almost any other constitutional matter, The problem we are discussing gains added complexity for believing men and women by the fact that in few other areas is there so much oral tradition and racial memory involved. For two millenia, and in the most various of situations, the Church has been accumulating a wealth of experience in church-state relations. Ivhen we practice the "dialogue with the past" in this area, and the most vulgar of all errors would be to neglect the wisdom of our fathers, i^ multiply the complexity of a complicated question many times over. the Age of Ideology wmoiMifc i i,i n ii i. i mi mmm Although the problem is ancient, in a certain sense it has gained a quite new dimension in the twentieth century. This last half-century, in its spiritual agony, has produced a new kind of politics - politics which is as different from ancient despotism as it is from republican forms of government. The "new science of politics" is ideological, i.e., ouasi-religious in its orientation.1 Former tyrannies, however scornful they might be of the human measure, were yet subject to the occasional restraint of pope, hierarchy, university, nobility, bureaucracy, and the power of opposing center's of tradition and mixed sovereignty. Wherever sub-political centers were suppressed, as in the case of the French Law of Associations (1792), conservative checks remained. As ^aldemar Curian of Notre Dame put it, Montesquieu remarks that religion works as a check in despotic regimes which do not have any institutional or traditional checks against the arbitrary actions of the despot. An essential feature of totalitarianism consists in the disappearance of this factual, though neither legal nor institutional, limiting power of religious habits and customs. On the contrary, energies and forces which formerly had their outlet and ex- / pression in religion, limiting the old despotic ruler, are now driving forces behind and in the new despotic regimes of the 20th century. The totalitarian ideologies replace and supersede religion, Therefore it may be said that the various forms of totalitarianism - Nazism and Soviet Communism - are politico-social secularized religions, characteristic of cur epoch. The totalitarian movements and their power replace God and religious institutions such as the Church; the leaders are deified; the public mass-meetings are regarded and celebrated as sacred actions; the history of the movement becomes a holy history of the advance of salvation, which the enemies and betrayers try to prevent in the same way as the devil tries to undermine and destroy the work of those who are in the service of the City of God, 2 A paper by Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, published in XVI McCormick Quarterly (March, 1963) 3:22-32. * » i iiiMnn mm > r
Object Description
Title | "Thoughts on Religious Liberty" a paper read at Chicago Theological Seminary; published in XVI McCormick Quarterly, volume 3, numbers 22-32 (1963-03) |
Creator (Person) | Littell, Franklin H. (Franklin Hamlin), 1917-2009 |
Date | 1963 |
Searchable Date | 1963-03 |
Repository Collection | Franklin H. Littell Papers |
Series | Franklin H. Littell papers. Series 12: Research, writing and speaking, 1938-2006 |
Subseries | Franklin H. Littell papers. Subseries 12.5: Speeches, lectures, and article manuscripts, 1938-2006 |
Subseries Scope and Content | Subseries 12.5 contains Littell’s speeches and lectures, as well as occasional article manuscripts. A noted expert in several fields, Littell was frequently invited to address a wide variety of audiences all over the world. He spoke on many topics, most especially: the German Church Struggle and the Holocaust, religious liberty, new religious movements, the Methodist youth movement and peace and pacifism, political extremism, Methodism, and the Anabaptist tradition. There are additional speeches, lectures, and manuscripts, as well as related materials available for research in the Special Collections Research Center. Review the collection’s online finding aid for more information. |
Language | English |
Type |
Speeches lectures Manuscripts |
Format | image/jp2 |
Rights | This material is subject to copyright law and is made available for private study, scholarship, and research purposes only. For access to the original or a high resolution reproduction, and for permission to publish, please contact Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, scrc@temple.edu, 215-204-8257. |
Repository | Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center |
Digital Collection | Franklin H. Littell Papers |
Digital Publisher | Philadelphia PA: Temple University Libraries |
Finding Aid | http://library.temple.edu/scrc/franklin-h-littell-papers-0 |
Catalog Record | http://diamond.temple.edu/record=b5769203~S12 |
Landing Page | http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16002coll14 |
Contact | scrc@temple.edu |
File Name | index.cpd |
Identifier | TLITFZ201307000038 |
OCR Note | The text presented here is in raw, un-copyedited form, as created through optical character recognition scanning of the originals. It is not always complete or accurate and should be used for preliminary research only. |
ADA Note | For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact diglib@temple.edu . |
Sort Title | 143 1963 03 000, Thoughts on Religious Liberty |
Description
Title | 001 |
Format | image/jp2 |
Rights | This material is subject to copyright law and is made available for private study, scholarship, and research purposes only. For access to the original or a high resolution reproduction, and for permission to publish, please contact Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, scrc@temple.edu, 215-204-8257. |
Landing Page | http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16002coll14 |
File Name | TLITFZ201307000038Y_001.tif |
OCR Note | The text presented here is in raw, un-copyedited form, as created through optical character recognition scanning of the originals. It is not always complete or accurate and should be used for preliminary research only. |
ADA Note | For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact diglib@temple.edu . |
Document Content | c 1 -63 \{ -' rnlG"'mtfrt THOUGHTS ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY * At the present time, in spite of the conflicts aroused by the race issue, there are more cases before the Federal courts involving church*state relations than any other problem. In other countries, too, the finding of new patterns of satisfactory church-state relationship has come to consume more energy than almost any other constitutional matter, The problem we are discussing gains added complexity for believing men and women by the fact that in few other areas is there so much oral tradition and racial memory involved. For two millenia, and in the most various of situations, the Church has been accumulating a wealth of experience in church-state relations. Ivhen we practice the "dialogue with the past" in this area, and the most vulgar of all errors would be to neglect the wisdom of our fathers, i^ multiply the complexity of a complicated question many times over. the Age of Ideology wmoiMifc i i,i n ii i. i mi mmm Although the problem is ancient, in a certain sense it has gained a quite new dimension in the twentieth century. This last half-century, in its spiritual agony, has produced a new kind of politics - politics which is as different from ancient despotism as it is from republican forms of government. The "new science of politics" is ideological, i.e., ouasi-religious in its orientation.1 Former tyrannies, however scornful they might be of the human measure, were yet subject to the occasional restraint of pope, hierarchy, university, nobility, bureaucracy, and the power of opposing center's of tradition and mixed sovereignty. Wherever sub-political centers were suppressed, as in the case of the French Law of Associations (1792), conservative checks remained. As ^aldemar Curian of Notre Dame put it, Montesquieu remarks that religion works as a check in despotic regimes which do not have any institutional or traditional checks against the arbitrary actions of the despot. An essential feature of totalitarianism consists in the disappearance of this factual, though neither legal nor institutional, limiting power of religious habits and customs. On the contrary, energies and forces which formerly had their outlet and ex- / pression in religion, limiting the old despotic ruler, are now driving forces behind and in the new despotic regimes of the 20th century. The totalitarian ideologies replace and supersede religion, Therefore it may be said that the various forms of totalitarianism - Nazism and Soviet Communism - are politico-social secularized religions, characteristic of cur epoch. The totalitarian movements and their power replace God and religious institutions such as the Church; the leaders are deified; the public mass-meetings are regarded and celebrated as sacred actions; the history of the movement becomes a holy history of the advance of salvation, which the enemies and betrayers try to prevent in the same way as the devil tries to undermine and destroy the work of those who are in the service of the City of God, 2 A paper by Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, published in XVI McCormick Quarterly (March, 1963) 3:22-32. * » i iiiMnn mm > r |
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