Religion in the Making
Alfred North Whitehead’s Religion in the Making redefines religion as a dynamic interplay between individual solitariness of religion—personal communion with the consequent nature of God (God’s evolving responsiveness to the world)—and collective religious intuitions that shape rational religion, harmonizing emotional devotion with cosmic order (the metaphysical structure of reality). Whitehead frames religion’s evolution through worship—acts of alignment with divine ideals—and revelation, where eternal objects (timeless potentials like justice) ingress into history via the primordial nature of God, which orders possibilities non-coercively. He critiques static dogmas, emphasizing rationalization—religion’s iterative refinement through reason and experience—and the divine persuasion, where God lures creation toward harmony without overriding freedom. Key is the transcendent-immanent God, neither detached nor pantheistic, but dynamically entwined with the process of concrescence (self-creative actualization of entities). Though concise, this work pioneered process theology (Hartshorne, Cobb), influenced interfaith dialogue, and reshaped studies of religion as a living, evolving religious experience rooted in metaphysical coherence, bridging speculative philosophy and spiritual praxis across disciplines like psychology and ecology.
