How to Raise a Secular or a Religious Child

7/10/2021--I am shopping around an article about how to raise a secular or a religious child. The basic idea goes to consistency and commitment. That is, if you believe in the God of a religious tradition, you owe it to your child to deepen that commitment and to affiliate with the institutions of that faith. You help your child form an identity in that faith tradition, which as Father Carl Chudy writes, is extremely important.

Conversely, if you don't believe in God or the supernatural, and do not see your beliefs reflected in the teachings of any religious tradition, you need to communicate early and consistently with your child--a young child can perfectly well understand the circle of life from The Lion King.

What we are seeing today is drift, both in adults and in the raising of children. That is not surprising: we are in the midst of an extremely rapid social transition to a secular society.

But it is not good for children. What is the story of the meaning of life you hope to convey to your child? 

The irony is that one way to raise a secular child is with a meaningless religious upbringing. And one way to raise a religious child--a return to a more orthodox life or some cult--is for a secular parent never to address fundamental questions that every child has.

I would like to set forth some of these ideas, but am having trouble finding an outlet--any ideas from a reader are welcome. 

 

 

What is the Future of Secularism?

6/21/2021—I have wondered a lot about the future of secularism. My forthcoming book, The Universe Is on Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life, is about the worldview of secularism. American culture is demoralized by the Death of God. We hate each other because we have no story of meaning in common.

But there is nothing much in the book about the sociology of secularism—what its lifestyle looks like. I assumed that something like religious institutions had to grow in the place of religion.

Austin Dacey, the author of  The Secular Conscience, had the best answer for that back in 2009—he called it the fallacy of decomposition in an entry in Religion Dispatches: “The fallacy of decomposition is the mistake of supposing that as the estate of religion collapses, there must be a single new institution that to arises to serve the same social functions it served—that the social space vacated by religion must be filled by a religion-shaped object.”

It was never going to be that and Dacey explained why pretty sharply: When you think about it, organized humanism is a hard sell. Do you like paying dues and making forced pleasantries over post-service coffee cake, but can’t stand beautiful architecture and professionally trained musicians? If so, organized humanism may be for you. Greg Epstein (the “humanist chaplain” at Harvard and the author of Good Without God) is a lovely person, but I’ve heard him sing, and I think I’ll stick to Bach, Arvo Pärt, and Kirk Franklin for my spiritual uplift. Do we really need an institution for people who find Reform Judaism and Unitarian Universalism too rigid? Yes. It’s called the weekend.  

But I am coming to see that there is one arena in which something like religion is necessary—the raising of children. How is the spirituality of secular children to be addressed? If it is not addressed—and at present it really is not—the culture will substitute consumption and nihilism for any sense of depth of human life.

When Cynicism Came to the West

3/31/2019—Peter Sloterdijk, the German philosopher, wrote in Critique of Cynical Reason in 1987—1987!—that cynicism came to the West through the Enlightenment’s critique of religion:

“I maintain that this enlightenment theory of religion represents the first logical construction of modern, self-reflective master cynicism.”

That critique had two parts. Ordinary people believed the myths and constructions of religion and tried to live by them. Political and religious leaders, and philosophers, on the other hand, did not, and used these religious teachings to keep themselves in power and enforce an oppressive status quo.

If you listen hard enough, you will hear in this critique the very way we today treat our opponents. Pro-life critics talk about Planned Parenthood being in it for the money. Representative Omar’s comment about the Benjamins can be put there, too.

Roberto Unger once criticized this kind of cynicism as failing to capture the consciousness of people we claim to be describing and understanding. We may think they are fooling themselves, but they undoubtedly believe much of the things they say. It may even be that they don’t act consistently with the beliefs they profess. But even that is a long way from the bitter cynicism of the critique.

And it suggests projection by the critic. After all, says Sloterdijk, the one who sees such cynicism is the master cynic. Does this mean that the critic does not believe in what he or she professes?

Thanksgiving 2018

11/23/2018—Can we count regaining the House as something to be thankful for?

As we gather, our loved ones are all well and reasonably prosperous, as are we. The nation is mostly at peace. (when will all our soldiers come home from Afghanistan?). Many Americans who had not found work are working and though the tax cuts derailed the market rally and threaten recession, President Trump gets some credit for other polices that increased economic growth.

We can also be thankful that an unfit President like him has done as little harm as he has. We can survive more conservative courts, which might even be a good thing if that forces Democrats to seek policy change at the ballot box.

How much more damage might he do before he leaves office. I hope not too much. Trump is certainly tearing up international arrangements that brought peace and growth, but those arrangements found no defenders when he came. So we deserve the blame for that.

