Hallowed Secularism: Theory, Belief, Practice

Hallowed Secularism

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Hallowed Secularism Theory, Belief, Practice Bruce Ledewitz

hallowed secularism Copyright © Bruce Ledewitz, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-61402-4 ISBN-10: 0-230-61402-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: March 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To Anna, Jonas, Ben, Joanne, Ryan, Douglas and Julia, their children and their children’s children, with all my love. You will see a secular world. “This gradual crumbling to pieces . . . is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world.” —Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind

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Contents Preface

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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Part I

Why Hallowed Secularism Is Necessary and How It Is Possible

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Secularists’ Indifference and Hostility Toward Religion

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2

The Roots of Secularism

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The Failure of Secularism

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Sources of Depth in Hallowed Secularism

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Part II The Beliefs and Practices of Hallowed Secularism 5

The Framework of Hallowed Secularism

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The Public Life of Hallowed Secularism

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The Local Life of Hallowed Secularism

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The International Life of Hallowed Secularism

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Part III The Meaning of Hallowed Secularism 9

Beyond Religion

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Beyond Humanism

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11

Beyond Materialism

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12

The Possibility of Hope

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Index

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Preface As I put the final touches on this manuscript before the production process begins, the debate in secularism of which this book is a part is finally breaking out. So, I believe the book is coming out at an opportune moment. For the past several years, secularism has grown in the United States. It has grown first, in a very slow, long-term trend, especially among the young, whose attachment to organized religion is not as strong as it is among their elders. But secularism has also grown in a seemingly sudden way, as a cascade of books from those I call the New Atheists has come into the market in the last five years. The reader is probably familiar with some of those writers: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, Mark Lilla, and others, culminating in the culture-changing impact of Christopher Hitchen’s best seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, in 2007. All at once, it seemed, secularists were a national audience. This secular prominence did not immediately translate into political or policy influence. The 2008 presidential primary campaigns were perhaps the most religiously influenced in American history with the early success of Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney’s speech on his Mormon faith, and the constant efforts of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama to speak the language of faith during debates and in their campaigning. From the tone of the presidential races, you would not know that any secularists existed in America. But beneath this surface appearance, a change was beginning to manifest in secularism itself. Before, the only issue for secularists had been to establish secularism as an alternative to religion. Thus, the tone of the New Atheists was still religion bashing of the old style. There was not much concern in these works about secularism itself and what kind of life a secularist could lead. Now that secularism is established as a national force, as a genuinely mass movement for the first time, the question of the future of secularism has begun to come to the fore. It is no longer enough for the secularist to say, “I am not religious.” The question now is, what am I and how shall I live? That change is now apparent. Earlier this year, too late for me to take much note of it in this manuscript, Austin Dacey published The Secular

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Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. I was happy to see this book because, as a staff member of the Center for Inquiry, Dacey is practically a card-carrying member of the atheist movement. Thus, when he accuses secularism of a soul-destroying relativism, he cannot be accused of harboring secret hopes for religious conversion. Dacey is right about the problem and wrong about the solution. In any event, this book offers a very different way out of secularism’s current morass than the path he is offering. We shall see which way secularism ultimately goes. For now, it is enough to note that even secularists hostile to religion are beginning to recognize that the objective values which religion used to offer to the culture are a necessary foundation for healthy human life. If we are not going to be religious in the future, we need to establish a new relationship to that religious tradition. Bruce Ledewitz June 2008

Acknowledgments My most immediate thanks go to Donald J. Guter, dean of the Duquesne University School of Law, who approved a sabbatical for me for fall 2007 to finish this book although I applied much too late to qualify for the program, and to Duquesne University Provost, Ralph Pearson, who went along with it. Their generosity in this instance is rather typical of the Duquesne University community, of which I have been a happy member since 1980. My colleagues at the law school have been extremely supportive of my ongoing work in religion and public life. They have shared not only their knowledge but also their contacts, and I thank them. I must single out two of my colleagues for special mention. Bruce Antkowiak has held my hand for every up and down of the publication process. Robert Taylor has simply been my teacher for the last twenty-five years. There is not a single major source in this work that Robert did not introduce me to. Naturally, Robert is not to blame for the use I have made of his teaching. The staff at the law school have gone out of their way to help me prepare this material, especially Kathy Koehler, without whom neither this book nor much of anything else in my academic life would get done. I also want to thank Frank Liu, the director of Duquesne’s Center for Legal Information, and his colleagues for their continuing help in research at the law school, as well as the staff of Gumberg Library at Duquesne University. The editors at Palgrave Macmillan have been very encouraging, especially Brigitte Shull, who, despite my various mishaps, never seemed to doubt that this book would be published. I have been fortunate in having two very able research assistants during the last two years, Jesse Leisawitz and Glen Downey, who continued to help with manuscript preparation even after they graduated from the law school. I will always be indebted to friends at my former synagogue, Dor Hadash, where I first developed my thinking in Judaism and then later grew away from the tradition. A special thanks to Anita Dufalla, artist extraordinary, for the cover. Finally, I wish to thank my family. My children have commented extensively and candidly on this manuscript and on the blog—http://www.hallowedsecularism.org—that accompanies it. They and their generation are this book’s intended audience,

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and they have tried to help me reach that audience. I cannot thank my wife, Patt, because that would be too much like trying to thank myself. Since this book is a product of our ongoing religious development, I cannot always tell where she stops and I begin.

Introduction

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ouldn’t you like to live your life abundantly? You and your family? Why don’t you? You must be aware that living life abundantly is precisely what Jesus promised and what Christianity offers. Most Americans were raised in Christian families. So why do you not practice Christianity in a serious way? If you are not from a Christian family, the other religions, like Judaism and Islam, make the same promise of abundant life to their adherents. Why do you not practice these traditions? From what I can see, your refusal does not imply that we already live abundant lives. Our lives are often harried and empty and shallow when they are supposed to be calm and meaningful and deep. We are alone when we are meant to live surrounded by love. All of that is what Jesus meant when he promised abundant life. So why do you not live in a committed way in whatever religious tradition you come from? Of course, the phrase “live life abundantly” may never have occurred to you. It’s a religious phrase, and you are probably secular, as I am. You and I do not believe in God, and we do not believe in miracles. Every religion requires beliefs we find ridiculous. For these reasons the promise of an abundant life, whether made by Jesus or by the other religions, is unavailable to us. What are we left with? Often, we are left with rather flat, pointless lives. The purpose of this book is to describe and begin to create a new way of life called Hallowed Secularism. Instead of opposing religion, as secularism tends to do today, Hallowed Secularism opens us to these and other sources of meaning for human life. Secularism is a broader category than just something that relates to religion. Secular means “world.” A saeculum is the span of a human life, which is how it came to mean “world.” Gabriel Vahanian, perhaps the best known of the “God-is-dead” theologians, says that saeculum refers to a shared world of human experience. So the secularist may be thought of as one who insists that

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this world is all there is to reality. There is no heaven, no afterlife of any kind, and no Messiah. This is not a sufficient definition of secularism. Abraham in the Bible did not experience heaven, afterlife, or a Messiah, but Abraham was no secularist. Abraham knew the God of the Bible. Yet one point of this book is that the secularist need not be an atheist. The secularist can also have a conception of God. So, in order to distinguish the secularist from Abraham, in addition to this worldliness we will add the absence of a traditional God—that is, the absence of an entity outside time and space who can affect the workings of the natural world. Now we have our secularist. There have been thinkers within the religious traditions who have been secular by this definition. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, seems to fit, for example. The Chicago minister and philosopher Edward Ames also fits. Secularism thus sounds potentially very close to religion. Nevertheless, if you fit this definition of secularism, you cannot participate wholeheartedly in the traditional Christian, Jewish, or Islamic traditions. I doubt you would fit easily in any other religion either. And the religious thinkers who thought along these lines also did not fit in easily. In our time and place, a person who thinks this way is distanced from religion. That is enough to make you a secularist. Some secularists go to church or to synagogue. Some of us may even raise our children in Christianity, Judaism, or another religion because we want our children to have something. But once our children grow up, we often stop practicing religion, except perhaps to use religious rituals to promote family connection. The problem is that we cannot give our whole hearts to the stories these religions tell. Without a whole heart, none of Our Religions, which is what the comparative religion people call them, deliver the abundant life they promise. Our Religions are not merely out of our reach. They are also often malign. If you’re gay, for example, you are condemned in the Bible. Often in the world, the more religious people are, the more violent they are. We see Muslims blowing up themselves and others, Hindus practicing an excluding nationalism, Orthodox Jews opposing peace with the Palestinians, and conservative Christians supporting the war in Iraq. Some of us have turned in other directions—away from religion—in our search for a life of meaning. “I don’t need religion,” we say. We turn to the arts, or politics, or service to others. These things are important, and they can be substitutes for religion for a while, but that does not last. Except for art, these other ways lack ecstasy and depth. Art, for its part, lacks a grounding direction for our lives. In the end, for most of us, only Our Religions teach the wisdom and connections to all of life that we need. Only religious lives sustain life’s fullness.

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Some people find the answer to meaning in nature. They worship, or purport to anyway, the sun or the earth and its spirits. Perhaps I have just not seen this done properly, but it does not seem to hold out real hope. Nature can be just as cold as the human heart. There is something behind nature that these people sense and seek, not nature itself. In response to these dead ends, some of us have begun to deny that abundant life is even possible. We have begun to doubt that there is more to life than paychecks, shopping, entertainment, and family and friends. Perhaps there is actually not that much to hope for in human life. But what if I told you that you could have abundant life without religious fantasy and without surrendering your intellect or your political principles? And that you could have this without New Age mumbo jumbo or obscure practices borrowed from indigenous peoples? What if I told you, in other words, that you could have abundant life just as Christianity promises without becoming a Christian? You could have what Our Religions promise without joining any of them. And what if I told you that you could have this not just for yourself and your family but also for your country? Jesus did not just promise abundant life for individuals. He promised peace and justice for the world. What if you could have that, too? Having all that without Our Religions is the project of Hallowed Secularism. I think you can live such a life without membership in any religion. But the how is the difficult part. The how is what this book is about. In the short run, this book describes a way of life as I see that way of life unfolding. But in the longer run, others will decide the future of Hallowed Secularism by living it or by rejecting it. You, the reader, will decide. The book proceeds in three parts. In the first part, I ask two questions: why has Hallowed Secularism become so necessary, and how is Hallowed Secularism possible? Hallowed Secularism is necessary because secularism has failed. Science and globalization have rendered the traditional images and messages of Our Religions unbelievable for many people. The number of these secularists is growing, especially among the young. Our Religions are themselves partly to blame for this because they have failed to answer the challenges of a new secular world, especially in regard to the place of women and homosexuals. Yet secularism, for its part, has failed to imagine and put into practice a genuinely fulfilling way of life. So a new kind of secularism is necessary. This new secularism will not be the same in different parts of the world. Each religious civilization—for example, the Christian civilization of Europe and the Americas or the Hindu civilization of India—will produce a secularism

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with a different flavor. This book is primarily about the Judeo-Christian secularism of North America, but its lessons about secularism apply more broadly. As to how Hallowed Secularism is possible, modern theologians and other religious thinkers already have been at work describing the frameworks of the various religions in secular terms. This has especially been the case with Christianity. This secularizing effort might be said to go back to St. Augustine’s term, “the two cities,” for the City of God and the City of Man. The beginning of the modern Christian engagement with secularism is associated with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in Letters and Papers from Prison, as he was held by the Nazis before his execution, that the next stage of human history might be “a complete absence of religion” and that it was “already more or less that case” that man had become “radically religionless.” Bonhoeffer pondered the theological meaning of this historic shift. So, in creating and living Hallowed Secularism, you and I will have teachers. The second part of the book describes what Hallowed Secularism might look like in practice. Chapter 5 sets forth its fundamental beliefs: truth, world, man, God, and the future. I hope to convince you that secularists are not cut off from meaningful connection with our religious heritage. The rest of Part II attempts to employ these concepts in the projected life of Hallowed Secularism. While Hallowed Secularism is not actually a new religion, insofar as it forms the basis for society it must still offer both social and personal ways to live. There must be insight from Hallowed Secularism into public life, including economics and politics, as well as personal life, such as prayer and ritual. Finally, the third part of the book raises the deeper meaning of this new phenomenon of Hallowed Secularism. What is the relationship between Hallowed Secularism and the other dominant orientations to reality, such as Our Religions, humanism, and materialism? A world of Hallowed Secularism is different from anything that has gone before in human history because humans have never been so secular. The ultimate question is, can a secularism of holiness contribute to the flourishing of the human spirit? Is it really possible for secularism to be “hallowed?” How can it be holy? That seems to be a contradiction in terms. After Auschwitz and Hiroshima, surely the world is profane in every sense. Surely man now knows himself too well for such a mirage. We seem to have only two choices: God—a transcendent being outside space and time—or man as the measure of all things. We cannot believe that such a God exists, and man on his own is a horror. What is needed is a source of power, order, and beauty outside humans themselves—in fact, outside the visible order altogether but not outside human experience. This is precisely what Our Religions give to those who are open to them. Can secularists have this without the traditional God?

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Yes. Even without Our Religions, human beings can encounter a mysterious otherness, both personally and historically—an otherness upon which we can build our lives and a civilization. This is well known at the personal level. Accounts of nontheistic spiritual experiences are common. Here is a beautiful example from Dr. Rachel Remen’s book, My Grandfather’s Blessings: A neighbor, a down-to-earth and practical person, shared . . . an experience with me. . . . She had been cleaning her house . . . when suddenly it was as if her life were passing rapidly in front of her and she became aware of something she had not recognized before, that there was a coherence and direction that ran through it like a thread. . . . Though she had never experienced this direction before, it was familiar to her. It was as if she had been following something unseen for many years and she had not known.

* * * As she stood in her kitchen . . . she became deeply certain that what was true of her personally was also true of life in general. Everything was unfolding according to a direction. It underlay all existence, binding it all together. For a heartbeat, it seemed to her that she could experience this directly. “A steady unseen force, like a wind,” she told me.

A religious believer might call this mysterious experience an encounter with God. But that is not how this woman experienced it. She experienced what any secularist could. I am not suggesting that Hallowed Secularism should be charismatic, seeking meaning primarily in personal and emotional encounters with the unseen. Hallowed Secularism can, however, acknowledge that human life has this aspect and that it is meaningful. Such an encounter might even be authoritative in one’s life; that is, such experiences might teach me how to live. Such experiences are not merely subjective. This sense of oneness with all reality that Remen describes is a common theme in nondogmatic thinkers as diverse as Eric Voegelin and John Dewey. In fact, such a sense of cosmic unity may underlie all Our Religions. Religious thinking of this kind has a great deal to teach us about reality. Hallowed Secularism must be open to such teaching. This openness to personal religious experience is not the same as a God who is a personality with a will, plans, and actions. Yet it is not atheism either. The sense of depth that comes from these experiences can be gained through more than just personal encounters. There is also public consciousness of transcendence. By transcendence, I mean the sense that there is something more to human life than is ordinarily apparent. Something deeper is at work.

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Public consciousness of transcendence may come to us in great public events: Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington, the funeral of John F. Kennedy, and the attacks of 9/11. This is the revelation of history. The public sense of depth also means an appreciation of the power of justice in history. Abraham Lincoln understood the Civil War as God’s judgment for the sin of slavery. Thomas Jefferson feared such a civil catastrophe out of the same concern for God’s judgment. I feel that way about global warming. Reality is structured in such a way that there are consequences for national injustice. Mistreat the poor and your society will end up in ruin. Worship money and you end up with callous violence. This is what the Hebrew prophets taught. Hallowed Secularism must be open to this message, too. So transcendence is not all sweetness. The Hebrew prophets remind us that just as the awareness of connection and belonging is both personal and social, so the reality of sin is both social—that is national—and personal. Christianity and Judaism both teach that human beings fail to live properly. We sin constantly. Hallowed Secularism has to deal with this reality of human life and not pretend, as much New Age religion does, that a sense of the divine is always welcome. The woman’s experience in Dr. Remen’s book, for example, was wonderful. Who would not want an experience like that? But what if her life passing before her had reminded her of the harm she had brought to the people she loved? Those experiences are also a part of the spiritual life of humanity and may be the most important part. The reality of sin shows the value of Our Religions in taming human pretension. Nevertheless, positive or negative, reality must be lived at this level to be meaningful. In order to recover from consumerism and the flatness of American life, the sense of depth must be present in public life as well as in personal encounters. This requires rejection of the scorn secularists now exhibit toward anything “religious.” We are dealing here not with superstition or with the supernatural but with a broader sense of the unexpected possibilities in human life. Secularists must be open to that. On the other hand, religion cannot be sovereign. The power and truth of science cannot be subjected to some religious test. Hallowed Secularism will insist that scientific discovery be accepted where science is appropriately relied upon. Once we clear out the brush of religious dogmas that conflict with the natural laws of the universe—resurrection, heaven, hell, Messiah, apocalypse, reincarnation, and a being called God—Hallowed Secularism falls out as what’s left. What’s left is neither materialism nor humanism. It’s beyond both, for there is reality to the unseen that is beyond human will. The number two cannot be seen, yet it is real. And love cannot be seen. The secularist can reject

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both traditional religion and its traditional alternatives, in the name of the unseen. Secularism has been down this road before: this road of assimilating religion. In the first part of the twentieth century, leading to the proclamation of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933, secularists, humanists, and liberal religious believers gave a great deal of thought to the meaning of religion in human life and to how our religious traditions might be incorporated into the new scientific age. With exceptions, these men and women were not hostile to religion. William James’s 1902 book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and John Dewey’s Terry Lectures, which were published as A Common Faith in 1934, form appropriate bookends for this serious, thoughtful, and helpful effort. Unfortunately, the pressures of the Depression, World War II, and then the cold war ended this age. Now it is time to reacquaint ourselves with what these giants learned and to extend the knowledge they acquired. When I look, in contrast, at recent books on the same subject of secularism and religion, I am struck by their sneering tone and their partisan attacks. You can see just by the title of the most popular book in this group, Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, that these people, as opposed to James or Dewey, have very little of enduring worth to teach us. Secularism has to get beyond its juvenile hostility toward religion and its illiberal attempts to banish religion from political life. Secularism must redevelop an appreciation of what Our Religions have to offer. Hallowed Secularism is an attempt to do just that. Let me give a final word about the title of this book, Hallowed Secularism. I took the term from a speech given by Sarah Blumenthal, a character in E. L. Doctorow’s 2000 novel, City of God. Sarah is a very liberal rabbi struggling with the Jewish tradition in a synagogue called the “Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism.” At the end of the novel, Sarah gives an address, which is set forth in the book in full, to the “Conference of American Studies in Religion.” In her talk, Sarah asks the question that must be confronted in this new secular world: “Is it possible that the behavioral commandments of religion . . . can be maintained without reference to the authority of God?” Sarah is not just asking about ethics. She is also asking about depth. Without “the exclusionary, the sacramental, the ritualistic, and simply fantastic elements of religion . . . can a universalist ethics be maintained—in its numinousness?” For those unfamiliar with the term, the numinous is the elevated, the beyond, the transcendent. Sarah is asking whether secular life must be flat and unrewarding or, instead, can capture the sense of mystery in life. Sarah’s answer is yes. We can have a secular life that is both deep and good, and she refers to this life as a “hallowed secularism.” She says that in such a

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secular life God can be recognized as “Something Evolving.” We human beings pursue a “teleology,” an ultimate purpose that we do not know but that “has given us only the one substantive indication of itself—that we, as human beings, live in moral consequence.” This book is an attempt to spell out what Sarah was getting at. Secularists should not be afraid of this sort of religious seeking. You and I are not threatened today by religion on the march, the violence of Islamic fundamentalism notwithstanding. No one is making us follow the teachings of some religion. We live in a democracy as religious or irreligious as it chooses to be. You and I are threatened by something quite different: by the gradual loss of meaning in a secular human culture. We cannot become religious again in the traditional way, but we can find the holiness we have been missing.

PART I

Why Hallowed Secularism Is Necessary and How It Is Possible

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CHAPTER 1

Secularists’ Indifference and Hostility Toward Religion

I

showed my daughter the introduction to this book. Upon reading the opening question, “Wouldn’t you like to live your life abundantly?” she said that her friends would not read any further. It sounded too religious. Her friends, she said, had no interest in religion. That is my impression as well in my dealings with young people. Many seem quite indifferent to religion and religious issues. My first task is to awaken interest in religion. Indifference to religion is something new in secularism. John Dewey, who could be considered one of the great American secularists, was very familiar with the teachings of Christianity and quite sympathetic to them. Breaking with Christianity, to the extent Dewey ever really did so, was difficult. Dewey was not indifferent to religion. No one would dispute that young people in America are more secular than their parents and grandparents. According to a March 2007 Pew Research Center report, 19 percent of those born after 1976, which is, roughly, thirty-years-old and under, describe themselves as “atheist, agnostic, or no religion.” This compares with only 5 percent of those born before 1946 and 11 percent of those born between 1946 and 1964. In another Pew Research Poll, among those sixty-five and older, 44 percent considered the Bible the “literal word of God” versus 29 percent among those eighteen to twenty-nine years old. Conversely, 13 percent of those sixty-five and older viewed the Bible as “not [the] word of God,” compared to the 24 percent of those eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds who felt that way. Nor is this just a matter of young people being more secular and growing more religious as they age. The 2007 Pew report concluded “the number of seculars within each generational group is about the same in 2007 as it was 10

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or 20 years before. Thus it appears that people have not become less secular as they have aged.” These numbers show that America is still a very religious society and is going to continue to be so for a long time. That is why presidential candidates in 2008 are busy emphasizing their belief in God. America is a religious democracy for the foreseeable future. My point is not how secular we are at the moment, but rather that secularists are now sufficiently numerous that they can no longer be considered a fringe group. The importance of that change is that, for some young people, religion no longer sets a framework for meaning. For someone like Dewey, religion was the frame even if he rejected parts of the religious message. In contrast, there is now, for the first time, a substantial group of secular young people who never learned much about religion and do not feel they are lacking anything because of that. This group will continue to grow. This is the sort of person who hears the term “abundant life” and feels uncomfortable. Religion for such a person is not even a mystery. This shortchanges people more than they know. This ignorance of religion is described by a story in the Haggadah, the collection of stories, blessings, and prayers that Jews read in their homes on the evening of Passover. In the Haggadah, several accounts of the Exodus from Egypt are told. One of the ways this is done is through the four types of sons who may hear the Exodus story: the wise son, the hostile son, the simple son, and the son who is too young to know how to ask a question. I want to address some questions to the simple son—those indifferent to religion. These are today’s young secularists. Look around you. Why is there something rather than nothing? You may give an answer from astrophysics. You may say it’s the big bang. Everything we see, everything we know, and much that we cannot see and cannot know just sort of happened out of nothing one day. Does this not awaken in you a sense of awe? Does it not bring forth in you a sense of reverence for the mystery of existence? If it does, you are not so indifferent to religion after all. But, perhaps it does not. Perhaps you are dull to such feelings. Then, I will ask you about the love you feel for your wife or husband or child or parent. Do these feelings not awaken in you amazement in the presence of the power of love? Do you not wonder if there is not something greater that you might love? You may tell me these feelings of love have a biological purpose. I will then ask you whether you are not more than a biological purpose. You must be more, for there is no biological purpose in wondering whether you are more than a biological purpose. Perhaps you do not love anyone, and no one loves you. I will ask you then, how do you know how to live? If you tell me you seek pleasure, I will tell you

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that the pleasure you are now seeking pales eventually, if it has not already. You are not made for that kind of pleasure. There is a greater pleasure awaiting you. But no one can experience it who does not love. We have all heard that we should devote ourselves to something larger. We have heard it, but does our culture really believe it? Do any of us really believe it? Colleges keep advertising their advantages in procuring good jobs for students. Colleges do not advertise much about something larger in human life. Well, whether people believe it or not, it is true that we cannot live well unless we devote ourselves to something larger than our own egos and possessions. But what is this “something larger?” Jesus answers that we are to live in radical love. That is his answer to everyone, not just to the “religious.” Jesus says this to the “lawyer” in the Gospel of Luke, in what is known as the parable of the good Samaritan (Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1952). The lawyer asks how he is to “inherit eternal life.” Do not be put off by this phrase; the man does not necessarily mean, how do I go to heaven? He means exactly what we have been looking at, how to live a life of deepest meaning—the truest kind of life there is. Jesus answers by asking what the Torah, which is the Old Testament, teaches. The man answers, as any Jew would have, to love God and my neighbor. Jesus says that’s right. The lawyer then asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Why does he ask that? While “lawyer” is the usual translation, it is misleading to an American reader thinking of secular law. “Religious scholar” might convey a better sense of the text. So, in asking this question, the man is seeking to justify the way he lives. He thinks he already does enough good in the world to satisfy the requirements of his religion. Jesus then tells the story of the Samaritan. The Samaritans were an ethnically mixed group that many Jews of the time looked down on as not really Jews. The Samaritan came upon a Jew who had become a crime victim, and, unlike the religious leaders who had passed the man by, the Samaritan took him to a place of safety and refuge and paid the man’s bill. Who was neighbor to the victim? asks Jesus. Many commentators have noticed that Jesus did not directly answer the question the lawyer had asked him. The man had asked Jesus, who is my neighbor? In context that meant, whom must I love? Jesus answered that question only indirectly: even Samaritans are neighbors. You must even love Samaritans. The parable, thus, is one more step on the road to the universalization of Judaism.

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But Jesus also answered a question the man did not ask. The unasked question was, how can I be a neighbor? In other words, what does it mean to love my neighbor? Jesus answered the right question because this lawyer was not someone who really loved his fellow man, not even his fellow Jews. Jesus was also answering our question: what does it mean to devote myself to something larger? It means to meet the world in love. Jesus’s love is a radical commitment. Look at what the Samaritan did for someone he did not even know. He bandaged the victim. He treated the wounds. He put the man on his donkey. He took the man to an inn and stayed with him overnight. The next day the Samaritan paid the innkeeper and told him to give the man what he needed, and the Samaritan would pay the rest when he returned. The Samaritan did all this not because he felt he had to and not because anyone would find out but because the Samaritan had “compassion.” The parable of the good Samaritan is not “religious.” The secularist is addressed, too. Loving God is not even part of the parable. Jesus does not tell the lawyer to go to synagogue or to pray or to engage in ritual or even to give charity to the poor. The way to live, Jesus is telling us, is to be like this Samaritan. Living in radical love is the way to live “beyond yourself.” Notice how much further Jesus tells us to go in love than we would go in what we call “ethics.” If you come upon an unconscious crime victim, must you interrupt your trip, care for him, take him to a hotel, stay with him, pay for his room, and then pay for whatever he spends after you leave? Of course not. You are indifferent to religion, but you cannot be indifferent to Jesus’s radical instruction. Jesus says that this is the way people are supposed to live—in radical love. Neither you nor I have the slightest intention of actually living this way, of course; nor do Christians live this way. But I’m not sure we dare to dispute Jesus’s demand that we live like the Samaritan. Jesus is making a claim on everyone, including secularists. You can disobey. We all disobey. But you cannot ignore him. It turns out that not only are you not indifferent to religion, you are not even indifferent to the gospel. Our failure to live the way Jesus instructs is sin. “Sin” is a religious term and, as secularists, we may think we can avoid it. Like religion, we say we are indifferent to such things. When I speak to secular groups, someone will inevitably say at this point, “I don’t need religion to live a good life.” I always agree. “No, of course not,” I say. But that is not the proper answer. I should respond, “You don’t live a good life. I would have no trouble lining up large numbers of people you have wronged, just as you could with me. And you probably have never in your life

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treated anyone like the Samaritan did, unless it was a family member, and you had to. We live a bad life.” We do need religion, or at least we need to learn the lessons religion teaches. Lessons like the one offered by the good Samaritan. Jesus is way ahead of this religion/nonreligion distinction. Jesus’s description of how to live in this parable is not religious. It is just the way to live. Of course, it follows that the lawyer’s way to live, which is sin, is not religious either. Claiming to be indifferent to religion turns out not to be so easy. All these questions of how to live, which every person must answer, are both religious questions and secular questions. This sense of sin also relates religious teaching to a public, as opposed to a purely personal or private, context. Many secularists believe that religion should play no role in American public life. We do not want another president to tell us that “God told me to invade” a country. This rejection of a public role for religion is the public equivalent of personal indifference to religion. This criticism of public religion is fair enough. Politicians do use religion this way. However, if sin is not necessarily “religious” in the sense of relating purely to God but consists in failing to live in radical love, then all our national policies are sinful. It seems to me that this insight would be a welcome corrective to America’s tendency to regard itself as good and its enemies as evil. That needed sense of humility was a theme in Peter Beinart’s 2006 book, The Good Fight, which argued that liberalism during the Cold War was able to fight totalitarianism with humility and restraint, unlike the Bush administration’s assumption of American moral purity in fighting the war on terror. The source of humility in those American leaders, however, was not calculation but a realistic view of human sinfulness, including their own. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Beinart greatly admires, warned specifically of the ambiguity of power. That ambiguity roots in human sinfulness, as Niebuhr knew but Beinart, as a secularist, cannot appreciate. This quick survey of the breadth of religion and its importance in our lives is meant to show no more than this: although you may know little about traditional religious doctrine and may legitimately have no interest in it, religion itself—its themes and thoughts—is simply too large and too much a part of human life for you to ignore. This does not mean you cease to be a secularist. You and I are firmly wedded to this world and no other. Instead, it might mean that the religious orientation of Hallowed Secularism has something important to offer to you. Let me turn now to the hostile son. The secularists who are angry at religion have definite ideas about it; they consider religion to be very important; they wish to combat it rather than leave it alone. These strong feelings stem

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from several different sources: disdain, disagreement, fear, and an intellectual commitment to atheism. I will take these factors up in turn. The disdain for religion by secularists is something we have all heard. It is said that religious people are hypocrites. This objection may be focused on something like sex scandals in the Catholic Church or the willingness of followers of the Prince of Peace to support war. Or, it could be more personal—that for all the claims of sanctity, religious people are no better than anyone else. They may be worse. All of these criticisms of religion are true to some extent. But these criticisms do not have anything to do with our subject here, which is Hallowed Secularism. It is not any part of what religious people believe, or say they believe, that bothers the critics, but that religious people do not live up to their message. There would be nothing here to prevent borrowing by secularists from religion. In fact, with all this criticism of religion, secularists might like to show that they can live according to the commandment of love to a greater extent than most religious people do. It is not surprising that religious believers do not live up to the teachings of their religions. They never have. The teachings of Our Religions require something approaching saintliness, which most of us lack. Karl Barth, perhaps the leading Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, even had a name for this phenomenon of falling short. He called the church “the Church of Essau,” as opposed to the Church of Jacob, from the two brothers in the book of Genesis. His point was that the church, and we may add any religion, is not usually, and never totally, the Church of God. The church is usually the church of men and, therefore, corrupt. But Barth did not think this was a reason to abandon the church. Everything else was always and totally the work of Essau. From what vantage point does the critic dare to throw stones at religion? Religious believers fall short of the glory of God, but the secularist does not even try to live up to that glory. You and I will not let ourselves off the hook that easily. Disdain is no answer to the religious question. In Hallowed Secularism, we are going to appropriate what we consider the best of religion. We will try to do better with this gift than religious people have done. But I doubt we will. A second type of secular hostility against religion stems from disagreement with religious believers about certain issues. In America, it is probably the case that the more often a person goes to any house of worship, the more culturally conservative that person is likely to be. This often translates into opposition to practices like abortion, gay marriage, and the separation of church and state. So, people on the other side of these issues become generally hostile to “religion.”

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This kind of opposition to religion is not a new phenomenon. Anticlericalism in the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War all stemmed, at least in part, from opposition to the conservative political role that the Catholic Church was perceived to have played in those countries. The presence in the last few years, on one side of the political spectrum, of solid religious support for the Republican Party solidified and accelerated the trend of some political liberals to oppose religion in a more general and even theological sense. This religious partisanship caused the political observer Kevin Phillips to point to the danger of “theocracy” and led to a whole industry of books to promote atheism. In terms of this issue opposition to religion, secularists should remember two things. First, religious believers are not monolithic on political issues. Second, religious believers have been, and are, powerful allies in terms of a constellation of other political issues, such as opposition to the harsh treatment of illegal aliens in America. Secularists probably are aware of these two political facts of life, but it is helpful to remind ourselves. Opposition to abortion, for example, has a powerful religious impetus. Yet, many religious liberals support a woman’s right to choose. The issue of gay rights is visibly splintering many religious denominations. A lot of liberal believers support gay rights. On other issues, such as support for workers’ rights and the rights of immigrants, religious support puts secular liberal commitment to shame. American bishops opposed President Clinton’s welfare reform at a time when secular liberals had more or less abandoned the poor. So, obviously, religion cannot properly be thought of as simply a conservative political front. Issues are not a reasonable ground for secularists to avoid thinking about religion. In addition, we are considering Hallowed Secularism, not conversion to one of Our Religions. We do not have to worry too much about the position of the Catholic Church concerning abortion, for example, because we are not becoming Catholics. Yet, there is a sense in which the secular person primarily committed to certain political issues should be suspicious of Hallowed Secularism. After all, this book and the movement I hope it stimulates are based on a fundamental, transcendent foundation to reality, which Our Religions have encountered and are trying to engage and which secularism should also encounter and try to engage. That transcendent foundation does make demands on us. Or, since it is not a person, I should say that encountering reality in this way changes us and that the change it promotes is in tension with many modern trends in Western society. On one hand, Hallowed Secularism is not going to

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be comfortable with abortion or any utilitarian approach to human life. On the other hand, Hallowed Secularism should be a powerful support for gay rights, as an aspect of human liberation. Religious teachings do not translate directly into ordinary politics. God makes strange demands on people who are open to him. That is why the Roman Catholic bishops are all over the place politically. It is also why any ideologue, even a religious one, is going to resist genuine religion. In any event, I think it is fair to conclude that commitments on particular political issues are not an absolute barrier to the openness to the transcendent that Hallowed Secularism promotes. A third source of secular hostility to religion is fear of religion as irrational and violent. Christopher Hitchens is convinced that religion is a dangerous force in the world. Who can argue with him? There are no secular suicide bombers. Hitchens does not think that this sort of violent behavior is the influence of just one bad religion—Islam. Hitchens believes that all religions are like this, that religion is inherently violent, irrational, and intolerant. He includes in his critique religious figures you might think are not like that: the Dalai Lama, St. Francis, and Gandhi. When secularists think of religion in this way, they are really criticizing any total belief system. If there were any belief you would be willing to die for or kill for, it would be equally “religious” for someone like Hitchens. This is why he believes that the murderous regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were not instances of secular violence. Those regimes were not really secular to Hitchens. Hitchens is criticizing emotional commitment, not religion. Dewey also feared simple emotionalism and did not see it as a positive force. He wrote a correction of Matthew Arnold, who had once described religion as morality “touched with emotion.” Dewey responded, in A Common Faith, that “the religious is ‘morality touched by emotion’ only when the ends of moral conviction [are] so inclusive that they unify the self.” Dewey saw what Hitchens and other critics of religion tend to forget— that the power of positive emotion is the engine of human life. Certainly, the power of emotion is twisted when a suicide bomber attacks innocent people. That is why Dewey modified the Arnold quote to specify what kind of emotion ought to be encouraged. Yet, there cannot be real change in the world or in one’s own life without engaging the emotions. Hitchens presumably believes that the world would be better if we all lived in his cool, ironic post-modernism. It is true that if no one cared deeply about anything, no one would kill anyone. But eliminating religion would not accomplish this. America is not killing people in Iraq because of American

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religion. We may have invaded Iraq for good reasons—such as the promotion of democracy—or bad—to attain cheap oil—but we certainly did not invade to impose Christianity. Nor did we invade because Iraq threatened us for its own religious reasons, though that claim was made at the time. In addition, if there were no passionate, emotional commitments, not only would violence cease, but all attempts to improve the world would cease as well. Hitchens is thus worshipping the status quo. Religion is not necessarily irrational or antirational. Not all religious believers deny the accomplishments of science, for example. Pope Benedict considers Christianity to be the very embodiment of reason. The basic point the pope was making in his famous 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg, when his comment about Islam grabbed everyone’s attention, was not that reason is bad but that reason should not be limited to “the empirically falsifiable.” Any sort of deeply felt life is going to be criticized as mindless, but to proclaim that there is more to human life than meets the eye is not mindless. It is the claim that makes life possible. Finally, opposition to religion can be grounded in an intellectual commitment to atheism. A serious source of hostility to religion can be premised on modern science, for example. I will deal more fully with this subject in the next chapter. Even if science undermines some religious claims, that is not a sufficient reason for the secularist to oppose all religion. We do not know yet what kind of religion, if any, is fitting and proper in the new scientific and post-dogmatic age. Hallowed Secularism is an experiment. It should go forward and be greeted with an open mind. Our Religions contain the way of life humanity needs to survive and prosper in the dangerous future that we face. The contribution that they make is not just in choices of policy. Rather, they connect us to the depth of human life that makes all commitment possible. What the young always seek is life in the fullness of its possibility. Only Our Religions hold open that path. Granted, we are not going to re-embrace them, strictly speaking, but we had better be completely open to them.

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CHAPTER 2

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massive shift is occurring at the beginning of the twenty-first century in which millions of people are moving away from the religious traditions of their cultures and into the technological/commercial vortex of secularization, the process by which secularism is growing. By and large, this change is not good for people. It is true that many people are thereby liberated from barbaric traditional practices and gross superstition in their native cultures, and secularization brings with it medical marvels and sometimes economic prosperity. But this does not always happen, and sometimes it is at a great cost. Lives that were centered are now adrift. The cost of secularization does not matter, however. The trend is probably permanent. In fact, secularization seems to be picking up speed. Secularization did not begin in the twentieth century, and it will not end in the twenty-first century. I foresee its victory in the sense that secularism will no longer seem to be significant—it will just be the way things are—sometime after the year 2100. What makes the process of secularization inevitable is that it works at the level of what is believable—what Charles Taylor calls the conditions of belief. According to the political philosopher Eric Voegelin, in his volume, In Search of Order, epiphanies—revelations of the truth of order, such as those that happened with Jesus and the Buddha—have occurred throughout history and will continue to occur. Each revelation succeeds to the extent that its new symbols express the “common sense” of people in a particular place and time with the “authority commonly present in everybody’s consciousness.” Religious images and stories today seem strange, whereas secularism expresses our common sense of how things are. It is not so much that we deny religious claims of miracles, for example, as that they do not seem possible and therefore do not really challenge us at all. This is what happened to me. I began to sense that Our Religions were unreal. At one time I was a liberal Jewish believer. Then, at a certain point, it

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took too much effort to listen to words that could not be true, and the worst part of this process—the part most revealing of how cut off you are from your religious tradition—is that you do not even feel you have lost anything. I can no longer believe, at least not in the old way. There are many others like me. Our Religions do not disappear in this process of secularization. In fact, they remain robust, first in opposition to secularism and then later in dialogue with it. Many people who come from religious families will probably remain religious believers in every generation, but as the number of religious families declines, the total number of believers will also fall. The deterioration of religious civilization will take a long time. Even after the triumph of secularism is complete, Judaism, Christianity, and all Our Religions will still be present and viable to many. However, they will be secondary to the secular world, which will be normative. This event—the displacement of Our Religions—although it will take place gradually, will signal a radically new era. There has never been a time in human history in which religion has not been the dominant worldview. Today, religion is still primary. The struggle against secularism is still ongoing. When that struggle ends, the world will look quite different. This chapter lists some of the forces contributing to secularism. I believe these forces will triumph over religion. However, as the next chapter shows, these forces displace religion, but they do not replace it because they do not lead us to abundant life. For that, we need to achieve Hallowed Secularism.

Science Science undermines religion in a number of ways. First, science shows that revelation, the most important source of our knowledge of God, is not wholly and uniquely reliable. Then, science shows us a universe in which God does not seem possible and certainly is not necessary. Finally, science shows us processes that do not bear the hand of a careful creator. Given all this, it is not surprising that religion begins to pale. Science displaces any supernatural account of the world. Why is the success of science in explaining the world a threat to Our Religions? Why cannot religion be in charge of morality and science be in charge of material life? Even many atheists admit that moral values can be real and enduring. In a Newsweek debate about the reality of God, Sam Harris, representing the atheist side, said, “I’m not at all a moral relativist . . . I think there is an absolute right and wrong.” So why not divide the spheres of life with material life on the science side, morality on the religious side, and the field of history split between them? This sort of division is what liberals in America have been suggesting for years—that religion is a private matter and

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that it should have no role to play in public life. The problem is that limiting religion to private life is not the way the Bible sees things. God is Lord of morality, history, and nature. This is why God begins as creator in Genesis 1:1. God is Lord of history in Exodus, the book in which the slaves are freed from Egypt, and God is Lord of morality in the Prophets, for example, in Amos’s condemnation of the rich merchants: “Hear this, O you who swallow up the needy, so as to destroy the poor of the land.” This is a very crude division—actually, God is Lord of all three aspects of reality everywhere in the Bible. The God of the Bible is in charge of everything. Furthermore, this God is not remote. He did not just start things at the big bang, set up evolution on autopilot, and then watch everything unfold scientifically. In Christian dogma, God sends his Son to bring salvation to all human beings. In the Jewish view, God enters into a covenant with Abraham so that the Jewish people will bring a blessing to the world. These are plans by an all-powerful and loving being. There is no room for an area of life in which science rather than God holds sway. There have been suggestions that other religions might be less vulnerable to the claims of science than are the biblical religions. The Dalai Lama, for example, is more open to the claims of science than are most representatives of the “religions of the Book”: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which are sometimes so named because of their fidelity to holy texts. In his book The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama is careful to concede the claims of science, but this admission turns out to have its limits. This is how George Johnson put it in a review of the Dalai Lama’s book: But when it comes to questions about life and its origins, this would-be man of science begins to waver. Though he professes to accept evolutionary theory, he recoils at one of its most basic tenets: that the mutations that provide the raw material for natural selection occur at random. Look deeply enough, he suggests, and the randomness will turn out to be complexity in disguise—“hidden causality,” the Buddha’s smile. There you have it, Eastern religion’s version of intelligent design. He also opposes physical explanations for consciousness, invoking instead the existence of some kind of irreducible mind stuff, an idea rejected long ago by mainstream science.

So it is fair to say that science is a challenge to all of Our Religions to a greater or lesser extent. How exactly does science contradict the Bible? The story of the rise of Western science can be told in a number of ways. In one sense, science is important simply because its discoveries enable us to know how the universe works and thus enable humans to do extraordinary things, like fly to the

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moon. For this latter accomplishment, we can thank Sir Isaac Newton, who solved the problem of planetary motion in 1687, laying down the three laws of motion that would frame a view of the physical universe lasting until the twentieth century. A second great scientific achievement was the establishment in geology of the ancient age of the earth, currently estimated to be around 4.5 billion years but understood even by the mid-nineteenth century to be at least in the millions of years, along with the related insight that the earth is not static but in perpetual change. These discoveries grew more gradually than did those of Newton, but by the early twentieth century, especially with the perfection of radiometric dating, there is no longer scientific controversy about the geologic outline. The third important scientific achievement, from the perspective of religion, was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which he first announced in 1859 in his book On the Origin of Species. Darwin applied his theory to human evolution in 1871 in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. These three scientific discoveries contradict a plain reading of the Bible. The Book of Genesis shows God forming the heavenly bodies and setting them in their courses, but Newton explained that gravity, not God, keeps the universe in its motion (though Newton did not put it that way). Genesis shows the earth created by God in its current form at the same time everything else was created, but geology explains that the earth is older than life itself—far older than Genesis suggests—and that the earth continually changes its form. Finally, Genesis shows all life created at the same time, but evolution traces life back to a common ancestor from whom all varieties of life are descended. Therefore, the Bible is not literally true. That by itself need not have been a radical challenge to the religions of the Book. Karl Barth, a religiously orthodox thinker, explains that the Word of God is not based on “a specific cosmology,” even though the Bible may express itself through a particular cosmology. Barth meant by this that scientific accounts of the workings of the natural order are not inconsistent with the meaning of the Bible. To put this simply, the point of the Bible is that God created everything, not how God did so. But that understanding does not elimintate the problem of the scientific challenge to the literal truth of the Bible for two reasons. First, despite Barth, Our Religions have had a tough time swallowing these scientific accounts, especially evolutionary theory. Certain Protestant groups reject evolution altogether. Some Muslims do as well. For example, on the “Understanding

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Islam” Web site, sponsored by the Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences in Pakistan, I found the following exchange: What is Islam’s view on evolution? In your question, if “evolution” implies that man is actually an evolved form of a certain other creature, then Islam does not affirm such a standpoint. According to the Qur’an, Adam (pbuh)—the first man—was a direct creation of God, as a man. The Qur’an does not support that Adam evolved from another species.

A traditional understanding of Islam would seem to be skeptical of evolutionary theory. My impression is that most Orthodox Jews accept the scientific conclusions described above, as does the Catholic Church, though perhaps with reluctance in both cases. Law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times about his experiences in an Orthodox Yeshiva when he was growing up, told of a lecture on creation by the head of the Yeshiva. The rabbi said that he accepted the theory of evolution but had trouble believing that man was descended from monkeys. In terms of the Catholic Church, the statement by Pope John Paul II acknowledging that evolution is “more than a hypothesis,” for example, betrayed the discomfort the Church experienced around the topic of evolution. The church’s position on evolution gradually became more supportive. By 2007, Pope Benedict called the creation-evolution debate “an absurdity” and evolution “a reality that we must see”—one that does not exclude a role for God. As shown above, even the Dalai Lama is not entirely comfortable with the whole scientific account. For those of us outside Our Religions, who accept scientific explanations as simply true, these sorts of rejections, or even qualms, about science undermine the acceptability of Our Religions and contribute to secularism’s appeal. It is not so much that science and religious dogma conflict, which many people are unable actually to judge, as that religious authorities doubt the reliability of science that many of us take for granted. The second way science contradicts the scriptures is that science claims to have more authority than religion. Galileo was forced by the church to recant not just because of the substance of his scientific conclusions but also because he regarded neither the revealed Word of God in the Bible nor the traditions of the Church to be appropriate sources of authority for conclusions in scientific investigations. In other words, Galileo thought that the wisdom of Our Religions must be judged against scientific reasoning and empiricism rather than the other way around. At least in the fields in which it is competent to judge, science is the umpire rather than religion.

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Galileo’s conclusion about the authority of science is obvious to a secular mind, but it must be intolerable to many believers. If you are, for example, a Muslim who believes that the angel Gabriel dictated the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad and that, therefore, the Qur’an is the very Word of God, what sense can it make to assert that mere human investigation not only rivals its authority but also surpasses it? So, again, science undermines at least a certain kind of religious belief. There are Christians and Jews who concede that the Bible is not the literal Word of God but that it is the work of inspired human authors. They accept scientific accounts of reality. They may even consider the Genesis account of the creation of the world to be a kind of poetry. The problem with this religious response is that it can be seen as solving the scientific threat by surrendering to it. When does poetry stop and something else begin in scripture? Maybe the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection are poetry. Maybe every miracle is somehow consistent with science, and when reading this poetry every religious service should add an asterisk. At some point, what is left of religious claims? Aside from contradicting biblical accounts, science undermines religion by showing a universe that appears to operate on its own. There is the absence of supernatural causation. Science shows how things happen. We do not need God to be present for the sun to come up. There is no reason to imagine anyone behind the actions of the natural world. Scientific ordering is not literally an argument against the existence of God. God might exist without running things. God might have begun all this in the big bang and might have designed all these processes to run on their own. But the kind of God who could intervene in the natural world in violation of scientific laws becomes difficult to accept. The God of the Bible is that kind of God. In addition, there is a secular effect from observing natural processes working without God, even if God exists. This secular effect renders God irrelevant. That irrelevance leads easily to indifference. That indifference is secularism. For many people, this indifference to God does lead finally to the denial of God’s existence, but that is not its immediate or most important effect. In fact, for some people, God is no longer sufficiently real or present to even bother denying. Finally, science shows us a universe that operates in the sort of unwieldy fashion that argues against a directing intelligence. Not only does the universe operate on its own, but it does so in an inefficient and even inelegant way. The universe is more complex than it ought to be if a certain kind of God were in charge of it.

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Here is an example from astronomy of what I mean. An astronomer who was also a Catholic priest came to Duquesne University a few years ago to talk about the relationship between science and religion. He said essentially the following: I do not know why God created life out of carbon rather than out of something else. But once life is based on carbon, there must be a sufficient cycle of star deaths to create the element carbon. That necessitates a certain age for life. Those statements do not imply a conflict between science and religion, but if the point of God’s plan is ultimately to create man, why should an allpowerful being bother with star cycles or evolution? Why not create humans in a straight line, as Genesis says God did? The processes of reality do not necessarily mean that there is no God. To jump ahead into the content of Hallowed Secularism, God may be “in” the processes of the universe or may even be “the structure in things,” as the theologian Richard Niebuhr once wrote. Or God could be the meaning of things or could represent what we mean when we say that events have meaning. The point here is that science does seem to undermine a certain way of looking at God. Thus science is one of the sources of secularism. Another such source is globalization.

Globalization There are two related meanings of globalization: economic and cultural. Both aspects contribute to secularization but in different ways. Probably the most commonly held meaning of globalization is the economic one. Since the fall of communism in the 1980s, a worldwide capitalist economy has been growing. In this unified world, capital is largely free to move. Labor is less free to move, but because production moves, jobs can go to workers rather than workers having to move to seek out jobs. Americans call this process outsourcing, and it is an enormous force in the world economy. The currency of this one-world capitalism is consumption. The economic well being of everyone depends on consumers everywhere continually buying an increasing mass of products, and these products are becoming the same all over the world. Globalization is not yet complete by any means. It is just an important trend. We can foresee, however, the eventual establishment of a worldwide, genuinely interconnected economy. There have been winners and losers in globalization. Automobile workers in America have not prospered. On the other hand, the growth of wealth in China, India, and certain other places has been astonishing.

