Why I quit going to church

Exerpted from the article by Rupert Hughes, copyright Freethought Press, 1924.

I did not quit going to church because I was lazy or frivolous or poetically
inclined to "worship God in the Great Outdoors near to Nature's Heart." I don't
believe that nature has a heart.
I quit because I came to believe that what
is preached in the churches is mainly untrue and unimportant, tiresome, hostile
to genuine progress, and in general not worth while. As for the necessity of
paying homage to the deity, I began to feel that I did not know enough about God
to pay him set compliments on set days. As for the God who is preached in the
churches, I ceased to worship him because I could no longer believe in him or
respect what is alleged of him.

I cannot respect a deity who would want or even endure the hideous monotony
and mechanism of most of the worship paid him by hired men, hired prayer-makers
and their supporters. When I think of the millions of repetitions of the same
phrases of prayer and song smoking up to a helpless deity I feel sorry for him.

As for the picture of God in heaven, "sitting on the Cherubim" or riding on a
cherub (2 Samuel xxii, 11), and listening to everlasting praises of himself, it
is simply appalling. I can no longer adore in a god what I despise in a man.

I say this in no spirit of cheap defiance.

The God of the Christians never has been believed in by as much as a tenth of
the world's population.

Two or three other religions have today far more followers; and, even in this
country, a great many millions less than half of the population is even
"affiliated" with any of the churches. About 40 per cent. of the free population
is affiliated with one church or another, and about 90 per cent of the criminals
in the penitentiaries. That is the only place where the church people have a
pronounced majority.

Exhaustive studies just made by the Institute of Social and Religious
Research show that the rural attendance is now only half as great as it was a
generation ago. In a typical Vermont community, in spite of an increase of
population, attendance has decreased 52 per cent. Reading an old church magazine
of 1808 the other night, I learned that even back there the churches were almost
deserted and that the country was in a godless condition.

As for those who are affiliated, I cannot believe that a
very large percentage is sincerely convinced. Recently in New York a pastor read
the Apostles' Creed through to a large congregation and asked everybody who
believed it to stand up. Not one person arose! The anonymous author of a recent
magazine article called "Why I Go to Church" admitted that he did not believe
any of the creed.

I once knew that creed by heart, repeated it aloud
with sincerity, and believed that I believed it.

Now while I recognize the music, poetry, and eloquence of
it, I do not believe a word of it, and it offends such intelligence and
information as I happen to have.

I do not believe in a Santa Claus for grown-ups, and I do
not believe that the vast number of church-people are doing the world any good
by promulgating false ideas and false ideals.

They say, and doubtless believe, that their motives are good, but I am of
such poor moral fibre that I do not believe in telling lies for the glory of
God. I am not up to the standard of the Apostle Paul who asks (Romans iii, 7):
"For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, why yet am I also
judged as a sinner?" Well, I am just mean enough to judge him a sinner and to
consider Christian lies as peculiarly ugly sins. Furthermore, I dislike St. Paul
even more than St. Peter did, and I consider him one of the greatest purveyors
of falsehood and mischief that ever lived.
It seems to my perverted brain
not quite honest, for instance, to pretend that Christianity has only one God.
The Christian religion is polytheistic if ever a religion were, for it includes
God the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Ghost, Mary the Mother, an almost
omnipotent God of Evil known as Satan, and an infinite number of invisible
angels and devils with superhuman powers, not to mention the saints, who have
all performed miracles and are to be prayed to for special favors.
The
Christian religion is intensely polytheistic. Gods warred with gods in heaven as
on Mount Olympus, and hosts of angels were thrown over the walls. The god
Michael fought with the god Devil for Moses' body (Jude 9). Christ is quoted as
saying that he himself saw Satan fall from heaven (Luke x, 18). Yet Satan
disputed with God the sway over the earth and had the power to pick Christ up
and carry him to the pinnacle of God's (or Christ's) own temple, then to the top
of a mountain, and to tempt him until be was repulsed. Think of it: Satan
offered to give the Son of God what already belonged to him! Then the devil left
Christ and "behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
If this was not a
duel of wits between two gods, what was it?