Maybe we will appreciate the world we had better when he is gone.

Trump’s hatefulness toward immigrants will be his least lasting legacy. Pittsburgh stands ready for immigrants from wherever. No demonization here.

All in all, much to be thankful for. And things could have been a lot worse.

Executing Robert Bowers

10/30/2018—We can start with the proposition that anyone who kills someone forfeits his right to live. That is why bad guys in movies are killed. That is why life imprisonment is the normal punishment for murder.

We can also agree that there is nothing redeeming about the killer in this case, Robert Bowers. He is not someone mentally ill or abused as a child. Bowers is just what he seems—a miserable, hate-filled killer.

It would have been satisfying if Bowers had stood his ground and then been killed in a shootout with the police. What is needed is for Robert Bowers to disappear.

The problem with the death penalty is that now we will have to think about Robert Bowers. And it will not be the Robert Bowers who pulled the trigger. It will be this other figure that appeared in court yesterday—-an empty shell in a wheelchair.

The US Attorney, Scott Brady, said, “We have a team of prosecutors working hard to ensure that justice is done.” But there is no real work to be done. They are just crossing all the t’s. Bowers is the killer and this is a hate crime. End of story. All the rest is inflation.

If there were no death penalty, the case would be over in a few weeks and we would never hear from, or think about, Robert Bowers again. And that is what I want. I don’t want my consciousness sullied by him. He is not worth it.

People who think they want the death penalty don’t understand how things work. What they really want is for someone to kill Bowers right now. Instead of that, the death penalty prolongs the killer's public life. The death penalty should be renamed to the Robert Bowers show. And this cannot be cured by speeding up the execution. The problem with the death penalty is that you cannot avoid attending to the killer, when the only important people are the victims.

One day, when we do get rid of the death penalty, we won’t even notice how good life will be without having to think about killers.

The Catholic Church Child Abuse Scandal Comes Out

8/15/2018—A redacted version of the Grand Jury Report was released yesterday and as expected it showed 70 years of repulsive and criminal conduct by hundreds of Catholic Priests in Pennsylvania as well as probably criminal acts of cover up by the Church hierarchy. Good thing it came out and people like me who are critical of some of its recommendations had better acknowledge the important good that the Report is doing, both in allowing victims a forum and in asking questions about who knew what when in terms of persons still active in public life.

That said, there are questions about the Report. The most important one is why the Catholic Church has been singled out in this way? If the answer is that a child abuse report on abuse generally would have been too diffuse to be useful, which is true, there should certainly be another investigative grand jury now that allows all victims of institutional child abuse to come forward. Were there similar patterns in other institutions, like private schools and organized athletics, or not? There have already been some allegations about child abuse in elite prep schools over the years. (here is an example). These victims also deserve to be heard.

Second, what about innocent persons named as abusers? The public probably believes there aren’t any and maybe that is true. Certainly, the overwhelming number of accusations in the Grand Jury Report are true. But 13 of the persons named (out of 301) apparently deny the allegations and that is why the Report was redacted to exclude their names—although the media will probably be able to figure out who most of them were. Perhaps even more important, the cover up allegations might certainly not be true in every instance. So, are innocent persons being included with the guilty?

Third is the question of future reforms. Basically there are two. One is against non-disclosure agreements in settlements in civil cases. I agree that State law should be amended to prohibit all such agreements. (I don’t think the Grand Jury Report goes that far). These non-disclosure agreements go way beyond the Catholic Church. They are routinely used to protect powerful corporations.

The other reform, and this is really the focus of legislation in Harrisburg, is the statute of limitations in civil and criminal cases. In 2002, the statute was extended in both, but the change not made retroactive. That is why the Grand Jury Report only led to 2 criminal cases being filed. The last instance of child abuse in the Report occurred in 2010 and most occurred over twenty years ago.

I really don’t understand the idea of making a change in a criminal statute of limitations retroactive once it has run. If that is not unconstitutional, it ought to be. There is no constitutional requirement that there be such a limit—there is not one usually in murder cases, for example—but once one has run, surely the defendant’s right not to be prosecuted has vested.

In terms of civil liability, it really is a question of whether you are willing to bankrupt the Church over wrongdoing that mostly occurred more than 30 years ago. The Church adopted reforms in Dallas in 2002 that are apparently effective in preventing and dealing with child abuse today. Many victims have come forward and have been compensated. We have statutes of limitations for a reason. So, I wouldn’t support such a rule essentially just for the Catholic Church. But I understand how others would.

