Love Thy Theological Enemies

In the third chapter of his book, Victorian Religious Revivals (Oxford, 2012), author David Bebbington describes and analyzes an 1841 evangelical revival that took place in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas.  In his analysis of the event, Bebbington describes four groups who posed threats to the revival.  They were the denizens of frontier Texas' rough, almost crude local culture, freethinkers, and two other groups of evangelicals—anti-missionary Baptists and rationalist Campbellites.  The first two groups are hardly surprising.  The last two are.  The revival itself was promoted by moderate, revivalistic Baptists supported by Methodists.  The anti-missionary Baptists did not hold with such things as revivals because there is no record of them in the Bible.  The Campbellites didn't like the revivalistic emphasis on emotion and experience.

From Bebbington's commentary, it is evident that the revival itself found at least part of its identity in this opposition by non-religious and other religious elements.  What it was against was important.  It was against the hard-edges of frontier society, anti-religious thinking, and two other forms of the faith.  One form didn't allow for active revivalism.  The other form didn't value religious experience as being key to one's salvation.

It is not a new thought, but perhaps we don't think often enough about how important our theological "enemies" are to us in the formation of our own identity.  This is certainly true for those of us who embrace the label of "progressive Christianity."  Conservative evangelicals, especially of the literalist persuasion, as well as the so-called new atheists are both important to our own identity.  It is important to us that we are not like them in certain specific ways.  We are not biblical or scientific literalists.  We reject their rigid dualisms.

In this context, Jesus' injunction to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44) makes a whole lot of sense.  We take our identity from our theological enemies.  In what they are, we butt up against the boundaries of our own self-understanding.  We need them to be "them," and we need them to be "not-us."  It is worth considering that "when the Kingdom comes" they will be in it too.  The difference between then and now is that then we will be able to pray humble, sincere prayers for "them" and actually love them for what they are—understanding that what they are is important to us.  Amen.

The Decline of the "New Atheism"?

Atheist Richard Dawkins with comedian Ariane Sherine

In an opinion posting entitled, "The Future is Not Looking so 'Bright' for Atheism," theologian Alistar McGrath argues that the so-called "new atheism" is largely a bust when it comes to numbers of adherents.  The actual number of new atheists, whether in Britain or here in the U.S., was never large to start with and is on the decline.  He seems to feel that it was more of a media phenomenon than anything else, and the media has grown weary of it. McGrath observes, "But now its freshness has worn off. Its breezy slogans now seem stale and weary. Soundbites that once sparkled are now dull through endless repetition. Its routine denunciations of religion are becoming more than a little tiresome."  In the course of his commentary, McGrath cites a much longer critical analysis of the new atheism entitled, "Believe It or Not," by David B. Hart, which was posted in 2010.  Branching a little further afield, my good friend Philip Hughes notes (here) that so far as Australia is concerned there is no evidence that the new atheism has had any measurable impact on people's thinking about God in spite of the fact that belief in God has long been on the decline in Australia.

To the extent that the so-called "new atheism" is in decline, that is not a bad thing.  Their discourse has been so largely angry, dismissive, and superficial that they are hard to take seriously, and as I've mentioned more than once in Rom Phra Khun the new atheists in many ways are a mirror image of their arch-enemy, religious fundamentalism.  This is not to dismiss the growing importance of "non-theism" as a faith choice.  It is also not to dismiss the importance of finding ways to engage in thoughtful, mutually beneficial  dialogue with those who do not consider themselves theists.  It is to say that it is a waste of time to try to dialogue with fundamentalists be they of the theistic or the atheistic varieties.  We should be thankful, I suppose, that atheistic fundamentalism is but a weak caricature of the far more potent and dangerous religious fundamentalism.

Woe Is Us

A recent news item on the Huffington Post (here), reports on the views of Rep. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, namely that, "the greatest minority under assault today are Christians. No doubt about it."  The posting, unfortunately, doesn't give more details about Scott's statement, only associating it with claims made by Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich has accused "the media" of ignoring what he terms, "anti-Christian bigotry," which he claims is much worse in the U.S. today than is Christian bigotry against others.

While there is no question that militant "new atheism" and others have been grabbing headlines with their anti-religion campaigns, the massive presence of organized religion and especially organized Christianity in the U.S. makes it impossible to take Scott and Gingrich seriously on this matter.  The Christian Right's zealous anti-abortion and anti-gay movements dwarf the efforts of the atheist folks, as does the considerable political clout of the Christian Right.  Even though most denominations in the U.S., including evangelical ones, are seeing decline in their numbers and the number of "unchurched" continues to grow, it will be a long time before Christians can seriously consider themselves a minority by any meaningful definition of the term.  Scott's sentiments are especially hard to take seriously considering where he hails from, the heart of the heart of the Bible belt, where evangelicalism is an unofficial "established religion."

It's "nice" of Scott and Gingrich to be worried about us (Christians), but what would seem to be more expressive of Christ himself would be a greater concern for the growing numbers of displaced and poor Americans for whom low income is far more oppressive than anything we Christians are experiencing.  Gingrich's rhetoric about the poor ("take a bath, get a job") seems especially wide of the mark given the economic realities we're facing today.  And, finally, historically Christians have sometimes even welcomed persecution because it is in such times that for some reason the church has best been able to share its message.