The Book of Job (i, 6) refers to the "sons of God" in the
plural, and I know of nothing in heathendom more pagan or more cruel than this
story of Job, according to which Satan bets God that he can make the "perfect
and upright" Job curse his maker. God thereupon takes the bet and delivers his
faithful worshiper over to all the fiendish cruelty and torture that the devil
can devise, cruelty involving the burning alive of Job's sheep and shepherds and
the slaughter of all his children. If this tremendous story is only fiction,
what is it doing in the Holy Bible? If it is truth, how can one deny the
existence of two rival gods, and wherein is Jehovah any kinder or more reliable
than Satan?

As for idolatry, either Christianity is idolatrous or no religion ever was,
for the Christian churches are, with certain exceptions, full of images and
emblems. The Buddhist does not believe that each of his innumerable little
statues is the real god. He prays to it or runs his water-wheel of prayers just
as many Christians tell their beads or give jewels to Madonnas or burn candles
or have their prayers said for them by paid clergymen. Jehovah was carried in a
cart and kept in an ark.
As for his omnipresence, it is several times stated
that he walked in a garden and brought people up on mountains to see him. When
the rumor of the Tower of Babel finally reached him, he could not have been
all-knowing as alleged, because he went down to find out what was going on, then
went back "up" and said, "Go to, let us go down and there confound their
language."
Who were "us"? Where was "up"? Did God not know that the world is
a globe?
The Bible itself destroys the claim of God's omnipotence, for in
judges i, 19, it states, "The Lord was with Judah and he drave out the
inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the
valley because they had chariots of iron."
The astounding and inconsistent
God of the Bible calls Moses up into the mountains to see him -- has him brought
up on eagle's wings. Later he lets not only Moses but seventy-three others see
him (Exodus xxiv, 9, 10). Still later, forgetting this, God says, "There shall
no man see me and live." Seventy-four people have seen him and he is exactly
described, yet a little later he covers Moses' face with his hand till he has
passed.
Yet Christian preachers make fun of the anthropomorphic gods of the
heathen and prate of the glory of our religion with its one God, all-Wise,
all-knowing, all-powerful, unchanging and ubiquitous!
According to the
Bible, God was ignorant, a ruthless liar and cheat; he broke his pledges,
changed his mind so often that he grew weary of repenting. He was a murderer of
children, ordered his people to slay, rape, steal, and lie and commit every foul
and filthy abomination in human power. In fact, the more I read the Bible the
less I find in it that is either credible or admirable.
I do not go to
church because I find no honesty in the pulpit toward the religion preached or
the religions preached against. I am constantly horrified by the extreme
unfairness of Christians toward men of other religions. There is no distortion
or concealment that they will not stoop to in their zeal.
It is no wonder
that the foreign missionaries have such difficulties and are losing ground
generally all over the world, by their own admission. Also the church is losing
ground in its own countries. It nowhere grows so fast as the population and it
is torn everywhere by virulent dissensions.

For only a while, however, was my faith able to believe
two or more contradictory things at once. One simply cannot ride two horses
going in opposite directions very long.

to quote what Pilate had put over Christ's head on the cross. I looked it up
in Matthew, and it was not as I remembered it. I looked further and found that
each of the four gospels gives a different version of this inscription.
In
the matter of the companions in the crucifixion John simply says that there were
"two other with him, on either side one." Matthew and Mark say that they were
thieves and that both reviled him. Luke, however, makes the striking statement
that only one of the malefactors railed on him, and was rebuked by the other.
Whereupon Christ said, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise."
Yet
elsewhere it is stated that Christ descended into hell for three days, then rose
from the dead as he himself prophesied in Matthew xii, 40: "For as Jonah was
three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
This shows that
Christ believed the Jonah story and that hell was in the earth underneath him.
In every detail concerning the birthplace, birth date, and the death of the
Messiah, the four gospels are in complete contradiction. It is not agreed
whether Christ was born 3 B.C. or 6 A.D. In "The New Archaeological Discoveries"
by C.M. Cobern, D.D., it is stated that recent excavations definitely place
Christ's birth between 9 B.C. and 6 B.C., and his death on April 3, A.D. 33,
making him between 39 and 42 when he died. This means that he was nearly 40 when
he began his ministry of one or three years, though his virgin birth was
announced by an angel and a star, as were most of the twenty-six virgin-born
Savors who preceded him.
The dates and hour of the crucifixion do not agree
in the gospels. These four gospels were selected from fifty gospels and one of
the early fathers, Irenaeus, says that there are four gospels because the world
has four corners, The Book of Revelation says that four angels stood on the four
corners of the earth, and 1 Chronicles xvi, 30, says that "the world also shall
be stable, that it be not moved." The names of
the twelve apostles are differently given in Matthew x and Luke vi. According to
John, Christ was not at the Last Supper -- at least the three Synoptic gospels
say that he celebrated the Passover and was crucified the day after, while John,
though describing a supper, states that Christ was crucified the day before the
Passover. This caused a great debate among the church fathers.