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The ability to move economic operations to other places in the world has increased the pressure on workers everywhere to be more productive. In a sense, workers are now competing against themselves everywhere in the world to keep prices low for consumers. This pressure has also been increased by technological innovations that spur productivity by homogenizing even white-collar work, thus contributing to the ability of corporations to move operations around the world. These technologies also tend to render certain types of organizations—for example, record companies and newspapers—as antiquated as the old guilds. People are beginning to obtain information and entertainment in new ways, and it is not yet clear what kinds of delivery systems will be profitable. These economic processes have both increased wealth around the world and increased disparities of wealth. Owners of capital, including intellectual capital, are rewarded highly in the globalized economy. Skilled workers are rewarded less than owners of capital, and unskilled laborers are rewarded even less. The other meaning of globalization is cultural. Globalization also refers to the interpenetration of the cultures of the world. Through all sorts of exchanges, not just economic, all the peoples of the world are in closer contact than ever before. Part of the reason for this is the Internet, which allows for continuing contact between people in different places. There is some overlap between these two types of globalization—economic integration and cultural exchange. After all, one way in which cultural contact happens is the spread of what is referred to as Western mass culture, and certainly one way that culture spreads is by the purchasing of products. How does economic globalization lead to secularization? There are two aspects to this. First, there is the content—the ideology—of this globalized culture. It is basically a consuming and producing culture. Therefore, what people learn from it is materialism. Economic globalization is not in any sense a spiritual awakening. Second, economic globalization loosens cultural ties. The Indian computer worker who spends time in Seattle, away from home and family, may no longer see the need for worship. The associate who is sent by a law firm to Tokyo for an extended period may not bother with church. These sorts of physical movements can weaken religious commitments. Here is an example from the cultural rather than the religious sphere that illustrates this power of economic globalization. For years, Spain has practiced siesta, a roughly three-hour break in the middle of the workday. Siesta moved the end of the workday and the evening meal to later in the day than in most other countries.

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Siesta was apparently not an ancient custom, but it was well adapted to Spain’s Mediterranean climate and, in my own experience, was followed pretty rigorously in southern Spain and less so in northern Spain. Anyone who has spent any time in Spain will testify that siesta gave Spanish life a different feel from that of the rest of Europe. Then, in January 2006, the Spanish government abolished siesta for federal agencies and conducted a campaign to try to convince private enterprise to follow suit. This was done in acknowledged response to the rhythm of economic life in Europe, specifically so that Spanish business schedules and those of the rest of the EU would be similar. This was felt to be more efficient and thus economically beneficial. It was also hoped that abolishing siesta would increase productivity. I do not mean to suggest that this change was a bad thing. Apparently, many young parents felt that the shorter workday was a more family-friendly policy, so the change may have been beneficial for more than economic reasons. However, the abolition of siesta was not intended to help families. It was intended to make money. That also is not necessarily a bad thing. This change in Spain is reminiscent of the gradual erosion of the Sunday closing laws in the United States during the twentieth century—also in response to economic pressures—which accelerated the secularization of American culture. Both these changes demonstrate that money can be a stronger force than either culture or religion. You will never see a serious American candidate for president advocate closing the malls on Sunday, even though doing so would probably revitalize Christian religious practice in the United States more than any other single act. The secularizing effect of the other form of globalization—cultural contact—is quite different from crude economic pressure. Religious skepticism can be born from anthropological relativism. Historically, most human beings knew mostly their own kind and certainly did not know that much about the traditions of other and different kinds of people. When we learn that all cultures have their religious traditions, the effect can be dramatic. Globalization disrupts our religious certitudes by bringing us into contact with different cultural and religious traditions. Philip Kitcher in Living with Darwin describes what often happens next: “As understanding of the diversity of the world’s religions increases, it’s hard for believers to avoid viewing themselves as participants in one line of religious teaching among many. You profess your faith on the authority of the tradition in which you stand, but you also have to recognize that others, people who believe very different, in compatible things, would defend their beliefs in the same fashion. By what right can you maintain that your tradition is the right one, that its deliverances are privileged?”

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This problem also beset Pem, an Episcopal Priest, in City of God, when he asks in a sermon, “But how do we distinguish our truth from another’s falsity . . . ?” The more we know of other religions, the harder it is to believe that the one we grew up in happens to be the ultimately right one. But the matter is even worse than that, because not only do we now know that there are sincere believers in other and different religions but we also know that our own tradition, especially if it is Christian, could at various points have gone in different doctrinal directions. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, could have been admitted into the canon. It is clear that the entire Old Testament was put together out of different and identifiable sources. In other words, Our Religions are man-made. The response from many people to this knowledge is that all religions are basically the same. That similarity may come down to something very innocuous, like “be a good person.” Thus begins a dull secularism that is out of touch with any deeper possibilities of human life. No religious tradition nor, for that matter, much truth of any fundamental kind can be embraced out of such thinking. The sorts of generalizations I am making here must be approached with care. Is secularization truly growing? Despite some obvious indications to the contrary, I think the answer is yes. Sometimes opposition to a trend like secularization, which is what we are seeing in both the Islamic world and in America, is evidence that the trend is strong, not that it is weak. For example, in American politics, the 2008 presidential election may well be the most “religious” in history as Democratic Party candidates try to reach across the God gap that has favored the Republican Party among religious voters in recent years. This does not change the fact that the younger you are in America, the less likely you are to go to church or synagogue, and that trend seems to reflect a generational change rather than a continuing change-of-life scenario. Also, secularization can sometimes be masked and can be much more present than it seems. For example, President George Bush’s policies in Iraq would not normally be described as secular in the sense of being antireligious. But after the invasion of Iraq, the intention of the Bush administration was to create a secular Iraqi constitution. In fact, as late as the December 2005 Iraqi elections, the media reported the electoral success of religious parties as a blow to the hopes of the United States for a secular Iraq. Despite its support from the Christian community in America, Bush administration policies could be quite secular. The Bush administration sought to privatize Islam in Iraq. I admit that the secularization that is going on in the rest of the Islamic world is hard to specify. Islam in many places—for example, in India and

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Indonesia—was for many years much more relaxed in its practices than it is today. There is a hardening of religious attitudes and practices going on in the Islamic world, and because of this, you do not see obvious signs of secularization—for example, increasing consumption of alcohol. If you looked elsewhere, however—for example, at the economic integration that requires lending at interest, in violation of some interpretations of Islamic law, or the teaching of secular subjects in religious schools, or even the growth of the Islamic bond market (sukuk bonds)—I think you would find signs of secularization, even in Islam, and if you do not see it now, you will soon. What we have seen so far in this chapter is that science and globalization are leading us to a secularized world. Next, we will see that Our Religions themselves play a third role in the growth of today’s secularism.

Our Religions Our religions are failing the test of modernity. A few years ago, Father Richard John Neuhaus, the editor of the religiously conservative magazine First Things and the author of the very influential book The Naked Public Square, gave a speech about his own history. In the speech, Neuhaus said that he had originally been a liberal. The issue that moved him out of the liberal camp was abortion. What struck me was how Neuhaus put it. He said he regarded abortion as a test of whether liberalism would be true to its historic mission of expanding the boundary of the human family. Liberalism, after all, had challenged the racial caste system in America; fought for the rights of women, native peoples, and other excluded groups; and supported unions. Neuhaus argued in liberal circles that unborn life was the next frontier of human rights. When he could not make even a dent in the unwavering support of the right to choose, he abandoned liberalism. This notion of the test case is relevant to the way Our Religions contribute to secularization. Our Religions have failed and are failing two great tests in our day: the role of women and the rights of homosexuals. In only a small fraction of Our Religions are women and gays treated as genuinely equal to heterosexual men. In liberal religious pockets, women have achieved almost full equality in the ministry and administrative leadership. This is true in the Episcopal Church, for example, but even there, there is tension over the role of women within the greater Anglican community. The more telling example is that women cannot be priests in the Roman Catholic Church. In terms of the rights of gays, an even smaller number of liberal religious groups perform gay marriages and truly accept homosexuality.

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Of course, it is not for me or any nonbeliever to tell a religious institution whether women ought to serve as priests or whether gay marriage should be recognized, but the right of Our Religions to believe what they believe is not what’s at issue. For many people, including me, it is obvious that women and men are equal in any sense relevant to religion. To anyone like that, excluding women or limiting their role is just prejudice—no different from a rule excluding blacks from leadership positions. It is just impossible to take Our Religions seriously when the role of women is even controversial. What is even worse is that, from the point of view of the religions of the Book, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad must be regarded as rather advanced— even revolutionary for their time—in their views of women. For their followers to be less radical in attitude is demoralizing. The prejudice against homosexuals is even greater. Many religious people regard homosexuality as objectively unnatural, but we now know that homosexuality is rather common in nature and has always been present in human society. Jesus never condemned homosexuality. The matter never came up. Homosexuality among men is condemned in the Old Testament, but why should the Book of Leviticus be invoked against homosexuality when it is not invoked against eating ham and shrimp, which of course were also condemned in the Old Testament? Christians ought to know better than anyone that when Peter saw in a trance in the Book of Acts that nonkosher food could be eaten, all the old laws were swept away. Immediately following this divine message, Peter was called to the home of the Roman centurion Cornelius. Though it had been unlawful for Jews to meet with gentiles, Peter is not to call another man unkosher. It is bizarre that this is not understood today to apply to persons whose only crime is that they love one another. The prejudice against homosexuality in Our Religions has had the tragic effect of turning many gay people against religion itself. Obviously this is not the intention of any religious leader, regardless of his or her opinion about gays. Nevertheless, people are responsible for the consequences of their actions. It seems to me that the contribution of these failures of religion to the growing secularization of our time, especially among the young, who do not share these prejudices to the same extent as their elders, is a judgment against Our Religions. There are other failures by Our Religions, of course. There are justifications for an atheist like Christopher Hitchens to write a book attributing the problems of the world to Our Religions. Young people look at these failures, and many turn away from religion. Our Religions also contribute to secularism by losing the heart of their own message and becoming a part of the problem, even if they are not the

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most significant part. Bill McKibben makes this point in his book Deep Economy. McKibben points out that most Christians in America believe that the saying “God helps those who help themselves” can be found in the Bible. Actually, the phrase originated with Ben Franklin, and it expresses an individualism that is at odds with the Bible in general and with Jesus’s message in particular. This is just one example of how tame Christianity and Judaism have become in the face of the current capitalist organization of the world. Our Religions are just important enough to be a source of conflict among people, but they have not been radical enough to be the source of transformation they were meant to be and have been in the past. Part of the reason that Our Religions have not convinced the young that religion embodies the future is that they have been either asleep or defensive in the face of a vigorous atheism. Religion does not have to be ridiculous, but it often is because even its own new thinking does not enter the houses of worship. Theologians have dealt with the issue of miracles from the perspective of modern man, for example, but you will not hear their message in most churches or synagogues. Even the bold clergy who reinterpret for their flocks tend to do so in postmodern irony, without the passionate commitment that originally gave our holy texts life. It is not helpful to hear the words “whatever you think that means” after invoking God. We do not have a lot of Sarah Blumenthals in our pulpits. One consistent exception to these criticisms is liberal, politicized religion, like that of certain Unitarian congregations. Here you can find gay ministers and consistently caring congregants. Maybe this will be a model in the future, but religions of this sort tends to be partisan, even predictable. Religion really is more than politics, which is why the genuine politics of religion can be so shockingly original. Suddenly, Buddhist monks are demonstrating against a military government. Suddenly, Polish workers are forming a Catholic labor union supported by a Polish pope. In contrast, politicized religion that supports some political party’s usual goals to me is not hallowed. Therefore, although I often agree with the political goals of politicized religion, I do not trust it, and I cannot give my life to it. A final source of secularization promoted by Our Religions is the problem of the embarrassing passages in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. Some of these passages promote genocide. In the liberal religious communities I know, such passages are dismissed as primitive, thus demeaning the Bible and ultimately undermining biblical religion. Worse, in conservative religious circles, these passages are sometimes embraced and have led to shocking violence.

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One of these passages is in the Book of Kings, in which the prophet Elijah brings down fire from heaven, discrediting the 450 rival prophets of Ba’al, and then has them killed. Following this episode, Elijah wanders to Horeb, the mountain of God, and hears God in a still, small voice. A passage like this makes me want to burn my Bible. Thus I was amazed to read Pope Benedict’s interpretation of this passage in his book Many Religions—One Covenant. Pope Benedict acknowledges that Elijah “calls to heaven and is heard.” The fire does actually come down, but the pope says that Elijah here is no better than Prometheus or modern man in his technological accomplishments because Elijah is relying on himself and manipulating the world. This kind of human effort is doomed to failure. The text shows that this effort does fail in the case of Elijah. As the pope put it, “Elijah has to realize that this is not the way in which God triumphs; he realizes that faith cannot be established by such signs, by force.” This is precisely what the still, small voice teaches Elijah on Mount Horeb. Pope Benedict’s interpretation reminds us why religion must be rehabilitated and why the failures of Our Religions, which today lead many to secularism, are the most serious failures of all. Humanity can survive mechanistic science. It can survive brutal globalization. But humanity cannot survive a loss of faith. We secularists need to come into a better and more hopeful relationship with Our Religions. We need to continue to hear insights such as this one from the pope. This chapter, highlighting the roots of secularization, begs the question of what kind of secularism is developing. In the next chapter, we see that secularism has fundamental problems of its own.

CHAPTER 3

The Failure of Secularism

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hough secularism is growing, we are beginning to see disenchantment with it. In 2006, Hent de Vries and Lawrence Sullivan published Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. In the book, several scholars tried to come to terms with a new political and religious reality—that the Enlightenment effort to relegate religion to the private sphere seems to have ground to a halt. The same recognition constituted the shared starting point for then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas in their 2004 debate concerning the moral foundations of the liberal state. My own book American Religious Democracy is also part of this growing recognition of a need for religion in public life. This greater openness to religion is not a reinvigoration of institutional religion, nor a lessening of secularization. Rather, something has happened within secularism itself. Our public life is not healthy. Perhaps in response, a number of thinkers are now questioning a separation of religion and public life that had been taken for granted. Further, it is not just public life in which religion is receiving new attention. Secularism has not generated human satisfaction in our private lives either. This chapter outlines the failure of secularism. My purpose is to suggest why Hallowed Secularism, which establishes a closer relationship between secularism and religion, is necessary. Necessary here means that secularism must be brought to the sort of completion that will allow it to grow and develop into a sustainable and satisfying civilization. There is a problem, though, in addressing the faults of secularism. Institutionally, there is no such thing as secularism. There is no movement called secularism, and there are no official spokespeople. There are no commonly accepted secularist texts. There are just people for whom organized religion is no longer meaningful but who have not found other sources of meaning for their lives.

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Since there is no actual secularism movement, I will take examples and insights from where I can to assess how secularism is doing. This means jumping back and forth from some of the New Atheist writers to American culture as a whole.

No Ground Secularism has failed to establish a ground for human existence. “Ground” here does not mean anything exotic. I just mean that secularism has not given us a way to orient ourselves to reality. Secularism does not know how to answer questions like, what is the purpose of human life? or, what may I hope for? Secularism does not even like to think about such questions. One possible reason for secularism to be coy about some of the questions that have fascinated men and women since human life began is that its answers are unpalatable. The answer to the question, what is the purpose of human life? may be “there is no purpose.” The answer to the question, what may I hope for? may be “nothing.” Secularism cannot be blamed for the truth of existence, of course. So, if these are its potential answers, they must not be ruled out just because of our wishful thinking. In fact one would expect secularism to answer in these ways because it might be secularism’s view that life is a cosmic accident. An example of tough-minded secularism is the French existentialist JeanPaul Sartre. Philosophy Professor William Barrett described Sartre’s atheism as follows: “Sartre’s atheism states candidly . . . that man is an alien in the universe, unjustified and unjustifiable, absurd in the simple sense that there is no Leibnizian reason sufficient to explain why he or his universe exists.” Sartre held that there is no ground for human existence. But Sartre did not flee from the dark implications of his insight. Man is radically free and radically alone (Sartre may have changed his view about this toward the end of his life). Now, compare Sartre’s honesty and depth with the shallow, cheerful optimism of the American atheist Sam Harris. I quoted Harris earlier claiming to believe in absolute right and wrong, presumably independent of man’s opinion of the matter. Harris’s view of right and wrong is reassuring, but Sartre would have seen it not only as unjustified but also as a threat to human freedom. Harris just asserts this view of the absolute, never admitting that absolute right and wrong do not fit his atheist universe. Here is a similar, jolly quote from Harris’s book The End of Faith: “Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically . . . without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met . . . is going to die. . . . All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would anyone want to be anything but kind to them in the

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meantime?” I do not understand the cheerfulness of our New Atheists. Here, there is an almost willful refusal to confront the implications of atheism. Why not say instead, “I’ll kill these other people out of my despair at the absurdity of losing everything I love?” I do not mean to suggest that violence is a better response to the apparent absurdity of human existence than kindness, but it is certainly a possible response. Another of our current atheists, Philip Kitcher, is more realistic about the effect of his thinking on average people. Kitcher writes about Elaine Pagels’s account of finding herself, unaccustomedly, in church after learning of the likely fatal illness of her young child. Kitcher writes about the difficulty of finding “comfort without supernaturalist hope.” But Kitcher does not understand that the biblical God is not just about comfort. God is also about justice. And punishment for wrong. And the shape of history. All this is lost when we dispense with God. If the hope that religion offers is “illusory to be sure,” as Kitcher says, what is Kitcher’s hope for life? Kitcher does not see that there is much more lost here than mere comfort. In his 2004 debate with Cardinal Ratzinger, Habermas seemed much more sensitive to what is lost when religious orientation is removed from our public life. Habermas called for a “saving translation” from religious to secular terms, such as the image of God transformed into the equal worth of all persons. But, Habermas also admitted that this does not always work. He was greatly worried about genetic engineering and a kind of rootless modernization in the world. Yet Habermas still argued that the legitimacy of the modern secular state could be grounded without religion in democratic argumentation. This does not seem too stable a foundation. Democratic argumentation is not a ground by itself. Only if there is something real behind argumentation does democracy achieve its promise. Here is what a ground for secularism might look like: When Rachel Remen’s grandfather would make an appointment or even just a plan, she reports that he would invariably add, “God willing.” This practice is common among Orthodox Jews of a certain generation. The phrase “God willing” reminds us that we are not in charge of the world or even our lives. Our plans are contingent. According to Remen, her grandfather believed that “all tragedy or blessing was a part of some unknowable and dynamic purpose. One might not always get one’s own way, but one trusted the Way absolutely.” This is an attitude potentially as acceptable to the secularist as to the religious believer. Life has its purposes. Accept them, align yourself with them, and trust them. This is the way to live.

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This is not just wisdom for one’s private life; history is also part of life. Abraham Lincoln believed—and proclaimed in his second inaugural address—that the Civil War reflected God’s unknowable and dynamic purpose, which he thought he could intuit to a certain extent. I think that I see purpose in the historic and ongoing liberation of women, for example, as an ongoing process that, barring some catastrophe, is unstoppable. Does the atheist say no to this? Does the atheist insist that life has no purpose and that history has no shape? If so, what is the basis for this denial? Of course, it is common ground between the atheist and any kind of secularist that there is no being whose will orders the universe. But even without God, the experience of meaningful life is one that many people have. Furthermore, it would be just an assumption, and an unwarranted one, that this experience of meaningful life is an illusion. Trusting life works. Primo Levi reported that Orthodox Jews did much better than others at Auschwitz because they could somehow see its inhumanity in a religious context, as part of God’s will. If we study religion as a natural phenomenon, as Daniel Dennett tells us to do, we will have to concede that and explain it. The atheist might respond, but no one ever denied that fooling yourself can be useful. The people who see life in these terms are deluded but in a helpful way. Yet that response does not seem quite right. Wishful thinking is not generally a good strategy in life, certainly not consistently over time for large numbers of people. We are either made to function this way—that is, we see connections where there are none—or life somehow is actually trustworthy. Life actually has purpose. How life could come to have a purpose without a being like God would just have to remain a mystery. In other words, the atheist asserting the meaninglessness of reality is simply wrong. This disagreement over the ground of reality, with the candid atheist asserting that life has no meaning and the religious believer and the hallowed secularist claiming that life is trustworthy, is a fundamental difference among people. This difference does not always correspond to whether people go to church. There are churchgoers who do not trust life. Then there are secularists who do. Such secularists trust life and its purposes though they do not believe in God unless by “God” you mean that reality is trustworthy. Trusting reality does not require a belief in an afterlife. In Genesis, Abraham trusts God’s promise, although he has no expectation of any afterlife and is not reported in the Bible as having one. Abraham just dies. Secularism in America and generally in the West has not come clean on its ground of existence. An earlier generation of atheists was willing to acknowledge the implications of its humanistic and materialistic views of life. Now we have cheerful atheists who suggest somehow that good things and good people are

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inevitable without God or anything God-like. This is a sharp delineation between secularism and Hallowed Secularism.

No Limit on Technology Humans are threatened today by an avalanche of technology. We see already the deadening effects of our gadgets: the declining attention span as multitasking replaces thinking; the lack of privacy as information spreads; the simple noise, as more places become wired. Our thinking lacks subtlety under the technological constraints of the screen. Our politics minimize thoughtful discussion and, instead, become the rants of blogging and talk radio. Our advertising moves ever futher away from providing information about products to the psychological manipulation of “branding.” The pressure of seeking efficiency leads to stagnating wages in return for more and harder work. And yet, increased technology is not increasingly efficient. We now live in a world of computer viruses and identity theft. These are all mere instances of the more general and insidious technological threat—that we come to regard ourselves as pieces of technology. We become thing-like. This threat is what lies behind a number of issues, such as genetic engineering, stem cell research, cloning, and abortion. This is why our benefits offices are now called offices of Human Resources. We are not people in the workplace but resources. Our humanity is at risk. People have been thinking about themselves as things at least since the times of Descartes and Newton. Morris Berman explains in his book, The Reenchantment of the World, that Descartes envisioned the universe “as a vast machine, wound up by God to tick forever,” and that Newton demonstrated how that machine is “held together by the forces of gravity.” The importance of understanding nature as a machine and not as having purposes of its own (or of God’s for that matter) is that nature’s only significance is its usefulness to humans. As Berman puts it, truth becomes identified with utility. This understanding of nature, as merely useful to humans, and of no value in and of itself, is the core of the scientific method and is absolutely secular. In theory, there is no reason why such a mechanical worldview could not have been restricted to nonhuman nature. Human beings could have been considered exceptional. Descartes regarded animals as machines but not humans. But the rejection of any distinction in mechanism between humans and the rest of nature is now threatening our humanity. As a character in Nicholas Christopher’s novel, The Bestiary, says, “Once you believed animals were insensate things, disposable, of utilitarian value only, it wasn’t so hard to move on to people.”

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Like other things, humans are also now subject to engineering. Genetic engineering promises to produce people who are smarter, taller, better looking, and so forth. So far, character seems beyond simple biological manipulation, but perhaps manipulating character is also in our future. You do not have to be religious to be uneasy about our increasing capacity to change ourselves. Bill McKibben’s 2003 book, Enough, was a general challenge to scientific activity that blurs the boundary of the human. Referring to the same technological capacities to alter human beings as was McKibben, Habermas stated his concern about the new “liberal eugenics” in his discussion with Pope Benedict. In his recent book, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, and in a 2004 Atlantic Monthly article, the philosopher Michael Sandel sets forth what he considers a secular case against genetic engineering: that it undermines the view of human life as a gift and restricts our “openness to the unbidden.” While Sandel expressly eschews religious grounds for his position, his language is premised on a traditional Judeo-Christian outlook. Indeed, Sandel acknowledges that he took the phrase “openness to the unbidden” from the theologian William F. May. One wonders what Sandel means when he says the “moral stakes [of genetic engineering] can . . . be described in secular terms,” and concludes that he wants us to see “our talents as gifts for which we are indebted, rather than as achievements for which we are responsible.” These sentiments are religious. Sandel is close to Hallowed Secularism. In contrast to Sandel, secularism usually adopts a fatalistic pose in the presence of science. One secular critic wrote of him, “a strategy that defines itself against the core idea of scientific progress cannot succeed.” Everything that man can do, man ultimately will do. Thus we see that secularism does not deliver on its promise of enhancing human freedom. Instead, we end up helpless in the face of scientific advancement. This fatalism in the face of technology is clearly expressed in the landmark case, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which, in 1980, established the patentability of bioengineered life. Chakrabarty is widely regarded as the legal birth of biotechnology in America. The case was brought against the U.S. Patent Office after it denied a patent for a bacterium that had been engineered to consume hydrocarbons, with particular application in cleaning up oil spills. The Patent Office argued that no living organism could be patented. The United States Supreme Court held, 5–4, that living things can be patented as long as the new living thing has characteristics “markedly different” from anything found in nature. The majority opinion by Chief Justice Burger rejected any categorical limits to

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patentability, quoting legislative history that patent protection extends to “‘anything under the sun that is made by man.’” The majority’s basic position was that biotechnology research, and presumably production, would not be affected by any decision the Court made. Chief Justice Burger’s suggested that in the end it would not even matter what Congress determined about patentability: “Legislative or judicial fiat as to patentability will not deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides.” The suggestion that “whatever can be done will be done” is frightening. We sometimes say that you cannot stop progress. But Burger is not talking about progress. He is not saying that the future will be better, only that technology has a certain momentum that is beyond human control. This fundamental threat from technology is also identified by the philosopher Martin Heidegger in his famous essay, The Question Concerning Technology. Heidegger views technology in very broad terms, as everything being ordered to stand by, to be in ready as a “standing reserve." Thus, even the Rhine River, with its hydroelectric plant, appears now to be something at our command as “a water-power supplier.” The picturesque Rhine seen on postcards is still there to be sure, “as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry.” But man only imagines that he is in charge of this process. Man too is “ordered . . . to do this” and belongs himself within the standing reserve. Human subservience to technology and the related inability to resist or to take a stand other than within technology explain the political power of stem cell research in America. President George W. Bush has lost considerable political support, even among those Republicans who are pro-life, for his opposition to federal funding for stem-cell research and his vetoes of bills supporting stem-cell research. This political weakness is strange because stem cell research, for the moment, requires the destruction of human embryos. A human embryo is fairly described as the very first stage of the development of a human being. It can be said with certainty that, if a new birth control pill that operated by destroying the human embryo were developed, the pro-life movement would unanimously oppose it. Yet, the pro-life movement is split over funding for stem cell research, which does the same thing. In the context of secularism’s subservience to technology, we can understand the politics of the issue. Abortion is seen as a “moral” issue. Secularism loves to take positions on moral issues—especially, on the left, if it can be done in the language of personal choice and, on the right, in the name of traditional sexual morality. But, stem cell research is regarded as a scientific issue. Secularism is loath to oppose scientific advance or technological

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application. This is why little criticism is heard about egg donors, sperm banks, embryo freezing or any of the other aspects of the human reproduction industry. Why do we not go even further? We are already beginning to resemble the mountains of humans used to produce energy for machines in the Matrix movies. Why do we not harness these same embryos that we are willing to use for medical purposes to produce energy? In sufficient numbers they would reduce our need for foreign oil. And they do not pollute. If that does not work out, we could always eat them. Secularism is uniquely vulnerable to the technological threat because secularism has no place to stand outside technology. In other words, secularism is hard pressed to answer the question, what is so special about human beings that they should not be treated like things? Unlike secularism, Our Religions can answer that question. The religions of the Book answer, human beings were created by God to serve him in a unique way, and to have dominion, within the limits of creatureliness, over nature. Other religions might say that man is special because he is a part of life and all life is holy. These responses can serve as foundations for resistance to technology. Hallowed Secularism attempts to borrow from religion here. This book is not the place for a full critique of technology. I am only pointing out the failure of our secularism to help us live humane and fulfilled lives. First, we saw the lack of ground, then the inability to resist technology. Next, let’s look at the failure of secularism to bring social peace.

No Peace Secularists like to claim that Our Religions are a source of conflict in the world. Supposedly, one important accomplishment of secularism is to avoid the conflicts that religious differences bring. The secular remedy for religious violence is to relegate religion to the private and individual sphere. This thesis was expressed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in a dissent in a 2002 case—Zelmon v. Simmons-Harris—that upheld a school voucher system in Cleveland, in which most of the money ended up going to the Catholic schools in that city. Justice Breyer explained the case in terms of the wider context of religious conflict. According to Justice Breyer, the Establishment Clause was meant to protect the “Nation’s social fabric from religious conflict. . . . These Clauses [adding the Free Exercise Clause] embody an understanding, reached in the 17th century after decades of religious war, that liberty and social stability demand a religious tolerance. . . . The Clauses reflect the Framers’ vision of an American Nation free from the religious strife that had long plagued the nations of Europe.”

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Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia and one of the New Atheists, recently expanded this argument in magazine article and book form. Borrowing from Thomas Hobbes, he claims the “Great Separation” of religion from politics is the key political accomplishment of America and the West. From secularism’s perspective, there are three explanations for the tendency of religion to lead to violence. First, there are simple doctrinal differences that people feel strongly about and are willing to struggle over. Second, there is a more general critique that people fight out of irrationality and that, unlike secular reason, religion is part of the irrational side of life. Finally, there is a specific critique of a certain kind of religion—apocalyptic religion—including the monotheisms with which the West is familiar. In its 2005 report, Exploring Religious Conflict, the Rand Corporation, an American think tank, calls this apocalyptic tendency “cosmic war,” borrowing the concept from Mark Juergensmeyer. Cosmic War “refers to the metaphysical battle between the forces of Good and Evil that enlivens the religious imagination and compels violent action.” Many of America’s opponents in the world today, the report asserts, are “religious extremists” engaged in Cosmic War. I think the secular position is wrong. Not only is religion not a particular source of violence, secularism itself is. In terms of religious violence, it is important to distinguish conflict based on religious differences from conflict in which religion is used as one more source of enthusiasm against an enemy. For example, the conflict between the United States and Japan from 1941 to 1945 would not be considered a religious conflict. Nevertheless, on both sides, religious differences were utilized for propaganda purposes. As Carl Schmitt put it, political conflict “draws upon other distinctions for support.” In other instances of conflict, the difference between religious conflicts and conflicts that arise from other sources is harder to distinguish. Conflicts in Northern Ireland and Israel, for example, plainly involve religion but are basically ethnic or cultural rather than religiously doctrinal. Religion itself is not usually the source of conflicts in the modern world. Let me now set forth the contrasting position—that secularism is the source of violence. I will briefly address that claim on three levels: the amount of conflict, the relationship of conflict to secular reason, and the inherent tendencies to violence of religion and secularism. On the amount of conflict, for all the religious wars of the sixteenth century and in our own day, the secular conflicts of the twentieth century—World War I, World War II and the cold war—surpass them in scope and ferocity to such a degree that the secular claim appears ridiculous. While it is true that there are Islamic fanatics out there who might be happy to drop an atomic

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bomb on New York City, it remains the case that they have not yet done so, while we secularists did drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When I say things like that in discussions with secularists, they resent the use of the Nazi movement as representative of secularism. They consider anything emotional, as opposed to reasonable, to be religious. The Holocaust, therefore, notwithstanding the Nazi movement’s hostility to Christianity on many levels, is characterized by secularists as a religious attack. Lilla even attributes World War I to religion, despite the fact that most of the participants were Christian. These secular claims about World War I and World War II are unpersuasive. Just as one example, Auschwitz was a labor camp that killed the people it did not need for labor and worked everyone else to death. The slogan at Auschwitz was “arbeit macht frei” (work makes [one] free). The phrase has a mystical tone, to be sure. But Auschwitz was not a religious conception, nor was the freedom referred to in the slogan religious. But, rather than belabor the point, let me demonstrate an undeniable instance of secular reason leading to violence. The highest achievement of secular reason was the nightmare of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), in which the two sides in the cold war rationally aimed thousands of nuclear warheads at each other and were apparently ready to use them. They were ready to do this even though everyone knew that human life would be destroyed. No one can claim that these calculations were anything but rational from a certain point of view. This is my answer as well to the claim of cosmic war. While there are, no doubt, religious people ready to bring on Armageddon, only secularists have taken upon themselves to put a finger one-inch from the Armageddon button. Apparently, religious people are not as irrational as secularists. There is an inherent reason for secularism’s violence. At their hearts, Our Religions promise peace that generally is not the result of war. As John Milbank puts it, “a harmonizing peace which is yet beyond the circumscribing power of any totaling reason.” In contrast, secularism assumes that difference is inevitable and necessarily implies “arbitrariness and violence” that can only be controlled by subjecting difference to the irresistible power of “market economies and sovereign politics.” True, Milbank was speaking only of Christianity in his contrast to secular thought, and would probably not agree with the expansion to other religions. But the point here is the flaw at the heart of secularism. Milbank denies the sweet reason that secularism claims. He would not be shocked that secularists might stare at each other from behind barbed wire or missile launchers. Peace requires at least the possibility of “infinite order.”

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Without that hope, there is only the temporary interruption of violence. Not, as is at least possible in Our Religions, peace as the expression of truth. In a world of almost constant violence, religion is not innocent. But secularism has failed in its promise of peace.

No Truth America is a country of untruth. This is how the author Nathaniel Philbrick describes the explorer Amerigo Vespucci and his relationship to the country that bears his name: “What Vespucci did have . . . was a gift for chicanery and self-promotion, along with an aching need to be remembered. As it turns out, America—this nation of notorious hucksters, dreamers and spin doctors— was named for just the right guy.” Is this claim exaggerated? Our consumer economy is driven by advertising, which is not based on truth. We even have a term for the lies of advertising, in order not to call them lies—we call them “puffing,” and they are never actionable in a court of law. Our political life is also based on lies, in the sense that all partisanship is dishonest, because you must always protect your friends and attack your enemies. I once read the columnist William Safire defending the political one-sidedness of his writing by explaining that you could not have an impact in American political life if you did not speak and associate with one side. Safire made it sound like a matter of commitment—that people who did not do this were wishy-washy. The notion of a commitment to truth did not enter into it. Newsweek recently did a cover story on what the magazine called the global warming “denial machine.” The denial machine consists of a corporately funded effort to manipulate the public into thinking that there is scientific division about the truth of global warming, when there is no serious scientific dispute. The story characterized politicians, especially conservative Republicans, as easily duped, and corporate leadership, especially that of ExxonMobil, as liars willing to sacrifice human good for greater profit. Lest you think this means that conservatives are liars and liberals tell the truth, the whole global warming story can be examined in the exact opposite way. From the point of view of people who believe, mistakenly but certainly honestly, that global warming is not true, the entire scientific establishment in the world is in on what Senator James Inhofe once called the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Either way, whether global warming is true or not, our society is corrupt. Either way, a lot of people are lying. Once you live in the realm of lies, truth is very hard to come by. It can become difficult even for you to know whether you are telling the truth.

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The height of our culture of dishonesty is the war in Iraq, which had nothing much to do with the reasons given for pursuing it. I still do not know why we invaded Iraq—and the reason could have been legitimate—but it could not have been a sincere attempt to prevent the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, since the American government made it difficult for the weapons inspectors to finish their investigation. That investigation would have shown whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Iraq was based in part on lies from the political right. But we all know that lying is nonpartisan. On the left, people defended President Clinton’s lies and on the right people defended Lewis Libby’s lies. The absence of truth is also at the heart of one of the American Constitution’s great accomplishments—free speech in the First Amendment. The idea of free speech might be, and to a certain extent is, that the absence of restrictions on speech ultimately leads to truth. But its acknowledged judicial spokesman, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. had a more jaundiced view of free speech: “time has upset many fighting faiths.” Holmes’s skepticism about truth could be really shocking, even absurd. Here is a quote from his famous Memorial Day Speech to the Harvard graduating class in 1895: I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

Holmes here is praising idiocy and slaughter, which he thinks he knows to be true, at least in a relative sense. Believe it or not, American law schools revere Holmes, both on the left and on the right. This is secularism. Also present in our society is the more technical noncommitment to truth that is associated with postmodernity. This philosophical trend emerged some years ago in the humanities and is grounded, if that could be the right word, in cultural and historical change. The idea is that there is no hard truth underneath our assertions, just temporary convention. Surprisingly, this relativism is established in conservative thought as well as in left-wing political movements. A few years ago, the political thinker Harry Jaffa criticized his conservative allies for their skepticism. In particular, Jaffa had in mind Chief Justice Rehnquist’s view that without the First

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Amendment there could be no right of free speech. Jaffa regarded free speech as a natural human right. The most extraordinary example of the lack of commitment to truth is that this society has an actual, professional news organization—Fox News— that, depending on your point of view, is either consciously dishonest, makes no attempt to deliver the news impartially, or is about the only news organization that does deliver the news impartially. This situation is baffling. If Fox News is really just partisan politics, how can it pretend to be a news organization? How can the journalists who work there look at themselves in the mirror? If people know this about Fox and still watch it, what does that say about the general view of truth in this society? On the other hand, if Fox is just telling it as it is, and its accounts differ from those of other news organizations, does not that mean that these other organizations are lying? How did we get to this point? I know that many secularists think that religious believers are dishonest. But genuinely religious people cannot denigrate truth. For believers, God the Creator stands as an insistence that the way things truly are is grounded and important. We see the weight of truth dramatically in the accounts in the New Testament of two opponents of Jesus and of the Jesus movement: Pilate and Saul, later to be renamed Paul. In the Gospel of John, before Pilate, Jesus says, “I have come into the world . . . to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate famously responds, “What is truth?” In other words, Pilate orders Jesus’s execution for reasons of expediency, not to dispute the claim that Jesus is King of the Jews—that is, the Messiah. Saul, on the other hand, is part of the mob that stoned Stephen to death for claiming that Jesus was the “Righteous One.” The book of Acts describes that upon hearing Stephen’s claim, “they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him.” In other words, Stephen is killed because Saul and the others deny the truth of his claim. This is the difference, as the New Testament sees it, between Rome and Jerusalem. In Rome truth does not matter, only power. And power is willing to kill even though there is no truth. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, truth is all that matters, even to death. In present American society, we are mostly like Pilate. For us, the most important thing is not truth but power or power’s equivalents: money, fame, health and so forth. Because we are secular—even some of us who claim to be religious—we are willing to live with less than the truth.

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No Hope In a thoroughly secular world, there is nothing to hope for. You cannot hope for eternal life. You cannot hope to see God. You cannot hope for the Messiah. About all you can hope for is to live relatively well, to find love, to help others, to see your children grow up and to die easily. That does not describe a bad life. But it is not an ultimately satisfying one. Beyond the individual, what can a secular country and a secular western civilization hope for? Surely we can hope for a world of peace, justice and caring for the environment. Pope Benedict has described this hope, perhaps a little mockingly, as the secularized version of the Kingdom of God. But we do not even hope for these things. Instead, there is something quite poisonous in the atmosphere. For many individuals, the common saying is “life is sh—, then you die.” For society as a whole, the closest we had to a common endeavor was to impose democracy on the Islamic world, which is a project that came to grief in Iraq. American society is at a dead end. Individual life is a flat, endless, working and consuming—a losing tread mill—interrupted by bouts of entertainment and escape, lacking in depth and tradition, constantly running up more and more debt. Social life is now lived in fear of endless threat from a seemingly incoherent world without and from illegal immigration within. We have a sense that America is losing ground, losing its way, losing its leadership, and losing its prosperity. In part, these perceptions are the result of demographics and world trends. America has a relatively aging population, which robs it of vitality. America is an aging empire, desperately trying to keep new arrivals on the world scene, particularly China, at bay. The pathology that this situation gives rise to is all around. In the individual realm, there are the new exotic religious products. For example, secularists, who ought to know better, are now dabbling in the afterlife. Two recent scientific books purport to make differing cases for nontheistic immortality: Frank Tipler in 1994 argued that we might be resurrected in computer simulations in the future, and John Leslie argues in a new book that we will survive death based, in part, on quantum physics. These recent efforts update the tunnel-of-light reports by those close to death, which were gathered in the 1970s by Raymond Moody. As another example, there is the new fascination with the Mayan calendar and suggestions that the world will end, or that something will happen, in 2012. The Mayan enthusiasm seems to be a kind of rapture for non-Christians. The pathology in the collective American psyche is more dangerous. This explains the strong and rather sudden anti-immigrant wave. This is why we are ready for conflict with China. Though 9/11 was a real and justified shock,

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this lack of hope helps explain why America was so ready for the thorough militarization of foreign policy that followed 9/11. The basic belief in progress that characterized the West for the last three hundred years no longer seems to sustain us. Global warming reminds us that technology is no panacea and the Islamic resurgence suggests to us that the world is not becoming more secular and peaceful. In other words, we do not even have the hopes that we thought secularism was competent to deliver. The problem is that these hopes, as understood, were merely utopian. We cannot just will international cooperation. We will not just suddenly have an era of peace and justice. There are real impediments and always have been, including our own sinfulness. These dreams of a better world rested on humanism. They aimed to bring the Kingdom of God without God. But man is not capable on his own of such an achievement. What might renewed hope look like in Hallowed Secularism? The point of Hallowed Secularism is that there is something transcendent in reality— something really there—and Our Religions are good guides to its nature. We are not left without guidance, personally or collectively. Thus, while it is true that there is no afterlife, there can be intergenerational blessing. Assuming there is something real beneath and around us, my individual life can contribute to the coming-to-fruition of such blessing. The same thing can be true for society as a whole. Assuming there is something God-like available for guidance, we could bring our society into better alignment with its thrust. Or, at least, we could try to do so. Since there will not be a Second Coming, whatever we are able to achieve socially will not last. Each generation will have the same task for its time and place. But this is a rewarding and gratifying task. The burden of these efforts is not solely ours. The point of trusting reality is believing that our best efforts will be met and enhanced beyond our own capacities. That is the hope that Hallowed Secularism gives us, which we do not now have. I will return to the theme of hope in the last chapter of this book.

No Way of Life The greatest failing of secularism today is its failure to be a way of life. Secularists do not even understand the need for this. They do not realize that they are missing anything. This is why, though we are not believers, we drift back to church and synagogue, our kids are confirmed, baptized, and bat mitzvahed, and ministers, priests, and rabbis offciate at our funerals. The most courageous among us do without these things, but have nothing to put in their place. We just do without.

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Because secularism is not a way of life, we cannot even say for certain what it means to be secular. American society, for example, while clearly secular in many ways, is also influenced by religion. For example, the Catholic Church tried to force Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign to change his position on abortion by threatening him with exclusion from communion. How different was this from Pope Gregory’s pronouncement of excommunication against Henry IV in 1076? Certainly President George Bush owed his reelection in 2004 at least in part to the clear, if not express, support of much of the American Catholic hierarchy. Yet, consider also how different the religious situation is today from the past. If Senator Kerry had made the matter of foreign religious interference with an American election a major issue, he doubtless would have gained political support. And, of course, President Bush is a Protestant. He literally owed the pope nothing in an institutional religious sense. The pope’s power in America is dependent on ordinary democratic forces. Whether it is the pope’s desire for change on abortion, or the Sierra Club seeking a change on global warming, it is a question of how many votes are at stake if the candidate moves one way or another. The church in other words, though very powerful, is powerful only as another interest group. In terms of the calendar, America is still interwoven with the religious year. Sunday is still something of a rest from business. Halloween, Christmas, and Easter still dominate the holiday seasons. Thanksgiving resonates with religious history and themes. Even the Jewish High Holy Days influence daily life where large concentrations of Jews live. And as other religious groups increase in numbers, their calendars will contribute to American religious consciousness. Yet, our religiously influenced calendar lacks the feel of religious time. We do not feel eternity. Often, Sunday is spent at the mall and the baseball game. Christmas is a time of watching Charlie Brown and buying presents. Easter is losing the cultural sense of the risen Christ. To see the degree of secularism present in our society, you must ask to what extent Christianity in particular or religion in general is the “ordering principle of human life,” as Glenn Olsen puts it. Does the world stand under the dominion of Christ or is it proudly autonomous? Put in these terms, we are plainly secular. What then is the ordering principle in America? Upon what are we dependent? What is the foundation of our way of life? To me, the answer seems to be threefold: political, scientific, and economic. Our lives are organized around human self-determination (democracy collectively and self-help individually); instrumental rationality (science in its many forms); and commerce (the world market). These are our sources of

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meaning. And of the three, the market is dominant. This is what passes for a secular way of life. It is not a healthy way of life. It is a world without worship, without gratitude, without mystery, and without love. In a word, this secular world lacks holiness. It lacks the hallowed quality that secularism needs in its new, worldwide civilization. It is also a world without a plan for itself. Secularism has drifted into this situation, rather than having chosen it. I think that secularism needs a very different kind of life. That is what I mean by Hallowed Secularism. The first step in that direction is collective engagement. Secular society must begin a democratic reevaluation of our way of life. In other words, we must come to grips with our secularism as a people. Obviously, I do not mean “politics” when I say democratic. Politics is narrowly divisive. This process must be broadly inclusive. That is why the narrowly politicized religion of activist liberal churches seems to me a dead end. We need collective study and thought, and finally to make a decision, as to who we are to be in this secular age. To put this another way, we must give a new and deeper meaning to human self-determination. Without impoverishing ourselves economically and without disdaining human reason scientifically, we must come to see democratic self-examination as the new center of society. Only in that way, can we come back to the deeper sources of meaning in the universe that are outside human control. This book is meant to be a marker on the way to that undertaking.

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CHAPTER 4

Sources of Depth in Hallowed Secularism

A

few years ago, Thomas Friedman, the well-known columnist for the New York Times, wrote an influential best seller titled The World Is Flat. The book was about globalization, which is increasingly interconnecting the world. Trade barriers are down, political tensions are lessening, and technical advances are reducing the importance of geographical distance. Friedman is right that technology is changing the world. There are good things about this—for example, it unites people all over the world—as well as negative. But for our purposes, the most significant aspect of this new world is not that it is fast and interconnected but that it is “flat.” Of course, Friedman means flat as in unimpeded. He is describing a secular world, however, that is flat also in the sense of lacking meaning. Religion plays little role in Friedman’s book, except that of irrational impediment to globalization. But no other sources of meaning come into play in this new world either. Though there are new techniques for the transfer of information, we have less of significance to say to each other. Friedman’s title is a helpful image. The secular world is flat. That is what is wrong with it. It lacks depth. It lacks insight into the meaning of human life. This chapter explores some of the potential sources of depth in a world that no longer believes the stories Our Religions tell. The list of sources is merely suggestive. Each of them has its positive and negative side. All of them will be a part of the world of Hallowed Secularism.

Our Religions: History It is a major premise of this book that Our Religions must become a source of meaning for the secular world. This is not surprising since Our Religions have always been the major source of meaning for humankind.

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The first lesson that religion can teach secularism is that God acts in our collective history. Our Religions, in particular, Christianity and Judaism, tell us that although God creates the potential for just societies, men instead institute injustice. When they do that, God responds. Religion in this context is not, and cannot be, private. The Old Testament is not primarily about the religious experiences of individuals. Those experiences are present, of course—the still voice speaking to Elijah, the burning bush that speaks to Moses. Such experiences are even fundamental in the unfolding story that the Torah tells. But those personal experiences are part of a communal story. That story is basically the formation, enslavement, liberation, maturation, decline, and eventual salvation of the Hebrews as a people in a covenant relationship with their God, Yahweh. That story is not restricted to the Hebrew people. The covenant extends to all people and to creation itself. Indeed, the point of the story of the Hebrew people, as explained by God to Abraham, is that the Hebrew people will be a blessing to all the people of the world. As heir to the promise of the Torah, the New Testament should not be thought of as personal, either. There is no such thing in the Bible as a personal savior. The savior—the Chosen One, the Messiah—is not sent to save individuals but, as Jesus puts it in Matthew 15:24, “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Salvation is communal. Incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are salvation history for all the world. Thus, the change from the Old to the New Testament is not from the collective to the individual. The change is the growing understanding that Yahweh, through Jesus, is now dealing directly with all the people of the world, for whose sake the covenant had been instituted from the beginning but who previously had been the recipients of blessing only indirectly. Jesus, his followers come to see, has been sent as savior not only to Israel but “to all nations.” It is certainly true that when Jesus preaches repentance, each individual must repent. This is why many people think of religion as a personal search for meaning. If someone insists that religion must deal with social problems, that person is accused of turning religion into politics. Pope Benedict sets forth the necessarily social thrust of Christianity in his book Jesus when he describes the foundational text behind Jesus’ statement, “I am the true vine.” Jesus’s claim sounds solely personal: Jesus is the true vine; believe in him and inherit eternal life. No doubt the pope believes that. But the pope reminds us that Jesus’s words about the vine cannot be understood without looking at the song of the vineyard in the book of Isaiah.

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In Isaiah, the owner sings a love song concerning his vineyard. He did all he could for the vineyard, expecting good grapes, but sour grapes grew instead. Then, the prophet adds, so all understand, For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold a cry. (Isa. 5:7)

As the pope says, forcing us to see political issues where we would prefer to see “religion,” “God gave them the way of justice in the Torah, he loved them, he did everything for them, and they have answered him with unjust action and a regime of injustice.” Secularism says there is no God. But that just transforms this religious claim into the terms of history per se. Is there an enduring shape to history? Is the cry of the orphan forgotten? Can a regime of brutality and injustice endure forever? The secularist who answers that history means nothing is leading us (and himself) into nothingness. Not only is such a person depressing and nihilistic, he is mistaken. Do you imagine that the rejection of human slavery is temporary, or the liberation of women not inevitable? Once these injustices are acknowledged, there is no going back. Supporters of these injustices are merely fighting a rearguard action. Something is on the scale of history, tilting it against slavery here, for the liberation of women there, promoting democracy across the globe. If God is not doing these things—and cannot be doing so because there is no God—it certainly acts in some ways like God. There are implications here for human autonomy. If history has a shape, then man is not absolutely free. This is of particular importance to Pope Benedict. The pope links the song in Isaiah to the parable in Mark of the tenants of the vineyard. The prophets in the parable are the servants sent to collect the rent. Israel, now the tenants rather than the vine, rejects the prophets. So the owner sends his beloved son, and the tenants kill the son, thinking now they will be free of the owner. Pope Benedict says this is the message of secularism. God is dead and man is free. Man is God, but look where our freedom is leading us. If we understand that history has a shape, we must accept that shape as binding. Human beings must conform to it or suffer the consequences. There are costs for injustice. This, then, is the second lesson for secularism: obedience. For secularists it cannot be obedience to the will of God. Yet, the Bible is a good guide to

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what man is to do and not do. While I quibble over the culturally determined parts of the Bible—the condemnation of homosexuality, the discrimination against women, the prohibition against pork—its overall thrust is genuinely liberating. This liberation comes with judgment—that is, negative consequences—when we engage in oppression. The word obedience sticks in my throat. But what else can you call it when history is on the move? You can go on holding slaves. Pharaoh did. The South did. There were consequences, though. Yes, people disagree about the direction of history. That does not excuse us. Many slaveholders sincerely believed they were benevolent. They were wrong. They were oppressors, and they paid the price, often with their lives. We are directed to follow the genuine path of liberation in history. If we are wrong, we will certainly find out. Commandment in the Bible is not arbitrary. Man is not oppressed by the divine direction, whatever form the judgment of history takes. Do you think it is a burden that we are commanded to love each other? It is only a burden if you wish to be powerful and heedless. Only a burden if you worship money. Only if you think the planet’s climate is your plaything. It is a burden, in other words, if you are on top. But I’ll take the burdens of the Bible any day. The oppression that threatens us is from each other, not from God. This is the third lesson for secularism: continuing exodus—continuing liberation from human oppression. The slaves go free. Exodus is the heart of the Bible. Jesus’s first public proclamation is straight out of the liberation of the Torah. Jesus reads from the Prophet Isaiah: He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18)

You and I refuse to be told what to do by the pope or by Jesus. But, when Francis Fukuyama says we are the end of history and that history ended with America on top, you can now tell him, based on the Bible, that history has a few more tricks up its sleeve. America’s will is not the final word. This means your will is not the final word either, and neither is mine. But this is no threat to our genuine autonomy. You and I were not running the world. People we might not care for were running the world: corporations, armies, dictators. And they were not really running the world, either. If, instead, something quite God-like is actually in charge, you and I and most everybody else are better off. What, then, is the final word of liberation in history? In the Bible the final word is the Kingdom of God.

