6/4/2016--I'll be traveling some in June, but I will try to be more faithful in blogging. For my term as Associate Dean at Duquesne Law School is ending and my life in thinking is about to begin again.
This last week I spoke to a group of civilians--non-lawyers--about Judaism as part of a class on Comparative Religion. At the same time, I submitted a proposed paper to the Association of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools to speak at their meeting in September. These two matters come together for the future.
The issue is American Democracy and what is wrong with it. Why are we so angry and disappointed? Some say the reasons are material, but I believe the reasons are basically spiritual. We are a people who are lost. We no longer get our orientation from traditional religion, but we have no substitute. Most secularists--people who don't go to Church or Mosque or Temple or Synagogue--and some who do, subscribe to a worldview that is a dead end. They think they are rationalists--hence the Reason Rally today in Washington.
But they are not rationalists--they are a kind of materialist. They reject God for the silliest reason: that he is invisible and inexplicable. Well so is quantum entanglement.
I am what you might call a minimal materialist. I reject God as a being. But of course all thinking religious people reject God as a being also.
The heart of my alternative to God as a being is hallowed secularism. Secular because there cannot be a quasi-physical realm like a heaven where spirits act like people. Hallowed because this reality is holy--the missing ingredient at the Reason Rally.
My hero is Sarah Blumenthal from the book, City of God, by E.L. Doctorow. Sarah is a liberal rabbi and gives a talk. God is something evolving, she says. And what about humans? We live out a teleology that gives one substantive indication of itself--that we live in moral consequence.
There you have the future of secularism--teleology and moral consequence. Teleology: this reality is not an accident. Yes, it has random features. But look at humans. We are the universe becoming aware of itself. No mere materialism can capture that. And we know what it means to live a moral life. That means that morality is real--not a matter of opinion. So much flows from that.
Of course we disagree in the present about moral questions. But we do a really good job historically in figuring out the right answers to moral questions.
But, shockingly, I could almost describe Judaism as a teleology of moral consequence, too.
Showing posts with label What Makes Hallowed Secularism Hallowed?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label What Makes Hallowed Secularism Hallowed?. Show all posts
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Thursday, August 29, 2013
No New Year for Secularists
8/29/2013—Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this coming Wednesday night. The Jewish New Year festival is not complete until the end of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on Saturday night, September 14. This information came to me this year as something of a shock. Because I no longer inhabit a Jewish world, I have completely lost the rhythm of a sacred calendar that used to be very meaningful to me.
Since I am studying Christian theology four days a week, I am still in contact with a sacred story of the universe. But I realize how little depth there would be in my life otherwise. One day would pretty much be like another. The rhythm of life would be set, and is set really, by secular events, such as the beginning of the school year, my neighborhood house tour, the local YMCA speakers series, Halloween and so forth.
There is nothing wrong with such a rhythm, but there is something missing. When I lived in a sacred space and time, even though I was really not a believer for much of my life, I was regularly confronted with questions that define a human existence: am I thankful for my existence?, what is the ground of existence?, what is the meaning of existence?, what do I regard as holy and apart from ordinary things?, what does history teach?, to what is my life dedicated?, and most important, have I been faithful to the promise that is my life?
That last question gets asked in secularism in a perverted way—have I worked hard, have I been creative, even have I lost weight? This does not capture faithfulness. The faithfulness question is this: have I retained reverence for the miracle of existence and have I treated everyone and everything around me out of that reverence?
The answer is no, of course. And that finally is the deeper meaning of a sacred calendar. That calendar offers the promise of renewal. That is what repentance during the Days of Awe—-the name of the Jewish Near Year festival-—means. That is what a secular life lacks.
I am fortunate. I still can remember what living within a religious tradition means. My children may still remember, to a lesser extent. Their children probably will not, or if they do, the children of their children, my great grandchildren, and following generations mostly will not.
What will happen then? To them and ultimately to humankind? A deeper secular life is needed. I believe that will happen. But only after the need for this is embraced. That is the task of Hallowed Secularism.
