IS THERE REALLY LIBERAL RELIGION ?
15th July 2002
The next issue, Number 74, will appear on 15th AUGUST 2002.
It is widely accepted that there are many pitfalls in the path of human progress. Alphabetically, we can identify AIDS, alcohol, global warming, greed, hard drugs, hunger, ignorance, indoctrination, nuclear war, over-population, poverty, terrorism .... and many other obstacles to the good life. Readers will have their own overlapping, and possibly divergent, lists. Secularists have little that is distinctive to say on most of these matters except for one of them - indoctrination.
We identify religious fanaticism as a peculiarly dangerous phenomenon with which secularists are particularly concerned.
Within Christianity - which is the main vestigial religion among readers of this Website - we have a peculiarly severe trend described as Conservative Evangelical. There follows below a whole-page scan of a section of an evangelical booklet in my personal library - Ultimate Questions: Is Sin Serious? - in which deeply dismissive notions of human life are specified ..... "You are debased, defiled, defiant ..... the final punishment will be inflicted after death when each one of us will have to give an account of himself to God".
Here is what they say:
SIN - Read All About It - CLICK HERE
Such absolute self-denigration by our species is not warranted empirically and must tend to corrode and demoralise those who think that way. Frankenstein's Monster had a point when he complained that he had not created himself, he had not contrived himself as the horrible creature he could see himself to be. His creator must be primarily to blame for creating him. It is, in the Monster's opinion, disingenuous for his creator to blame his creation for bad design.
Ultimately the views expressed in that scanned extract can be read as a bitter complaint against the very creator in whom the evangelicals ask us to believe.
Such a prospectus is akin to a protection racket ..."You are in danger but you will be OK if you do as we would have you do". There are, of course, rather similar trends in areas other than Christianity.
I do not propose to give any more free publicity to the source document in which this passage is to be found but I will gladly give full particulars - including ISBN - to anyone who cares to ask.
1. Pious fanatics make four main claims :
1.1 We have absolute knowledge of the important things in life; without us you do not have, indeed cannot possibly have, this knowledge:
1.2 Our special knowledge is none other than knowledge of God's Will (or sometimes The Laws of Historical Development or the Destiny of Our Fatherland or whatever - but 'God' is the time-tried prototype) so you must act upon it; to do what we prescribe is to do God's Will.
1.3 We, the messengers of God, have not only to oppose the infidel without but also to combat the heretic within. We have to increase both our strength and our purity; the one complements the other.
1.4 We are a downtrodden minority but our time will come. The future is ours ....... or it is nothing.
2. Given that such a thing as pious fanaticism exists, is growing and is destructive of reasonable human values ....... given all that, then we need to identify the obstacles in its path? I suggest that there are three:
2.1 The most potent obstacle, the least valued, indeed the most widely regretted among serious persons, is ..... apathy. The yawn is the secret weapon of the sane; no fanatic can last long in face of a resolute avoidance of response. If our being bored, by those whom Locke sometimes identified as 'enthusiasts', does not work then ridicule is worth a try. Fanaticism and a sense of the absurd are deeply incompatible.
2.2 The most obvious but perhaps the least potent, of the three counter-fanaticisms is the secularist humanist tendency - comprising a rather small and heterogeneous group of people - mostly middle-class, middle aged and mostly of European ancestry who are explicit in their scepticism towards religion in general. The secularist movement has many voices and it has two vices: one is that its members sometimes display an 'unholier than thou' sectarianism (which often echoes holy sectarianism in characteristics 1.1 to 1.4 above): the other is a secular version of the biblically derided "all things to all men" approach to controversy. Organised secularism is a necessary requirement - but not a sufficient one - in the countering of pious fanatics.
2.3 In direct disagreement with many secularist friends, I contend that a third obstacle to fanaticism lies in the liberal mainstream churches. There is an important fact of real politik in this and there is a substantial ideological puzzle too. Let us consider these in turn.
2.3.1 Consider the case of this island community in which I have lived amicably these twenty-five years. The population is about 500; there is one significant Christian fraction - the Church of Scotland - with a registered number of members and adherents that has varied between 100 and 150. Regular attendance at the Sunday service ranges from about 30 to 60. Funerals and weddings are very much better attended.
2.3.2 These Kirk people seem hardly ever to discuss religious issues of any importance; their preoccupation is with running their committees and ancillary bodies, fund raising and the like. These very human people hardly ever discuss religion and so they hardly ever disagree about it and rarely do much to promote it among the adult population. Presbyterianism in Sanday is scarcely a wellspring of faith; it is more like the rusty engine of a veteran social club.
The phrase "social club" should not be seen negatively. It is good to have a bland organisation comprising a reasonable variety of citizens who, apart from that club, would not relate to one another; Christian belief here is moribund but Christian fellowship is positive and valuable.
There is great benefit to liberal secularism in the faith vacuum surviving as a social club. The mainstream churches, such as our Kirk, are flypaper into which buzzing evangelicals are enticed by the teasing prospect of easy converts. That social club of undemanding churchy habits - the Kirk - soon neutralises most of them. Those who will not be neutralised fold their tents and steal obtrusively away; we have seen it happen under our very noses not so many years ago.
