Essay On Religious Conflicts

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society.

It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God.

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve?

The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power.

And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love.

We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because woman and child.This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand.This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature.But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face.They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture?Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means.So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point.First Christianity speaks of the value of the world.In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating.