an empirical concept of the religious life

An Empirical Concept of the Religious LifeAuthor(s): Benjamin MillerSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Jul., 1963), pp. 210-217Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1199934 .

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AN EMPIRICAL CONCEPT OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE BENJAMIN MILLER*

T HE religious inheritance of the Western world has been shaped by the dominance and the exclusive-

ness of theological religion. The classical Judeo-Christian tradition represents a theological view of the religious life that takes as its point of departure an assertion of the supernatural existence of God and of his sovereignty over the natural world. The religious response is interpreted as man's relation of obedi- ence and submission to the will of God. Ethical principles and moral impera- tives, which govern man's relations with his fellows, are derived from this pri- mary theology. The ethical ends toward which man strives in his search for individual and social fulfilment are inferred from God's self-revelation of his will and purpose for man. Thus the exclusive basis of relgious fellowship in tradition- al religion is the acceptance of singular theological belief.

An empirical concept of the religious life is bound to recognize, as a fact of experience, that theological belief may be an important part of the individual's religious orientation, underlying and informing his total religious response. Empirical religion is not anti-theological in the sense that it requires the re-

nunciation of theological belief. On the contrary, it is inclusive of the productive role played by many varieties of theological belief in motivating, sup- porting, and enhancing the growth of the religious response.

But empirical religion holds that the truth-claim for theological belief cannot be verified in any objective or ex- perimental way. Theological belief makes assertions about realities which are, by definition, inaccessible to the publically verifiable evidences of per- ception. Tradition itself affirms that "no man hath seen God at any time."

The existence of the supernatural personal God of classical Christianity cannot be empirically verified. The proposition which asserts that such a God exists cannot be demonstrated to be true, either directly or indirectly, by the common evidences of experience. Such a God may exist; and by faith one may believe that he does. But we cannot justify the truth-claim of this assertion by any objective and universal- ly verifiable evidences. Further, be- cause the reality of God is inaccessible to experienceable evidences, neither can we disprove his existence. The as- surances which support one's belief in a supernatural God must remain essen- tially subjective, private, and "self-veri- fying."

However, while rejecting the truth- claim for theological belief, we must recognize its validity in the growing religious experience. For there is an important distinction between truth and validity as criteria of judgment. Theo-

* Professor Miller is assistant professor of philosophy at Lake Erie College, Painesville, Ohio, having previously taught at Pomona College, Ste- phens College, and the University of Vermont. Educated at Occidental College (B.A.), the Pacific School of Religion (M.A.), the Yale Divinity School, and the University of Southern California, he was for twelve years a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He has contributed articles to the Personalist, the Christian Century, the Review of Religion, and other journals.

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EMPIRICAL CONCEPT OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 211

logical belief cannot be shown to be true, but it can frequently be shown to be valid. The validity of a belief in God can be justified in terms of its productive consequences for the individual's own religious and moral growth. The justification of belief in terms of its empirical consequences may support the validity of one's claim to hold such belief and to live by it. But the judgment of a valid belief, in this sense, does not in itself imply the further judgment that what the belief asserts is true. A "valid" belief may or may not be a "true" belief; and we have proposed that the nature of theological belief is such that we cannot empirically verify whether it is true or false.

We conclude, therefore, that there must be room within the household of religious fellowship for the theological believers, the theological disbelievers, and the theological non-believers. Since no authoritative answers can be given to the theological question, the concept of empirical religion rejects the notion that theological belief-on the level of truth-claims-can be proposed as the exclusive basis of religious fellowship. In our search for the common religious character of human experience, we cannot take theology as an unexceptional point of departure.

In the quest for an empirical definition of the religious life, we may further resolve the ambiguity of the term "religion" by distinguishing between its use in a special and narrower sense and its use in a broader sense.

First, in the special and narrower sense, the religious quality of experience is a distinctive attitude, or emotion, which characterizes man's response to all experienceable reality and which constitutes his sense of communion with his world. The specifically

religious experience is recognized by the presence of a distinctively religious attitude. To be religious is to feel in a certain way about the wholeness of life and the universe, to take a certain attitude toward all that one is and does, and toward all that happens to one.

But, second, in the broader sense, religion has a more comprehensive meaning as a characteristic human response. While it includes the distinctive attitude of the religious response, in the narrower sense, it also involves larger and more inclusive aspects of man's total response to his world. In this broader sense, the religious experience is the individual's growth toward the fulfilment of all his powers, capacities, and potentialities as a person. Thus no aspect of his behavior lies outside of his religious experience, since all that he does and thinks and feels is related to the growth and fulfilment of his powers as a person. It is in this sense that we commonly speak of religion as a totally inclusive way of life.

