(Ir)religiosity

If you don’t read Religion Dispatches you really should.  A great “progressive” (for lack of a better, more unambiguous term) religion blog that consistently posts good content.  Case in point: yesterday’s post on interfaith dialogue in a — thanks to social media and other forms of new technology — increasingly globalized world.

What if we thought of religion (and even science and philosophy) as a type of language or dialect?

If the “Nones” are a rapidly growing category (as the surveys suggest), then “religion” will need to change in order to remain relevant and viable in the complex world we’re heading into. To begin with, the idea that only one religion is true, while all the others are not, will have to be abandoned. Perhaps one way of hastening this process is to think of religion as being like language. Languages are not true or false. Rather, each different language seeks to express the shared history and life experiences of those people who speak it. In a rapidly globalizing world, people will increasingly need to be fluent in more than one language. [...] Likewise, it will become necessary to speak more than one religious language; not just for the sake of communication, but in service of human spiritual growth and enrichment.

Since my first real and meaningful encounter with the presence of other religious ideas besides evangelical Christianity in “Introduction to World Religions” fall semester of my freshman year in college — the first of many experiences which radically altered my view of interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism — I’ve thought it best to think of religion(s) as a type of language or linguistic structure.  A language or dialect isn’t completely wrong, but it’s not absolutely right either.  It conveys meaning to a particular community, a characteristic that makes it true, but no single language enjoys a monopoly on meaning or truth.  And any claims to complete hegemony are essentially illegitimate and equivalent to, for example, an American demanding that all the world immediately begin using English as a means for global communication.  It just wouldn’t work.  Communication couldn’t happen and some pieces of truth and meaning would die along with the lost languages.

Language, by its very nature, is limiting.  As a native speaker I can’t escape English.  No matter how many languages I learn in my lifetime (it won’t be many, it’s not my strong suit!) I will never be able to liberate myself from thinking in English.  It is my mother tongue.  Likewise as a Christian, I am, in some sense, limited in my religious thinking.  True, Christianity offers its own unique and helpful insights into the penetrating questions of meaning and truth, but like every other religion, it does so at the expense of others.  Understanding the double-nature of that reality — its benefit and its limitation — will go a long way in understanding and making room for other religious tongues in the future.

The bilingual and multilingual person is more of an asset than the one who is not.  Christianity will always be my mother tongue, but understanding and becoming fluent and conversant in the other prominent languages of the religious landscape will be vital and of the utmost importance in the future if we are to have meaningful interfaith dialogue.  Not only that, but becoming comfortable with and using more religious languages instead of merely “knowing about them” and assuming the superiority of one’s own — a modern symptom if there ever was one — will be the hallmark of mutual understanding and respect as religious “emergence” really begins to take root in the future.  To be sure, I don’t think that dilutes my Christianity at all, contrary to the usual accusations of syncretism — in fact I think it enriches it.  Not to mention it helps me become a more well-rounded human being.

We must acknowledge that we live within an inescapable language that is no better or worse than the others — it simply is.  We must become familiar and fluent in other languages so we can become conversant.  And, most of all, we must welcome and become comfortable with the presence, importance, and enriching value of other languages — not merely tolerate their existence.  The first two come fairly easy, it is the last one that is tough.  Yet I think the success and efficacy of future dialogue and evolution depends upon it more than anything.

In my mind, language is the best way to think about this.  It helps me understand it better.  What do you think?  Does it help to think of religion as a language?

I ran across this thought by Moby reading something else last night and I can’t get it out of my head.

i actually think that the teachings of christ accomodate most of the new ways in which we perceive ourselves and our world.
the problem is that although the teachings of christ accomodate this, contemporary christianity does not.
here’s more seriousness dressed up as flippancy:
christ: acknowledging quantum realities.
christiantiy: depressingly newtonian.
does that make any sense?
well, to me it does.
and to some of you it might make sense, also.

That’s rich.  And interesting.  What do you think?

In 1786, near the end of his life, John Wesley wrote a retrospective essay on the Methodist movement he founded. In it, he admitted his fear that Methodists would “…only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.”¹

Many have interpreted this to mean a loss of “evangelical fervor,” that is a failure to “win souls” or “convert new people” to Christiniaty.  I’ve read a fair amount of Wesley’s work and I can’t help but wonder if he was speaking of something much more pressing than escape from present problems, something much more important than the possibility of an orgy of eternal bliss.

In chapter called “Good News to the Poor,” in Theology and Evangelism in the Wesleyan Heritage, Ted Jennings suggests the same.

When do we have the form without the power of religion?

When we develop church growth strategies that target the middle class instead of the poor and marginalized, then we have the form without the power.

When we spend more of our resources on constructing and maintaining Church buildings and property than we do on feeding the hungry, then we have the form without the power.

When we spend more on pastor’s salaries, benefits, and pensions, than we do on clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless, then we have the form without the power.

When we turn stewardship into financial campaigns for the Church, rather than sacrifice for the poor, then we have the form but not the power.

When we blame poverty on the sloth of the poor rather than the avarice of the prosperous and the indifference of the comfortable, then we have the form but not the power.

When we furnish our sanctuaries and social halls in such a way as to make the prosperous comfortable rather than make the indigent welcome, then we have the form but not the power.

When we dedicate Methodist institutions like universities and hospitals and retirement homes to the needs of the affluent rather than the needs of the impoverished, then we have the form but not the power.

When we preach a grace which saves us without changing us, then we have the form but not the power.

Above all whenever and however we make of Methodism a preferential option for the middle class, we have the form but not the power of religion.

