Monday, August 20, 2007

Christopher Hitchens and Hallowed Secularism

8/20/2007--I read the story Christopher Hitchens wrote recently in Vanity Fair about his book tour for God Is Not Great. I was impressed by how smart Hitchens is and depressed by how shallow his challenge to religion is. Hitchens’ basic argument is that religious people do terrible things—although of course they sometimes do good things too--and that secular people do good things. But, while secularism does not cause anyone to actually do bad things, religion does cause bad behavior. Hitchens has a standing bet challenging anyone to come up with something good that only a religious person would do.

The main response to Hitchens is that his challenge cannot be tested in this culture because there is no such thing as a person unaffected by religious categories. The very concept of doing good is, in the West, an invention of Judaism and Christianity. Before they influenced the western world, people of course did things we now think of as good, but the category that one should do good things did not exist. As I think Peter Brown put it, almsgiving, that is, support for the poor, was not something Romans did.

So, there is no way to really answer Hitchens’ question. The problem for him is that this is a post-Christian culture. That means that our categories of cultural behavior are still premised on a Judeo-Christian outlook. Even people like Hitchens, who fancy themselves atheists, know what the biblical God is like. That influence will take generations to weaken, although in many ways secularism is growing in America and the West.

Nevertheless, there is one way to begin to test Hitchens’ surmise. We simply look at those parts of our culture furthest away from Christian life and ask whether they seem a good bet to ground a healthy and sustainable culture in the future. Since the market is the part of the culture I would identify as furthest from the Church, and since I think the market’s influence on human attitudes is harmful, I am afraid secular culture as currently constituted is not self-sustaining in a healthy way.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, Bruce: A disclaimer: I didn’t read Hitchens and I haven’t read all of your postings, so this comment is just an off-the-top of my head reaction to this one post.

    I take it you’re saying that any “good” act-- even by those who “fancy” themselves to be atheists-- is cultural behavior played out against an unavoidable background of religious categories that supply the only vocabulary we have. I’m not sure I agree that institutional “Western” religion has in effect co-opted all concepts of good behavior by Westerners. Pardon the expression, but that sounds a little to Old Testament/ New Testament for me personally. I know you said the "good" question can’t be answered, but isn’t that because you begged the question?

    Further, what’s your response to Hitchens’ claim that secularism as such does not cause bad acts of the kind religion causes? I don’t see that you respond to the “bad” challenge.

    Other random thoughts:
    Did no one in pre-Judeo-Christian Western world distinguish between doing good and doing evil? Doesn’t “doing good things” mean more than “doing good” in the sense of almsgiving and suchlike. (Hah, I don’t often get to use “suchlike.”) If “doing good things” is more expansive, how is the Judeo-Christian innovation of almsgiving relevant to your point? (I’m convincing myself that I’m not understanding you.)

    Regarding almsgiving--I understood that giving, including almsgiving, is and always has been foundational to both Buddhism and Islam. Of course, Buddhism is older than Judeo-Christianity although Islam as daughter/sister religion is younger, and they’re both non-Western, I suppose. Still, is it too simplistic today to characterize our culture as “post-Christian”, letting our tunnel vision inflate the importance of Judeo-Christianity’s role in “doing good”? And then if it's not a simply dichotomy--Judeo-Christianity v. secularism--where are we?

    Finally, re your last paragraph, and especially your last sentence:

    “ Since the market is the part of the culture I would identify as furthest from the Church, and since I think the market’s influence on human attitudes is harmful, I am afraid secular culture as currently constituted is not self-sustaining in a healthy way.”

    Are you begging the question again?
    Also, what is the basis for asserting that the “market” is the apotheosis of secularism and is the “part” of the culture that is “furthest away from Christian life”? Is the “market” a monolithic, definable, discrete thing? Aren’t there lots of Christians who have found that market and their version of Christianity entirely compatible?

    I have no answers—only questions!

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