From the people who gave us Aquinas: Dumb-as-a-post mediocrity

Andrew Sullivan writes the blog The Daily Dish for The Atlantic magazine. Sullivan is British by birth, gay, HIV+, politically conservative, and Roman Catholic. In short, he is a very interesting person. He is also very intelligent and writes a fine blog. Sullivan is a committed Christian first and Catholic second. He is very aware of Catholicism’s shortcomings and does not hesitate to expose them.

Here he provides excerpts from a public debate in London of the question, “Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?” It opens with a mind-numbingly dull affirmation from Nigerian Archbishop John Onaiyekan. This is followed by a jolting onslaught from world-renowned journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens. Sullivan sees this battle of unequals as a direct consequence of the Vatican’s policy of elevating of obedient yes-men to leadership positions.

You can forgive the pro-Catholic side for losing the debate…. What you cannot forgive is the sheer intellectual shallowness of the defense. Just listen to the small speech above, I mean: really, this is the best we've got?

In Onaiyekan, you have a classic Benedict/JP II Archbishop: dumb as a post, sheltered from the actual debate in the West, incapable of argument, and pathetic as a spokesman. The problem with the theoconservative take-over in the Catholic priesthood is not so much its extremism as its mediocrity. And it is mediocre because it has been trained not to think, not to argue, and not to engage the modern world. It has been trained solely for obedience - blind, dumb, unquestioning, intellectually moribund obedience.

The audacity of compassion (Sunday Reflections for November 8, 2009)

On Thursday, November 12, a document called the “Charter for Compassion” will be published. It is the brainchild of British religion scholar and popular author and speaker Karen Armstrong. She presented her vision for the charter in a February 2008 speech accepting a TED Prize for her work. Since then, thousands of people from around the world have contributed their ideas. These in turn have been processed by a group of international religious leaders to create the Charter’s text.

The Charter is a call for the members of all religions and philosophies to commit themselves to the ancient, global principle of human relationships commonly known as the Golden Rule. One of the oldest known versions of it is attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius in the 5th century BCE: “Do not do to others what you would not have others do to you.” It is phrased in various ways in the gospels, one of which is in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 where Jesus says,” Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

From Jewish tradition Armstrong recounts a story of the famous Rabbi Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus. A pagan comes to him and says he will convert to Judaism if the rabbi can summarize all of Jewish teaching while standing on one leg. Accepting the challenge, Rabbi Hillel says, “That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.” Similar statements are found in all the world’s major religions.

In making this gambit, Armstrong is making a bold and strategic move. She is attempting little less than reframing and refocusing world religion.

Armstrong grew up in an Irish Catholic family and became a nun in her late teens. She left the order and the church seven years later as a result of a combination of physical, emotional and spiritual crises. She intended to become a scholar of English literature but instead found herself doing television documentaries about religion. A work-related trip to Jerusalem caused her to revalue the role of religion and to see their common message as far more important than their individual differences.

The main thrust of Armstrong’s mission is to return (in her view) to the ancient understanding of religion as a way of living rather than as a collection of ideas to be believed. In her recently published book The Case for God, Armstrong writes:

Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible.

Armstrong correctly notes that both the words “faith” and “belief” originally meant trust and commitment (Latin credo), rather than acceptance of ideas. Christian theology has always been wordy and concerned with getting ideas about Jesus and God right. Yet this was originally motivated by a need to support the church’s worship and liturgy. Orthodoxy literally means “right praise.”

With the Reformation and Enlightenment periods, however, that connection was largely lost. Being orthodox came to mean having the right ideas and doctrines. The invention of the printing press resulted in enormous quantities of theological writing, poured over and endlessly debated by clergy and laity alike. Bibles could now be studied and interpreted by every literate person. There began an obsession with studying and analyzing Christianity’s doctrinal “trees” while losing sight of its gospel “forest.”

In doing so, of course, theologians were paralleling what was going on in the new fields of science. Truth was in the details, scientists said, whether the very small (cells and atoms) or the very distant (stars and galaxies). Christian theology raced to keep up, accepting that the only truth worth believing was in demonstrable propositions: God is X, Jesus is Y, the Bible is Z. To be a Christian meant accepting these “truths” just as being a scientist meant accepting nature’s laws.

The Charter for Compassion is an assertion that religion generally, and Christianity in particular, is concerned first and foremost not with what we think but with how we live, especially in relationship to our neighbor. The world’s rising tensions and violence demand we make this shift. Obsession with what we believe is making world worse, Armstrong says, not better. “Any ideology that does not promote a sense of global understanding and global appreciation of one another is failing the test of the time.”

