[lbo-talk] Irreligious But Not Secularist (was Not in Search of the "Salt of the Earth")

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Sat Dec 2 18:30:51 PST 2006


On 12/2/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie:
> > Canadians are much less religious than Americans: "Only 29 per cent of
> > Canadians say religion is a very important part of their lives, in
> > contrast to 59 per cent of Americans who give it high personal
> > importance" (Michael Valpy, "Canadians Giving Up on Religion, Poll
> > Finds," Globe and Mail, 10 September 2004,
> > <http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=3925&sec=74&con=5>
> > <http://www.culturescanada.ca/media/news.php?detail=n1095093677.news>).
> > --
> ========================
> Ok, I will accept your point. But what I am really interested in knowing is
> what course changes you want your fellow US leftists to make in relation to
> organized religion. Should they join ("enter") the churches to help
> strengthen their power - as they have historically attempted to do in the
> case of the trade unions and working class parties? Or should they just
> cultivate a more tolerant attitude to their adherents? That would give
> us a clearer idea of what you are proposing, and condition the response to
> it.

Here's my proposal: (1) develop a good historical materialist understanding of the religious in all their varieties; (2) create a new secular -- but not secularist -- world view for ourselves (we currently have none that all or most of us share even inside the Marxist tradition); and (3) NOT to equate Marxism or socialism or leftism with secularism and make adherence to secularism a condition for being part of the Left, narrowly or broadly defined.

Looking at the European political trend (e.g., banning hijab, the Far Right gaining ground in large part due to Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, opposition to Turkey joining the European Union in part based on fear of Muslims, and so on); the American political trend (e.g., little opposition to violations of civil rights and liberties of Muslims, despite a high level of opposition to the Iraq War); the intellectual trend (e.g., silly but popular books like Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Oriana Fallaci's The Rage and the Pride, etc.; the concept of Islamofascism gaining currency); the current focus of US imperialism on West Asia, I think that it's more than ever important not to make it appear that being on the left and being a religious believer are mutually exclusive. Instead, we should think about how religious faith can, has, and still does motivate many from diverse religious traditions to make great contributions to struggles against exploitation and oppressions. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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