i'm a little tired of having to be worry about what "the people" are going to think. they're going to think we're calling them names no matter what we do. it's hardly like i holler to my neighbor when he and his wife get home from choir practice and ask, "So, glad you're home from heysooz worshipping. How's the old dead guy on a stick hangin' anyway?"
At 06:56 PM 6/13/2005, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>On 6/13/05, snitsnat <snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures_5.htm
>
>good stuff. and good quotes early on from niebuhr. what did you think of it?
I think this is deeply problematic:
"Religious toleration through religiously inspired humility and charity, is always a difficult achievement. It requires that religious convictions be sincerely and devoutly held while yet the sinful and finite corruptions of these convictions be humbly acknowledged and the actual fruits of other faiths be generously estimated."
What this means is that the religious person extends "Christian Charity" to those who don't share her beliefs. It asks her to steel herself against the actually existing sins and corruptions that challenge her beliefs. If she believes that it's sinful to live together without being married before god, then she must tolerate that, out of Christian Charity.
Love the sinner, hate the sin. What patronizing bull shit. And it's not the faith itself that can be generously estimated, but the fruits? Spare me.
We hold devoutly and sincerely to our convictions, we steel ourselves -- martyr ourselves? -- and put up with the way the others live. and maybe we'll even acknowledge that people live good lives if they hold different religious views, but this is only done _to preserve_ the religion. It doesn't question the very fundamentals of the religion itself. It is done, as Niebhur says, to ensure the survival of the religion, lest society preserve solidarity through secularism -- or authoritarianism. I can see why he rejects the latter, but what's wrong with secularism -- exactly?
That's a rhetorical question. I'm well aware of the drawbacks.
(and, btw, there's nothing wrong with ritual. this list wouldn't exist without ritual. solidarity doesn't exist without ritual.)
> > oooooooooo. I am NO thing. I am NO ting. I am NO thing. etc.
>
>is this you being snide? can't tell for sure.
no. i was just telling a story and it had two subtle points.
1. i was studying _american_ ideology and identity, 1950s-1970s, and I was in the library studying Buddhism. For all these claims that Buddhism is some sort of alternative, it has deep roots in u.s. ideology and identity that go back, at least, to Whitman -- as you know. It is not surprising that at least on variant of Buddhism is Freddy's Buffet Buddhism: load up your plate with any of Buddha's teachings you want.
Don't like jello salad. No problem. Don't put it on your plate! Load up on the bbq ribs and mashed taters, son!
the other point was that I was reading something about "I am nothing." so I started repeating it over and over, turning it over and thinking about it, when I realized it was _no_ thing. I am _no_ thing. i forget what that's called. the story means nothing, really, and the link didn't mean much to me because there was no explanation as to why you were giving it to me in response to a question about how religion encourages people to ask questions.
so once again: how does religion encourage people to ask questions? (i haven't read everything you've written, so keep that in mind. and why you think my question was a gross generalization -- i don't know. you've said yourself that your students often haven't _read_ the bible, they have heard passages in sermons.)
obviously, there are manifold defs of religion. but, also obviously, you're going to have to pick one and answer the question. in fact, you've already answered it.
you believe that one of the features of religion is that it encourages people to ask questions or, rather, that it is a mode of inquiry.
if that's the case, then I don't think I would find so many religious adherents who don't ask questions of their faith at all. Oh, they may ask "Why god?" or they may question this or that, but it's accidental. It isn't a mode of _inquiry_, it's a way to _know_ the world, a prism through which to perceive and understand the world. That's not inquiry. It's a worldview. And, a religion may impart certain practices through which one sets about testing and questioning one's faither, but the rituals are _part_ of the religion, so it's hardly questioning the foundational principles of the religion.
it is one thing to grill religion and spirituality, but that's not the same thing as leaving it completely open to the possibility that there is no basis for anyone's belief or faith. Ultimately, _that_ question cannot be asked, for then there would be no religion at all.
i don't think the same thing extends to science since the only thing that binds scientists together is a commitment, not to substantive rationality, but to formal rationality.
Now, the parallel I'll draw here is found in _Habits of the HEart_. In in the authors talk about love and marriage in the u.s. They contrast the way people embedded in communities of faith think about love and marriage with the way that those influenced by therapeutic culture (expressive individualism) think about love and marriage.
for the religious, love and marriage is an expression of their membership in a community of faith. there is a larger end within which marriage is expressed. substantive rationalisty. marriage has a meaning beyond the lives of the two people involved.
for the therepeuticists (for lack of better word), love and marriage have no larger meaning outside the marriage itself. So, what keeps it together? Well, they have a hard time answering that question. What it boils down to is a kind of funcational or formal rationality: a focus on process/method.
In marriage, that means that while there is no larger purpose for a particular marriage (for those people anyway), what they agree to is the process. What's that for u.s.ers? Communication. You agree to communicate. You agree to work on communicating. You agree that, when communication stops or when you stop trying to communicate -- it's over. Etc. Etc.
Enlightenment liberalism can be said to have concluded that there is no larger set of values to which we can all agree, but what we can agree to is the method, process, form by which we come to an agreement. (we see parallels in our judicial system, where truth is the result of an agonistic _process_ -- such as the defense/prosecution, the jury system with its focus on selecting a 'jury of peers'. What we point to in cases like the OJ trial or MJ trial is the process. if the process was fair, then no matter what, we must agree that the ends are legitimate. etc. etc.
Similarly, science does not speak to those substantive ends. It asks its adherents to stick to one thing and one thing only: the scientific method. If you reject Newtonian physics for a different theory, you're still scientists. That can't be said for religion.
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin