Word: sectarianism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Persistence of sectarianism is promoted strongly by the "conspiracy of silence" or so-called "religious toleration." There is a deadly parallel between the "conspiracy of silence" on sectarianism today with the "conspiracy of silence" on the "social diseases" a few years ago. So long as people were "too nice" to mention gonorrhea and syphilis, these diseases went largely untreated and ate away at countless victims. Because we are "too nice" to call attention to the errors and other evils within one another's sectarianism, they eat away at our religious life. The less defensible the practices of a sect...
...annually to the doctrinal statement following: "We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament as verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings, and as the supreme and final authority in faith and life." Untold millions of people agree. Could any but a sectarian mind believe that a loving, merciful, just God would harden Pahraoh's heart (Exodus 11:10) so that he would not let the Israelites go, then kill in each Egyptian family because he would not (Exodus 12:29)? Or kill everybody on the earth except the few people in Noah...
...great proportion of the resources of each sect, given in the name of religion, is wastefully used up in just keeping alive and in promoting self-centered sectarian ends rather than in ministering to the religious needs of individuals and communities...
...Unless Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other sects are merged into or replaced by a great One Religion, sectarianism will continue to divide the world and communities into self-centered groups, isolate peoples, use sectarian prejudice for political advantage, and stimulate conflict which is deadly dangerous in the atomic-space...
...problem of world organization and unity. In fact I think the most important one as well as the most neglected and most needed. There is almost a conspiracy of silence on this phase of the problem--not deliberate, but certainly testifying to the immense strength of the sectarian evil you so ably discuss. Yours is almost a voice in the wilderness."--John Dewey...