As we were grocery shopping at the new Jamboree Diamond Plaza last week, my mom abruptly said to me, "Religious people seem to be pretty nice, don't they?"
It was one of the first times that she had ever brought up religion; it seemed that she had been thinking about a topic that I suppose has long been a subject of contention, that is, the idea of religion correlating with the rather ambiguously defined sense of "morality." She brought to mind a few of our neighbors, and recalled how the church-going ones always seemed to be a little sunnier than their nonbelieving peers.
Well, I offhandedly told her that at least if we used incarceration rates as a nation-wide metric, atheists were somewhat "nicer" in proportion. Whereas estimates of atheists range anywhere between 5-14% (Gallup and ARIS, respectively) of the US population, they comprise only 0.209% of the incarcerated (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2007). (Catholics are disproportionately higher and Protestants are somewhat disproportionately lower in prisons.) Of course, that one statistic doesn't mean secular ethics trumps religious ones, for there are other correlates that must inevitably be taken into consideration (education levels, race, etc.), but at least it takes the legs out of the claim that a religious education makes Joe the lovely Plumber all the more moral.
My mom then asked, "so what if people sent kids to meet nice people and to be a part of that community-- and not necessarily for the religious education?"
That actually made me pause for a bit. What if they did? Is there anything necessarily wrong with that, so long as the kids like it too? What if people started seeing churches as purely social spaces, and their messages as supplementary? I doubt church leaders would mind, for their congregations would grow. Perhaps the more faithful churchgoers might feel less comfortable because of the influx of people joining for the social reasons-- but they could also welcome these new members as people they could potentially convert someday.
However influential religion may be in today's world, if looked at from a wider historical lens, its pervasiveness is waning. Value judgements on that trend aside, our communities will need to gradually fill the gap in civil society that churches currently (and used to) provide. So what if, instead of churches disappearing one by one, they were "converted" in a sense, to institutions that brought people together, and still taught morality, just in a secular setting? Something like the YMCA/YWCA or the Boys and Girls Club, so to speak, but with life lessons after school and on Sundays/Saturdays.
Then, people like my mom who wanted take their kids to an institution that did help with a moral upbringing, but framed it in a purely secular context, would have a place to go. "Preachers" would teach altruism, duty, service, charity, empathy, and other such ideas, and use current and historical figures as examples while doing so. From a young age, children would be introduced to the ideas of Aristotle, Spinoza, Plato, Kant, Comte, and Holyoake, eventually choosing their own palette of principles with time.
Of course, this is all hypothetical and very far into the future, but what if we eventually do need to fill the social and edifying gap of religious institutions? Would something like this work?
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You know my stance on religion (better than most non-religious people I would say) so take this comment for what it's worth. People who are religious in America often do it for a social reason, because it costs nothing to go to church and belong to a "nice family friendly community."
ReplyDeleteBut ultimately, that isn't the point of religion. Religion is about sacrifice, not what you can gain - and you need the people willing to sacrifice to keep a religion going. So maybe there can be some sort of social group, but it would never last long without people willing to die for it standing behind it - and people just going for the community aren't going to be willing to die for it.
Jinju
Several points need to be made:
ReplyDelete1. Religion as a whole affects the poor and wealthy totally differently. It is tied into to economics, so any commentary about it should address this. Your's did not.
2. Religion really was and is not a teaching tool but control. It addresses our most primitive of all feelings -- fear -- and offers answers. Guidance. Solutions. Or what feels like solutions. Or is it solutions? They would like to convince you their lives are more meaningful. This also should be addressed. Look at key turning points in this country's history and if religion had any play or role in it.
3. A more interesting question to ask is what do religious folks really want and use their religious "powers" for. You'll find those ones are way more persuasive and powerful than your more "educated" citizens.
4. Your article seems to hint very subtlely to Christianity. If you re-read this article in the shoes of a Jew, none of this would make sense. It is 1 of the only religions -- Buddhism is another -- which does not attempt to convert others. They gain no pleasure or satisfaction derived from a conversion. The question is why. Ask a Jew.
Albert Wu
(a troubled Jedi)
To classify religion in one statement and say it's about sacrifice is completely outrageous. It's not "about," sacrifice at all. The misconstrued idea that it is is precisely what makes it inaccessible to most people. Religion, at least Christianity and I suppose our own natural religiosity, is simply a leap of faith, and faith is a willingness to be oneself.
ReplyDeleteKierkegaard, I feel, organizes this thought beautifully when he organizes morality in three stages placing the religious state at its zenith--even above the ethical stage--based on the logic that the greatest misfortune of humans is us forgetting how to exist.
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Mike, your assumption, I believe, that religion in general is waning, is incorrect. If I'm to view the Church purely as a function of its political power (which you originally do), then you're right. It's influence over the state, and perhaps even control over the people, is indeed "waning," if not totally gone. One would not even need to look through a "wider historical lens to see" this, but rather, the sense to compare the Church in America in the 1970s with the Church of today. The reasonable religious of today NEVER go so far as to reject the separation of Church and state.
But you seem to mistake the decrease in the Church's influence as a sign of its decline in popularity, if you will, among the masses. It's APPEAL to the general people still, quite largely, remains and I suspect always will because of our natural inclination for some sort of spiritual life.
[According to a Gallop poll taken in 1992, 40% of Americans attend mass, a service, or the synagogue, on a weekly basis. The same poll conducted in 2003 showed similar results. 41% of the adults claimed to do so. The pollsters could easily be ashamed for whatever reason to tell the truth, however.]
We currently don't need to fill this gap, and I doubt we ever will. BUT, if one were to assume that we would have to eventually do so, I doubt the conservative religious would stand in it, and if a secular Church did arise, a new religious Church would be formed not long after.
Just a note --
"Preachers" would teach altruism, duty, service, charity, empathy" That's not to say priests don't already do that. You don't need a secular setting to teach those values, just as you don't need religion to teach morality.
Lucas