A happy New Year to all. Please join me in saying “twenty-ten” and not “two-thousand and ten”.
An annoying op-ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times: The Fact of the Matter. Or Not. Arbitrator Barry Goldman worries that we are “becoming a nation of fruitcakes”. The alarmingly under-informed Goldman frets:
A new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life concludes: “Large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices, mixing elements of diverse traditions. Many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects. And sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups say they have experienced supernatural phenomena, such as being in touch with the dead or with ghosts.”
What is striking about the Pew study is not the prevalence of superstition and hocus-pocus, alarming as that is. It is the feeling that we are free to choose from a broad, cafeteria-style menu of superstitious hocus-pocus. Charles Blow in the New York Times called it the construction of “Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities.”
Christians, for example, do not believe in reincarnation. At least not according to theology classes in the seminaries. But the population likes the idea. And people like the idea of being Christians too. So they just choose to believe in both.
Plenty of Christians have believed in reincarnation over the centuries; a belief in the transmigration of souls from body to body wasn’t officially condemned by the church until the sixth-century A.D. Though the majority of early church fathers rejected reincarnation, some early Christians (like the Gnostic Valentinus) did teach the doctrine. As late as the sixteenth century, astrology was regularly practiced by the popes; a great many scholars consider the Magi (the wise men who come to the infant Jesus) to have been astrologers. The point is that what is taught in the theology classes Goldman evidently hasn’t taken has been refined and developed and changed over centuries, through church councils and confessions of faith written and rewritten again and again.
Faith, as any historian of religion, evolves. When earnest young evangelicals start “house churches” because they imagine that they can somehow go back to the way that Christianity was practiced 18 centuries ago, they fail to see that the very texts they will use in worship and the presuppositions they will bring to their interpretation of those texts are inescapably modern. Many churches have come to permit divorce, ordain women, and celebrate same-sex unions — innovations in the sense that they have not always been traditional practices, but to a growing number of theologians, not inconsistent with either biblical doctrine or the Holy Spirit that animates our understanding of God’s will for our lives. Astrology and reincarnation are certainly not consistent with the more recent traditions of the Church — but on many fronts, those traditions are doing what they have always done, which is change.
Goldman is worried that we are moving towards a world where an increasing number of people think irrationally, ignoring evidence if it interferes wth their own assumptions about the world. This is hardly a new concern, and to the extent that it reflects the failure of our schools to teach critical thinking, I share his anxiety. But as Robert Bellah pointed out so brilliantly a quarter-century ago in his Habits of the Heart, this American tendency to fuse together various traditions in new (and highly individualistic) ways is as old as our republic, if not older. Transcendentalism, which is now seen as both thoroughly American and exceedingly reputable in all but the most troglodytic circles, was condemned and mocked a century and a half ago in far harsher language than that Goldman employs. Emerson, Thoreau and his group mixed everyone from Swedenborg to Kant to Hindu Vedic philosophers — a scandalous mishmash at the time, but now a dignified and celebrated part of our national intellectual inheritage. Would Goldman call Ralph Waldo Emerson a fruitcake? Perhaps.
The loss of loyalty to established churches is not cause for regret, I think. In America, so many of our traditional denominations had their roots in ethnic exceptionalism: the Lutherans were German and Scandinavian, the Presbyterians were Scots, the Catholics Irish or Polish or Italian or Hispanic, the Greek Orthodox were, well, mostly Greek. Just as we’ve happily intermarried and mingled traditions gloriously, so that Christmas trees and menorahs shine in the same households, we’ve also found less and less need to stay within the narrow confines of the institutional affiliations which were comforting to our ancestors. And so we dabble and fuse and explore, taking a bit of this and a bit of that, doing what the church has always done. What could be more “fruitcake” than to give and receive said fruitcake on what is supposed to be the birthday of Christ, but is really the birthday of a pagan sun god? What could be more ‘fruitcake” than to celebrate His resurrection from the dead with rabbits and eggs, on a day named after a pagan Goddess?
One of my favorite bible passages is one of the most perplexing to those who believe that the traditional canons of Scripture are the final word:
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you” (John 16: 12-14)
When progressive Christians say “God is still speaking new things”, we rely often on this magnificent passage. And though on Pentecost the Spirit came to many at once, in later times the Spirit often seems to come to folks when they are alone. I don’t fear a world where Christians get their “charts done”. I may have a doctorate in religious history, but I fear more a world where folks with academic and divinity degrees deny that orthodoxy itself is always evolving, as the Spirit continues to tell us what we once could not bear to hear.
A good answer to that, very good indeed. I am especially glad that you mentioned critical thinking, even while diversity of non-scientifically-proven this and that is respected.
Speaking of progressive, and I don’t know whether this would count as a thread derailment or not, but I just read on Making Light that Mary Daly is dead. While I found much of her later stuff questionable at the very least, “Beyond God the Father” was invaluable when I got hold of it in 1975. It helped me put into words what I was feeling, about the problems some have with gendering a deity.
The offensive message that I take away from Goldman’s article is that religion should be left to the experts. He uses science as an analogy, but weren’t many of the great scientific innovators of the 18th-19th centuries talented amateurs, rather than members of big corporations or universities? Darwin, for instance…a “gentleman scientist”. Or Mendel with his pea plants, discovering the principles of heredity.
Religion is always changing; today’s syncretism is tomorrow’s tradition, as you point out. That said, Goldman is trying (in an unskillful and muddled way) to call attention to the real problem of shallow “dabbling” in spirituality and incoherent mixing and matching of beliefs — which can happen within as well as across denominational borders.
