ABSTRACT
The religious instinct in man is one of his oldest items of equipment and dates back, along with his other emotions, to the days of the primitive family gang. The thing to observe about this primitive religious sense is that it began, like other human instincts and emotions, as a communal affair—it grew out of the ‘gang’. As man’s self-consciousness grew out of, and was shaped in the matrix of, his gang-consciousness, so his sense of personal religion grew out of the gang-religion. The principles of co-operation fostered through leadership which should guide the new family gang in its social development must also govern its religious growth, otherwise that growth will not be along healthy and natural lines. Paradoxical as it may sound, one of the troubles that afflict modern children is that they have not enough to be afraid of.