The life of the religious person is marked at one end by an act of personal decision and commitment, by his consecrated sense of the supreme im- perative to strive toward fulfilling his powers as a person. At the other end the life of the religious person is marked by the sustaining power of the ideal, the envisioned goal of a self-realization that is never completely attain- able. In terms of these initiating and terminal energies, we may suggest a definition of the religious experience as our striving in fellowship with one another toward that mutual self-fulfilment as persons which is the purpose of our existence. Defined in this way, religion in the broader sense has to do with all our drives and potentialities with all aspects of our behavior.



212 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION

It cannot be said that one is religious when he does certain things, such as at- tending a religious meeting or saying a prayer, and that he is not religious when he does certain other things, such as keeping the books in his business or making love to his wife. For the religious person, living by an act of decision and commitment, living direction- ally toward the fulfilment of himself and of others, all of his behavior shares in his sense of the consecration of life. The Saturday night celebration is a consecrating influence in his life as well as the Sunday morning celebration. In this sense there is no distinction between sacred and secular behavior within the total response of the religious person.

An empirical concept of the religious life affirms, therefore, that the common ground of religious fellowship is simply our common human needs and the response of our common human drives toward growth and fulfilment. In these terms we come to a view of the religious response, in the broader sense, as inclusive of the fellowship of all sorts and conditions of men, regardless of their theological beliefs or whether they have any at all.

Taking its point of departure from a broadly ethical, non-theological view of the human situation, an empirical concept of religion is inclusive of five distinguishable and essential aspects of our common experience. The nature of the religious life comprehends the totality of these five modes of man's characteristic response to his world.

First, we recognize the intellectual factor in the religious response. The widespread popular connotation of religion emphasizes the element of intellectual belief as one of the most important marks of the religious man. This

expresses itself, for example, in the notion that if a man is religious, he believes in the existence of God; and vice versa, if a man believes in the existence of God, he is religious. The phenome- non of being religious is identified with holding certain intellectual beliefs; and in order to be religious, one must give the assent of his mind to the truth-claim of these beliefs.

This popular notion confuses the difference between philosophy and religion. It fails to distinguish between having a philosophy and being religious. In reality, one may believe with his mind that God exists, and yet in his own life represent nothing of the religious quality of experience. Having a philosophy-that is, holding certain ideas to be true-may or may not have a bearing on the kind of life one lives. Being religious is not simply a matter of holding to a particular kind of philosophy.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a religious idea. There are only religious persons. To speak, for example, of the idea of God as a "religious" idea adds nothing to our understanding of the idea. Our attitude toward particular ideas may or may not be religious, without in any way affecting the ideas themselves. The religious quality of experience is a characteristic response of the whole person to all of life. It is not a property or qualification of ideas. We may, of course, have ideas about the religious life-that is, we may have a philosophy of religion-but the ideas about it must be distinguished from the religious life itself.

We have said that being religious does not consist in holding particular philosophical beliefs to be true, but rather that the religious response is a striving toward the realization of all




one's powers as a person. It is apparent that one of the significant aspects of the individual's self-realization is the fulfilment of his intellectual powers-his power to reason, to understand, to in- quire, and to experiment. What we mean by the intellectual factor in the religious response is that the individual's integrity and well being as a person depend upon the productive exercise of his intellectual powers and upon the as- surances of his belief in ideas that he can hold to be reasonably justified.

An empirical concept of the religious life includes the experience of disci- plined inquiry and the unremitting quest for knowledge and understanding by tested methods of experiment and reasoning. We must believe something; and it makes a difference what we believe. It is an escape from intellectual responsibility to argue for one's self that one belief is as good as another, since it is an escape from responsibility for the realization of one's own intellectual powers as a person.

The act of decision and commitment, which is the continuous basis of the religious response, is clarified and strength- ened by intellectual beliefs that can be reasonably justified. Only upon the foundation of reasonably true or reasonably valid beliefs can we be guided toward a rational faith-a faith that does not draw upon the resources of ignorance, fear, and superstition but upon the resources of one's active capacity to know and to understand.

But our human powers and potentialities also involve the capacity to feel, to imagine, and to have attitudes. Therefore we must recognize a second factor in the religious response-the emotional factor.

We suggested earlier that, in the special and narrower sense of the term "re-

ligion," the religious quality of man's experience is a distinctive attitude, an emotion, which marks his response to all experienceable reality and which constitutes his sense of communion with his world. The religious person is recognized by the fact that he feels in a certain way about the wholeness of his world. He takes a certain pervasive attitude toward all that he is and does and toward all that happens to him.

The religious emotion is rooted in man's capacity for aesthetic awareness and appreciation: the satisfaction which man enjoys in contemplating the sensu- ous and perceptual aspects of things and events. On the level of man's intellectual powers, he is characterized by his unique capacity to seek and respond to truth. But man's potentiality is also characterized-and perhaps on a profounder level-by his unique capacity to enjoy aesthetic satisfaction, to create and respond to beauty.

