section_path: Philosophy/Religious writings
section_name: Religious writings
paragraph_text: Religious writings
  
  Starting in the 20th century, commentators tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, although in the nineteenth century this had not been the prevalent view. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters helped make Kant famous, wrote: "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." According to Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first commentaries on Kant: "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which was widely seen as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone.
  
  Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition, and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs for the existence of God that were grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and to Christianity in particular. Other interpreters, nevertheless, consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief.
  
  Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood, as well as Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality, and Christianity to ethics; however, many interpreters, including Wood, alongside Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist 's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.