Buddhist Romanticism

very minor differences of doctrine separating the Protestants from the
Catholics. After thirty years of killing one another over questions of how to
understand the oneness of the Trinity, or God’s presence—or lack thereof—
in consecrated bread and wine, people began to wonder if this was really
what Christianity was all about. The jaded response was Yes, which led to
the growth of the anti-Christian secular movements of the 18th century,
especially in Scotland and France.
The unjaded response was the growing belief that the Christian message
was one not of the head, but of the heart. As a true Christian, one should be
measured not by one’s understanding of the Trinity but by one’s right
feeling of love for God, however one conceived Him. This, in turn, was to
be measured in daily life by one’s right loving relationship to one’s fellow
human beings. Various religious movements grew out of these convictions.
One that developed in England from a parallel disillusionment with the
organized church was Methodism. The prime movement in Germany was
Pietism.
Pietism appealed largely to anti-intellectuals, but it also attracted people
of a more scholarly bent, who used their philosophical training to show
that, contrary to the school theologians, no human being could form an
adequate concept of God, and so no self-styled authorities had the right to
say that their concept was right and anyone else’s wrong. Because the
founding principle of the universe could not be adequately conceptualized,
the best use of one’s energies was to develop a provisional concept that
worked in fostering the love that the Christian message clearly called for. In
other words, religious truths should be judged by pragmatic standards:
their ability, not to represent reality fully, but to inspire a correct
relationship to one’s God and one’s fellow human beings.
Pietism was originally a movement within the Lutheran Church, but it
soon sparked similar movements in Catholic parts of Germany as well.
However, because the administration of churches in Germany was often
subject to political interference from local authorities, the movement
developed a loose relationship to existing church organizations. In fact, it
fostered a perception that the Romantics adopted and has since grown
common throughout the West: that organized religion is inimical to the
genuine religious life of the heart—or what we currently call the split
between religion and spirituality.
Large voluntary brotherhoods developed, crossing state boundaries, in
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