On the latest episode of The Good Fight (title: Jonathan Rauch on the Politicization of Christianity), host Yascha Mounk interviews Jonathan Rauch about the role religion plays in society, the subject of his latest book. In it Rauch, for as much as I disagree with many aspects of his approach regarding religion and religious history, says something that I found both rare and shocking when it comes to how atheists often speak about religion. He calls out the “patronizing”nature of atheists attempting to make space for the good of religion while completely neglecting and ignoring its most necessary quality- the fact that people are only religious because they believe it to be true. If people didn’t think it was true they would abandon it. Mounk uses the parallel of secularized democracy, imagining what it would sound like if we said well, I know democracy doesn’t actually exist, but I’m glad people believe in it because we would be worse off without it.
Atheists who do this are essentially engaging in what is a condescending pat on the back, almost like using a perceivably amicable and friendly apologetic for secularism to say, oh look how silly their beliefs are, isn’t that cute. Why don’t we, standing above them in the great truth of secularism, pretend like we can have an intelligent conversation with them and maybe they’ll come around.
For as terrible as the whole new atheist movement was in all its vile hate towards religion, this new approach almost feels and appears to be worse. It’s like they are taking a page out of Christian apologetics, but doing it not in satire but in seriousness.
As Mounk and Rauch flesh out, this shift from seeing religion as the source of all that is bad towards seeing religion as a potential source of good, or from seeing religion acting in tension with democracy towards seeing religion as a positive for democracy, is, to borrow Mounk’s phrasing, justified on the basis that “it is the right kind of approach to what religious faith means in the secular world.” This is the most telling qualification. We will tolerate it for as long as it doesn’t undermine our own beliefs. And yet, what becomes abundantly clear throughout the epidsode are the clear contradictions that underlay this sentiment when talking about they ultimately need from religion to make secularization true.
For example, while they acknoweldge that what lies underneath the clear politicization of religion we are seeing today, which they see as the source of its decline and failure, is actually the loss of that religious identity which can produce the sort of things that benefit societies. And yet, in saying this they are continually forced to straddle this line between entertaining religion as a social construct while ignoring the fact that these benefits are tied not to the construct but rather to a belief system, They want to acknowledge that the helpfulness of religion is bound to the necessary beliefs that allow for things like morality and meaning to emerge, while similtaneously ignoring the fact that they do not believe religion to be true. This actually strips the necessary foundation from the equation. It becomes a contradiciton.
Now, I can perceive that me saying that could be called out for placing too much burden on rationality, and likewise imposing unhelpful black and white binaries. I’ve been told this by many an atheist. Rauch at least admits this when he describes his own journey. He states that he has never been bothered by the question of mortality, and that he is content not being able to defend believing in morals without a foundation.
In other words, he knows and understands his limitations, and he is content with letting these contradictions be, precisely because he is certain religion, to quote, is silly on the level of belief.
Welcome to the patronizing being snuck right back into the equation.
Here’s what I find even more fascinating. Rauch centers his rejection of religion in his “not being bothered by mortality.” And yet he misses the actual concern of religion, which is what we can logically and rationally say about life, or the living. Which is awfully curious, because he goes on to assume all kinds of secularized beliefs about life and the living that, if I was afford it the same treatment and response he affords religion, could be deemed “silly” and irrational.
And yet, to his credit, he still acknowledges what is lying underneath the surface of his approach. Rauch states that he wants to get away from speaking of religion as social structure, where we might say “religion is not true, but I’m glad other people believe it.” This is the patronizing effect he wants to apparently avoid. And yet, seemingly because he cannot act otherwise given that he cannot escape the necessity of his own belief, he engages in it on the very next turn of phrase.
Also to his credit, I think he uses his awareness to bring two imporant observations or questions to the table regarding the questions secular liberalism cannot answer apart from religion-
- Why I am here
- What is the basis for understanding good and evil as something other than a competition between personal preferences.
He later calls this being “colour blind”, by which he means that people of faith are able to see this world with a deeper dimensionality than those without it. Rauch states that he himself, and thus his own belief system as an atheist, is incomplete without answers to those questions. Thus secular liberalism and religion remain in existential need of each other.
