Thanks for writing this piece. I think you are exactly right in your analysis of the situation. I cannot read the basic teachings of Jesus without thinking he agrees with you as well. He taught inclusion and not exclusion. When we start seeing efforts to exclude people from easy access to voting, for example, then obviously something has gone terribly wrong in politics and religion.
Part of the problem is that the culture/press/education system has adopted a two thousand year old idea of the divine that is out of date. As long as "being religious" means that you believe in a superhuman individual who has direct power over you in the same way a parent has direct power over a child, the default among people with a sense of their own agency will be to reject that label. When the definitions of "holy", "higher power", "worship", and "divinity" are expanded to include the powers inherent in love, nature, community, etc., those who are spiritual but not religious will be able to call themselves believers.
I've read a number of books by Christians including Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Francis Collins who are articulate in their understanding of the compatibility of science and religion, but my biggest influence is Martin Luther King Jr. who saw clearly the power of "beloved community". Selfishness is evil, but every single article about any legislation focuses almost exclusively on how this will benefit or hurt individuals or groups of individuals, not on how it will improve things for the whole. For example, the infrastructure proposal currently being introduced is described in terms of who gets what, instead of how a better infrastructure is good for our whole country and perhaps the world. This kind of individualized thinking rots our souls.
When I was a Catholic child we sang a song that goes "God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God." I'm now a church-going Unitarian Universalist active in Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. Depriving people of marriage, voting, family planning, and fair wages is against my religion, as is environmental destruction, corporate greed, and homelessness. All of these things are an affront to LOVE, which is a power greater than each of us individually. The press, the education system, and our whole culture needs to change its foundational commitment to fostering competition, individualism, and selfishness. It's a time of abundance and inclusion. God is love and Love is god.
Yes, but secularization means that the "one true religion" (in America anyway), conservative Christianity, will no longer be dominant and will no longer be able to dictate the culture and society. It will have to share space with blasphemers, heretics, infidels, etc. That's no good. You can't expand "God's Kingdom" with religious neutrality.
This is mostly backwards--religion is used to get right wing politicians elected, and right wing policies enacted. And on a personal level, right wingers use religious dogma to justify their own prejudices and to justify their superior social position. Dig into their actual beliefs, and they don't believe in the principles that supposedly are at the core of their religions.
"“I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is really another way of saying “I’m religious but I don’t want to say so,”"
Not in my experience--such people want to find meaning for their lives in the universe but don't "believe in and worship a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", or "a particular system of faith and worship"--that's what "religion" means.
Secularization is, by definition, "disassociation or separation from religious or spiritual concerns"--i.e., the absence of religion from the law, policy, etc. It doesn't mean the absence of religious people from society, and I don't think "non-religious liberals" generally make that mistake.
OTOH, it's difficult to secularize policy in the face of uncritical acceptance of superstition and dogma, and it's difficult to win the autonomy of women in the face of a Catholic church that on the one hand officially accepts evolution and most science, but on the other hand outlaws abortion and feeds the Federalist Society movement to stack the courts top to bottom with extremist Catholics.
I hang out out on Reddit quite a bit and I'm heartened to see to what a large degree the young people who dominate that platform have rejected religion and theology as anti-scientific and an impediment to a just world.
In any case, this is a complex topic and we non-religious liberals are not ignorant boobs so I don't think this bogeyman warning that we're enabling religious zealots is going to sway us.
At the risk of putting too much into several broad generalizations, I agree with you that when I hear liberals launching into anti-religious rhetoric and intentionally antagonizing people of faith—equating it directly with conservativism and/or being uneducated—I feel they seem to be forgetting that a significant portion of their "core base" is both religious AND “liberal”: Jews, Blacks and Hispanics/Latins. These are often people of deep faith and a bedrock belief in God, and yet they also tend to vote Democrat…unless alienated by some anti-religious rant.
And not just those folks, but the rest of America as well, still, overwhelmingly, believe in God, with 85% believing to at least some degree.
And finally, they also seem to be guilty of promoting diversity/inclusivity of other religions over Christianity as an end goal, when Christianity/Catholicism is still the clear front-runner in the U.S. (for now) among religious affiliations at 70% Christian/Catholic (with the non-affiliated at 22%, and non-Christian faithful at 6%).