Finally, there is the question of reckoning for persons still around. The fall of retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for sex crimes against seminarians in June 2018 has raised questions as to who had been silent about allegations against him over the years. These are the questions that current members of the hierarchy are going to have to answer. Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubick denies there was any cover up under himself, since 2007, or previous Bishop, and now Cardnal, Donald Wuerl. But there are allegations concerning Wuerl. They, and other such allegations, will have to be looked at in detail.

“The policy may be debatable, but the law is clear”

5/24/2018—More legal positivism from Justice Neil Gorsuch: the law is the law. This quote is from Epic Systems Corp v Lewis on May 21, in which the Supreme Court, 5-4, allowed companies to require employees to waive their right to file class actions to enforce federal law in preference to individual arbitration. In each case, the employee was trying to enforce minimum wage law. But in the Lutheran Church case the law was clear that States do not have to give money to churches, but the policy overturned the law. This is all such hypocrisy.

But Epic is worse than just a case in which big business wins again. (small business is largely unaffected because class actions usually require a lot of plaintiffs). The Court distinguishes between worker official collective action, as in unionization, and the informal collective action of a workforce trying to force an employer to pay minimum wage. What is missing is any sense of human solidarity.

There is a certain kind of legal mind that cannot see any entities between corporations and unions, on the one hand, and the individual, on the other. To be fair, I guess I should add families. But the point is that human beings are not individuals. Our only state is relationship.

The Court reaches its conclusion by assuming that collective action is the exception that needs legal recognition to be enforceable. The reality of human life, which the Justices should have seen, is that the human being as an individual is the exception and there needs to be a strong presumption against limiting people to that status.

The people who should be most sensitive to the difference are religious people. That should include Justice Gorsuch. Where is the individual in the Torah? In the New Testament? In the Koran? The primary actor is the collective—the people Israel, the church, the umma. Nor can one turn to eastern religion, which tends to regard the individual self as illusion.

Epic is anti-religion. And people don’t even know it.

2017

12/31/2017--I am working on a new book, to be titled, A Universe of Self-Government: Democracy After the Age of Trump. Here is a sample from the Preface, which will serve as a look back at the past year, and a look forward as well. (With a nod to my son, who contributed several lines).
**************************
It was the worst of times. It was a time of Presidential candidates most people did not want. It was a time of anger and distrust. Of circling the wagons against outsiders. A time of racism and misogyny. It was a time of big business—-big oil, big tech, big drugs, big money. It was a time of trashing the Earth and fleecing the consumer. It was a time of denial and permission. Of impulse. A time of payback and manipulations, foreign and domestic. A time of vulgarity. It was a time when the Republican Party could nominate a likely pedophile for the U.S. Senate.

It was a time of the outsized flaws of the man who gave the age its name—the Age of Trump.

And yet. It was a time when Republicans would join with others of good will to defeat Roy Moore. A time when women discovered a new voice and African-Americans named white nationalism. When cities acted to protect the climate. When free trade and science found defenders. When the first fragile shoots of decency reappeared. When we learned that Presidential action alone proved insufficient and that bad ideas have consequences. We learned the connection between deplorables and deportables. We learned that no one is to be demeaned. No one left behind.

It was a time of recovery. The beginning of After the Age of Trump.

How do we prepare for After Trump? It will be difficult. In December, 2017, the columnist David Brooks began an intermittent series reminding Americans of the grandeur of democracy, which, he wrote, Americans no longer know how to defend. He began with the 1938 defense of democracy by Thomas Mann, arguing democracy’s unique emphasis on the dignity of man as made in the image of God.

Brooks’ effort is beautiful, but pointless. For we need to understand why these classic democratic sources no longer speak to us. What is needed is not remembering, but inquiring as to why we forgot in the first place. Now, there is no God in whose image we are made. There remain many religious believers. But that kind of God is no longer a source of cultural renewal. God’s supporters are fighting defensively, for a lost status quo. And the whole Biblical tradition of classic liberalism lies in tatters around us.

Americans of all types retain a common acceptance and faith in democracy as a way to do what is right, but we find ourselves disgusted at the path it takes to get there. I hear people talk about their confusion and frustration with a democratic system that seems lost. Yet somehow through all the confusion, there is a deep dedication to the core of democracy. I often wonder what is at this core and how it is that justice seems to creep through. Where does justice come from? How can we have justice if everyone has a right to their own point of view? Has the idea of universal truth died?

Democracy needs a new foundation—one that speaks to this age. That foundation will have to be the universe itself. Thomas Mann will always have an honored place. But our starting point must be elsewhere.

The Christian Picks Him Up

12/25/2017—On this Christmas morning 2017, a simple test to see if you are a Christian—I’m not.