Everywhere I turn I find the same flat contradictions. One proverb says,
"Answer a fool according to his folly;" the next says, "Answer not a fool
according to his folly" (Proverbs xxvi, 4, 5). When a skeptic mentioned this to
me as a schoolboy, I laughed off the difficulty as mere quibbling. Yet I was
terribly disturbed to find God giving his children two directly opposite bits of
advice.
An awful task for a believer is a touch of arithmetic. It is hard to
disbelieve arithmetic. Since there were 600,000 men in the throng that Moses
took out of Egypt, there would have been about three million people all told.
And they crossed the opening in the Red Sea (the bottom of which was doubtless
quickly dried for them) in a few hours. They took with them also their flocks of
cattle, which were incredibly large. It must have made the angels sweat to herd
that livestock over. Now it took Napoleon, with just 300,000 trained soldiers,
three days and nights to cross the Niemen on three bridges in 1812.
Of
course Napoleon did not have a million miracles worked for him, but the miracles
required in Moses' case are too numerous to face -- especially as they did not
accomplish any good and the Israelites turned to the golden calf as soon as they
were amazingly wafted across the split sea. I can't understand a god who would
fumble things so -- always performing miracles that got him nowhere.
It is a
mere detail that all of Pharaoh's horses were drowned, though a plague had
previously destroyed them, but it is not confusing that God should have had to
perform so many miracles to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, since he
had peculiarly hardened Pharaoh's heart in advance -- so that he could destroy
all the first-born children in the land except where the kindly angels found
blood smeared on the door-posts as a sign.
Almost stranger than the Mosaic
miracles was the fact that it took 150,000 of Solomon's workmen seven years to
build a little temple 96 feet long, 32 feet wide, and 48 feet high -- about the
size of a moderate Union Depot.
In 2 Chronicles xiii it is told that God let
his beloved people be slaughtered by Abijah, who killed 500,000 chosen men.
Jeroboam thereupon retreated! At the greatest battle in the Civil War Lee had
80,000 men, Meade somewhat more. After three days of fierce conflict Lee
retreated, having only 2,500 killed, and Meade with 3,000 killed dared not
pursue for a day. That was the greatest battle in the history of this big
nation, and we lost only one one- hundredth as many men as the half-king of a
country whose area was about the size of our littlest state, Rhode Island.
I
am tempted to say rudely that anybody who says he believes the Bible to be all
true either lies or is ignorant of what he says. How can anybody believe
contradictory statements, -- and there are three hundred downright mathematical
contradictions in the Bible. Jehoshaphat's death is given sixteen different
dates!

The God of the Bible punishes all who do not believe, including those who
never heard of him. Trillions of them must be screaming somewhere for mercy.
What then must be waiting for me? for I have not their excuse. I have heard the
gospel. I had it put before me. I accepted it, and then let it slip!
Still,
since I must pass into the flames with no promise of being a Shadrach or an
Abednego, it is surely better for me to go there honestly, having told the truth
as I see it, than to sneak into hell by the back-door of lip-service or of
hypocritical assent by silence -- I am no longer of the
Christian faith, but this should not affect my standing as a citizen.

it is specifically announced that "the United States of
America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" and has no enmity
to the laws or religion of the Mohammedans.

Theoretically this nation is free for all; as a matter of fact, persecutions are
heaped upon those who honestly state their doubts and incessant pressure is brought to bear on our law-makers to give police power to the special tenets of Christian sects.