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As a secularist, talk of messiahs and second comings and resurrection puts me off entirely. This is superstition. But Jesus also said, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. (Luke 17:20)

And the promise to Abraham is even more this worldly: his descendants are to be a blessing. So, the final lesson for the secularist is that the kingdom—a world substantially more just than this one and more liberating than what we know now—is promised. It is not just a dream. If we do our part, though we never yet have done so, reality will more than meet us. We will not be rowing into the wind, but will be buoyed up. Is this utopia? Not necessarily, nor is it humanism. For it is not based purely on our own efforts. It is the biblical promise. The point of Hallowed Secularism is that we must let the teachings of Our Religions lead us in our lives together. History, politics, social life, economics, and so forth are all places of potential holiness. We secularists must not give up this biblical vision. Here is the potential source of foundational justice. Here is a place of power in which the merely political comes alive.

Our Religions: The Personal I have had several spirit-filled experiences in my life. Once, at a time of great need, I asked God for help to simply go on and immediately received help. Once, at a time of deserved guilt, I asked for forgiveness of sin and immediately received forgiveness. Several times, while studying scripture alone or with others, I experienced what the Jewish tradition calls the world to come. On one startling occasion, at the end of Yom Kippur services, I experienced a vision of violence and destruction centered around abortion. What should a person conclude from such experiences? We know from William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience and, more generally, from the sociology of religion that experiences like these are common. They happen transculturally and transhistorically. These religious experiences can be sources of enormous power. They can promote great optimism or black despair, harmony or fragmentation of the psyche. They can bring a person to the world or lead one away from it. James’s attempts at categorizing religious experiences do not seem very informative of their nature. His accounts do, however, generally share the attributes of intensity and connection. These experiences are intense in that they are more vivid

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than our usual lives and can be life changing. They are connecting in that the person experiences a broader, otherwise unavailable, reality in which all things participate. Religious experiences carry their own authority for the person who has them. When I experienced the forgiveness of my sins, it would have been senseless if someone had claimed that my sins had not really been forgiven; I only thought that they had been. Religious experiences, therefore, cannot serve as authority for anyone else. President George W. Bush is reported to have said that God instructed him to invade Iraq. The rest of us, of course, cannot rely on the authority of President Bush’s sincere report of God’s will. Similarly, my vision experience concerning abortion capped my long, slow movement to a pro-life position. My experience in synagogue was so vivid and powerful that it was impossible to interpret other than as instruction as to the violence implicit in abortion. Obviously, though, as in the case of President Bush’s experience, no one else would be persuaded by what happened to me. Like the fact that people disagree over the will of God in history, the atheist uses disagreements over the meaning of personal religious experiences to argue that these experiences are irrational and dangerous. President Bush’s confidence in his invasion strategy is a perfect example. My newfound and, I assure you, quite unwelcome, commitment on the issue of abortion is another example. The atheist says that people should rely not on visions and instructions from another world but on evidence and reason. James would respond, I think, that the atheist’s position is unscientific. These religious experiences happen. They actually happen a lot. They change people’s lives. They are thus fully real and fully a part of the world. As James put it, in terms specifically of God, “God is real since he produces real effects.” I would add, in terms James might reject, that the capacity to produce such large-scale effects argues against mere illusion. Besides, religion is not the only source of these deep experiences. Art, for example, also can evoke the sense of connection to something larger than ordinary human life. Art, like religion, can evoke the authority of an unseen realm. Meditation can do so. Even silence. Famously, sexual relations can lead us to experience heightened connection with everything around us. Human beings simply are, it seems, potentially connected with the power of a deeper reality. It comes as no surprise that I, raised in Judaism, called on the God of Israel for help and asked for forgiveness of sins in accordance with the ritual of Yom Kippur. Other people raised, let us say, as Muslims would experience divine help from Allah and would be transported by study of the life of the Prophet.

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As the great Indian student of religion, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, explains, “Something is directly experienced, but it is unconsciously interpreted in terms of the tradition in which the individual is trained.” What should the secularist learn from all this “religion”? Secularism must be open to religious experience of this kind and not flee from it or denigrate it. The reaction of dismissal is mere secular bias. Religious experiences are a natural and constant fact of human life. They have at least that much authority. I regard these religious experiences as quite profound. They are often the most meaningful experiences that people have ever had. Such experiences must be a part of secular civilization if that civilization is to be whole and rich. There is even a deeper importance to religious experience. We need it to reach our full human potential. Looking at this phenomenon for the moment through the lens of the Judeo-Christian tradition, even that most rational, enlightened figure, Thomas Jefferson, regarded Jesus of Nazareth as an exceptional human being, who not only taught self-sacrificial love, but practiced it in a way totally beyond the rest of us. Jesus was a product of the tradition of prayer, of contact with holy reality. I doubt that a human being remotely like Jesus is possible without openness to experiences of the holy. If secularism is to be capable of nourishing human beings who are whole and giving, it must find a way to cultivate religious experience. This is not just a matter of personal growth. Secularism must care for the world and its people. That kind of caring does not come from mere ideas. It does not come from self-interest. It does not come from ethics. Such caring can come from experiences of deep connection that communicate the oneness of reality. To conclude this short examination, secularism must learn to cultivate and study religious life. It must be open to religion’s power. This obviously will require secular structures and habits that do not now exist. In fact, openness to religious life sounds like the opposite of secularism. That is only because, until now, secularism has been able to borrow from the spiritual life of Our Religions without acknowledgement. In the world of the future, in which secularism becomes dominant, secularism will have to cultivate sources of meaning on its own. It will need religion. Does that imply all religion? I have a Western bias in favor of the ethical obligations generated by the religious life of Judaism and Christianity. I have been taught that the mystical religions of the East are more passive, more dedicated to mere experiencing of the Absolute. But I might be wrong about that. Secularism should proceed from a firm ethical foundation and not from mere relativism. While there must be tolerance of religious practice and belief, secularism will make judgments about which religious traditions

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contribute the most to the betterment of human life. As I said at the beginning of the book, it is likely that the secular traditions that come from each religious civilization will differ in their appreciation of the content of the wisdom of Our Religions. Eastern secularism will probably be more open to the lessons of Eastern religion than Western secularism will be. At that point secularism will begin to learn from itself. All this contact with Our Religions leaves open the real possibility of religious conversion. After all, Our Religions are not going to disappear during the next hundred years. If secularism studies religion carefully, as it must, some secularists are going to convert. That is no threat. Secularism has to be devoted to truth, not to its own perpetuation. I doubt that secularism will be weakened because I think it corrects Our Religions in important ways and responds well to the needs of our time. But that is something history will decide. Is there any one thing at the center of these religious experiences? Our Religions teach that there is. At the heart of reality is unfathomable compassion. To come into contact and alignment with that reality is the fundamental goal of human life. Appropriating that insight is the level at which secularism becomes Hallowed Secularism.

Science We saw in an earlier chapter that science is one of the sources of secularism. Scientific accounts of the world tend to undermine the stories Our Religions tell. But that is not the end of the scientific interaction with religion. Science can also be a source of depth in human life. Of course, this is obvious in a simple sense. Psalm 19:1 proclaims that “the heavens are telling the glory of God.” And so they do. Most people who look at the immense sky, with its billions of stars, feel something deep and mysterious. In addition to the impact of nature’s grandeur, there is also amazement at nature’s intelligibility. Why are we able to understand at least part of the wonder of the natural world? Why is nature so regular? The experiences of the great scientists were akin to religious experiences. Then there is the mystery of our own intelligibility. We can study our capacity to know. In the hands of a master such as the theologian Bernard Lonergan, the methods by which we come to know the world suggest meaning in our efforts to do so. In these ways and others, science can deepen us and give us a sense of awe and gratitude. Obviously, then, Hallowed Secularism will be highly scientific. There is another sense in which science is important to the effort to deepen secularism. There is always a potential conflict between faith and reason in

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religions that are historical, such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Historical religions insist that certain events actually occurred. For the secularist, the natural laws discovered by science cannot be violated. Thus, science sets the boundary of what is possible to believe. Hallowed Secularism must begin at that point and nowhere else. You could say that secularism learns the power of truth from science. This obviously raises an issue between secularism and Our Religions. As Glenn Olsen puts it, in referring to the theology of Karl Barth, in secularism and in certain secularized versions of Christianity, “the world already sets the expectations to which Christianity must conform.” For Barth, this is an antireligious comportment that rejects the fundamental message of the Bible. To put this bluntly, Barth would say that man cannot tell God what God can do. This legitimate tension between secularism and religion is where Hallowed Secularism is born. Based on experience, the secularist does not believe that the laws of nature are ever set aside, nor that the sort of God who could set them aside, could exist. Yet the hallowed secularist thinks that the core of Christianity—not just its “ethical teachings”—is true all the same. I do not know how this tension will be resolved. Until now, religiously oriented people had to defend religious dogmas—that is, particular stories and explanations—against scientific attack by secularists who wanted to discredit religion in general. Sometimes, religious people accepted science and claimed that both science and religion were true. Sometimes, religious people responded, as did Pope John Paul II, by challenging the capacity of scientific reason to fully account for reality. Sometimes, there was a sort of mix that tried to split the difference by declaring, for example, that the age of miracles is over, but by implication that miracles had occurred. Unlike the defenders of Our Religions, Hallowed Secularism agrees that much religious teaching is indeed ruled out by science. Nor does Hallowed Secularism object that this is setting man above God. Humans were meant to use their brains in much the way we are doing. Hallowed Secularism denies, however, that science rules out what is fundamental in Our Religions. Our Religions do not make many claims that actually violate the natural order. Atheists love to point out, for example, that Jesus heals people, but that no one regrows an organ. This is supposed to show that Jesus lacks supernatural power. What it actually shows is that the Bible generally tells us about events that could happen. Jesus heals people. There are many examples of healers in human history who can remove disease by touch. Indeed, Jesus reminds his critics that they also heal the sick. There are details in biblical accounts that could not have happened. For example, no one can actually walk on water. Certainly, there is also exaggeration

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in the Bible. An older couple might have a child, as in the example of Abraham and Sarah, but the ages they are given in the account might be older than they actually were. Other events are most improbable, but do not actually violate the laws of science. A virgin could theoretically give birth. The most important claim in the Bible is that God speaks to us. I know this does not violate the laws of nature because something like this happened to me. A related claim is that God enters history. Science certainly has nothing to say about that. In other words, the project of scientific atheism to disprove the existence of God, such as in Victor Stenger’s book God—The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, cannot succeed. It gives atheists a lot of comfort that the big bang could have happened without violating any natural laws. Or, that the universe might always have been existing in some sense. Either account would rule out the “button-pusher” God who creates by his will. But I want to know whether the creation of the universe matters. Is selfconscious, morally self-defining life both the goal—the teleology—and the most important accomplishment of the universe? I think the answer is yes, and I do not see that science puts any limit here. Scientific accounts do limit religious plausibility beyond mere physical impossibility. Science gives us a physical account of the world. An important part of that account is regularity. So, I cannot believe in a God who could alter that regularity. Such a God could not be. That has enormous theological implications. Science also shows us that everything we know about ourselves roots in our physical being. This rules out anything like an existence after death. Perhaps even more important, it keeps me from regarding death as an enemy to be overcome as opposed to a natural event. Why is science so important to us? I know it is not impossible to believe the Torah or Gospel more or less as traditionally understood. Once, I believed it. Furthermore, I do not know that much about science. I certainly do not vouch for it. The issue is not science as such. What is at issue is knowing the nature of human life. I insist that human life as I know it is approximately what human life has always been like. If there are no voices at Sinai today, there never were. If there are no miracles today, there never were. Conversely, if slaves go free today, then they always were being freed. If human greed today causes the rains to fail, as it does in global warming, then such a curse could always have been sent by heaven. The Kingdom of God must be something that we can seek here and now and that we have seen, or it does not exist at all.

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Democracy How is the Kingdom of God to be sought? Devotion to God must be total to be meaningful. If religion does not determine your life, you are just like your secular neighbors, except that you go to church or synagogue. Maybe you vote your religious commitments, but secularists vote their commitments, too. God really means nothing in a life in which religion is not the primary determinant. Yet, such a status quo religious life is overwhelmingly the life of most believing Americans. Today, movements are springing up to renew Christian life in fundamental ways. An example is the New Monasticism movement, based loosely on Jonathan Wilson’s book Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World. The theme of the movement is that, to practice Christian life seriously, there must be small-scale communities that live differently from their neighbors. Similar in commitment is “radical orthodoxy” in the Catholic and Anglican Churches, in which the locus of all of life for the Christian is the church, rather than the culture. Secularism needs a response just this radical in order to become Hallowed Secularism. But how can this happen when there is no institution like the church to promote alternative secular living? Hallowed Secularism cannot happen until we figure out how to create a countercultural model. In the 1960s, young people tried to do this through alternative lifestyles. That did not last. Something more fundamental is needed. Democracy can be a starting point in this effort to create radical secularism. By democracy, I mean the way that a people decides collectively the fundamental orientation of their society. Every act, every word that we speak, creates a social world that answers the question, what does it mean to be human? We can call this organic totality of social life, radical democracy. Hallowed Secularism aims to answer the question, what does it mean to be human? differently from the way we are answering that question now. With the long-term decline of organized religion, secular societies will have to work at meaning. In the future, secularism will not be able to preach life without value while relying on Our Religions to keep the world basically decent. The current secular answer to the question, what does it mean to be human?, is production and consumption relieved by entertainment without greater possibility. This answer, if it ever really becomes the world’s answer, will lead to despair. In contrast, the answer of Hallowed Secularism to that question is holiness and love in a world without the God of the Bible but with the traces of that God remaining. With that answer, we might get by.

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Making that answer a social reality is the overall task of Hallowed Secularism. The institutions that will make that possible do not yet exist. These institutions will have to function at the collective, local, and individual levels. At the collective level, the task is to define a national orientation to reality in opposition to materialism, militarism, and nihilism. In other words, the American people must become a people as the Hebrews did, with a selfconscious longing to orient ourselves to what is fundamentally real in the universe. This task carries several implications. First, secularism must be open to religion even just to get started. So, our political practices and constitutional doctrines must change to allow easy public openness to religious reality. Secularism is currently hostile to religion, but that is because secularism has not yet figured out its great task. Second, the state cannot be “neutral in worldview” as liberal political theory would have it. Of course, the government in America is not neutral now and no state could be. The government now endorses capitalism. The government now endorses materialism. The government now endorses anthropocentrism. Our national life now puts humans ahead of nature and puts money ahead of humans. There is nothing neutral about it. Since I am recognizing and endorsing a strong government role, I must address the danger of totalitarianism. Some future politician will want to run everybody’s life in the name of Hallowed Secularism and will invite the voters to help him do so. There really is no distinction in Hallowed Secularism between the State and religion and, I must admit, that is dangerous to liberty. How did the Hebrews deal with this threat, since they also mixed church and state? The Hebrews used prophecy as a check against the danger of tyrannical theocracy. America, and all other secular societies aiming to redefine what it means to be human, must therefore be open to a prophetic voice in order to protect themselves against arbitrary government power. America already has institutions that allow prophecy to occur. I am not speaking of the courts. The institutions I am referring to are the normal foundations of democracy: freedom of speech, the press, and association. As long as we have these, we can hope that some prophetic voice will arise and protect the people from themselves. As long as we have these freedoms, we cannot be a totalitarian state whatever the role of religion. The task of radical democracy—deciding what it means to be human—is what every democratic society decides every day. This democratic task is one of fundamental social orientation. It has little to do with individualism as such. So, the libertarians are both right and wrong. They are right that what small social units do, like families, is more important than what governments

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do. However, they are quite wrong in imagining that these small-scale, private, decisions are not of cumulative weight. Libertarians think you can only be oppressed by something the government does. They imagine that the private decisions of others cannot be oppressive. But, in fact, the market economy and its attendants, like advertising, overwhelm people and set the benchmark for the culture of what it means to be human. That is a social, not individual, question. Strong people can manage to dissent, of course, but they have to overcome a great deal. Overcoming a great deal is not liberty. This social task is not a mere policy issue. Hallowed Secularism’s task is to determine the fundamental attitudes of society, hopefully determining them differently from the current market orientation. But, this is not the same as deciding particular policy issues. Just as it is wrong to enlist Jesus in a debate about the tax rate, it will be equally wrong to do that kind of thing in the context of Hallowed Secularism. To do that is to engage in moralism. I have written thus far about the responsibilities of the collective. How do individuals, families, and neighborhoods participate in Hallowed Secularism, since it has no churches? How can we determine anything collectively unless we can discuss and come to grips with matters locally? This is a serious problem, and it has the potential for undermining American democracy no matter what direction our secularism takes. We lack ways to talk with each other outside narrowly defined “political channels,” like election campaigns. At one time I thought Americans might begin to organize “Democracy Clubs” to talk about fundamental questions. Others think the Internet may be part of a solution. We have not yet responded to this challenge to democracy. But even if such institutions of communication and exchange existed, how can secular Americans confront the aspects of our culture that they reject? How can secularists begin to actually live the countercultural lives that Hallowed Secularism demands? Obviously, we will need radical thinking about secularism to spur alternatives. In other words, we need new ideas and then a way of putting these ideas into practice. In the next section, I ask where these ideas, the content of Hallowed Secularism, will come from.

Theology The great postwar preoccupation of Christian thinking has been to ponder the rise of secularism and the meaning of that rise in light of the God of the Bible and the revelation in Jesus Christ. Never before has humanity been in this situation. While there have been individual atheists, there has never been a culture that believes humans are alone in the universe. As the strong interest in Charles

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Taylor’s book A Secular Age shows, we have begun to wonder how this state of affairs came about and what it means. This Christian theological project was the positive counterpart to the challenge implicit in Feuerbach’s statement in 1841 that “the personality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of man” and the shocking announcement by Nietzsche in 1882 that “God is dead.” Feuerbach denied he was an atheist. Nietzsche was more radical in his understanding of man’s relation to God. Nietzsche saw in the death of God the potential negation of all value. One obvious, potential theological response to the rise of secularism is that secularism is simply the latest manifestation of human sinfulness. Man has again turned away from God. Humans have always used religion to turn away from God and now are using secularism to do so. Under this view, the proper role of the church would be to confront and resist modernity. Certain aspects of Barth’s theological opposition to liberal Protestantism can be looked at that way, and, similarly, some identify Pope John Paul II as “the last anti-modern Pope.” Pope Pius X’s encyclical “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” (On the Doctrine of the Modernists) is often also cited in this context. But Christian theology did not ultimately embrace that rejection of modernity. Most theologians looked for the positive implication of secularism. In what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called his “secular interpretation,” he seems to equate secularism with Jesus’s cry on the cross that God has abandoned him. God will not save in this world: “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.” He is to be found only in “weakness and suffering.” Thus, we find ourselves in a world come of age without God, but before God; that is, all this in accordance with God’s will. From Bonhoeffer we may conclude that if we want to destroy ourselves, God will not prevent us from doing so. God has told us how to live. Now that we have the power and knowledge to live without superstitious belief in him, we must live in accordance with his teachings or suffer the consequences. And in that suffering, God suffers with us. Bonhoeffer was trying to understand the theology of—the meaning behind—the rise of secularism as a context without God. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann calls this task grasping “the implicit theology of this modern world of ours” and he sometimes refers to it, apropos Hallowed Secularism, as “Godless Theology.” In the name of human liberation, Moltmann practices a radical critique of modernity and its will to domination. He affirms that all theology in the secular world is public theology—that is, theology with its eye on the Kingdom of God—seeing what in the modern world moves toward the Kingdom and what moves away. To accomplish this goal, theology needs secularism, so that

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it is free of the institutional restrictions of the church; but theology also needs openness on the part of secularism to hear theology’s critique of modernity. A somewhat different critique of secularism is articulated by Eberhard Jungel, a near contemporary of Moltmann. Jungel is very Christ oriented and so at first seems far away from secular man. But that is just Jungel’s point. Without God, man runs the risk of self-divination. This is precisely the danger to which secularism is exposed and to which Hallowed Secularism attempts to respond. Jungel might ridicule the whole notion of Hallowed Secularism, but that only means it is not a certainty that the task of Hallowed Secularism can be accomplished. Bonhoeffer, Moltmann, and Jungel have a great deal to teach us, and they are just a tiny sample of modern theology encountering secularism. Our world is one in which organized religion no longer controls thinking about God. But in current secularism, theology has a hard time reaching popular thinking. Not many people in our secular world are reading theology. But in Hallowed Secularism, theology would become the blueprint for human life to confront reality. In other words, free of church control, secular man can return in his autonomy to religious sources for guidance. This is something of what Bonhoeffer was getting at. This is a secular world come of age. What Hallowed Secularism is attempting to get secular man to see is that the religious question is the most important matter for us. When all supernaturalism is abandoned, after miracles are rejected and death is embraced as real, that religious question amounts to this: what is reality really like, and what is the human response to reality to be? No doubt there are other ways into this question besides religion. But since philosophy has become technical and unhelpful to people, theology is the best source for thinking about this question, which is, after all, the most important question. In Part II of this book, we will use theological sources, as well as other available sources of depth, to develop an understanding of the key concepts of Hallowed Secularism: truth, world, man, God, and the future. Then we will begin to apply these conceptions to imagine the world of Hallowed Secularism.

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PART II

The Beliefs and Practices of Hallowed Secularism

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CHAPTER 5

The Framework of Hallowed Secularism

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his chapter begins the process of defining and specifying our longing. Secularists want to belong to a meaningful whole and feel cutoff instead. We want justice to triumph while we worry that it may not. We are willing to die without hope of any future life, but we want to experience the world to come here on earth. The basic categories for understanding are not surprising: world, man, God, and the future. But we begin not with a category, but with a method— what religious people call “the way.” We begin with truth.

Truth Let me give an example of what I mean by truth. The German theologian Eberhard Jungel was asked why communism failed in Europe. He responded that it was the “objective untruthfulness” of the system. By this he did not mean socialism in principle but “the untruthful way in which the socialist ideals were implemented by a kind of power politics.” Hallowed Secularism agrees with Jungel that a truth claim of this kind—that there is such thing as objective untruthfulness—is meaningful. On the other hand, no one has the whole truth of anything for all time. That is one problem with religious dogma. We must live empirically. As Ludwig Wittgenstein says, “look and see.” Truth can be contrasted with image. In 2006, Robin Givhan won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism as fashion editor for the Washington Post. I listened to a speech by Givhan in which she said she was only concerned with image and with the power of the image. Ms. Givhan and her Pulitzer are the perfect symbol of the postmodern, secular world. It is a world increasingly out of touch with truth.

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Unlike this secular age, the Bible sees truth behind the image. The image is merely of the slave. The Hebrews are slaves, but the power of the universe is somehow on their side. Jesus is the image of a slave, but he is actually allpowerful. Reality does not reside in the image of things but in how things really are. And this is what frees us—the truth of things rather than the false image. That is why Jesus promises in the Gospel of John that knowing the truth will make you free. No one really denies truth in terms of his own life. For example, a person like Pontius Pilate, who asks, “What is truth?,” knows the truth of his own self-interest perfectly well; and he follows that truth even to the point of committing violence against the innocent. The same is the case with postmodernism’s deconstructions. The people who practice deconstruction are on top. They do not burn with the passion of social justice because they are comfortable with the way things are. They also know the truth of their self-interest. Thus, the secularist and the believer are probably not divided over truth as such. Truth is not a religious category. Pope Benedict has often said that there are things that a secular conscience knows as well as a religiously grounded one. Even though our consciences are culturally and historically conditioned, at any particular historical moment, people of goodwill are going to agree about a lot. Religious dogma need not interfere with such agreement. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan says this in the name of the Hindu tradition, but really in the name of all religion: “The creeds of religion correspond to the theories of science.” Science does not give us a perfect picture of the ultimate nature of the physical world; its “theories are symbolic and are accepted because they work.” This is also true of our ideas of God. They do not capture God, but they are consonant with our experience of reality, including our experience of revelation itself and history read in the light of revelation. Radhakrishnan’s contextual religious thinking is uniquely Eastern. John Milbank, a fully orthodox Christian, and one of the founders of the radical orthodoxy movement, explains that Christian truth develops out of the experiences of the church. Milbank is a different kind of postmodernist. He criticizes what he calls secular reason for its abstract and ahistorical quality. So, given the crucial importance of living by truth and yet recognizing that culture and history condition us, what can be a starting point for Hallowed Secularism? The main conclusion that I draw from looking at reality is that everything is one. That is, there is unity in reality. Truth is the whole. Of course, I, having been raised as a Jew, am conditioned to think that from the Sh’ma—the central prayer of Judaism: Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is one.

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Nevertheless, I do not say this simply out of traditional religious commitment. All the world, as we live in it, seems to be one. The laws of physics, for example, apply in the realms of chemistry and biology. In fact the laws of physics undergird them. The same is true of doing good. The truly good is not ugly but beautiful. The good, the true, and the beautiful are one. Theology at its best deals with the world as one. This is why Milbank calls theology the queen of the sciences. This fundamental unity means that the current division among science, politics, and religion cannot be permanent. The theologian Harvey Cox describes his view of an increasingly integrated religious and secular future as follows: “I predict . . . a postmodern world in which science, philosophy, and theology have once again begun to communicate with each other, and in which politics and religion no longer inhabit different compartments of the human enterprise.” The implication of this unity for Hallowed Secularism is precisely Cox’s unified world of inquiry. Hallowed Secularism will be a world open to truth that deals with all aspects of life. Thus, the realm of the holy and the realm of the secular must be one. This insight is not new. The doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus Christ has already testified to the unity of the holy and the world, of God and man. We could say that living by truth is the religion of Hallowed Secularism. There is no fear that truth will lead to evil, or even to impiety, because reality is one. Science, therefore, could never contradict the truth of religion, or vice versa. What about truth for an individual’s life? Here again truth is not a matter of religious dogma. The key lies in following what John Dewey—a young Dewey of twenty-seven—called “the perfect and matchless character of Christ.” As Karl Barth said, that is not a matter of believing in any particular set of ideas, including Christian ones, but of actually following him, of building one’s life on the model of Jesus and relying on a connection to him. Of course, others may object here, offering other models, not convinced that truth lives in Jesus. That is fine. I am not suggesting truth of that sort. When I am most open, I see Jesus as the model I should follow. Others may see things differently. The point in Hallowed Secularism is that there is a model—a true model—that one should follow in life. The models will be contested and, probably, never finally resolved. The consequence of losing the commitment to truth is the triumph of evil. For genuine evil is always based on some sort of lie, whether that lie is the claimed inhuman quality of people—Africans in slavery, Jews in the Holocaust, the inferiority of women—or something else, like the supposed right of people to exploit the natural world. Pope John Paul II was correct in the encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (The Gospel of Life) to begin his treatment of human inhumanity with Cain’s lie before God after the murder of his

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brother Able. Asked by God about the whereabouts of his brother, Cain responds falsely, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” The pope writes, “Cain tries to cover up his crime with a lie. This was and still is the case, when all kinds of ideologies try to justify and disguise the most atrocious crimes against human beings.” The old saying that for evil to triumph, good people need only be silent is only partly true. Someone needs to be willing to lie as well. When truth is at the heart of life, what do we find is at the heart of truth? The answer is love. The life of truth is fulfilling. The result of truth is rewarding. The clarity of truth is ennobling. This, of course, is what Christianity has always said. Dewey wrote this of the Christian message: “God is truth; . . . as truth He is love.” Though this sounds like dogma, it is simply what we find when we look.

World Hallowed Secularism’s major commitment is to this world—this reality that we all experience—as all there is. This world is what secularists see when they look. The world is what science investigates. The nonhuman aspects of this world are often called nature. We humans are part of nature, too. We are also apart from nature. Defining the limits and boundaries of the world is not an obvious or simple matter. The question becomes, what is this world? There is transcendence in this world. There are what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences” in this world. The world is in no sense the opposite of religion. Here is how Mary Catherine Hilkert describes the thinking of the theologian Edward Schillebeeckx on this point: “In the midst of our ordinary daily lives, certain events and experiences provide a point of breakthrough, even cause a kind of ‘gestalt shift’ in the way we live and understand ourselves and life. . . . Whether suddenly or gradually, something happens through which, upon reflection, we recognize deeper dimensions of ourselves and of reality.” It is important here to note—so there is no misunderstanding—that this is not just religious. Schillebeeckx is describing the experiences of morality, beauty, history, of depth of any kind. The conversion experience is not always a matter of falling off your donkey upon the address of God. It need not be mystical or dramatic. A lot of people experience this breaking-in when they read the Gettysburg Address or when they see people bravely insisting on their human rights against all odds. Suddenly, we feel connected with a sweep of movement beyond the everyday. These depth experiences are not supernatural. They are part of life as lived in this world. Materialists pretend that life is flat and just a matter of forces of various kinds. But that is not how life feels.

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Surprisingly, Our Religions also mostly teach that this world is what matters. Here is an example from Pope Benedict’s book, Jesus. Pope Benedict writes of Jesus’s numerous invocations of the Kingdom of God: “When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he is quite simply proclaiming God, and proclaiming him to be the living God, who is able to act concretely in the world and in history and is even now so acting.” This is shocking reading for us secularists. The pope is saying that the believer and the secularist are looking at the same event when the believer says, “You see, there is God acting.” There is no invisible realm for the secularist to deny. What the believer is claiming, in attributing action to God, is simply an interpretation of the here and now. When the skeptic responds, “Where is God acting? I don’t see anything,” the believer says, with Jesus, “the captives are freed; the blind see and the oppressed are set at liberty.” The believer says, “Haven’t you seen liberation in your life? There is God.” Suddenly, the concept of world does not seem so irreligious. This is why Schillebeeckx, interpreted on this point again by Hilkert, says that God himself is to be found in this world: “While religious traditions provide a searchlight for believers, the traces of the living God are to be discovered in the history we have called secular and the world we have considered profane.” Pope Benedict writes similarly about heaven. In a discussion of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus prays that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, the pope says “the essence of ‘heaven’ is that it is where God’s will is unswervingly done. . . . Earth becomes ‘heaven’ when and insofar as God’s will is done there.” Nor is it just religion that suggests more to the world than mechanism. Science also points to something beyond materialism in the world. Just as one example, it may turn out that, in principle, computers cannot achieve selfawareness, the Terminator movies notwithstanding. Consciousness may not be reducible to particular physical relationships. This has been argued by, for example, Roger Penrose in his book The Emperor’s New Mind. I am not suggesting that Penrose’s theory of mind in particular is crucial. I simply mean that science cannot explain consciousness in simple physical terms, or even mathematical terms, and may never be able to do so. As another example of the nonphysicality of reality, science, at the quantum level, has not been able to explain matter itself, which seems at a certain point to dissolve into indeterminacy. There is no reason to invoke God here as a gap-filler until we learn more about how things work. Things may just not work in a simple, physical way. If that is the case, then the statement “This world is all there is” does not represent closure against a religious view of life. Or, better, religious and nonreligious views of reality could be similar.

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It is said that Einstein objected to the indeterminacy of quantum physics, claiming that the Old One would not play dice with the universe. His objection may have occurred because Einstein was a better scientist than he was a theologian. Science may call nondeterminism arbitrary, saying the universe either changes in a determined way or in an arbitrary way. You and I might say, instead, that there is freedom in the universe. And that freedom is, beyond a certain point, a mystery to us. Thus, when we look at the world in a certain way, we see mystery. What can we know of this mystery? First, the world is basically good to us and for us. Daniel Quinn, in the novel Ishmael, makes this point dramatically. Our ancestors over millions of years became the human beings we know by trusting nature and living within and by its rhythm and limits. The invention of agriculture was precisely the “fall” that Genesis describes. No longer would humankind trust nature. The results of this change away from trust in nature have not been good for people, says Quinn. Second, the world pursues its natural course. It is a mistake to see the hand of the divine or judgment or purpose in every act of nature. The Talmud, the ancient Jewish book of learning, gives this example. Suppose someone steals seeds and plants them. By right, the seeds should not grow. But the world pursues its natural course, and they will grow or not grow, without regard to the morality of the original act. This is true of catastrophes also, such as tsunamis and hurricanes. They just happen in nature’s natural course. One day an asteroid may hit the earth, destroying all life. It will be not some great purpose or punishment; it will just be the way the universe operates. Asserting that the world follows its natural course resolves some of the problems of theodicy—the existence of evil despite God—but raises in its place questions about the nature of God. Or, for secularists, you could say it raises questions about the meaning of things. Why does the world pursue its natural course? Is it God’s choice or something about the structure of reality? If God cannot do anything about nature’s regularity, then the biblical account of God has to be modified. But, now, contrast this ordinary operation of nature with the biblical story of the plagues in Egypt. Nature in that instance went haywire. This is represented in the Bible as having been brought on by human evil—in this case, disobedience and slavery. If global warming is changing the climate as a result of human greed and selfishness and if that change makes hurricanes and other natural disasters worse, this seems closer to the plagues than to planting a seed. Not everything that happens is nature’s natural course.

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Third, while nature thus does not pursue a teleology—that is, an end or goal—humans do pursue purposes. And human history, as Sarah Blumenthal says in City of God, shows that human beings live in moral consequence. This moral consequence is not our creation. It is somehow rooted in the world in which we live. Of course, one could suggest here that since humans are part of nature and since humans evolved within a natural process, we are nature’s telos. Fourth, implied by our relationship with the rest of nature, we cannot assume that matter is lifeless and that the world is merely here for our convenience. There are consequences when humans act that way. This was stated powerfully by the Russian theologian Vladimir Solovyov, who was speaking of secularists: “They put forth [the] false view that nature is lifeless matter and a soulless machine. And earthly nature, as though offended by this . . . untruth, refuses to feed mankind.” Finally, the world shows us that we are not the source of things. For the secularist, even the hallowed secularist, there is, of course, no creator God. Yet it is still the case that humans did not create the universe. Thus we are still creatures. This is how Leon Kass, in his commentary on Genesis, puts it: “We can discern the distinctions in things, but we have not made them separate. Neither have we made that power of mind that registers the articulations of the world and permits us to recognize distinctions.”

Man Even more pressing and more difficult than the question, what is the world? is the question, who is man? And behind that question, is another question: in whose image is man made? What view of man lies in the balance between atheism and religion? That may sound like a surprising question. Man, after all, could have the same nature whether God exists or not. So, the nature of man and the existence of God could be completely separate issues. But they are not. If man is alone, radically alone—as religion and Hallowed Secularism both deny though in different ways—then the nature of man and nothing else determines everything. If you see man as flawed, then you get the atheism of Sartre: man is essentially doomed, though defiant. Unlike Sartre, the New Atheism is not in despair. This is because it has confidence in human nature. In this confidence it mirrors its precursor: John Dewey. In the 1940s, Dewey, then in his eighties, challenged what he saw as the revitalization of supernaturalism in religion, seeing in it a “skeptical, even cynical and pessimistic, view of human nature.”

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We now have more experience with human nature unconstrained by traditional religious authority. However much atheists might like to attribute World War II to religious motivations, no one can claim the Nazis had permission from any religious authority to create the death camps; nor can anyone blame religious authority for the creation, use, and further development of atomic weapons. Mutual-assured destruction came a hairsbreadth away on several occasions from blowing up humankind and maybe all life with it. Man, unconstrained by religion, does not look good. Even if the New Atheists are right about the pernicious influence of religion, and of course, to some extent, they are right, man’s actions should give them pause about human nature. Christopher Hitchens likes to say that “religion is a human fabrication.” Assuming that, what does it say about man’s nature that he would fabricate what the atheist regards as a violent, vengeful, and malevolent God? As Ludwig Feuerbach saw, this God must be a projection of man. Thus, once freed from whatever constraints that even the atheists admit religion imposes, why would human beings not just give in to these destructive impulses even more fully than heretofore? In fact, by ignoring the negative truth about humanity, even while tearing down the flimsy restrictions of religion, the New Atheism would bring on catastrophe all the more certainly. Similar thoughts led the conservative theorist Russell Kirk to write in The Conservative Mind in 1953 that the “the salvation of civilization is contingent upon the revival of something like the doctrine of original sin.” Kirk was referring to the thought of Irving Babbitt, who had written that man must either “take on the yoke of a definite doctrine and discipline . . . [or] at least do inner obeisance to something higher than his ordinary self.” The point both men were making is that humanity must recognize our potential for evil in order to restrain ourselves. This is in a way an atheistic view of human nature. There is nothing external to ourselves, like God, to restrain us. But this atheism is, in contrast to Dewey, pessimistic about human nature. It might be said that Kirk and Babbitt were inconsistent. How could a flawed human nature be improved by a restriction it knows it is only placing on itself? What kind of jail gives every inmate a key to the door? Yet, despite this inconsistency, they did at least try to deal with human nature’s flaws. Christianity in particular has emphasized the flaw in man’s nature in the doctrine of original sin. By original sin, I am not referring to the cause of human sinfulness, which is the classic doctrine of original sin, but rather simply a description of human nature as sinful. Adam and Eve’s fall, in other words, is a symbol for what we are. This is more or less how Reinhold Niebuhr saw

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original sin: man loves himself and does not trust God, which drives him to actual and present sin. But there is more in the Christian view of evil than merely man’s sinful nature. Pope Benedict, for example, notes our tendency to trivialize evil. He sees evil as a real and overwhelming force in the world. Man actually “encounter[s] the superior power of evil.” This is, the pope says, what Paul meant by his reference to the “principalities” and “powers” of darkness. This is “the poisoning of the spiritual climate all over the world,” which man, by himself, is powerless to overcome. This poison makes it difficult, even for good people, to see clearly. As evidence of the power of evil beyond human control, we can point to the current blindness with regard to stem cell research. Something precious and even miraculous is created: a new human life. But we imagine that we have a right to destroy this human life for our benefit. And it is really good people for really good reasons who make this terrible mistake. We see the same blindness in regard to the environment. The current talk is about “accommodating” global warming, dealing with it, in other words, rather than trying to lessen or prevent it. We just assume not only that the developed world has the right to change the environment in ways that harm poorer nations, such as island nations, and future generations, but that humans own earth’s climate in general and therefore have the right to change it. We also think that we own ourselves and have the right to genetically engineer a new human being. Maybe a new human race. Many good people simply cannot see all this. They do not know what they are doing. When Satan does not appear with a pitchfork and a pointed tail, he is hard to see. We are at the point now where human beings can be thought of as having to earn the right to be considered human. Those whom Eberhard Jungel calls the “non-producers” are at risk. Abortion is a part, though only a part, of this. The end of welfare as a full entitlement in America was also part of this. And, as could have been predicted, abortion is now sought not only to end pregnancies that are threatening to women but also to try to have a baby with some certain characteristics, including aborting girls in order to try for a boy. Atheists should be worried about the flaws in human nature. Atheists should also be worried about evil and its essence. Why is the world so ambiguous that we almost never can do the right thing? Why does even the right thing turn out often to be incomplete and horrible? Atheists should foresee disaster in our future, since there is no God to save us. It is different for Our Religions. For them, man is not alone. This is somehow true even in nontheistic religion. They also see the ambiguous and evil nature of man’s situation in this world. Different religions may even be thought of as offering differing treatments for a disease we all share. The point is not

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whether they work in some sense. Maybe they do not. After all, the world today is a reflection of Our Religions. But Our Religions acknowledge the depth of man’s problem, and they think there is something that can be done about it. The “something” that they propose is sufficiently outside human control that we are not being asked to cure ourselves on our own. There is something beyond human beings that helps. In the case of the religions of the Book, that something is God. By God’s grace even the sinner is capable of doing good. God limits the harm man can do to himself and the world, even if that limit is itself God’s judgment. The rainbow after the flood is a symbol that God will not destroy the world again as a response to human evil. Where, in all this, is Hallowed Secularism? Hallowed Secularism is capable of seeing man as he in fact is. But it does not despair. There is something outside man that reaches out to him in benevolent aid. But what can that something be if there is no traditional God? We now, finally, turn to that question.

God It is not always clear what the dispute between the New Atheism and religion is about. The full title of Hitchens’s book is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. But, the title of the book is confused. God is not the same as religion. So, God could be great, and yet Our Religions, misinterpreting God, could poison everything. In that case, one could reinterpret God for oneself. Or, Our Religions could be great in theory, and each religion could be great in its own way, but the current human leadership of Our Religions might be bigoted, ignorant, and hateful. In that case, one should become a prophet, calling each religion back to its beautiful truth. But none of that would diminish God. In this section I am asking about God, not about religion or any particular religion. Inevitably, I am influenced by the Bible in trying to say who or what God is or might be, but the Bible is not the only source of knowledge of God. There is nature. There are other religious sources. There is profane learning. There is the world in its entirety, in other words. The New Atheism is attempting to lead secularism away from traditional religious life. It is not clear what the New Atheism intends as a new or different way of life. Conversely, it is clear that Hallowed Secularism aims to keep people in the orbit of religion, though looking at things differently. In discussing whether God exists—the classic question for theism and atheism—atheists complain that religious people present God as a moving target. A. C. Grayling, for example, a professor of philosophy in England and one of the New Atheists, calls religious thinkers “an evasive community, who

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seek to avoid or deflect criticism by slipping behind the abstractions of higher theology.” There are two criticisms here. First, and the one Grayling is probably making, that religion is not theology and that religions are responsible for the superstitions of their flock. So, it is not sufficient for religions to present to critics a more sophisticated form of its teachings as a defense against criticism, when ordinary religious people do not share this sophisticated understanding. The second criticism of higher theology is that it is not biblical. God cannot be a philosophical category, such as uncaused cause or ground of being, and still engage in a conversation with Moses, let alone love the world and send His son. It would seem that only a being of some sort could do those things. Some theologians, even self-proclaimed Christian theologians, sometimes do not defend the kind of God the Bible seems to speak of. Here is an example, from a very well-respected theologian, Karl Rahner, of what might be called evasion: “that God really does not exist who operates and functions as an individual existent alongside of other existents, and who would thus as it were be a member of a larger household of all reality.” Instead, says Rahner, God is “the most radical, the most original, and in a certain sense the most self-evident reality.” What are we to do with that? Is this something that can hear our prayer? Let’s start then, in considering God, with a common ground between Hallowed Secularism and the New Atheism. As Dewey would say, there is no all-powerful, perfect being dwelling apart from the world, who created reality. This does not remove us from the more radical aspects of the Christian tradition. There have always been doubts in Christian thought that the statement “God exists” can be meaningful if God is the ground of existence itself. The theologian Paul Tillich states this expressly: “God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.” The theologian Bernard Lonergan, in his book Method in Theology, has a different way of approaching the question of God—one that does not link God to existence as a being. It is also a way that is not abstract, but has definite moral implications. I am led to say that Lonergan’s God is real and makes demands on every person. But on the other hand, Lonergan’s God—that is, his God only in one book since Lonergan was a loyal Roman Catholic—is the sort of God many atheists could also affirm. Lonergan says that “man achieves authenticity in self-transcendence.” In the realm of intelligence, I make judgments—to the extent I am not deluding myself—as to what is in fact so. The judgment about what is, is independent of me. Things would be this way if I were not here. It is beyond, trans, me.

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This is a form of cognitive self-transcendence, that is, self-transcendence in thinking. Then, according to Lonergan, every human being moves to moral selftranscendence by asking whether the world as it is, or parts of it, are truly good. This is not a question of advantage or preference but of objective value. To live in what Sarah calls “moral consequence” is to ask questions about the good, answer them, and then try to live by the answers. Lonergan calls this “living a moral self-transcendence.” Herein, he says, lies “the possibility of benevolence and beneficence, of honest collaboration and true love, of swinging completely out of the habitat of an animal and becoming a person in a human society.” All this is a human capacity, which becomes actual when we love. You may object that this is all within the human being. What does it have to do with God? But, for Lonergan, there is no self-transcendence unless we are stretching toward “the intelligible, the unconditioned, the good of value.” Our horizon, in other words, must stretch to eternity if we are to practice the self-transcendence that allows for human authenticity. There is within this horizon “a region for the divine, a shrine for ultimate holiness.” Lonergan concedes that this space, this possibility of holiness, might resolve nothing since the atheist pronounces this space empty and the agnostic says it is inconclusive. Yet, reality is such that this possibility, the possibility of ultimate transcendence, cannot be ignored. We are drawn toward this possibility. Atheists do not ignore this possibility, nor our attraction to it. Our attraction to this possibility is derided by atheists who call it the religious instinct in people. But it is present in the atheist’s relationship to reality, too. This possibility is built into us and into the reality we encounter. With this possibility of ultimate transcendence, we have come to God, and not God entirely of our own making. What I find important in Longergan’s approach is his insistence that humans must transcend their self-regarding natures and that this goal is not mere moral carping but is our destiny in this universe. We live in accordance with reality only when we strive to live this way. When we do not, there are consequences. Some atheists hate consequences for behavior. But even a child knows there are such. Other thinkers have come to somewhat similar conclusions about the shape of reality. The crucial similarity among them is that this shape is independent of man. It is something man must take into account, like not wanting to walk into a dresser in the dark. So, C. S. Lewis begins Mere Christianity with transhistorical and transcultural notions, such as taking your turn, which is an intelligible demand wherever there are people, whether they follow this rule or not. Apparently taking your

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turn is a real value, as Lonergan would put it, one that is built into reality. And, if one day we meet intelligent aliens, they will understand taking your turn. The theologian Schillebeeckx writes of our experiencing “reality as a gift which frees us from the impossible attempt to find a basis in ourselves.” This is the mystery of graciousness at the depth of human experience. Even Dewey, who was not a theist at the end, wrote of the awareness of the whole of reality that human beings experience. This sounds very much like Lonergan’s horizon. I quote these thinkers, and I could add others, in order to demonstrate that they are all making the claim that reality calls to human beings and invites their participation in accordance with certain norms. This is the case with regard to individual lives, societies as a whole and history in its entirety. This is God. Walter Brueggemann writes in his classic work Theology of the Old Testament that the ancient Hebrews discovered something new, something never before expressed, at the heart of reality: “a hidden cunning in the historical process that is capable of surprise, and that prevents the absolutizing of any program or power.” Of course, they called this cunning, God. God, they said, was ultimately in control of history rather than we. The Ancient Hebrews discovered a power at the center of things. Often, they did not understand this power. It was a mystery to them. However, they did see it work in history, and they were able to sense its presence. To a degree unlike that of any other people, they saw this power as involved in the life of humankind on the side of the powerless. In fact, they had a sense that this current world did not reflect the way things were supposed to be. They were certain that the power at the center of things, in contrast, did reflect the way things were supposed to be. In the Bible, you see human history as the movement from the original Garden of Eden and its loss, to the differing ways of trying to put reality back the way it is supposed to be. One such way was the covenant with Abraham. The Hebrews did not think they could command this power. They could not even name it. Sometimes it appeared person-like. At other times, as power itself. It was the Hebrew genius to try to figure this out. I think the ancient Hebrews were absolutely right that there is a mysterious power in reality and that its effects are present in our lives and in history. I also think they were right about its strangeness. I do not have any doubt that it is real and that it is in control rather than we. This power is behind the natural order, not instead of it. I do not think it does tricks with nature. The Hebrews apparently also thought that miracles in nature were uncertain, since magicians are shown in the Bible as able to do some of the same things in nature that God does.

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The Hebrews thought this power was something like a person. Here I think they made a mistake. This mistake had consequences because it led them to imagine a plan—God’s plan—and, eventually, an end to things. By the time of Jesus, some of the Jews foresaw a Messiah and an end to the world as we know it, with the resurrection of the dead and the last great day. The Jewish followers of Jesus knew him as this Messiah and his resurrection as the beginning—the first fruit—of the coming end, the eschaton. Some current Christian thinkers maintain that the second coming was not to be the end of history. Yet, it was to be the end of death and the resurrection of the dead, so in what sense could it not be the end of history? In any event, Jesus is now for Christians the face of God who is absolutely a person with a will and a plan and the power to control nature and change its laws. Atheism and Hallowed Secularism both deny that this sort of God is real. But for atheists, this world seems pretty self-explanatory. We happen to be here, and we do things, and then we die. There is nothing in any sense behind all this. Hallowed Secularism stands against that self-evidence. I think the Hebrews were mostly right and the atheists mostly wrong. In some ways the world we know is out of whack. It is not the way things are supposed to be. Somehow, humans know this, especially once a book like the Bible points it out. When humans work to change this world, both collectively and personally, toward the way it is supposed to be, they come into contact with something that helps them, that comforts them, that consoles them and sometimes “speaks” to them. That is, there is communication. Humans begin to see the world as it is supposed to be. This force does not change nature. It does not work that way. And it does not always act. The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt four hundred years before Moses. Their cries were not answered during that time. Those slaves died as slaves. When humans try to bring a new world into being on their own, the results are failure and sometimes catastrophic violence. This is utopianism. But instead, when humans work with this power, or better yet, allow this power to work through them, the results can be spectacular. I have previously called this a tilt in the universe toward the good and the weak. But that formulation does not seem right. A tilt does not comfort. A tilt does not communicate. But, on the other hand, a personal God is just a big and wonderful human being, which is not right either. So I will just leave it as a powerful force at the heart of reality sometimes experienced as personal. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan said something like this. He called God the power that makes for salvation. We just have to remember that salvation is never an end, but a process.

