Your quantifier "pithily" noted, but still, this really is an oxymoron: Religious doctrine is philosophy. Doctrine, as I understand it, is the end result of argument (theological maybe, perhaps political or personal), and you can get in trouble for questioning it. Charitably, I'll assume Max meant "theology."
The fact that our lives and the lives of those we care about are matters of all-consuming interest to ourselves but of absolute indifference to the universe should be at least as thought-provoking for an atheist as for a believer.
I don't get this comment, because Christianity is a way out of the fact that our lives are brief and the universe is indifferent to them. In Christian faith, the Universe exists for us, and our lives are eternal. This is a solely a problem for atheists, and perhaps some non-Christian religions.
because Christianity is a way out of the fact that our lives are brief and the universe is indifferent to them
That's a very common, but mistaken, understanding of faith. It's no accident that Ree talks about Kierkegaard, for whom the leap of faith is always about throwing oneself into the unknown: faith is precisely not having the guarantee that your belief will be vindicated. For Kierkegaard (and not just for him; he's just particularly good), the kind of comfort you describe isn't faith at all.
Right on, I think this is very true and something I've been wrestling with lately.
A quibble and a comment.
I think your quote from Ree is overly utilitarian - that religion provides a useful set of tools for dealing with calamity. I believe daily we encounter the unexplainable, the infinite in a multitude of ways. These are things that no coherent political ideology or philosophy of life or research agenda can ever erase or take away. Spiritual activity can be a way of connecting with the infinite.
It seems to me that the alienation of people like many of your readers from congregations might run deeper than politics. I have been turned off from several unitarian/universalist congregations because the sunday service seemed like mostly politics and social science - not what I'm looking for when I turn to religion. Not that religion can't inspire a more humanitarian politics, but I don't want that to be the first order connection.
I don't know if it's even fair to say that most liberals "have more doubt than belief."
Probably true for other religions as well, but certainly with regard to the Christian religion, most liberal positions probably conform with religious tenets more so than conservative ones.
Maybe religious liberals are less certain that they are right about all religious questions than the religious conservatives. But that is just another way of saying they are more intelligent.
That's besides the point -- what I mean to say is that there is nothing about being a liberal that should forestall a person from being devout, or vise versa. I think the fact that conservatives have tied themselves with the Christain religion is a result of cynical maneuvering, not anything systemic in the religion.
Right, but whereas the atheist confronts the existential anxiety in question head-on, the questioning Christian confronts it only as an alternative to his belief. They're different modes. I will grant that quite possibly, though, the Christian's anxiety is worse, because he fears losing something.
But I also wonder now how incorrect my statements about faith were. They certainly were true for quite a number of my religious teachers in Arkansas. Not a questioning bunch, by and large. A lot of Christian people don't share K's perspective of absurdity; they see Christianity as a sure bet, for a variety of reasons. (sightings of angels, personal chit-chats with jesus, concrete evidence of angels and divine intervention, and the more "scientific" complexity of nature arguents)
public religiosity has a meaning in our culture that makes us uncomfortable.
Public religiosity should make everybody very uncomfortable. The last thousand years of history and literature ought to make that blindingly obvious. Patriotism isn't the last refuge of scoundrels, it's only the second to last, as Tom DeLay has been so aptly demonstrating.
I haven't read that much Kierkegaard, but I don't think it's fair to say of a Kierkegaardian Christianity that it doesn't confront the existential questions directly. An, if not the essential element, as I understand it, comes from belief that following the dictates of faith is absurd, and it should be followed because of, not in spite of that. If someone has faith of that kind, they don't seem to me to be dodging important questions. Wwhat I just wrote might be so vague as to be meaningless, so if someone who actually and read more than half of Fear and Trembling wants to correct me or elucidate, I'd appreciate it.
I know Fear and Trembling precedes Fear and Loathing by better than a century, but it still makes me chuckle.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Is there such a thing as a teleological suspension of the ethical?"
w/d, ex-before-last knows her Kierkegaard, I'll see if I can get her to comment (it's been ten years since I read any; it's really pathetic to no longer be expert in the one thing you were once expert in...).
cw, yeah, I almost skipped the Ree this time around because he's primarily addressing a more secular European audience, and trying to get them to stop being dismissive. That's not where we are. Still, it was well put, and his piece is really good.
textualist, also yeah, I'm not sure "more doubt than belief" was the right way to put it.
Michael, I have no doubt that most people practice a religion of "comfort," but I'm more interested in what it can be, at its best (as are you with your atheism, which can be denial just as easily it can be a direct confrontation...)
Part of that to which Max must have been referring is the fact that there is a vast array of Christian thought, much broader than those who haven't studied it (I haven't) realize, and that it's unlikely that 2000 years of work that uses its precepts as the frame within which the brightest and best made sense of life yields naught. I've heard a Protestant pastor tell me that one can be a Christian without believing in an historical Christ, an Episcopal Reverend claim that the Church must accept the Bible as simply instructive stories, and if there is a better synonym for "sophist" than "Jesuit," I don't know it. So I'm not sure that simplistic, singular definitions of what it means to be a Christian are what is at issue here.
In passing, I note that Graham Greene's Catholicism seems fairly bleak, a la what I remember of Fear and Trembling.
if there is a better synonym for "sophist" than "Jesuit,"
This I don't get. I did my philosophy MA at a Jesuit institution and I have a lot of respect for the Jesuits (hell, I'm not sure I shouldn't become a Jesuit).
But otherwise, you make a really good point; Christianity is vast and multifarious, but even so, not quite the point here.
(I remember a philosophy professor once telling a story about being on a radio program to debate an atheist. The prof asked him, "What don't you believe?" They guy said that he didn't believe in a man with a beard on a throne controlling our lives. "No significant thinker in the history of Western thought has believed that...")
1. It wasn't a shot at Jesuits; I don't know enough to be impressive in my ardor for them, but I am impressed by them. I meant something like, "Jesuits are sufficiently smarter and more subtle than you that, as with sophists, your puny brain will not be able to tell you if they are leading you down the One True Path or in some other direction."
2. I'm not sure what the Order's requirements are, but you seem to have mastered the celibacy part. I do like the idea of you as the Black Pope.