My early life was, however, one of intense religions conviction. I had a lot of fun and did a normal amount of mischief, but I studied as hard as I played and I prayed and believed with my whole soul. I not only said my prayers every night but I prayed incessantly throughout the day; and I prayed publicly at prayer meetings and tried to convert other people to the faith.

Then I began to slip in my belief and to get a little dubious about the value of my prayers, their value either to me or to the infinite intelligence I was annoying with my unimportant chatter. It was a terrible step I took when I stopped praying, but I gave it up because it ceased to mean anything.
My faith in the Bible as an inspired work went from me slowly, like sand slipping down a hill. I was reading the Bible from cover to cover, It confused me to find nothing in the early part of the Old Testament about a future life and to learn that the Hebrews did not apparently consider the matter till after captivity among the Assyrians, who did believe in a future life.
It terrified me to learn that the heresy of the Egyptians from which Moses saved the Israelites was a belief in a future life of rewards and punishments. I did not know which way to turn. And the Egyptians believed that a god came to earth, was born of a virgin and slain for the redemption of the faithful -- not only long before Christ but before Moses led his sacred band from the heresy of immortality. Here was my beautiful sacred belief in the Divine Book destroyed by the Book itself!
I read every word of it from cover to cover, but try as I would, my feeble mind could not hang on to its early faith. When I got to the end of the Bible I was confronted by the 'Book of Revelation. That shook me loose with a jolt. It seemed to me that its mental chaos matched the physical chaos of the beginning of the world.
How can anyone defend that picture of graves opening, hells yawning, sheep, goats, trumpets blaring, scarlet women riding; a city coming down from the sky dressed like a bride with twelve gates for the twelve tribes of Jews? How can the Christians hope to get into the New Jerusalem since it contains only entrances for Jews -- and Christ himself said he came only to the lost sheep of Israel?
According to Revelation, God wipes away all tears from the chosen, but there is a lake of brimstone for the unbelievers; there are seven angels with seven vials full of seven plagues, and an angel with a reed who measures the city and proves it to be a cubical city -- twelve thousand furlongs in length, in height and breadth. Just why this measurement should be necessary at that late date is not explained, Each gate is one solid pearl, the streets are gold transparent as glass. There is a bride there called "the Lamb's wife." Who was the Lamb and who his wife? Some say that the Lamb was Christ and his wife the Church. But Christ is elsewhere referred to independently, and there was no church yet.
The kings of the nations bring their glory to the city and the gates will never be shut; yet only those shall enter whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life! A strange Lamb, with a wife and a directory! There is a river coming from the Thrones of God and of the Lamb; a tree bearing twelve fruits and leaves of healing power. Outside are dogs and idolaters and liars, but within there is Jesus "the offspring of David," also a Spirit and a Bride that say Come, and whosoever will may come, yet plagues await any who change the Book.
What all this means I can't imagine, and I can't imagine anybody else explaining it except by explanations that do not explain. I don't believe anybody living believes that the Lamb had a wife. And if anybody says he believes it, I don't believe him.
The Bible begins with two stories of creation by two different gods of two different names in two different orders -- two ill- edited clumsy myths told by two ignorant barbarians; and ends with the clamorous hysteria of a color-mad, blood-thirsty lunatic with a magnificent literary style.
Nobody has more admiration for the literary beauties of the Bible than I. And nobody has less respect for the Scientific or historical value of literary beauty.
Between these two extremes is almost every conceivable kind of writing, including every known atrocity, indecency, degeneracy, nobility, a cyclopedia of anecdotes, genealogy, mythology, criminology, stories of incest, of sodomy, of bestiality; of angels, "sons of God," coming to earth and taking women; of daughters having children by their fathers.
There is the sainted patriarch Abraham, whose ancient wife was so pretty that he was afraid her admirers would fancy her and kill him, so he told her to pretend to be his sister, whereupon Pharaoh enjoyed her and loaded Abraham with presents (Genesis xii). Pharaoh was horrified when he learned what Abraham had done.
There is only one dirty word in our language for this man, in whose bosom the blessed rest. After this experience the foul old creature played the same trick on Abimelech, but the Lord warned him in a dream just in time (Genesis xx). Abimelech was disgusted, but Abraham lost none of the Lord's favor and his name is holy in all Christian teachings.