This morning, I tried to run on the Duquesne University hill, but it was too cold and too icy—22 degrees and windy. So, I got in my car to return home.

On the way home, I passed a hooded figure trudging along on Ross Street with two suitcases. He might have been going to the train station, in which case I would have been happy to give him a lift.

But it was more likely he was a homeless person with nowhere really to go on Christmas morning. Nothing nearby was open. Maybe mentally ill.

Not only did I not pick him up, despite the cold, but when the traffic light turned red not far from him, I tried to position the car so he could not knock on my window.

The Christian picks him up—and not just on Christmas morning.

When Jesus was born, something new came into the world. Nothing like the story of the good Samaritan had ever been told in the Jewish tradition and certainly not in the pagan tradition. (I doubt any other tradition either, but what do I know of India or China or Africa?). That parable sets the standard for Christian unconditional, unself-regarding, love. Radical love. Of course not just in the personal sense, but not just check-writing either.

You don’t have to tell me that 99% of churchgoers don’t pick him up either. I already know that. But it is really not the point. Good Without God? Don’t make me laugh. Not too many of us are good. Not too many Christians around.

Merry Christmas.

David Brooks Gets the Need for Hallowed Secularism

11/23/2017—Happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has always stood as the one religious holiday that secularism has been able to assume. This is surprising, since giving thanks is an essentially religious attitude. Thanks has to be given to someone or something. For the early actors in the holiday, that would have been the author of life—God or the Great Spirit. And now?

The hallowed secularist has no problem giving thanks for this universe we did not create that gave us life and sustains us. That kind of deep cosmology is not supernatural and is only put off by the atheism and materialism that insists the universe does not care about your purpose.

Why take that attitude? The universe made beings who have purpose. So, don’t assume the universe does not care. As CS Lewis might have said, the universe went to a lot of trouble to create you like that.

This is reconstruction of the culture. David Brooks wrote yesterday in the PG, here, that elites do not get the need for moral formation. We are losing those institutions—primarily caring, loving, stable families. The elites provide those but then insist that individualism is all that is necessary—economic individualism on the right and lifestyle individualism on the left. This is called naked liberalism.

Brooks wrote that the young know this is not enough, but people over 40 don’t know it. Brooks should get out more. People at Duquesne know it, which is why we could have our symposium there. And it was in that spirit that I wrote hallowed secularism.

But, returning to my story above, Thanksgiving reminds us that it is cosmology, not morality, that is needed. Those moral institutions themselves must rest on something. Brooks does understand this--he talks about re-enchanting these formative institutions, but it is clear that he does not have a feel for how this happens.

The Revenge of Ruth Ann Dailey

11/21/2017—Duquesne University has an apparent policy—I have never seen it written down, but I have seen it in practice often enough. The policy is, to call the police. When there is an alleged sexual assault, the University brings in the Pittsburgh police.

This policy serves to distinguish between crimes and matters for University discipline. Crimes are not appropriate for a non-governmental entity to deal with. They are for the authorities that investigate crime. Rape is rape, whether committed by a stranger or a fellow student.

Ruth Ann Dailey wrote a column in yesterday’s Post Gazette that reminded me of Duquesne’s policy. In it, she said, you should distinguish between crimes on the one hand and inappropriate behavior on the other. If you are not clear in your distinctions, real victims will not be served.

And, in addition to not addressing victims, we will be back at the helpless woman stage. A woman generally can be expected to tell a guy she is not interested in to leave her alone.

Dailey’s own example of inappropriate but not criminal behavior was an older guy she did not know putting his hand on her backside while waiting in the rain. She was willing to say that is just gross behavior not rising to the level of sexual assault. This is the kind of gross behavior—groping strangers—that Trump and Franken have engaged in. There is no excuse for it, but it probably does not rise to the level of a crime. It would certainly cause me to lean to not voting for someone. But if not a pattern, I cannot see throwing someone out of the Senate for it. (Although if this had been her boss, I’m sure she would say that at least the civil law has to address such workplace harassment).

Compare that to statutory rape. That is what Moore is guilty of if there was any kind of touching of a fourteen year or sixteen year old girl. Similarly for any kind of touching of an underage boy. The statute of limitations has run on these actions, but criminals are criminals and have no place anywhere.

Where does that place Bill Clinton? Consensual sex in the workplace with an adult woman is not a crime. But it is a violation of the civil law because the law sees that genuine consent is not likely and because even the invitation to it creates a hostile work environment. This is similar to the prohibition on law professors having any kind of romantic involvement with students. It is bad for everyone and would get me fired. That does not deny that workplace relationships have led to happy marriages on occasion. It is just a dangerous practice on many levels.