Yeah, I should have been clearer on that. Usually you can count on fear of Wolfson to backstop your natural self on something like that. But he seems to have disappeared. It's too bad, too, because I saw Coupling the other day, and he's right, it's awful. In fact, on the basis of the 10 minutes I was able to bear watching, I herewith willingly disclaim and forfeit any Non-Creepy Blogcrush rights I may have had towards LB. I would have liked to have been able to say, "The Comm., Mr. Wolfson, is yours."
Yeah, the Brit version. I don't know which one - they stole part of the plot point from the Seinfeld in which George's girlfriend refuses to accept a break-up. In fact, that's the problem - it's an 8:30 mishmash of Friends and Seinfeld. The two don't mash easily, and each is better than this bastard child.
This I don't get. I did my philosophy MA at a Jesuit institution and I have a lot of respect for the Jesuits (hell, I'm not sure I shouldn't become a Jesuit).
"Jesuit" also has the insulting meaning of "sophist" as a practictioner of the bad kind of sophistry—they have, or had, a reputation as logic-choppers and drawers of impossibly fine distinctions.
SCTM, I'm glad you agree w.r.t. Coupling, if it was in fact the British version you saw (I don't doubt the American version ain't that great either, but that would hardly be a surprise, now would it?). I haven't been around because I've been in sunny California, mostly away from computers. What's the "Comm."?
Jeebus, ogged, you didn't like Seinfeld? The finest situation comedy ever created? The only necessary justification for commercial television? Maybe you really do hate America.
SCMT--it sounds like you saw the very first episode. It gets better. (Although I hate Seinfeld, so we may not have the same tastes.)
I think my favorite episode was "Split," which followed the two lead characters in split screen after they'd had a fight that looked like it might turn into a final break-up. I won't go so far as to say that there were any real insights into the divergence between male and female patterns of grieving in such situations, but the final minute of the episode had me crying with laughter. It's worth taking a second look.
There are maybe four comedies that are in/comprise the Pantheon of TV shows: Shelly Long's Cheers, early Simpsons, Seinfeld, and, of course, Phil Hartman's News Radio. Excepting Seinfeld, I defy you to tell me that you find fault with any/all of the above.
(This should really be the modern version of "Who Won the World Series," as a check for foreign allegience).
I think I've seen two five-minute blocks of CYE. Too Seinfeldian for my taste, but I did see a rapper asking Larry David, over and over, "Are you my nigger?" and that was hilarious.
You should run, not walk, to wherever, and get copies of the first few seasons of News Radio. I probably quote that show at least once a week, and never ironically.
I'm kind of 'eh' on News Radio. The Phil Hartman years were obviously much better than after he died. The other two were indeed awesome. I also quite liked Night Court during its first few years (however, I was in my pre-teens, so my standards were pretty low).
BTW, liberal Christian/Catholic bloggers have come roaring back since the election. There is a blogroll called the Progressive Christian Blogger Network and there's a ring called the Alliance for Progressive and Moderative Christians. Both were formed at about the same time and have quite a bit of overlap. But I have to say that in the past few months, I've found more likeminded religious bloggers through these links than I did in two prior years of blogging.
We're out there in force . . . naming and claiming. (To get to these rings, click on my name).
because we have more doubt than belief,
Maybe secular liberals, but there is a . . . load of religious liberals who wouldn't describe it as such. Also, the liberal problem may have to do with the inability for (Husserlian) "epoche," i.e, a subjective (not existential) suspension of belief while investigating truth. This way, absurdities don't intrude the existential path to belief, rather they remain mysteries to be fleshed out.
Religion's a third rail, don't you think? I have a dificult time talking about religion because my views are sufficiently extreme as to be offensive to many (e.g. religion is the opiate of the masses, people should open their eyes and acknowledge that there is no God, etc.) and, since I acknowledge that people of sincere and honest faith can also be quite likable, intelligent and full of goodwill, I hesitate to express my views because I don't want to risk giving that offense.
Seinfeld: take a bit of social awkwardness, give it a funny name, repeat name at increasing volume.
As opposed to, "You know what I call a girl like that? Do you? Do You? 'Unflushable.'" Didn't you ever see the Edward Sissorhands/Marriage of Figaro episode? So great.
And Chopper, believe what you want, but you're still DAMNED TO HELL!
Oh, and the final episode in the fourth season (and, the final episode for the show, it now seems) was quite affecting for me as an expectant father (at the time of first viewing).
Even the first season of COupling is well worth it -- the funeral episode had me weeping.
On religious belief -- as an agnostic, I'm probably not the right person to opine on this, but I don't know that I can buy into the assumptions of this post. I may be misunderstanding you, but I'm geting the impression (shameless and unjustifiable caricature follows) that you're drawing a distinction between simple-minded, dogmatic believers who do bourgeois things like belong to particular denominations and actually go to church who are mostly conservatives, and intellectually questioning seekers who think deeply about their faith, or at least about their search for faith, as they sleep late on Sunday (Saturday, Friday) mornings and are mostly liberals.
If this is something like what you actually think, I don't think that it's particularly accurate -- left-wing religious people tend to be both more supportive of church-state separation, and more tolerant of non-believers and members of other sects than right-wing religious people, but I don't think that they're all that much less personally observant. More importantly from my own godless point of view, I think it's politicially very unhelpful. It seems to play right into that "Liberals are all nasty snobs who hate regular people because they think we're stupid" pattern that's been giving us so much trouble lately.
Hey, I'm anti-Seinfeld, pro-Coupling. I thought I was the only person who didn't like Seinfeld. It's the sort of thing I don't talk about, in the way some people don't talk about religion. In fact, I'm more willing to talk about my atheism than my dislike of Seinfeld.
Talking about why I don't like Seinfeld became easy once I realized why I don't like it--the situations are funny enough, but not one of the main characters is a likeable human being. They're all reprehensible.
Shelly Long's Cheers, early Simpsons, Seinfeld, and, of course, Phil Hartman's News Radio
I never got into Seinfeld and, though I only know them from re-runs, I've always found some of the middle years of Cheers (leading up to Long's departure) to be a bit depressing - but I put Newsradio near the top of all comedies I've seen. I think the early seasons are scheduled to come out on DVD this May.
The distinction wasn't really my goal. I'm just trying to describe, a little bit, what belief is like for liberals. For example, some of my liberal friends are churchgoers, but it's not something they talk about; the talking about, rather than the going, is what I was pointing to.