It is the specifically religious need that man shall find satisfaction in re- sponding appreciatively not only to discrete objects in his world but to the wholeness of life and the universe. In whatever form the image of wholeness may be created, it is an artifact of beauty, to which one responds appreciatively and with a sense of communion.

The wholeness of life is not an object that can be literally perceived. It is a creation of man's uniquely self-conscious and imaginative capacities that arises out of his experienced need to feel at home in his world, to enjoy the satisfaction of an emotional relationship with the totality of things that is appreciative, confident, and trusting. It expresses the powers of the human spirit to deal emotionally with the con- fused manifold of the natural world by imaginatively creating an image of




wholeness. This object of emotional response functions in human experience as the background of the multiplicity and disparateness of life's foreground.

Man creates an image of wholeness in order to feel appreciatively and confidently about the totality of his experience. This emotional response-what we may call in the special sense "the religious awareness"-is productive of a dominant and generalized attitude which marks the religious relation to all of life. The religious attitude is one of appreciation, confidence, and trust. It is the emotional resourcefulness with which man confronts an enigmatic and frequently menacing world, and in which he achieves the strength and courage to live out his life with meaning and growing fulfilment of his natural powers. The productiveness of the religious life expresses itself in the sense of communion with one's world and in the achievement of those spir- itual resources which win for the religious person a kind of invulnerability to despair and anxiety and fear.

It is by observing a man's persistent response to things and persons and events in terms of this profound emotional relationship that he is recognized to be a religious person. This is the common religious core of experience that characterizes all the great histori- cal traditions, lying beneath the codes and fixed practices of behavior and beneath the elaborated systems of intellectual dogma.

Consideration of the emotional factor inevitably raises the question of the expressive values which mark this spir- itual relationship with life and the world. This brings us to a third factor in the religious response-the dramatic factor.

Forms of ritual have always been

characteristic expressions of the religious response and of the fellowship of religious persons. The familiar controversy over ritual as a mode of religious expression is often misleading. The question at issue is not whether we shall have ritual or whether we shall not have ritual. The controversy arises over what kind of ritual, what sort of dramatic expression will celebrate most meaningfully and most effectively the faith and practice of an individual or of a particular religious fellowship. It is probably impossible to conceive of any fellowship of persons, religious or oth- erwise, in which some meaningful form of ritual is not present.

Ritual is the dramatic celebration of significant value experiences in some objectively ordered and overt action. The key to ritual is its objectivity. The individual's subjective feelings are ex- pressed through his participation in common group action, in something that the fellowship does together-sit- ting, standing, speaking, singing, listen- ing, exercising physical postures and movements. This participation by the individual in the drama of corporate celebration is distinguished from the subjectivity of such individual acts as private prayer, meditation, and all the many subjectively meaningful forms of individual, dramatic self-expression of the sense of life's consecration. Both the individual and the corporate forms of celebration are essential expressions of the religious life.

Man's need for dramatic celebration of his value experiences is deeply rooted in his human nature. Celebration is the dramatic performance of the emotional satisfaction which one finds in shared value experiences. Man possesses a natural drive to dramatize, to do something about his feelings and value sat-




isfactions. Values tend to atrophy when they are neither shared nor celebrated.

The celebration of the religious emotion is an end in itself, in the same sense that celebration of the aesthetic emotion is an end in itself. The religious response, like the aesthetic response, is the realization of values that are intrinsic, that are worth realizing for the simple satisfactions which they constitute in themselves. In the individual and corporate celebration of these values, no ulterior motive or purpose need be present. It is for this reason that dramatic celebration of the religious and aesthetic emotions is commonly disparaged by so-called "practical" people. But what the "practical" people overlook is the profound human need for intrinsic value satisfactions which can be nurtured only through their being celebrated as ends in themselves.

However, the celebration of the religious response does have profound consequences of an extrinsic character. The long history of man's religious experience testifies to the effectiveness of individual and corporate religious celebration as a means to the achievement of intellectual and moral ends. The dramatic factor, thus, goes beyond the function of an end in itself and becomes expressive of all the values which constitute the total religious response (what we have defined as religion in the broader sense)-our striving in fellowship with one another toward the mutual self-fulfilment of our powers as persons.

In the most practical sense the corporate celebration of the religious life motivates, inspires, and sustains the realization of our moral purposes and of our natural capacities to know and to understand and to experiment. It

dramatically celebrates and, hence, nurtures the security of one's own spir- itual well being, enhancing the continuous act of decision and commitment which is the basis of one's growth toward greater fulfilment, and which one shares with others. It contributes psy- chologically to the integration and in- tensification of both the individual per- sonality and the life of fellowship.

These extrinsic consequences of expressive ritual suggest a fourth factor in the religious response-the moral factor.