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You can now see that the disagreement between atheism and religion is not really about the existence of God. It is instead about the nature of reality. The word God can sometimes be a shorthand way of claiming a kind of meaningfulness and order in the universe. To that extent lawyers and judges are arrogant to think of restricting claims about God in public proclomations, such as the Pledge of Allegiance. For these references to God are not just “religious” claims but are assertions about how things are. Every people must decide what is ultimately true about the way things are. Atheists imagine that politics can be separated from that decision. They do not understand that a decision about the nature of reality is behind every political act.

The Future The prior section foreshadows what the future holds. The question is, what can we hope for? If I am right about reality, we cannot hope for an end to death or the final establishment of the Kingdom of God. These things are never to be. It is the lack of this hope, or one like it, that Peter Beinart, the political writer, sensed in an Internet posting he wrote for The New Republic in August 2007. Beinart noticed that the Democratic netroots, as he calls them—the liberal bloggers who have become such a force in the Democratic Party—are without much radical hope. They are not pressing for fundamental change. And neither is anyone else in our political life. Beinart is right about this, but he cannot say why this is. He is himself a moderate and is happy that there is no destructive utopianism around. Things after all are pretty good, especially if we elect Democrats. Universal health insurance and an end to the war in Iraq are all we should be concerned with. I know why there is no vision on the left. It is because the left is secular. That means there cannot be any real hope in the future. The future will be just like the past. Instead, Hallowed Secularism says that we can work toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God, with the understanding that, though we work toward it, this Kingdom is never finally established. It is always on the way. We are always helping, only helping, to bring it about. And in doing this work, we must be very careful to try to bring ourselves into alignment with the power in the universe that is at the heart of reality. We must genuinely try to pray Jesus’s prayer: not my will but yours. For if we do not, the dangerous forces we unleash can destroy the world. And what about my future, personally? Well, I am going to die, and that will be the end of me. So, whatever taste I am going to have of the eternal will have to be here and now.

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And a taste is possible. The psalmist writes in Psalm 27:4, of his wish to dwell in the house of the Lord all his days: “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” The writer does not ask for God’s presence after he dies. The touch and presence of the power of the universe is the highest, most intense good that there is in this life. We could call it a taste of the world to come. The rabbis never said with clarity whether the world to come is heaven or the messianic future or simply the unsayable. Clearly, the rabbis thought there was something beyond the taste. Unlike them, I think the taste of it is all there is. But, we can still seek that taste. We can live from it. I often wonder why religious schools advertise to parents their economic benefits—your child will be successful—or their loyalty benefits—your child will remain a Jew or a Catholic. Religious schools never advertise what they should be about. They should say, send your child here, and perhaps one day your child will know God’s presence and will work toward the establishment of the Kingdom. Actually, I know why such advertisements are not run. The world is filled with atheists. Some of them are parents. And some of them are in charge of religious schools. The presence of God is not guaranteed. The world was shocked when, in the summer of 2007, the letters of Mother Teresa revealed her spiritual loneliness almost her whole life. It was not granted to her to know the presence of the Nameless throughout her life. Yet, she was faithful to the Kingdom as well as she knew how to be. Mother Teresa is a good model for us. I do not mean her particular doctrines. Maybe she was wrong about those. I do not even mean her particular methods; maybe she misread everything. I mean that she is a model because she sought to bring the Kingdom closer, and she sought the presence of the divine in her own life. Now there is a future. All of the above—all of this chapter—may strike an atheist as pretty religious and not very secular. That is a debate all secularists should be having— not about the crusades or Islam, not about the harm of religion, but about the nature of reality.

CHAPTER 6

The Public Life of Hallowed Secularism

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he categories employed here—democracy, economics, and law—are intended to capture all the ways that we act publicly, as a nation. The categories are sufficiently broad that everything can be placed within them. I begin with democracy because that is the broadest category of our shared public life. While I deal here with America, the implications are there for others to look at their societies in order to create Hallowed Secularism there.

Democracy As everyone knows, there are ways in which the American political system is not technically democratic. A minority of the people can elect the majority of the Senate, for example, since every state is allotted two senators. The Electoral College sometimes allows a presidential candidate with fewer overall votes to become president, as in 2000. In addition, five votes on the nondemocratic Supreme Court decide certain policy questions. But I am not referring to democracy in those terms. As I explained in Chapter 4, by democracy, I mean something else. I mean collective selfdetermination. In a free society with free communication of information and opinion, with regular expressions of formal public views such as voting, with limited tenure in office, and with an overall relationship of servant and master between government officials and the people, the people can decide or try to decide all the important issues of the day. This is collective self-determination. And it goes on all the time, not just at election time. This vision of an organic democracy, one in which informal decisions by the people are as important as formal elections, is not inconsistent with leadership by public officials, or even leadership by judges. In fact, political leadership, which often consists of taking necessary but unpopular action, is

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one way that choices and issues are presented to the people for decision. President Franklin Roosevelt, for example, foresaw a war that most Americans wanted to avoid. Roosevelt prepared for this war as aggressively as he could despite popular opposition. That was his job as president. The fact that the war in Iraq is unpopular is not what condemns it; what condemns it is that it was a bad idea in the first place. None of this has to do directly with the issue of religion and democracy. I left religion out of the democratic context for the moment because I want to contrast any sort of conception of collective decision by the people, including a purely secular one, with the extreme individualism of the New Atheism’s understanding of political life. The New Atheism has no idea of democracy. In August 2007, Mark Lilla wrote a New York Times Magazine article titled “The Politics of God.” The article was more or less a summary of Lilla’s new book, The Stillborn God. Lilla’s basic idea was that the Western separation of church and state protects us from killing each other over differing visions of ultimate salvation, which any religiously based political system, even one that is liberal and rational, will eventually lead to. The “Stillborn God” of the title refers to the failure of the rational conception of God in the nineteenth century to inspire religious life or to restrain religiously motivated violence. According to Lilla, non-Western people, primarily Muslims, are not lucky enough to enjoy this separation of religion from political life; therefore they are subject to irrational religious violence. We Westerners are always in danger of losing our way and returning religion to political life, despite the threat that religion represents. Lilla is a fair representative figure of the New Atheism, and his work is well received in these circles. The point for me in looking at Lilla is to demonstrate how truncated political life must become in order to avoid religion. Here is Lilla’s conclusion, in which he describes what he claims is our politics: “We have made a choice . . . [W]e have chosen to limit our politics to protecting individuals from the worst harms they can inflict on one another, to securing fundamental liberties and providing for their basic welfare, while leaving their spiritual destinies in their own hands. We have wagered that it is wiser to beware the forces unleashed by the Bible’s messianic promise than to try exploiting them for the public good.” Lilla’s description of our politics is just wrong. We have not limited politics to prohibiting individual harms without endorsing conceptions of the good. None of our serious political issues fit into Lilla’s conception of political life. In the case of abortion, for example, one might say that it is a matter of fundamental liberty. However, the law still must decide between abortion and infanticide, which would not be a matter of a woman’s fundamental liberty. Infanticide, according to Lilla’s categories, would be a matter of harming others.

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The distinction between legal abortion and illegal infanticide can only be made by deciding at what point a person joins the political community: at conception, at birth, or some other point. If the mother gets to choose, there will still be a point when she loses her choice. You cannot get away from the question of who is a human being. This fundamental question is why slavery could not ultimately be compromised. No separation of church and state could avoid the question of the humanity of the slave. It was a question of ultimate values. How about the question of whether there should be redistribution of income through progressive taxation? To decide that issue, you have to decide whether it is good for people to live in a society of extreme divisions between the rich and the poor. You also have to decide whether the property a person earns belongs to that person in a fundamental way. Is property something a person holds or something that defines a person? Is property private, or is it social? How about the question of whether prostitution should be legal? Or heroin? Here, you must decide whether uses of freedom that degrade human personality should be permitted. Or, in perhaps the most extreme example, how about the decision that it would be better to use atomic weapons that might destroy all or most human life than to allow the Soviet Union to take over the world? That decision involved a commitment by the American people that there are some things worth dying for and killing for. Yet none of these decisions are religious in any traditional sense. They are simply and inescapably political decisions. Ultimately, these matters are what politics is about—deep conceptions of the good that we struggle over. Attempts by liberal thinkers to imagine a state that is neutral about defining the good life have always failed and always will fail. It is true that any conception of the good life that is worth dying for can lead to conflict and violence, as Lilla suggests. That, unfortunately, is the nature of political life, and as Lilla says about religious societies, we must find the resources not to kill each other over rival conceptions of the good. The only way to achieve the political peace that Lilla envisions is to abandon political life altogether and to live simply as individuals, surrendering to whatever dominant forces control a society. That can be done in America. One simply works, shops, and goes to sporting events. But that is not democracy. The inadequacy of Lilla’s conception of secular political life is helpful because it eliminates the need to justify democracy in Hallowed Secularism as a search for the good. All politics is a collective search for the good. Hallowed Secularism simply approaches that task in a particular way.

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What is that way? The heart of democracy, as John Dewey wrote in The Ethics of Democracy, is the radical commitment to equality, in which every individual has the means to achieve personhood and realize his or her unique capacities. For Dewey, this achievement required an ethical economic life and a social life of solidarity as well as individual liberty. The Torah’s word for such conditions of material life is not equality but tzedeck, often translated as “justice.” Deuteronomy 16:20 says, “Justice, Justice shall you pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you.” Justice is the starting point of the politics of Hallowed Secularism, for only with justice can democracy even begin. But the collective commitment to justice is only a starting point. Democracy is a continuing and overarching task. A democratic people must decide what reality is. This includes deciding the nature of human beings, a philosophy of history, the definition of the good life, and so on. All this is necessary to know what justice requires. A democratic people living Hallowed Secularism will answer these fundamental questions in accordance with the wisdom and teachings of Our Religions. In America, that means starting with the Bible. I know that is a controversial suggestion, but for now I am more interested in what the Bible actually says about political life than in justifying its formative role. That role for the Bible will either emerge on its own or it will not. There are two quite different implications concerning religion and public life that can be drawn from the biblical tradition. One is that faith is essentially apolitical until and unless the political authorities transgress fundamental human norms. This is the view Pope Benedict seems to take, at least at one point, in his book Jesus, in which he calls Christianity “apolitical” and describes it as acknowledging the legitimacy of governing authorities. Perhaps this is a view born of coexistence with the Roman Empire in the church’s early history. The quote above from Deuteronomy concerning justice, however, takes a very different starting point. Here, the people as a whole are instructed to create a just society in accordance with God’s law. There is no possible distinction in this understanding between politics and religion. There is, in other words, no separation of church and state at the level of the just society. For me it is Deuteronomy that represents the sounder view of politics. In a democracy, the people are responsible for everything that goes on. They must seek justice both at home and abroad in all that their nation does. Lilla would object that people do not agree about what justice requires. This will be true in Hallowed Secularism as well, of course. But there does not need to be agreement about the content of the pursuit of justice and the meaning of life. All that is needed for democracy to flourish is agreement that the pursuit of justice is a proper subject of political life and that protection of

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the vulnerable is the core of justice. We may not agree, for example, precisely what we owe to future generations in regard to the use of the earth. But justice prohibits asserting that our needs are all that should be taken into account. That is an important starting point for democracy. The struggle over actual outcomes is what political life does. No legitimate conception of political life can eliminate that struggle. Although people will not agree and will struggle over the requirements of justice, Deuteronomy insists that justice is not a matter of opinion. There are consequences to getting justice wrong; specifically in Deuteronomy, you lose the land. There are two implications here for our politics. First, the land, the nation in which we live, is a gift. We did not earn the right to be here, nor did we earn the right to be part of this political commonwealth. We do not own America. Second, the gift can be rescinded. This kind of judgment is not a matter of supernaturalism. It is a matter of the power of justice and the harm of injustice. Reality is constructed in such a way that injustice eats away at the foundations of any human society. This understanding of reality is part of the political commitment of Hallowed Secularism. All of the above is about political substance. But what about the style of democracy? If Americans are to be like the ancient Hebrews in coming close to the power at the heart of the universe, then the American people must, like the Hebrews, have ceremonies that celebrate their life together as a people. Some of the rudiments of a potential democratic ritual life are already present in America. Obviously, Thanksgiving is one, July Fourth is another, and Memorial Day is yet another. Some people celebrate the Constitution. Unfortunately, the inauguration of the president partakes of party politics and therefore cannot serve the unifying purpose of democratic ritual. There is not much else in our current national life. Dewey is no help here. He is short on the rituals of democracy. I will return to this theme of ritual and prayer in Hallowed Secularism in the next chapter. Partly this is the same problem that Hallowed Secularism has in general: it is not an actual religion. Plus, without a clear conception of a personal God, prayer life is awkward in Hallowed Democracy. Nevertheless, I can say that Hallowed Secularism requires a much more robust sense of democratic life than America currently experiences. Furthermore, democracy must be led back to its religious roots in order to nourish the political life of the people. This is what Hallowed Secularism aims to do. I have been assuming that people can think and talk about their collective lives in meaningful ways. Some thinkers on the left, however, are now questioning the possibility of meaningful political discourse. There are a number of political writers, most recently Drew Westen in The Political

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Brain, who argue that rational political discourse is a cover for various psychological needs in the public. In Westen’s book, this psychological need is to make us feel good. John Judis expanded this theme in The New Republic in August 2007, arguing that politics is a subconscious struggle against the fear of death. This view of politics seems to represent, at least in part, an excuse for past Democratic Party election losses. The party, it is said, is too intellectual, too rational. The Republicans are better at the psychological manipulation needed to win elections. This message is also present in political analysis, like that of Jeffrey Feldman in Framing the Debate, which suggests that framing an issue is the key to winning elections. These ideas are too broad to be wrong exactly. There is a sense in which all of our efforts in life are an attempt to come to terms with death. Unfortunately, accuracy is not the point of this political work. These authors are not trying to improve our democracy. Their point is that politics is inevitably psychological manipulation. These thinkers conclude that voters do not actually know what they are voting about. I assume something very different. I assume that political discourse is meaningful on its own terms. When I say politics is rational, I do not mean that it is merely instrumentalist, nor do I mean that it is mere self-interest. I mean that the voters do know in a general way what they are doing. If their emotions are engaged, it is only because that is how human beings live. If the fear of death is in play, that is only because we know we are mortal. Of course, there is such a thing as persuasive discourse. And politicians, like trial lawyers, do put their arguments in the most persuasive package they can. But we assume in the courtroom that trial tactics only go so far. We assume that, at some point, the facts decide the matter. That is true in politics, too. The Democratic Party lost its majority status after 1968 for many reasons. People certainly will disagree about what happened and why. But there were reasons for this political change. It was not just image. Like trials, politics is ultimately about something real in the world. Good presentation only gets you so far. This new political irrationalism, which asserts that politics is unthinking psychology and rhetoric, is another form of atheism. It is another way to say that we live in a world of chaos and meaninglessness. Hallowed Secularism and Our Religions both deny that this is so. There is a world. We can meet as equals to talk about what the world is, why it is, and how it should be.

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Economics The Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of the Chasidic movement in Judaism, once said that people are not usually tempted into evil that their society condemns. He was writing about Jews who lose the sense of God’s presence through overzealous study of religious law. Instead, we lose our way through temptations that are socially acceptable but lead us away from God. This is what has happened to religion in America with regard to wealth. A Christian, for example, would not usually be tempted to kill, become a drug addict, or rob a bank. But Christians are seduced into imagining that the pursuit of wealth and the message of Jesus are compatible. That is wrong. Jesus was very specific about material things. Beyond a certain point of material comfort, which Jesus called “our daily bread,” the pursuit of wealth moves one away from God—“No one can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24). The actual achievement of riches virtually disqualifies one from salvation—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt 19:24). I know the devil can quote scripture, but I am not taking a cheap shot at the rich. Jesus was consistent about money. That condemnation was part of the core of his message. Astonishingly, there is a whole movement in America called the Gospel of Prosperity, in which belief in Jesus Christ promises material gain. This idea is now spreading around the world. My point, though, is not about fringe Christian movements. Rather, it is about how mainstream religion in the West has come to accept the dominance of economics over everything else. Our orientation is to production and consumption. We think about jobs and goods. America has become a nation of shoppers. Here is an example of world of economics as our dominant frame of reference. Christmas in America has become a grotesque, commercial orgy that has little to do with the birth of Christ. It has become instead the key foundation for retail prosperity. In fact, the growth of the American economy may be said to depend on Christmas sales. But, despite occasional warmhearted blather about putting Christ back into Christmas, no mainstream Christian denomination—not Catholic, not mainstream Protestant, not Evangelical, no one—would dare to put a simple dollar limit on what Christians are allowed to spend on Christmas presents. Such a limit would make great sense because Christmas giving distracts the faithful from the message of the season. Plus, the pressure of giving harms the poor and the working class. But even stating the idea shows its absurdity. Such a thing is not going to happen.

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I could have come up with an example from Judaism, too. The only reason I did not was the old canard about Jews and money. The truth is that Our Religions in America worship material gain. Christmas is just the most dramatic example of the dominance today of economics over everything else. The British author Tony Judt recently put this very simply: “We live in an economic age.” In this light, the prior section on democracy seems naïve because the social solidarity that radical democracy requires is not currently a cultural option. We do not think about matters that way any more. We think about products. Here is another example of the dominance of economic thinking. Dr. Leon Kass, an expert on bioethics and, by all accounts, a very good person, wrote a commentary on Genesis called The Beginning of Wisdom. However, he devotes only a short space in 666 pages to the Sabbath, a key subject in Judaism that is introduced in Genesis. The short treatment he does give the Sabbath is primarily about separation, holiness, and awe. Those are good things—in fact, this book is about those things—but they are not the most important things about the Sabbath. The most important thing about the Sabbath is rest. Without the Sabbath, man would be a beast of burden. We would work 24/7 every week of the year. The Sabbath is a critique of precisely the kind economic system we are now developing. That economic system increasingly does require work 24/7, and it has in fact obliterated the Sabbath in America. But Kass does not write about this. I do not think he sees it. When I found out that Kass is associated with the American Enterprise Institute, I made a point of looking to see how he would treat Sabbath, and he did so exactly as you would expect a capitalist to do: as moral suasion rather than as criticism of capitalism. A moral Sabbath is the sort of Sabbath you get in a world dominated by material goods. You do not get a critique of capitalist economics. The dominance of economic life has become so pronounced that its manifestations do not strike us as odd anymore. For example, the New York Times Magazine now often has a section on marketing. People go on vacation in part to shop. National newsmagazines rate products. This has all occurred in the last thirty years. But my favorite example of the dominance of economics is a recent Sports Illustrated reference in its “Sign of the Apocalypse” column, which is a weekly celebration of the absurd. A sports team in England could not convince free agents to sign with the team because the shopping in that town was subpar. I suppose I should be glad that the magazine at least thought that this was absurd.

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It is not just the sheer presence of material goods that is alarming; the way economics looks at human nature is now treated as an adequate account of what it means to be human. Thus Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner was a big hit. The book explains much of life by reference to hidden incentives, thus fostering the view of human beings as self-interested, rational decision makers. Since economists love to tweak conventional moral wisdom, this way of thinking soon led to the book More Sex is Safer Sex by Steven Landsburg, in which the author argues, among other counterintuitive positions, that chastity contributes to the spread of AIDS. This is also why New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan of offering cash incentives to low-income students for good grades and classroom attendance seemed plausible. I do not mean by these examples to criticize the notion that economic thinking can help solve social problems. It obviously can and does. That is why caps and tradeoffs in environmental policy often improve outcomes compared to regulation. But the economic view of human beings takes only a part of human nature for the whole. The economic view of human nature is seriously harmful when treated as the sole truth of human life. Human beings do not need incentives to live meaningful lives. Or, if they do, if rational self-interest is the truth of human life, the emphasis on self-sacrifice in Christianity dooms it to irrelevance. It is true that Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, in part, as Ramsay MacMullen has argued, by the promise of salvation and the presence of healing, which are both powerful incentives. So, to that extent, early Christianity might be said to be consistent with economics. But serious Christians know that salvation is not possible unless it comes from the love of Christ; salvation cannot come from expectation of gain. Hallowed Secularism, which cannot even promise heaven but can deliver only a life of meaning, is ruled out by economics as a way of life. Christian theologians have been bitter critics of capitalism in general and the world’s current economic organization in particular. Jurgen Moltmann, just as an example, writes powerfully of the will to dominate that distinguishes the West, including its economic and technological organization. He writes of the effect of Western economics on the developing world and on nature. There are many examples of such religious critiques. But this theology has not reached the pews. What has been the actual economic performance of this economic worldview? Has it brought prosperity to people? The answer is that, to some extent, it has. The West is wealthy by any historic standard. In the developing world, millions of people have been brought out of poverty. Yet, increasingly, the economic system is failing to deliver its gains to the majority of human beings. Development is uneven worldwide, with Asia prospering much more

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than Latin America and Africa. Within the success stories of China and India, as another example, massive rural poverty persists. In America we see an increasing divide not only between the rich and the poor but also between the super rich and everyone else. While average wages grow very slowly, the salaries of CEOs grow at an accelerating rate. Because the costs of medical care and other necessities also increase faster than wages, average people must work longer hours, additional jobs, and outside the home, despite having young children, to make up for the lack of growth in wages. What we have in America today is a nation that does not feel its prosperity. It does not help popular morale to read that the sixtieth birthday party of Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of Blackstone Group, cost five million dollars and that, when the private equity company he founded went public, he earned around $600 million. Then, there is hedge fund manager Edward S. Lampert, who, in 2004, made $1.02 billion. Often it is said of the ancient world that the wealth of the privileged classes was carried on the backs of the peasantry, who did not really share in that wealth. That is how it increasingly seems to be today in America. The bursting of the subprime lending bubble has led to numerous bankruptcies by ordinary people. Somehow, the rating companies, which made large profits from the exaggerated values assigned to mortgage instruments, do not seem to be paying much of a price. If they do, I assure you they will be bailed out with only token firings of management. Our world is a stacked deck in favor of the wealthy and the insiders. All this is criticism, but what does Hallowed Secularism actually offer economically? I cannot describe an economic system that does not yet exist, but I can set forth four starting points. First, economics must serve larger purposes, not simply feed an unending lust for material goods. Prosperity is fine until it becomes the purpose of life. A society committed to money and things will never achieve satisfaction. There will always be the need for more, nor will such a society ever live in peace with the world—either the natural world or other people. Such a society will always need too much. The second point is the requirement of economic security. Some marketoriented thinkers actually want workers to be insecure as a goad to efficient production. The hero of these market people is the entrepreneur who risks all to make a lot of money. That is why they want to privatize social security and to leave medical insurance to a private system. But normal people want to relax. They do not want this goad of living on the edge of disaster. Jesus said not to worry about material things because God would provide them. The way God has provided them is by making us wealthy enough to take some of the economic worry out of life. Without going into detail, that seems to

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require a society-wide retirement system, like social security, and universal healthcare in some form. Such a proposal would also aid the competitiveness of American companies, but that subject is beyond my scope in this book. The third point is the need for economic democracy—what Dewey called industrial democracy. People need more of a say in the economic direction of their society. This can happen in a number of different ways—from greater government oversight of the economy, to laws requiring notifying workers of plant closings, to empowering shareholders. But we must stop looking at economic life as something other than public policy. Wealth is not a private matter. It always rests on a public foundation, whether that foundation is an educated workforce or a low crime rate or simply social peace. Taxation is not theft. It is more true to say that income is theft or at least that one’s income is dependent on the cooperation of others. It is never my own income. Sometimes that cooperation is bartered directly between people, like when I pay someone to work for me. More often it is a background cooperation, like the road my trucks use. Even when cooperation is directly bartered, I rely on the general orderliness of society and the goodwill of promise keeping. Economics is the most social of enterprises. Fourth, there is a need for greater economic equality. We need a little socialism. There will always be rich and poor, but intelligent public policy spreads the wealth around. Such redistribution is fair and is also likely to produce more prosperity for everyone, including the rich. It also creates the necessary social solidarity for democracy to work. In other words, it is in the interest of the wealthy themselves that the wealth be shared, as they should have learned by now. Beyond these commitments, what will the economic system of Hallowed Secularism be like? No doubt it will be basically market-oriented. That system has worked well and is much more likely to work well compared to any other economic system. Plus, the market is merely a system of production and first-order distribution. The market does not prevent us from redistributing wealth, nor does the market require that we value material things beyond everything else. We have fallen into the error of a certain kind of economic thinking. That is what economics in Hallowed Secularism needs to correct.

Law Law as now understood in America has an antidemocratic tone. Courts are celebrated for their antimajoritarian role. Courts are said to protect the minority against the injustices of the majority. Law schools and courts perpetrate the myth of the politics-free judiciary. That is where the antidemocratic tone originates.

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Surprisingly, then, it is actually easy to show that law is not antidemocratic. Elections indirectly decide the makeup of the Supreme Court and thus the content of its decisions. The Court follows the election returns. As John Rawls once said, the Supreme Court decides what the people allow it to. The public hears a lot about method as a constraint on constitutional interpretation. Conservatives and liberals wrangle over proper reasoning by the Court. We hear about “strict construction” by judges, for example. What the public hears is not true. Law, like any other aspect of political life, is not about method but about outcome. You can tell that by the example of one well-known proponent of judicial restraint, the conservative Federalist Society. As far as I have seen, the society treated with silence the Supreme Court’s invasion of the political realm in the 2000 presidential election, in the Bush v. Gore decision. Because they favored the election of George Bush, they said nothing about the Court’s overreaching even though, based on their stated philosophy against judicial activism, they should have opposed the Court’s entering the case. According to their approach, the matter of which Florida electors to recognize should have been left to the Florida legislature and Congress. The 2000 presidential election perfectly illustrates America’s cult of the apolitical Supreme Court. For years conservatives warned liberals not to rely on courts because doing so would lessen the democratic instincts of the people. This has happened. The 2000 election should have been left to the political system to sort out. George Bush would certainly have been elected anyway and his legitimacy assured. We will not worry about judicial method here. The constitutional matters that are at stake for our purposes are not clearly decided by text or by history anyway. Arguments about methods of interpreting the Constitution are just a distraction. What are these constitutional matters? That is, in what sense is Supreme Court constitutional doctrine an impediment to Hallowed Secularism? The impediment is that constitutional law is currently excessively individualist, capitalist, and atheist. All this must be modified to achieve Hallowed Secularism, and that can easily be done. As to individualism, Hallowed Secularism requires that we regard ourselves as a people, as an organic whole. Democracy itself requires that. In contrast, the Supreme Court sees us as a collection of individuals. In part, this is a structural flaw in our legal system. That system is based largely on cases being brought by individuals. Plus, the rights tradition itself, such as the right of free speech or to be free from unreasonable searches, draws its strength from individualism.

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The Court exacerbates these tendencies toward individualism by refusing to look at issues from a group perspective even when a collective view is strongly suggested by the legal materials. For example, police searches are a collective issue. The privacy of all is threatened by police overzealousness. Yet the case law emphasizes the individual’s privacy interest in deciding whether the result of a search can even be challenged. As another example, race discrimination is clearly a group harm. Yet if race discrimination is proved, group remedies are disfavored. Of course, there are countervailing justifications for these approaches. I am here simply trying to highlight the individualist perspective of constitutional law. Another example of individualism is the Court’s inability to see any relevant groupings of people other than the government and the individual. The Court cannot see civil society, in other words. So, for example, in deciding about prayer at a public high school graduation ceremony, the Court asks only about the “government prayer” being imposed on an individual—student, parent, or whomever—in the audience. Aside from what ought to be the rule about prayer, which we will return to below, this division of the world into government and individual is incomplete. The parents who want the graduation ceremony to include prayer are neither the government nor a collection of individuals. Because such groupings of parents are literally invisible to the law, the outcomes of these prayer cases have been wooden and unsatisfactory. A second way in which constitutional doctrine obstructs Hallowed Secularism is the Supreme Court’s commitment to capitalism. Hallowed Secularism requires at least some skepticism concerning the primacy of property. In part, the promotion of capitalism is another aspect of the Court’s individualism. For example, the Court sometimes gives priority to private property over the needs of the collective. In a well-known case, Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, a man bought beachfront property to build a house. But, before he could do so, South Carolina passed an antierosion law that essentially forbade all development of the property. The United States Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, reversed the State Supreme Court, potentially ordering more than a million dollars paid to the landowner as just compensation for the loss of the use of his property. In other words, even though, as we shall assume here, the law was passed in good faith and the development threatened to erode the beach, the taxpayers had to pay the man to prevent him from using his property in a way that would harm others. Why was it not just the man’s bad luck that he bought eroding property? Surely he knew that antierosion laws were being tightened. Two recent changes in free speech law also strengthen capitalist control over the political system. The Court seems to have finally concluded that

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money is speech. It is likely, therefore, that almost all campaign finance restrictions will be held to be unconstitutional. This means that rich people will continue to have a disproportionate influence on political life. This expansive reading of the free speech clause of the First Amendment is probably not justified by the history of the clause. Still, rich people have rights, too. Therefore, their political speech should be protected. If that threatens democracy, so does restricting their speech. The real threat to democratic life lies in the combination of the money-equals-speech doctrine with the bizarre and indefensible doctrine that corporations have constitutional rights. Corporations are creatures of law. They are not persons. There is no way by text or by history—the two supposed sources of conservative constitutional thinking—to justify the expansion of constitutional rights to corporations. The idea that corporations have rights is a very late judicial invention. Corporations, with their enormous funds, eternal life, and complete lack of human conscience, are a danger to our collective democracy. Just look at the cigarette companies’ campaign of dishonesty about the health effects of smoking and ExxonMobil’s funding of lies about global warming. It takes a corporation to lie that well. Corporations have been deemed to have rights not because this holding is required by the Constitution but because this holding helps powerful economic interests prevent government regulation of economic life. A second late, procapitalist speech doctrine is the idea that commercial advertising is free speech protected by the First Amendment. Traditionally, advertising was just the proposal of a sale and could be regulated like any other aspect of the market. But, beginning in 1976, the Supreme Court began to protect pure commercial messages from government regulation. This is part of the reason that drug companies are now badgering people in ads to pressure their doctors to prescribe medications people do not need. This is the reason Massachusetts was denied the authority to regulate tobacco ads near schoolyards. To his credit, then-Justice William Rehnquist warned that the result of these decisions would be advertising for prescription drugs, but many people did not take his warnings seriously. The American people cannot take their country back and reconsider the relationship of capitalism and democracy until commercial advertising loses its falsely prestigious position as free speech. Of course, this is another area in which granting constitutional rights to corporations makes the situation all the worse. It will come as no surprise to readers that I next accuse the Court of atheism. People have been blaming the Court for years for taking prayer and God out of the public schools. But I want to begin with a different line of cases. In 1990, in Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia dismayed many of his

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admirers by writing an ahistorical opinion holding that the government could completely limit religious practice as long as the law applied generally and not just to religious activities. So, for example, a Prohibition law restricting all use of alcohol need not make any exception for Christians and Jews who use wine in religious ceremonies. Indeed, Smith itself was a case very much like that, in which members of a Native American Church used peyote, which is a traditional part of their religious practice and yet was illegal. Smith was a surprising case, not so much because of its outcome—the plaintiffs worked for a drug rehabilitation organization and so being fired was no shock. What was surprising in Smith was the lack of weight given to the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment. In other rights contexts, such as free speech, the effects of government regulation are looked at, not just whether the government is regulating speech as such. Regulating speech is just a factor in the legal analysis. But with regard to religion, effects on ritual practice are irrelevant under Smith unless the government is regulating religion as such. Exercise of religion is thus a second-class right. Smith was an odd decision rendered by an unusual majority. However, attempts by Congress to overturn it have had only limited success. I keep waiting for a presidential candidate to run against Smith and promise a Supreme Court that will defend religion, as the text of the Constitution seems to promise. Smith is a kind of atheism in practice that denigrates religion. We come finally to the area of constitutional law most directly affecting Hallowed Secularism—the prohibition on the establishment of religion. Under the influence of Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor—the wall of separation between church and state—the Court has said that government must be neutral about religion and may not promote it. This principle led to the prohibition of prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. Obviously, the principle of government neutrality toward religion is in some degree of tension with Hallowed Secularism. That is because the Court does not know when something is a religious belief or practice and thus banned or is a value and thus permitted. So, for example, if the people in a secular country want to affirm that reality has meaning, that history has a pattern, and that these are, in some sense, binding, they might say that their country is “under God” even though they do not believe in a traditional God. For the Supreme Court, that formulation would raise an issue of government nonneutrality toward religion. But, on the other hand, if the same secular people wrote a Pledge of Allegiance that stated in detail that reality has meaning, that history has a shape, and that we are judged by how closely we follow that meaning and shape but did not mention God, this text would probably not even raise an

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issue of church and state. This is so even though God and this formulation could be thought of as the same thing. To state this problem is not to solve it. I cannot try to solve it here. It is fair to say that the doctrine of government neutrality toward religion is recent and not well justified by text or history. It is also fair to say that coercion and sectarianism are rejected by most Americans, even those who want more religious expression in public life. So, the building blocks of a new approach to church and state issues are available. The foundation of such an approach would be to prohibit any form of religious coercion and to avoid endorsing a specific religion while permitting public commitment to transcendent reality without inquiry into people’s religious motives. What is missing is a new vision in constitutional law that can bring all this together. These changes would not usher in theocracy, as charged by Kevin Phillips. Theocracy is not an outcome but a process. If a democratic people adopt the criminal law of the Old Testament because they believe it is God’s will, that result is still democratic rather than anything else. Conversely, if a governing structure gives final say to a clerical institution, as in Iran, the result is theocracy regardless of what democratic window dressing may exist. At the moment, no one knows what the law of church and state is in America. There seems to be a majority on the Court ready to alter the current doctrine of government neutrality, but it is unclear what the new doctrine would be. It may be that the establishment clause will be interpreted in the future to bar only institutional partnership between government and religion rather than contact between them at the level of meaning. So, the topic of law and religion in America needs a new approach, which is not yet available. The above discussion may at least indicate in what directions constitutional law must change in order to accommodate a culture that wants a much fuller expression of holiness and transcendence in its public and private life than is presently legally possible. We at least can know in a general way how the constitutional law of Hallowed Secularism will differ from our law today. In order to achieve Hallowed Secularism, we also need a new understanding of the relationship between law and democracy. We must have a constitution that is the property of the people rather than of lawyers. The interpretation of our Constitution was never meant to be a technical matter. The Supreme Court should not be thought of as independent. The Court should be political in the sense that the Court is the concern of all the people and is responsible to them for its decisions. That does not mean that the Court should be merely majoritarian. The people are not stupid, and they understand very well the necessity of the protection of minority rights. If they did not, no such protection could ever stand anyway. So, where the Court acts against the wishes of the American

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people, it must state clearly why it is doing so. As we see in the instance of the Court’s constitutional protection of flag burning, it is possible for people to debate and understand important legal principles. I think everyone can see in that instance why the Court did what it did. Even if people disagree with that outcome, no one questions the Court’s legitimacy in rendering it. Of course, the people may still reverse that decision one way or another. I wish I could promise a less individualistic, less capitalist, and less atheist Supreme Court. But these changes will only come when the people see the need for them. That will require public thinking about the Court in a coherent and overall context. That is not how people usually think about the Court. They think instead about particular decisions. If it turns out that only particular decisions are in focus, the first manifestation of a change in the direction of Hallowed Secularism would be in the area of church and state. The degree of change will depend on who wins the 2008 presidential election and whether the new religiosity of the Democratic Party has gone far enough that any future judicial nominees will cement a greater openness toward religion. That may happen. I think that the time when even a Democratic president could nominate a judge who advocated a strict separation between church and state is over.

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CHAPTER 7

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his chapter is about the tone of life. I am trying to explore what Hallowed Secularism might feel like. Is it rushed? Is it beautiful? Is it holy? I ask this on three different levels: family, ritual, and prayer. “Local” is not quite the right word for what I have in mind. I use the word to avoid the terms “public life” and “private life.” The contrast between public and private is part of our current religious problem in America. Religion has been relegated at times to private life despite the fact that nothing could be more public. For the ancient Hebrews, religion occupied all the space that we call public: all government policy was religious. God was concerned with everything. But that meant religion was also private. That same overwhelming scope of the holy is true of Hallowed Secularism. It is also public and private, but the distinction between these terms does not fit. Thus I use the term local instead of private. The category “family” is also problematic. It leaves out all of civil society, which forms an important part of any social life. I start with the family because I have been a parent in a family that did not fit into traditional religious life. I have had to decide how to raise my children in light of the fact that I could not believe what was being said in synagogue. This seemingly insurmountable problem of raising children outside Our Religions is one part of the larger issue of how religion will fade in the future and a new kind of secularism will come to life. Exactly how do we live during the transition to Hallowed Secularism? The second category, ritual, forms a bridge between public life and local life. As one who was raised as a Jew, I can only think of ritual as public—that is, as something involving more than the individual. Jews conduct religious services as a group. Jewish holidays are that way, as well. Even if Jewish rituals take place in the home, they take place in almost every Jewish home.

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Finally, prayer, in contrast to family and ritual, is often genuinely personal and even private, even if it takes place in a setting of public ritual. It is with prayer that I introduce the notion of piety in Hallowed Secularism. By the time we finish this chapter, you should have some idea of what a person’s life might be like under Hallowed Secularism.

Family What will happen when you die? I mean, what do you anticipate will happen to your body in terms of some event hosted by your loved ones? Probably, no matter how you have lived, the clergy will be there. It is very easy to fall into the religious rhythm of a normal cycle-of-life event such as marriage, birth, or death. The clergy are trained to know what to say and do in these contexts. Another reason the clergy will be there is the superstitious fear that surfaces during life transitions, such as birth, marriage, and death. Let us say your deceased spouse never believed in heaven. It may still seem like you are jinxing him or her if you do not even nod toward the possibility of heaven by having some kind of religious official preside over your spouse’s body. In addition, there are the feelings of others to consider. People expect something appropriate to be said in an appropriate setting. They will be scandalized if you mention what your spouse really thought. Are they not already upset enough? And even if your spouse did not believe in heaven, what difference does it make to him or her if you hold a religious memorial service or funeral? Or maybe you are not sure that you agree with your deceased spouse about an afterlife. It seems so final for someone to actually say at a funeral that you will never see your spouse again. What harm can it do to hold out a small hope that you will be reunited? And it is easy to hold out this hope. There are people—clergy—willing to come to the funeral and suggest that your beloved still exists. They are not lying. They really believe that. Clergy I have known are a little cynical about this life-event need. They are accustomed to being called upon at such times by families who normally have no use for them. This human frailty that doubts its own nonbelief at the end is not the fault of the clergy. The best of the clergy do not take advantage of it. In the United States, we are still at the point that, when a secularist dies, that person likely had been baptized as a Christian at a young age, or had been raised in an identifiably Jewish family. And the situation is similar with other religious traditions. So it is not hypocrisy for clergy to be willing to come. In other words, the clergy’s attendance at the funerals of secularists is going to keep happening for a long time, especially if secularists continue to

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be careless about religious issues. And the clergy’s teaching of the children of secularists goes on for the same kinds of reasons. But it is now time for us to care about these things. What should secularists do in terms of organized religion? Let us start with family itself. Will the family structure continue to be the backbone of society under secularism? I assume the answer to that is yes. Our Religions did not create the structure of the family. In the famous description of the origin of the man-woman bond in Genesis 2:24, the Bible clearly recapitulates an existing social structure: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Against this background of the ideal bond of matrimony, apparently based on human nature as created, the Bible also shows that polygamy continues to exist. Abraham has more than one wife, as does Jacob. Yet the Bible promotes an almost romantic vision of the love between husband and wife. When Isaac meets Rebekah after the death of Sarah, Isaac’s mother, the text in Genesis 24:67 is quite tender: “Then Isaac brought her into the tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” In another instance, Jacob, the trickster, is himself tricked by Laban into marrying Leah, the older sister of Rachel, whom he loved. While Jacob had worked seven years as the wedding price for Rachel, the text in Genesis 29:20 tells us those years “seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.” These passages do not reflect a divine command. They are plainly meant to reflect fundamental truths of all human life. Therefore, it is no shock that gay people also seek the love and companionship of monogamous marriage. In this urge, gay people are simply human. Certainly, secular society will also be shaped by similar marriage and family dynamics. In these secular families, how are children going to be raised? Very few people want children to have nothing in the way of religious training. That is exactly the phrase people use—they do not want their children “to have nothing.” Think about what it is like for a child not to have any religious exposure. It does not mean the child will be a criminal. It does not even mean that the child will not experience the depth of human life while growing up. But it does mean that the child will not have a vocabulary in which depth can be experienced and expressed. A child in this situation is like someone who has never been told the definition, composition, or names of the colors. Such a person still sees “red” but does not know what “seeing red” means. Children in this situation do not rebel against religion. They have no reason to. In contrast, my impression is that the New Atheists do not come from nonreligious backgrounds. They know all about religion. Ironically, their rebellion against religion and God is fueled by the vision of human freedom

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that the Bible promises. Someone once observed that the children of the middle class do not build cathedrals. It may also be true that the children of the truly nonreligious, who know nothing of religion, do not pull them down. This absence of depth is not what most secularists want for their children. Many of us end up sending our children to religious schools or to church and synagogue activities so they can pick up some religious background. This experience at least helps children understand the largely religious calendar of our society. However, as we are doing this, we worry that religion will ruin them. I remember my mother taking me out of Yeshiva after the fourth grade when I started talking about keeping kosher. My mother wanted no part of what that would have meant for our family. I also remember taking my daughter out of Hebrew school when she reported negative comments in school about Palestinians. I wanted my children to have an experience of Orthodox Judaism because, like some other liberal Jews, I thought Orthodox Judaism was the real thing. Originally, I thought to enroll my eldest daughter in a Yeshiva. But I found out that, in contrast to the 1960s, a new, more puritanical spirit now exists in some branches of Orthodoxy, so that girls and boys are now taught separately, even in the lower grades. Still, I went to see the Yeshiva with my wife and discovered a lack of piety in most of the curriculum. Specifically, we watched a high school girl’s class in which the play Death of a Salesman was discussed without any references to Torah. When I pointed this out to the dean, who was also a Rabbi, he responded with pleasure, “Yes,” “we keep the Hebrew and regular curriculums entirely separate.” This struck me as bizarre because Death of a Salesman is about the hopelessness and illusions of life. One might almost call it a poster for a life without Torah. Arthur Miller was a Jew, after all. If Torah is that irrelevant and can only be relied upon in a separate world, called “religion,” who needs it? What I did instead of Yeshiva, knowing that it was not just religion that I wanted my children to have but also the promise of God in a life fulfilled—that is, the power of Orthodox belief—was hire a wonderful man who was an Orthodox rabbi to teach my two older children. Unfortunately, my daughter and son, though diligent and respectful, had no experiences comparable to an Orthodox Jewish life and so could not relate to it. Thus this experiment had little religious impact on them that I could see. In light of this negative experience, I spent more time—one full year— studying with my youngest child instead of having her continue in Hebrew classes after school. To me, this was very satisfying. but I am not sure that she saw the same magic I did in biblical Hebrew. To me, the letters were actually

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moving on the page. They were telegrams from the heart of being. I doubt it was that way for her. It is necessary for children to experience a touch of the divine, to taste the sweetness of ecstatic transcendence. A life without this experience is truncated. Also, such experiences can be a source of fullness that children will remember later in life, perhaps at a time when nihilism threatens to overwhelm them. In addition, such experiences inoculate children against cults of various kinds. Mark Lilla, for example, whose Catholicism apparently meant little to him during his formative years, attached himself to religious fundamentalism before becoming an atheist. How can secular parents expose their children to genuine and meaningful religious experiences? It is not easy, but it can be done. Family ritual will do it if all else fails. We used to sing a song from the liturgy as a lullaby to our children. Some people light candles, either within a religious tradition or not. Even Halloween can do it in a small way. There just needs to be a special beauty and mystery in the world. But as children mature they also need knowledge and not just emotion. Failure to impart knowledge is partly why religion fails. How many Catholics, for example, have read Pope Benedict’s book, Jesus of Nazareth? Not too many. How can secularists transmit religious knowledge, that is, knowledge of the transcendent side of life? I already mentioned sending children to religious schools, but the problems with that choice are obvious. Teaching your child yourself is beyond the capability of most people, and I imagine the results would be mixed for others, as they were for me. Serious comparative religion courses in public school are a possibility. This suggestion assumes that we get over our wooden separation of church and state. A serious comparative religion course could only be taught by serious religious people. Such a course never communicates properly unless the people teaching it are sympathetic to the subject matter. This is a question of tone and it is perfectly obvious to the students when the teacher finds religion outdated or otherwise false. Thus, such courses really are religious. There would be religious converts from such a course and this would bother both the atheists and religious families, who might lose a child to a different tradition. But at least this sort of structure is imaginable. If the political and legal opposition to using the public schools is too great, my other suggestion is to set up after school programs, as my small synagogue did in creating our own Hebrew School. The tricky part is the curriculum. Obviously, the school could teach comparative religion, as I suggested for the public schools. But I think the best approach would be to teach the religion of the family that the child comes from. In my case, for example, the curriculum would be Jewish.

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I am not proposing a celebration of Jewish culture, or of Christian culture, as does the online magazine, Secular Culture and Ideas. There was a story recently in that magazine about Ira Glass, the NPR radio host, who was asked, “Do you still go to synagogue?” He responded, “I don’t believe in God, and so I feel like a fraud when I’m in a synagogue. I feel like somebody who is in a theme park of my own childhood. I know all the songs, and it makes me feel really warm and nostalgic, and it’s incredibly comforting. But then I think that I don’t believe anything that’s being said here. And so, I have no business here.” Instead of outward cultural forms, I am trying to describe a school where the themes of God, revelation, history, ritual, and prayer are vital and real, but without the traditional content in the traditional way. In other words, you teach Judaism as if you believed it, while being candid with the students about belief and nonbelief. Will all this work? I have not even described a clear idea, so it is impossible to say. The goal is clear, however. Atheism is very likely in the long run to lead to hopelessness and despair. The hope here is to engender a life search for meaning in the young. To the criticism that it will not work, I can only respond that a lot of these children are going to be secular one way or the other, so something had better work.

Ritual To understand ritual in Hallowed Secularism, we must ask who is the group that practices the ritual and what do we mean by ritual? The two questions are related. I can think of two possible ways for Hallowed Secularism to develop organizationally. Organized Hallowed Secularism could develop like a new religion, by groups of people identifying as hallowed secularists. Such people might form subgroups that would essentially be like church congregations. Ritual for these people would then mean a social practice of shared meaning within the secular group, similar to sacraments within the church. I do not intend to be forming a new religion, and I doubt there is room for one. So, this is not the way that I think Hallowed Secularism will develop. Instead, I foresee American culture becoming more and more secular over time until it crosses a critical point, after which it begins to think of itself as secular rather than religious. In other words, America as a whole is the secular people in Hallowed Secularism, not some subgroup. The process will resemble the developing self-consciousness of the original Hebrew people. Perhaps this analogy is inevitable for a Jew like me.

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Thinking then at the national level, what sort of ritual would be appropriate or possible? This problem has been faced before, but was artificially resolved. In both the French and Russian revolutions unsuccessful attempts were made to substitute national holidays for previous religious celebrations. These ceremonies did not capture popular imagination, nor did they express the depth of religious worship. America has national rituals now. The Pledge of Allegiance is one example, which is why people on both sides think it is so important whether the words “under God” appear in the Pledge. Self-definition, after all, is one of the marks of democracy. We also read the Gettysburg Address in a ritualized way, although we seem to have lost sight of Lincoln’s aim. It was Lincoln who used the phrase “nation, under God” before it was put in the Pledge of Allegiance. Not all of our holidays are expressly American. America has already begun to transform Christian and Jewish holidays, but the process is not always understood as one of adopting religious holidays to secular uses. The most obvious examples are Christmas and Hanukah, which have become commercial holidays in America. This has changed the nature of the holidays as they are practiced even by religious people. For example, it is my understanding that the Catholic Church has had to remind its staff in the Dioceses that, for liturgical reasons, Christmas decorations cannot go up on Church property during the Advent Season—the four weeks of preparation for Christmas. The American practice of putting up Christmas decorations around the same time as Thanksgiving is simply not Christian. The religious right argues that saying Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holiday protects the holiday’s religious content, but this is a silly argument. The religious holiday of Christmas has nothing to do with the gift orgy that Americans, including conservative Christians, practice. Similarly, there is almost no connection between the festival of Chanukah and the gift buying that is practiced by almost all American Jews at this time of year. The effect of culture on religion was demonstrated a few years ago when Orthodox Jews in Pittsburgh added a Menorah to a Christmas display, with the consent of the Christian group involved. In strict Jewish understanding, no one would think of putting up a Menorah near a Christmas display, not only because Jews should not be mixing their practices with those of nonJews, but also because the coequal display would suggest that Chanukah was equivalently important to Christmas. Chanukah is not that important a holiday in Jewish tradition. Chanukah would probably be like Purim, a holiday non-Jews have never heard of, were it not for the buying of presents at Christmastime.