There is a difference here, yes. It might be that most liberals either (a) respect differing views on religion, or (b) recognize that shrill recitation of doctrine -- without offering any justification -- is not persuasive. Perhaps to get to (b), you have to care about being persuasive, and not just belittling, so in that sense, (b) entails (a).
There is something else at work. The conservative religious issues are the easy ones. By that I mean (unless you happen to be gay) they are easy to comply with. Adopt our way of life. Get married. Don't take drugs. If you look at religion as simply absolving yourself of uncleanliness (which is where the conservatives have taken Christianity) then you get a basic set of acting principles that are fairly easy to adopt. What I mean by easy is: you can still be selfish and adopt them.
A basic reading of the gospels should demonstrate the problems with that take on Christianity. In fact, just read the sermon on the mount. Or don't. It isn't hard to see that Christianity is focused elsewhere. Anyway, I contend that liberals think it is focused elsewhere -- that helping other people is more important than absolving onself of sin.
The liberal take on Christianity is harder to live by. It opens up a host of questions that aren't really answerable -- how much is enough? How should I devote my life. We all have to take care of ourselves to a certain degree. Most of us aren't Mother Theresa. So it leaves a liberal Christian feeling a little guilty, a little unsure.
The conservative take on Christianity, because it is easier to fulfill, engenders smugness, self-satisfaction, the end of questioning. Don't you see -- the answer is right here in the book. Now depart and sin no more. Easy answers are easier to give. They come out faster, and you can feel very clever while giving them.
I have made obvious which take I prefer. My point is that I think the conservative take makes one more likely to talk about religion, and not for good reasons. I think you could argue that the conservative, though self-righteous (in a literal sense) is actually less devout.
The Seinfeld characters weren't really reprehensible early on, once they'd built the audience a lot of the humor was derived from the cast just being dicks to each other or enjoying schadenfreude against one another. I'm sure that given its popularity you must hear this a lot, but it's really worthwhile giving the show another chance. Also, a lot of the endings in the middle seasons (3-5, or so) are just brilliant.
I've always been under the impression that a not insignificant fraction of the right wing christians who hold a views I find nutty on gay rights/evolution/abortion/whatever also contribute time and or money to charitable, poor helping, causes. Certainly some of this is missionary work which helps to spread their ideas, but doesn't it undermine the nice dichotomy textualist is trying to draw?
Yes, probably some conservatives also give to charities. Ok, there are also liberals who are fairly clean living. Damn. Let me try to salvage this.
There isn't an easy dichotomy. However, among the two groups, the conservatives are probably more focused on the clean living aspect of the religion, the liberals on the poor-helping.
It isn't that no or few conservatives give to charities, but that the religious issues they care about aren't about doing that. They care and are vocal about what I have called the easy issues. They vote on those issues. Otherwise, they wouldn't have voted for Bush; on the helping-poor issues, he does not hold up.
At least some of the conservative religious are solely concerned with the clean-living aspect of the religion, at least in practice. Some liberals are probably solely concerned with the poor helping. Then, as much as we are talking about group tendencies, it would follow that significantly more conservatives would adopt the smug attitude I described than liberals. Of course not all conservatives would adopt that attitude, but not all conservative religious talk up their religion to everyone they meet. We are talking about generalities here, which invariably make dichotomies seem crisper than they really are.
So, I told ex-before-last that her expertise in Kierkegaard was needed here. By way of explanation, you should know that she's a nut, and can't figure out how to comment. For your pure voyeuristic fun, here's what she emailed me (yes, I have permission...),
First, I like Coupling and News Radio, and find Seinfeld merely tiresome. Second, I thought Ono's comment on "epoche" astute, better as a condemnation of Husserl, than of the liberals perhaps. Third, "confront the existential questions" is far too tame a way of characterizing SK's posture -perhaps "inhabit the existential questions" is better. At any rate, the profoundly radical, even abysmal tenor of SK's voice puts to shame pretty much any contemporary expositor of the Gospel of whatever denominational/liberal or conservative stripe. Think of [professor]'s comment about teaching philosophy -if we are not hovering on the edge of what it is possible to think/say, then we are doing nothing. Textualist's assessment is fairly accurate in #49, but Washerdryer's is a nice jab in #51. I like Lizardbreath's comment in #42, and yes, you should become a Jesuit.
I thought the deal was that anyone left of Al Gore worshipped a golden calf. Seriously, though, let me double down on the comments by washer-dryer and the ex. (she sounds great ogged! what was the problem?).
False dichotomy number 1: burdens of 'religion' and burdens of intense moral perfectionism. Well, it's not exactly a false dichotomy, but unless you have philsophical resources like Kierkegaard's it will be very hard to show how the "religious" perfectionist and the merely "ethical" perfectionist have substantially different interior lives. I think most approaches to ethics and religion have a hard time showing how these will be different.
False dichotomy #2: "right" vs. "left" religion.
I'm not, as it happens, a Catholic. No dog in that fight. but it boggles my mind to think that Catholic doctrine on sex would be considered "easy." No sex before marriage isn't "easy," no divorce isn't "easy." The major monotheisms aren't easy, they are transformative. If it's easy, you are doing it wrong.
On the larger point, moral smugness is not a property of left or right, it's just not. Rather, it's a property of people who do not 'inhabit the existential problems' -- and that, alas, is most of us most of the time.
I agree she sounds nice and smart and interesting. But liked Coupling, found Seinfeld tiresome - probably best that two such unstable personalities didn't tie their lives together.
Also, I don't I understand this, "it will be very hard to show how the "religious" perfectionist and the merely "ethical" perfectionist have substantially different interior lives." Aren't those lives going to be oriented toward, at least potentially, very different ends? Aren't they going to be asking different questions about the nature of a Good Life, and accept different answers from different sources?
baa -- fair point. No sex before marriage isn't easy in the way that tying your shoes is easy. But it is easy compared with, say, giving all your money to the poor and devoting your life to others, which is what the religion arguably demands.
There is also a tendency among the conservative religious to load the sins for which they are unlikely to be tempted with extra weight. Homosexual acts, which are decried in the bible far less often than adultery, are treated as far worse transgressions.
