Religious Naturalism - History

History

Religious naturalism is a relatively new religious movement. Early uses of the term include the American Whig Review in 1846 describing "a seeming 'religious naturalism'", In 1869 "Religious naturalism differs from this mainly in the fact that it extends the domain of nature farther outward into space and time. ...It never transcends nature". was expressed in American Unitarian Association literature. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote that religious naturalism was "the acknowledgment of the Divine in Nature" and also "an element of the Christian religion", but by no means that religion's definitive "characteristic" or "tendency".

In 1864, Pope Pius IX condemned religious naturalism in the first seven articles of the Syllabus of Errors.

Many modern religious naturalists find philosophical similarity with ancient philosophers in the stoic or skeptical traditions, for example Zeno (founder of Stoicism) who said:

All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature.

Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), one of the great rabbis of the 20th century and the founder of the Jewish reconstructionism movement., was an early advocate for religious naturalism. He believed that a naturalistic approach to religion and ethics was possible in a desacralizing world. He saw God as the sum of all natural processes.

Another of the currently verified usages was in 1940 by George Perrigo Conger and Edgar S. Brightman. Shortly thereafter, H. H. Dubs wrote an article entitled Religious Naturalism – an Evaluation (The Journal of Religion, XXIII: 4, October, 1943), which begins "Religious naturalism is today one of the outstanding American philosophies of religion…" and discusses ideas developed by Henry Nelson Wieman in books that predate Dubs's article by 20 years.

In 1991 Jerome A. Stone wrote The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence explicitly "to sketch a philosophy of religious naturalism". Use of the term was expanded in the 1990s by Loyal Rue, who was familiar with the term from Brightman's book. Rue used the term in conversations with several people before 1994, and subsequent conversations between Rue and Ursula Goodenough [both of whom were active in IRAS (The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science) led to Goodenough's use in her book "The Sacred Depths of Nature" and by Rue in "Religion is not about god" and other writings. Since 1994 numerous authors have used the phrase or expressed similar thinking. Examples are Chet Raymo, Stuart Kauffman and Karl E. Peters.

Mike Ignatowski states that "there were many religious naturalists in the first half of the 20th century and some even before that" but that "religious naturalism as a movement didn’t really come into its own until about 1990 took a major leap forward in 2000 when Ursula Goodenough published The Sacred Depths of Nature, which is considered one of the founding texts of this movement."

Biologist Ursula Goodenough states:

I profess my Faith. For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life reaches around, grabs its own tail, and forms a sacred circle that requires no further justification, no Creator, no super-ordinate meaning of meaning, no purpose other than that the continuation continue until the sun collapses or the final meteor collides. I confess a credo of continuation. And in so doing, I confess as well a credo of human continuation

Donald Crosby’s Living with Ambiguity published in 2008, has, as its first chapter, Religion of Nature as a Form of Religious Naturalism.

Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative is a history by Dr. Jerome A. Stone (Dec. 2008 release) that presents this paradigm as a once-forgotten option in religious thinking that is making a rapid revival. It seeks to explore and encourage religious ways of responding to the world on a completely naturalistic basis without a supreme being or ground of being. This book traces this history and analyzes some of the issues dividing religious naturalists. It covers the birth of religious naturalism, from George Santayana to Henry Nelson Wieman and briefly explores religious naturalism in literature and art. Contested issues are discussed including whether nature’s power or goodness is the focus of attention and also on the appropriateness of using the term "God". The contributions of more than twenty living Religious Naturalists are presented. The last chapter ends the study by exploring what it is like on the inside to live as a religious naturalist.

Chet Raymo writes that he had come to the same conclusion as Teilhard de Chardin, "Grace is everywhere", and that naturalistic emergence is in everything and far more magical than religion-based miracles. A future humankind religion should be ecumenical, ecological, and embrace the story provided by science as the "most reliable cosmology".

As P. Roger Gillette summarizes:

Thus was religious naturalism born. It takes the findings of modern science seriously, and thus is inherently naturalistic. But it also takes the human needs that led to the emergence of religious systems seriously, and thus is also religious. It is religious, or reconnective, in that it seeks and facilitates human reconnection with one's self, family, larger human community, local and global ecosystem, and unitary universe (…) Religious reconnection implies love. And love implies concern, concern for the well-being of the beloved. Religious naturalism thus is marked by concern for the well-being of the whole of nature. This concern provides a basis and drive for ethical behavior toward the whole holy unitary universe.