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Easter is also in the process of being acquired by American commercial interests. Easter is more resistant to commercialization because it has a more complex, and specifically Christian, religious message, and also because the gift giving of Christmas is seen as an obvious source of commercial advantage. Nevertheless, Easter will be transformed over time. What America is doing to Christmas, Chanukah, and Easter has a negative impact on culture and religion. I am hoping that the rituals of Hallowed Secularism will be beneficial and positive, even where there is a similar kind of borrowing. Ritual at the national level is social, not personal. Its aim is social regeneration. We collectively remember who we are and what we hope to be. Some American nonreligious holidays could also function as the equivalents to religious worship. Thanksgiving, for example, has a quasi-religious origin that enables it to express transcendent meaning. However, for Thanksgiving to fully achieve transcendent meaning, we need to be more self-conscious about thankfulness. Secular Americans need to embrace Thanksgiving in a more thoughtful way for this to happen. Memorial Day could be another example. It could be a holiday not of nationalism, but a celebration of courage and self-sacrifice. The Fourth of July is similar to the Jewish Holiday of Passover. Passover commemorates the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery; this is the story of the beginning of the nation of Israel. The absence of a traditional God in the Fourth of July narrative is, in the context of Hallowed Secularism, an advantage. We can all celebrate the birth of a new kind of freedom in the world. The flaws in American history do not exclude this understanding. Freedom of the Hebrew slaves led immediately to the Golden Calf, after all. The Fourth of July could be experienced as a day of antiempire, as is Passover. As the experience of the Hebrew people teaches us, we need to connect our national narrative to the deepest possible meanings. America already has a celebration of law that is along the lines of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot—known as the Pentecost among Christians. Shavuot is the holiday commemorating the biblical giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. In Hollowed Secularism, the equivalent could be Constitution Day. We would not be celebrating the particular content of the Constitution, but the idea of justice under law. This is not a purely secular notion. At Shavuot, Jews read the book of Ruth. Ruth tells a story of how legal practices, in this case the law protecting widows, can help a society live in justice and peace. I am not suggesting that the holiday should celebrate courts;, courts in America already occupy too much social imagination. The third pilgrimage festival in ancient Judaism, in addition to Passover and Shavuot, was Succoth. In that holiday, the practice was to live in booths or tents to experience dependence on God and a connection to nature.

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Thanksgiving has symbolic connections to Succoth. However, the themes of closeness to nature and of antimaterialism that define Succoth have been lost in the practice of Thanksgiving. It might be possible to recover these themes. Earth Day has already begun to be a nature holiday. That could be embraced and deepened. Of course, to do that, Earth Day would have to be cleansed of its specific political baggage. National holidays have to include all the people, at least potentially. As far as antimaterialism is concerned, an obvious solution would be to resuscitate Sunday as a day of rest from commerce. This relates to the old Blue Laws that used to ban work and other activities on Sundays. But, resuscitating the Blue Laws would be hard to do and would not happen unless there were a national crisis in which the harm of the constant pace of commercial life came to be recognized. 24/7, which we now treat as our consumer entitlement, is an evil formula—bad for us and bad for the planet. We must make a conscious decision to slow down. There is a loose campaign now to buy nothing on the Friday after Thanksgiving, called “buy nothing” day. Maybe that could be a start. We can also celebrate our ethnic pluralism. We have holidays like Columbus Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Martin Luther King’s birthday, all of which emphasize that in America distinctive groups are embraced. The national mosaic could be expanded to include holidays associated with other groups, such as Cinco de Mayo, the Chinese New Year, Hindu celebrations, Muslim practices, and the rituals of Native Americans. In this new world of national security, the message of welcoming pluralism must be heard more than ever. Regrettably, I have left out music, which is so integral to worship. I miss my days of singing in synagogue and in church choirs, as well as the group fellowship that was so much a part of that. Hallowed Secularism must find a way to fill this gap. I have also left out the deepest religious themes. Easter emphasizes suffering and resurrection. The Jewish High Holy Days include fasting and the forgiveness of sins. These themes are not only associated with supernatural phenomena but also operate on a plane of depth that secularism, even Hallowed Secularism, unfortunately seems unlikely to reach. Nevertheless, rebirth and renewal, which are secular versions of resurrection and forgiveness, are not supernatural categories. They are available to secularists who want to open themselves to the depths of reality. However, I am not sure how these themes may be incorporated into national secular life. I suppose the New Year’s holiday could be expanded, as did happen in Judaism. The New Year already contains the theme of new beginnings, which we call New Year’s resolutions. Memorial Day, although much more specific in its connections, certainly emphasizes self-sacrifice and may also play a role.

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Ritual is not, however, just about particular occasions. The point of national holidays is national renewal. The tone of national life, which is increasingly degraded in America, is at stake. Recently, HBO introduced a television series called Tell Me You Love Me, which may mean well in exploring couples’ intimacy but which so emphasized raw immediacy that it lowered the bar substantially concerning explicit sexual portrayals on television. HBO earlier had televised a show, appropriately titled Real Sex, which I came across quite by accident, that was no different at all from what would have been considered hard-core pornography a few years ago. Real Sex was running late at night, but it would not have been difficult for children to see this while their parents were out. This sort of irresponsible programming on television is bad for our culture. I am not making a pitch for the prosecution of pornography, but I would like to see a boycott of HBO. American culture is becoming raunchier. Ritual in Hallowed Secularism could aim at reversing that trend. Less sex. Less drugs. Less stuff. Less work. Less noise. More love. More connection. More concentration. More physicality, less virtuality. And silence. You can add to this list. We are not powerless to make these changes. By national ritual, I do not mean celebrating America as if America were a new religion in the way that David Gelernter did in his book, Americanism: the Fourth Great Western Religion. That thought would be viewed by traditional religion as idolatry, which is what it is. I am not speaking of just celebrating America. I am speaking of Americans celebrating what is real. This would be the opposite of turning America and its history into a norm of goodness. Instead, rituals of national renewal would give Americans new norms against which to measure America.

Prayer I think that prayer is absolutely necessary for a fulfilled life. The reader has already heard about my own experiences of prayer and how important they have been to me. In theory, anyone can pray, anytime and anywhere. So, prayer should not constitute a problem for Hallowed Secularism. But this is not the case because it is not clear what prayer can mean for a secularist. Why is prayer necessary? Genesis tells us that God blessed the Seventh Day—the Sabbath—and hallowed it. This is the first appearance of holiness in the Bible. God made the Sabbath a sacred time. By using the term “hallowed” in the term “hallowed secularism,” E. L. Doctorow was invoking this biblical understanding of holiness from the experience of Sabbath. He was attempting to describe a secularism that could partake of the sacred.

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This is not easy for secularists to do. The great danger in secularism is that every day and every place become exactly the same. Secularism does not have an obvious ability to distinguish one place and time from another. Why is that a danger? When life is experienced as all the same, humans are just marking time until they die. At least in our American and Western context, an undifferentiated life means working and consuming every second, except when we engage in “entertainment,” which is just another form of consumption. It is called the travel and entertainment industry, after all. To help counter this danger to a healthy secularism, the last section described a life of social ritual. Ritual at the social level is a time that renews our life together. You could say that prayer operates at the personal level in the same way that ritual operates at the social level, though I will have to amend this somewhat in the context of group prayer. Prayer marks our openness to holiness entering our lives. Prayer is our invitation. Seeking holiness does not require a traditional image of God. It does require grounded hope that reality will respond, or at least may respond, if I approach in quiet intensity. Many secularists practice meditation now. Prayer is in some ways similar to meditation. Does this invitation to holiness require a group setting? One of the traditional questions in Judaism is whether prayer by an individual is possible or can only be done in and through a group. By contrasting ritual and prayer, I am entering that debate. But actually, I think either is possible. Prayer is individual, but it can take place in either a group setting or a private one. To say that prayer is individual, even private, is liable to misunderstanding. Obviously, if I can label this section “prayer,” readers have some sense of what I mean. To have a word for something means that there is a shared experience of it. So while prayer is personal it is also a social phenomenon. The importance of a group setting for prayer is that it helps me overcome my own concerns. The group is beyond my everyday experience. The group setting prepares me for a special time and a special place. I am already at home and in a sense already immortal because I am part of the group. In his book, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, Mordecai Kaplan refers to public worship as “God felt as a presence.” At first, this seems surprising since Kaplan believed that there is no supernatural realm. For Kaplan, God was not a being separate from the world. Nevertheless, Kaplan asserted that God could be felt as a presence. Kaplan’s formulation is awkward. As a Jewish leader, Kaplan had to use the word God. But you and I do not have to use that term. We can simply say that prayer is openness to a felt presence and leave it at that.

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Hallowed Secularists are not atheists. We do not have to deny the experience of renewal that can come to us in prayer. We only deny, as Kaplan does, that a being outside time and space, speaks and acts. We deny God treated as a being, but we do not deny the experience of presence. For many people, presence implies a person. But in my own prayer experiences, that was not the case. In prayer, I experienced the forgiveness of sins. I experienced help in my deep need. I experienced instruction. I have even experienced a felt presence. Yet, never have I had the slightest sense of another person. The word “impersonal” does not work either because that word implies something uncaring. As C. S. Lewis observed in Beyond Personality, to think of God as beyond personality should not mean less than personal. What I have experienced in prayer has been transpersonal. The experience was beyond the category of person. The reality of this otherness has important implications. While there are different categories of prayer, every form of prayer seems to require surrender to some kind of Otherness. In fact, the inability of atheists to get beyond themselves is the clearest indicator of why Hallowed Secularism is needed. The recent atheist writers seem very egocentric. Indeed, how could they not be when their message is that man is the only important thing in the universe? People cannot sustain that kind of self-importance. Prayer, in contrast, allows me to let go of myself and of my self-importance. Prayer assumes that there is something beyond man, but to specify what and how that something is, can be difficult. Yet that something is real. Kaplan wrote of the “cosmic urge”—“an emotional intuition of an inner harmony between human nature and universal nature”—in which one might participate. Another way to say that, is found in the Sh’ma, a central Jewish prayer that asserts God is one. The oneness of God is the experience of unity with all things that comes to me in self-surrender. This concept is also found in Buddhism and in other religious traditions. The secularist borrows from everyone. Self-surrender requires trust. I must trust the universe not to harm me. And the more I pray the more easily that trust will come. In fact, the hardest thing about prayer is probably getting started. With prayer also comes the sense of love at the heart of reality. Again, that will imply to some that there must be a person to love and to be loved by. People must let their own experiences speak to them. It is good to repeat here that secularism is not a dogma. Thus, if one is moved to affirm “God” as a person after the experience of prayer, this is not a loss for secularism and a victory for religion. We do not know what the future of secularism will be. This book is trying to open secularism up to whatever the future might bring.

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Thus far, I have portrayed prayer as solely a positive experience—a beneficent presence. But there is also an ethical dimension to prayer. Kaplan warns us that we must be worthy of the experience of prayer. This means clean hands and heart. But, of course, none of us has clean hands and heart. We are all sinners. Thus, forgiveness of sin must always be a part of prayer. Judaism devotes a particular day, Yom Kippur, to fasting and prayers for the forgiveness of sin. It may seem odd for secularism, which denies the traditional God of theism, to try to practice prayer for the forgiveness of sin. But such forgiveness happens. The secularist cannot affirm that God forgives sin, but does not deny that the forgiveness of sins occurs. Forgiveness of sin is a necessity for human life. We are always enmeshed in the ambiguity of existence in which, even with the best intentions, we constantly harm others. In addition, we often lack the best intentions. Without forgiveness of sin, human life becomes callous, even, maybe even especially, for those who are most sensitive. The forgiveness of sin is not something that we can give to ourselves. The promise to the Jew on the High Holy Days is that, in the words of Isaiah 1:18, “though your sins are as like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” This is what every person needs because we are incapable of forgiving ourselves. Nor should we forgive ourselves. There is a famous story in Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Sunflower, about the Nazi who sought forgiveness. Wiesenthal walked away from the dying Nazi on the ground that it was not his place to offer forgiveness. That was a wise response. No living person had the right to forgive the sins of the Nazis, nor do we deserve that our sins be forgiven. But the promise from God is that all sins can be forgiven. In Judaism, and I believe this is true in Christianity as well, there is no sin that is beyond God’s compassion for the truly repentant. This religious promise coincides with our need for forgiveness from an outside source. We are unable to forgive ourselves. Just so there is no misunderstanding, forgiveness of sin does not relieve me from the responsibility to undo as much of the harm that I have caused as is possible. But that matter is not the point here. There is also an intellectual side to prayer. The rabbis portray the study and discussion of God’s ways as the content of life in the world to come. In other words, prayer involves knowledge of God in addition to the presence of God. So, we should also think of prayer as beyond the usual categories of piety—beyond clasped hands, on my knees, and so forth. Those physical acts are indeed symbolic of the self-surrender that prayer requires. But, study and discussion and clear thinking are also prayer. Martin Heidegger once wrote that questioning is the piety of thinking. Thinking can be the piety of prayer.

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Prayer thus can help bring clarity to any situation. When confronting a difficult situation, there is truth to the expression “I will pray on it.” I am not speaking here of getting “an answer” but of clarification of the matter itself. Prayer may change the frame of reference of a matter confronting me by removing my self-interest to see the matter more clearly. Then an answer may suddenly seem quite clear. Are we told anything in prayer? I am afraid to answer yes because someone then always claims that God told him to do some particular thing. In contrast, as discussed in Chapter 2, Elijah heard a still small voice—the sound of silence, if you will. If you hear in prayer that you have acted wrongly, you might be hearing that still small voice. On the other hand, if you hear that you are justified, just as you thought, you are probably talking to yourself. Are there matters that it makes no sense to pray for? Yes, of course. Secularists cannot pray for divine intervention in the physical world. They know that the physical world does not work that way. Such a prayer would be mere superstition. So, you cannot pray to get well or not to get shot or for a storm to go out to sea instead of harming your home. These things happen on their own, or follow physical laws, or may just be a matter of luck. If you want to pray about such things, pray for help in coping with the aftermath. Or, pray to be a worthy friend for someone. In September 2007, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a front-page story about Randy Pausch, a promising 46-year-old academic and father of three preschool-age children, who had been given only a few months to live before cancer would take his life. He gave a farewell address to friends, admirers, and students at Carnegie Mellon University. This farewell has since become a national best-selling book. Randy Pausch seemed a brave and admirable man, but it would have been wrong to pray for a miracle to cure him. There is no God who ordered the universe to give Randy Pausch cancer. And, there is no God who could cancel the order. The Hebrews knew this; it is the point of the book of Job. I do not mean that for the Hebrews there was no God who could intervene physically in the world, but that they understood that God often does not intervene, which frankly amounts to the same thing. They knew that God usually does not work that way. It is a good thing that there is no God who intervenes in the physical world. If there were such a God, then that God would be responsible for the bad events that occur. We would all be like Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers, who, in 2007, sued God for an injunction against further floods, hurricanes, and tornados. We would be forever asking why bad things happen to good people. They just do. Does this lack of intervention render the universe meaningless? Not at all, unless death makes the world meaningless. All people die, from something

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and at some point. The way they live has to do with their meaning in the universe. Usually, the particulars of what killed them and when are irrelevant. We finally come back to the question of the setting of prayer. How is prayer to happen in Hallowed Secularism? In terms of private prayer, people who do not belong to churches might just find themselves praying as the occasion warrants. This is especially possible if secularists accept the idea that they are allowed to pray and understand that this is behavior that is available to them. But that seems like an inadequate response to something like prayer, which is so basic and necessary. In the case of ritual, if Hallowed Secularism were to become a separate movement, then it could develop the equivalent of liturgy. Prayer could then occur where it does now, in church. But if Hallowed Secularism becomes simply the state of the culture in general, there will be no such groups. Here it seems to me that the national holidays that I previously suggested could become real and meaningful rituals in secular national life, might also spawn prayer. This could happen organically, as it does now in the context of Thanksgiving. If these holidays have genuine spiritual content, people may begin to create liturgy for them, which could easily become prayer for individuals. I say “could” because I do not know. Human beings have never had a culture that did not take its cue from religion in one form or another. Hallowed Secularism will be new and its practices will also be new.

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CHAPTER 8

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his chapter presents a vision of the world in opposition to that of Thomas Friedman and Norman Podhoretz. In their books, respectively, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century and World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Friedman and Podhoretz present a picture of a world in struggle. In the economic realm, Friedman suggests that globalization is a contest in which America may well be bested by China and India. In politics, Podhoretz insists that America must fight a long-term battle, essentially against Islamic civilization worldwide. I wish to suggest quite a different picture of what is reasonably possible in international affairs. Granted, there is not likely to be an era of genuine peace anytime soon. But conflict, which occurs in all human life and especially in international affairs, is not the same as violence. We can live in a world without the kind of conflict that threatens large-scale violence. In looking at three areas of international life—globalization, religion and law—I suggest that Hallowed Secularism can bring us a world of greater cooperation and understanding than is currently the case. The key to this future is seeing all human beings as one community. Remember that I am assuming that secularism will become a dominant worldwide phenomenon. Because most of the people of the world will eventually share a common ground in Hallowed Secularism, differences among people may become easier to deal with. Even religious believers will have less reason to distrust secularism when that secularism is self-consciously open and accepting of religious orientations to reality. I am not saying that this leads to real peace by itself, but it certainly can lead away from war. In contrast we are today being taught fear by our culture. We are being taught to fear people who are different from us. We are being taught to fear workers in other countries, immigrants at home, and Muslims everywhere.

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This is strange because, historically and objectively speaking, things are actually pretty good in the world today. This should be a time in which humanity begins to relax and enjoy the fruits of its development. There are very serious problems in the world, some of which I have alluded to in this book, but by and large these are problems that can be dealt with. Even global warming can be productively addressed. These fears prevent us from thinking about our problems reasonably and also prevent us from enjoying the world. Hallowed Secularism abjures fear and looks for our commonality. It looks for shared interests. It sees humanity as one. National life will remain important, even in a world of Hallowed Secularism. But differences in the way people of different nations look at reality, which are real and important distinctions, will not be seen as fundamental. They will be viewed in the future as merely each instrument’s part in the great orchestra.

Globalization There are many aspects of globalization, but Friedman emphasizes two in particular. First, there is relentless speed. For all its benefits, the technological way of doing things is new and demanding. We must all keep up. As one reviewer of Friedman’s book put it, globalization threatens to “trample” the unprepared. Second, there is national competition. Friedman’s beginning point is his impression of the hungry and educated young people of China and India. How will America keep up? What is the future for young people in America? There is obviously some truth to these related points of view. We are worried about equipping our young people to compete in this new world of technology. We are afraid of falling behind. Certainly, American companies and workers are under pressure from a variety of international sources of competition. To this extent Friedman is right. Nevertheless, I think these views of the world—as uniquely rapid and severely competitive—are fundamentally mistaken, at least in emphasis. Neither point of view is fully true. In terms of speed—that is, the tendency of technology to allow instantaneous communication of information—the real breakthrough was the telephone, not the computer or the Internet. People have been able to communicate instantly for many years. Today’s technological change is not a totally new world at all. It is true that the Internet spreads information much more widely in a short time than has ever been true before, but not that much more widely than the telephone.

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To make this point, Michael Feldman, the host of the radio show What Do You Know, used to make fun of e-mail by calling people at home on the telephone during the show and asking them to type their responses back to him and read them instead of just speaking to him. His point was that the telephone is faster and easier. The phone is also more capable of communicating what people want to say than, for example, text messaging. Of course technology has vastly increased the power of the phone through the ubiquitous distribution of cell phones, but this is an increase of quantity rather than quality—an arithmetic increase rather than exponential, if you will. As I was flying recently, I was struck by how the basic technologies of our world have really not changed much in the last fifty years. The last mass increase in speed was the introduction of jet travel for the mass market. That change will not be surpassed until virtual reality improves to the point of truly substituting for travel. Teleconferencing is not nearly to that point now. Manufacturing technologies have also changed through the introduction of robots and other forms of new automation. But, ironically, it is not technology that has allowed China and India to perform so well economically but rather old-fashioned people skills like intelligence and industriousness. The second point—national competition—ignores the fact that globalization is not a zero-sum game. Many people have pointed out that the success of China has benefited American consumers, for example. But even the benefit to consumers is not a simple trade-off between some Americans benefiting and others losing. Those American consumers who benefit are workers, too. It is fairer to say that most people both benefit and lose to some extent from the economic aspects of globalization. It is not easy to show any overall harm from globalization. Until 2008, America had not experienced much, if any, increase in unemployment, which had remained at historically low levels despite globalization. The increase in unemployment in 2008 that did occur had to do with the end of the housing bubble and rising oil prices rather than with globalization. As for the charge that we are trading good jobs for bad ones, it is true that average wages are stagnating, but they are not actually falling. In other words, international competition is not hurting America. Such competition may be helping other countries more than it helps America, but most Americans are not actually worse off. A minority of workers—those whose jobs are directly lost to foreign competition, like auto workers—are clearly harmed by globalization. But capitalism has always generated a relatively small group of losers, even without globalization. Friedman, it turns out, is not really describing the capitalist system we have. He is, instead, warning us from a mercantilist perspective, as if that

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were our system. Mercantilism was an earlier economic theory that suggested that one nation’s advantage in trade was another nation’s loss. But international trade is not actually like that and should not be treated as if it were. The last time we tried in a serious way to protect ourselves from the pressure of international trade, we helped worsen the Great Depression through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Great Britain is a perfect example of why Friedman is wrong about the effects of trade. Great Britain used to be the dominant nation in the world. Over time, Britain lost world economic and political leadership to the United States and to others. But it is not true that Britain has suffered economically from this change. Britain is far wealthier today than it has ever been, by any measure. If America is destined to go the way of Britain, it will not actually be worse off. I do not mean to go to an opposite extreme. Technology does change some things quickly and lots of people are quite literally worse off because of international competition. I only want to suggest that most of the problems Friedman wants America to address—an inadequate educational system, debt financing of consumption, lack of investment in infrastructure, and so on— were not caused by globalization and would be serious problems for the United States even in the absence of globalization. The collapse of the subprime lending market, for example, had nothing to do with globalization. Globalization is actually an opportunity to do things we should have done anyway, to solve problems we should have been solving. Earlier in this book, I discussed capitalism and its unfairness. Globalization does tend to exacerbate the harm that comes from our winner-take-all approach to economic life. In that sense globalization adds to the unfairness of capitalism. But America could redistribute income to a far greater extent than we do today without harming our competitive position. Globalization is not preventing the introduction of universal healthcare, for example. The point of this is that Hallowed Secularism foresees a world of even greater economic integration and social cooperation than we have today. Thus, it sees growing globalization in the future. There is a great deal of room for the type of increased globalization I am describing. Despite the existence of global English, as it is called, globalization as we now know it has not succeeded in bringing about a worldwide culture. We are only beginning to move in that direction. Over time, cultural change will begin to match economic integration. Secularization on a global scale in this century and the next will allow the creation of a worldwide culture, or at least a worldwide basic culture with much local diversity, for the first time. Max Stackhouse, the highly influential theologian at the Princeton Theological Seminary, has written of the possibility

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of a new “worldwide federated civil society.” That is the true promise of globalization in an era of Hallowed Secularism. The major threat to the emergence of this closer, more united world is not international competition hardened by technology—Friedman’s fear—but rather the very kind of hegemony that the United States enjoys today and that Friedman wants to protect and continue. I know the claim that the United States is a threat to peace is not only debatable but, to an extent, clearly wrong. The American military umbrella has not only protected trade routes but it has prevented international rivalry from becoming military competition since there could be no serious military competition with the United States. A strong case can be made that American power since World War II has been very beneficial to world peace. But if a confident, prosperous, and wise hegemony is good for the world, a tottering, bankrupt, and foolish hegemonic nation is dangerous indeed. The United States has already suggested in an early Bush administration national security document that it will not tolerate the emergence of power that challenges it. The National Security Strategy of the United States, transmitted from the White House to Congress in 2002, before the Iraq War, established three key principles of U.S. strategic policy: (1) the perpetuation of U.S. global military dominance, so that no nation will be allowed to rival or threaten the United States; (2) U.S. readiness to engage in “preemptive” military attacks against states or forces anywhere on the globe that are considered a threat to the security of the United States, its forces and installations abroad, or its allies; and (3) the immunity of U.S. citizens to prosecution by the International Criminal Court. These principles are shortsighted. They represent a certain recipe for conflict with an emerging power like China. The importance of this national security document is that it has nothing to do directly with the war in Iraq. The foreign policy question Americans need to ask is not what to do about Iraq, which is a failed policy from any point of view—the best outcome we can hope for now is the emergence of a stable, pro-Iranian government in Iraq, which is hardly an American victory. The more important question is the longer term one. Do the American people want to continue a policy of dominance in the world, or are we capable of moving genuinely toward international cooperation? Whatever the United States does in the future, it remains the case that, in general, conditions in the world have never been better for the growth of human understanding. We are closer to each other than ever before. We have no reason to assume that economic life must foster conflict. The reverse should be true. We should become trading partners in the fullest sense of the term. None of this hopeful description of globalization is meant in the slightest to contradict the important critique against the world market. There is a danger

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that the materialism of the West will spread along with global economic organization. In fact this is happening to an extent already. But here, in this section of the book, we should acknowledge that the benefits of globalization are also spreading. And Hallowed Secularism can function as a counter to this materialism. Hallowed Secularism, as secularism, is in a better position to do that than is traditional religion, which will lose ground to secularism in the course of globalization. Of course, globalization is not only economic. Cultural ties around the world are spreading as well. In part these trends—economic and cultural—go hand in hand. If these changes are as yet ill distributed; if their benefits fall mostly to a narrow range of international elites, we should work to expand the reach of globalization rather than seeking to limit it. Before proceeding to the next section, which concerns the potential for conflict and actual conflict among the world’s religious civilizations, it is important to remember the role that religion has played in preparing the world for genuine and healthy globalization. The world’s universal religions historically proclaimed that all human beings are one family. Without this knowledge, which is expressly taught in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and in other religions, the spread of world culture would have been far slower than it has been. This religious contribution is something the New Atheism finds it hard to acknowledge.

Religion This section concerns the future of religion in a world of Hallowed Secularism. I have already said that as secularism becomes the dominant worldview— admittedly many years from now—Our Religions will not disappear. They will remain on the scene and perhaps even retain the formal attachment of a majority of the world’s population. However, they will not dominate the terms of life, either for societies as a whole or for local life. Of course, there will still be many people in such a world for whom religion remains the dominant reality. But they will not represent a worldwide consensus. It is hard to even imagine a world in which religion is no longer the dominant force it is today. I am writing this section at a time of intense conflict between Islam and the West. In 2007, New York Representative Peter King, a congressman who, at the time, was a foreign policy adviser to Republican Party presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, was quoted saying that America has “too many mosques.” After a furor arose over these words, King explained that he meant too many mosques that did not cooperate with law enforcement. Since King was also quoted as saying that extremist leadership controlled 85 percent of mosques in America, this was a distinction without a difference.

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For King, although there are certainly “good” Muslims, most Muslims are the problem. Or, to sharpen the point, we could say that Islam is the problem. I think King stated the basic American position perfectly. He was widely criticized, but if you listened carefully to the criticism, you realized that most politicians, even those who were doing the criticizing, actually agreed with him that too many Muslims either sympathize with terrorism or refuse to condemn it. If you are either with the West or against it, Muslims are not unambiguously with us. Many in the West see the conflict against terror as essentially and fundamentally one against Islam. For example, Podhoretz has claimed that in the world as a whole, few Muslim clerics condemned the attacks of 9/11. As another example, the Bush administration was trying to create in Iraq a secular democratic state, before that effort was abandoned as totally unrealistic. The administration did not want to make room for a public role for Islam in a new Iraq, and no Democrat or liberal criticized this policy as an imperialistic imposition of secularism on a religious society. When Muslims complain that the war on terror is really a war against Islam, there is a sense in which they are right. This view of Islam is not just a consequence of 9/11. It was in 1993 that Samuel Huntington published his famous essay, “The Clash of Civilizations,” in Foreign Affairs magazine. Huntington argued in that essay that in the coming years, international life would be dominated by conflicts between civilizations—groupings that he specifically identified with religion including Islam, although he referred to such conflict as cultural. These criticisms of Islam are mistaken. There is not something fundamentally different about Islam compared to Christianity and Judaism that requires and accepts religious conflict and violence. The conflict today between Islam and the West is real, but it is not grounded in theology, at least not in the way people think. The West is conducting an unreal debate today about Islam. Recent doctrinal efforts to show or argue that “true” Islam does not permit killing innocent people in the name even of legitimate conflict, for example, are not so much wrong as beside the point. It is true that Islam obviously does not permit such killing as a general matter anymore than would Judaism or Christianity. On the other hand, because the current situation in the world is different from the past, what we call indiscriminate killing may seem justified to some Muslims, as it has, of course, for some Jews and Christians in the past. It is easy to see that Islam is not an inherently violent religion and that Islam is not a violent way of life. First of all, during earlier periods of world history, Islam created great civilizations that, for the world at the time, promoted much greater tolerance and cooperation than did Christianity. I

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am thinking, for example, of the Golden Age of Spain, before the Christian reconquest that ended with the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 or the Mughal Empire under Akbar the Great in the sixteenth century. There are other examples of tolerant Islamic civilization as well, though you do not hear much about them. Second, and even more obviously, Islam is the religion of more than a billion people in the world. It is arrogant and ridiculous for some people in the West to argue that such a world religion is fatally and fundamentally dangerous. That cannot be true, or Islam would not have a billion adherents. Islam is not some sect. I do not mean that all religions are equal. I just mean that, at this kind of scale, Islam is a social reality to deal with rather than something to condemn. One billion people cannot be that wrong. Anyway, the main source of the Muslim hostility today toward the West is not Islamic teaching per se. Rather, tension resides in the sense many Muslims have that the West has attacked Islam. That feeling is considered irrational by many in the West. But this grievance has dramatic symbols in the historic acquisition of Muslim lands by imperialistic Christian countries and, more recently, the establishment of a Jewish State in the heart of the Muslim world in 1948. For many Muslims it seems that Europe committed a crime against the Jews in the Holocaust and Muslims paid for it by occupation of their land. This way of looking at things is not irrational. Of course such a view does not treat fairly the legitimate interests of the Jews, but deep conflicts never do. Native people in America, for example, do not really consider the acquisition of North America by European settlers to be legitimate. They simply bow to the historical reality that there is not much to be done about it. I am not saying the Jews were wrong to create a Jewish state after World War II. They, or I might even say “we” since I was raised a Jew myself, had legitimate claims to that land. Plus, after the Holocaust the establishment of the state of Israel was simply necessary. To say all this is just to show how deep and genuine the conflict over the state of Israel is. Must it therefore go on forever? No. As the recent history of Northern Ireland shows, deep-seated conflict, with justice and injustice on both sides, can eventually be resolved. At some point, people become exhausted by conflict and reach out for peace despite legitimate grievances. I believe this will happen eventually in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. King’s related notion of Muslims cooperating in violence in America is not inherent in Islamic theology either. It may be true that most Muslims in America will not cooperate with law enforcement officials. But what does that mean exactly? It probably does not mean that if Muslims learned of a

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plot to blow up a building, they would not contact the police. It probably means that Muslims will not report fundraising for groups that the United States calls terrorist, like Hamas and Hezbollah, but that many Muslims regard as legitimate social and military organizations. This supposed lack of cooperation might even mean something else. The FBI may be asking Muslims to “keep their ears open,” and Muslims may be resisting such regular contact with the government. People do not want to be thought of as spies against their own community. I would feel the same way if asked by the FBI to report on even genuinely illegal activity in a synagogue. If the conflict in the world today is not theological in the sense that Islamic teachings promote violence, then what is the West actually seeking in regard to Islam? And what does the answer to that question tell us about the future of religious conflict in the world? The mostly unstated goal of the West in regard to Islam is to tame it in the way that Judaism and Christianity have been tamed. In the eyes of the West, Islam must become a matter of private religion and must give up its claim to be the fundamental source of public norms in a society. This is what the West means by coming to terms with modernity. This is what it means to share the values of the West. This is why no one objected to the original Bush administration plan for a secular Iraq, despite the fact that everyone could see how such a regime would be a foreign imposition on a religious culture. This desire in the West to change Islam goes beyond partisan categories. For those on the political right, Islam must be made safe for capitalism—that is, for private property ownership, lending at interest, neutral courts, and so forth. For those on the political left, Islam must be made safe for personal freedom, especially in matters of gender and sex. Both sides say they want to see democracy for the Islamic world, but it must be democracy that leads to these outcomes. In part, I am in sympathy with this Western effort. I would not want to live in a country dominated by Islam as currently practiced. However, it is important to remember that taming Islam in this sense is the real conflict. It is not about violence per se. It is not just aimed at terrorism; it is aimed at Islam in a fundamental way. Can we say what will happen in the future in regard to this conflict? Given the basic forces of secularization that I have discussed earlier, I think the effort to change Islam will eventually succeed. A billion people cannot be wrong, but neither can they basically differ from everybody else. Science is science. Trade is trade. Products are products. Muslims will want the kind of life that other people want. When is this secularization supposed to happen? We should consider how long it took Christianity to come to terms with modern, liberal culture,

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including democracy. It took hundreds of years, but it happened. It will happen with Islam, too, and in less time. Once there is peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, which will eventually happen also, the process will speed up. Hallowed Secularism has a role to play in this speeding up. Part of the source of conflict between Islam and the West is the sense on both sides that modernity and Islam are incompatible. That is only true if we mean by Islam the subjugation of women and the rejection of democracy. In other ways Islam is fully compatible with modernity—in its historic view of science, for example. If Muslims in general viewed Islam and modernity as more complementary than in conflict, the conflict between Islam and the West would be lessened. In contrast to this position of accommodation, for some in the West, the incompatibility lies not in particular aspects of Islamic doctrine but in an incompatibility between modernity and religion in general. This is what a Christopher Hitchens would say, for example. If the Muslim world has the idea that modernity means giving up religion and if that idea is not challenged, then the conflict between Islam and the West will last a long time. Hallowed Secularism rejects the view that religion and modernity are incompatible and it, further, blurs the distinction between religion and secularism. Thus, a West characterized as Hallowed Secularism would both be perceived by religious practitioners, including Muslims, as not fundamentally hostile to religion and would actually not be as hostile as some secularists are today. This changed perception and reality would reduce the temperature in the world significantly. Hallowed Secularism is much more relaxed about the relation of religion and public policy than is today’s version of secularism. Public policy is always based on fundamental values and worldviews and these values are going to continue to be based on religious sources, at least in part. Religion is not expected to be solely private in a world of Hallowed Secularism. The values of free speech, religious freedom, democracy, and equality are nonnegotiable, of course, under Hallowed Secularism. Yet, that is only true in a basic sense. There are going to be differences in application of these values from culture to culture. For example, for historical reasons Germany bans forms of hate speech that Americans regard as absolutely central to freedom of speech. Looking at things that way, Muslim hostility to media depictions of the Prophet do not seem so alien. People do not have to be exactly the same in order to be part of the same modern world. Mark Lilla has suggested that there is something unfathomable about the behavior of Muslims in the world today. He claims that they practice a form of political theology that Americans and the West in general have long since

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abandoned. But, that is plainly not the case. There is nothing truly new or astounding about Islam. The conflicts we are experiencing over the public role of religion are actually quite ordinary. We have seen all this before. In fact to a certain extent, we see it still in our own societies. Because Hallowed Secularism is more sympathetic to religion and more familiar with its tone and more open to its values, it can lead to a world of greater understanding and cooperation than seems possible today. This process of opening secularism up to religious values and thus lessening conflict with religion is happening already. The context in which it is occurring is not the West versus Islam but Pope Benedict’s campaign in Europe to reintroduce Christian values. Granted, Pope Benedict is attempting to return Europeans to their Christian roots. He is trying to refill the churches there through Christian reevangelization. He is also trying to do something else. He is trying to reopen political life in Europe to the general notion of God and of transcendent values. That was the meaning of his 2004 debate with Jürgen Habermas about the possibility of neutral political life. Pope Benedict might even be seen as a leading voice for a kind of Hallowed Secularism. It is not hard to see that Muslims in Europe would be more comfortable in societies of the sort the pope is calling for, even if those societies remain basically secular. For a society of the sort the pope is describing would be welcoming to religious understanding, practice, and language in a way that Europe today is not. Now, imagine a worldwide culture that is celebrative of conscience formed by exposure to the religious truths of humankind. Imagine a world in which religious practitioners and secularists see themselves as linked and not as enemies. This is precisely what I see as one possible future for our world. People who imagine that Islam, or any other worldwide religion, is incompatible with such a world are mostly unfamiliar with the ways in which religions have evolved in the past. They are also unfamiliar with their own mythic structures of life. Secularists have found substitutes for religion. But these substitutes are still religious in a sense. There are, of course, religious conflicts in the world other than Islam versus the West. There is deep tension, religiously based in part, between India and Pakistan, for example. But Hallowed Secularism might play a similar role in those conflicts as well. I have been suggesting that international life in Hallowed Secularism would be less subject to conflict than is international life now. Yet, of course, there will always be conflict. The last section of this chapter deals with the regulation of such conflict in the international realm. What is the role of law in the international life of Hallowed Secularism?

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Law The world today can be technically described as lawless, nor is this a new situation. For lawyers, lawless does not necessarily mean violent. Obviously, today’s world is not mere chaos. Lawless simply means that there are no institutions to enforce on everyone norms arrived at through settled means. There could not be a world of genuine law unless there was some form of world government with a monopoly of coercive power. I do not think anyone would want a one-world government at the moment. Centralized power of that magnitude would be frightening. The legal problem in the world is the same problem the European Union has. That problem is the source of authority. In the European Union, there are two legislative bodies. One is the European Parliament, which is elected by the people of each member state by universal suffrage in roughly equal districts. Thus, the parliament is a democratic body. The other legislative body is the Council of the European Union, which is composed of the national ministers of each State. Obviously, this body is by no means democratic but represents governments. It is wildly impractical to imagine a workable democratic world government today. Not only are people too divided by numerous factors, but, as the American experiment suggests, democracy by itself is also not enough to create free and stable societies. There would not be agreement at the moment for any of the other necessary political institutions such as judicial review, a constitution, or anything else. Short of democracy, a world government would have to represent the interests of member countries, much as the General Assembly of the United Nations does today. Needless to say, and for lots of different reasons, there is no clamor to surrender sovereignty to a body like the United Nations. There are understandings of law that are looser than the enforcement of formal norms backed by a monopoly of coercive force. There are effective norms at the international level. There are, for example, treaties, which are acknowledged to have binding force. Treaties sometimes even create adjudicative bodies to decide disputes about their terms. There are continuing organs of international norms, such as the International Court of Justice. There are binding multination agreements, through the United Nations or otherwise, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). There are norms of practice in international relations that make up binding customary law. International law is a loose weave, but it is not nothing. We have an idea of what we would like to see from a regime of law at the international level. Of course, the main thing we would like is an absence of war, an absence of physical killing.

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But an absence of killing is by no means the ultimate standard. If the world had acquiesced in the occupations of land by the Axis powers in the 1930s, there would have been peace of a sort, at least for awhile. Genuine peace, however, requires an element of justice. So, what we would like from international law is a just and regular order of norms understood and followed. There would have to be institutions to resolve disputes and mechanisms to allow expression of international opinion. Eventually, we would like to see a worldwide human community emerge. The book in the Old Testament that demonstrates some of these characteristics is the book of Ruth. This book has little to do with international relations as such. Yet, it has everything to do with the workings of customary law. The book is set in the time of the judges, which means before the kingship and thus before effective, centralized government. It that sense, the legal context in the book of Ruth is similar to that of international relations. A man from Judah moves to the country of Moab at a time of famine, taking with him his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, but he dies. After marrying women of Moab, one of whom was Ruth, the two sons die as well. Naomi, having neither husband nor sons, decides to return to Judah. She tells the two daughters-in-law to stay in Moab, for there were no prospects of marriage if they went with her. The other daughter-in-law leaves, but Ruth remains with Naomi, swearing that “your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” Upon Naomi’s return to Judah, Ruth meets a rich man, Boaz, a close relative to Naomi, who eventually performs the role of kinsman redeemer by buying Naomi’s land—so that the land would stay within the family group—and marrying Ruth. The book tells of Boaz finding the nearest relation and gathering ten witnesses. The nearest relation refuses the right of redemption, which Boaz formalizes by giving the man his sandal, as “was the custom in former times in Israel” in the words of the Bible. The book of Ruth shows a traditional society whose settled customs allow for peace and prosperity without armies and even without formal law courts. These customs are transnational. Ruth is a resident alien, as we would put it, but is cared for within this customary social welfare system. The book of Ruth represents an ideal of the sort of international order that we would like to see, although, the scale and complexity of modern life is beyond the point of sandals and gathering witnesses. Nevertheless, an international civil society—Max Stackhouse’s proposal—would not be a matter of legislation or formal structure, although there would be some of that, but would have to grow in the organic way described in the book of Ruth. Hallowed Secularism would be one element in such growth. At the moment, humanity is divided not just by nation but by civilization, which

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includes differences in religion. The world is moving in the direction of one world culture, but it is as yet a very limited culture of youth, technology, and a certain kind of consumption. Religions still mark boundaries among people. As the world becomes more secular and as that secularism becomes more open to religion, humanity may find it easier to sustain a genuinely common culture or, as I have said, a common culture with many local differences. This seems today totally out of reach, but I am speaking here of a time perhaps a century in the future. I do not think our situation will remain then as it is now. I have said almost nothing to this point about nation-states. At the moment, nation-states are in fact the only really effective actors in the international world. There is no real worldwide public opinion except for what can be enforced by sanctions imposed by nations. The world community of ordinary people has very little influence as yet. In the world there are genuine, large-scale, transnational groups such as the ideal in Islam of the Ummah Wahida, the unified Muslim community, or the Catholic Church. I am leaving these out the discussion because they are based on religion and thus, for now, are only a part of the broader community of all. In fact they may be sources of conflict with nonmembers in the group. I am also leaving out small-scale international terrorist groups. They are important for the moment, but they are only parasitic on conflicts among nations. In a world of peace, they will disappear. It may be that a worldwide public is already beginning to emerge. The international human rights community exists and does exert some influence across borders. That is also beginning to be true of the environmental movement. Still, we deal with a world of governments and nongovernmental actors, which are still organized groups. There is not yet a common world of ordinary people. In the current world, nation-states make war if they can, without the permission of the international community. Of course the military power of the United States gives it more flexibility in this regard. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization acts on its own as well. Other countries do also. At the moment we remain a fractured and lawless world. But we can see the possibility of a very different sort of world one day. A sign of this emerging world occurred recently. On September 24, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke about climate change at a United Nations climate change summit that President Bush had attempted to marginalize. Schwarzenegger’s appearance did not generate that much attention in the U.S. press. He is a Republican and cannot run for president, so his appearance was not domestically dramatic.

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However, he said something at that meeting directly relevant to the new world of Hallowed Secularism. He said, “California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action.” Once upon a time, the U.S. Supreme Court called the president the “sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.” I suppose that may still be technically correct in terms of the federal government. But that is plainly not the case today with regard to America as a whole. The states have been willing to engage independently in what once would have been considered foreign affairs. In addition, this change is not limited to government officials. On the same day that Governor Schwarzenegger was weighing in on global warming, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was debating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a stage at Columbia University. It was a day of international civil society. Hallowed Secularism offers a way to think about that worldwide society. Thinking about the world as a whole requires categories outside Our Religions. Particular interests—like environmentalism—do not embrace the whole of humanity in all of its concerns. We can assume that secularism will eventually make up a part of that overall category of world culture. But if that secularism is atheistic, that identification will not include most of the world’s people, at least not for a very long time. Hallowed Secularism, in contrast, is closer to what people actually are and, thus, to what we might more easily become.

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PART III

The Meaning of Hallowed Secularism

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CHAPTER 9

Beyond Religion

I

begin with religion because religion has always been humanity’s starting point. Every human culture has worked out its relationship with divine reality. We secularists can admit that historically. We can accept it still for other cultures, but we may be surprised that religion continues to undergird the West. Here is an example of that secular reluctance. Some years ago, I was part of a group of law professors that was thinking about a comparison of countries that base their legal systems on religious traditions. The state of Israel was suggested, of course, although its legal system is not mainly based on Jewish law. There certainly are Muslim countries that follow Shari’a to greater and lesser extents. Burma, as it was then known, was suggested as an example of a Buddhist legal system. But when it came to Christianity, I was not sure. I suggested Spain, perhaps at a somewhat earlier time. I was then asked, why not the United States? I was surprised at this suggestion. “The United States is a secular country,” I said. “Our laws are democratically derived. They do not come from the Bible.” One of the others in the group just laughed. He said, “Everything in American history comes from the Bible, as the Protestants read it. You just have to know how to look.” Now I would answer differently. I think my friend was right. Religion is the starting point everywhere, especially in America, but that just renders our secular future more uncertain and challenging. It does not undo it.

The Power of Religion Religion tells us our story. In the book Ismael, a gorilla teacher asks his student what story this culture is living out. The teacher says that the first part of the story is about creation. The student is confused by this request. He responds that we do not have a story of creation because we live by facts and science

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rather than by myth. The student does not accept the creation account in Genesis, nor the creation myths of any other culture. The teacher asks the student to tell the scientific story of the origin of the universe, which the student does. It turns out that this “scientific” story ends with the birth of man. As the teacher points out, that arrangement of reality— the implied belief that evolution has now come to its ultimate purpose in man—is purely mythical. The birth of man is seen as the central event in the history of the cosmos. That interpretation of natural history is a story about the meaning of the world. The world—all of reality—is made for man. In the West, this story originated in the Bible, although there were earlier sources that were similar on this point. This view of reality would stand in contrast to a different story—one that suggested that man is simply a part of nature, not particularly special, and soon to be extinct as all natural things run their course. There is obviously no scientific evidence for one of these views of reality versus the other, and there could be many other understandings of the meaning of the world. This is how religion works. Religion grounds us. That means religion gives us a way to understand who we are, why we are here, and what we should do. You may respond that there could be a secular account of these things. I’m sure there could be, but I really have not heard one. Thus far, secularism has borrowed its meaning from religion. This point was made poignantly by Lauren Sandler, self-described secular liberal and author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. She writes, “We need our own ‘Purpose Driven Life’ that will inspire people to action and offer them a reason for living.” Sandler was referring to the bestselling book by Protestant Minister Rick Warren. She is asking the secular and religious left to offer young people a home and sense of belonging. Religion also gives us a sense of the countercultural. It gives us a place to stand, from which to challenge the way things are. The Bible tells us that the world was meant to be quite different from the way it is. In a sense, both the Old and New Testaments represent the way God has been attempting to put things right again. This perspective, that we are meant to live in a world of peace, prosperity, and friendship, is a powerful antidote to the pressure that is exerted on us to accept things as they are in the name of realism. You could say that the humane imagination was born in our religious traditions. You may object that religion has often been on the side of an oppressive status quo that is against the powerless. That certainly has been true at times, but the point here is not how well religious people and religious institutions have lived up to their religious obligations. The point is the source of an alternative way of life. Religion has always served as the promise of a better life. I’m not sure that without the Bible, the notion of the lamb and lion lying

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down together would have occurred to anyone. This sort of promise has always struck me as so fantastic that if it had not come from God, no one would have accepted it as worth thinking about. Read the following from Isaiah 11:9: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Or consider this image from the Prophet Micah 4:1–4: But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow to it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide concerning far away strong nations; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it.

The secular world, even in its most revolutionary moments, has never generated possibilities this radical. It is not just the content of these promises that means so much, but the assurance that this is what reality is actually like. In other words, the world we see, the world of violence and selfishness, is not the truth of things. The truth of things is what the prophets promise. Their understanding, and that of the Sermon on the Mount, is how we are meant to be. This is the order of life that we are supposed to strive for. This guarantee is the reassurance that people have needed in order to insist upon, and work for, a much different world. If human aspirations are not grounded in the way things genuinely are, they are just hopes and dreams; but if they are grounded in reality, then you and I may legitimately give our lives for these possibilities of human life. Of course, I am assuming that the Bible is true. I have been asked in debates why I say that we should start with the Bible. I usually answer along the lines of the centrality of biblical imagery in Western and, particularly, American history. There is such a history, of course, and it does justify Bible study. But this is not really my reason for suggesting recourse to the Bible. My reason is that the Bible is true. Its understanding of reality is the true one. Its proposed way of life—the law of love—is the human way to live.

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I am not trying to convince you of that truth right now. Plenty of atheists disagree, and there are billions of people outside the biblical tradition (although they may agree with the Bible on matters like these). We can expect to debate these matters into the future, but we cannot avoid a commitment to some sort of truth about reality. Every society has a collective view of how things are, even if strong individuals live out countercultural assumptions. We can say at least that the Bible is an important potential source of truth that is worth investigating. Another point about religion is its realism. The Bible also contains an anthropology—a view of man. That view is basically that man is a sinner. This insight is of particular importance in America today. One of the criticisms against the neo-cons, in their haste to invade Iraq and remake the Middle East, is that they were overconfident, both in terms of what America could accomplish in the minefield of Iraqi politics and in estimating their own virtue. We are not simply the good people that we imagine we are. Our enemies are not simply the evil ones. Our motives are mixed and our methods are corrupt. Those of our enemies are as well. Our enemies are also motivated in part by a sense of justice and in some ways they are also justified, as are we. This viewpoint does not arise because there is something especially grievous about the invasion of Iraq. It is just what the Bible calls “man’s heart.” It was even true in a good war, such as World War II. In America today, there is a renaissance of the thought of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. A lot of people have rediscovered him. Niebuhr is looked to because of his “Christian realism.” He knew that there are no just nations. Every country is, to some extent, out to better itself at the expense of its neighbors. A number of opponents of the war in Iraq have begun citing Niebuhr. Though Niebuhr’s point of view is very important, it cannot be grasped without its biblical context. As the American writer Paul Elie argued in a November 2007 online Atlantic Monthly interview, losing touch with the biblical perspective and looking at things only from a secular point of view, has led to shallowness in our political life. We have forgotten about human frailty, natural catastrophe, the perpetual threat of irrational violence and the propensity toward oppression. We have lost the sense of history and of the eternal lessons of human experience. I’m sure that we could have relearned these lessons from religious traditions other than the Bible, but we have to draw from some deep well in order to live fully. We learn these things from religion. We see all the time what religion can do. We see a Martin Luther King. We see a Gandhi. We see a Dalai Lama. We see a Desmond Tutu. We see Buddhist monks facing down guns and bayonets. We see an Amish community forgiving

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a killer of young schoolgirls. We know that religion is a potential source of greatness in the human spirit, and we also know, if we are candid, that such sources are not all that common. What is most striking about the power of religion, however, is the way that it can lead to surprise. This is something secularists are learning from the developing split among Evangelical Christians in America over global warming. Despite our frozen politics, some Christians have been crossing political lines on this issue. Similarly, some of the most supportive voices for the poor, whether at home or abroad, have been conservative Christians. I think, for example, of former Pennsylvania Senator Richard Santorum; he could sometimes be a powerful spokesperson for the disadvantaged. Religion is like that—often hard to pin down. That is why the Catholic bishops can be conservative on gay rights but opponents of the war in Iraq. It seems to me that secular liberalism tends to be more ideological and doctrinaire than religion, a fact secularists would find hard to acknowledge. All this sounds like I am about to endorse religion, but, of course, Hallowed Secularism is not religion. For all the power of religion, there is another side to it. I am not speaking of the failure of religious people to live up to the promise of their own religious traditions. That criticism has always struck me as beside the point. There are hardly any really good people anywhere, and very few saints. That does not seem to me to be much of a criticism of religion. No, for all the greatness of religion, for many of us, religion is just not a plausible option.

