The Next Step in Religion: An Essay Toward the Coming Renaissance

Published in the shadow of the Great War, this bracing philosophical essay proposes something radical: that religion must evolve or perish. Roy Wood Sellars, writing with the confidence of a philosopher who believes truth matters more than comfort, argues that the supernatural framework of traditional faith has become incompatible with modern knowledge. Science, social progress, and a deeper understanding of human needs demand a new spiritual orientation, one centered not on otherworldly salvation but on the cultivation of human values. Sellars calls this "humanistic naturalism," and he makes no apology for its implications. The book is an explicit challenge to inherited beliefs, though Sellars frames his argument as an act of spiritual courage rather than destruction. He insists that genuine religiosity has always been concerned with what elevates human life, and that a faith grounded in ethics and community is more honest, more generative, than one built on fear and mythology. A century later, Sellars's central question remains urgent: can spiritual life survive its encounter with modernity, and what might it become afterward?