#10, my atheism. You're likely giving me too much credit, or, more accuratly, you're assuming I have more interest in the religion question than I really do. My interest-level in religion is at about the level of a crossword puzzle, I would say. Fun, for about 10min, then I'm done with it and don't think about it anymore until it gets put before me again. My questions for religion: 1) Empirical evidence that god exists? No. 2) Any evidence that, supposing he does exist, he cares if I care he exists? No. And 3) does it make a difference in my life whether or not I believe he exists? No. So I'm basically an atheist by default, because I have other things to think about or practice. I've spent more than enough of my life pondering religion while growing up.
I am, however, willing to engage the gospels (and Acts) because they're neat. Continuing in this direction, I'll see if I can help textualist out. The OT has a lot of condemnation and rules and is pretty strict about things. Big punishments if you mess up, too. The NT has a lot about forgiveness, tolerance, and living with your community.
From that quick oversimplification, one can say that you don't hear much about the NT from the loud mouth-breathers who set themselves up as the voice of the religious right. Or, even while conservative politicians talk about poverty and growing communities, their actions, in liberal eyes, aren't up to snuff.
Instead, we hear a lot of talk about "morality," and being moral. These guys (and not just them, but some students I've met on campus) could giving a running leap about the conditions of poverty. They're focus is on "souls," not material conditions (except their own). And they *really* like assigning blame.
I doubt that what I'm describing is good conservative Christianity. But it has become the face of Conservative Christianity. I think the best answer would be for liberal and conservative Christians to work together, emphasize their common ground, and tell these extremists to shut up and sit down.
Morning all. Im really sorry I missed this (I need new sleep patterns, evidently).
So. Late but FWIW:
I am an Anglican living in a Catholic country, with a Catholic family. I came to religion as a result of realising that atheism was (for me) untenable. I would guess that after reading in as many religions as possible, the influence that brought me to christianity would have been Graham Greene's "The Power and The Glory" (One of the central themes of the novel is the sin of complacency), coupled with my innate liberal take on life.
Which is where we get to be on topic.
What bothers me most is certainty. For me it was a very painful admission to have to make that the only justification I have for believing is at best a combination of the recognition that there has to have been a creator of some kind (not a valid scientific standpoint - but a massive suspiscion) and a WISH for the central tenets of the gospels to be true. I have no proof. No objective certainty of any kind. Faith is precisely that.
faith is precisely not having the guarantee that your belief will be vindicated. covers that nicely.
This leads to all kinds of dichotomies: I get angry, very angry, with God. I have a really hard time accepting doctrine. I find it so very hard to evangelise simply because faith is such a damn personal experience. I am fascinated by other religions, other interpretations of the same problems and can do no better than to say: " I find your faith truly fascinating and in many instances beautiful, but at bottom it does not work for me. I can tell you why, but I can prove nothing"
It is this innate liberalism that makes it so hard to stomach the certainties of the religious right. The notion that we should seek to legislate against otherness on arguments founded on religion is repulsive. Seems to me that the only thing a Christian should be able to say with any certainty is that IF the gospel is true, then we have to behave with respect, tolerance and love towards each other. No other statement stands up. Therefore, refusing to fulfill BCP prescriptions on religious grounds etc. stands in such contradistiction to the basic tenets of faith as to be surely offensive to the very God those doing the refusing claim to serve.
And it is here that I find I become usefully angry.
If one is going to adopt a set of principles based on a faith that (however strong, however inspiring) can only be a personal and subjective wish for the shape of truth to be just so then one needs to be very careful about imposing those beliefs on others. You guys have a constitution full of statements about that kind of behaviour.
So I guess I'm with Ogged:
But it's not a bad time to come out of that particular closet; to take some of the language of faith back from the undoubting crazies, and to restore a bit of what's humane to religion itself.
That said: If a church is unable to wag a finger or shout from the rooftops that things are wrong, does it have a function? Probably, but it is then reduced to the state most politicians would want to see it in: compliant and silent.
IF, however, it is going to wag a finger. Who decides when and on which issues? Turning religious discussion into a proxy for left/ right political battles harbours real dangers for faith itself.
Seinfeld was just puzzling. But then I watched it in German.
Jim Wallis' new book seems relevant to your post, if not to this discussion. (the weekly standard review was all I turned up quickly)
I attended a jesuit high school and I really loved the experience, including several fabulous jesuit teachers and several excellent religion classes (that I was required to take, though I've never been a catholic). I saw the sophist side my last semester, however, when our religion class became "here's our brief response to every religious or existential quandary, in three sentences or less. now memorize".
Now ogged as a jesuit, there's an idea. If double ex thinks it's plausible, I'm all for it. They'd let you keep tthe weblog, I think. Other potential problems? Same clothes every day, no problem. Vow of celibacy, pretty much there already. Vow of poverty, hmmm... I guess we're back to textualists challenge of a life like christ.
Can sympathize with Rhee on means to persuade disinterested Euros (also sympathizing with the non-Seinfeld camp out there). When I've got an audience like that, I usually ask what Martin Luther King's first title (i.e., not Dr.) was. That usually gets us past the "no proper role for religion in politics" position pretty quickly, because let's face it: no organizing through black churches (and liberal white churches), no civil rights revolution in the US.
Your quantifier "pithily" noted, but still, this really is an oxymoron: Religious doctrine is philosophy. Doctrine, as I understand it, is the end result of argument (theological maybe, perhaps political or personal), and you can get in trouble for questioning it. Charitably, I'll assume Max meant "theology."
The fact that our lives and the lives of those we care about are matters of all-consuming interest to ourselves but of absolute indifference to the universe should be at least as thought-provoking for an atheist as for a believer.
I don't get this comment, because Christianity is a way out of the fact that our lives are brief and the universe is indifferent to them. In Christian faith, the Universe exists for us, and our lives are eternal. This is a solely a problem for atheists, and perhaps some non-Christian religions.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:05 AM
because Christianity is a way out of the fact that our lives are brief and the universe is indifferent to them
That's a very common, but mistaken, understanding of faith. It's no accident that Ree talks about Kierkegaard, for whom the leap of faith is always about throwing oneself into the unknown: faith is precisely not having the guarantee that your belief will be vindicated. For Kierkegaard (and not just for him; he's just particularly good), the kind of comfort you describe isn't faith at all.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:11 AM
Right on, I think this is very true and something I've been wrestling with lately.
A quibble and a comment.