There is the story of the brother pretending to be sick in order to rape his sitter; of the harlot who saves spies and is sanctified for it; of chosen people who commit all known abominations; of a man Onan who is cursed for refusing to beget children upon his brother's widow (and ever since wears a bad name for what he did not do) of a giant who carries off a gate and slays a multitude with a bone, loses his strength when his hair is cut, and is able to pull down a crowded temple when his hair grows out again; of children eaten by bears sent by God because they merely made fun of a bald man; of a runaway prophet who is brought back inside a fish -- in short, an utterly amazing gallimaufry of events and fancies presided over by a god who does not know his own mind, is constantly defeated by his own cast-out angels and by his stubborn worshipers; who performs miracle after miracle only to fail of his purpose, and whose total record of infamies staggers the imagination.

If you give up Adam's apple and his Fall and the sin of all his posterity, you rob Christ of his mission of atonement. Christ is repeatedly claimed to be of the seed of David; and to prove it, two genealogies are given, each contradictory of the other and of itself. But it was Joseph and not Mary who descended from David, and the Bible repeatedly states that Joseph was Christ's father. Yet it also states that Mary was a virgin,

There is absolutely nothing in the Bible of religious importance that it does not itself annul by its own contradictions

the Bible is absolutely unbelievable as a book of fact. Its astronomy, geology, zoology, geography, hygiene, ethnology -- were simply ludicrous. It does not claim to be a text book, but it claims to be the inspired word of an all-knowing God, and there is ferocious pressure to put it in our public schools as a text book and to drive out all scientific treatises that contradict it.

The oldest manuscript of the New Testament dates from the fourth century after Christ; the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament dates from the tenth century after Christ! And the ancient texts differ so much that they are almost original.

Always devoted to Greek art, history, and literature, I was dazed to find that hundreds of years before Christ there were people who believed more in brotherly love and gracious kindliness and democracy than many of the Christians did -- or do. It somehow humiliated me to learn that the Greeks knew that the earth was round; that they had figured its circumference out almost exactly. They knew that the insane are only sick people to be treated kindly, though Christ apparently believed the earth to be four- cornered and flat and that insanity was caused by intrusive devils who could be evicted or transferred to somebody's convenient drove of swine. Greeks had advanced far in surgery, and the temples of AEsculapius were true hospitals

For eighteen centuries because Christ said that they were inhabited by devils, the Christians treated the insane with devilish cruelty. Because of this devil- theory, Christianity gave the poor deluded wretches torture, whippings, revilings, neglect, while other religions gave them either superstitious deference or at least gentleness. What an infinity of undeniable kindnesses Christians must show to atone for this inconceivable torture of innumerable invalids!

Where is a vital utterance that Christ did not himself contradict? What hid he really know about himself? In one saying, he was the only one that ever rose from the dead; yet the dead were raised before him, and he raised them himself. He promised in Matthew xix, 28, that his twelve apostles should sit on twelve thrones in heaven and judge the twelve tribes. This gives Judas a throne in heaven. Yet in John vi, 70, he said, "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?"

How can any honest soul deny that Christ was guilty of promulgating an odious savage superstition contrary to science as to humanity? And what can we say of Christ's celebrated tenderness and mercy after we read what he says in Mark iv, 12, that he used parables in order to deceive those "without the mysteries" lest they should understand them and "lest at any time they should be converted and their sins should be forgiven them"? I was taught that the parables were beautiful stories told in that form so that simple souls could understand. But Christ says he told them in order to hoodwink those whom he didn't want to save. It is ghastly! It makes my blood run cold!

What could be plainer? In Matthew xv, 24, He said: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of Israel. It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs."

The Jews would not have him, and Paul rearranged his gospel to convert the Gentiles. Yet Christ said he came only to Israel.
And in the Book of Revelation, to repeat, it is plainly stated that the New Jerusalem has only twelve gates, one for each of the tribes of Israel.

what would happen if Christianity were removed from the nation?
For answer, consider the facts.
If you could prove by statistics that there are 68,000 Atheists and Infidels in the prisons of this country and only 150 church members, you would have marvelous evidence of the moral value of Christianity, wouldn't you?

You would hear of those figures from the pulpit, in all probability.
Did you ever hear from any pulpit the true statistics?