Since I am studying Christian theology four days a week, I am still in contact with a sacred story of the universe. But I realize how little depth there would be in my life otherwise. One day would pretty much be like another. The rhythm of life would be set, and is set really, by secular events, such as the beginning of the school year, my neighborhood house tour, the local YMCA speakers series, Halloween and so forth.
There is nothing wrong with such a rhythm, but there is something missing. When I lived in a sacred space and time, even though I was really not a believer for much of my life, I was regularly confronted with questions that define a human existence: am I thankful for my existence?, what is the ground of existence?, what is the meaning of existence?, what do I regard as holy and apart from ordinary things?, what does history teach?, to what is my life dedicated?, and most important, have I been faithful to the promise that is my life?
That last question gets asked in secularism in a perverted way—have I worked hard, have I been creative, even have I lost weight? This does not capture faithfulness. The faithfulness question is this: have I retained reverence for the miracle of existence and have I treated everyone and everything around me out of that reverence?
The answer is no, of course. And that finally is the deeper meaning of a sacred calendar. That calendar offers the promise of renewal. That is what repentance during the Days of Awe—-the name of the Jewish Near Year festival-—means. That is what a secular life lacks.
I am fortunate. I still can remember what living within a religious tradition means. My children may still remember, to a lesser extent. Their children probably will not, or if they do, the children of their children, my great grandchildren, and following generations mostly will not.
What will happen then? To them and ultimately to humankind? A deeper secular life is needed. I believe that will happen. But only after the need for this is embraced. That is the task of Hallowed Secularism.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Rethinking Secularism or Enjoying It?
8/26/2011—Two books are out that illustrate differing approaches to secular life. One is The Joy of Secularism (Princeton), which I discussed in a prior post. That book, according to reviews (it’s coming to our library), considers how to live a fulfilled life within secularism. But the book assumes that the boundary between secularism and religion is clear, even obvious.
The second book, Rethinking Secularism (Oxford) is not so sure about this. Secularism is a something, but it is not at all clear what that something is. The bifurcation of the world between the secular and the religious is a question.
My earlier book, Hallowed Secularism, tried to show that the person who lives outside organized religious life can greatly benefit from the wisdom and teachings of the religions. There is a reason that this is true. There is, after all, only one reality. We live our lives accompanied by beliefs about that reality. We call some of those beliefs religious and some something else, perhaps scientific. But religious life and secular life are both dealing with that one reality.
I think it is not clear at all what the boundary is between the secular and the religious. In America we think it is clear because Christianity and Judaism have developed beliefs about a supernatural realm—still of course a claim about reality, about what is real—that cannot be true from a certain scientific perspective. Fair enough. But not all religions share those kinds of beliefs and some Christians and Jews struggle to make sense of them.
Conversely, some secularists are materialists, even reductionists. But this worldview cannot even account for consciousness. Not all secularists look at reality in that way.
Can a secular life be holy? That is the question. Is it a religious question or a secular one?
The second book, Rethinking Secularism (Oxford) is not so sure about this. Secularism is a something, but it is not at all clear what that something is. The bifurcation of the world between the secular and the religious is a question.
My earlier book, Hallowed Secularism, tried to show that the person who lives outside organized religious life can greatly benefit from the wisdom and teachings of the religions. There is a reason that this is true. There is, after all, only one reality. We live our lives accompanied by beliefs about that reality. We call some of those beliefs religious and some something else, perhaps scientific. But religious life and secular life are both dealing with that one reality.
I think it is not clear at all what the boundary is between the secular and the religious. In America we think it is clear because Christianity and Judaism have developed beliefs about a supernatural realm—still of course a claim about reality, about what is real—that cannot be true from a certain scientific perspective. Fair enough. But not all religions share those kinds of beliefs and some Christians and Jews struggle to make sense of them.
Conversely, some secularists are materialists, even reductionists. But this worldview cannot even account for consciousness. Not all secularists look at reality in that way.
Can a secular life be holy? That is the question. Is it a religious question or a secular one?
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Check Out James Wood on The Joy of Secularism
8/17/2011—Critic at Large James Wood reviews the new book, The Joy of Secularism, in The New Yorker. Take a look here. Wood shows the difference between secularism and hallowed secularism.
