Immanuel Kant’s Universal Moral Religion: A Solution to Contemporary Religious Servitude and Conflicts

Abstract

This paper sets out to prove that the contemporary practice of religion characterized by servitude and conflicts needs to be scanned using the lenses of Immanuel Kant’s universal moral religion posed as an antidote to the problems created by denominational multiplicity. From the inability by human reason to obtain epistemologically fruitful results from the world beyond sense – experience, this transcendental realm of existence becomes a source of the ideal of the object of a will governed by moral laws whose uncompromising character make them divine commands thus paving the way for religion as an edifice based on morality. Though morality can exist without religion, religion cannot be genuine without the necessary moral foundation that gives it rationality and universality. We argue that the contemporary practice of religion has lost touch of the moral foundation that would have made it relevant in the quest for an ethical commonwealth or God’s moral kingdom on earth. In this light, a return to Kant’s moral religion becomes indispensable in the resolution of conflicts resulted from differences in modes of divine worship.