Franklin Steiner has compiled the figures obtained from the authorities concerned and they may be found in his book "Religion and Roguery" with its shocking appendix listing "Crimes of Preachers" and showing their addiction to murder and sex-crimes.
In the penal institutions of the United States and Canada he found 68,863 persons with church affiliation, 8,134 with no church preference, 5,389 Jews, and 150 Infidels, Atheists, and pagans. In 29 states there were only 15 downright unbelievers.
Curiously in striking confirmation of these figures, even as I revised this text (on November 8, 1924), the Crime Commission of Los Angeles completed a survey at the county jail and was surprised to find that "out of 200 prisoners interviewed, 184 professed adherence to some religious faith, only nine denied having any religious faith. Seven declined to answer the question."
Everywhere we turn we find just that proportion. In Europe as well as in America the churches that are represented by the most criminals are the ones that are most rigid in their creed and most evangelic in their nature. Try this on your own county jail or your state penitentiary or reform schools.
The most ruthless of the pirates and buccaneers observed the Sabbath and often shot dead the irreverent who interrupted divine service. They had their own churches. But the vilest pirates never approached the bloodiness, the perjury, the confiscatory frauds and treacheries of the Christian churches in certain times of power.
There is much of passion in religion as in crime; and even those religious people who keep out of jail are apt to be distinguished by a persecuting tendency, a meddlesome tyrannical spirit either to make rules or to break them. The Bible exploits a god of cruelty, rapacity, heathen ruthlessness, and makes saints of foul criminals. How could it save men from crime?

In sober reason, then, one might argue that if Christianity were to disappear overnight from the hearts of the citizens, the prisons would be almost entirely emptied and crime would almost disappear.

Believing that freedom of soul, mind and body is the most important privilege of humanity and the one hope of progress, I was stunned to find on reading the history of the world that the religious mind has always been opposed to liberty and equality.

Offering a religion filled with Orientalism, modified by Greek principles, and full of stories forcibly borrowed from the worship of Mithra, they dare to pretend that Christians are somehow mystically better than the Greeks or the Orientals; that Christians of evil life are infinitely superior to non-believers however virtuous.

I agree with the fundamentalists in their claim that the Bible must be taken entire or let alone; that you must take all of Christ or give him up as a supreme teacher and as a savior.
As for living the Christ life, it cannot be done, and it ought not to be done. Too much ugliness is included in the sweetness.

They say that if you find a watch, you are sure it had a maker; therefore the universe must have had a maker. Even if it had, it could not have had such a maker as the Christian God. And after that one must still ask, who made the maker? It is no solution of a mystery to call it God. It is a vast increase of the mystery.
It is easy enough to laugh this off as beyond finite understanding.

All right. So it must be. Then so is the whole problem, and I will drop it from my thoughts.

In my own case I know the loss of religion has not made the least difference in my character, either for good or evil, for sorrow or for happiness. People often say, "If I ceased to believe in God and a future life, I'd go mad." I say, "Oh no, you wouldn't. I didn't. I don't feel any change."

Deeply as I am convinced of certain things, I would not enforce them on any other person.

I would not silence his contradictions of me. I want to keep my mind open to new aspects of truth and new opinions, I want my opponents to have every freedom to express everything whatsoever.

Sincerely as I dread and abhor the teachings of most of the churches and churchmen, I would not lift my little finger to prevent one of them from absolute freedom of utterance.
I do not believe in censorship of others or of myself.

For the present I am happier than any Christian I know. Now I have a wonderful peace of soul in letting the universe run itself and in trying to ride on it and keep out from under the wheels without trying to talk to the Motorman. If I have offended your God, your God is quick to punish when he is ready. He has room for me in his hell and fuel to spare. So let us go our separate ways: you to bliss, and I to blister.

If it shall prove to be true that my failure to believe is itself a crime against God; if my failure to pay him the kind of worship which I cannot, to save me, is an offense against him, then you can surely leave my punishment to him

If there is a god and he is a god of love, God knows he must wish that his children's treasure and their toil and their fervor should be spent upon one another and on the countless miseries of this unhappy world, which might be made so beautiful. Instead of sanctifying piety, let us make a religion of pity, of mutual help, of the search for truth and power, and the increase of freedom.