While Jesus’ commitment to love for neighbor and even one’s enemy is universally recognized, placing this at Christianity’s center as Armstrong wants is not universally welcomed. As she recognizes, many religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Indeed already you can find people basically calling her the Antichrist for saying that having the right doctrine is not the most important part of Christian life. In their view heresy is the truly unforgivable sin.

In this country, at least, the personal value of religion or spirituality is still accepted but the social value of organized religion is increasingly doubted. The injection of religion into politics is overwhelmingly rejected and continuing outbreaks of inter-religious violence deplored. Imagine, Armstrong asks, if religion became a force for peace in the world, rather than conflict?

Sadly, religious leaders have figured out that their power is enhanced when they can create fear in their followers, convincing them that other religions are “false” and therefore their followers dangerous and evil. Armstrong believes, and I think she is right, that this is not the inclination of most people, including most religious people. Rodney King’s plea during the 1992 LA riots is increasingly a global concern: Can we all get along?

In our shrinking world this is becoming the question which may well determine the survival of our species. Calling religions and religious people everywhere to make this simple commitment, to do to others only what you would want them to do to you, may be a first step. In doing so it would return the word “religion” to its literal meaning, that which “binds together,” rather than something which pulls us apart.

Karen Armstrong: Think again about God

Karen Armstrong, British author and scholar of world religions, writes in Foreign Policy magazine that trying to dismiss or oppress religion only serves to bring out its worst inclinations. God and religion aren't going away so we need to figure out how to live with them, contra the "new atheists" like Dawkins and Hitchens.

These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

The PARADE passing us by (Sunday Reflections for November 1, 2009)

Last month, PARADE magazine (the Sunday newspaper insert) reported the results of a national survey it conducted on religious attitudes and practices. Here are a few of its questions and answers.

1. Which of the following best describes you?
I consider myself a religious person 45%
I'm not religious but I observe the holidays/traditions of my religion 17%
I'm not religious but I am a spiritual person 24%
I'm neither religious nor spiritual 14%

3. Are you more or less religious than your parents?
More 19%
Less 38%
About the same 43%

6. How important is religion in your life?
Religion is the most important thing in my life 24%
Religion is an important part of my life, but not the most important 33%
Religion is part of my life, but not particularly important 22%
Religion is not a factor in my life 22%

9. How often do you attend religious services?
Rarely 30%
Never 20%

(The survey’s full results can be found here.)

For anyone who has been paying attention to national religious polls in recent years little of the PARADE survey results will come as a surprise. Nor should they come as surprise to anyone active in religious organizations in this country. They shouldn’t—yet it seems they still do.

I write frequently about the decline of religious activity and belief and if you’ve read those previous stories you may be thinking, “What, again?” But as I talk about these kinds of reports and listen to others talk about the state of organized religions, I continue to experience denial, disbelief or incomprehension. It’s not that people reject these kind of results as much as it is a kind of deafness and blindness—the proverbial head-in-the-sand. “If I don’t look at it maybe it will go away.”

Briefly, here’s what PARADE’s survey tells us. Over half of those asked do not consider themselves religious. For each person saying they are more religious than their parents, two say they are less religious. More than 4 in 10 say religion has little or no importance to them and half say they rarely if ever attend worship. At the same time over 80% believe in God or a higher power and three-quarters of respondents pray at least once-in-awhile. Only 1 in 10 believes theirs is the true religion while 60% say all religions are equally valid.

One interesting question PARADE asked was what movie dealing with spiritual themes people liked the best. The winner at 25% was the religious classic Ten Commandments. Over half, however, selected a not traditionally religious film, such as Ghost (the next most popular), It’s A Wonderful Life, Da Vinci Code, or Sixth Sense.

The survey doesn't help us much in understanding trends (no comparison with previous results) or with demographic differences (region, age, gender). When combined with other recent surveys, however, the picture is pretty clear. Interest in organized religion is falling and falling fast. Some of this is the result of people discontinuing religious involvement but more is due to younger people not adopting the religious practice of older generations. At the same time, however, people continue to be interested in spirituality and spiritual practices (and fairly conventionally as there was little interest in either astrology or psychics).

