Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Unity
1
A Creed for Living
A Faith That Fits the Facts
Bernard Shaw aspired to give the world a new religion, a faith suitable for
a new age. But a religion requires a congregation, which his faith has not
found, and so he failed—at least for now. He did create something more
remarkable and rarer: a creed that is a reasonable and practical guide to
living in the real world, a faith that is completely compatible with the facts,
a religion consistent with itself. No one seems to have noticed.
We all know that he professed the need for unity of facts and faith. His
most fundamental belief was, in Major Barbara’s words, that “life is all
one” (3:183). We cannot put our various beliefs into separate watertight
compartments called “philosophy,” “science,” and “religion,” any more
than we can segregate religion and daily business or divide the world into
saints and scoundrels. He called for a “faith proof against science” and declared
that there was “not a single credible established religion in the
whole world” (Pref. Saint Joan 6:57; Pref. Major Barbara 3:63). Most
people imagine that he failed to provide the “intellectually honest” creed
he demanded. The consensus is that his religious, philosophical, and political
ideas were inconsistent, impractical, and unoriginal: a hodgepodge of
notions patched together from other, more consistent and original, thinkers.
In fact, his originality is attested to by the persistence with which he is
misunderstood, and one of the most original traits of his philosophy is its
astounding consistency.