Wood begins with the questions of a friend: “How can it be that this world is the result of an accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can it be that every life—beginning with my own, my husband’s, my child’s, and spreading outward—is cosmically irrelevant?” He then adds, “atheists are not supposed to have such thoughts.”
Wood points out that religious believers entertain the same doubts. The question, why, is not very different from Job’s “Why Lord?”
The problem is, and it is the problem this book is supposed to address, that modern humans find it hard to experience spiritual fullness. But the book fails, for reasons Wood identifies and does not identify.
One failing of the book is that apparently it is still very much about religion, which should no longer be the point. Another is that Wood identifies Weber’s “enchantment” with spiritual fullness and then writes that it would be dangerous for secularism to try to fulfill this loss. That would make secularism merely upbeat and vacuously “positive,” he writes.
The emphasis of the book is on human autonomy, but for various reasons, that heroic humanist story—man asserting his own values—does not work either. Evolutionary biology has robbed humanity of even that myth.
Unfortunately, Wood ends his essay with the proposal of Thomas Nagel that “we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” And this is where thoughtful secularists often end up.
But I remind the reader of a different promise: “Wouldn’t you like to live your life abundantly? You and your family? Why don’t you?” The promise of hallowed secularism is that the joy and sorrow—and meaning—of religious life is not out of reach simply because we do not believe in the supernatural God.
Wood begins with the questions of a friend: “How can it be that this world is the result of an accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can it be that every life—beginning with my own, my husband’s, my child’s, and spreading outward—is cosmically irrelevant?” He then adds, “atheists are not supposed to have such thoughts.”
Wood points out that religious believers entertain the same doubts. The question, why, is not very different from Job’s “Why Lord?”
The problem is, and it is the problem this book is supposed to address, that modern humans find it hard to experience spiritual fullness. But the book fails, for reasons Wood identifies and does not identify.
One failing of the book is that apparently it is still very much about religion, which should no longer be the point. Another is that Wood identifies Weber’s “enchantment” with spiritual fullness and then writes that it would be dangerous for secularism to try to fulfill this loss. That would make secularism merely upbeat and vacuously “positive,” he writes.
The emphasis of the book is on human autonomy, but for various reasons, that heroic humanist story—man asserting his own values—does not work either. Evolutionary biology has robbed humanity of even that myth.
Unfortunately, Wood ends his essay with the proposal of Thomas Nagel that “we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” And this is where thoughtful secularists often end up.
But I remind the reader of a different promise: “Wouldn’t you like to live your life abundantly? You and your family? Why don’t you?” The promise of hallowed secularism is that the joy and sorrow—and meaning—of religious life is not out of reach simply because we do not believe in the supernatural God.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Is Eat Pray Love Religious?
9/1/2010—This may seem like an odd question, given that one-third of Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritual memoir is set in an Indian Ashram, where she goes in order to attain enlightenment, and given that the book is filled with references to God. But it is a very serious question and I intend to assign a bit of the book in my class in the spring entitled Secularism and Religion in the Public Square and ask my students the same question.
Here is the issue. The whole idea of the separation of church and state in a constitutional sense depends on there being a difference between the secular and the religious. But the genuinely religious quest that Gilbert is on is so non-supernatural and so filled with experiences that any secularist could have (and that some secularists have already had) that a sharp distinction between profane and sacred seems impossible. For example, why could a secularist not experience the mystical embrace of oneness in consciousness? Secularists think they should not speak that way. But, why not?
Gilbert’s mantra was originally, Om Namah Shivaya: I honor the divinity that resides within me. So, what if the American national motto were one Nation under the Divinity that Resides in Each of Us? Would that be religious and perhaps unconstitutional, or secular and just fine?
Even more fundamental than the legal question is the cultural one. Why shouldn’t secularism be open to expressions of mystery and depth? Of course a secularism like that would be Hallowed Secularism.
Here is the issue. The whole idea of the separation of church and state in a constitutional sense depends on there being a difference between the secular and the religious. But the genuinely religious quest that Gilbert is on is so non-supernatural and so filled with experiences that any secularist could have (and that some secularists have already had) that a sharp distinction between profane and sacred seems impossible. For example, why could a secularist not experience the mystical embrace of oneness in consciousness? Secularists think they should not speak that way. But, why not?
