Josiah Royce on the Beloved Community (REVIEW ESSAY)

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 29, 2023: Google for "Beloved Community" and you will readily learn that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968; Ph.D. in theology, Boston University, 1955) popularized this expression. You might even learn that Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., published a short book titled Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Judson Press, 1974). You might even learn that the King Center in Atlanta devotes a page of its website to Dr. King's idea about the Beloved Community.

If you search further, you may also learn that Harvard's prolific philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916; Ph.D. in philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 1878) used the expression the Beloved Community in his exploratory 1913 book The Problem of Christianity (Macmillan; expanded edition published by the Catholic University of America Press, 2001). However, it does not necessarily follow that Dr. King ever read any of Royce's uses of the expression the Beloved Community. But we cannot rule out the possibility that King may read something by Royce. In any event, Harvard's philosopher of religion Royce was famous enough that his use of the expression the Beloved Community may have been known by the theology faculty and students at nearby Boston University when King was doing his doctoral studies in theology there.

Royce did not belong to any church. Perhaps we should think of him as a non-denominational Christian, because his thought about the Beloved Community is clearly rooted in the Christian tradition of thought - more specifically in Pauline Christology and ecclesiology. However, as we will see momentarily, Royce in the end advises Christians to "Simplify your traditional Christology."

Question: If Christians were to take Royce's advice and "Simplify [their] traditional Christology," at what juncture on their simplifying their traditional Christology would they cease to be Christians? In other words, isn't some form of traditional Christology a pre-condition for being a Christian?

Now, the Wikipedia entry on Royce includes a quote from him that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945; Harvard class of 1903) included in his 1936 State of the Union Address (from an article published by Royce in 1914):

"'The human race now passes through one of its great crises. New ideas, new issues - a new call for men [and women] to carry on the work of righteousness, of charity, of courage, of patience, and of loyalty. . . . I studied, I loved, I labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of my generation.'"

FDR's quotation is taken from Royce's article "A Word for the Times" in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, volume XXIII, number XC (December 1914): pp. 207-209 (the ellipsis in the quotation is in the Wikipedia text; the first part of FDR's quote is from p. 208 of Royce's article; the second part from p. 209).

No doubt the prolific Royce "labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of [his] generation."

In any event, the late American Jesuit philosopher Frank M. Oppenheim (1925-2020; Ph.D. in philosophy, Saint Louis University, 1962) published the following three books about Royce (all published by the University of Notre Dame Press):

(1) Royce's Mature Philosophy of Religion (1987);

(2) Royce's Mature Ethics (1993);

(3) Reverence for the Relations of Life: Re-imagining Pragmatism via Josiah Royce's Interactions with Peirce, James, and Dewey (2005).

For Oppenheim, Royce's mature work involves his books and essays from about 1910 onward. However, Royce's 1908 book The Philosophy of Loyalty (Macmillan) is the focus of Oppenheim's 1993 book Royce's Mature Ethics.

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