The Limits of Religion So, why not just be religious? It sounds so good. The problem has nothing to do with the church and its stands on issues. These things do not help, but they are not the crucial matter; nor is the matter institutional. I do not like the clergy acting as if they are intermediaries to the divine, but if that were really the issue, we would just form our own Christian or Jewish sect. Secularism is growing because of the spirit of the age—what Charles Taylor calls the “conditions of belief.” Our religions form a coherent whole. You cannot really pick and choose what to believe. At least, you cannot pick and choose at the foundation. Speaking for the moment only about the biblical religions, there is too much at the foundation that is not believable for me to remain within the fold. Terms here are notoriously slippery. I have already said that the concept of God has been reworked by theologians like Mordecai Kaplan, and others, to

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exclude the supernatural. Reinterpretations of miracles have been attempted. Heaven can be on earth, as we have seen. It is actually not easy to state the bedrock of religion that is not possible for secularists to accept. I will start with a Christian doctrine that cannot be avoided—death. In his book Jesus, Pope Benedict discusses the second Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” The pope points out that the sufferer is not truly comforted by standing under the protection of God’s Kingdom. “True comfort only appears when the ‘last enemy,’ death, and all its accomplices have been stripped of their power,” and this—the end of death—is what Jesus ultimately promises. For those of us for whom this world is the natural frame, this promise of ending death makes no sense. First, death is a natural process, not an enemy. Second, death cannot be overcome. I am not looking forward to the rapid decline I have already started. I am not happy to see my father aging. Death is not simply the end of life. Death is also decline and pain. So, I understand why death is called enemy. All the same, death is what makes life what it is. Life does not go on forever. We each die and our species dies too. We are part of a great cycle. It is ingratitude to seek immortality, nor is it possible for us to live forever. We are by nature finite. In science fiction, many injuries can be healed and rejuvenation is sometimes possible, but even in science fiction, there are limits built into the natural order. There are borders beyond which human science cannot see. Death is always a possibility for us. Not only is the end of death not possible, there is another side of the promise of the end of death, which is the dangerous tendency of some religious believers to embrace apocalypse. This is the similarity between those Christians who are willing to press for a war in the Middle East that they think was prophesied in the book of Revelation and Muslim suicide bombers. Both of these groups are willing to act in this world on the basis of its supposed end, either in a heaven for them personally or in the end of history for all. Such beliefs are dangerous. All in all, the promise of an end to death is not credible and not desirable. Why is that so significant? I’ve already pointed out that the Old Testament does not make this promise. Abraham dies and is not promised anything else. Perhaps secularism is only incompatible with a particular Christian doctrine. However, it is not that simple. The reason Christianity came to understand the coming of the Messiah as the promise of the end of death is because Judaism was moving in that direction. This is the same reason why Islam also speaks of the last day. The religions of the Book came to see the end of death as possible because they worshipped a God who both had this capability and

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was a faithful partner to man. In other words, if God could end death, why would God not do so, at some point? This was the logic of Messianism. This means that the denial of the end of death is actually the denial of the kind of God who could accomplish that result. That is a more fundamental incompatibility than just one doctrine. Then why not just reinterpret the God concept? The problem is that the God of the Bible is a person, not a power, and this is just as true of the Old Testament as it is of the New Testament. This is why Reconstructionist Judaism, the movement that Mordecai Kaplan founded, has not been able to create a credible liturgy. Kaplan taught that there is no supernatural being, but this meant as well that God could not be a person. God ended up defined by Kaplan as a feeling that human beings have when they are at their best and the highest ideals of humanity. Despite that understanding, the Old Testament continued to be read in Reconstructionist Judaism, and the prayers were not rewritten, with some exceptions not relevant to the personhood of God. This attempt to have it both ways did not work. Today, Reconstructionist synagogues are indistinguishable from those of other Jewish movements, such as the reform or conservative. Despite his writings Kaplan even insisted that God exists. He told his students that anyone who denied that could not be a rabbi in good conscience. The problem is insurmountable. A personal God with a plan for humanity—which the Bible insists is the nature of God—is not consistent with what we know or think we know about the way things are. This is also why attempts to reinterpret miracles and biblical history are beside the point. The question is not, for example, whether God created the world in seven days but whether a God who could create that way could exist. If the answer is yes, then the details are irrelevant, and the biblical message can be accepted. If the answer is no, much of the biblical understanding of reality is undermined. Death is not final, or not quite final, in other religions as well—in Hinduism, Buddhism, and even the spirit world of Confucianism. All these are barriers to the secularist. The situation for the secularist confronting religion today is different from that of pagans in the ancient world confronting monotheism. The Exodus account portrays God as superior to the gods of Egypt. There was nothing in the biblical account that challenged what an audience at that time would have understood as possible. Similarly, the early Christian movement did not deny the reality of pagan gods, which the movement called demons, but proclaimed that Jesus had defeated their power. Again, this was a demand to switch allegiance to a new authority. It was not inconceivable.

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It is true that the Christian claim that God could be known through suffering was a shattering insight for the pagan world—a stumbling block, as Paul put it. But the secularist’s problem today is more fundamental. There is no unseen realm in which a person-like authority could exist. The secularist does not even get to the point of asking what sort of person God might be. This problem with the person of God does not necessarily contradict the Bible’s injunction of the way people should live or the nature of reality, at least not directly. One could believe in what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount without believing that the God of the New Testament exists. I will return to that possibility below in discussing religion’s view of Hallowed Secularism. The secularist would not have exactly the same problem with other religions, of course. Not all religions insist on a person-like God. It is sufficient, however, for our purposes, to explain why secularists cannot simply become Jews, Christians, or Muslims. It will be for other secular traditions to address the other world religions, but, as in the case of death, all of Our Religions insist on fundamental attributes of reality that the secularist cannot accept. I’m not sure that humankind has been in this situation before. There have always been non-believers. Psalm 14 announces that “the fool has said in his heart, There is no God,” but this was a denial of God’s faithfulness rather than his reality. The nonbeliever in the Psalm was saying that there would be no punishment for evil. Today’s secularist might say, in contrast, I wish there were a God of the Bible. I would gladly worship. I know that doubt is not a monopoly of the secularist. The faithful Christian has always prayed, as in the Gospel of Mark, “I believe; help my unbelief.” Again, however, the unbelief in Mark was a doubt about God’s power or willingness to act, for it was in the context of curing a child. The father in the story is not a secularist. The secularist says I know in my heart that such things cannot happen. The reader at this point is entitled to ask how I, of all people, can so confidently assert that there is no person at the heart of reality? Have I not testified to receiving help upon sincere request, and not just once? You cannot step out of your context. There are people who believe in the accounts of the Bible. They are luckier than they know. I start with a natural order that obeys regular laws because that is what I know. That is not inconsistent with what happened to me, but it is inconsistent with the authority over nature that the Bible portrays as belonging to God. As the New Testament says, “even wind and sea obey him” (Mk. 4:41). For the secularist, the wind and sea obey no one. I am afraid that someone like Mordecai Kaplan could just not accept the implications of his own thinking. Kaplan was influenced by John Dewey, but,

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whereas Dewey could at some point cease to think of himself as a Christian, Kaplan was much too loyal to the Jewish people to go that same route. Indeed, aside from his theology, Kaplan was most influential for defining Judaism as an evolving civilization, rather than merely a religion. It has not proved possible to have Judaism without the God of the Bible. God has therefore remained at the heart of Judaism in fairly traditional terms. What then is left in the biblical tradition for the secularist? It may be possible to affirm that the claims of the Bible are true even though their foundations in God are removed, but even if that belief can sustain a Hallowed Secularism, it is still not religion. It is something else. James Kugel, an Orthodox Jew, has written a book—How to Read the Bible—that explains how modern scholarship reads the Old Testament, with all of the different literary sources for the text and the inconsistent accounts and so forth. Kugel includes all the modern relativisms, but in the last chapter, Kugel insists that, notwithstanding all that, the Bible still inspires the reader to serve God. This is essentially confusion on Kugel’s part. The secularist can agree with Kugel that the Bible inspires, but must deny that there is a God to serve. It is easier to conclude that the writers of the Bible were encountering reality in different ways—thus the differing approaches in the text that source criticism identifies—and expressing their understanding of reality in terms of a personal God. We can learn a great deal from their understanding of reality, even without the personal God.

How Religion Views Hallowed Secularism The religious reaction to Hallowed Secularism has to be that it is an attempt to split a difference—or compromise fundamentals—where that simply cannot be done. It is called the “Kingdom of God” for a reason. It is the Kingdom of God. It is just wishful thinking that one could have all this—all the power and goodness of religion—without God. This is how Rick Warren put it in Newsweek Magazine, “For years, atheists have said that there is no God, but they want to live like God exists.” Another way to state this criticism is that God is the guarantee that religious claims about the universe, and specifically Christian and Jewish claims, are true. God is the reason they are true. If religious people live for others, if they do good things, if they feel they belong, this is all because God exists, and these are the ways He has told his people to live. How could any of that happen without God? Hallowed Secularism, from this point of view, is really just for the faint of heart. It is for those people who want to be close to religion, for reasons of their own, but do not want to obey or submit to the will of God as revealed.

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Such people want to be able to support gay marriage, but they also want to feel close to religious sources. They want a meaningful universe, but they do not want the One whose will informs the meaning of the universe. The New Testament tells the story of trying to bring about a better world without God. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. There are three temptations. Jesus is taunted to make a stone become bread, he is offered the Kingship of all the nations of the world, and he is shown scriptural authority to the effect that he should leap from the Temple so that angels will come to bear him up. If we summarize the temptations, they amount to one single matter—that Jesus should act to bring about a better world. This better world would satisfy the material needs of people—bread—the political needs of people—unified beneficent leadership—and the spiritual needs of people—miracles. Indeed, as has been pointed out, Jesus more or less does eventually do or promise all these same things. So, why were these temptations? They were temptations, of course, for just the reason Jesus says. These actions were to be taken by Jesus himself rather than in obedience to God. Hallowed Secularism makes the same sort of claims and promises that Satan did. There is no God, but people may still have all the promises of the Bible fulfilled. I made that very specific claim in the introduction to this book. So, am I then like Satan? The critique of Hallowed Secularism by religion should not be rejected out of hand, nor, as the reader will see in the following two chapters, should the other critiques—by humanism and materialism—be rejected out of hand either. I am not going to attack the criticisms I set forth here. Perhaps these criticisms are true, and whether they are true or not, they should be fairly considered and probably left open for the future. I will respond, however, to this extent. Jesus was being challenged by Satan to take matters into his own hands. He was tempted to act like God. Paul is clear that Jesus did not grasp at equality with God but emptied himself and became a servant. The temptation was to act autonomously, without God. Hallowed Secularism does not assume that man is autonomous in that sense. Man is not free of constraint. Man is not free in the way that classic liberalism suggested. He is not a tabula rasa, nor is history. Hallowed Secularism understands man as sinful and in need of forgiveness. It understands history as subject to movements beyond human control. This idea of limit is the sense that Thomas Jefferson had when he confronted the injustice of slavery and the likelihood of consequences for such evil. Jefferson, at that moment at least, was not fooling himself about man’s independence. I hope that this sense of limit will instill in secular civilization the necessary inhibition to keep us away from genuine disaster, but I admit that the question

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is an open one. Surely no one can look at recent human history and wish to see humanity really freed from constraint, free to do whatever we wish. Religion levels another fundamental criticism at Hallowed Secularism. The religions of the Book—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—have a strong sense of community. The believing community forms a whole, or at least is meant to do so. In Christianity, the whole is called the church or the people of God; in Islam, the Ummah or community of the believers; in Judaism, Am Yisroel, the people of Israel. The point of these collectives is that a believer is not alone, not even alone with God. Instead, the believer is in community. There is not much of a sense of the individual in the Old Testament. The point of the story is God’s covenant relationship with Israel. When Lauren Sandler calls for secularism to give young people a sense of belonging, she is referring to this sense of a whole. The problem is that there is not currently a community in secularism. It is not at all clear how such a feeling of belonging could be engendered. There are already secular subgroups that function as quasi-religious communities. The Society for Ethical Culture, for example, which was founded in New York City in 1876, has spun off a number of such groups. The Ethical Society of St. Louis, which is one of the members of the American Ethical Union, describes itself very much in churchlike terms: “The Ethical Society of St. Louis is an ethics-centered religious community committed to creating a world in which all people choose to live ethically. Members join together to assist each other in developing ethical ideas and ideals, celebrate life’s joys and support each other in life’s crises, and promote ethics in their communities.” There is even a Sunday school. What would community in Hallowed Secularism look like? If Hallowed Secularism becomes a specific movement, then one can imagine groups like those of Ethical Culture. I am skeptical that this will occur, however, because the goal of a holy secular life seems too vague. On the other hand, ethical living is vague, and it has survived. So perhaps this will be the future of Hallowed Secularism. If, however, Hallowed Secularism comes eventually to be seen not as a particular movement, but as a definition of American life, and then perhaps of world life, community would have to be seen differently. Then, we would be looking at something like the way Thanksgiving is celebrated in some American small towns, with a communal meal. There would be town by town and city by city groupings and practices. Could such dispersed practices form the basis for a meaningful cultural life? Could a child feel a sense of home from this kind of secular living? I can

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only hope that this is possible, but only the future can decide the kind of secular life we will lead. Perhaps the most serious challenge to Hallowed Secularism from religion is that Hallowed Secularism is just a sop for comfortable people to feel better about themselves and their world. It cannot serve as a foundation for radical transformation, either personally or collectively. I am not sure how to respond to this challenge. Radical transformation that is positive, rather than the demon of revolution, has been rare in human history. Where it has occurred, it has generally been the result of religious conversion in one form or another. Whether Hallowed Secularism can call us out of our personal comfort depends on the extent to which it becomes genuinely holy. It is from the sense of the holy that real change comes. By holy, I simply mean that we know our world and ourselves are not as they ought to be. The distance between what there is and what there should be suddenly becomes a personal demand. On the bus this morning, I looked around and saw broken humanity everywhere. The people on that bus were poor and tired and seemed without hope. My immediate response was that I had been very fortunate to have the life I have. That is a typical secular response, but, the typical religious response is not much better. The morning prayers in Judaism tell us to thank God that we are not in the situation of others. The response of the saints—the saints of any religion—would have been very different. They would have resolved to help mend the broken world through offering their own lives. Many times these saints have succeeded in changing the world. Can you imagine a secularist, even a hallowed one, responding in that way? When you can, then you will know that Hallowed Secularism can be an answer.

Hallowed Secularism’s Contribution to Religion What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean when he referred to a “world that has come of age,” when he claimed that “Everything gets along without ‘God’— and, in fact, just as well as before?” What does it mean that the world is no longer under the “tutelage of ‘God’?” Bonhoeffer was not lamenting this change. He was accepting it, perhaps even reveling in it. He called the disputes between state and pope, which ultimately ended in the liberation of worldly power from the constraints of the church, “the source of the intellectual freedom that has made Europe great.” Given the context, this is astonishing. Bonhoeffer was in prison for his part in the plot that would ultimately attempt to kill Hitler. He must have been aware that he was not likely to survive the war. He certainly had no

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illusions about the Nazis. One would therefore expect Bonhoeffer to conclude, as Martha Franks puts it, “that the Enlightenment was a godless work of the devil” calling for “repentance for our hubris in trying to tame nature and deny God.” Bonheoffer should have willed us back to our knees, but he does not. Bonhoeffer is proud of man. He is proud of our efforts and our learning. He does not think that the modern age was some sort of mistake. Part of the reason for this is that Bonhoeffer was convinced of the truth of the advances of science. For him it is in vain for theology to take up arms against Darwinism and other scientific advances. It is too late—“like an attempt to put a grown man back into adolescence.” Plus, religious acceptance of modernity protects secularism against its own tendency to anti-religious polemic: “the more [Roman Catholic and Protestant historians] claim and play off God and Christ against it, the more the development considers itself to be anti-Christian.” The main reason that Bonhoeffer accepts modernity with its secularism is that this movement of history is from God—“God himself compels us to recognize it. . . . God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him.” Bonhoeffer is still in advance of us. We have not yet caught up to him. As a believer, the movement of the world in such a large direction, as in the movement to the secular, had to be from God. So, decrying it was not an option. It is true that Bonhoeffer ultimately comes to understand secularism in Christian terms—“God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross”—but he comes to that understanding only after assuming that secularism must be God given because God is the Lord of history. Bonhoeffer makes two contributions to religion, by way of Hallowed Secularism. First, he is in some sense the author of Hallowed Secularism, which is an attempt to be religious in a world that has come of age. Hallowed Secularism is an attempt to speak “in a ‘secular’ way about God.” Bonhoeffer believed that Christ and God are about this world—that, for example, “belief in the resurrection is not the ‘solution’ of the problem of death.” In that sense, Bonhoeffer was himself a secularist. Bonhoeffer’s second contribution is to remind Our Religions that they cannot just go on as before, as if worldwide secularism did not exist. They should not repeat, uncritically, stories that a modern mind must reject. At least they should not announce such stories to the world, although they might still do so within the community. When the Bible was formulated and written, it was not an affront to the learning and knowledge of the age. The cross was an affront to Greeks and Jews, as Paul wrote, not because people doubted the existence of God or gods. The cross was an affront because it made a claim about the nature of God—that

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God suffered for our sakes—that the ancient world found shocking. The problem today is that the claims of the Bible, in the Bible’s language, are beyond the capacity of many modern humans to accept. Bonhoeffer insisted that Christianity was meant to confront this problem by understanding God and Christ from within it. I’m not sure that Bonhoeffer succeeded in explaining how this was to happen or what it all meant. His last words on the subject indicate that we are to participate in the powerlessness of God in the world. Because it is godless, the world is perhaps closer to God, presumably because it experiences God’s powerlessness in the world, but how this powerlessness differs from absence is not clear to me. The challenge to religion is to come to understand what the growth of secularism means. Thus far, the church has tended to simply resist. Secularism is thus seen as merely the latest example of the Tower of Babel—man’s latest overreaching. That is precisely what Bonhoeffer rejected. He was accusing the church of refusing to see that God is doing something new. Secularism is not like Nazism. It is not simply an evil. There is something right about it, something healthy. This has been difficult for religion to see. Hallowed Secularism would confront religion with a secularism that the church would have difficulty simply dismissing. This might help the church in its own engagement with the world. Pope Benedict has been confronting the secularism of Europe. What is important for us is the nature of the pope’s criticism of secularism. He states, “While Europe once was the Christian Continent, it was also the birthplace of that new scientific rationality which has given us both enormous possibilities and enormous menaces . . . In the wake of this form of rationality, Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner hitherto unknown to mankind, excludes God from public awareness . . . A culture has developed in Europe that is the most radical contradiction not only of Christianity but of all the religious and moral traditions of humanity.” The pope is here accepting secularism to a certain extent, but is calling on it to end its exclusion of the holy from public life. The day that happens, Hallowed Secularism comes of age. On that day, the secular challenge to religion will be sharpened. The other challenge from Hallowed Secularism to religion in general, and the church in particular, is the recognition of democracy as another act of God, another positive change in human affairs that must be recognized. The tendency of Christianity has been to divide public life into the two categories of church and state. This is why the American constitutional law of religion is known as the law of church and state. To see why this excludes democracy, let me summarize the theology of the relationship of church and state argued by Karl Barth in Community, State, and Church. The role of the church is to pray for the state. Only the church

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understands the proper role of the state—to procure peace and order so that the preaching of justification by the church can go forth. When the church resists the state’s effort to suppress preaching, this resistance is a service to the state. There is no place in this formulation for democracy. Democracy becomes merely the particular way that the state pursues its business. In this way of looking at things, democracy is not in principle any better than monarchy. The Old Testament has a very different view of public life. All of the decisions of public life are ultimately the responsibility of the people, even when there is a king. The decision to have a king is presented in the Old Testament as a collective decision, almost a societal constitutional convention. Samuel, the prophet, wants to reject the people’s call for a king, but God countermands this. In a similar way, the decision to be bound by God’s law at Mount Sinai is presented in the book of Exodus as a collective decision. The people respond to God, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do,” (19:8), a strikingly democratic commitment. In the Old Testament, the nation is the people of God. Thus, the call to social justice is political in the Old Testament in a way that Barth’s formulation does not recognize. Of course, the difference between Barth and the Old Testament is the subcategory of church as a group within a society, a category that does not exist in the Old Testament. In Hallowed Secularism, the sense of the peoplehood of the nation and its relationship to the divine is reestablished. Democracy becomes, so to speak, the expression of the people of God, and this could be true in every country. It could be true of humanity as a whole. Although this way of looking at democracy invites the danger of idolatry, if the nation were to become God, it also contains the seed of a healthy political life as the entire nation recognizes its collective responsibility to a justice that goes beyond order. If such recognition were to become widespread, religion would be deeply challenged and politics would be transformed. In any event, it is surely wrong to treat democracy as just another political form. Jesus did not come to form a church but to save all people. He was not apolitical, and, of course, the powers of the day did not treat him as apolitical. We see from this chapter that Hallowed Secularism maintains an intimate relationship with religion. This is not surprising since this entire book shows that close connection. Next, we confront two quite different traditions that will also define the future of Hallowed Secularism: humanism and materialism.

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CHAPTER 10

Beyond Humanism

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efore Hallowed Secularism can go forward, there is a need to retrieve the history of humanism. To see how much we have lost, consider Susan Rubin Suleiman’s New York Times book review of Norman Davies’s book on World War II, No Simple Victory. Suleiman notes the following entry in Davies’s book: “[Kurt Vonnegut] succeeded Isaac Asimov as president of the American Humanist Association.” That book entry startled me. I had forgotten that there is such a group as the American Humanist Association, though the group has been around for more than sixty years. There is also an active movement called Secular Humanistic Judaism. There are two points to be made here. First, why are we reinventing the wheel? Why, in other words, is there a New Atheism when there is an old and established one? The second question concerns the quality and tone of this older humanism. Think of the intellectual centrality of Vonnegut and Asimov. These were giants of American letters—deeply educated and cultured persons. Hostility to religion did not drive them. Their concern was the human condition. This openness gave them a mass appeal that the New Atheists lack. The same was true of Rabbi Sherwin Wine, who founded the first Humanistic Jewish congregation in 1963. Rabbi Wine was a towering figure and a serious and pastoral religious leader. None of these figures was anything like the hectoring, juvenile, and elitist voices of today’s New Atheism. More generally, the thinking of humanism in its heyday, with the drafting of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933, was not opposition to religion but the creation of a secular civilization with a complex relationship to religion. Thus the project of Hallowed Secularism, although quite religious in tone, may be closer to the humanist tradition than is the current atheist enthusiasm. John Dewey, for example, a signer of the manifesto and a powerful influence in the movement, was always aware of what religion had brought and could bring to human life.

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To determine the proper heir to the humanist tradition and its proper relation to religion, we must ask, what is the essence of humanism? There is no simple answer. If in religion the subject for reflection is transcendent reality, the subject for thinking in humanism is man. The nineteenth-century religious philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach is an appropriate starting point, therefore, because he argued that the real object of religious thought was man rather than God. In religion, man projects onto an imaginary divine subject— God—the highest and most worthy attributes that he actually finds in himself. Man is the creator. Man the eternal. Feuerbach did not mean any particular man, of course, but the species itself in which the individual finds his meaning. Feuerbach’s kind of humanism is highly influential to this day. Many of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto probably subscribed to something along these lines. Karl Marx’s understanding of religion was also taken in large part from Feuerbach. To the extent that secularists today think about God, most of them probably would assent to Feuerbach’s basic insight. This means that in humanism, theology is turned into anthropology, as Karl Barth put it. The question for humanism then becomes, what is the nature of man? Hallowed Secularism is not humanism. It denies that man should be thought of as his own most important question. Man cannot bear the weight of such self-centered inquiry. His own hopes, dreams, fears, and so forth will not liberate him. Man actually needs to get outside himself. In that sense, Hallowed Secularism is beyond humanism. Nevertheless, there is greatness in man, and the humanist project has led to important advances in human understanding and commitments. That positive aspect is where we begin in reflecting on the relationship between Hallowed Secularism and humanism.

The Power of Humanism Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits” (Mt. 7:16). By that measure, humanism has done very well. Pope Benedict has been lavish in his acknowledgment of the importance of individual rights in general and religious liberty in particular. Our Religions as a whole have praised religious liberty. But it is fair to say that establishing these rights has been the accomplishment of humanism rather than of Our Religions. While the roots of the human rights tradition were laid in the Bible and while it is fair to point out that this tradition grew originally only in cultural soil prepared by the church, nevertheless, our liberty has not been the gift of the church, as it should have been. It has been the gift of the humanist tradition.

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Humanism has freed humanity from the tyranny of superstition and from the illegitimate power of clerics. We need only to look at the Muslim world, which has lacked a humanist tradition in the modern era, to see the importance of humanism in this regard. Some of this humanist accomplishment has been described in the books of the New Atheism. Religion has a great deal to answer for. It has been a stumbling block. Humanism has shown us in various ways that Our Religions are human creations rather than traditions given by God. Humanists from the Protestant tradition essentially created the fields of source criticism and sociology from which much of our knowledge of religion comes. Again, humanism has taught us what Our Religions would prefer we not know. Humanism has also emphasized the integration of the human being against all claims of dualism. Humans are not a war of spirit and body. Human beings are both spirit and body. Or, rather, the human body is spiritual, and the human spirit is embodied. Humanism also has taught us that people are responsible for their actions. It is not enough that a leader tells us that God spoke to him and commanded an invasion of a foreign country. We are to work out our destiny on our own in the here and now. As Dewey hoped in A Common Faith, this attitude that man must handle his problems on his own probably has helped bring about a surge of human effort around the world to alleviate poverty, cure disease, bring peace, and so forth. It is also true that the world economic system is bringing increasing numbers of people out of the terrible poverty that afflicts so many in the world. The system of representative government, market economics, and judicial review has spread around the world, and if it has not solved all our problems, it has provided a lot of people with stability in governance and the possibility of prosperity. There is increasing commitment to collective human action to confront worldwide problems like global warming, and as soon as the United States ceases to obstruct the effort, even more will likely be done. Human capacities are increasing. There seems to be an understanding of how to avoid the crippling economic disasters of the not-so-distant past, when the entire world could spin into depression, thus threatening and ultimately undermining world peace. There is a sense that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right that this is a world come of age. We are more rational, less warlike, more prosperous, and more reasonable than humanity has probably ever been. To a great extent, it has been humanism, in its many guises, that deserves the greatest share of the credit. I have spoken here only of humankind’s material advances. What about the thinking of humanism? Here, the record is more modest. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933 certainly was an impressive document, but the thinking of

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humanism has not really developed since that time. I would be hard pressed to name a leading, current humanist, except for the virulent atheists, whose main thrust has been antireligion rather than prohumanism. I do not think that humanism as a movement has advanced in its reflection on human life, nor have I seen a model for a way of life proposed by humanism. Undoubtedly, we are in an increasingly secular and humanistic world. Our methods and procedures are rational, or at least we think they are. Our hopes are increasingly universal. We have done much good for each other, even if we have not yet found a way to describe ourselves in this new context. But there is, of course, another side.

The Limits of Humanism The attentive reader will note that there is no reason to attribute some of the specific advances listed above particularly to humanism. Human capacities are increasing, for example, but that is the result of general human striving. The millions of human beings involved are humanists, materialists, religious believers, and, no doubt, many other kinds of things. Why should all the accomplishments of the modern world be laid at the feet of humanism? This objection—that it is hard to gauge the contribution of humanism—highlights a larger question about humanism: is humanism really a movement? As I mentioned above, there was an active humanist movement that had a certain cultural weight at the time of the Humanist Manifesto. Today, there are few “humanists” in the organizational or even self-identifying sense. There are humanist organizations, but they are of negligible importance. They are sort of old hat. Humanism never caught on as a movement. There never was, and is not now, such a thing as a humanist way of life. There is no international humanist spokesperson, nor is this absence just organizational; it is also philosophical. The philosophers associated with humanism—such as the logical positivists, who insisted that there must be evidence for assertions—moved into materialism, which promises a much more rigorous method of proof than does humanism. The existentialist tradition evolved into postmodernism, which rejects the sorts of claims about human nature and self-definition that humanism sought to champion. On the other hand, it could be argued that no one bothers to actually become a humanist because we are all humanists now. The spread of secularism in the world could be viewed, at least in part, as a humanist accomplishment. Even religions have become humanist. Recently, there was a full-page ad in Time Magazine by the Unitarian Universalist Association. The ad asked the provocative question, is God keeping you from going to church? The ad

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suggested that people might be uncomfortable with an idea of God that comes from others. In Unitarian Universalism, on the other hand, the religious seeker can find a loving, spiritual community where you can be inspired and encouraged as you search, as the ad put it, “for your own truth and meaning.” What could be more humanistic than the notion that each individual searches for his or her own meaning? The Bible, in contrast, says that God is truth. Truth is real and objective and is independent of man. The Bible would say that man searches for meaning but not his own meaning. If you search rightly, you find what all human beings seek. If not, you do not. Truth is not subjective in the sense that an individual forges his own meaning, though all human beings do find their own pathway to the truth. So an antibiblical spirit of humanism is present even in some churches. There are examples of humanism in other religions. In the famous Talmudic story of the Oven of Aknai, the rabbis conclude that the Torah is no longer in heaven. Now, after Sinai, God has given Torah over to its human interpreters. Thus God may not interfere directly to resolve a dispute among human religious authorities. Man is on his own. Yet it is not the triumph of having been accepted that now limits humanism, nor is it that a new kind of humanism is now current. There is another and deeper reason why humanism does not seem as vibrant as it had been in the past. Humanism has in a sense been passed by. Humanism is actually a soft philosophy compared to the harder-edged scientific materialism that is beginning to dominate human thought today. Humanism is like religion, or at least on the religious side of things. Indeed, one of the famous humanist books in America was Charles Francis Potter’s Humanism: A New Religion in 1930. Humanism’s core concepts, such as the dignity of the person and human autonomy, have their source in religion. Thus humanism may be declining just as religion is declining. Humanism may be too “humanistic” for our scientific age. The trend away from humanism to materialism can be seen in many instances. One obvious example is the growing dominance of chemical treatment in psychiatry versus the “talking cures” of older therapy. This is partly the victory of pharmaceutical companies and medical insurance “efficiencies.” But partly, the trend is rooted in our perceptions of what is real. Drugs and their effects on the brain are more measurable and, hence, from a certain perspective, more real than human community as manifested in psychotherapy. The trend away from humanism can also be seen in today’s New Atheism. The well-read and classically grounded Christopher Hitchens certainly comes out of the humanist tradition. But many of the rest of the leading authors and thinkers among the New Atheists are scientists or philosophers of science. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. Sam Harris is pursuing a

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doctorate in neuroscience. Daniel Dennett is a philosopher of science, as is Philip Kitcher. Victor Stenger is a physicist. Thus, even in the New Atheism, humanism is giving way to materialism. I will return to the theme of materialism in the next chapter, but certainly, this trend threatens what used to be called “the humanum.” Humanism does not seem able to defend our humanity against the materialist challenge. Why might that be? Humanism has failed because it ceased asking the questions about reality and human life that distinguished it from any kind of materialism. Why are we here? What are we to do? What can we hope for? Hitchens is not directing his attention in this direction but is instead engaging in a largely false and wholly pointless defamation of religion. This is also why there are now no humanist saints—or saintly secular human beings—in the public sense. There used to be such saints. Dewey and his comrades, as well as figures like Clarence Darrow, presented the model of fair-minded inquiry. There was a nobility to such people. There is truth to the portrayal of Darrow in the movie Inherit the Wind when his character delivers a moving eulogy of the William Jennings Bryan character: “A giant once lived in that body but Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away.” Can you imagine that kind of generosity for an opponent today in our secularism/religion wars? Part of the weakness of humanism is its ambivalent relationship to truth. I mentioned earlier the cheap way that Harris claims that values are absolute. The Humanist Manifesto was more candid and thoughtful in acknowledging its relativism. The Fifth Affirmation in the manifesto states, “Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. . . . The way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relations to human needs.” Though it here recognizes relativism, the manifesto was not consistent on this important point of relative values. The Eighth Affirmation states, in contrast, “Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life.” In human self-realization lies what the manifesto had earlier called, when describing the classic role of religion in human history, an “abiding value.” But there is nothing self-evident or objective about the way of life that leads to self-development as the normatively best life there could be. Such a life might be the best life there is, or there might be no such thing as the best life. This claim is just one that the authors of the manifesto felt is guaranteed by reality despite their rejection of such grounding in principle. In other words the manifesto was trapped between relativism of some kind and objective truth.

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This very same tension is being played out in secularism today in Austin Dacey’s recent book, The Secular Conscience. From within the New Atheism, Dacey excoriates secularism for its subjectivism and defends the objectivity of values. Objective values have always led to religious formulations of the sort that the manifesto wished to leave behind. In the Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis called the doctrine of objective value “the Tao” because all traditional value systems have shared this viewpoint. It may not prove possible to defend objective value without some of the worldview and commitments of religion. Dacey may need something like Hallowed Secularism in order to succeed. Perhaps because of its uncertain relationship to truth, humanism has turned out to be unable to defend humanity against the various forces threatening it. One such force is technology. Humanism has not been consistent in its opposition to genetic manipulation of human capacity. Many humanists have not wanted to challenge science. As another example, many humanists support the right to choose abortion despite its potential threat, or actual threat, to human life. The greatest threat to human autonomy today is economic. It is economic activity that threatens the planet with global warming. It is economic forces that insist on a life defined by consumption and entertainment through incessant advertising. But humanism’s challenge to the current, dominant economic organization of the world simply collapsed. There is no current humanist challenge to the market. The original manifesto, in the Fourteenth Affirmation, condemns “acquisitive and profit-motivated society” as inadequate for modern needs and calls for a “socialized and cooperative economic order.” This call for socialism has been completely forgotten today. Humanism simply failed in this important challenge to the status quo. Another weakness in humanism is its relationship to religion. The reader may have noticed the switch in language in the manifesto from humanism to religious humanism. The manifesto uses the terms interchangeably, which shows a much closer connection to religion in this older humanism than is currently the case. In fact one can read the manifesto as an attempt, in its own words, “to establish such a religion”—that is, a religion consonant with the values of humanism. Now, contrast that idea of actually establishing a humanist religion, and in any event being open to religion, with the current view by the New Atheism that opposition to religion is one of the main tenets of secularism. I do not mean to overstate the original connection to religion. One could certainly infer criticism of traditional religion from a number of points made in the 1933 manifesto—for example, the phrase, “the time has passed for theism, deism. . . . ” Yet, despite the criticism, the manifesto does not spend its time

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and energy denouncing traditional religion. Instead, the manifesto is a positive statement of what religion should be. It is, in that sense, somewhat like Hallowed Secularism. Current secularism, on the other hand, is so obsessed with opposing religion that it is even willing to denigrate democracy in order to uphold secularity. The political Left in America agreed with the Bush administration that any future governing framework in Iraq should be secular rather than Islamic. This was not a reasonable expectation, but it was a shared one. John Esposito, founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, pointed out in Islamaca Magazine that “the voices of many in the West, who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, called for democratic initiatives in Eastern Europe, and Africa, often seemed muted when addressing the Middle East and the broader Muslim world.” The fear of Islamic influence has undercut efforts to promote democracy whenever Islamist political movements are genuinely popular. There are many examples of this double standard, but perhaps the most dramatic current ones are the absolute silence in American politics over the suppression in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ambivalence by the left over the electoral success of the Islamist Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The popularity of these movements and their willingness to engage in genuine political activity—as opposed to violent activity under the guise of politics, as in the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon—should have made folk heroes in America of the leaders of these groups. That is not the case, however, simply because these are religious movements. Although an improvement compared to the current humanist attitude toward religion, the original manifesto did suffer from the one fundamental defect in Humanism that no nod to religion can alter. Humanism fails to assess humanity candidly. Humanism can worship man only because it looks at man with rose-colored glasses. Human beings are simply not as good as humanism suggests. Our Religions generally know man much better than this. Evidence of this confidence can be gleaned from the manifesto’s endorsement of Dewey’s commitment to education as the answer to all human problems. For example, the Eleventh Affirmation states, “Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom.” What is one to say of such monumental naïveté? Such attitudes are not just wrong; they are irrelevant to the actual condition of humanity. This irrelevance is probably part of the reason humanism failed to maintain itself as a serious alternative to traditional religion. The manifesto does not look at the tragic quality of the human condition candidly. Evil is absent, and history makes a bare appearance in the manifesto.

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There are a number of explanations that can be offered as to why these categories were minimized. One reason was overconfidence concerning human activity. Another reason was implicit opposition to the idea of any limit on humanity. In the manifesto, man is the measure of all things. Hallowed Secularism assumes, instead, that man’s intelligent inquiry can lead to incorrect conclusions and, if that happens, that such inquiry will lead to harm. On the personal level, that harm is sin. On the social level, that harm occurs in history. This consciousness of objective limit is missing from the manifesto and indeed may represent the difference between humanism and most forms of religion. Organized humanism that acted with such confidence in the 1930s all but disappeared under pressure from the clouds of war in the 1940s and beyond. Part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s enduring reputation in American political, intellectual, and religious life stems from his challenge to Dewey’s humanist confidence. From 1932 and through the 1940s, Niebuhr raised fundamental issues, such as the prevalence of evil in history, in a position that came to be known as Christian realism. If not Niebuhr, then perhaps Auschwitz or Hiroshima ultimately came to symbolize man’s, and thus humanism’s, limits. Many people today, and the number is growing, consider themselves secular humanists. Yet it is not clear what they mean beyond general opposition to religion. The great value of the Humanist Manifesto was its willingness to state the humanist position positively as an alternative to traditional religion. That healthy engagement with religion is what is most needed today. That is the gap that Hallowed Secularism seeks to fill.

How Humanism Views Hallowed Secularism The introduction to the 1933 manifesto speaks of the need for “radical changes in religious beliefs” beyond “mere revision of traditional attitudes.” Presumably, Hallowed Secularism is not the radical change that the authors of the manifesto had in mind. Thus, from the point of view of the manifesto, Hallowed Secularism would continue to apologize for and cover over the illegitimate and harmful power of traditional religion. Having acknowledged that basic criticism, however, it should also be noted that Hallowed Secularism is consistent with many of the proposed changes in religion that the manifesto champions. The manifesto specifically rejects aspects of religion that have already been discussed, and also criticized, in this book. For example, the manifesto rejects any form of supernaturalism or dualism, meaning no traditional God and no heaven or after life. In terms of that kind of criticism, all forms of secularism including Hallowed Secularism are an improvement over traditional religion.

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It is difficult to say much more in a general way about the relationship of Hallowed Secularism to the manifesto. The problem is that it is not really possible to describe the kind of “religion” that the authors of the manifesto were thinking of when they described themselves as “religious humanists.” Because there are so many claims in the manifesto and because those claims are not always consistent, any such effort must be merely approximate. Nevertheless, let me attempt to set forth the most fundamental religious claims in the manifesto. The universe was not created but is self-existing. Man is a part of, not separate from, nature. Man is an integrated whole. Religion is a human creation ideally aiming at the complete realization of human personality. The method by which this task is to be undertaken should be intelligent inquiry rather than, presumably, recourse to authoritative texts. That seems to me to be most of it. Hallowed Secularism assents to most of these points, but not to their implication. To the authors of the manifesto, these particular conclusions arose from a more general and fundamental commitment to human autonomy. All the particulars in the manifesto are manifestations of that overall theme. That general theme of autonomy, surprisingly, is not spelled out. But the point of it all is that human beings are to be free, although, as the Fourth Affirmation states, “molded by . . . culture.” Nevertheless, this commitment to human freedom is the point of contention between Hallowed Secularism and the humanism of the manifesto. Human beings are not free. We are bound in many senses. From the point of view of a humanism that is attempting to free man from arbitrary restrictions, Hallowed Secularism is obviously not a healthy change from traditional religion. Hallowed Secularism acknowledges limits on man. Humanism would also say that Hallowed Secularism is engaging in wishful thinking in several senses. It is a step forward that Hallowed Secularism rejects supernaturalism, but insofar as it posits that values are objective—that is, really independent of people, it makes the usual religious mistake. Humanism asserts that we make our own meaning. Notwithstanding the claims of some atheists of today, early twentieth century humanism asserted that there is no objective meaning to be found. It follows that man is alone in the universe. That realization may be difficult and frightening to confront, but that is no argument against this insight. People often object to the conclusions of humanism on the basis that these conclusions are painful, even harmful. The question should be whether they are true. Humanism would assert that even if human nature is corrupt—that is, even if humanism is wrong about man—we are still alone. Therefore, we

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should concentrate on how to live in that situation. Humanism does that, while Hallowed Secularism fudges on the nature of reality. This has been a controversial point in humanism for a long time. Part of the reason that Dewey used the word God despite rejecting supernaturalism was to uphold human morale. He was afraid that human beings could not bear the reality that we are alone and that nothing in the universe cares about us. Other humanists were more enthusiastic about human autonomy in a universe without God. They would have rejected Hans Kung’s notion that human beings will fill in some form of idol when confronted with a theologically empty sky—that is, one without God. These humanists would say that it is only the pretense of God that allows such corruption to occur. If man knew that he makes his own way, he would be less likely to fall for charlatans. Religion, thus, is responsible for idols. Hallowed Secularism is somewhat ambiguous on this important point. There is no God, but certain trends in reality exist and are trustworthy. That trustworthiness is not consistent with the claim that we are genuinely alone. In addition individuals continue to have vivid religious experiences, and those experiences must be taken as self-validating. The humanism of the manifesto would have to deny that such experiences are genuine. They must be merely psychological or they must take place only in the context of a certain culture’s expectations of such experiences. The manifesto is clear that there are “no uniquely religious emotions.” Beyond the manifesto, today’s humanism would further sharpen the criticism that Hallowed Secularism relies too much on the concepts, traditions, language, and texts of traditional religion. In 2002, Edd Doerr wrote a formal statement for the American Humanist Society that rejected modifiers for humanism. It became simply “humanism.” In acknowledging this change, Doerr did not mention religious humanism in particular. He was expressly concerned with redundant use of terms like “secular” humanism. But the rejection of religious humanism was implied as well. This way the fog of religion can be dispensed with altogether and clear thinking introduced. Humanism today is more superficial than the complex thinking of the manifesto. The first sentence of the 2003 version of the Humanist Manifesto adopted by the American Humanist Association summarizes the whole: “Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical live of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.” We simply are to do this. Hallowed Secularism obviously sees the universe in a much different light. It is not simple to live a good life, and it is not simple to nurture a society that values a good life.

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Hallowed Secularism’s Contribution to Humanism The major theme of this book is the need for secularism to reopen itself to religion. This theme is the most important contribution Hallowed Secularism can make to humanism. Humanism has lost its depth and can address the significant questions of human life only by retuning to the religious orientation that gave us humanism in the first place. Humanism began in the Bible with the question, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4). Psalm 8 sees the tension that humanism must always struggle with. Man is not impressive. Certainly, man is not enough for God to care about. Man lives only a little while, and he does great evil while he is alive. He does not love himself or his fellow men. The widow and the orphan are not protected, as commanded by God’s law. Yet, for all that, man is glorious. The psalm continues, Yet thou has made him little less than God, and dost crown him with honor. Thou has given him over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.

You cannot do better than that in stating the question of man. The Bible understood long before it was objectively true that human beings would totally dominate their world. Humans would have the capacity to destroy everything. Today, when the issue of global warming is raised, some religious believers retreat to a doubt that human beings could have the capacity to do so much harm. Often, I have heard it said, the earth will abide. Puny man could not be such a threat. But the psalmist understood man’s power very well. The psalm asks the question, why did God give such power to an imperfect creature like man? There is no reason for humanism to reject the Bible as its starting point. As Psalm 8 demonstrates, the Bible is a humanist document. The Bible is a celebration of man’s capacities, although that celebration is mixed with a fear of man. But how could any honest humanism feel differently? Humanism’s rejection of religion has become a blinding habit. Let me give a minor but revealing illustration. In November 2007, Cardozo Law School and New York University (NYU) Law School teamed up for an academic conference titled “Rethinking Constitutionalism in an Era of Globalization and Privatization.” Presenters came from all over the world. One of the sessions was titled “Constitutionalism and Secularism in an Age of Religious Revival.” But, not altogether surprisingly, in the pamphlet announcing the conference, the question to be addressed was put in quite different terms: “How should we understand constitutionalism in an age of religious fundamentalism?”

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This switch from “religious revival” to “religious fundamentalism” tells us two things about the essentially secular mindset of Cardozo and NYU law schools. First, the issue these legal academics were thinking about was how to protect human liberty from religion. Admittedly, this is not an insignificant question in a world in which religious thugs beat up women for driving cars. Freedom from religion, however, is not the only question about religion and liberty that educated women and men should be interested in. The original formulation of the topic as religious revival would have also addressed the issue of how to ensure the right to practice religion where it is threatened. The right to practice religion is threatened today in many countries such as China, France, Turkey, and even the United States under the potentially oppressive regime of Employment Division v. Smith, the case that held there is no right under the Constitution to practice religion in the face of generally applicable prohibitions. If one focuses on religious fundamentalism, it is hard to acknowledge this kind of secular oppression. The conference organizers could easily see a threat to human liberty when women are not allowed to attend universities. But when Turkey refuses to allow women in headscarves to attend universities, these same professors turn a blind eye. The second implication of this unthinking change in terms from religious revival to religious fundamentalism is that the secularist has a very hard time thinking of religious practice in positive terms. The right to practice one’s religion is a basic human right and many secularists have fought to protect it. Yet as this one small instance suggests, secularists often cannot appreciate that religious practice might enhance human life. Secular support for religious liberty is mostly grounded in an admirable defense of religious belief even though such belief is regarded as erroneous. This inability to treat religion as substantively positive is also demonstrated by the secularist demand that religious believers modulate their faith claims when they enter the public square. Early in his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama even called on believers to “translate” their faith commitments into universal language when discussing public issues. This demand was an echo of the now politically discredited secular commitment to prohibiting religion from the public square. The right to speak of God and of God’s demands on us as a people is part of the human right to practice one’s religion. The secularist tries to insist that religion is private. That insistence is a denigration of a human right. The believer must be able to practice his or her religion in the terms that religion requires, which will often include references to ultimate demands for changes in public policy. While the rights of others must also be respected, it cannot

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seriously be maintained that others have the right to limit the religious language that believers use. Humanism must return “to elicit[ing] the possibilities of life,” as the 1933 manifesto put it. Religion is one such important possibility. As the manifesto also noted, religion “includes . . . all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living.” Indeed—and this is shocking to remember today— far from promoting the separation of church and state, the manifesto rightly sought to eliminate it. The Seventh Affirmation states that “the distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.” The point the manifesto was trying to make in denying the separation of church and state is that the highest possibilities of human life cannot be relegated to a sphere called “religion,” leaving debased the space we dwell in day to day. This was a magnificent insight; it is one that humanism has today forgotten. Indeed, when atheists today say we should turn away from religion, it is not in order that all life may be recognized as holy but that nothing in life be seen as holy. Hallowed Secularism is, in this regard at least, a way for humanism to recapture the spirit of the 1933 manifesto. Hallowed Secularism sees the space for holiness in secular life. In addition to openness to religion, a second contribution that Hallowed Secularism can make to humanism is to rescue it from elitism. Because humanists have been a small, well-educated minority, they have tended to look down on average humanity. They have tended to be “cultured despisers” of religion, as the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher put it in his classic work, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. This elitism can be seen in the New Atheism. Hitchens is a perfect example of a sneering tone toward ordinary people and their beliefs. Hallowed Secularism is an antidote to this tendency because, while it rejects many of the particular religious beliefs that humanism also rejects, it does so without denigrating the grounds of these beliefs. This is much more likely to appeal to ordinary people than is the direct and complete rejection of religion. The third contribution that Hallowed Secularism can make to humanism is to deepen the question of the good life. In its concluding paragraph, the manifesto summarizes its goal as follows: “The quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind.” Traditional religion is seen as no longer adequate for that task but that is because the manifesto sees man as himself responsible for the achievement of the good life, which he has the power to accomplish. But while this term, “the good life,” is set forth in the manifesto as selfevident, the understanding of what in life is good is not simple or obvious at

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all. The term “the good life” in America connotes material prosperity. The authors of the manifesto no doubt thought that, too, since the manifesto is very American in a number of ways, but they must have meant also to include individual liberty and progress in the mores of society, such as ending racism. I have not heard much attention by secularists recently about the nature of the good life. Do Americans enjoy the good life today? Poverty is being reduced. The rich are fabulously wealthy, and average income is rising, albeit slowly, as well. Material goods are increasing in sophistication and often dropping in price. People have all sorts of things and are more or less “free” to enjoy them. They live longer, and so forth. This would seem to be a golden age. But it does not feel like a golden age, nor is this unease just the result of an unpopular war in Iraq against the background of seemingly ceaseless international conflict and threat, nor is it the result of temporary economic dislocation. American life is just not that rewarding. The problem goes back to this question of the good life. To be blunt and simplistic, Jesus is right about what it means to be human: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” That quote is from the Gospel of Luke, but all the Gospels share this view. Man cannot live by concentrating on himself but only by giving himself away. Human beings cannot live the good life by seeking it. Secularism, as currently understood, contradicts this religious commitment. I am not seeking converts to Jesus’s way of life. You and I are not going to become Christians. Nevertheless, we all must come to a conclusion about the proper end of human living. The use of the term “the good life” in the manifesto should have been seen as raising a question rather than as providing an answer. The concept of “the good life” is highly contested in human thinking. Hallowed Secularism recognizes this ambiguity and proposes a path for living. The final contribution of Hallowed Secularism to humanism brings us to the issue of materialism. Humanism insists on the centrality of humanity. To be human is to be unique. This understanding roots in religious traditions that ask, what is man? That is not just the Bible’s question. Most religious traditions ask that. Both the humanist and the religious believer share this commitment to man. The importance of the story of the universe is that it is about man. There are forces in the world today that challenge this human centrality. For our purposes these forces can be associated with materialism, for they deny the importance of human self-consciousness. This de-emphasis on the human combines perspectives often thought of as different such as animal rights, environmentalism, and science.

