Can religion cure the world’s biggest social problems?! Who are we kidding? The major
challenge to religion, in this next period of human history, at least at this moment, is not whether religion can cure the world’s biggest social problems but whether it will make things incredibly worse and I say this as a religious person (an observant Jew) with a disciplined spiritual practice. After the past three hundred years of modernity in which, for good reason, religion was minimized, privatized, and dismissed, religion has reemerged as a central force. This is not surprising, for at the same time that modernity radically questioned religion’s truth claims and thankfully liberated human reason from the superstition, literalness, and overextending of religion, which led to miraculous and revolutionary achievements in our ability to master the material world, e.g., the cure of diseases and the amazing increase in life span, it also resulted in a world disenchanted and disqualified - a wasteland (in T.S. Eliot’s apt description) that left human beings bereft of a sense of meaning, depth, and wholeness – precisely the purview of religion and spirituality and so we have a reawakening. But it sure does seem that in this initial period of the reincarnation of religion, that religion world wide has done more damage than good – whether by inspiring suicide bombers, leading and inflaming culture wars, stopping scientific advances, or promulgating nasty moral judgments about fellow citizens especially in the area of sexuality.

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Can religion cure the world’s biggest social problems?! Who are we kidding?

The major challenge to religion, in this next period of human history, at least at this moment, is not whether religion can cure the world’s biggest social problems but whether it will make things incredibly worse and I say this as a religious person (an observant Jew) with a disciplined spiritual practice.

After the past three hundred years of modernity in which, for good reason, religion was minimized, privatized, and dismissed, religion has reemerged as a central force. This is not surprising, for at the same time that modernity radically questioned religion’s truth claims and thankfully liberated human reason from the superstition, literalness, and overextending of religion, which led to miraculous and revolutionary achievements in our ability to master the material world, e.g., the cure of diseases and the amazing increase in life span, it also resulted in a world disenchanted and disqualified - a wasteland (in T.S. Eliot’s apt description) that left human beings bereft of a sense of meaning, depth, and wholeness – precisely the purview of religion and spirituality and so we have a reawakening. But it sure does seem that in this initial period of the reincarnation of religion, that religion worldwide has done more damage than good – whether by inspiring suicide bombers, leading and inflaming culture wars, stopping scientific advances, or promulgating nasty moral judgments about fellow citizens especially in the area of sexuality.

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Ah…the recently invented liberal war on Christmas, a war created and nurtured by a few conservative media folks like O’Reilly, Limbaugh, and Malkin, with the support of religious or is it political leaders like Dobson, Robertson, and Bauer, who seem to like nothing more than to exacerbate the animosity between Americans and exacerbate a culture war that itself is a product of a minority of ideologues on both sides. What a shame that a season that should be about Light and Love and Life has become one more place for our religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists to play out their insecurities and fears, and their inability to even imagine that there is some partial truth in the opinions of those with whom they disagree. It seems that the only way those inflaming our culture wars can be right is if those with whom they disagree are not only completely wrong but are seen, in some paroxysm of paranoia, as out to destroy them and so need to be destroyed. Of course, the fierceness of their absolutism simply masks their own repressed uncertainty about their own views.

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Ah…the recently invented liberal war on Christmas, a war created and nurtured by a few conservative media folks like O’Reilly, Limbaugh, and Malkin, with the support of religious or is it political leaders like Dobson, Robertson, and Bauer, who seem to like nothing more than to exacerbate the animosity between Americans and exacerbate a culture war that itself is a product of a minority of ideologues on both sides. What a shame that a season that should be about Light and Love and Life has become one more place for our religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists to play out their insecurities and fears, and their inability to even imagine that there is some partial truth in the opinions of those with whom they disagree. It seems that the only way those inflaming our culture wars can be right is if those with whom they disagree are not only completely wrong but iare seen, in some paroxysm of paranoia, as out to destroy them and so need to be destroyed. Of course, the fierceness of their absolutism simply masks their own repressed uncertainty about their own views.

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How extremely sad that there are Christians in this country who feel so insecure about their own faith and so under attack that they need a group of politicians (and specifically a group that collectively has the lowest approval rating in recent history) to affirm the importance of their religion. People who confidently subscribe to their religion no doubt already know and appreciate the significance of their faith and don’t need a congressional resolution to affirm its importance. So this resolution reflects at best a deep lack of faith and at worst a nasty attempt (symbolic of course because this resolution has no legal or practical effect) to make non-Christians feel that this is a Christian country. Contrary to this resolution, Christianity, surely in the form observed by the lobbyists for this resolution, played little role in the founding of this great nation.

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