Gilbert’s mantra was originally, Om Namah Shivaya: I honor the divinity that resides within me. So, what if the American national motto were one Nation under the Divinity that Resides in Each of Us? Would that be religious and perhaps unconstitutional, or secular and just fine?
Even more fundamental than the legal question is the cultural one. Why shouldn’t secularism be open to expressions of mystery and depth? Of course a secularism like that would be Hallowed Secularism.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Death of Christopher Hitchens
8/12/2010—The news of the terminal illness of the noted atheist Christopher Hitchens has brought out an old Christian-influenced heresy. This misunderstanding can be seen in the following quote from a story in The Independent: “To the question that each interviewer was bound to ask an orthodox atheist such as himself – is this the time to reconsider your views on God? – he offers a categorical reply: no.”
OK. So, good for Christopher Hitchens not to abjectly surrender his beliefs when confronted with a death that is, after all, inevitable for everyone. I presume that Hitchens like the rest of us has thought about his death before now.
The question is, though, why is his impending death thought to be a time to rethink God? Two obvious answers: to save his life from cancer or to go to heaven rather than hell.
As to the first, such a thought is beneath contempt. There are millions of faithful Christians and other religious believers dying from cancer right this minute. Nowhere does any creditable religion promise medical miracles. And if God lets some people off the hook and not others, then he is no God worth believing in. That is not the end to death that Christianity is promising.
As to the second, why should there be any necessary connection between belief in God and an afterlife? The Hebrew Bible is quite clear that humans just die. Abraham is not promised life after death. He just dies. His justification lies in history—his descendants will be a blessing to the world. Hitchens presumably has that belief now, in a form, in the truth of his writings.
Even the New Testament, despite some suggestions to the contrary, does not speak of heaven but of resurrection. The thought of most of the writers is clearly that we die and at some near future time, Christ will return on the last day and that all will be resurrected and some saved and some judged. In other words, Hitchens will still be dead for now.
Damon Linker of the New Republic was closer to the mark when he wrote of someone perhaps feeling on his deathbed “for the first time in his life the call of God”. In other words, the announcement of my terminal illness marks the proper moment to rethink my life in order to be sure. It is the call to ultimate seriousness. It isn’t ultimate vulnerability. Or, even if it is, God is no life preserver. I remain vulnerable.
Socrates called philosophy preparation for death. And Heidegger insisted on holding onto the truth of my death. The tragedy of terminal illness for most of us is not that we die but that death reveals how we have wasted our lives. And no conversion can alter that.
OK. So, good for Christopher Hitchens not to abjectly surrender his beliefs when confronted with a death that is, after all, inevitable for everyone. I presume that Hitchens like the rest of us has thought about his death before now.
The question is, though, why is his impending death thought to be a time to rethink God? Two obvious answers: to save his life from cancer or to go to heaven rather than hell.
As to the first, such a thought is beneath contempt. There are millions of faithful Christians and other religious believers dying from cancer right this minute. Nowhere does any creditable religion promise medical miracles. And if God lets some people off the hook and not others, then he is no God worth believing in. That is not the end to death that Christianity is promising.
As to the second, why should there be any necessary connection between belief in God and an afterlife? The Hebrew Bible is quite clear that humans just die. Abraham is not promised life after death. He just dies. His justification lies in history—his descendants will be a blessing to the world. Hitchens presumably has that belief now, in a form, in the truth of his writings.
Even the New Testament, despite some suggestions to the contrary, does not speak of heaven but of resurrection. The thought of most of the writers is clearly that we die and at some near future time, Christ will return on the last day and that all will be resurrected and some saved and some judged. In other words, Hitchens will still be dead for now.
Damon Linker of the New Republic was closer to the mark when he wrote of someone perhaps feeling on his deathbed “for the first time in his life the call of God”. In other words, the announcement of my terminal illness marks the proper moment to rethink my life in order to be sure. It is the call to ultimate seriousness. It isn’t ultimate vulnerability. Or, even if it is, God is no life preserver. I remain vulnerable.