Mounk pushes back asking a necessary question- where do we draw the line between being jealous about how religious people see the world, see truth, and the need to understand when and how and why seeing something we don’t believe to be true can become a problem rather than a good? If we believe it is not true, is the virtue in exposing that as an untruth, even if it benefits society? He is pushing Rauch to actually attend for the inconsistency and contradiction that is created when we state on one hand that the religious are seeing something that we recognize as good and true, while similtaneously stating on the other hand that we don’t in fact believe it to be true. In one telling point, Rauch states that, in a society where religion exists, secular liberalism gains the freedom to not have to asnwer the bigger questions.
Which to me feels precisely the place where I have been told by many an atheist that I am placing too much weight on rationalism. Which has always been baffling to me. Its clear neither the host nor the author live this way, as though these bigger questions don’t matter or aren’t relevant. It’s clear they absolutely do and absolutely are. These truths are inteegral to how they live. Mounk describes himself as an agnostic, meaning he lives as though God is not true. And yet, based on this convo it becomes clear that he lives quite the opposite. He lives as a secular atheist (or agnostic) in a world where he can assume religious truths without having to acknoweldge their foundation (beliefs).
Things get more strange when Rauch moves to assess the present state of Christianity as the dominant religion and its possible renewal. I think he rightly describes part of the problem, even if his history is problematic, by parallelling the way the mainline churches shifted to a social gospel, eventually coming to believe they could serve the social Gospel without the trappings of religion, and on the other side the evangelicals calling for a return to the true faith embraced politicization, eventually comning to recognize that they can do politics without the trappings of religion. This is a sentiment I’ve heard in other circles as well, even from someone like Tom Holland (author of Dominion) and Alex O’ Connor The best thing the church can do is distinguish itself from secularism and get back to “being weird”, as Ive heard it stated.
Maybe. But here Rauch runs into another contradiction. He wants to isolate the things that he desires from the equation (such as the social Gospel), and make them the property of secularization, while relegating religion back to the arena of belief systems which he does not share and finds silly. Its as though he imagines a world where its logical to have the social gospel without an actual foundation (beliefs) through which to justify and make sense of it. This detached view creates a kind of smokescreen for what he is ultimately admitting- secular liberalism isn’t logical when it comes to its beliefs. Its adhering to illusions, falsehoods, things that should be deemed “silly” if it were being treated through the same lens. Even more so, its borrowing from the religion both authors seem to want to paint as dying out or losing their relevance. Is this really, then, the fading of religion?
And that smokescreen is made even thicker by attempting to reattach Christian belief to a greater adherence for the next world rather than this one, a statment that seems completely out of touch with the renewal that is actually going on and the scholarship that we find (just look at all the work N.T. Wright has done over the last 40 or so years deconstructing that exact thought. It belongs in the same category of caricature as his rendering of religion to a concern for mortality rather than life. He is quite wrong on this front. Religion isn’t an answer to death, its an asnwer to life. Its a belief that formulates out of observation and experience of this world, not some next world. Which not subsequently would, or could, be the answer to his incredulitity regarding how someone like Frances Collins, an intelligent man of God he cites and references, could believe both in science and faith. It is precisely because science illuminates this world, this reality, this life, that we arrive at God. That’s why we believe, whether we are a scientist or not.
I do find it extremely interesting how dialogue between atheist tend to get around these things. And to be clear, it could be that they are right and I am wrong when it comes to our fundamental observations about reality and God. That’s not the point. The point is how we justify our beliefs and whether we do so by appealing to logic and reason. There are reasonable grounds for arriving at an atheist position. I don’t think Rauch’s process and position are one of them, precisely because he cannot actually attend for the implications, even while I states the logical limitations of his own posiition. Or he doesn’t want to. Perhaps more importantly, arrving at atheism as a reasonable and logical conclusion can only happen if one allows for religion to be a logical and rational conclusion as well. The minute we abandon that is the minute we cease to be logical and rational about our own approach.
The Stories of my Life 