FREE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT, THE. The Free Religious Movement in London, the adherents of which meet in Steinway Hall, was founded by Dr. Walter Walsh. In 1912, after being deprived of his church through the verdict of the highest law court in Scotland, Dr. Walsh formed what he called a Free Religious Movement in Dundee. Subsequently he was appointed to succeed Mr. Voysey as Minister of the Theistic Church in London. But here again his utterances in course of time proved unwelcome to the members of the Church, and he was again ejected. Hence arose the Free Religious Movement in London. In the United States there is a Free Religious Association of America which has taken as its motto " World Religion and World Brotherhood "; in various parts of the Continent there has been a similar movement with the same name; and in Australia a Free Religious Fellowship has been formed. The Free Religious Movement towards World Religion and World Brotherhood, under the leadership of Dr. Walsh, has its source in that desire for unity which pervades the modern world. It is a reasoned effort to express and encourage that sweep towards universalism in religion and social ethics and politics which is the most powerful and hopeful impulse of our time. It seeks to relate man to his universe, and human beings to one another, by principals which are rational, scientific, ethical, and international. The movement is religious—not in the narrow ecclesiastical sense of the word—but in a broad, humanist and ethical sense. It is a constructive movement, springing from the spiritual one ness of humanity, and consciously directed towards the realisation of the greatest of human ideals—the ideal of social and international unity. To enable it to move
with ease and rapidity, the Free Religious Movement does not encnmber itself with creed or sacrament. Be lieving that for the accomplishment of the successive tasks of mankind ample wisdom and virtue dwell within the nature of man himself, it seeks to voice the truth of the ages as discovered by science, tested by reason, and approved by experience. It endeavours to support truth as disclosed to the growing intelligence of man by his tory and science. It asserts the undeniable right of everyone to think and speak his or her own thoughts; and therefore it assures to its leaders and speakers entire intellectual liberty; and to all its adherents and auditors perfect freedom of judgment. Believing that goodness and truth are inherent in human nature, it seeks for these in the immortal books of all ages and races; and regards with reverence all those who in every nation and time have laboured and suffered and lived and died for humanity. In the conviction that the goal of human unity can be reached only as men and women learn to think Independently, fearlessly and rationally, the Free Religious Movement in all its activities keeps steadily before it the liberation of mind and conscience from servile submission to authority and tradition; and seeks association with all those who also are looking for a world which shall be enlightened by knowledge, guided by reason, and animated by love. See the Free Religious Addresses and Leaflets.