Word: churches
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...must, at the outset, deny that a "religious renascence" is an adequate term for the religious interests of students at Harvard. One must first look askance at the word "religious," which implies some sort of mixture of faith and ritualistic practice. While attendance at Memorial Church has multiplied many fold since the arrival of the Rev. George A. Buttrick, Preacher to the University, such has not been the case with other churches in the vicinity, which have been garnering about the same number of worshippers for many years. The new popularity of Mem Church is generally ascribed to the stimulating...
...proceed to say that he rejects the doctrines of grace, immortality, and the divinity of Christ. Rather than renascence, we must say that a new birth is taking place, a birth of new and individual religions peculiar to each believing student, and thus an association with one's nominal church in but a three-quarters-or-less-hearted...
...impossible to find a single explanation suitable for all cases. Catholics and Episcopalians have, of course, much more to bind them to their faith than Protestants with a weaker liturgical tradition which occupies a smaller part of their time. Several Episcopal students have attended the Congregational services in Mem Church and have returned praising the sermon, but shuddering at the "aridness" of the service. Those Anglicans who change their religion generally convert to Roman Catholicism, keeping the service but changing the philosophy, or to Unitarianism, rejecting the service but keeping and increasing the independent freedom inherent in Episcopalianism. Jews...
Such a refusal to commit oneself is repeated also in respondents' views on attendance at church or synagogue. Sixty-nine per cent of the respondents felt that "the Church (i.e., organized religion) stands for the best in human life," despite "minor errors and shortcomings," which are common to "all human institutions." The smallest percentage--3--considered the church "the one sure and infallible foundation of civilized life." Thus, again, the way is left open to view organized religion in an independent manner, the student regulating it rather than the other way round. For while the Church may "stand...
Furthermore, 74 per cent of all respondents did not belong to any of the local religious fellowships--Hillel, Newman Club, Canterbury, etc. This fact, along with the high percentage of those who attend church more at home than at Harvard, give further indication of the individual nature of religion among at least those responding to this poll. There is a divergence here between religious thought and religious practice, where church attendance is regarded as secondary to theological speculation. This physical separation from the centers of religious gathering encourages eclecticism and free choice among religious doctrines, and is considered by most...