So, What is Wrong with Liberal Religion?

4/10/2010 ¢â‚¬”In my last blog entry (see below), I asked whether the kind of liberal religion evinced by Jon Meacham in a recent book review is sustainable in the long run. I answered, no.

But there is another issue here. I often find myself criticizing efforts like those of Meacham. Yet I wrote plainly in Hallowed Secularism that I had no problem with liberal religion, that I practiced it myself for years, and that I was supportive of people who managed to stay in our religions, even though eventually I felt I had to leave.

It is obvious that I do think there is something wrong with liberal religion. And the problem with it cannot really be that it is destined to fade away, which is what Mark Lilla wrote in his book, The Stillborn God. Certainly I am in no position to criticize that. Hallowed Secularism, my position, does not even exist yet.

I think what bothers me about liberal religion ¢â‚¬”that is, people who don ¢â‚¬â„¢t really believe in the supernatural claims of a religious tradition but who go on attending and practicing more or less as if nothing had changed ¢â‚¬”is that are blocking the future. Meacham apparently attends church and continuously translates what is being said there into some sort of acceptable alternative. Or, worse, he just lets it all wash over him as what he calls a mystery even though he does not accept what is being claimed. That is not a sustaining way of life. Religion must be a full, passionate commitment, including the viscera, as William Connolly puts it in Why I am Not a Secularist. Religion must include the nonrational elements of awe, wonder and worship. Religion must be something worth dying for.

Some atheists would say that this is precisely why we should not have religion. Suicide bombers have something worth dying for. That is the problem.

But a human life of tepid materialism, which is what New York Times columnist David Brooks said is great, in an April 5 column (he wrote,  ¢â‚¬Å“Educated Americans grow up in a culture of moral materialism ¢â‚¬  and he meant it as a compliment) is not a life. It will be rejected by the young eventually. It is not how America was founded. We were not a Christian nation, but we were a nation founded on a powerful truth about human freedom, a truth our founders thought worth dying for.

I admit that I do not yet foresee this new way of life that replaces religion in a way that is humanly satisfying. But, liberal religion is not it and currently siphons off energy and intelligence that should be devoted to helping us find a way into the future. That is what is wrong with liberal religion.

http://www.hallowedsecularism.org/2010/04/so-what-is-wrong-with-liberal-religion.html

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Will Jon Meacham ¢â‚¬â„¢s religion last?

4/7/2010 ¢â‚¬”I predict that Jon Meacham ¢â‚¬â„¢s religion will not last. Meachum is a liberal Episcopalian who writes of his religion and family,  ¢â‚¬Å“I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously (if unemotionally), and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church. ¢â‚¬  He writes this in the New York Times Sunday book review, reviewing Diarmaid MacCulloch ¢â‚¬â„¢s book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (review here). Of MacCulloch, Meacham writes that  ¢â‚¬Å“I sense a kind of kinship ¢â‚¬ . But Diarmaid is not a Christian. He writes of himself, as Meacham notes, “‘I would now describe myself as a candid friend of Christianity. I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence, and I appreciate the solemnity of religious liturgy as a way of confronting these problems. ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬â„¢

Now, on one level, it is easy to say that Meacham ¢â‚¬â„¢s religion will not last. Nothing lasts. Everyone ¢â‚¬â„¢s children, or their children, or the children of their children, turn away from something that you and I find very important. So I guess I mean more than that. I mean that Meacham ¢â‚¬â„¢s young children will themselves probably turn away from his contorted Episcopalianism. At least my children did from my equally fraught Judaism.

The problem is that Christianity is supernatural. Not in its detail, but at its heart. In the very liberal Religion Dispatches yesterday, I was a little surprised to find this statement by Rev. C. Joshua Villines about what Christians believe:  ¢â‚¬Å“Christians are people who believe in a divine reality, one beyond the material world perceived by our five senses. We believe that there is more to life than what we can control or understand. We believe that there is something beyond our comprehension, and that  ¢â‚¬Å“something ¢â‚¬  is conscious, vital, wise, and loving in a way that is not limited by space or time. While Christians might have different perspectives on the value of the experiences and content of the material world, we are united in our belief that there is more. ¢â‚¬ 

I was only surprised because in such a liberal magazine, I would have expected an acknowledgment that some people who call themselves  ¢â‚¬Å“Christians ¢â‚¬  would have a hard time calling this reality  ¢â‚¬Å“conscious ¢â‚¬ . Once you do that, using the word  ¢â‚¬Å“something ¢â‚¬  is irrelevant. This is the biblical supernatural God.

And belief in this God, who could control the natural forces in the world, is the crucial stopping point for people like me and, perhaps, like Meacham. Without it, though, the kids don ¢â‚¬â„¢t stay in the religion.

The next question is, why write about this? I said in the book Hallowed Secularism, that I had nothing against liberal religion even though I could not sustain it for myself. Yet I find myself often writing against it, as here. Next blog I will take up the question of why that might be.

http://www.hallowedsecularism.org/2010/04/will-jon-meachams-religion-last.html

BRUCE LEDEWITZ

Author of Hallowed Secularism: Theory, Practice, Belief (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) and American Religious Democracy: Coming to Terms with the End of Secular Politics (Praeger 2007)

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An Australian Blog on this theme –
http://churchrewired.org/progressive-christianity.html