The church that worked for the 5th century, or the 15th, will not work for this century. .What was good enough at Rome, Oxford, or Berlin in past centuries, is not good enough for Boston, Orlando, Seattle, or Houston today.
It must have our ideas, the smell of our ground, and have grown out of the religion in our soul. The freedom of America must be there before this energy will come; the wisdom of our century, before its science will be on the churches' side, or else that science will go over to the ' infidels.'
Let us have a church that dares imitate the heroism of Jesus; seek inspiration as he sought It; judge the past as he; act on the present like him; pray as he prayed; work as he wrought; live as he lived.
Let our doctrines and our forms fit the soul, as the limbs fit the body, growing out of it, growing with it.
Let us have a church for the whole person; truth for the mind; good works for the hands; love for the heart; and for the soul, that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith in God, which, like lightning in the clouds, shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark.
Let our church fit humanity, as the heavens fit the earth!" In other terms, a parallel religious progress ought to correspond to the scientific, commercial, and industrial transformation of our age. Either the church will find a way to transform itself in this manner, or it will lose all influence.
Adopted from "The True Idea of a Christian Church," by Rev. Theodore Parker. Preached in January, 1846. Photo: a Fifth Century church ruin in Syria.
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