I ask myself whether I would rather live among 500 people including 100 passive conformists or among 500 people including a half dozen or so determined and unrestrained evangelical nutters infiltrating every public organisation. I prefer the first of these possibilities. Secularists do really have a vested interest in the survival of liberal religion.
2.3.3 The overriding ideological issue in this connection is ...... is there such a thing as distinctively liberal Christianity worthy of first-order respect as a coherent view of life or is 'liberal Christianity' simply a watered-down version of the doctrines set out in the booklet I have scanned and quoted above.
Sadly, the prospects for liberal Christianity in Scotland - and I suspect elsewhere too - are poor. The Kirk has to face some hard realities.
2.3.3.1 The Kirk will have to accept that people have no sense of obligation to it or duty to believe in its doctrines. Conformity could, at an earlier stage, be enforced but belief can never be enforced and (unless we think that God is daft enough to be fooled by our hankering after Pascal's Wager) there is ultimately no point is wearing it as a fail-safe fashion accessory. The case for Christianity has publicly to be made, honestly and respectfully, to informed sceptics.
2.3.3.2 Another hard reality for the Kirk to make is to acknowledge that intelligent religion is a subtle many-sided thing totally unsuitable for children. The perennial attempt to Christianise children by way of 'Bible Stories' might, on conspiracy theory, be thought of as an atheist plot to raise a generation of non-believers. Children discard the story of Jonah emerging intact from the whale as easily as they discard the story of Grandma emerging intact from the wolf. The story of Jesus walking on the water is as easily discredited as the story of Jack and his beans. Whether Bible Stories are truly comparable with Fairy Stories is not the point; children see them as being similar in principle - and similarly disposable. In my own early experience, encroaching disbelief in Father Christmas and encroaching disbelief in Father God ran side by side. Comparisons that are not necessarily sound can, in reality, be made and acted upon. Sunday School enthusiasts should do a little more asking and a little less telling if they wish their church to cope with the generation gap. 'Find it out' is a better route to understanding than 'make it up'.
2.3.3.3 Perhaps the hardest thing needing to be faced down is the populist nonsense of prayer as a lever to influence events. It is an understandable cry for help; it is absurd unless people believe their god to be in need of their advice. Apart from the fact that is empirically without foundation there is the thought that 'God knows best; God does for the best". This 'blessing in disguise' theory is usually brought to our notice when bad things happen to good people. Given that God knows best, it seems that asking Him to procure events and outcomes we happen to prefer, is to revert to the primitive practice of attempting to manipulate the god(s). Mature religion has no place for such self-serving petitioning.
Only a rigorous revision of belief and practice can restore the Church of Scotland as a live force. It is hard to find any signs of such rigour; it is hard to assess liberal religion as, ideologically speaking, anything other than watered-down evangelism. The remaining congregations need better leadership than they are ever likely to get. The flypaper has almost lost its stickiness.
This brings us back to ridicule. Why do we even bother to satirise piety when the Anglican Church, in particular, is such a rich mine of self parody?
"Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in My Name, I will do it."
(John 14: 13,14). Some people believe this! See the London Times June 20th 2000 in which we find .......
"Say a little prayer: England fans asked to have faith"
The article invited England Association-Football Fans to join in a prayer that England might triumph over Brazil. The Rev Jeremy Fletcher, a member of the Church of England Liturgical Commission and Chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell the Right Rev. George Cassidy wants football fans to pray: "Lord let not this cup pass from us." The Rev. Fletcher had already written a prayer for the Quarter Final which went as follows:
Arise, O Lord, and let not Brazil prevail over us,
Put them in fear O lord
Rise up, O Lord, lift up your hand,
Confound the might of Ronaldo and Rivaldo
And put Ronaldinbo to confusion.
O God, if nothing else, award us a dubiously
Offside goal in the last minute,
That the world may know that you are our God,
And through you we will triumph over our adversaries,
This time making it all the way to the final,
Even if it is on a Sunday and no one will go to church.
Amen
The Rev. Fletcher has also written a litany, or supplicatory prayer, to be chanted in the event of a penalty shoot out which has already been set to music and broadcast on BBC Radio Nottingham. It begins: "O Seaman make speed to save us, O Martyn make haste to help us." It goes on to plead with God to make the Brazilian keeper guess the wrong way, while England's shots are "strong and true" and ends "May their goal be unto us like an aircraft hanger, And their keeper be as an ant."
The article ends by telling us that the Rev. Fletcher is about to take up an appointment as Canon Precentor at York Minster, where he will be responsible for the music.
The Rev. Fletcher also explained that while the prayer was light-hearted he believes prayer is a valuable aid in confronting difficulties. "Any prayers are worth a go," he said. "Naturally they raise the question as to whose side God is on. If people start asking it, then the debate becomes serious, and some good will have been done. Nationalistic this is not."
We need hardly remind readers that Brazil not only beat England in the quarter-final but went on to win the World Cup.
So "Any prayers are worth a go." Are they? Let us overlook Rev Fletcher's want of success as a petitioner to his god. Well, here goes ..... "Please God transubstantiate Rev Fletcher into a Brazilian.
The question at the head of this essay remains unanswered. It remains open that liberal religion is either watered-down evangelism or crazy self-parody. I wish it were neither of things; I wish it were a credit to the millions of perfectly reasonable serious people who feel moved to tag along with it.
E.S.
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