I think your quote from Ree is overly utilitarian - that religion provides a useful set of tools for dealing with calamity. I believe daily we encounter the unexplainable, the infinite in a multitude of ways. These are things that no coherent political ideology or philosophy of life or research agenda can ever erase or take away. Spiritual activity can be a way of connecting with the infinite.
It seems to me that the alienation of people like many of your readers from congregations might run deeper than politics. I have been turned off from several unitarian/universalist congregations because the sunday service seemed like mostly politics and social science - not what I'm looking for when I turn to religion. Not that religion can't inspire a more humanitarian politics, but I don't want that to be the first order connection.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:38 AM
I don't know if it's even fair to say that most liberals "have more doubt than belief."
Probably true for other religions as well, but certainly with regard to the Christian religion, most liberal positions probably conform with religious tenets more so than conservative ones.
Maybe religious liberals are less certain that they are right about all religious questions than the religious conservatives. But that is just another way of saying they are more intelligent.
That's besides the point -- what I mean to say is that there is nothing about being a liberal that should forestall a person from being devout, or vise versa. I think the fact that conservatives have tied themselves with the Christain religion is a result of cynical maneuvering, not anything systemic in the religion.
Posted by textualist | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:40 AM
Right, but whereas the atheist confronts the existential anxiety in question head-on, the questioning Christian confronts it only as an alternative to his belief. They're different modes. I will grant that quite possibly, though, the Christian's anxiety is worse, because he fears losing something.
But I also wonder now how incorrect my statements about faith were. They certainly were true for quite a number of my religious teachers in Arkansas. Not a questioning bunch, by and large. A lot of Christian people don't share K's perspective of absurdity; they see Christianity as a sure bet, for a variety of reasons. (sightings of angels, personal chit-chats with jesus, concrete evidence of angels and divine intervention, and the more "scientific" complexity of nature arguents)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:47 AM
public religiosity has a meaning in our culture that makes us uncomfortable.
Public religiosity should make everybody very uncomfortable. The last thousand years of history and literature ought to make that blindingly obvious. Patriotism isn't the last refuge of scoundrels, it's only the second to last, as Tom DeLay has been so aptly demonstrating.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 12:14 PM
I haven't read that much Kierkegaard, but I don't think it's fair to say of a Kierkegaardian Christianity that it doesn't confront the existential questions directly. An, if not the essential element, as I understand it, comes from belief that following the dictates of faith is absurd, and it should be followed because of, not in spite of that. If someone has faith of that kind, they don't seem to me to be dodging important questions. Wwhat I just wrote might be so vague as to be meaningless, so if someone who actually and read more than half of Fear and Trembling wants to correct me or elucidate, I'd appreciate it.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 12:51 PM
read more than half of Fear and Trembling
I know Fear and Trembling precedes Fear and Loathing by better than a century, but it still makes me chuckle.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Is there such a thing as a teleological suspension of the ethical?"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:02 PM
w/d, ex-before-last knows her Kierkegaard, I'll see if I can get her to comment (it's been ten years since I read any; it's really pathetic to no longer be expert in the one thing you were once expert in...).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:06 PM
cw, yeah, I almost skipped the Ree this time around because he's primarily addressing a more secular European audience, and trying to get them to stop being dismissive. That's not where we are. Still, it was well put, and his piece is really good.
textualist, also yeah, I'm not sure "more doubt than belief" was the right way to put it.
Michael, I have no doubt that most people practice a religion of "comfort," but I'm more interested in what it can be, at its best (as are you with your atheism, which can be denial just as easily it can be a direct confrontation...)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:17 PM
Part of that to which Max must have been referring is the fact that there is a vast array of Christian thought, much broader than those who haven't studied it (I haven't) realize, and that it's unlikely that 2000 years of work that uses its precepts as the frame within which the brightest and best made sense of life yields naught. I've heard a Protestant pastor tell me that one can be a Christian without believing in an historical Christ, an Episcopal Reverend claim that the Church must accept the Bible as simply instructive stories, and if there is a better synonym for "sophist" than "Jesuit," I don't know it. So I'm not sure that simplistic, singular definitions of what it means to be a Christian are what is at issue here.
In passing, I note that Graham Greene's Catholicism seems fairly bleak, a la what I remember of Fear and Trembling.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:22 PM
if there is a better synonym for "sophist" than "Jesuit,"
This I don't get. I did my philosophy MA at a Jesuit institution and I have a lot of respect for the Jesuits (hell, I'm not sure I shouldn't become a Jesuit).
But otherwise, you make a really good point; Christianity is vast and multifarious, but even so, not quite the point here.
(I remember a philosophy professor once telling a story about being on a radio program to debate an atheist. The prof asked him, "What don't you believe?" They guy said that he didn't believe in a man with a beard on a throne controlling our lives. "No significant thinker in the history of Western thought has believed that...")
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:31 PM
Ogged
1. It wasn't a shot at Jesuits; I don't know enough to be impressive in my ardor for them, but I am impressed by them. I meant something like, "Jesuits are sufficiently smarter and more subtle than you that, as with sophists, your puny brain will not be able to tell you if they are leading you down the One True Path or in some other direction."
2. I'm not sure what the Order's requirements are, but you seem to have mastered the celibacy part. I do like the idea of you as the Black Pope.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:40 PM
Ah, I always hear "sophist" as an insult.
Friend, to me, on the phone yesterday: "What's new? Nothing exciting? Have you gotten laid? Would that even count as exciting to you?"
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:44 PM
Ah, I always hear "sophist" as an insult.
Yeah, I should have been clearer on that. Usually you can count on fear of Wolfson to backstop your natural self on something like that. But he seems to have disappeared. It's too bad, too, because I saw Coupling the other day, and he's right, it's awful. In fact, on the basis of the 10 minutes I was able to bear watching, I herewith willingly disclaim and forfeit any Non-Creepy Blogcrush rights I may have had towards LB. I would have liked to have been able to say, "The Comm., Mr. Wolfson, is yours."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:53 PM
You watched the British coupling? And didn't like it? Which episode?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 1:56 PM
Yeah, the Brit version. I don't know which one - they stole part of the plot point from the Seinfeld in which George's girlfriend refuses to accept a break-up. In fact, that's the problem - it's an 8:30 mishmash of Friends and Seinfeld. The two don't mash easily, and each is better than this bastard child.
USA! USA! USA!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:01 PM
I'm crushed. But less so because SCMT is clearly unable to judge fine comedy.