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There are many good things about this change from humanism to materialism, as I will acknowledge in the next chapter. It is also true, however, that materialism is a threat to humanity. When we treat human beings simply as matter, we might be elevating matter to the sacred, but we might instead be denigrating the human. Too often we seem to be doing the latter. Gene manipulation is the likely first step to a fundamental loss of humanity. Humanism should be opposed to all such attempts to undermine the human essence. Instead, humanism has begun to surrender to materialism. The movement that began by placing man at the center now accepts man’s merely relative position in a cosmos of cause and effect. This surrenders humanism’s core. Hallowed Secularism maintains the contact with religion that renews humanity’s centrality, hopefully within a horizon that does not denigrate the rest of creation. As such it is the place from which humanism should confront materialism.

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aterialism is the third great tradition in which people find orientation and meaning in reality. Indeed, of the three—religion, humanism, and materialism—materialism is the one that is growing in importance today. Materialism is the understanding of reality from the perspective of material, usually physical, forces. Economics, which explains human behavior in terms of monetary incentives and self-interest, is an example. Neuropsychology, which includes genetics, biochemistry, physiology, and other such disciplines, is another example of materialism, even though its explanation of human nature is different from that of economics. Generally speaking, science in its different forms, is the materialist enterprise. The prestige of science has grown so much that we now even look to science for moral grounding. The well-known secular humanist, Paul Kurtz, recently published Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?, which argues that the rational methods of science can help us make moral judgments. No one suggested that his question was ridiculous. And no one thought his answer would be no. What many people believe, as Wired Magazine wrote in 2006 about the New Atheism, is: no heaven, no hell, just science. Humanism may be said to be the precursor of materialism, but, as Kurtz’s own history shows, humanism originated in the religion that materialism now disdains. It was Kurtz who first embraced the term “secular humanism” in his role as founder of the Council for Secular Humanism in order to purge humanism of its earlier religious orientation. The Council issued A Secular Humanist Declaration in 1980, under its original name, the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism. Thus, materialism is where nonreligious humanism ended up. There are reasons why materialism has acquired such powerful influence.

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The Power of Materialism On October 21, 2007, the John Templeton Foundation took out a two-page advertisement in the Sunday New York Times—a quite expensive undertaking—to introduce its “big questions” project. The question at the top of the ad was “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?” The question was put, in the words of the ad, to “leading scientists and scholars.” The lineup of responders was, nine scientists, two theologians, and one humanist—all eminent persons. There are several points to note about this ad. First, the question itself: “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?” The question is posed from the perspective of materialism. It is a question about the physical universe. From a religious perspective, the question would have been, what was God’s purpose in creating the universe? From the perspective of humanism, the question would have been, does man have a purpose? Apparently, the questions of religion and humanism are not as compelling as they once were. We now address our questions to nature. Granted, the answer that someone gives to the Templeton question might involve God or man. But the question is material in its orientation. The second point about the ad is the sort of person who is thought able to answer the question. In the ad, the question of meaning was directed primarily, though not exclusively, to scientists. The Templeton Foundation might have wondered how a scientist could answer a question about meaning. Scientists do not study meaning. They are not experts in meaning. So, the fact that the Templeton Foundation assumes that scientists would have the most to contribute to this question tells us a lot. The Foundation also assumed that most people would agree that scientists have a lot to say about meaning and would want to hear from them. This says a great deal about the power of materialism. We are being told in this ad, and expected to agree, that materialism is the fundamental truth about the universe and that scientists who are experts in that materialism are the ones who can say whether materialism excludes, or includes, something called meaning. Finally, there is the kind of answer that most people in the ad gave. The content of the answers were split, with two “no’s” and one “unlikely” out of the twelve. Only Elie Wiesel answered from the standpoint of the authority of scripture. And, only Nancey Murphy, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, answered based on the authority of tradition. The scientific account of the world was the starting point for every other commentator. For example, John F. Haught, a Senior Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center of Georgetown University, who has less professional obligation to the scientific tradition than does the average working scientist, began his statement as follows: “If we accept evolution, as indeed we must.” Professor Haught knows that no one who wants to be taken seriously by the

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educated culture can afford to cast any doubt on evolutionary theory, especially not someone involved with religious issues. If you suggested that evolutionary theory was in any way questionable, you would be regarded as a religious nut. This is also reflective of the power of materialism in our culture. Of course, the near-unanimity among the starting points of the contributers might simply mean that Templeton utilized that criterion in the selection process. Nevertheless, the advertisement was expected to inform the rest of us. The acceptance of the scientific method in such a fundamental matter was not expected to generate controversy in and of itself—at least not among most readers of the New York Times. Materialism comes first, and meaning— if there is meaning—comes second. So, one indicator of the power of materialism is the prestige and dependability of science. At an earlier point in the history of the West, God would have been taken as the dependable one. Later, it would have been man. But now, it’s science. Science is so dependable that it is expected to answer a question like this— one about meaning. And we trust what scientists say. But, more to the point, the scientists themselves are confident enough to give answers. They do not say, this is outside my expertise. Only a very powerful discipline and tradition engages the deep and crucial issues of human existence. Science is now that discipline and tradition. I have not yet addressed the fundamental question about the ad. Why was it written? The ad addressed a problem that science itself, in its materialism, has either created or pointed to. Science threatens to undermine the notion of meaning. The Templeton Foundation was trying to confront, and perhaps ameliorate, this threat. This threat to meaning was summarized in the ad by the primatologist Jane Goodall in the context of what she called a “common scientific view”: “Evolution occurs simply because matter obeys some unseen law whereby a simple organism will, if it evolves at all, become a more complex one. Evolution is thus a blind process without purpose and science will one day uncover the simple mechanical rules underlying every seeming mystery. Our own lives, therefore, are equally without purpose.” This is the threat that the Templeton Foundation felt the need to confront. It is momentous when the most respected tradition we have—science— seems to tell us that life has no meaning. It is so serious that science is then invited to argue with itself to see whether that understanding—that our life has no meaning—is necessarily so, from a scientific perspective. There is a little more to it than Goodall says. It would be possible to consider human beings as outside the materialist account. While the universe as a whole might be dumb and blind, humans might be an exception. God might

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have made us different or we might have evolved differently. Either way, humans might now be recognized as unique, as beyond a purely materialist understanding. Some of the contributors to the ad made similar arguments. But arbitrary exception is not the way materialism proceeds. Science seeks to explain all of the universe in terms of matter, including human beings and human nature. Humans are also to be explained by forces. We are not an exception. At the popular level, materialism presents two basic views of humanity that undermine the religious and the humanist accounts. Economics challenges the moral foundations of human behavior, while neuroscience challenges consciousness, especially self-consciousness, as a uniquely human event. Economics looks at humanity as responsive to incentives. Neuroscience looks at consciousness as what the brain does. How did we get to the point of such domination by material explanations of reality? The main reasons are the success of physics and other sciences in explaining how the universe works and the failure of man to live up to his own promise. The first trend undermined a certain kind of religion, and the second, most forms of humanism. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the Templeton ad shows, materialism has advanced beyond explanations of purely physical matters. Now it is regarded by many as the only possible explanation of anything. The growth in the influence of economics in particular has been rapid in recent years. A symbolic turning point was the 2005 book, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Levitt is an economist and Dubner a journalist. The ambition of the book was stated in its subtitle: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. The authors’ belief in the centrality of economics and its understanding of incentives was stated with admirable clarity. The book’s “central idea” was this: “If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work.” And how the world—by which they mean human behavior— actually works is by the power of incentives. All the rest—religion, morality, art, literature, and so forth—is just fluff. Actually, the influence of economics had been growing for years before the publication of Freakonomics. The power of the conservative political movement in America since the Presidency of Ronald Reagan rested, in part, on the convincing showing that privatization could produce public services at lower costs. Also, incentive structures, such as emissions trading, were shown to work well in reducing acid rain during the 1990s. Such programs are now being used to attempt to reduce greenhouse gases. The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis in 2003 paved the way for Freakonomics by showing that the sort of statistical analysis that economics

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engages in helped the small-market Oakland Athletics baseball team survive and prosper in a big-money era. Conventional wisdom and human judgment, which are in Moneyball the equivalent of morality in Freakonomics, just cannot compete as an account of the world—and thus in effectiveness in the world— with an empirical, scientific approach. Ian Ayres’s new book, Super Crunchers, extends this numbers-versus-intuition story into many, if not all, areas of life. In terms of consciousness, which is the quintessential human attribute, science believes it can discover its basic secret. In a 1989 book, The Emperor’s New Mind, Roger Penrose asked whether a computer can have a mind? (His answer was no.) The question has not gone away since then. Science continues to ask, if we could build a computer sufficiently complex, or of the right type— for example, digital versus analog—or of the right stuff—for example, neurons versus transistors—would the computer “wake up?” By “wake up,” I mean would the computer become a sentient being with an independent moral life? This is the sort of waking up that computers do in science fiction, such as in the Terminator and Matrix movies. Since many scientists believe that consciousness resides in the way that matter is arranged, the answer must, in principle, be “yes.” Of course, some scientists admit that, for practical reasons, we might never be able to actually build such a computer. The unimpeachable power of materialism explains why opposition to scientific accounts takes the form that it does in our culture. For example, if the truth of global warming is unacceptable to people for theological or ideological reasons, they must argue, unconvincingly, that the-scientists-cannotagree about global warming. Or, if evolutionary theory is felt to be threatening, it must be combated as bad-science, with better-science. This is what the intelligent design theory seeks to do. This is what young-earth creationist geologists, such as John Whitmore at Cedarville University, try to do by using the tools of science to support the biblical theory of creation. There is not much space in this culture from which materialism could be convincingly opposed in a fundamental way—that is, opposed in its way of accounting for reality. The statements, “God is more than science” or even “man is more than science,” do not ring true. People say such things, but we cannot imagine acting on them. Here is what I mean by acting on them. Imagine that one day, Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, announces that God came to him in a dream and told him to set interest rates at six percent. Even if a six percent interest rate were economically justified, Bernanke would be removed from his position. Now imagine that Bernanke announces that even though inflationary pressures are building, “man can will himself through any circumstance,” and, thus, interest rates will not be raised.

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Bernanke would probably be removed in this scenario too. At least, his influence would be greatly reduced. But now imagine that Bernanke announces that, although it will cause great suffering, “the data show” that interest rates must be raised. Even if people have no idea what he is talking about, this announcement will be accepted, at least until a certain level of pain is actually produced, as a proper basis for Federal Reserve Board policy. In this comparison, we see the power of materialism. The only things in our culture that are really real, are things.

The Limits of Materialism In a sense all secularists are materialists. If this world is all there is, as secularism affirms, and if this world is material, then reality must be based in physical stuff. The existence of logical and formal systems, such as mathematics, does not alter that conclusion, for thought itself would have to be bound up with the material in some sense. Emotional life, such as the reaction to beauty, or a relationship of love, would also have to have a physical basis. That kind of materialism, which grounds all experience in the broad category of the physical, is neither reductionist nor determinist. In other words, admitting that there must be physical changes in the brain when I hear music does not detract or belittle the beauty of Mozart. Knowing that brain cells fire when I think does not mean that the content of my thoughts is determined solely by cell alignment. This is healthy materialism. This is the kind of materialism we see at work in the famous book about neuroscience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. In this book, physical changes in the brain were shown to have important consequences in behavior. This kind of materialism just says that humans are always, in part, physical. Part of the reason that materialism can be healthy, and need not be narrowly reductive, is that we do not know what matter is. Under the pressure of quantum theory at the smallest level and dark phenomena at the largest scale, physicists increasingly wonder about physical reality. As the British geneticist John Maynard Smith wrote, “physicists . . . imagine a less and less mechanistic universe, in which a particle can pass through two slits simultaneously, mass can turn into energy, and stars collapse into black holes.” For some physicists, reality is less and less disenchanted and more and more uncanny. But this openness is not the only form of materialism in our culture. In fact, this open materialism is not our popular form. Biology, in contrast to physics, according to Smith, “has become more and more mechanistic, in the sense of believing that organisms are like machines.” This is the sort of

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reductionist materialism that is also reflected in economics and some types of brain theory. There is a hidden message in this narrow kind of materialism—the kind that Jane Goodall was pointing to. That hidden message is one of self-interest and hopelessness. The message is that life is just the material. But the universe is not a machine and neither are the entities, including you and I, who are present in it. Materialism as it is popularly presented, that is, in economics and neuroscience, does not give a full account of the way things are. Let me tell a story about what recently happened to my dad that illustrates the potential for reductionism in materialism. In what has become a depressingly common event, my dad was overmedicated to a point that given his age and condition, threatened his life. This happened not because of incompetence or ill-will. It’s just that one doctor was treating his heart. Another his cold. Another his lower anatomy. But no one was treating my dad. Medicine has been aware of this problem for a long time. Yet it has proved difficult to solve. The intractability of such situations is the result, in part, of medicine’s need to be a humanistic discipline within a materialistic scientific approach. The two do not always mix well. And this problem demonstrates the limits of materialism in understanding human beings, even at the level of physical health. In terms of economics’ inability to explain the world, I am never sure whether to say that economics is trivial, false, or tautology. Economics is trivial in that we have always known that many people, surely most, would like to be rich. That is why Jesus talked about the power of mammon. We also have always known that people would like to pay a lower price for products and will do so if possible. We have also known about incentives—it had occurred to people in the past that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. These are commonplaces, which is why economics has never seemed to me to be a real science. It is the only science, as they say, that predicts the past. On a deeper level, in its claim to be a universal human psychology of rational self-interest, economics is false. People do not follow that model, in several different senses. First, human behavior is not always rational. Often it is self-destructive or, in other ways, irrational. For example, the law and economics expert Richard Posner sees rape of women as bypassing the dating market, as if the rapist were choosing between rape and taking a woman out for dinner and a movie. Rape in this context is much better understood as hatred of women than as a misguided, but rational, act. Second, and more fundamental, people knowingly sacrifice their selfinterest all the time. Soldiers throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Parents work and save money throughout their lives for the betterment

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of their children. Scientists devote themselves to understanding the universe rather than to maximizing their earnings. As a form of materialism, economics is not trying to explain how most people act most of the time. Economics is not literature. Economics sees itself as describing forces that are always present. So, proposing counter examples does not just reduce the range of economics, it destroys its foundation. Counter examples in economics operate as would exceptions to Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. There cannot be exceptions. To counter this apparent gap between human behavior and economic theory, economics resorts to exotic descriptions of implicit markets, such as “markets” in friendship, love, and respect. In other words, the parent who is working so the child can go to school, may never expect to be repaid in actual dollars by the child. But the parent does gain respect and love, says the economist. That sort of sleight of hand, amounts to saying that people always act to maximize something. This is mere tautology. It is certainly not science. There is a sense, admittedly, in which the Christian who sacrifices his or her life for the sake of the gospel, and who expects thereby to go to heaven for all eternity, is making a straightforward calculation of self-interest. But that description does not capture how the believer looks at the matter. The believer is simply willing to give up his life out of love. In addition, it is not guaranteed to the believer that sacrifice in this life will lead to abundant life in the hereafter. It is a more accurate description of such sacrifice to say that people are capable of nobility and love. Accounts of self-interest do not explain human beings. And this limit is also applicable when the self-interest is placed at the genetic level, as in the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. In terms of the other radical form of materialism—the study of consciousness—I know of no progress at all in twenty years in explaining what consciousness is and how it comes about. There is no evidence that any arrangement of matter that we could create would result in consciousness in some inanimate object. The idea that a computer would “wake up” is a pipe dream. It will never happen. The commitment by biologists and artificial intelligence people that computers can be conscious is a faith claim—a faith claim by a particularly bad religion. Such people believe that it must be possible to build a computer that will attain consciousness because matter must behave in straightforward ways. Since matter is all there is, and since matter is simple, human consciousness must also be simple. But if matter is not simple, then consciousness may not be either, even if consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon. It turns out that there is more to reality than materialism asserts.

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This error about consciousness highlights a more general limit of materialism: that is, the inability to appreciate the uniquely human. There is no sense pretending that the human ascent to self-consciousness changes nothing. For example, the primatologist Frans de Waal is studying primate culture in order to glean lessons for humans about how to live and flourish. No doubt he is right to do so since we are closely related to primates. But, as I’m sure de Waal would agree, it is significant that the chimps are not studying us. Human consciousness in that sense is a one-way street. Humans are unique in nature. And, unless we find other self-conscious beings in the universe, humans will have to be reckoned as the most important thing that ever happened. The Bible comes out of that kind of understanding of humanity. This insight, admitedly, is dangerous. It can lead to inordinate regard for humans. Materialism, though, can go to the opposite extreme. This is also why materialism has nothing to say anymore about history; although, this was not always so. Marxism is obviously a materialist theory of history. But Marxism’s origins lay in humanism and religion, rather than in materialism. The kind of materialism we are talking about tells us little about man, except that he is a machine like everything else. You never get to history that way. Nor does materialism ground an ethic for living. Materialism has no basis for distinguishing one state of affairs from another. Why, for example, does the scientist care about the truth of material life? The answer to that question cannot be given by the materialism that the scientist purports to find governing the universe. In other words, the scientist who believes humans are like machines is subtly exempting himself. The scientist studies reality in the name of truth, which is something materialism cannot touch. Machines do not love truth. Neither does matter. Or, if matter does love truth, there really is something to the Bible, which tells us that God created everything as good. I once asked one of these secular materialists—the sort who regards religious believers as superstitious, like astrologers—just what kind of life we are all supposed to lead in his way of thinking? “A life of science,” he answered. What kind of an answer is that? Most of us are not scientists. Are the rest of us then bit players providing scientists with a high enough societal standard of living to support scientific research? This makes science sounds like a high priesthood. In the end, materialism brings about a profound demoralization of society. There must be more to human life than the purely material in order for people to flourish. Fortunately, given the odd quality of quantum physics and given the strangeness of physics in general, there may indeed be demonstrably more to reality than mere cause and effect. I do not mean that quantum physics is

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the hand of God. But it does seem that we will always confront something mysterious in our attempts to understand reality.

How Materialism Views Hallowed Secularism There is no need to surmise how materialism views Hallowed Secularism because a thoughtful materialist, Philip Kitcher, has essentially spelled it out. Kitcher is a philosopher who has done a lot of writing about the intersection of science and religion, which is why I include him in materialism, though he calls himself a secular humanist. His commitment to fathoming nature’s secrets as the ultimate goal of humanity speaks to materialism rather than to humanism. In terms of the relationship between science and religion, Kitcher’s previous position, in a book entitled, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, had been that Darwinism was no threat to religion. But in Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design and the Future of Faith, Kitcher retracts what he calls his “earlier errors” and admits that evolutionary theory is subversive of religious doctrines that are central, at least, to “providentialist religion.” For Kitcher, providentialist religion is basically the Bible. He describes such religion in the following terms: “the universe has been created by a Being who has a great design, a Being who cares for his creatures.” Most religions are not of this type, he writes, but undoubtedly the monotheistic religions are. Darwin’s threat to providential religion lies in the messiness and unnecessary suffering in the natural world that evolution entails. Kitcher notes in particular the gruesome story of the caterpillar whose motor nerves, but not sensory nerves, are paralyzed by the parisitic wasp, whose larvae later eat their way out of the host. Such suffering in nature, asserts Kitcher, precludes a caring God. Kitcher also presents the general Enlightenment case against supernaturalism in broader terms than the particular argument against a providential God. Only a few religions may be said to be providential, but most have been supernatural, says Kitcher. This general Enlightenment case begins by undermining the authority of texts through processes similar to the source criticism of the Bible. Not everything in the New Testament Gospels can be true, for example, because these accounts are in various ways inconsistent. Further, now that everyone knows that there is a world full of different religious traditions, and that we would surely be committed believers in the tradition of our place of birth wherever we happened to have been born, there is no reason for us to be convinced of the truth of the particular religion we grew up in. In addition, the sociology of religion undermines the truth of any particular religion by pointing to factors that facilitated its growth at certain times and places. Psychology shows us the

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emotional needs behind direct religious experiences. Finally, there are ethical objections to permitting unreasoned actions that harm others based on religious commitments. Kitcher admits that the case against supernaturalism can never be airtight. Who knows what sorts of realities we may yet discover in the universe? Perhaps there will be something akin to “our vague conception of the transcendent.” That is unlikely but cannot be ruled out. Kitcher is also skeptical of, although sympathetic to, attempts to live a nonsupernatural religion, such as, perhaps, Hallowed Secularism. In a general way he calls such attempts, “spiritual religion.” He refers to such Christian attempts as including the “teachings, precepts and parables, and the eventual journey to Jerusalem and the culminating moment of the Crucifixion . . . as a symbolic presentation of the importance of compassion and of love without limits.” According to Kitcher, spiritual religion is buffeted from two directions. To the vast majority of believers, it is hardly religion at all. On the other hand, to secular humanists, spiritual religion represents a last bid for legitimacy on behalf of religious traditions that have been refuted. If spiritual religion is all that is involved in the teaching of a religious tradition, why not go further and embrace all the best of human understanding, secular as well as religious? If spiritual religion is to show its worth, it would have to demonstrate to the secularist that its content is more compassionate and just than that of humanism. Presumably, its task with regard to believers is to show that it can express the truth of a religious tradition without its doctrines. Kitcher does not believe that this is possible. He sees spiritual religion as either tending to lapse back into supernaturalism or going all the way to secular humanism. Kitcher is not gloating. He tells the story of Elaine Pagels’s rediscovery of church life at the time she learns of the terminal illness of her infant son, in order to show how important religion and religious communities are to people. Kitcher does not think that secularism is much comfort at a funeral, nor does he think that secularists have been compassionate toward the people whose religious myths they are underming. What is needed, Kitcher says, is the Common Faith that John Dewey proposed in 1934. But, in all the time since then, we have not achieved the broadening of religious life to include all attitudes that lend “enduring support to the processes of living.” In these chapters I am not attempting to refute all of the charges that each tradition levels against Hallowed Secularism. It is important to let the criticisms stand so that the reader can reflect on these issues. However, at this point I have to remind the reader that the “spiritual religion” that Kitcher is discussing is not really the same as Hallowed Secularism.

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Kitcher, influenced by Dewey, is engaged in the psychology of adjustment to life. Religion for him is basically subjective. Values are personal. The goal of life is to find our own path. This is Kitcher’s humanist side. Despite the occasional reference to social justice, religion for Kitcher has little relationship to social and political life. There is no sense in him of history. There is no prophecy. Compassion is important, but not demanded. The word evil does not appear anywhere in Kitcher’s book. In other words, Kitcher does not really understand religion, nor does he address the human condition in its fullness. It follows that neither does materialism understand religion. These considerations are part of what Hallowed Secularism can offer to materialism.

Hallowed Secularism’s Contribution to Materialism On July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert, Robert Oppenheimer, the supervising scientist of the Manhattan Project, quoted the Hindu classic text, the Bhagavad-Gita: “now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Why would a scientist quote a religious text? There might have been no other way to say what he felt needed to be said. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once wrote in a different context that religious language can serve purposes that no other kind of language can serve. Such language, she wrote, expresses, “in the only ways reasonably possible in our culture, the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future, and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society.” Given what Oppenheimer had just seen, Justice O’Connor’s description of the purpose of religious language lies a little flat. But the idea for both of them might be that religion expresses depth in human life that secular concepts simply cannot reach. When we are confronted with precisely the sort of apocalypse that religion has described, it is not surprising that prayer rises to our lips. Materialism is not an orientation that is capable of expressing meaning or significance. The scientists involved in the Manhattan Project were busy solving problems. Making the bomb was not an experience of transcendence. But seeing the bomb explode was such an experience. At that point, materialism failed to satisfy human longing and religion became an alternative source of meaning. We have in this example from Oppenheimer an indication of what transcendence is—that vague conception, as Kitcher puts it. Transcendence is the sense that something extraordinary is present in a given situation. The difference between religion and materialism may lie in whether that sense is reflecting something real—that is, that something beyond the ordinary is

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actually present—or whether the sense of something beyond is just a feeling we make up, perhaps through misfiring neurons. No one can deny that we do feel it. Oppenheimer felt it. In theory, the scientist who feels what Oppenheimer felt does not need something called Hallowed Secularism. Such a scientist could simply refer to his or her own religious tradition for the felt necessity of depth. But that was not what Oppenheimer did. Oppenheimer was not speaking as a believing Hindu. He was not engaging in a full theological expression from within any particular religion. Instead, he was seeking a connection to religious insight without the baggage of doctrinal commitment. That is what Hallowed Secularism offers—a connection between our religious traditions and the life of materialism. It is a way for the nonbeliever to connect with transcendent traditions—Oppenheimer, for example, attended the Ethical Culture School in New York before college. This is an important contribution that Hallowed Secularism can make. Beyond expressing the transcendent, there is a second aspect of the need to connect the materialistic scientist with religion. The mature scientist should realize that he himself is in question in his investigations. Here is something else Oppenheimer said at the time of the bomb test that refers to the religious overtones of his experience: “In some crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” It is possible that Oppenheimer was referring only to the sin of others, to the sin of humanity, for example. But, given his involvement a year later in the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal plan for international atomic control, it seems to me that the sin to which he referred was also personal. I do not mean by calling it sin that something was done that should not have been done. Rather, I am referring to the ambiguity of any action in a fallen world. In the circumstances of World War II, producing the atomic bomb was particularly in the category of ethical ambiguity. The bomb was and is a horror. Yet, its development potentially protected the world from a Nazi bomb, and its use saved thousands of lives, including Japanese lives. The scientist could not help but be guilty, no matter what course was chosen. Materialism likes to pretend that the human being who investigates the natural world is not himself at stake in the investigation. The world is composed of forces, but the scientist is motivated by something quite different—perhaps, a love of truth. It claims that people operate in self-interest, but that we can still trust the law and economics professor to be a fair-minded federal judge. This sort of alienation of the scientist from his own conclusions is unhealthy and undependable. In talking this way, and thinking this way, the materialist exempts himself from the implications of his own thinking.

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The religious traditions are much more holistic in their treatment of scientific investigation. One such example is the book, Insight, by Bernard Lonergan, which studies human understanding itself, including investigations by science of the natural world. Lonergan includes his own thinking in his investigation. Since Lonergan does this outside any particular doctrinal tradition, we may think of him as an exemplar of what Hallowed Secularism could be like. I do not mean to press this point very far. Lonergan, who also wrote Method in Theology based in large part on Insight, was very much a Christian. But the point is still valid. Lonergan shows us that the investigator is at stake in the investigation. This is the sense in which materialism needs to ground itself in a tradition larger than itself. Materialism needs a larger tradition to account for its own human activity. Beyond the needs of materialism that can be met through contact with religion, there are two other consequences of opening materialism to religious thought. For one thing, there is a pressing need in America to end the culture wars between science and religion. I am sure that scientists cringe when evolution and global warming become entangled with political controversy. Scientists must hate it when presidential candidates cast doubt on generally accepted scientific theories. Hallowed Secularism offers the beginning of a way out of this conflict. Many people believe that scientists as a group are atheists who want to undermine religious belief. It would certainly be helpful in ending this suspicion, if there were a general sense that one could be a secularist without regarding religion negatively. But what if scientific theory conflicts with biblical religion not only at the level of detail, such as the age of the Earth, but also at the most fundamental levels? This is what some atheists claim and some religious scientists deny. If such conflict is, in fact, the case, how can the culture wars end, except in capitulation by one side or the other? The biologist Richard Colling’s attempt to reconcile evolution and revelation in his book, Random Designer, for example, may simply not work. Nevertheless, even if this turns out to be so, even if science and biblical religion are destined to be opponents, an attitude by scientists of openness to what is good in religion might still help heal our current political wounds. The other consequence of opening materialism to religious thought, through the intermediary of Hallowed Secularism, could be to introduce a deeper ethics into materialism. The stem cell debate, before the promise of nonembyonic sources for stem cells, was revelatory.

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I know no scientific reason to regard human life, or any mammalian life, as beginning at some point other than conception. Once the egg is fertilized, the unique genetic inheritance of a new individual is complete. That point is the earliest moment of our lives. Before that moment, we did not exist. So, why is it considered antiscientific to oppose using embryos for scientific experimentation? Why are people who oppose doing that lumped together with opponents of evolution and global warming? There is no scientific reason I can think of to consider destroying an embryo much different from killing any other human being. The embryo is just an earlier stage of development. The reason that some materialists are blind to the danger of this form of stem cell research is that materialism suffers from an inability to experience awe before existence. As Max Weber put it, matter becomes disenchanted. Humans become thing-like. Everything can be used. Religion per se cannot guard against such a tendency because many scientists do not take religion seriously. But Hallowed Secularism is different. Science might take Hallowed Secularism seriously because Hallowed Secularism believes most of what the scientist also believes. Its ethical qualms, therefore, may be enough to slow down materialism. The acid test for religiously-oriented limits on science is human genetic engineering. Materialism shows signs of wanting to pursue such manipulation. Opposition to such activity may soon also be cast as antiscientific. This moment may be our last chance to forestall a permanent change in the nature of human beings. Hallowed Secularism, on the other hand, because of its close connection to traditional religion, is informed by reverence for humanity as formed originally by nature. It cannot look blithely on experimentation with that human essence. I hope that Hallowed Secularism’s opposition to genetic manipulation may ultimately prove a further bulwark of our shared humanity and an hedge effective against this form of biological utopianism.

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CHAPTER 12

The Possibility of Hope

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ithout hope, man withers, but what kind of hope could there be in secularism? Our Religions have been the place where humans could speak of ultimate hope. We secularists may not even be aware that we are without hope. Unfortunately, without Our Religions, one day may be just like another until I die, and ultimately, who can bear that? It may be that the hopes of Our Religions are chimeras, even silly. We secularists know there is no reincarnation. No heaven. No resurrection. No last day. If we cannot hope for those things, what is there then to hope for? What can Hallowed Secularism promise that men and women can believe in? All along, I have said that the Bible is the source of truth, an inspired book. It is also the source of hope. But how can the Bible be a hope for secularists if the promises in the Bible require supernatural events like heaven or resurrection? We shall see that this is not all the Bible promises. In this chapter, we will examine hope. First, we will look at hope’s current absence in secularism, then hope’s nature in the Bible, the Bible’s potential application to secularism, and finally the unbounded quality of hope itself. Human beings live in hope or they do not truly live at all. Hallowed Secularism, and indeed all secularism, must face that challenge and become a source of hope.

Why Is There No Hope under Secularism? Philip Kitcher wrote in Living with Darwin that “they are always without hope.” In Kitcher’s context, the category of “they” is “the voices of reason I hear in contemporary discussions of religion.” They are hectoring voices, stripping away comfort and faith from ordinary people. Those who accept the Enlightenment case against religion believe that there is nothing to religious belief. It is all made up. They pass this knowledge on to others whenever they can. They speak the truth, according to Kitcher, but their knowledge is no “consolation at a funeral.” These secularists neither have nor offer hope.

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Kitcher believes that the Enlightenment case against religion, through which people’s religious hope is undermined, is an instance of “reason.” Atheists always claim they are following reason. What Kitcher means by using the word reason is that there is no empirical evidence for miracles or anything else of the supernatural realm. So when Kitcher says that those who live by reason are without hope, he means there is nothing beyond the “the facts” of human life. We are born. We live. We die. Nothing else happens to us. These are Kitcher’s facts. In these facts, he finds no hope. According to Kitcher, if in the course of life we think we experience God’s love, we are mistaken. That is a mere psychological state. That cannot be a source of hope anymore than can heaven or any vision of eternal life. Kitcher represents one form of secularism’s hopelessness. Nothing is real but what we can see and measure. Kitcher’s form of hopelessness will not strike everyone as a bad thing. It might just mean that man is in this world and cannot be anywhere else, such as heaven. Any hope that we could escape the world in which we live would be a false hope. As depressing as our situation might be, it is better to live the truth than to live in false hope. However, this Enlightenment case against religion, in its furthest implications, is by no means self-evident. Kitcher says he is simply facing facts, simply using reason, but whether God works through the messiness of evolution is not a matter of fact. For example, the British paleontologist Simon Conway Morris in Life’s Solution looks at the same facts as does Kitcher but finds a universe filled with meaningful patterns and connections. Kitcher’s proposal of Deweyian living-up-to-our-potential as the goal of human life is not a fact either. These are commitments. They are similar to the commitments of religion. For some reason, Kitcher does not take seriously the possibility of hope in this world. Can we expect anything from the world? Can we hope for peace? Can we hope for an end to human suffering? Can we hope for justice? Kitcher tells us nothing about these matters, which are crucially important because the secularist regards this world as all there is. There might be a potential for hope in secularism after all. There might be all sorts of secular comfort at funerals. There have been secularists who had hopes for a better world. In general, these hopes have not worked out. Secularists in the late nineteenth century expected gradual improvement in the human condition, which they loosely labeled progress. Those expectations were undermined by the savagery of the American Civil War and World War I. Then, in World War II, the ferocity of killing increased. In fact, the distinction that had been so important in the law of war between civilian and combatant disappeared, probably permanently. It was hard to see progress under such circumstances.

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There have certainly been utopians who believed that, with some change or other, human society could be radically improved, but these older utopian dreams were not genuinely secular because, for example, in the case of Marxism, they owed their visions of a positive future to religious foundations and origins. Today, materialism is updating utopian hopes through appeals to science. As I mentioned in a prior chapter, the primatologist Frans de Waal is described as trying to build the “perfect society” by absorbing lessons from primate groups, but I’m not sure that lessons from primates could bring change quite that profound. Among some secularists, genetic engineering is reviving the dream of an improved human race. For example, the genuinely scary “Transhumanism” is a loose movement that began in the 1950s in the United States and envisions a posthuman future with an enhanced humanity having overcome ignorance, disease, and death. There is also the tendency among scientifically oriented secularists to imagine some special task for humanity in the future. This is also a form of hope. One such strange suggestion was made in Daniel Quinn’s book Ishmael, which asserts that humanity’s task is to shepherd species that are near selfconsciousness toward enhanced mental development. Dolphins might fit this category. The classic science fiction version of future hope is the Star Trek-type exploration of the galaxy. Something has happened to this hope in recent years as money for space exploration declined. It is not clear whether this lull in human expansion into space has been caused by a lack of hope in the future or a mere temporary decline in international competition in space. Perhaps in the future humankind will go back to the moon and colonize Mars. Humanity today is not in the mood for such efforts. In fact, none of these possibilities for hope, and there are others, have really caught the world’s imagination, and this may be in part a manifestation of a lack of hope in the future among secularists today. Kitcher may speak for many. Is this hopelessness inevitable in secularism, as Kitcher seems to suggest? Perhaps secularism must be without hope. If this world is all there is, then how could there ever be radical change in the way things are? And if there were radical change, why should it be assumed that any change would be positive? This is why progress was such a healthy concept for secularism. There might not be radical improvement in the human condition, but there could be gradual improvement. There is still that thought in discrete areas, such as medicine, but I do not believe that “onward and upward” is endorsed as much today as it was a hundred years ago. It is now plain that progress carries its own costs. Global warming is, to a certain extent, a function of increased prosperity, and there are other limits to growth, such as population pressure.

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Part of the problem for secularism, in terms of hope, is the limit of human nature itself. Many secularists take their view of human nature from the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the economist Adam Smith. According to Hobbes in Leviathan, “man is a wolf to man.” It is revealing that this saying had its origin in pagan Rome, which, although not secular in the modern sense, was not of Our Religions either. According to Adam Smith, self-interest is at least a constant human motivation—there is disagreement among scholars as to whether Smith thought human beings could be taught to rise above self-interest. Even if the view of humanity as essentially selfish misinterprets Smith, it is a widespread view of human nature today. If people are fundamentally violent and selfish, or at least potentially so, and if human nature cannot change—where would such change come from in secularism?—then there is no basis upon which to hope for a much better world. This attitude is well expressed by the conservative political theorist Brian Anderson in his book Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents in which he writes, “There is no ultimate solution in politics, only temporary ‘settlements.’” This may well be a realistic insight, but it is still a manifestation of secular hopelessness. For some reason, this view of human nature has not led today’s New Atheists to despair, as I pointed out earlier. They think the flaws of human nature can be managed, though they would admit that these flaws cannot be improved. I doubt their cheerfulness will last. The advantages to this kind of hopelessness are in not expecting people to be better than they are and in not expecting society to be better than it can reasonably be. During the twentieth century, there were several attempts to build a radically better world that led to genuine disaster. Nevertheless, this kind of secular realism is demoralizing to humanity in the long run, and even if that demoralization is wisdom, it is still demoralization. If such realism is inevitable in secularism, perhaps secularism is not a sustainable human condition. But I do not agree with Kitcher that any of this is inevitable. Secularism can be a source of hope. To have hope, however, secularism must learn from religion. Religion has the capacity to engage humanity’s hopes without inflaming violence. The pope is not Pol Pot. Religious men and women tend to believe in the potential for a truly better world. Though this may not be true of every religion, it is true, certainly, of monotheism. And in working toward what they believe will be a radically better world in the future, believers can usher in a modestly better world today. The relentless realism of secularism cannot do what religion does. In fact, secular realism can prevent even modest improvement in the conditions of life. I am here reversing John Dewey’s claim in A Common Faith that

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Christianity, by pointing to otherworldly betterment, retarded this-worldly improvement. I think the record of Christian witness and reform shows that that was never true. Christians invented and sustained the philanthropic and reformist traditions. If those traditions remain robust, they are living on borrowed capital from religion. Humans really would be happier if we were still religious. Then we could truly hope. There are two ways of looking at that statement, of course. In one view, we would be happier because we would be naive. In Glen Duncan’s novel The Bloodstone Papers, one character says to another, “All the old scams, God, purpose, fate, design—you’re desperate for them,” and the character seems to agree. For his parents, “the big things don’t change: God, Fate, Love, Time, Beginnings, Endings. Good and Evil.” However, there is another possibility, which is that religion works because its promises are true. We secularists, then, would be the ones who are naive. There is a remarkable book in which this latter perspective is taken—Hope in Troubled Times. The authors, including Desmond Tutu, who wrote the foreword, believe that the evils of the world, specifically poverty, the environment, and terrorism, can best be confronted by biblical analysis and promise. It is a very modern believer’s book, and it shows the power of intelligent religion. What prevents the secularist from following these authors, at least insofar as secularism permits? Why not turn to religion at least to consider the possibilities of life? The answer is, of course, that he or she could do exactly that. That is essentially the argument of this book. But there are impediments. One impediment lies in a certain type of secularist who hates religion and cannot conceive of its power and truth. From that impediment, secularism must heal itself. Another impediment is that religious liberals today are themselves helping secularism insulate itself from religious hope. Let me cite one example. In the fall of 2007, Alan Wolfe, the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, wrote an essay in the New York Times Book Review entitled “Mobilizing the Religious Left.” The occasion for the essay was the one-hundredth anniversary of Walter Rauschenbusch’s famous book Christianity and the Social Crisis, which sparked the Social Gospel movement and led to important reforms in American public life. The Social Gospel movement was an example of the power and goodness of religion. Wolfe does not deny that, but he says that “such claims . . . pay insufficient attention . . . to the dangers of mixing religion and politics, no matter who is doing the mixing.” And what are those dangers? For one thing, says Wolfe, Rauschenbusch was no saint. He was anti-Catholic and shared other prejudices of his time. For another, if you allow religion to contribute to political life, you cannot complain when religion in a later age is against gay marriage.

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Wolfe calls this “freedom of entry” of religion into politics, as if people like Wolfe have the right to keep conservative Christianity out of politics. In addition, we are religiously diverse today, and therefore it is not appropriate to look to the Christian tradition for social renewal. But all of this is not what is bothering Wolfe the most. Perhaps it occurred to him that most of those criticisms could be leveled at any tradition, religious or secular, that seeks social renewal. The worst problem for Wolfe is that Rauschenbusch lacked “irony.” For the theologian, irony teaches the danger of pride. For the philosopher, adds Wolfe, irony teaches that “we cannot ground our liberal commitments on any firm foundations.” The basic problem for Wolfe is that Rauschenbusch was committed to the power of truth, and truth—the enduring, permanent, and objective value of norms—is unacceptable to a certain kind of modern mind. Wolfe is not a seeker of truth. A lack of truth is the death of hope. This is why secularism must turn to genuine religion for renewal lest it die as a hopeful way of life. Without that turn, all secularism will be able to do is support the status quo and the existing relations of power. I could cite other examples of religious liberals similar to Wolfe trying to tame and cabin religion. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s 2007 book Failing America’s Faithful, like Wolfe’s essay, argues against mixing politics and religion. The subtitle of the book is How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way. Townsend’s argument is confused, but it comes back to the old dualism of spirit versus body, in which religion is supposed to be about the former rather than the latter. Such dualism is not consistent with the Bible, which sees all life as one. God is politics. For liberals, religious and nonreligious, abortion and gay rights are so important that it is worth trying to keep religion away from public life altogether despite the positive potential of religion. They cannot admit that, in political and legal terms, they have lost that fight. Conservative religion is now well entrenched in the public square. All liberals accomplish now in denying the propriety and desirability of religion in the public square is to make their potential religious allies uncomfortable. In other words, in a vain attempt to keep religion from interfering with abortion and gay rights, liberals give up the power of religion in most other political fields, many of which would find secular liberalism and religion allied. In any event, this secular critique of the public role of religion is not persuasive. Therefore, let us now turn to the biblical promise in order to determine how secular hope might be restored.

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The Christian Hope Why begin with the Christian hope? What about all the other religions? Partly, the reason is that I know this tradition. But I also admit that I endorse Christianity as a healthy and available source of hope. I am not arguing here that Christianity is the “best” religion in the ultimate sense. But it is the best religion here and now. As I said above, every religious civilization—Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, even Animism, and others— will flavor the secularisms that arise from it. The secularism that arises here in the West will be flavored by Christianity. It makes sense then to begin with Christianity in this book. Substantive, comparative religious judgments among secular civilizations will have to wait. The secularist is limited in approaching any religious hope. If the promises of the Bible are impossible to fulfill, they are irrelevant, however pleasant they may be. The secularist, hallowed or not, denies in principle the possibility of supernatural intervention in history. If that is the biblical promise, it cannot be a source of hope. But that does not turn out to be the biblical promise, or at least it turns out that the biblical promise can be looked at differently. Christianity, and the Judaism from which it arose, had an uncertain relationship with otherworldly hope. As told by the New Testament scholar N. T. Wright in volume 3 of his trilogy on Christian origins, The Resurrection of the Son of God, the Old Testament made no consistent claim about any kind of afterlife or ultimate promise. There were hints of a developing tradition or, actually, two developing traditions: a heaven of reward and divine judgment after death on the one hand and a final sort of resurrection associated with a last day and a Messiah on the other. But these matters were not resolved in the Old Testament. In Jewish thinking in Jesus’s time, which Wright calls post-Biblical Judaism, both ideas had developed and spread. Compared to the biblical period, there developed in Judaism much more of a sense of the possibility that a person’s soul might enjoy immortality and much more commitment, especially among the Pharisees, to a general, final resurrection on the last day. There were still important holdouts against this. The Sadducees seem to have retained the sense of no life after death of any kind. Indeed, the tension between the Sadducees and the Pharisees on this point was the starting point in the gospels of the challenge by the Sadducees concerning the woman with seven husbands, where the Sadducees were attempting to show the absurdity of the claim of resurrection. The example they used would prove a problem in any heaven scenario as well. And in the book of Acts 23:6–10, Paul used these doctrinal differences to undermine his accusers. The commitment of Jesus on the issue of resurrection is important for the history of Christianity. Jesus’s resurrection was the endorsement of a particular

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side of this Jewish dispute. Paul, as a good Pharisee, would come to see the resurrection of Jesus as a foreshadowing of the resurrection of everyone on the last day. There are also hints of a kind of heaven in the gospels, aside from resurrection. For example, in Luke 23:43, Jesus famously says to the criminal with whom he is crucified and who shows faith in Jesus, “today you will be with me in Paradise.” This sounds like heaven and pretty disembodied at that, but Wright is skeptical of that reading. These two ideas—resurrection on the last day as part of the second coming of Jesus (the Parousia) with its final judgment and, in some type of interim before then, heaven for the faithful Christian—form the basis of widely held Christian hope. The effect of this hope in a future life is, in this world, usually positive. In terms of resurrection, the Christian works toward the ushering in of the Messianic age in a kind partnership with Jesus. In terms of heaven, the Christian tries to live as Jesus taught in order to be worthy of his fellowship. Of course, I am condensing and conflating important differences, but this account is adequate for the purposes of this book, even though it is not fully accurate about Christian belief. The secularist, like the Sadducees, makes fun of these beliefs. There is no heaven. We simply die. There is no resurrection. The dead can never awaken, including Jesus himself. So there would seem to be here an absolute and fundamental distinction between Christianity and any form of secularism. Surprisingly, however, that is not the end of the story, for heaven and resurrection are not the only promises given in the Bible, even in the New Testament. When Jesus instructs the disciples after his resurrection, he gives to them a task and he gives them his promise. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew 28: 18–20, Jesus says to them, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” In Luke 24:46–49, the task and promise to the disciples are only a little different. Jesus tells them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you.” The promise in both instances is that the disciples are not alone. The task is that the disciples are to continue the work Jesus pursued when he was on the earth. It is well to remember how Jesus, in Matthew 11:4–5, described that work to the disciples of John when he was asked, “Are you the one who is to come?” He says, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear,

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the dead are raised up, the poor have the good news preached to them.” This is not much different from Jesus’s earlier claim to have fulfilled the words of the Prophet Isaiah. He reads in Luke 4:18–19, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus then adds, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Why should the secularist have a problem with that kind of task and work? The secularist’s problem with all this, as good as it sounds, is that the source and context are all wrong. The secularist says, no doubt Jesus had power, as do many charismatic leaders. No doubt there was liberation, which may be why he was executed by the authorities, but he was not the Son of God. The dead were not raised. He was not raised. Jesus was just one more good man killed by power. Many Christians would agree that without the resurrection, Jesus was a failure. Paul said exactly that: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” Many Christians would deny that a secularist, one who by definition rejects the resurrection, could have anything to do with Jesus. I do not think that is true. The point of his being raised from the dead is that Jesus was justified and glorified. Well, wasn’t he, and isn’t he? We are speaking of him now, are we not? Jesus was the real revolution. He taught a universal selfless love—agape—and he taught it with power. This was not a teacher of ethics. He was not some liberal rabbi relaxing religious laws for the poor. This was the power of life, and it did win, did it not? The church is here and the Roman Empire is not. I do not think the secularist is outside Jesus’s circle, and I do not think Jesus would have thought so. I can love him as well as most Christians do. The other day, I met a young woman, a typical young secularist, who had never had any religious training and had never even read the Bible. I wanted to say to her, in good evangelical fashion, “Let me tell you about Jesus.” This invitation to everyone, even the secularist, is why the theologian Karl Barth once told trade unionists, in a sermon titled “Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice,” “as an atheist, a materialist, and a Darwinist, one can be a genuine follower and disciple of Jesus.” Not only is the secularist not outside the circle of Jesus but secularism also actually presents a unique opportunity to preach Jesus’s message as he intended that message to be preached. Right now, religious claims are a zerosum game. Because almost everyone belongs to some religion, every gain for Christianity is a loss for another religion. Conversion in this context is inevitably divisive. As Pope Benedict has written, the Christian preaching the

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gospel is not confronting people who have no notion of God and whose religious traditions have no value. This is not the kind of competition Jesus was proposing when he told his followers to preach the gospel, because at that time, to a Jew like Jesus, the Roman world did not look religious. It looked simply lost. Those pagans had no contact with God as far as the Jews were concerned. Conversion in that context was not leaving an old religion for a new one. Thus, strangely, the coming secular world is a return to the situation Jesus had in mind. People will be lost in the new secular world, and preaching Jesus to them will not be bringing them a new religion, but it will be offering to them the key to existence. In secularism, one does not have to join an institution to know Jesus, and one does not have to leave anything. At this point, secularists will always object in the name of some other universalism. What about the Buddha or Mohammed and so forth? Why all this talk about Jesus? Secularists make this objection even though they themselves have no attachment to any other religious tradition. They say this simply to avoid confronting the religious truth that is at hand in the West, in Jesus. Nonetheless, for the record, let me say, let a thousand flowers bloom. By all means, let us know the Buddha, the Prophet, and anyone else whose message of truth and hope can light the secular world. Hallowed Secularism will be wide open. That will be both its strength and its weakness. The point I am making here is not about a particular religious truth but that religious truth is what secularism must be seeking, even though that truth will have to be viewed through a secular lens. There have been serious objections to Jesus and his message, of course. Friedrich Nietzsche, for one, found the selfless love of Jesus threatening to the vitality of life, but Nietzsche never could quite make up his mind about Jesus, whom he also called the only Christian. The kind of deep engagement with religious truth that Nietzsche exemplified, whatever its conclusion, is precisely what must occur in secularism. Now, having bowed to pluralism, let me claim that there is a special depth to Jesus’s message that secularism must hear. What is the good news to the poor that the gospels proclaimed? It is the message to all who suffer that God suffers with them. This was shocking to the followers of Jesus, who could not quite grasp it while he lived. They kept expecting a Messiah who would bring military victory over Rome, but Jesus lived co-suffering all the way to his end. In a beautiful little book—The Heart of Orthodox Mystery—William Bush describes the church as a community of suffering. Suffering, he says, is the universal truth of human life, indeed of all life. We watch first our grandparents, then our parents, then our beloved partners die. And we decline while we are watching them, and we know it. This is true in the best and most fortunate

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life. Suffering in other lives can be unspeakable. This insight is not limited to Christianity. Bush points out that Buddhism is based on it too. As we have seen, even Philip Kitcher, an atheist, understood the importance of suffering in the story about Elaine Pagels, who could find in the church a community to share her suffering, a place of open hearts. Secularism has shied away from this truth of human suffering. I do not see much mention of suffering in the Ethical Culture movement or in humanist groups or among the New Atheists. Certainly it is usually missing among scientists. Our politics and economics have not reached in the direction of suffering either. Bush specifically counterposes suffering with the promise, which he considers false, in the Declaration of Independence of the “unalienable right” to the “pursuit of happiness.” Jesus is not like Thomas Jefferson, and happiness is not what we are to pursue in life. In the pursuit of happiness lies malls and sporting events and work and emptiness and death. However, I do not want to leave things there. The reader would have the impression that I think of the goal of Hallowed Secularism to be mere individualist comfort. The community of shared suffering is the most powerful source of social justice in the world. The authors of the book Hope in Troubled Times refer to the “widening ways of God—justice, peace, stewardship, love, truth, freedom.” They say that these ways of God are the lens of scripture. In calling these things the ways of God, the authors remind us of the biblical promise that these are the ground of power in existence. Justice, peace, stewardship, love, truth, and freedom do not exist, as the political and economic elites would have you believe, at the sufferance of powerful human beings. They are instead the greatest and most irresistible powers we know. They are the real. When you work with selfless love to alleviate suffering, you are stronger than military weapons. This is something neither the neocons nor the liberals understand. I must add, though, that this power of justice is not on call. The Hebrews understood that God would act in the fullness of time. The symbol that man does not control justice is the four hundred years of slavery in Egypt before redemption. Obviously, any opposition to slavery during that time must have been crushed. Faith in this context does not mean belief in God. It means belief that the weight of reality is on the side of justice however circumstances look at the moment. While we wait for justice, working toward it all the time, we have faith in its eventual vindication. We will look in the next section at how all this might be done in secularism. Here I simply wanted to indicate that secularism can partake of the Christian hope and still remain secular. And it must do so.

