Okay… it’s quote time once again. This one comes from Between God and Man, an anthology of writings by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

Religion is an answer to ultimate questions. The moment we become oblivious to ultimate questions, religion becomes irrelevant, and its crisis sets in. The primary task of religious thinking is to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer, to develop a degree of snsitivity to the ultimate questions which its ideas and acts are trying to answer.

Religious thinking is an intellectual endavor out of the depths of reason. It is a source of cognitive insight into the ultimate issues of human existence. Religion is more than a mood or a feeling. Judaism, for example, is a way of thinking, not only a way of living. Unless we understand its categories, its mode of apprehension and evaluation, its teachings remain unintelligible.

It is not enough to call for good will. We are in desperate need of good thinking.

I first discovered this book when I was in high school, and since then, I have come back to this particular passage several times and found new meanings in it over time. As times change, so does the context in which we live, and I continue to find something new in this passage.

Last Friday, my synagogue hosted an interfaith service with a nearby Catholic congregation. We heard from their priest on the recent scandals that have gone on in the Catholic Church. Many people have lost faith, not just in the Church, but in religion. As Heschel’s passage separates the concept of organized religion from faith and religious thinking, I think it’s at times appropriate to reflect on the importance on what we think of in issues of faith.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church is not the only organized religion that has suffered on behalf of the actions of its leaders. The Southern Baptist Convention has suffered for its unhealthy levels of blind faith to the point of claiming to have knowledge of “The Truth;” these leaders need to realize that it is fundamentalism itself that is the enemy of religion. Some religious denominations, including Jewish denominations, suffer for leaders who focus too much on fundraising and not enough on outreach; these leaders should ask the question of whether they would be willing to give up the fancy churches and synagogues in exchange for a congregation where they can go on a first name basis with each of their congregants.

These crises are not universal. Not all Catholic leaders exploit their most vulnerable congregants. Not all Baptists buy into the hellfire and brimstone. Not all congregations are so large as to be cold and distant. I suppose that what all this leads me to say, in light of Heschel’s passage, is that ultimately I still have faith in organized religion. Where I have lost faith is in top-down hierarchies.