The implications, obviously, are sobering and ominous for America’s traditional religious organizations. We can expect that congregations will continue to close and national and regional church budgets and programs will continue to be reduced. The question is whether any creative response is possible. To this point, most churches have followed the strategy of “if it doesn’t work, do more of it.” For thirty years (at least) church administrators and independent gurus have trotted out one “exciting” innovation or program after another. Unfortunately they all have born a striking resemblance to each year’s “new” lineup from GM, soon forgotten as more of the same.

It isn’t very daring to prophesy a Christianity decades hence shrunken to a cultural footnote. As people today say “Let’s go to the Amish country in Pennsylvania,” tour guides in the near future may be giving bus trips to see the Lutherans in Minnesota. Already today, many churches in Europe are operated mostly as museums supported by taxes, admission fees and tourist contributions.

Unfortunately, most people within churches can’t imagine such a scenario or dare think of it. As a result, for example, the ELCA continues to operate eight seminaries despite having lost nearly a quarter of its membership. Similarly, we continue to imagine ministry done primarily by congregations with expensive, stand-alone buildings and expensive, full-time professional clergy. The impracticality and even impossibility of this, however, will soon be impossible to ignore.

Shrinking the church, while inevitable, is by itself not a response but a capitulation. Perhaps realistically it’s all the church can do. I keep wondering, however, how the church can re-invent and re-imagine itself to be a cultural agent for genuine good which addresses the needs of people and society as they really are today.

There is so much about the church and Christianity that we consider “non-negotiable.” Much of that, however, is exactly what people today have no interest in or use for: our traditions, liturgies, structures, theology and doctrines. Yet those same people continue to need and look for values, ethics, meaning, beauty, and spiritual depth for their lives—those things which religion has provided across cultures and across the ages.

In the midst of all this I continue to think of Jesus and his practicality. He reached out to meet the needs of people whoever they were and wherever they were. He was happy to just eat and drink with people. He showed little interest in participating in formal religion and was highly critical of its leadership. He showed the most interest in people society said were of little or no importance. And his philosophy was stunningly simple yet true to the scriptural tradition: love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. It just seems that somewhere in there ought to be the seeds for a renewed and reborn church and Christianity.

Jewels of the system

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reflects on the Vatican's current attempts to reign in American nuns. As she describes it, Rome wants them to be more "sepia-toned" and much more like their docile predecessors. She quotes author Kenneth Briggs that nuns who saw Vatican II as a call to reimagine their mission “started to look uppity to an awful lot of bishops and priests and, of course, the Vatican.” The result, however, was for the church to (once again) shoot itself in the foot, as more forceful nuns could well have blown the whistle on many of its current problems, in the opinion of Bob Bennet, lawyer and leader of the lay inquiry into priest pedophilia. “It’s a tragedy because nuns are the jewels of the system.”

Adieu, Church of England?

Professional commentators and bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic have been having a field day with the Vatican’s offer to take in disaffected Anglicans, clergy and lay. Author A. N. Wilson sees this as the final push to end England’s established church—an event, in his view, that is long overdue.

"Although it will be a sad day for those Anglicans who have reached a parting of the ways, for Britain itself, the pope’s maneuver is actually good news. It will formally bring to an end the idea of the Established Church, and of the monarch as that Establishment’s symbol and head. Whatever our private religious allegiances, we Britons no longer want to force our royal heads of state to jump through those impossible hoops. The paradox is that a move by a conservative pope to ease the tender consciences of conservative-minded Anglicans will actually be a move toward the complete secularization of Britain, and an acceptance of its new multicultural identity."

Reformation truth revisited

I feel a need to bring attention to the good writing and thinking that I frequently come across, even if I don't have time--or feel the need--to offer much in the way of commentary. So that is what the next few posts are going to be and I hope to keep this up going forward. I will acknowledge in advance one of my main sources, Andrew Sullivan's The Dish at The Atlantic. In addition to his own writing, he and his assistants come across a lot of good stuff on topics I'm interested in.

Today and this week Lutherans, Protestants generally, and surely some Roman Catholics are remembering the beginning of the Reformation on October 31, 1517. With that in mind, here is a profound contemporary endorsement of Luther's doctrine that all of us are simil justus et pecator--at the same time justified and sinner.

The writer is a correspondent with Sullivan and quotes a work I am not familiar with. S/he endorses the Puritans (!) and correctly identifies contemporary fundamentalists of both right and left as missing this key Reformation insight. Their concern is much more for being right than about enabling transformation and redemption--to everyone's loss.

Efforts such as political correctness and movement conservatism are destructive of civil society and are based on nothing more than a chasing after the wind.