November 17, 1929

Do we need a new religion?

This was the first sermon given by Rabbi Eisendrath in Toronto in which he was unrestricted by tradition or the calendar in his choice of topic. His first several sermons in Toronto were delivered at services for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and other holidays occurring during the first weeks of the Jewish calendar. His first Sunday morning sermon in Toronto was delivered at a special Armistice Day service and was related to that day.

This then was his first opportunity to introduce to his Sunday audience his religious and philosophical outlook. It was the first of three related sermons,  It was followed by "Do we need a new morality?" (November 24, 1929) and "How moral then are we?" (December 1, 1929).  Rabbi Eisendrath showed himself to be erudite, modernist and unafraid of controversy.


To the rhetorical question "Do we need a new religion?" Rabbi Eisendrath's preliminary answer is an unqualified yes.  His detailed examination of the question, as the sermon progresses, reveals nuances and subtleties to his position, but, as his congregants were to learn, it was frequently his style to begin with a provocative and attention-grabbing assertion.

The beliefs of many religions, as they have been traditionally expounded, are, Rabbi Eisendrath argued this day, yielding to scientific knowledge. Judaism, Christianity and Islam need to shed their reliance on revelation and become more scientific and humanist.

Rabbi Eisendrath describes the "rude reception" received by Harry Elmer Barnes, professor of history at Smith College, when, at a December 1928 gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he told the association that their generation needed "a new conception of God."

The response, the rabbi reports, was "a storm of protest." Barnes was "pompously chided as though he were a naughty and disobedient boy." Rabbi Eisendrath refuses to join the protest. (It is a sad irony that Barnes, whom Rabbi Eisendrath defends in this sermon, later became a holocaust denier.)
[F]ar from being disturbed or scandalized by Barnes' innocent assertion, I greet it enthusiastically and happily and use it as a point of departure for this morning's discourse because I for one would go even further than Dr. Barnes and maintain that not only do we in this modern era need a new conception of God, but that we likewise require a new interpretation of religion itself, and so I would discuss with you today the inescapable query as to whether or not we Christians and we Jews, we men and women of an altogether different age, as to whether or not we need a new religion.
Jewish thinkers, the rabbi says, are not in the vanguard of this re-examination of religion.
Jewish voices have remained conspicuously silent ... it is to a Bertrand Russell, a Roy Wood Sellars, a Eustace Haydon, a M. C. [Max Carl] Otto, a John Haynes Holmes, a [Hermann] Keyserling, a [Alfred North] Whitehead, a [Oswald] Spengler, a Harry Elmer Barnes -- all erstwhile Christians that I must go for enlightenment and spiritual guidance ...
To this list of Christian names, Rabbi Eisendrath adds two "inspired spirits of the East," Gandhi in India and Hu Shih in China. Were all of these religious thinkers? Although older than Rabbi Eisendrath, they were contemporaries, born in the late 19th century and still living in 1929. [1]  Was Rabbi Eisendrath correct in saying that there were no Jewish thinkers engaged in the re-examination of religion? Should he have mentioned Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Baeck, or Martin Buber?  To what extent was their work known in North America in 1929? Felix Adler and Mordecai Kaplan, active in America, are also not mentioned. [2]

The religion of the future, Rabbi Eisendrath states, "in its broad outlines, and with a few modifications" will resemble the movement known as Humanism. Will Judaism and Christianity, he asks, be able to adapt and survive?

Rabbi Eisendrath identifies four main things that will distinguish the religion of the future.

1 -- The religion of the future will have no limits in time. It will be evolutionary, gradually unfolding, ever enlarging, and without finalities. (This was already long accepted in Reform Judaism. The Pittsburgh Platform (1885) said, for example, "We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason.") The new religion will not deny the reality or importance of revelation; rather it will say that revelation is never-ending and may occur in any age.

2 -- The religion of the future will have no limits in space. "[A]s it has fulfilled itself in no single event of the past, neither has it exhausted itself in any particular place or people." (This would seem to deny, for the religion of the future, the singularity and importance of the Jewish people.)

3 -- The religion of the future will be guided by scientific thought. "It is science which must henceforth become the supreme arbiter of truth -- not necessarily of right my friends, but of truth, as definitely and as exclusively as infallible doctrines and dogmas have been in the past." (On this point, the Pittsburgh Platform had stated: "We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism ..." However, if science is not the supreme arbiter of right, then what is? Rabbi Eisendrath perhaps implies that it will found in the 'religion of the future,' but clearly not "in the infallible doctrines and dogmas of the past"--or a singular revelation as on Mount Sinai.)