All religions should be treated equally, respecting those who ascribe to them as people, rather than just the label attributed by their faith, with all the baggage that entails.
In sum, I agree with most of your article, and that extremist (elitist) spokespeople for the liberals should probably "take it down a notch" and back away from a strictly atheistic/agnostic/anti-religious message, because it turns off a lot of moderates who might otherwise lean their way, and yes, promotes a feeling of vindication (and backlash) among their counterparts in the extremist religious right. The loudest shouters become the de facto "face" of a group.
I believe, as I feel you implied, you can promote the GOALS of separation of church and state without denigrating either the church or the state, and that those who seek freedom of religion and those who seek freedom from it, can live together harmoniously…if the zealots on BOTH sides of the issue would just let them.
"Secular" means: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis. So to say that religious people can be secular is fine - they can certainly do things that are not religious. But it is weird to say that secular people can be religious since the word "secular" applied to a person means they have no religious or spiritual basis! I am secular and I cannot, therefore, be religious... ever. But really, there are no secular people, there are just secular actions.
Secularization is absolutely the absence of religion. When people talk about secular society, they are not talking about the people having no religion, they are talking about the society and the government having no religion. There is no place for religion in government, at least not in the USA where it is forbidden by our constitution.
It seems like non-religious liberals are being blamed for the troubles with society that they are specifically trying to fix. It almost sounds like victim plaming. As a non-religious liberal who wants to remove religion from government activities/laws, I cannot figure out exactly how I am making things worse - without non-religious liberals, more laws would be based on mythology and backward (anti-science, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-choice) 2000 year old ideas. More people would be forced to follow the religious teachings that they believe to be false or baseless when you remove the non-religious liberals from the fight to make our society more secular. Sure, you as a person that believes there is a god has no problem blaming the non-religious for you perceived problems - it's typical for religious people to blame the non-religious for every problem in the world - but it's not convincing as an argument.
To be honest, I am a non-religious liberal and I have a bias. I suspect that you also have a bias. It sounds like it.
Thanks for writing this piece. I think you are exactly right in your analysis of the situation. I cannot read the basic teachings of Jesus without thinking he agrees with you as well. He taught inclusion and not exclusion. When we start seeing efforts to exclude people from easy access to voting, for example, then obviously something has gone terribly wrong in politics and religion.
Part of the problem is that the culture/press/education system has adopted a two thousand year old idea of the divine that is out of date. As long as "being religious" means that you believe in a superhuman individual who has direct power over you in the same way a parent has direct power over a child, the default among people with a sense of their own agency will be to reject that label. When the definitions of "holy", "higher power", "worship", and "divinity" are expanded to include the powers inherent in love, nature, community, etc., those who are spiritual but not religious will be able to call themselves believers.
I've read a number of books by Christians including Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Francis Collins who are articulate in their understanding of the compatibility of science and religion, but my biggest influence is Martin Luther King Jr. who saw clearly the power of "beloved community". Selfishness is evil, but every single article about any legislation focuses almost exclusively on how this will benefit or hurt individuals or groups of individuals, not on how it will improve things for the whole. For example, the infrastructure proposal currently being introduced is described in terms of who gets what, instead of how a better infrastructure is good for our whole country and perhaps the world. This kind of individualized thinking rots our souls.
When I was a Catholic child we sang a song that goes "God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God." I'm now a church-going Unitarian Universalist active in Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. Depriving people of marriage, voting, family planning, and fair wages is against my religion, as is environmental destruction, corporate greed, and homelessness. All of these things are an affront to LOVE, which is a power greater than each of us individually. The press, the education system, and our whole culture needs to change its foundational commitment to fostering competition, individualism, and selfishness. It's a time of abundance and inclusion. God is love and Love is god.
Yes, but secularization means that the "one true religion" (in America anyway), conservative Christianity, will no longer be dominant and will no longer be able to dictate the culture and society. It will have to share space with blasphemers, heretics, infidels, etc. That's no good. You can't expand "God's Kingdom" with religious neutrality.