Admittedly, I did watch most of Coupling in order from DVDs -- maybe the episodes don't work so well in isolation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:02 PM
I'm shocked. I can't watch Friends or Seinfeld, but Coupling always cracked me up.
LB doesn't seem to be around to defend it either.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:03 PM
This I don't get. I did my philosophy MA at a Jesuit institution and I have a lot of respect for the Jesuits (hell, I'm not sure I shouldn't become a Jesuit).
"Jesuit" also has the insulting meaning of "sophist" as a practictioner of the bad kind of sophistry—they have, or had, a reputation as logic-choppers and drawers of impossibly fine distinctions.
SCTM, I'm glad you agree w.r.t. Coupling, if it was in fact the British version you saw (I don't doubt the American version ain't that great either, but that would hardly be a surprise, now would it?). I haven't been around because I've been in sunny California, mostly away from computers. What's the "Comm."?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:04 PM
Uh, spoke too soon, obviously.
Yeah, I admit, I watched it with the ex, and I think it's funnier to couple-watch it than to watch it alone. I'm not sure it would make me laugh now.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:04 PM
Geez, suddenly they're all back.
I haven't heard "Jesuit=sophist" but I have heard "jesuitical=sophistical."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:05 PM
Jeebus, ogged, you didn't like Seinfeld? The finest situation comedy ever created? The only necessary justification for commercial television? Maybe you really do hate America.
Wolfson, are you out there checking out Stanford?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:12 PM
SCMT--it sounds like you saw the very first episode. It gets better. (Although I hate Seinfeld, so we may not have the same tastes.)
I think my favorite episode was "Split," which followed the two lead characters in split screen after they'd had a fight that looked like it might turn into a final break-up. I won't go so far as to say that there were any real insights into the divergence between male and female patterns of grieving in such situations, but the final minute of the episode had me crying with laughter. It's worth taking a second look.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:14 PM
Couldn't stand it, Timmy. Kramer did make me laugh sometimes.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:15 PM
"Split" is awesome.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:16 PM
Curb Your Enthusiasm, ogged?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:18 PM
There are maybe four comedies that are in/comprise the Pantheon of TV shows: Shelly Long's Cheers, early Simpsons, Seinfeld, and, of course, Phil Hartman's News Radio. Excepting Seinfeld, I defy you to tell me that you find fault with any/all of the above.
(This should really be the modern version of "Who Won the World Series," as a check for foreign allegience).
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:21 PM
I think I've seen two five-minute blocks of CYE. Too Seinfeldian for my taste, but I did see a rapper asking Larry David, over and over, "Are you my nigger?" and that was hilarious.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:21 PM
I've never seen News Radio, and we've established definitively that Seinfeld sucks, but the other two are great, yes.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:22 PM
Well, religion was good for about ten comments...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:24 PM
You should run, not walk, to wherever, and get copies of the first few seasons of News Radio. I probably quote that show at least once a week, and never ironically.
What didn't you like about Seinfeld?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:25 PM
I'm kind of 'eh' on News Radio. The Phil Hartman years were obviously much better than after he died. The other two were indeed awesome. I also quite liked Night Court during its first few years (however, I was in my pre-teens, so my standards were pretty low).
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:27 PM
Seinfeld: take a bit of social awkwardness, give it a funny name, repeat name at increasing volume.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:29 PM
Fordham? Georgetown? St Louis? Gonzaga? . . .
BTW, liberal Christian/Catholic bloggers have come roaring back since the election. There is a blogroll called the Progressive Christian Blogger Network and there's a ring called the Alliance for Progressive and Moderative Christians. Both were formed at about the same time and have quite a bit of overlap. But I have to say that in the past few months, I've found more likeminded religious bloggers through these links than I did in two prior years of blogging.
We're out there in force . . . naming and claiming. (To get to these rings, click on my name).
because we have more doubt than belief,
Maybe secular liberals, but there is a . . . load of religious liberals who wouldn't describe it as such. Also, the liberal problem may have to do with the inability for (Husserlian) "epoche," i.e, a subjective (not existential) suspension of belief while investigating truth. This way, absurdities don't intrude the existential path to belief, rather they remain mysteries to be fleshed out.
Posted by Ono | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:30 PM
Religion's a third rail, don't you think? I have a dificult time talking about religion because my views are sufficiently extreme as to be offensive to many (e.g. religion is the opiate of the masses, people should open their eyes and acknowledge that there is no God, etc.) and, since I acknowledge that people of sincere and honest faith can also be quite likable, intelligent and full of goodwill, I hesitate to express my views because I don't want to risk giving that offense.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:32 PM
I also have a 'dificult' time proofing my own writing, it seems.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:34 PM
Seinfeld: take a bit of social awkwardness, give it a funny name, repeat name at increasing volume.
As opposed to, "You know what I call a girl like that? Do you? Do You? 'Unflushable.'" Didn't you ever see the Edward Sissorhands/Marriage of Figaro episode? So great.
And Chopper, believe what you want, but you're still DAMNED TO HELL!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:38 PM
Yes, but Coupling didn't build entire shows around weak lines. Watch the second or third season on DVD; it's good.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:41 PM
Right.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:42 PM
Oh, and the final episode in the fourth season (and, the final episode for the show, it now seems) was quite affecting for me as an expectant father (at the time of first viewing).
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:43 PM
Even the first season of COupling is well worth it -- the funeral episode had me weeping.
On religious belief -- as an agnostic, I'm probably not the right person to opine on this, but I don't know that I can buy into the assumptions of this post. I may be misunderstanding you, but I'm geting the impression (shameless and unjustifiable caricature follows) that you're drawing a distinction between simple-minded, dogmatic believers who do bourgeois things like belong to particular denominations and actually go to church who are mostly conservatives, and intellectually questioning seekers who think deeply about their faith, or at least about their search for faith, as they sleep late on Sunday (Saturday, Friday) mornings and are mostly liberals.