As the financial institutions in which have, until now, placed all our trust and hope are crumbling around us and as we see the effects of unrestrained consumer-capitalism unfold before our very eyes, I find these words to be especially poignant.  And convicting.

1. http://deeplycommitted.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/john-wesleys-thoughts-upon-methodism/ [↩]

This is interesting to me.

I was messing around with Google Trends ( I love these sorts of things.  Check out Facebook Lexicon and Twist sometime.) the other day and discovered some interesting trends/correlations when I aggregated a graph of the terms “religion” and “economy” within the United States.

Here is a record of the last 12 months.

And here is a record of the last 30 days.

Even more interesting, here is a record since January of 2004.

Finally, here is a global record since January of 2004.

Clearly, there is a trend here and perhaps even a correlation. Now, I know this isn’t the best of surveying people and gaining information.  I know it is skewed and probably inaccurate to an extent.  But it is interesting nonetheless.  I don’t know what to make of it.  What do you think?

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In case you missed it, former Sec. of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press.  The whole interview if worth watching, but a particular quote caught my attention.

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian.  He’s always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Here’s the video with more context.

Read the entire transcript of the interview here.

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Political action and democratic participation have been points of contention in the Christian community for quite some time.  Now, as the upcoming presidential election quickly approaches, the issue of voting and not voting as an act of resistance have been brought to the forefront — at least in the blogosphere.

An interesting observation is that the dying Christian Right and the new post-evangelical, or emerging movement converge on the issue of voting though they endorse opposite candidates.  Both seek to utilize the democratic process as a means to bring about justice, though they disagree vehemently as to what justice actually means or looks like.  This concerns me to an extent because I can see it leading to the formation new Christian Left, which in my mind is no better than its dwindling counterpart.  But that’s a different issue altogether.

A few months ago David Fitch, who blogs a Reclaiming the Mission, wrote a post advocating the notion of voting abstinence as an act of resistance in opposition to Empire and asserted the Hauerwasian claim that voting itself can and should be seen as an act of violence.  Fitch writes: Read the rest of this entry »

We’re beginning to see more and more signs that the old traditional form of evangelicalism is slowly dying and with its death we are witnessing the emergence of something new.  According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 70% of evangelical Christians agree  that “many religions can lead to eternal life” and 57%  believe theirs is not the only path to salvation. This is good news. [Ht. Ben]

As mentioned a few days ago, I spent all day Friday at the University of North Texas in Denton at forum on religion and ecology. I promised reflections, so here there. Not many because it was only a day long, but a few nonetheless.

First just a broad observation. No matter how much any of us (especially academy types) would like to think we have it all figured out, we always need to be engaged in dialog. And after hearing perspective from all sorts of religions from Hinduism to Christianity to Jainism, I realized how much that point needs to be driven home. We can never learn enough. And in order to avoid damaging stereotypes and caricatures we have to be engaged. There is no excuse for that.

The second thought arises from the need for the first. I observed among some of the presenters–who were wonderful and I’m sure are some of the most compassionate, open, and accepting persons–a tendency, whether conscious or not, to portray their particular religion’s response to ecological crises as superior to others. I don’t even know if it was intentional. I doubt that it was (for some at least). But it was there. And these were people who have made it their life’s work to be an open and tolerant student of the world’s religions. If anything, I think that further illustrates the need to intentional dialog and intentional listening. If all we’re interested in is triumphalism of a certain brand, how can we ever expect to unite and fight ecological crises? Or any problem for that matter?

Finally, I realized even more than before that much of Christianity’s inability to address ecological problems arises from our deep-seated misinterpretation of Genesis and our perversion of the creation narrative(s). Lynn White Jr. points this out in his article, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis” wherein he indicts the Judeo-Christian tradition as the root of problem rather than part of the solution tracing the issue all the way back to the interpretation of Genesis 1:28 and rightly observes that “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.”

Historically, the western church as wrongly assumed, as our misleading translation alludes, that human beings are to “rule” the earth, to have “dominion” over it, and to “subdue” its creatures. In Genesis, Adam is given the right to name the animals, another sign of dominion and power over another. As a result, Christians have treated the world as a sort of endless resource and an endless garbage dump whose value is derived only by its utility to humans. Who care about ecology when we’re given dominion over it all? Of course this is all very misleading. A better translation would be that humans are to be “responsible” for the earth. To be good “stewards” of it. Stewardship. Now there’s a word we in the church usually only here in relation to money campaign and building funds. We would do well to remember were our divinely sanctioned stewardship lies. And it’s not to our buildings that are likely destroying the environment.

As White suggests, it’s high time we reclaim the sounder interpretation of Genesis, take responsibility for our inaction and contribution to the problem, and begin to act as stewards of the earth in which we live. After all, without the earth it would be pretty tough to survive.

I’m at another ecology conference, this time in Denton at the university of North Texas (PDF file of the schedule here). I don’t know if there will be wifi at the venue tomorrow. If so, I’ll try and liveblog some of the talks. If not, I’ll post some reflections later on.

USA Today has an article out about religious pluralism in America and the changing face of faith:

“A new map of faith in the USA shows a nation constantly shifting amid religious choices, unaware or unconcerned with doctrinal distinctions. Unbelief is on the rise. And immigration is introducing new faces in the pews, new cultural concerns, new forces in the public square.”

You can read the entire article here and see the interactive graph here. Very interesting. Below are the results from my own state, which has, according to this graph, not only the most “Evangelical Protestants” of any state (53%, a tie along with Arkansas), but also the highest concentration of any religious group, save Utah (58% Mormon). I’m not necessarily surprised at that number, but I was a little surprised that it was the largest number nationwide with the highest concentration.

Click here to see the full size image.

[Ht. Bob Carlton]

~bh ><>