In the past, ministers who preached the Social Gospel were outnumbered by those who preached humility and acceptance of one's supposedly God-given lot in life. People of faith who joined the anti-slavery movement were outnumbered by those who uphheld whatever the prevailing practice in their society was.

Rick Warren has often been incorrectly described in the press as a "new," reform-minded kind of evangelical Christian. In fact, Warren belongs squarely in the American tradition of Christian boosterism embodied in the twentieth century by Norman Vincent Peale. Warren's blockbuster bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life is the 21st-century version of Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking.. These books do have social value, though--the social value of making their authors multi-millionaires. I laugh when I see the indignation of believers at the success of books by authors such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Compared with the sales of books that combine faith with self-help platitudes, the sales of books by atheists are a drop in the ocean.

Do I think that committed people of faith can and should address themselves to earthly social problems? Of course. So should atheists. Is religion uniquely equipped to salve the wounds of poverty, disease, and war? Certainly not. Religion, being a human invention, is as responsible as any other human institution for creating the serious social problems that produce human misery.

On the very day that this "On Faith" question arrived in my e-mail, I picked up my copy of The New York Times and found several stories about the influence of religion in today's world. In Russia, the Orthodox Church is emerging as a quasi-state religion, thanks to Vladimir Putin's appeal to traditional Russian nationalism (of which the church was always an important part before the Bolshevik Revolution). Making fun of the church in painting or in print can now get you beaten up by thugs (while police wink at the violence). Putin, who built his career in Soviet days as a KGB apparatchik, apparently has no problem cozying up to the Russian Orthodox Church today. Official Communist atheism is gone, but official suppression of the fragile civil liberties that were emerging before Putin is back in--and is supported by both the church and the current leader of the Russian state.

From Nigeria came a mildly hopeful story, about certain Muslim religious leaders pulling back from the harshest imposition of Shariah, Islamic religious law, in Muslim regions of that unhappy country. It seems that some Shariah-promoting politicians are now being prosecuted for embezzling millions of dollars, and some of the clerics are having second thoughts about the religious intolerance that has resulted, according to human rights organizations, in the deaths of 11,000 to 15,000 in religious/tribal conflicts since 1999 (www.nytimes.com, p. 1, December 1, 2007.) Nigeria is an oil-rich country that was once seen as a beacon for Africa. Without the toxic interaction of religion and politics, it might have fulfilled that promise. It's very nice that some Muslim leaders now realize that the imposition of Shariah has gone too far, but as long as religion claims the right to determine civil law, there can be no freedom and security
for anyone who disagrees.

Finally, Pope Benedict XVI issued an encyclical blaming atheists for the loss of hope in the modern world. This would be funny if it were not so willfully blind to truth. Seen any atheists committing suicide bombings lately? Have atheists denied funds for public health programs that encourage people to use condoms in countries where AIDS is rampant? Were atheists responsible for "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. Oh, wait, the Serbian Christians were the biggest offenders. Benedict even resorted to beating the dead horse of communism and cited atheism as the reason for Stalin's and Mao's crimes. This is utter nonsense. The problem with Soviet Communism was that it did, in fact, resemble a religion--substituting absolute faith in Joseph Stalin for absolute faith in the Orthodox Church and the Tsar as God's representative on Russian soil. What made Soviet Communism a religion was what makes any religion a religion--imperviousness to countervailing evidence. Needless to say, the pope had nothing to say about the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is now back in the business of working hand-in-hand with the state in suppressing cultural and political dissent.

So pardon me if I am not impressed with the idea that religion is the solution to serious social problems.

What many religious figures, including the empire-builder Rick Warren, do is confuse charity with work for fundamental social change. Charity is a wonderful thing, and all of us (religious believers or not) should practice more of it. But personal charity alone cannot remedy deep-seated social injustices. Moreover, it is important to note that in the United States, the most philanthropy-minded country in the developed world, 90 percent of charitable donations each year go for the support of religious institutions themselves. No doubt some of this money goes to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, and treat the sick, but much more of it goes for the support of the churches and their bureaucratic structure. In the case of evangelical religions, the money also supports proselytizing designed to create more believers in a particular faith.

If more of the American faithful now realize that morality involves social justice as well as controlling other people's sex lives, that is all to the good. It will certainly take everyone's effort to deal with the grave ills of our country and our world. But the sick are better advised to consult a doctor than a preacher.