A League of Religions
By NORMAN BENTIVICH.
rilHE passing of the-thirteenth anniversary of Armistice Day and the approach of the World Disarmament Conference afford an opportunity for considering the progress of the cause of world peace since the War. It is not a reassuring retrospect or a reassuring prospect. True, there has not been during the latter part of the period any outbreak of hostilities, and the League has been successful in averting conflicts between Greece and Bulgaria, Paraguay and Bolivia ; and it may contrive to avert war to-day between China and Japan. But it has not succeeded in creating that atmosphere of tranquillity and mutual trust which it was the primary aim of the Covenant- to create. It is not for lack of swearing to keep the peace and eschew war that the States are still threatened by the demon of distrust, and arc unable to unburden themselves of their armaments. If oaths could prevent strife, there would be no danger of an explosion. What is lacking in the world is the determined will to peace, the consciousness of a common humanity which should make war between civilized nations impossible. - The League of Nations, it is said, is a palace without a soul. The will to peace cannot be established by the organs and the machinery of the League, which are rather concerned with disputes that have arisen. It is a feeling which depends on a spiritual outlook, and it requires the armaments of religion and morality to make it respected. It is on the face of it absurd that the movement for international peace, which is historically and logically the offspring of religious teaching, should be directed exclusively by political bodies, and that the Churches should not be organized so as to exercise a collective force on public opinion. Man is to-day, as lie has never been before, a citizen of the world, but he does not recognize himself as such. 'While modern invention has multiplied human contacts in endless ways and almost destroyed the old isolation of time and space, practically no progress has been made in bringing international relations under the control of the moral law. That was the main cause of the tragedy which overtook the world between 1914 and 1918. The failure is the more remark- able because in the Middle Ages, when the world was divided physically into a number of isolated States, a common spiritual government existed in the Roman Church which gave expression to the spiritual unity of Christendom. The Reformation broke up that unity ; and the spiritual co-operation which should have been consequent on the modern economic co-opera- tion has not been achieved. And the Churches, it was said by a cynic, have always been opposed to past wars and to future wars, but not to present wars.
Attempts have been made indeed since the Great War to bring together representatives of the various Protestant * Howling. • Compiled by Kathleen M. England, Anne M. Lupton, Marjorie Pentland. With- a foreword by John Galsworthy and a frontispiece by Muirhead Bone. (Chatto and Windus. 2s, ad.) Churches for the common cause, such as - the• conference at Stockholm of 1925 ; but they have ended in the passing of indefinite resolutions, and the religious bodies carry on their work for peace without cohesion, What has not yet been attempted is any union of all Christian Churches, much less of the great world religions, in any permanent organization for the well-being of humanity, for fighting the two root-evils which engender war, the hatred of classes and of races. The time is surely overdue for the formation of a League of Religions parallel with the League of Nations: Its aim would be the promotion of peace and of the understanding of peoples, which are the common objects of all religions. Just as in the League of Nations each State maintains its own independence but co-operates for the common good, so in a League of Religions each Church and member represented would not be asked to give up its independence or doctrine hi any way, but it would seek a means of co-operating with the others and of breaking down the religious differences where they still tend to embroil nations.
A French Professor of the College de France, Jean Izoulet, put forward a scheme for a union of the kind sonic years ago, in a book entitled Paris, Capitate des Religfons. His principal idea is that the religions of the world should be federated, that -the three sister faiths of the Bible, Judaism, Christianity and Islam should take the lead, and eventually bring the eastern religions into a " Bureau des Religions " parallel with the Bureau International de Travail. With his main idea he mixes not a little that is fantastic ; but, as he says himself, Dream must precede Drama. He conceives a Council of the seven great religious creeds at Paris, each sending two • representa- tives, and the general secretary being a layman; while under the Council would be a number of permanent commissions working at specific aspects of spiritual co-operation. The precarious position of civilization, threatened by the Balkanized Chauvinism of • Europe makes it urgent to consider whether some shape could not be given to the idea forthwith.
The first step would be to convene a conference of religions on the lines of the Hague Conferences on Arbi- tration of 1899 and 1907, to consider the fostering of world-peace by spiritual bodies. The fitting place of such a conference would surely be Jerusalem, which is the hearth of the creeds of the West and of a large part of the East. It should be easier for religious bodies than for States to combine in the cause of humanity : - for the aim of each is universal, and not national, well-being, and the establishment of the reign of Justice over all mankind without any limit of frontiers. The conference would have to devote itself to the common aims and leave aside any possible matters of friction, such as missionary activity. That should not be difficult ;- and if the con- ference succeeded in setting up a bureau- of religions on the lines of the International Labour Office, that body would have before it a large field of work without touching upon any question of dognia. It would establish a spiritual union which would supplement, or rather would inform and inspire, the political union, and create the conditions of mind in which genuine disarmament would be possible. It would make religion true to its original meaning of a force which binds people together, rather than, what it is too often to-day, an " abligion," a force which pulls them apart. Such a union should be more lasting than the Holy Alliance, for it would be divorced from any political and dynastic aims, and devoted simply to the realization of the spirit which, everywhere and among every people, is yearning for peace, so that, in the words. of the Monu- ment of the Reformation at Geneva "- If we cannot be .of one religion, we may be, at least, of one intention."
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