If this is something like what you actually think, I don't think that it's particularly accurate -- left-wing religious people tend to be both more supportive of church-state separation, and more tolerant of non-believers and members of other sects than right-wing religious people, but I don't think that they're all that much less personally observant. More importantly from my own godless point of view, I think it's politicially very unhelpful. It seems to play right into that "Liberals are all nasty snobs who hate regular people because they think we're stupid" pattern that's been giving us so much trouble lately.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 2:58 PM
Hey, I'm anti-Seinfeld, pro-Coupling. I thought I was the only person who didn't like Seinfeld. It's the sort of thing I don't talk about, in the way some people don't talk about religion. In fact, I'm more willing to talk about my atheism than my dislike of Seinfeld.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:00 PM
Talking about why I don't like Seinfeld became easy once I realized why I don't like it--the situations are funny enough, but not one of the main characters is a likeable human being. They're all reprehensible.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:04 PM
And I'll always be pro-coupling.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:04 PM
Shelly Long's Cheers, early Simpsons, Seinfeld, and, of course, Phil Hartman's News Radio
I never got into Seinfeld and, though I only know them from re-runs, I've always found some of the middle years of Cheers (leading up to Long's departure) to be a bit depressing - but I put Newsradio near the top of all comedies I've seen. I think the early seasons are scheduled to come out on DVD this May.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:04 PM
I have a fondness for News Radio because Dave Foley is on it, but it's really a residual or reflected fondness for Kids in the Hall.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:08 PM
On religious belief
The distinction wasn't really my goal. I'm just trying to describe, a little bit, what belief is like for liberals. For example, some of my liberal friends are churchgoers, but it's not something they talk about; the talking about, rather than the going, is what I was pointing to.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 3:11 PM
re: the talking about, rather than the going.
There is a difference here, yes. It might be that most liberals either (a) respect differing views on religion, or (b) recognize that shrill recitation of doctrine -- without offering any justification -- is not persuasive. Perhaps to get to (b), you have to care about being persuasive, and not just belittling, so in that sense, (b) entails (a).
There is something else at work. The conservative religious issues are the easy ones. By that I mean (unless you happen to be gay) they are easy to comply with. Adopt our way of life. Get married. Don't take drugs. If you look at religion as simply absolving yourself of uncleanliness (which is where the conservatives have taken Christianity) then you get a basic set of acting principles that are fairly easy to adopt. What I mean by easy is: you can still be selfish and adopt them.
A basic reading of the gospels should demonstrate the problems with that take on Christianity. In fact, just read the sermon on the mount. Or don't. It isn't hard to see that Christianity is focused elsewhere. Anyway, I contend that liberals think it is focused elsewhere -- that helping other people is more important than absolving onself of sin.
The liberal take on Christianity is harder to live by. It opens up a host of questions that aren't really answerable -- how much is enough? How should I devote my life. We all have to take care of ourselves to a certain degree. Most of us aren't Mother Theresa. So it leaves a liberal Christian feeling a little guilty, a little unsure.
The conservative take on Christianity, because it is easier to fulfill, engenders smugness, self-satisfaction, the end of questioning. Don't you see -- the answer is right here in the book. Now depart and sin no more. Easy answers are easier to give. They come out faster, and you can feel very clever while giving them.
I have made obvious which take I prefer. My point is that I think the conservative take makes one more likely to talk about religion, and not for good reasons. I think you could argue that the conservative, though self-righteous (in a literal sense) is actually less devout.
Posted by textualist | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 4:03 PM
The Seinfeld characters weren't really reprehensible early on, once they'd built the audience a lot of the humor was derived from the cast just being dicks to each other or enjoying schadenfreude against one another. I'm sure that given its popularity you must hear this a lot, but it's really worthwhile giving the show another chance. Also, a lot of the endings in the middle seasons (3-5, or so) are just brilliant.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 4:10 PM
I've always been under the impression that a not insignificant fraction of the right wing christians who hold a views I find nutty on gay rights/evolution/abortion/whatever also contribute time and or money to charitable, poor helping, causes. Certainly some of this is missionary work which helps to spread their ideas, but doesn't it undermine the nice dichotomy textualist is trying to draw?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 4:18 PM
Yes, probably some conservatives also give to charities. Ok, there are also liberals who are fairly clean living. Damn. Let me try to salvage this.
There isn't an easy dichotomy. However, among the two groups, the conservatives are probably more focused on the clean living aspect of the religion, the liberals on the poor-helping.
It isn't that no or few conservatives give to charities, but that the religious issues they care about aren't about doing that. They care and are vocal about what I have called the easy issues. They vote on those issues. Otherwise, they wouldn't have voted for Bush; on the helping-poor issues, he does not hold up.
At least some of the conservative religious are solely concerned with the clean-living aspect of the religion, at least in practice. Some liberals are probably solely concerned with the poor helping. Then, as much as we are talking about group tendencies, it would follow that significantly more conservatives would adopt the smug attitude I described than liberals. Of course not all conservatives would adopt that attitude, but not all conservative religious talk up their religion to everyone they meet. We are talking about generalities here, which invariably make dichotomies seem crisper than they really are.
I liked Seinfeld.
Posted by textualist | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 5:39 PM
So, I told ex-before-last that her expertise in Kierkegaard was needed here. By way of explanation, you should know that she's a nut, and can't figure out how to comment. For your pure voyeuristic fun, here's what she emailed me (yes, I have permission...),
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 5:57 PM
I thought the deal was that anyone left of Al Gore worshipped a golden calf. Seriously, though, let me double down on the comments by washer-dryer and the ex. (she sounds great ogged! what was the problem?).
False dichotomy number 1: burdens of 'religion' and burdens of intense moral perfectionism. Well, it's not exactly a false dichotomy, but unless you have philsophical resources like Kierkegaard's it will be very hard to show how the "religious" perfectionist and the merely "ethical" perfectionist have substantially different interior lives. I think most approaches to ethics and religion have a hard time showing how these will be different.
False dichotomy #2: "right" vs. "left" religion.
I'm not, as it happens, a Catholic. No dog in that fight. but it boggles my mind to think that Catholic doctrine on sex would be considered "easy." No sex before marriage isn't "easy," no divorce isn't "easy." The major monotheisms aren't easy, they are transformative. If it's easy, you are doing it wrong.
On the larger point, moral smugness is not a property of left or right, it's just not. Rather, it's a property of people who do not 'inhabit the existential problems' -- and that, alas, is most of us most of the time.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 6:30 PM
baa -
I agree she sounds nice and smart and interesting. But liked Coupling, found Seinfeld tiresome - probably best that two such unstable personalities didn't tie their lives together.