4 -- The religion of the future "will concern itself more with Man than with God; it will be essentially not theistic but humanistic."

But the religion of the future will not be a new form of atheism. "What do we find in human history and in the human heart if not the clearest demonstration of the Divine?"
Deep principles of Right, exalted impulses for Good, passionate yearnings for the Beautiful, instinctive longings for Love, profound cravings for Truth--what then are these if they be not everything we have meant by the Divine ... Man, I do believe, is 'God in process,' and God, as Professor Sellars so beautifully expresses it, 'is man at his finest; man loving, daring, creating, fighting loyally and courageously for causes dear unto himself and his fellows.' Here is the sublimest spiritual truth of our day. Man, coming to a knowledge of God only through a deeper knowledge of itself. Man living with God and acting according to the divine will only by fulfilling the best in human life, only by fashioning for himself and the entire human family a statelier mansion, a lovelier home.
This notion of God verges on heresy, even for Reform Judaism. Where is God the creator, God the Lawgiver, or the God who brings Israel out of Egypt? If not quite atheism, it certainly comes rather close to it.

Having described the religion of the future, Rabbi Eisendrath returns to answer for a second time his question "Do we need a new religion?" His answer now (in true rabbinic form) is both yes and no.
If Christianity and Judaism insist upon remaining static and fixed [remember, Rabbi Eisendrath's Sunday audience included both Christians and Jews]; if they remain smugly satisfied with the progress they have already made and convinced that they now possess the true formulation of human faith, then must we courageously admit that these two great religions, despite the eternal truths they have given to the world ... are doomed to disintegrate, decay and die ...  But if on the other hand they will slough of the false accretions and dead integuments of the past and root themselves in the few simple realities proclaimed by their common founders, recognizing no finalities in time, no bounds in space, no guide but science, no values but human values, no ends but human ends, no problem but humanity, no goal but the achievement of the utmost infinities of the human soul, then like the child succumbing in youth, and the youth fading imperceptibly into the man, both Judaism and Christianity, so changed, so different, and yet the same shall become themselves the preachers and prophets of that only possible religious faith that in the future immediately before us can ever hope to survive ...
Rabbi Eisendrath doesn't elaborate (at least not in this sermon) on just what the "false accretions and dead integuments of the past" are, nor on what "the few simple realities" proclaimed by the founders of Judaism and Christianity are. Presumably (from what we know of the rabbi's later sermons), the former would include the minutiae of Jewish law and the latter the moral laws of Prophetic Judaism.

To traditional Jewish ears, this sermon is quite radical. Rabbi Eisendrath is perhaps merely reporting on the pervasive threads of contemporary religious thought and the challenges traditional religions face. Still, he sets out the principles of this "religion of the future" with such clarity, and in such enthusiastic language, that it is hard not to believe he is sympathetic to it. The sermon is best appreciated as a demonstration of Rabbi Eisendrath's belief that change and re-examination are Jewish imperatives. This is a principle that he will return to frequently in other sermons.

HR / MC

[1]  Of all these, John Haynes Holmes 1879- 1964, minister of The Community Church of New York, was arguably the greatest influence on Rabbi Eisendrath, and is mentioned frequently in his sermons.

Dates of  birth and death for other persons Rabbi Eisendrath refers to are: Alfred North Whitehead  1861 - 1947, Mahatma Gandhi 1869 - 1948, Bertrand Russell 1872-1970, Max Carl Otto 1876-1978, Roy Wood Sellars  1880 - 1973, Eustace Haydon  1880- 1975, Hermann Keyserling 1880 - 1946, Oswald Spengler 1880 - 1936, Harry Elmer Barnes 1889 - 1968, Hu Shih 1891 - 1962.

[2] Franz Rosenzweig 1866 -  1929, Leo Baeck 1873 - 1956, Martin Buber 1878 - 1965, Felix Adler 1851 - 1933, Mordecai Kaplan 1881 - 1983.

Other Jewish thinkers, contemporary to Rabbi Eisendrath but not yet known in 1929 are Gershom Scholem 1897 - 1982, Joseph Soloveitchik 1903 - 1993, Yeshayahu Leibowitz 1903 - 1994, Emmanuel LĂ©vinas 1906 - 1995, Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907 - 1992, and Emil Fackenheim 1916 - 2003.

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