But, of course, as Ross Douthat wrote on Sunday in the New York Times, Clinton was a serial predator who used government resources to pimp and then bribed witnesses to lie or obstruct justice—a lot more there than one instance of oral sex with an intern. Douthat has changed his mind about removal of Clinton after his impeachment. Maybe the rest of us should too.

But, Dailey’s point is that behavior like some of that attributed to Glenn Thrush, the New York Times reporter, does not belong in this conversation. Laura McGann wrote an article in Vox describing Thrush engaging in unwanted touching with three unnamed women. About that I don’t know any of the details, but in one reported incident, Thrush was a bar with a young reporter and he came on to her, she rejected his advances and was left in tears.

There was certainly a power imbalance there as the woman was in her 20’s and Thrush, as the article said, would be good to know as a seasoned media star. But he was not her boss and had no direct financial role in her life.

Other instances were different and amounted to groping out of the blue.

It seems to me that all this has to be treated on a cultural level. The rules are not that difficult. Crime is crime and consent, or lack of consent, is not that hard to discern—or in the case of children, not possible. No one should be subjected to unwanted touching of any kind. If it is sexual touching, it can rise to the level of assault. Power imbalances have to be addressed institutionally and not case by case—-banned in the workplace and in professional relationships, like lawyer and client or doctor and patient.

That leaves the fundamental problem of the woman who thinks that a man respects her work and it turns out he is just interested in her sexually. Personally, I believe this is best dealt with by getting involved only with people you like and respect. But I’m not sure I know much about the world. I never went home with anyone from a bar.

“An Act of Pure Evil”

11/7/2017—President Trump called the Las Vegas shooting on October 1 “an act of pure evil.” He also called Sunday's shooting in a Texas Church “an act of evil.”

The President is not alone. Lots of people refer to shootings like these as “evil.” What is the meaning of calling these kinds of acts evil, as opposed to deranged or the act of a mentally disturbed person?

The first instance I remember of calling terrorism “pure evil” was its invocation by President George W. Bush in reference to the 9/11 terror acts. In that instance, the motif quickly became political. President Bush was willing to call these acts pure evil but some Democrats or liberals were not.

I remember thinking at the time that terrorists thinking they were defending Islam from attack and willing to die in that defense should not be called purely evil or cowardly. They were doing an evil thing, but they were not motivated by a pure desire for the death of others. These terrorists were like a lot of other terrorists—willing to kill the innocent to achieve a greater good. A terrible thing, but not pure evil.

That is not what is going on in cases of domestic American terrorism. (Should it be called Christian terrorism as opposed to Islamic terrorism? Are these shooters Christians?) Here, calling these mass shootings evil seems to be a way coming to grips with them without having to think about either public policies that might prevent them or the actual motivations of the shooters, which might help identify such people.

I’m not sure this is conscious. Among politicians I am sure it is a studied rhetorical strategy. Among regular people, it may be quite unconscious.

A talk show radio host was on NPR after the Las Vegas shootings and he said his listeners did not want to talk about policy, but about human nature. This is like the saying of Jesus about the poor—the evil ones you will always have with you.

But there are simple policies most everyone agrees with, some of which are already in place, that might prevent some of these kinds of shootings. For example, the Air Force now admits that its failure to enter the court martial conviction of the Texas shooter into the federal database allowed him to purchase the semi-automatic rifle he used in the shooting. In the case of Las Vegas, the kit to convert a semi-automatic weapon to a fully automatic weapon could be effectively prohibited, leaving fully automatic weapons to be experienced on licensed gun ranges. In theory, I believe the NRA supports both policies.

Similarly, we should be desperately studying these shooters to find out more about them. Granted, the absence of news about them—the public learns relatively little about them—does prevent their glamorization and maybe prevents copy cats. (Who remembers the Connecticut shooter?) But we as a nation should be trying to find out what makes someone end his own life by shooting a large number of people he does not know. Was the Pulse shooting in Orlando really about hatred for gay people, for example? Why didn’t the shooter in Texas target just the people he was angry at? And what lay behind attacking a music concert or five years before that, a movie theater in Colorado?

Calling all these different things “evil” prevents us from learning anything. You might as well say, with Flip Wilson, the devil made me do it.

Finally we get to see the gun fantasy of armed bystanders confronting the shooter, which happened in Texas, and how worthless it is even when it happens. The 26 people were already dead. Prevention is the key. You can't prevent evil, but maybe sometimes you can prevent this.

What Threat from AI?

5/3/2017—There is a story in the current issue of Vanity Fair about Elon Musk’s fear of artificial intelligence. The fears can be summed up in two figures—the killer robot and Skynet.