I don’t care so much whether some of my beliefs come from Christianity and some from Buddhism, but I do care whether they’re well-thought-out, not contradictory of each other, and chosen because I think they’re true and not merely for sentimental reasons. It’s about self-examination, because my beliefs will have an effect on the kind of person I become and how I treat others.
He didn’t mention this explicitly in the article, but I bet people who fear “fruitcakes” often worry about the possible loss of values as much as anything else. As in – if we’re all free to choose what we please from various faiths, then we might end up leaving out the rules that require us to be good. In my own underinformed opinion, this isn’t as big a potential problem as it seems. Even dogmatic religious people slip and slide on those rules, while people who throw out the traditional creation story or whatever aren’t so quick to discard “thou shalt not steal.” Morality doesn’t necessarily follow from religious practice or lack thereof.
Besides fearing loss of morality, people also fear loss of community – something he did discuss. I agree with your response. Communities are constantly changing. They always have. If someone tries to keep a community artificially static, then it grows irrelevant and either dies or revolutionizes itself to fill people’s real needs. As this happens, there are gloomy people like Goldman predicting the demise of civilization because – surprise – the world is moving on from the moment in time he perceived as a golden age.
Just to go off topic, this post reminded me of a couple things I’ve read about the Catholic church recently. Awkwardly, they’re trying to hold themselves as static as possible while also attempting to recruit more members, especially young ones. I can see why they don’t want to jump into acknowledging LGBTQ rights, give up the abortion issue, or ordain women – not that I sympathize – but I’m skeptical about the appeal of this relatively non-fruitcakey religion to people growing up in the 21st century.
There will always be an appeal in a consistent body of theology and moral reasoning. Even many Catholics who don’t agree with the whole teaching of the Church (raises hand) find a systematic and uncompromising approach more appealing than (say) having a church whose theology varies with the whim and personality of the pastor, or going the unchurched route and just deciding everything for ourselves.
Does that appeal to young people? Not often, not at first – but young people do not stay young.
As someone whose house contains both a menorah and a Christmas tree at this very moment, I sympathize with what you are saying. But I think this Goldman dude has a point too. I see two limits to the current mania for syncretism. One is logic: for instance, this-worldly reincarnation is obviously incompatible with the traditional Christian view of the afterlife (which involves an other-worldly Heaven and Hell). The other rests in the fact that, if religions don’t offer anything different, they don’t offer anything at all. If all the religions of the world swapped ideas until the merged into one, what would that one religion be like? A vague mass of platitudes, not worth getting excited about, I should think.
I think that this is not just about concern for combining aspects of different faiths and practices into one’s own life and journey……although clergymen in my own community encourage me and others to find as much of what we need as we can in our own wisdom tradition because, they say, it’s all there.
I think part of this is about the fact that in addition to a lot of genuine opportunites for spiritual life and development…..there’s a lot of junk science and woo woo nonsense out there, particularly in this town. And there’s often a fine line between the two. You could say that if woo woo is working for you than it has merit but there are those who would argue that point too…….and it sounds like this guy is one fo them.
I don’t believe in it, but I don’t really see reincarnation as incompatible to Christianity for that reason. In religions where it’s actually dogma, I’m pretty sure the point of reincarnation is, as the Indigo Girls put it, for your soul to get it right. The point of it is to move on and get to a higher plane eventually, not dilly dally on earth forever and aye.
I’ll reiterate the point that even rigid orthodoxies are arrived at through trial and error (or, if you’re really ultra religious, through the guidance of the spirit). Athanasius barely beat Arius; Augustine had to beat Pelagius; the Calvinists had to reject Arminius and so forth — the history of any organized religion is the history of how orthodoxy prevails, either by narrow votes in ecumenical councils or through rabbinical decrees or through bloodshed, over a minority view. And all some folks are doin’ now is revisiting some of those minority views. Scripture might be inerrant, but was the Council of Chalcedon? Not so sure.
As for the point about religions blending together to be indistinguishable; your life (and mine), Lester, bears witness that we can blend multiple truths together without forgetting the distinctives of our heritage. It’s like race — intermarriage means an end to one sense of identity, but a marvelous and hardly unappealing New Thing.
I’m laughing at this. Thanks, Hugo. For someone who is completely agnostic (I have no idea whether there is/are (a) god(s) or not and I do not believe that any definitive claim on that account can be proven by anyone) and for whom you theists are all effectively “fruitcakes”, it’s pretty funny to see an argument about the “facts of the matter” regarding religious beliefs, almost like hearing one of those very passionate and earnest arguments that children have over who would win in a fight between Superman and the Incredible Hulk.
On the merits, though, I’d have to definitely say that I’m glad that this country is as freewheeling and anti-establishment with regards to religious matters as it is and I question what Mr. Goldman believes is lost by that. It seems that he bemoans an absence of some sort of epistemological consensus (note his shift without pause or irony from religion to science) and he seems to confuse consensus with an understanding of “the facts”. He also ignores the fact that religious consensuses in particular have traditionally been quite hostile to contrary opinions, including those based solidly and entirely on facts (see e.g. Galileo Galilei). I also found this paean to orthodoxy particularly ironic given that, based on his name and the anecdote with which he opened, I assume that Mr. Goldman is probably of a Jewish background and the Jewish people have been the Western world’s most notable and perennial historical victims of intolerance for heterodox religious views. It’s probably best for religion anyway to allow a flourishing of diverse opinions, based on, for example, a comparison of extraordinarily religious America to very nearly post-religious Europe, the Europeans having burned out on established churches and their mischief. It’s probably best for everyone in general that not too much power and deference be left to “the guys in the seminaries”, as it’s very often proven too great a temptation to them to abuse it to horrifying ends.
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