In the moral aspect of the religious life we are dealing with the normative practice of human relationships, with how we relate ourselves to one another. Our religious empiricism affirms that the norm by which human responses and human relationships are to be judged is self-realization-the mutual growth of persons toward the productive exercise of their unique powers as persons. Morality is the kind of behavior that is characterized by the vol- untary and reasonable choice of courses of action which affect man's interrela- tionships with his fellows, and in the light of this ethical norm or ideal.

Moral behavior is primarily a rational-volitional activity, involving the awareness of ideal ends, knowledge of the facts that are relevant to the realization of values in particular situations, the use of intelligence and reasoning, and the decision to act. It is the individual acting rationally in his relations with other persons.

As distinguished from this moral response, we have said that religion, in the special and narrower sense, is the kind of behavior that is characterized by an appreciative response to the wholeness of life and by a generalized attitude of confidence and trust. What




we have called the specifically religious response is primarily an emotional activity. Therefore, one might conceiv- ably be moral without being religious, or be religious without being moral. That is, one might relate himself pro- ductively to other persons and yet remain frustrated in his need to respond appreciatively and confidently to his sense of the wholeness of life; and vice versa. The moral and the religious are distinguishable aspects of human experience.

But within the broader meaning of the religious life, both of these responses are essential. It is not enough to be merely religious, in the narrower sense; nor to be merely moral. Empiri- cal religion as a way of life comprehends both the struggle to achieve morally right relations with one another and the kind of awareness, appreciation, and confidence that bring one to a persistent sense of communion with the wholeness of life.

We begin the religious life not with some speculative faith in whatever ulti- mate powers may exist in or outside of the universe. We begin with the experience of our own powers as persons; and out of this experience we fashion a faith in the potentiality of growth toward greater fulfilment of our powers and a confidence in the kind of a universe that supports our striving toward this end. Although the universe has no conscious purpose to save us, it permits us to save ourselves. We are free to choose dam- nation and destruction; but we are also free to choose salvation. It is within our power to become aware of the creative order of things where it touches us and to respond to it-to make what Doug- las Clyde Macintosh called the "right religious adjustment" to the sustaining processes of the natural world. Our pro-

ductive response to the possibilities of salvation includes the fulfilment of our intellectual, emotional, dramatic, and moral powers.

Taking account of these four distinguishable and essential aspects of the total human response, we have arrived at an empirical concept of the religious life. Man's religious experience is his striving in fellowship with others of his kind toward that mutual self-fulfilment as persons which is the purpose of man's existence. The religious relation is inclusive of man's intellectual quest for verifiable knowledge and reasonable understanding; of his appreciative and confident response to the wholeness of life; of his dramatic celebration of significant value experiences; and of his striving to achieve morally right relations with his fellows. In the broader sense, these "modes of relatedness" to himself, to other persons, and to the vaster reaches of his world comprise the individual's religious response.

But a general concept of the religious life must also include its social and his- torical practice, which is manifested in the form of religious institutions. This is a fifth factor in the religious response -the institutional factor.

Fellowships of religious persons or- ganize and perpetuate themselves as social institutions. This is a natural and essential expression of the religious life, the social celebration of man's religious response which is a corollary of the so- cialization of human nature. Man so- cializes his basic needs and interests; and he preserves and nurtures their expression in a variety of institutional forms. His religious needs and interests have, historically, been nurtured and celebrated in one of the most funda- mental and most influential of social




institutions-the church, or the religious society.

There are dangers inherent in the institutionalized religious life. It tends to bring about the petrifaction of intellectual beliefs. The conservation of religious institutions is a barrier to social progress. Religious institutions tend to ally themselves with the status quo, thus implying so-called "religious" sanctions for social, cultural, economic, and political beliefs. Institutional mores and cult practices readily become in- flexible, lose their meaning, and no longer serve the productive ends of religious growth. These dangers are inherent in all institutionalized expressions of religion, regardless of the orthodoxy or liberalism of their traditions.

But, on the other hand, there are important and indispensable values inherent in religious institutions. The churches, temples, and religious socie- ties perform a unique function in the

conservation, clarification, and fulfilment of religious and moral values. The religious institution is a source of pro- phetic insight and social change; proph- ets arise within the context of institutions. Despite the danger of inflexibility and the threats of meaninglessness, institutionalized religious practices do provide effective and essential means for individual and corporate growth of the religious response.

The criticism of institutionalized religion is an easy and often justified in- dulgence in times of massive social change and the failure of the church adequately to maintain its own discrete function. There is urgent need for a far deeper and more relevant understanding of the nature and function of the religious institution, both to guard against its dangers and abuses and to discover experimentally and imaginatively its more effective uses as an essential manifestation of the religious life in an era of permanent revolution.



an empirical concept of the religious life

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