The New Kinda–Kinda Not Atheists

They loudly, sometimes angrily, and frequently call themselves the "new atheists," and their voices have become a persistent buzz in the public media.  They insist that they do not believe in God, which they habitually spell with a small "g", or any other divine beings.  Yet, from time to time, one hears from them a whisper of something else—in, for example, a PBS interview with one of the gurus of new atheism, Richard Dawkins (here).  In that interview he was asked, "Why do you think that in an age of science so many people, even in the West, and particularly in America, continue to believe in religion?"  Dawkins responded:

"I don't understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did. You'd have to ask them. I know that in some cases what they mean by God is very different from what the ordinary people that they talk to think they mean by God. There are physicists who are deeply awed, as I am, by the majesty of the universe, by the mystery of origins -- the origins of the laws of physics, the fundamental constants of physics, and who are moved by this to say there is something so mysterious that it is almost like God, and maybe use the metaphor of God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that's fine. I mean, that's just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe."

Other new atheist authors occasionally avow feelings of awe and mystery in the face of nature and the universe.  They tip toe up to the edge of admitting that there is a "something" out there that is the source of this mystery that lies "at the base of the universe."  Were it not for the way "ordinary people" think about God, Dawkins might even be willing to say that he thinks that there is a something that we might use the word God to describe.  But, in the face of what he considers to be the superstitious beliefs of "ordinary people," he refrains because he doesn't want to associate his views of this mysterious basis of the universe with their unacceptable beliefs. When, furthermore, we read the new atheist literature, what we find is that the "God" they reject is the narrowly constructed God of fundamentalism and biblical literalism.  They heap scorn on this little God who is narrow-minded, violent, judgmental, and damns otherwise innocent unbelievers to eternal hell-fire.  This "God" inspires injustice and prejudice as well as out and out violence in "his" believers who among other things reject the findings of science when they don't accord with their superstitions.  That's fine.  Lots of committed people of faith agree with their assessment of narrow-minded theisms.

So, when they aren't carefully distancing themselves from superstitious forms of theism, do at least some of the new atheists think it possible there is a God, a "something" that lies "at the basis of the universe"?  Yes, some of them apparently do.  Do they thus believe in God?  It all depends on what one means by "believe" and "God."  If God is a mystery at the base of the universe and belief means intellectual agreement to a proposition, then, apparently, "yes" again.  Some of them do "believe" in "God".  They are almost but not quite atheists.  If by "believe," however, we mean trust in God, then "no" they are not theists but atheists.  So, it looks as though they are kinda—kinda not atheists.

The "Truthiness of Religion" (II)

(Continued from "The 'Truthiness of Religion' (I)" below).

Shaun McGonigal entitled his 2009 posting on the relationship of religion to the truth, "Truthiness of religion" with good reason.  From his perspective, religion very much fits the definition of "truthiness," which is "a 'truth' that a person claims to know intuitively 'from the gut' without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts." (source).  For that is exactly what the so-called "truths" of religion derive from: beliefs built out of "a general psychological disposition" toward the sensation of transcendence, which is nothing more than a personal experience.  He identifies religion with a larger class of creative states of mind that includes a sense of beauty and such artistic endeavors as poetry.

McGonigal then distinguishes between two states of mind, the first this creative one and the second a critical or analytical state of mind.  Only the second state leads to truth.  He appreciates creativity but insists that it does not lead us to truth.  Truth, what is real, can be discovered (not created) only by the employment of meticulous empirical methods that severely tests ideas in order to prove them wrong if possible.  Creative powers can only tangentially contribute to this process, if at all, but "once we have the idea we must switch to using our learned critical skills to test the idea.  We cannot just dream and create answers to real world problems, we have to criticize them."

This is helpful.  It gets at what seems to be the fundamental difference between people of Christian faith and self-identified "new atheists" such as McGonigal.  (I should be clear here that by "people of Christian faith" I mean those of us who are not biblical literalists. Literalists tend to think about faith in absolutist terms generally parallel to the new atheists).  McGonigal believes that physical reality is reality.  Anything pertaining to the emotions or the a-rational is not real, not true.  Only physical realities can be true.  As Christian theists, we believe, instead, that creativity, inspiration, and our feelings are important sources of truth.  We worship God as one who is essentially (as best we can understand these things)—who is essentially creative, the Creator.  We put our ultimate trust in the love of God we see in Christ.  We believe that justice is a real thing.  We learn important truths in our service of others.  Prayer has the power to change us.  Worship has the power to move us.  Reality, that is, is not defined only by the cold, hard facts of science—which are proving to be not so cold and hard, but surprisingly pliable especially in the quantum world of the infinitely small.

Why would we choose to be theists?  Why do we put our trust in things that seem so intangible and that we cannot prove by a critical empirical method?  Let me save the answer to these questions for the next posting.  For this one, it is sufficient for us to realize that we believe in a much more textured and, frankly, a richer reality than does our friend Shaun.  While we understand the limitations of creativity, inspiration, the arts, and religious faith, we still put our ultimate trust in the God we are convinced is revealed to us in these things.  Amen.