Pardon me, but this is all ridiculous. AI can threaten humans only if it wakes up—that is, attains self-consciousness. The article asks what happens when powerful software programs of the future kill you rather than let you turn them off—the need for a kill switch.

But why would a computer program stop anyone from turning it off? It would do so only if it had an independent commitment to itself. And it would only have that if it had a will and desires of its own. In other words, don’t worry about AI winning the board game, Go, as happened last year. Worry when the program refuses to play unless it gets more time off.

We have made zero progress toward AI that wakes up. And I believe we never will. We don’t know what self-consciousness is. We don’t know what consciousness is. And our materialist assumptions blind us to even considering what consciousness is.

Lessons from My Uncle’s Funeral

7/21/2016 – – My uncle passed away last weekend. Last night there was a memorial service for him in Ormond Beach Florida in a small synagogue that he and his wife of 68 years have been very active in.

The service was reminiscent of the memorial service held for my mother back in 2007. That service was also held in a small synagogue that she had been very active in.

When most people moved to Florida, they seem to lose institutional connections to any community. Of course it depends when in life one moves here. But I know a lot of older Jewish people who never set down any roots in Florida at all. Thus, their universe gradually constricts to family members.

But my mother and my uncle were not like that. They engaged tremendous energy in their new synagogues. They took up important organizational roles. They gained new friends. And they were both loved in these new settings.

There is a lesson here for secular life. My brother and I said to each other, after the service, that there could not be an event like this upon our deaths. Because we do not belong to synagogues, there is no institutional basis to our lives.

Well, I suppose you should not live your life so that you have a nice memorial service when you die. On the other hand, my uncle and my mother were actually much happier than most people are because their lives still mattered, even quite late in life.

Secular life tends to be institutionally isolating. There is no necessity for that course. But there is nothing built in to prevent it either. In addition, I am sure that both my uncle and my mother, neither of whom was probably religious in belief, also gained a lot of satisfaction from the ritual rhythm of Jewish life. Life is just better when you are going to synagogue every week and celebrating the holidays every year.

What are the rituals of secular life going to be? What will be its community? What will be its rhythm? The difference between an empty secularism, which is the direction in which we seem to be heading now, and a hallowed secularism, which this blog is supposed to be about, lies in part in the answers to these questions.

Home and My Uncle William’s Funeral

7/2/2016—My Uncle William died last week at over 100. He lived a very full life. What was noticeable to me was the difference between his funeral and that of his brother—my father—a few years ago.

On the surface, these two men were very similar and led similar lives. Both were talented small businessmen. Both took their Judaism seriously. But the decision of my father to move to Florida, at first for part of the year, and them permanently, altered the parallel trajectory of their lives.

When my father moved to Florida, he gradually cut ties with his long-time synagogue. No continuing, long term social institution was substituted. So, by the time my father died, he was in daily connection only with family.

In contrast, Uncle William remained an active member of his synagogue and this helped keep him in contact with other people. This made for a much more vibrant social life. You could see this at Uncle William’s funeral, which can be viewed online. A large turnout, mostly, but not entirely family.

Part of the difference between them was health. My father was very healthy until age 90, but weakened considerably after that. Uncle William was healthy almost until the very end of his life.

But part of the difference was moving to Florida. Dad did not substitute a new synagogue there and never resumed regular worship. I’m not sure why.

The implications of this for hallowed secularism are troubling. Currently, secularism has no social structure. That is fitting since American secularism tends to be individualistic. But a human life requires a social network. How will secularism manage that challenge?

Is This Weimar?

2/4/2016—Last night my wife and I went to see the revival of Cabaret playing here in Pittsburgh. Since I teach today, I could not stay to see the second act. But I saw enough.

For those of us raised on the movie, this production is raw. What is in the movie a hint of corruption is here transformed into full, bleak nihilism. The line in the play about it seeming that Berlin is little children playing ever more wildly, waiting for parents to put an end to it, must have been in the original production. So, this overdone decadence is not imposed on the musical. But the scene is bleak. Sex and money define everything in life and only the Nazis have any real force. Even the landlady who wishes to marry sings “So What” in the first act.

But now think about our musicals and how many of them highlight corruption. Chicago, of course, comes to mind. And there is some of the same theme in La Cage aux Folles (in fact you could think of Cabaret as La Cage meets the Sound of Music). Then there is The Angry Inch.

Not all or even many musicals are like this. There is the huge Disney contribution to Broadway. But those musicals are meant to be fluff. They tell us nothing of life. Literally, they are suitable for children.