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Secular Hope This is the way that religion can serve as a basis for secular hope. The promises of the Bible remain true even in the secular world. These promises may be modified, or understood differently, in a secular context in which many different religious traditions will be looked to for wisdom and policy, but the promises of the Bible are not rescinded. The starting point for secular hope is that the ways of freedom, justice, and peace have power to change the world. There is no place here for irony nor for postmodern relativism. There is no need to invent a false neutrality about the good life in order to defeat epistemological doubt, and there is no need to separate politics from religion to prevent conflict. I have never understood why secularists are afraid particularly of religion as a source of political conflict. Westerners are quite committed to certain truth of liberal life—for example, the equality of women and the right to private property. We really are not relativists. We are not neutral about the good life. It is true that any such commitment can be the basis of conflict, but religious commitments are not special in that regard. The biblical promise is not so specific that believers should regard their own programs as God’s revealed wisdom. The certainty of the commitment by some Christians against homosexuality—which the New Testament does not emphasize, which Jesus never mentioned, and which scientific investigation is more and more showing to be innate—is a scandal. It is just the sort of thing that gives religion a bad name. It would be nice to think that secularism, in its turn to religion, would not make similar mistakes about specifics. What we can believe, with a whole heart, is that justice is more powerful than injustice, peace is possible, human beings are meant to be free, and we must love each other. These are commandments, whether there is a God or not. This promise does not guarantee success in our efforts to change the world. The religious believer always knew that results are not within our control. If the truth of human life is suffering, our efforts can never result in fundamental and complete success. What might secular hope look like given these parameters? The main point would be genuine universalism, which would mean the brotherhood of all people. Universalism was something that the Enlightenment learned from Christianity. The most surprising thing about Jesus to his followers was his universalism. He associated with persons who were outside proper religious acceptability, and he was criticized for it. Jesus apparently did not resolve the fundamental question of whether a person needed to become a Jew in order to share in the Kingdom of God. His followers were debating the matter after his death, but ultimately, they came to see Jesus’s message as one of God’s universal love for all human beings.

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The Enlightenment grounded a similar commitment to universal humanity but in reason rather than in revelation. This Enlightenment commitment has made important contributions to human life. The tradition of universal human rights arose here, for example. Worldwide secularism has the capacity to attain an even broader universalism. One day, we will have worldwide economic, cultural, and social arrangements and, perhaps, political ones as well. Universal secularism is not necessarily something anyone would have chosen, but it seems likely to occur. Perhaps it will usher in the universal promise of the brotherhood of all human beings. This result, however, will depend on numerous changes. One such change would be the ability of secularists and religious believers to come together. It is not clear to me how much of an issue this is in the rest of the world today. Most people in the world live the religion of their culture in an uncomplicated and unselfconscious way. There are other people who live secular lives in secular cultures, such as parts of Europe. People in both those situations might not have much conflict with their secular or religious counterparts. They are at home with what they are. They are not threatened. In the United States, on the other hand, conflict, especially political conflict, between secularists and religious believers is constant. Here, there is a contested public space where religion has been and perhaps wishes to be and where secular forces are attempting to restrict religion. This is an unfortunate story that the reader is familiar with. In the future, more of the world is going to be in the situation the United States is in today, with conflict between established religion and growing secularism. In the Islamic world, for example, secularism has yet to really establish itself, especially at the popular level. That will come but obviously not without resistance. Conversely, in Europe, growing religious commitment will sharpen secular resistance. The promise of Hallowed Secularism is to lessen this future conflict by bringing secularism into a positive relationship with religion and to do this, more or less, on secularism’s terms. Secularism will continue to affirm an antisupernatural perspective. Nevertheless, it will reach out to Our Religions. In a secular world, most people are going to continue to experience the divine or the mystical or the mysterious in their lives. Most people are going to continue to see history as the story of the unfolding of real values, such as justice. Our Religions have dealt with these yearnings for thousands of years. Eventually, I hope that secularism will recognize its need for the wisdom in Our Religions that humanity has developed over time. That moment will be the beginning of Hallowed Secularism.

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From the point of view of religion, this reaching out by secularism will be welcomed by many. Pope Benedict, for example, has already spoken in terms of the secular conscience. It is already accepted by most religious traditions that there is a great deal of common ground between religious believers and all women and men of good faith. Hallowed Secularism does not require much movement on the part of Our Religions. The change required is really just the ending of secular hostility. When this coming together occurs—when religion and secularism genuinely engage each other in terms of the deepest insights of human life—a wider universalism in the world will finally be possible. Not only will women and men not be cut off from each other but they will be free to learn from one another. There are sources of conflict in the world other than religious versus secular, of course. What will Hallowed Secularism contribute to the ending of interreligious conflict, for example? As the world becomes more secular, it may be easier for Our Religions to come together among themselves. If the modern secular world were not viewed as atheistic, the tendency to conflict among religions might be reduced. Islam suspects today that Judaism and Christianity are cat’s paws for a secular modernity that it greatly distrusts. As an example, it seems to me that Israelis and Palestinians are natural allies and friends. Both cultures have tended to oppose religious fundamentalism and both practice a kind of Hallowed Secularism. One day it may be possible for two countries living side by side in the Middle East—Israel and Palestine— to establish moderate religious and democratic states in mutual dialogue. The same is true of international conflict in general. The unified culture of secularism, if it does not threaten decent human values as it does today, might form the basis for reduced conflict of many kinds. Ultimately, out of unifying culture, political institutions might emerge that finally allow the expression of a worldwide community. I am not referring to a one-world government with the kind of unified power that would be potentially oppressive. Rather, I am thinking of a model along the lines of certain trans-European agreements and the growing trading blocs across the globe. It is not hard to imagine a world in the not-too-distant future with widespread peace, prosperity, and shared humanity. This is assuming that the dog-eat-dog capitalism favored today, with its inhuman pressure, will not be our future. Such worldwide capitalism would inevitably lead to conflict, misery, and perhaps war. I see as well as anyone how optimistic all of this sounds. Nevertheless, it is possible, and if the biblical promise is to be believed, all this stands as oddly attainable. We must begin, however, from a posture of faith and hope. We must not insist on own ways.

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The Open Future In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict writes, “Nothing can turn out right, if our relation to God is not rightly ordered.” I think that is true, but how could the secularist, who after all does not believe in God, rightly order that relationship? What is the rightly ordered relationship with God? Jesus says what it is: “Thy will be done.” There is a will in history or, if you prefer, a direction. That direction is toward what I quoted above as the ways of God—justice, peace, stewardship, love, truth, and freedom. Working toward those ends in life is a rightly ordered relationship with God. However, it is not my will to do this work. It is a command. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes in Theology of Hope, “to know about God is always at the same time to know ourselves called in history by God.” We are called to this service. This is why we are here. The crisis of secularism is not a crisis of belief but of acknowledgment. We do not need to be convinced that justice, peace, and love are the proper ends of life. We do not need to be convinced that we must serve others rather than ourselves. Granted, we do not often do these things, but at some level, we know they are true. There is just no God standing behind them. They are the nature of things, and our obligation toward these ends is also part of the nature of things. The pope’s objection to the way secular man works toward a better world is that man imagines himself in control. Man is not in control of the ways of God. Our efforts toward the good are upheld by reality. We do not understand how that could be. We know our own evil. Reinhold Niebuhr told us that human activity is always a mix of motives. Yet good often results from our efforts. Nor are we in control in the opposite direction. If we are mistaken about the good—if we do evil thinking it is good—we pay a price. If we misuse the planet, if we mistreat homosexuals, if we kill the unborn, if we starve the poor, there are consequences. This is how things are. Secularism does not change any of this. What would be the result of a secular world in which women and men devote themselves to these ways of God, knowing that people are limited in their understanding and knowing that they do not control the outcome? The answer is, I do not know, but it might be spectacular. That is the one last thing about the ways of God. In the Bible, God is a constant surprise. The old bear young. The younger son inherits. The small nation endures. A man of no account from Galilee changes the world. And maybe secularism allows his message to be preached. You never know with God, but then, it is not God. It is the way of God.

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This is the basis of the open future. All the fatalism we have heard is at an end. In the movie 2010, Earth is on the brink of nuclear war, and an apparition of astronaut David Bowman appears, repeatedly promising that “something wonderful” is about to happen. That is the situation we are in today. In the Bible, we have been promised something wonderful. All we have to do is believe the promise and work toward its fulfillment. We do not know and we do not control how that fulfillment will come and what it will be, but it will come and it will be. You do not have to be religious to believe that.

Conclusion

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erhaps I am not the one who should have written this book. I was raised in a fully religious home and community. I went to religious schools. You could say that God has intervened in my life. I speak to God even now. My journey to secularism has been long and twisting. My children, in contrast, and their children and the next generations will be natural secularists. Their secularism will not be difficult or a change, and they may not know religion at all. They will have lost something, certainly, but they will also have gained, for they will come to religion seeking something more in life than materialism and humanism can offer. For them, religion will be filled with promise. It will not be a source of conflict and limitation. It will not be implausible. I have wondered for a long time about the growth of secularism in myself and among the young, and I wonder whether this is not a blessing of sorts. Perhaps it takes a new innocence of the Bible to look at it again. Perhaps only a secularist, and a young one, could find in its pages an intelligent love at the heart of reality. Maybe such a person will be free to say, “when I love another, I participate in this intelligent love.” Maybe such a person will even say, “when I free the captive, I participate in this intelligent love—and it is my destiny to do so.” Thus all this may have been inevitable. We may have had to become secular. We may have needed to come to religion as truth “without a supreme authority,” as Sarah Blumenthal puts it in City of God. We may have needed to have our science and our rights to see that something more was necessary. We may have needed to feel the incompleteness of our lives without the transcendent. We may have needed to feel the power of history beyond man. We may have needed to see our own evil without having to bow down to men in religious costumes. In short, we may have needed Hallowed Secularism so that we could truly be religious. But then, how could such secularism have known to return to the Bible? Perhaps in the end, the hint would have to be dropped, as it was in Sarah’s case, by a person who had been a part of the religious tradition and who now saw that its particular day was done. Not to end the glory of God, but to see that glory anew.

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Index Abolition of Man (Lewis), 161 abortion, 16–18, 31, 39, 41, 50, 56, 58, 78, 88–89, 161, 192 Abraham, 2, 23, 38, 54, 57, 62, 83, 107, 144 abundant life, 1–3, 12, 22, 178 Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (Kitcher), 180 agape, 195 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, and Lee Bollinger, 135 Allah, 58 America: hegemony of, 125; lies, 45–46; ordering principles of, 41–42; as a religious democracy, 12; and the right to practice religion, 167; and truth, 45; will of, 46 American Ethical Union, 149 American Humanism Society, 134 American Religious Democracy (Ledewitz), 35 Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (Gelernter), 114 Ames, Edward, 2 Amos, 23 Anderson, Brian: Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents, 190 anticlericalism, 17 apocalypse, 6, 144, 182 Arnold, Matthew, and John Dewey, 18 art, 2, 58, 174 Asimov, Isaac, 155 atheism, 5, 17, 19, 33, 36–37, 62, 77–78, 80–81, 84–85, 88, 100–101, 110, 126, 155, 157, 159–61, 168, 171; intellectual commitment to, 16; and

political irrationalism, 92. See also New Atheism atheist. See New Atheists; x, 2, 11, 22, 32, 36–38, 58, 66, 78, 82, 86, 99, 103, 109, 116, 155, 195, 197 atomic weapons, 89; and mutually assured destruction, 78 Auschwitz, 4, 38, 44, 163 Axis Powers, 133 Ayres, Ian, Super Crunchers, 175 Baal Shem Tov, on temptations, 93 Babbitt, Irving, 78 Barth, Karl, 16, 61, 153; Community State and the Church, 152; and humanism, 156, 195; on Jesus, 73, 159; and science, 24 The Beginning of Wisdom (Kaas), 94 Beinart, Peter, 85: The Good Fight, 15 Berman, Morris, 39; The Reenchantment of the World, 39 Bernanke, Ben, 175–76 The Bestiary (Christopher), 39 Beyond Personality (Lewis), 116 Bhagavad-Gita, 182 Bible: and Abraham, 2, 38; as an affront, 151; anthropology of, 141; Barth on, 61; burdens of, 56; as collective, 55, 155; as counter culture, 140; and the Enlightenment, 181; and evil, 76; on family, 107; and God, 2, 26, 62–63, 65–66, 80–81, 145–47, 159, 179; and healing, 61; and history, 139–40; and homosexuality, 2, 55–56; and human rights, 156; and humanism, 166–69; and humanity,

212

INDEX

179; and individualism, 33; Kaplan on, 143; and the Kingdom of God, 57; Kitcher on, 181; and law, 139; and the law of love, 141; Lilla on, 89; and man, 142; and man’s heart, 142; promises of, 88, 140–41, 148, 193–94, 198; and public life, 23; and reality, 141; role of in Hallowed Secularism, 90; and the Sabbath, 114; and science, 23–25, 61; as a source of hope, 186; as a starting point, 141, 166; as truth, 47, 72, 141–42, 159, 187, 201–2; understanding of humanity, 187; understanding of reality, 141–47; and the word of God, 11, 56. See Old Testament and New Testament big bang, 12, 23, 27, 62 biology, and physics, 73, 176 biotechnology, 40–41 The Bloodstone Papers (Duncan), 191 Bloomberg, Mayor Michael, 95 Blue Laws, 113 Blumenthal, Sarah 77, 33, 203; and Hallowed Secularism, 7; and numinous, 7 Boaz, 133 Bollinger, Lee, and Ahmadinejad, 135 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 4, 66–67, 150–52; contributions to religion, 150–52, 156; execution of, 4; and God, 150–52; Letters and Papers from Prison, 4; and modernity, 151; and the Nazis, 3, 150–54; on science, 151; on secularism, 151 Bowman, Matthew: 2010, 202 Breyer, Justice Stephen, in Zelman v. Simon-Harris, 42 Brueggemann, Walter: Theology of the Old Testament, 83 Buddha, 21, 23, 196 Buddhism, 116, 126, 139, 145, 193, 197; and Burma, 139 Buddhist monks, 33, 142

Burger, Justice Warren E., in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 40–41 Bush v. Gore, 98 Bush, George W.: and Iraq, 15, 30, 41, 50, 58, 131, 162; and Islam, 30, 127; moral purity of, 15; and the National Security Strategy of the United States, 125; and religious experiences, 50, 58; and stem-cell research, 41; in 2000, 98; and the Unites Nations Climate Change Summit, 134 Bush, William, on happiness, 197; The Heart of Orthodox Mystery, 196–97; on suffering, 196–97 Buy Nothing Day, 113 Cain, 73–74 capitalism, 64, 94–95, 99–100; and globalization, 123–24, 129, 200; and unfairness, 124; worldwide, 200 The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Sandel), 40 Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, 162 Chambers, Sen. Ernie, 118 children, 2, 48, 96, 105–10, 114, 118, 178, 203; and religious education, 105–9 China, 27, 48, 96, 121–25, 167; and the right to practice religion, 167 Chinese New Year, as a celebration of ethnic pluralism, 113 Christianity and the Social Crisis (Rauschenbusch), 191 Christmas, 50, 93–94, 111–12; decorations, 111–12; and gifts, 93 Christopher, Nicholas: The Bestiary, 39 church and state, mixing of, 64 Church of Jacob, 16 church of men, 16 Cinco de Mayo, as a celebration of ethnic pluralism, 113 City of God (Doctorow), 4, 7, 30, 77, 203

INDEX

City of Man, 4 Civil War, in America, 6, 38, 188; in Spain, 17 The Clash of Civilizations (Huntington), 127 Clinton, Bill, and welfare reform, 17 cold war, 7, 15, 43–44; liberalism during, 15; and mutually assured destruction, 44 Collings, Richard: Random Designer, 184 Columbus Day, as a celebration of ethnic pluralism, 113 commercial speech, and the First Amendment, 100 A Common Faith (Dewey), 7, 18, 157, 190 Community State and the Church (Barth), 152 comparative religion courses, in public schools, 109 competition, and globalization, 122–25 “Conference of American Studies in Religion,” 7 conflict, religion as a source of, 42–45 The Conservative Mind (Kirk), 78 Constitution Day, as a celebration of law, 112 constitutional law: as atheistic, 98–101; as capitalistic, 98–100; of Hallowed Secularism, 98; as individualistic, 98. See United States Supreme Court conversion (religious), x, 17, 60, 74, 150, 195–96 corporations, constitutional rights of, 100 cosmic war, 43–44 Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, 171 Council of the European Union, 132 Council for Secular Humanism, 171 Cox, Henry, on an integrated religious and secular future, 73 creation, 140

213

culture wars, 184 Dacey, Austin: The Secular Conscience, ix–x, 161 Dalai Lama, 18, 142; and science, 23, 25; The Universe in a Single Atom, 23 Darrow, Clarence, as a secular saint, 160 Darwin, Charles: The Descent of Man, 24; On the Origin of Species, 24; and religion, 179; Selection in Relation to Sex, 24 Davies, Norman: No Simple Victory, 155 Dawkins, Richard, as a New Atheist, 159 death: Bonhoeffer on, 151; and the clergy, 106; and intervention, 118–19; and life, 92, 144; and the limits of religion, 145 Death of a Salesman (Miller), 108 Deep Economy (McKibben), 33 democracy: as act of God, 152–53; as collective self-determination, 50, 67, 87, 100; and Hallowed Secularism 87–100; and law, 102, 132; as a source of depth for Hallowed Secularism, 63, 87–92; organic democracy, 87; pursuit of justice as proper subject of political life, 87, 153; radical democracy, 64, 94; as a religious democracy, 8, 12; religious roots of, 88; and speech, 100; style of, 91 Democratic Party, 85, 92, 103. Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents (Anderson), 190 Dennett, Daniel, as a New Atheist, ix, 28, 160. Descartes, René, 39 Deuteronomy, and justice, 73–74; as politics, 73–74 Dewey, John, 5, 7, 11–12, 18, 73–74, 77–78, 81, 83, 90–91, 146–47, 155, 157, 160, 162–63, 165, 181–82 190;

214

INDEX

and Matthew Arnold, 18; and Christianity, 11–12; A Common Faith, 7, 18, 157, 181, 190; on democracy, 97; and emotionalism, 18; on equality, 90; The Ethics of Democracy, 90; on God as truth…and as truth he is love, 74; and Christopher Hitchens, 18; industrial democracy, 97; and Kitchner, 81–82, 188; as a secular saint, 160; and supernaturalism, 77–78; truth and the perfect and matchless character of Christ, 73–74 Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 40–41 Doctorow, E. L., 114; and City of God, 7 Doerr, Ed, and humanism, 165 Dubner, Stephen, Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explains Everything, 95, 174–75 Duncan, Glen: The Bloodstone Papers, 191 Earth Day, 113 Easter, 111–13, and suffering and resurrection, 113 economics: and Christmas, 76; definition of, 139; economic democracy, 79; economic dominance, 76–79; economic equality, 79; economic security, 79; of Hallowed Secularism, 75–79; and humanity, 141; and implicit markets, 145; influence of, 142; Jesus on, 144; as materialism, 144–45; and the Sabbath, 76–77 Egypt, 12, 23, 76, 84, 145, 162, 197; and the Muslim Brotherhood, 162 Einstein, Albert, on the indeterminacy of quantum physics, 76 Elie, Paul, 142 Elijah, in the Book of Kings, 34; and the still small voice, 34, 54, 118 emotionalism, 18 The Emperor’s New Mind (Penrose), 75, 175

Employment Division v. Smith. See Smith The End of Faith (Harris), 36 the Enlightenment, 25, 151, 180, 187–88, 198–99 Enough (McKibbens), 40 epiphanies, 21 Esposito, John, 162 Establishment clause of the First Amendment, 42, 102 Ethical Society of St. Louis, 149 The Ethics of Democracy (Dewey), 90 Ethnic Pluralism, celebrations of ethnic pluralism, 113 European Parliament, 132 European Union, 132 evil, 43, 73–75, 78–80, 93, 142, 146, 148, 152, 162–63, 166, 182, 191, 201, 203 evolution, 23–25, 27, 140, 172–73, 175, 180, 184–85, 188; and Catholicism, 23; and Islam, 23–24; and Judaism, 25 existentialism, 36, 158 Exodus: God in, 23, 145; and the Haggadah, 12; as a lesson for secularism, 56 Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way (Kennedy-Townsend), 192 family, 106–10 fatalism, 40, 202 FBI, 129 Federalist Society, 98 Feldman, Jeffery: Framing the Debate, 92 felt presence, 115–16 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 66, 78; and humanism, 156 flat, the secular world as, 8, 48, 53 Fourth of July, as a celebration of liberation, 112 Fox News, 47 Framing the Debate (Feldman), 92

INDEX

France, and the right to practice religion, 167 Franks, Martha, on the Enlightenment, 151 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains Everything (Levitt and Dubner), 95, 174–75 Friedman, Thomas: on globalization, 121–25; on mercantilism, 123–24; The World is Flat, 53, 121 Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, 42, 101 freedom of association, 64 freedom of the press, 64 freedom of speech, 64, 130; in America, 46; and campaign finance reform, 99–100 Fukuyama, Francis, 56 future: as a framework of Hallowed Secularism, 3, 69–70; of secularism, 59, 63; as open, 85–86 Galileo, 25–26; and the authority of science, 25 Gandhi, 18, 142 gay, 2, 107; biblical condemnation of, 2; gay marriage, 16, 148, 191; gay rights, 17–18, 143, 192; and Our Religions, 31–33 Gelernter, David: Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, 114 Genesis: Abraham in, 38; and agriculture, 76; Barth on, 16; and creation, 23–27; on family, 107; in Ishmael, 139–40; Kass on, 77, 94; Sabbath, 114 genetic engineering, 37, 39–40, 185, 189 Gettysburg Address, 74, 111 Givhan, Robin, as symbol of postmodern, secular world, 71 Glass, Ira, on synagogue, 110 global warming, 6, 45, 49–50, 62, 76, 78, 100, 122, 135, 143, 157, 161, 166, 174–75, 184–85, 189

215

globalization, 3, 27–31, 34, 52, 122–26; and capitalism, 121–26; cultural, 23–24, 102; economic, 27–31, 122–26; and Our Religions, 3; and unemployment, 124 “God-is-dead” theologians, 1 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Hitchens), 7, 80 God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Stenger), 62 “God willing,” 37 The Good Fight (Beinart), 15 the good life, 168 Goodall, Jane, 173, 177 Gospel of Prosperity, 93 Grayling, A. C., on religious thinkers, 80–81 Great Britain, and trade, 124 Great Depression, 124; and the SmootHawley Tariff Act of 1930, 124 grounds, for human existence, and secularism, 36–37 Habermas, Jurgen: debate on moral foundations of a liberal state with (now) Pope Benedict, 37, 40, 131 Hallowed Secularism, 1, 3, 4, 5, 13–15, 42, 166; beliefs of, 56–110; beyond religion, 111–24; and the Bible, 73; and community 120; and conflict, 163; constitutional law of, 84; contribution to humanism, 134–38; contribution to religion, 121–24; and democracy, 51–54, 71–75; and economics, 75–79; and establishment of the Kingdon of God, 69; and establishment of religion, 83; and family, 85–89; and forgiveness, 119; framework of, 56–68; and freedom, 133; and the future as framework, 69–70; and globalization, 99–102; and God as framework, 64–69; and the good life, 137; and heaven 78; and holiness, 136; and humanism,

216

INDEX

125–38; humanism’s view of, 132–34; and the Humanist Manifesto, 125–38; international life, 98–110; and law, 80–84, 107–10; and living by truth, 58; local life of, 85–97; and Lonergan, 150; major commitment to this world, 58; and man as a framework, 62–64; and materialism, 102, 137–38, 146–51; meaning of, 111–66; and models, 58; necessity of, 8–40; and Our Religions, 43–49, 75, 102, 163; and personal comfort, 121; possibilities, 43–54; practices of, 56–110; and prayer, 93–97; public life of, 71–84; and reality, 49; religion’s international future, 102–7; religion’s view of, 118–21; and ritual, 89–93; and science, 49–51; and sin, 119; and social cooperation, 101; sources of depth, 43–55; and theology, 54–55; and transcendence, 149; and truth as framework, 56–58; and unity, 57; and the world as framework, 58–62; and a worldwide society, 110 Hamas, 129 Hanukah, displays, 111–12 Harris, Sam, ix, 22, 33; and absolute values, 22, 160; The End of Faith, 33; as a New Atheist, 159–60 HBO: boycott of, 93; programming, 114 The Heart of Orthodox Mystery (Bush, W.), 196 heaven, 13, 115; and Abraham, 2; and Christianity, 174, 194; and death, 144; Elijah and, 34; and the glory of God, 62; and Hallowed Secularism, 95; in the Humanist Manifesto, 163; and the New Atheists, 171; Pope Benedict on, 75; as a promise, 95, 187, 194; as religious dogma, 6; and secularists, 4, 193; as the world to come, 75

Heidegger, Martin, 41, 117; The Question Concerning Technology, 41 Hezbollah, 129, 162 Hilkert, Mary Catherine, on Schillebeeckx, 74–75 Hindus, nationalism of, 2 Hiroshima, 4, 44, 163 Hitchens, Christopher, 18, 32, 160; and Dewey, 18; elitism of, 167; and emotional commitment, 18; God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 7, 80; and the humanist tradition, 159; on modernity and religion, 130; on religion as human fabrication, 78; and religious violence, 18; and the status quo, 18 Hobbes, Thomas, 43, 190 Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell, Jr., 46; “Memorial Day Speech,” 46 Holocaust, as genuine evil, 73; and Islam, 128; as a secularist attack, 44 hope, 3, 48–49, 187–200; Christian, 193–97; and immortality, 71, 85; and secularism, 48–49, 198–200 Hope in Troubled Times, 191, 197; Tutu in, 191 hopelessness, 110, 177, 188–90 How to Read the Bible (Kugel), 147 human autonomy, 55, 159, 161, 164–65 humanism, 4, 6, 125–38; autonomy, 133; and the Bible, 134; core concepts of, 128–29; and economics, 130; elitism of, 136; and freedom, 133; and Hallowed Secularism, 4, 125–38; Hallowed Secularism’s contributions to, 134–38; and humanity, 131; and the good life, 137; and liberty, 126; limits of, 127–32; and man, 132–33; and materialism, 128–29, 137–39; as a movement, 127–28; and the Muslim world, 126; and Our Religions, 4; power of, 126–27; and religion, 130; and secularism, 128; as soft philosophy, 128; and

INDEX

technology, 130; and truth, 129; view of Hallowed Secularism, 132–34 Humanism: A New Religion (Potter), 159 Humanist Manifesto of 1933, 6, 129–33, 136; and evil, 131; and Hallowed Secularism, 125–38; and the human condition, 131; and the good life, 137; introduction to, 132; and man as the measure, 132; and objective truth, 130; and relativism, 130; religious claims of, 132–33; and the separation between church and state, 136; value of, 132 Humanistic Jewish Congregation, 155 Huntington, Samuel: The Clash of Civilizations, 127 illegal aliens, 17 image versus truth, 71–72 immigrants’ rights, 17, 121 infanticide, and abortion, 88–89 Inherit the Wind, 160 Insight (Lonergan), 184 intelligent design, 23, 175 International Court of Justice, 132 International Criminal Court, 125 International Life, of Hallowed Secularism, 121–38 Internet, 28, 65, 122 Iraq, 2, 18–19, 29, 30, 46, 48, 58, 85, 88, 125, 127, 129, 142–43, 162, 169 Isaac, 107 Isaiah, 55, 56, 141, 195; and forgiveness, 117; and the vineyard, 54–55 Ishmael (Quinn), 76, 189 Islam, 1–2, 23–25, 30, 49, 86, 126–32, 134, 144, 149, 193, 200; and capitalism, 129; history of tolerance and cooperation, 127–28; and Iraq, 131; and Israel, 128–29; and the Middle East, 131; and secularization, 30–31, 43–44, 105; and violence, 8, 18–19, 43–44,

217

126–29; and the West, 49, 129–31; and women, 130 Islamist Justice and Development Party, in Turkey, 162 Israel, and conflict, 128–29 JFK, funeral as transcendence, 9 Jacob, 107, 141 Jaffa, Harry, criticism of Rehnquist’s value skepticism, 46–47 James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 7, 57; and religious experiences, 57–58 Jefferson, Thomas, and slavery, 6, 148; on Jesus, 59, 197; on the wall of separation metaphor, 101 Jesus, 1, 2, 38–39, 50, 68, 117, 119, 126, 137, 158–59, 164; and economic security, 79; and economics, 144; and healing, 50; on humanity, 137; and incarnation, 57; on Isaiah, 45–46; and John, 158; and the Kingdom of God, 46; and materialism, 76; as a model, 58; promises of peace and justice, 2; and radical love, 9; and resurrection, 158; as revolution, 159; second coming of, 158; and secularism, 159–60; as a slave, 56; and Satan’s challenges, 119; as a savoir to all nations, 44; as a servant to God, 119; and suffering, 160; and truth, 56; and a vine, 54–55 Jesus (Pope Benedict), 44, 59, 73, 88, 115 Jewish High Holy Days, and fasting and forgiveness, 50, 113 Job, 118 Johnson, George, 23 John Paul II (pope), 66; on Cain, 73–74; on Evolution, 25; and the Gospel of Life, 73; on science, 61 John Templeton Foundation, 172–74 Judis, John, on politics as a struggle against fear of death, 92 Judt, Tony, 94

218

INDEX

Jungel, Eberhard, 67; and nonproducers, 79; and objective untruthfulness of Communism, 71 justice: 37, 48–49, 55, 57, 71–72, 90–91, 112, 128, 133, 142, 153, 182, 188, 197–99, 201; in history, power of 6; as a staring point for Hallowed Secularism, 90 Kaplan, Rabbi Mordecai, 2, 115–16, 117, 143, 145–47; cosmic urge, 116; and God and salvation, 84; on God as a felt presence, 115–16; The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, 115–16 Kass, Dr. Leon: The Beginning of Wisdom, 94; on Genesis, 77, 94 Kerry, Sen. John, and the Catholic Church, 50 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 113, 142–43; birthday as a celebration of ethnic pluralism, 113; march on Washington, DC, as transcendence, 6 King, Peter, 126–29 Kingdom of God, 48–49, 56–57, 62, 66, 75, 85, 93, 147, 198; and democracy, 62; and science, 62 Kirk, Russell, 78; The Conservative Mind, 78 Kitcher, Phillip, 29, 180–82, 187–90, 197; Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, 180; and the Bible, 146; and Dewey, 182; and God, 37; Living with Darwin, 29, 187; as a New Atheist, 197; and religion, 180–82, 187–90Kugel, James, How to Read the Bible, 147 Kung, Hans, 165 Kurtz, Paul: Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments, 171; and secular humanism, 171 Laban, 107 Lampert, Edward, 96

Landsburg, Steven: More Sex is Safer Sex, 95 law: as antidemocratic, 114; and international life of Hallowed Secularism, 121–26; and Hallowed Secularism, 101–3; Leah, 107 Ledewitz, Bruce: American Religious Democracy, 35 Letters and Papers from Prison (Bonhoeffer), 4 Levi, Primo, on Auschwitz, 38 Levitt, Stephen: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains Everything, 95, 174–75 Lewis, C. S.: Abolition of Man, 161; Beyond Personality, 116; Mere Christianity, 82–83 Lewis, Michael, Moneyball, 174–75 liberal state, 35 liberalism, 15, 143, 148, 192; and Our Religions, 31 Life’s Solutions (Morris), 188 Lilla, Mark: ix; and Catholicism, 109; on justice, 89; on Islam, 88; as a New Atheist, 43, 88; and political peace, 44; on public life, 88; on religious societies, 88; and secular political life, 88–89; The Stillborn God, 88 Lincoln, Abraham: and the Civil War, 6, 38; and the Gettysburg Address, 111; “Nation under God,” 111 Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World (Wilson), 63 Living with Darwin (Kitcher), 29, 187 local life, 126; of Hallowed Secularism, 105–19 logical positivists, 158 Lonergan, Bernard, 60, 81–83, 184; Insight, 184; Method in Theology, 81–184 love, 1, 6, 9, 39, 113, 143, 161–62, 164; of the believer, 145; in the Bible, 86–87, 113, 166; commandment of,

INDEX

12, 45, 113, 162; economists on, 145; and God, 58, 65, 161, 164; and human capacity, 66; and humanism, 134; and Hallowed Secularism, 52, 93; and homosexuality, 25, 87; and Jesus 48, 78, 147, 159, 162; and Niebuhr’s original sin, 63; and Nietzsche, 160; and prayer, 95; and secularism, 41; in the story of the Good Samaritan, 10–11; and truth, 58. See radical love Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 99 Luke, the Gospel of, 13, 56–57, 169, 194–95; Satan tempting Jesus, 148 MacMullen, Ramsay, on salvation, 95 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Sacks), 176 Many Religions—One Covenant (Pope Benedict), 34 Mark, the Gospel, and unbelief, 146 Marx, Karl, 156 Marxism, as a materialist theory of history, 179, 189 Maslow, Abraham, and transcendence in this world, 74 materialism, 4, 6, 76, 139–51; beyond, 139–51; definition of, 139; and the demoralization of society, 146; examples of, 139; and Hallowed Secularism, 4, 137–38, 146–51; and history, 146; and hope, 153; and humanism, 128–29, 137; limits of, 143–46; and New Atheists, 129; and Our Religions, 4; power of, 139–43; and reductionism, 142–44; and secularists, 143, 146; of the West, 102 The Matrix, 42, 175 McKibben, Bill: Deep Economy, 33; Enough, 40 The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (Kaplan), 115

219

medicine: with materialism, 177; and progress, 189 meditation, 58, 115 Memorial Day, as celebration of selfsacrifice and courage, 92, 112–13 Menorah, 111 mercantilism, 124 Messiah, 2, 6, 47–48, 54, 57, 84, 144, 193, 196 messianism, 145 Mere Christianity, (Lewis), 82–83 Method in Theology, (Lonergan), 81, 184 Micah, 141 Milbank, John, criticism of secular reason, 72; and peace of Christianity, 44–45; and radical orthodoxy, 72; on theology, 73 military, of America, 125, 134 Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman, 108 miracles, 1, 21, 33, 61, 63, 67, 83, 144–45, 148, 188 Moltmann, Jurgen, 66–67, 95, 201; and “Godless Theology,” 66 Moneyball (Lewis), 174–75 More Sex is Safer Sex (Landsburg), 95 Morris, Simon Conway, Life’s Solutions, 188 Murphy, Nancy, 172 Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt, 162 music, as integral to worship, 113, 176 My Grandfather’s Blessings (Remen), 5 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 132 Nagasaki, 44 The Naked Public Square (Neuhaus), 31 Naomi, 133 nation-states, and international law, 134 national holidays, 111, 112–14, 119 national life, 64, 91, 119, 122; tone of American, 114 national renewal, 114

220

INDEX

National Security Strategy of the United States, 125 nature, 3, 23, 39–40, 42, 49, 57, 60–62, 64, 74, 76–77, 83–84, 95, 112, 140, 151, 164, 172, 180, 185; as a machine, 39 Nazis, 4, 78, 118, 151–52; hostility to Christianity, 35 New Age, 3, 6 New Atheism, 62, 64–65, 72, 125–26, 129–31, 154; elitism of, 136; and globalization, 102; on God, 64–65; and humanism, 129; and materialism, 129; rebellion against God, 87; and science, 139; and suffering, 161 New Monasticism, 63 New Testament: as communal salvation, 54; and God, 40, 145–46, 148; and homosexuality, 198; promises of, 194; and truth, 47, 180 New Year’s Day, as a celebration of beginnings, 113 Neuhaus, Father Richard John: and abortion, 31; and liberalism, 31; The Naked Public Square, 31 neuropsychology, definition of, 171 neuroscience, and consciousness, 174; and materialism, 175, 177 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 16, 27, 201; and Christian realism, 142, 163; on man’s sin, 78–79 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 66; on Jesus, 196; 9/11, as transcendence, 48–49, 127; No Simple Victory (Davies), 155; numinous, 7 O’Connor, Justice Sandra Day, and religious language, 182 Obama, Sen. Barack, ix, 167 Obedience, as a lesson for secularism, 55–56 Old Testament: as a collective history, 43–44; criminal law of, 83; and death, 116, 157; and God, 116; and homosexuality, 25; and

international relations, 108–9; and Jesus, 10; as man made, 23; and modern scholarship, 118; and public life, 120, 123–24; as a source of secularization, 26; Wright on, 157 Olsen, Glenn, on Karl Barth, 61 Oppenheimer, Robert, 182–83; and religious language, 182; and transcendence, 182 Orthodox Jews, 2, 25, 37–38, 111, 147; and Palestinians, 2 otherness, 5, 116 Our Religions, 2, 3, 4, 13, 15, 63, 164; and community, 120; and cosmic unity, 5; displacement of, 16; and evolution, 19; and family, 86; and globalization, 3; and God, 17, 64; and Hallowed Secularism, 43–49, 75, 102; history, 43–46; and homosexuals, 3, 25; and hope, 152; and humanity, 131; and humanism, 4, 126; and liberalism, 24–25; and materialism, 4, 76; and a personlike God, 117; 15; the personal, 46–49; and process of secularization, 16; promises of peace, 36; and science 3, 17–21; and a secular world, 3; and secularism; 24–27; and sin, 5; as a source of conflict, 26, 34–35; as a source of meaning, 43–49; as a source of power, 4; teachings for Hallowed Secularism, 43–49; and triumph of secularism, 16; and violence, 26–27; and women, 3, 25; and this world, 59; and a worldwide society, 110 Oven of Aknai, 159 Pagels, Elaine, 37, 181, 197 parable of the good Samaritan, 13–15 parousia, 194 Passover, and the Fourth of July, 112 Pausch, Randy, 118 peace, 2–3, 42–45

INDEX

Penrose, Roger: The Emperor’s New Mind, 75, 175 Pentecost, as a celebration of law, 112 Peter, in the Book of Acts, 32 Pharisees, 193 Philbrick, Nathaniel, on Amerigo Vespucci, 45 Phillips, Kevin, 17, 102 physics, 73, 174, 179; and biology, 176–77 Pilate, Pontius, in the Gospel of John, 47; on truth, 72 Pius X (pope), and Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 66 Pledge of Allegiance, 85, 101; as ritual, 111 Podhoretz, Norman: on conflict with Islam, 127; World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, 121 Political Brain (Westen), 91–92 Pope Benedict: and America, 41; and apolitical nature of religion, 73; and Christianity as reason, 14; and consciences of the secular and religious, 57; on conversion, 160; on death, 115; debate with Habermas on moral foundations of the liberal state, 28, 30, 106; on Elijah, 26–27; and Europe, 106, 123; and evil, 63; on God, 164; and heaven, 60; and hope, 39; and individual rights, 126; Jesus, 44, 59, 73, 88, 115; and Kingdom of God, 59; lecture at University of Regensburg about Islam, 14; and the Lord’s Prayer, 60; Many Religions—One Covenant, 26–27; and religious liberty, 126; and secularism, 45, 123, 163, 165; on the Sermon on the Mount, 115; on the social thrust of Christianity, 44 Posner, Judge Richard, 177 postmodernism, 18 Potter, Charles Francis: Humanism: A New Religion, 159

221

poverty, 95–96, 157, 169, 191 prayer, 85; ethical dimensions, 95; and forgiveness of sin, 95; and Hallowed Secularism, 93–97; individual, 94; intellectual side, 96; as meditation, 94; as openness to a felt presence, 94; as passive invitation, 94; and secularists, 96; setting of, 97; as social phenomenon, 94 presidential candidates, for 2008, ix, 12, 30 presidential election, of 2000, 87–98; of 2008, 30, 103 Prosperity, Gospel of, 93 psychiatry, 159 public religion, 15 Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (Sullivan and Vries), 35 public theology, 66 The Purpose Driven Life (Warren), 140 The Question Concerning Technology (Heidegger), 41 Quinn, Daniel: Ishmael, 76, 189 Rachel, 107 radical democracy, 63–64, 94 radical love, 13–15 radical orthodoxy, of the Catholic Church, 63, 72 Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, 59, 72; and science, 72 Rahner, Karl, 81 Random Designer (Collings), 184 Rawls, John, on the United States Supreme Court, 98 Rauschenbusch, Walter: Christianity and the Social Crisis, 191–92 Reagan, Ronald, 174 real sex, 114 Rebekah, 107 Reenchantment of the World (Berman), 39 Reconstructionist Judaism, 2, 145

222

INDEX

Rehnquist, Chief Justice William: and commercial speech, 100; and the First Amendment, 46–47 relativism, x, 46, 59, 198; and the Humanist Manifesto, 160 religion: as America’s staring point, 111; beyond, 111–24; as counterculture, 112; as a grounding force, 112; Hallowed Secularism’s contribution to, 121–24; and humanism, 130; humanity’s starting point, 111; and international life of Hallowed Secularism, 102–7; limits of, 115–21; power of, 111–15; and promises of a better life, 112; and psychology, 147; sociology of, 147; view of Hallowed Secularism, 118–21. See Our Religions religious experiences, 46–49; and secularism, 48 religious humanism, 160–61, 165 religious partisanship, 17 Remen, Dr. Rachel, 5, 37; My Grandfather’s Blessings, 5, 6 Republican Party, 17, 30, 126 The Resurrection of the Son of God (Wright), 193 Revelation, Book of, 144 Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement (Sandler), 112 Roosevelt, Franklin D., and political leadership, 88 Ruth, Book of: and international law, 133; and role of laws in society, 112 Sabbath, 94, 114 Sacks, Oliver: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 176 Sadducees, 193–94 saeculum, 1 Safire, William, on one-sidedness of his own writing, 45 salvation, 23, 54, 78, 84, 88, 93, 95 Samuel, 153

Sandel, Michael: The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, 40 Sandler, Lauren, 149; Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, 140 Santorum, Sen. Rick, 143 Sarah, 62 Sarte, Jean-Paul: atheism of, 37, 77; and grounds for human existence, 37; secularism of, 37 Saul, in the Book of Acts, 47 Scalia, Justice Antonin: Employment Division v. Smith, 100–101; Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 99 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 74–75, 83 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, on the elitism of humanism, 168 Schwarzenegger, Gov. Arnold, and climate change, 134–35; Schwarzman, Stephen, 96 science, 3, 6, 15, 57–58; and the Bible, 18; and consciousness, 60; and materialism 139, 146; and meaning, 140–41; and Our Religions, 3, 17–21, 49–51; at the quantum level, 60; and secularism, 17–21, 49; as a source of depth for Hallowed Secularism, 49–51 Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments? (Kurtz), 171 A Secular Age (Taylor), 66 The Secular Conscience (Dacey), 161 A Secular Humanist Declaration, 171 Secular Humanistic Judaism, 155 secularism, 1, 3, 165; breadth of, 1; and Christian hope, 161; and common sense, 16; crisis of, 165; disdain for religion by, 12; ethical foundation, 49; failures of, 28–42; as flat, 43; forces contributing to, 17–27; and globalization, 21–24, 101; and grounds for human existence, 28–31; holiness of, 4; and hope,

INDEX

39–40, 193–96; hostility of, 8–15; as a human condition, 155; and humanism, 128; indifference of, 8–15; and Islam, 24, 105; and Jesus, 159–60; Judeo-Christian secularism of North America, 3; lack of a way of life, 40–42; modern Christian engagement with, 3; need to cultivate sources of meaning, 48; of the nineteenth century, 153; opposition to religion, 131; and Our Religions, 24–27; and peace, 34–36; and progress, 154; and religion, 8–15; and religious experiences, 48; religious liberty, 136; roots of, 16–27; and science, 17–21, 49; as sinfulness, 54; as a source of conflict, 35–36; and suffering, 161; and technology, 31–34; and truth, 36–39, 49; and universal, 162; of the young, 8 secularist, 1, 2; and God, 4; and materialism, 143; and prayer, 96; scorn of, 5, 6; and sin, 11; young secularists as the simple son of the Haggadah, 9–12 secularization, process of, 21 separation of Church and State, 16, 88–90; and comparative religion courses, 109; and the Humanist Manifesto, 168; at the level of the just society, 90; and slavery, 89 Sermon on the Mount, 141, 144, 146 sexual relations, 58 Shavuot, and the Book of Ruth, 112; as a celebration of laws, 112 Sh’ma, 72, 116 sin, 6, 14, 63; forgiveness of, 57–58, 116–17; and Hallowed Secularism, 183; and Our Religions, 6; reality of, 6; and secularists, 14–15 slavery, 6, 55, 73, 76, 89, 112, 148, 197 Social Gospel, 191 Society for Ethical Culture, 149 Solovyov, Vladimir, on secularists, 77

223

Smith, Adam, 190 Smith, John Maynard, 176 St. Augustine, 4; City of God, 4; City of Man, 4; “the two cities,” 4 St. Patrick’s Day, as a celebration of ethnic pluralism, 113 Stackhouse, Max, on a worldwide federated civil society, 124–25, 133 stem-cell research, 42 Stenger, Victor, ix; God, The Failed Experiment: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, 62; as a New Atheist, 160 The Stillborn God (Lilla), 88 subprime lending, 96, 124 Succoth, as a festival of pilgrimage, 112–13 Suleiman, Susan Rubin, on No Simple Victory, 155 Sullivan, Lawrence: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, 35 The Sunflower (Wiesenthal), 117 Super Crunchers (Ayers), 175 “Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism,” 7 taxation, 89; and economic democracy, 97 Taylor, Charles, 16, 54; and conditions of belief, 21, 143; A Secular Age, 65–66 technology, 39, 49, 53, 134, 161; and globalization, 122–25; and humanism, 130; and secularism, 39–42 teleology, 8, 62, 77 Tell Me You Love Me, 114 The Terminator, 75, 175 Thanksgiving, 50, 91, 111–13, 119, 149 theocracy, 17, 64, 102 theodicy, 76 theology, as a source of depth Hallowed Secularism, 65–68 Theology of the Old Testament (Brueggemann), 83 Teresa, Mother, 86 Tillich, Paul, 81 tilt, of the universe, 85

224

INDEX

Townsend, Kathleen Kennedy, Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way, 192 transcendence, 6, 74, 82, 102, 109, 182 transhumanism, 189 truth, 36–39, 156; and America, 36; and evil, 58; as framework of Hallowed Secularism, 56–58; Jesus on, 56; objective truth, 130; and Pontius Pilate, 56; versus image, 56 Turkey: and the Islamist Justice and Development Party, 162; and the right to practice religion, 167; women’s rights, 167 Tutu, Desmond, 142; in Hope in Troubled Times, 191 2010 (Bowman), 202 Tzedeck, 90 unemployment, and globalization, 123 Unitarian Universalism (Unitarian Univeralist Congregation), 33, 158–59 United Nations, 132–34 United States Supreme Court, 40, 42, 87, 98, 100, 102–3; atheism of, 101; capitalism of, 99; individualism of, 98–99; on presidential powers, 135 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 133 universal healthcare, 97, 124 universalism, 196, 198–200 Vahanian, Gabriel, 1 The Verities of Religious Experience (James), 7, 57 Vespucci, Amerigo, 45

Vineyard, in Isaiah, 54–55; Jesus on,55; and Mark, 55 Virgin Birth, 26; Voegelin, Eric, 5, 21 Vonnegut, Kurt, 155 Vries, Hent de, Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, 35 de Waal, Frans, 179, 189 wage gap, 39, 96 war on terror, 15, 127 Warren, Rick, 147; The Purpose Driven Life, 140 Weber, Max, 185 welfare, 17, 79, 88, 133 Westen, Drew: The Political Brain, 91–92 Whitmore, John, 175 Wiesel, Elie, 172 Wiesenthal, Simon: The Sunflower, 117 Wilson, Jonathan: Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World, 63 Wine, Rabbi Sherwin, 155 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 71 Wolfe, Alan, 191–92 workers’ rights, 17 The World is Flat (Friedman), 53, 121 World War I, 43–44, 188 World War II, 7, 43–44, 78, 125, 128, 142, 155, 183, 188 World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Podhoertz), 121 Wright, N. T., The Resurrection of the Son of God, 193–94 Yom Kippur, 57–58, 117 Zelmon V. Simmons-Harris, 42