The Coming Religion
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| Gerald Massey |
I've been reading the works of Gerald Massey (1828-1907) recently. Described as 'Chartist, Poet, Radical, Freethinker', he was an autodidact who became something of a self-styled expert in Egyptology. He claimed that the Christian story was poached from Egyptian mythology, a theory which, although receiving no support from academia, has influenced contemporary avant garde thinkers such as Acharya S., Tom Harpur, and the author of the Zeitgeist video. In one of his essays, he considers what the religion of the future will be like. I think most of this will appeal to Unitarians. Here's the final paragraph. The rest, along with a biography and numerous other essays can be found at
Possibly my Coming Religion may suggest a coming
revolution? I should not wonder if it does. Anyway, we mean to do our own
thinking, and to have absolute freedom of thought and expression. We mean to
rescue our Sunday from the sacerdotal ring. But we do not mean
that the
day of rest and recreation shall fall into the hands of the
capitalists. We mean
to try and rescue this world from the clutches of those who profess to
have the
keys and the keeping of the other—they who hold up the other world in
front of
that beast of burden, the producer, as a decoying lure, like the bunch
of
carrots before the donkey's nose, in order that the suggestion of plenty
in
paradise may induce him to forego his common right to grazing-ground on
earth. We mean to have a day of reckoning with the unjust stewards of
the earth. We
mean to have the national property restored to the people, which the
churches
and other bodies have withheld from the people. We mean that the land,
with its
inalienable right of living, its mineral wealth below the soil and its
waters
above, shall be open to all. We mean to have our banking done by the
State, and
our railways worked for the benefit of the whole people. We mean to
temper the
terror of rampant individualism with the principles of co-operation. We
mean to
show that the wages' system is a relic of barbarism and social serfdom.
That
under it labour must remain a slave in the prison-house of property. We
mean for
woman to have perfect equality with man, social, religious, and
political, and
her fair share in that equity which is of no sex. We mean also that the
same
standard of morality shall apply to the woman as to the man. In short,
we intend
that the redress of wrongs and the righting of inequalities, which can
only be
rectified in this world, shall not be put off and postponed to any
future stage
of existence. The religion of the future has got to include not only
Spiritualism, but the salvation of humanity for this life—any other may
be
left to follow hereafter. It has to be a sincerity of life, in place of
pretended belief. A religion of science, in place of superstition. Of
joy,
instead of sorrow. Of man's Ascent, instead of his Fall. A religion of
fact in
the present, and not of mere faith for the future. A religion
in which the temple reared to God will be in human form, instead of being built
of brick or stone. A religion of work, rather than worship; and, in place of
the deathly creeds, with all their hungry parasites of prey, a religion of life—life
actual, life here, life now, as well as the promise of life everlasting!
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