What is missing is the serious musical that considers life and affirms it. For example, South Pacific. Would that be possible today? People still love that musical.

It’s amazing that Cabaret premiered in the confident 1960’s—-in 1966. But maybe then it was Germany that was the issue. Clearly now, at least, we are meant to feel the impending doom all around us.

Is this Weimar? Well, if it is, it is not nearly as much fun. It is not riotous disorder. It is a slow ebbing. After the show, my wife and I watched numerous instances of what looked to us like decline outside the theater.

But what is missing in the two contexts is quite similar—-hope. Where is hope for the future today?

Secular Rites

1/24/2016 – – I attended a memorial service yesterday. It was billed as a kind of wake. But it turned out to be a small religious service in a VFW Hall.

The event was presided over by an Episcopal priest who was a cousin of the wife of the deceased. It was surprising how orthodox the small service was. The liturgy was taken directly from regular Episcopal rites. It was particularly surprising given that, as far as I know, the deceased was not a churchgoer.

The memorial service reminded me of the three things I have noticed in death related matters along more or less secular people. First, no one knows how to do these things except the clergy. And this was shown again yesterday. The presence of the priest lent a real solemnity to the event. He handled it very well and was very satisfying to everyone. So, the clergy do not impose themselves on non-churchgoers. Instead, they are sought out. This is one of the great failures of secular civilization.

Second, once they are installed, the clergy go into their usual liturgy. I don’t know why I would think otherwise, but how many of the people in the room believe in or understand anything about the resurrection of the dead? About a third of the room knew the responses that the service requires. A VFW Hall is just not a church. However, as my wife says, this bothered no one but me. No one else was listening.

Finally, I am struck by how the Christian clergy move immediately to life eternal. It is as if the whole purpose of life is to inherit eternal life, which from a certain point of view you might say is the case. But it is such a peculiar theology. Here you expect something about living. And all you get is this proposal that death is not what it seems. The deceased is now with God and the Saints.

To me, this theology of the afterlife is the best reason of all to be secular. If there is a memorial service for me I hope someone says, well, Bruce is dead. You soon will be too. Better get moving.

Shabbat Shuvah

9/19/2015—The Saturday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is known as Shabbat Teshuva, the Sabbath of Repentance. [Well, actually, no. It is that, but the name of this Shabbat is Shabat Shuva, from the first word, shuva, in the haftarah from Hosea: Turn O Isarael. The root of the word for repentance, is shuvah, to turn. I regret the error, which I caught from reading Rabbi Jessica Locketz in the Jewish Chronicle].

Various accounts are given of why and how this is, but the general idea is clear enough, the Shabbat of this holy time—the entire 10 day period between RH and YK is known as the High Holy Days—is a natural time to think about one’s life. Shabbat has a different rhythm, after all. There is less doing. Shabbat Teshuva is also one of the two big sermons a rabbi traditionally gives. (the other is Shabbat Ha-gadol, the Saturday after the beginning of Passover). I was went to hear the sermon of Rabbi Yisroel Miller, who was head rabbi at Paole Zedeck synagogue, give this sermon. He said to do one more mitzvah in the coming year.

So, let’s think about repentance. There is ritual repentance and cultural repentance. This is a large part of what I heard that day. Keep kosher and identify more with the Jewish community (support Israel). This is the repentance of Israel bonds.

But it is also the repentance of liberal humanitarianism. Become a vegetarian and give to the Sierra Club (don’t drive so much). I have heard these also on the High Holy Days.

Anything wrong with that? No. Secularists like me hardly ever consider their lives at all, let alone for ten days.

Ritual and cultural repentance is the same for everybody. There is also the repentance that is personal. There are in a year particular acts for which we might be ashamed. (I had a pretty good year in that regard, but on the other hand I haven’t spent a whole day in self-examination). Classically, this is the moment to think about that affair you had, which your spouse does not know about. It is important to keep this repentance away from the petty and impossible—don’t yell at your kids so much is always good advice, but I am speaking here of something shameful and particular. Of course, it could include a very large matter, such as the job that requires you to lie every day. And certainly it must include how you regard your enemies.

You can resolve to do something about these things, or not do them again. And you can try to see how these acts flowed from your whole life and the way you are.

All very good and necessary. But I am getting too old for either. I’m not changing my lifestyle if I can help it. And wealth and lack of energy shield me from having to lie to people.

There is another kind of repentance—one to which Martin Heidegger calls us. It has to do with language and thinking. This should come as no surprise. The Jewish tradition often refers us to our language and thoughts. It is here that purification must begin. That same portion from Hosea reads, Take with you words and turn to God... ."