"Religion is the goal, politics the means. "
This is mostly backwards--religion is used to get right wing politicians elected, and right wing policies enacted. And on a personal level, right wingers use religious dogma to justify their own prejudices and to justify their superior social position. Dig into their actual beliefs, and they don't believe in the principles that supposedly are at the core of their religions.
"“I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is really another way of saying “I’m religious but I don’t want to say so,”"
Not in my experience--such people want to find meaning for their lives in the universe but don't "believe in and worship a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", or "a particular system of faith and worship"--that's what "religion" means.
Secularization is, by definition, "disassociation or separation from religious or spiritual concerns"--i.e., the absence of religion from the law, policy, etc. It doesn't mean the absence of religious people from society, and I don't think "non-religious liberals" generally make that mistake.
OTOH, it's difficult to secularize policy in the face of uncritical acceptance of superstition and dogma, and it's difficult to win the autonomy of women in the face of a Catholic church that on the one hand officially accepts evolution and most science, but on the other hand outlaws abortion and feeds the Federalist Society movement to stack the courts top to bottom with extremist Catholics.
I hang out out on Reddit quite a bit and I'm heartened to see to what a large degree the young people who dominate that platform have rejected religion and theology as anti-scientific and an impediment to a just world.
In any case, this is a complex topic and we non-religious liberals are not ignorant boobs so I don't think this bogeyman warning that we're enabling religious zealots is going to sway us.
At the risk of putting too much into several broad generalizations, I agree with you that when I hear liberals launching into anti-religious rhetoric and intentionally antagonizing people of faith—equating it directly with conservativism and/or being uneducated—I feel they seem to be forgetting that a significant portion of their "core base" is both religious AND “liberal”: Jews, Blacks and Hispanics/Latins. These are often people of deep faith and a bedrock belief in God, and yet they also tend to vote Democrat…unless alienated by some anti-religious rant.
And not just those folks, but the rest of America as well, still, overwhelmingly, believe in God, with 85% believing to at least some degree.
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/belief-in-god/
And finally, they also seem to be guilty of promoting diversity/inclusivity of other religions over Christianity as an end goal, when Christianity/Catholicism is still the clear front-runner in the U.S. (for now) among religious affiliations at 70% Christian/Catholic (with the non-affiliated at 22%, and non-Christian faithful at 6%).
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
All religions should be treated equally, respecting those who ascribe to them as people, rather than just the label attributed by their faith, with all the baggage that entails.
In sum, I agree with most of your article, and that extremist (elitist) spokespeople for the liberals should probably "take it down a notch" and back away from a strictly atheistic/agnostic/anti-religious message, because it turns off a lot of moderates who might otherwise lean their way, and yes, promotes a feeling of vindication (and backlash) among their counterparts in the extremist religious right. The loudest shouters become the de facto "face" of a group.
I believe, as I feel you implied, you can promote the GOALS of separation of church and state without denigrating either the church or the state, and that those who seek freedom of religion and those who seek freedom from it, can live together harmoniously…if the zealots on BOTH sides of the issue would just let them.
"Secular" means: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis. So to say that religious people can be secular is fine - they can certainly do things that are not religious. But it is weird to say that secular people can be religious since the word "secular" applied to a person means they have no religious or spiritual basis! I am secular and I cannot, therefore, be religious... ever. But really, there are no secular people, there are just secular actions.
Secularization is absolutely the absence of religion. When people talk about secular society, they are not talking about the people having no religion, they are talking about the society and the government having no religion. There is no place for religion in government, at least not in the USA where it is forbidden by our constitution.
It seems like non-religious liberals are being blamed for the troubles with society that they are specifically trying to fix. It almost sounds like victim plaming. As a non-religious liberal who wants to remove religion from government activities/laws, I cannot figure out exactly how I am making things worse - without non-religious liberals, more laws would be based on mythology and backward (anti-science, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-choice) 2000 year old ideas. More people would be forced to follow the religious teachings that they believe to be false or baseless when you remove the non-religious liberals from the fight to make our society more secular. Sure, you as a person that believes there is a god has no problem blaming the non-religious for you perceived problems - it's typical for religious people to blame the non-religious for every problem in the world - but it's not convincing as an argument.
To be honest, I am a non-religious liberal and I have a bias. I suspect that you also have a bias. It sounds like it.