Also, I don't I understand this, "it will be very hard to show how the "religious" perfectionist and the merely "ethical" perfectionist have substantially different interior lives." Aren't those lives going to be oriented toward, at least potentially, very different ends? Aren't they going to be asking different questions about the nature of a Good Life, and accept different answers from different sources?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 7:10 PM
baa -- fair point. No sex before marriage isn't easy in the way that tying your shoes is easy. But it is easy compared with, say, giving all your money to the poor and devoting your life to others, which is what the religion arguably demands.
There is also a tendency among the conservative religious to load the sins for which they are unlikely to be tempted with extra weight. Homosexual acts, which are decried in the bible far less often than adultery, are treated as far worse transgressions.
Hell of a basketball game.
Posted by textualist | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 10:19 PM
baa, can't you get anything right?
I thought the deal was that anyone left of Al Gore worshipped a golden calf.
The right worships the gold, the left worships the calf.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04- 4-05 11:54 PM
#10, my atheism. You're likely giving me too much credit, or, more accuratly, you're assuming I have more interest in the religion question than I really do. My interest-level in religion is at about the level of a crossword puzzle, I would say. Fun, for about 10min, then I'm done with it and don't think about it anymore until it gets put before me again. My questions for religion: 1) Empirical evidence that god exists? No. 2) Any evidence that, supposing he does exist, he cares if I care he exists? No. And 3) does it make a difference in my life whether or not I believe he exists? No. So I'm basically an atheist by default, because I have other things to think about or practice. I've spent more than enough of my life pondering religion while growing up.
I am, however, willing to engage the gospels (and Acts) because they're neat. Continuing in this direction, I'll see if I can help textualist out. The OT has a lot of condemnation and rules and is pretty strict about things. Big punishments if you mess up, too. The NT has a lot about forgiveness, tolerance, and living with your community.
From that quick oversimplification, one can say that you don't hear much about the NT from the loud mouth-breathers who set themselves up as the voice of the religious right. Or, even while conservative politicians talk about poverty and growing communities, their actions, in liberal eyes, aren't up to snuff.
Instead, we hear a lot of talk about "morality," and being moral. These guys (and not just them, but some students I've met on campus) could giving a running leap about the conditions of poverty. They're focus is on "souls," not material conditions (except their own). And they *really* like assigning blame.
I doubt that what I'm describing is good conservative Christianity. But it has become the face of Conservative Christianity. I think the best answer would be for liberal and conservative Christians to work together, emphasize their common ground, and tell these extremists to shut up and sit down.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04- 5-05 12:33 AM
And how can you list top TV shows and neglect Northern Exposure? I was a little young at the time, but, fond emotional memories.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04- 5-05 12:35 AM
Morning all. Im really sorry I missed this (I need new sleep patterns, evidently).
So. Late but FWIW:
I am an Anglican living in a Catholic country, with a Catholic family. I came to religion as a result of realising that atheism was (for me) untenable. I would guess that after reading in as many religions as possible, the influence that brought me to christianity would have been Graham Greene's "The Power and The Glory" (One of the central themes of the novel is the sin of complacency), coupled with my innate liberal take on life.
Which is where we get to be on topic.
What bothers me most is certainty. For me it was a very painful admission to have to make that the only justification I have for believing is at best a combination of the recognition that there has to have been a creator of some kind (not a valid scientific standpoint - but a massive suspiscion) and a WISH for the central tenets of the gospels to be true. I have no proof. No objective certainty of any kind. Faith is precisely that.
faith is precisely not having the guarantee that your belief will be vindicated. covers that nicely.
This leads to all kinds of dichotomies: I get angry, very angry, with God. I have a really hard time accepting doctrine. I find it so very hard to evangelise simply because faith is such a damn personal experience. I am fascinated by other religions, other interpretations of the same problems and can do no better than to say: " I find your faith truly fascinating and in many instances beautiful, but at bottom it does not work for me. I can tell you why, but I can prove nothing"
It is this innate liberalism that makes it so hard to stomach the certainties of the religious right. The notion that we should seek to legislate against otherness on arguments founded on religion is repulsive. Seems to me that the only thing a Christian should be able to say with any certainty is that IF the gospel is true, then we have to behave with respect, tolerance and love towards each other. No other statement stands up. Therefore, refusing to fulfill BCP prescriptions on religious grounds etc. stands in such contradistiction to the basic tenets of faith as to be surely offensive to the very God those doing the refusing claim to serve.
And it is here that I find I become usefully angry.
If one is going to adopt a set of principles based on a faith that (however strong, however inspiring) can only be a personal and subjective wish for the shape of truth to be just so then one needs to be very careful about imposing those beliefs on others. You guys have a constitution full of statements about that kind of behaviour.
So I guess I'm with Ogged:
But it's not a bad time to come out of that particular closet; to take some of the language of faith back from the undoubting crazies, and to restore a bit of what's humane to religion itself.
That said: If a church is unable to wag a finger or shout from the rooftops that things are wrong, does it have a function? Probably, but it is then reduced to the state most politicians would want to see it in: compliant and silent.
IF, however, it is going to wag a finger. Who decides when and on which issues? Turning religious discussion into a proxy for left/ right political battles harbours real dangers for faith itself.
Seinfeld was just puzzling. But then I watched it in German.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 04- 5-05 1:47 AM
Jim Wallis' new book seems relevant to your post, if not to this discussion. (the weekly standard review was all I turned up quickly)
I attended a jesuit high school and I really loved the experience, including several fabulous jesuit teachers and several excellent religion classes (that I was required to take, though I've never been a catholic). I saw the sophist side my last semester, however, when our religion class became "here's our brief response to every religious or existential quandary, in three sentences or less. now memorize".
Now ogged as a jesuit, there's an idea. If double ex thinks it's plausible, I'm all for it. They'd let you keep tthe weblog, I think. Other potential problems? Same clothes every day, no problem. Vow of celibacy, pretty much there already. Vow of poverty, hmmm... I guess we're back to textualists challenge of a life like christ.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 04- 5-05 8:42 AM
Can sympathize with Rhee on means to persuade disinterested Euros (also sympathizing with the non-Seinfeld camp out there). When I've got an audience like that, I usually ask what Martin Luther King's first title (i.e., not Dr.) was. That usually gets us past the "no proper role for religion in politics" position pretty quickly, because let's face it: no organizing through black churches (and liberal white churches), no civil rights revolution in the US.
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 04- 5-05 9:01 AM