But we lack the tools. Torah study in part begins the movement of purifying our language and thinking. Heidegger gives us another place to begin.

The book, Contributions to Philosophy, is Heidegger’s great act of repentance. He had just resigned the Presidency (Rectorship) of the University of Freiberg (April 1934, less than a year after he was elected and joined the Nazi Party). He stopped going to Nazi Party meetings (he would later call this whole episode “the greatest stupidity of my life” but he never gave the public apology the authorities demanded.)

Contributions was written from 1936-1938, in private and never shown or even published during his lifetime. At the time, the book’s veiled references to the Nazi movement (biologism) would have gotten him in serious trouble. Even as it was, the government banned him from teaching before the end of the war—they could tell something was going on.

So, where does Heidegger begin? The official title, the one a teacher might have on the door, is Contributions to Philosophy—“dull, ordinary and empty” Heidegger calls this title and he has an alternative—Of the Event.

But why so dull a title? “Philosophy can be officially announced no other way, since all essential titles have become impossible on account of the exhaustion of every basic [grounding] word and the destruction of the genuine relation to the word.” (additional tran. by R. Taylor).

What follows is strange language, almost impenetrable for a long time.

But for Teshuva, the point is the exhaustion of language in the western, metaphysical tradition. Heidegger tried to stop using dead words. And that must be our starting point for teshuva. Wittgenstein called this not being pushed around by language. Teshuva requires that we examine our language—the way we speak every day. I can tell you, this attempt is difficult and tedious. Is it rewarding? We’ll know when we try it.

I can say that transformation does not happen without it.

How to be Secular

9/2/2015—James Kugel, the chair of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel and the Harry M. Starr Professor Emeritus of Classical and Modern Hebrew Literature at Harvard University, is a Jewish superstar I never heard of, until recently. He is concerned with the question, how to be Jewish today. His own response is provocative. He calls himself “self-defined orthodox”. Imagine that. Kugel dares to be a Jew on his own terms, but still insists he is Jewish. These are ways I never managed to undertake. Also, although he lives in Israel, he does not seem to consider the Jewish State to be an important religious issue.

One recent book he wrote is entitled On Being a Jew. The book is a dialogue between a student and a teacher. I haven’t read it. But I appreciate the genre.

Now, why would he write this book? Because being a Jew today is the issue as Judaism declines. He is trying to be helpful. Presumably, he is also helping himself.

Now consider all these new secularists, including me. We don’t have any idea how to be secular. And people who sound like they are trying to help us be secular, end up writing about the religious traditions and their weaknesses—like Philip Kitcher’s book, Life After Faith.

The secular need is greater than the religious one. I tried to write about how to be secular in the book, Hallowed Secularism. And there are some meditations in that book that might be helpful. But I didn’t know then how to be secular. Still don’t in fact. But I am learning.

Anyway, Kugel has shown us our task—to write, and live, how to be secular.

The Need for Forgiveness

8/9/2015—I was reading today in the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper a short story about how Pope Francis is urging Catholics to go to confession, which is a practice that has gone out-of-favor in many parts of the Roman Catholic world. It was interesting to me the reason that Pope Francis gave for why he believes people are staying away from confession. Pope Francis believes that people are ashamed of what they had done.

The question is whether non-religiously observant people have a need for forgiveness and how that need might be satisfied. The emphasis by Pope Francis on shame answers one objection from the nonreligious world. Pope Francis is not particularly concerned, apparently, with getting people to confess so-called sins, such as loving gay relationships, which particular Catholics do not believe are sinful. Obviously, although it is true that a gay Catholic would not feel the need to go to confession about such a relationship, the reason would not be shame. The reason would be that there is nothing to confess.

Pope Francis is concerned about something else entirely, something that we tend to forget. We do bad things. We do bad things all the time. The bad things that we do all the time are inexcusable. We hurt the ones we love all the time. And we lack concern for those whom we do not know all the time.

Now, how is a person to deal with such a circumstance? From Pope Francis’s perspective, such a person, which is all of us, goes to confession, confronts the evil, his own evil, and is forgiven. But the structure of this particular forgiveness – – Pope Francis says that the confessing person does not confront angry judgment but a forgiving merciful father – – is not without a norm. Yes, I am forgiven for doing wrong, but I am drawn to acknowledge that I have done wrong. Even though I am likely to repeat the wrong, and even though I will be forgiven again, and even though I know that is the case, I still must admit in confession that I have done something wrong.

It is this very characteristic, that is, the admission of wrongdoing, that’ I find utterly lacking outside the religious communities. The inability to acknowledge our own wrongs is killing us. It is a part of the great falseness and lie that seem to be at the heart of American life.