Prof. Zueblin on "Religion and State"

Professor Charles S. Zueblin of the University of Chicago delivered the fifth of his series of six lectures on "A Democratic Religion" in the New Lecture Hall yesterday afternoon. The subject was "Religion and the State."

Professor Zueblin pointed out first that the great trouble of our modern life is its fragmentary character. To secure a wholeness of life is to satisfy the six great human wants mentioned last time: wealth, health, sociability, taste, knowledge, and righteousness. The best way to view how the state synthesizes these is to observe how their opposites flourish within its domain.

In the aesthetic, the intellectual, and the moral wants the state and church can do much in common. But to accomplish this, much of the orthodox and worn-out theory must be cast aside. It is essential that more rational methods of dealing with Sunday be adopted, providing for instance healthy, inspiring drama and opera at established municipal theatres rather than allowing certain managers to produce anything they wish to, as we see in Boston today. The opening of the school-houses on week days and Sundays for the purposes of ethical instruction would make a dynamic force for moral good equal to the combined influence of all the churches.

The use of non-theological ethics, a theory of evolution, and the growth of socialism, during the past century are ripe indications of the possibility of this democratic religion. Of these, ethics has given us a glimpse of the worship of humanity, evolution of the fellowship of humanity, and socialism of the organization of humanity. Through the international workingmen's unions, also, we begin to see, through socialism, the realization of some part of our conception of a universal society. All these great needs must be welded together into one great functionary unit of society, guided by the old motto of the monks, "Laborare est orare."