Socrates called philosophy preparation for death. And Heidegger insisted on holding onto the truth of my death. The tragedy of terminal illness for most of us is not that we die but that death reveals how we have wasted our lives. And no conversion can alter that.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Hallowed Secularism on Opening Day
4/5/2010—Today is opening day for the Pirates. Since this site is dedicated to secular religion, that can only mean the opening narration of Annie Savoy, from the movie Bull Durham:
I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshiped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.
And if that is not hallowed secularism, then I don’t know what is. Let's go Bucs.
I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshiped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.
And if that is not hallowed secularism, then I don’t know what is. Let's go Bucs.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Chardin’s Challenge to Secularists
9/2/2009—In an essay in the book, The Future of Man, Teilhard de Chardin issued a challenge to secularists. In the essay, "The Grand Option", Chardin asked how we assess the future of humankind? He gave his alternatives, which he called “the human spiritual categories”. The challenge to secularism is to contemplate reality with requisite seriousness. Chardin offers four choices. He believes that they define the basic possibilities. He also believes that to each choice, “there must necessarily correspond a universe of an especial kind.” That is, only one choice is really true to the kind of universe there is.
The first choice is in answer to the question whether the state of Being is good or evil. Is it better to be than not to be? Chardin calls this optimism or pessimism. Is the universe pointless? Is humankind going to get anywhere? If not, why not end things now?
Although Chardin notes the modern temper toward meaninglessness, he does not take it seriously, given the growth and expansion of consciousness. There has been progress in the universe from inorganic to organic, to consciousness, to self-consciousness and so forth. This justifies optimism.
The next question is, optimism of withdrawal or of evolution? Do we engage the world or refrain from engaging? Chardin chose engagement because of his faith in the spiritual value of matter.
The final question is evolution toward divergence or convergence, plurality or unity? Chardin chose unity over against what could be called the capitalist cult of individualism (not Chardin’s term). We do not perfect our creativity in opposition to others but in association with others.
So, take your pick. Is the universe ordered or disordered? If ordered, is it exhausted or still young? If young, is it divergent or convergent? This is secularism, not religion. But it is a particular kind. It is hallowed secularism.
The first choice is in answer to the question whether the state of Being is good or evil. Is it better to be than not to be? Chardin calls this optimism or pessimism. Is the universe pointless? Is humankind going to get anywhere? If not, why not end things now?
Although Chardin notes the modern temper toward meaninglessness, he does not take it seriously, given the growth and expansion of consciousness. There has been progress in the universe from inorganic to organic, to consciousness, to self-consciousness and so forth. This justifies optimism.
The next question is, optimism of withdrawal or of evolution? Do we engage the world or refrain from engaging? Chardin chose engagement because of his faith in the spiritual value of matter.
The final question is evolution toward divergence or convergence, plurality or unity? Chardin chose unity over against what could be called the capitalist cult of individualism (not Chardin’s term). We do not perfect our creativity in opposition to others but in association with others.
So, take your pick. Is the universe ordered or disordered? If ordered, is it exhausted or still young? If young, is it divergent or convergent? This is secularism, not religion. But it is a particular kind. It is hallowed secularism.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Death and Resurrection
4/2/2008--Today, a celebration of the conversion experience of Arthur Waskow, which points us in the direction of Hallowed Secularism. Waskow sent the following account of the creation of the Freedom Seder in 1968 to his e-mail list today. I have edited it, but I recommend the whole account from the Shalom Center, http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/tsc/signUp.jsp?key=442.
It begins as follows:
“Death and Resurrection? Christian theology, of course, centers on that rhythm. Traditional Jewish prayerbooks also praise the God Who "gives life to the dead," but most modern Jews have either deleted or bowdlerized or ignored that passage. Forty years ago, I was the kind of activist secular Jew who not only ignored that passage, but ignored the prayerbook altogether. Yet precisely forty years ago I experienced a profound - and profoundly unexpected -- death-and-rebirth of my own self, deeply intertwined with the American agonies of that spring, that year.”
Waskow describes what happened after the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968.
“By noon on April 5, Washington was ablaze. It was touch and go whether 18th Street - four houses from my door - would join the flames. Just barely, our neighborhood's interracial ties held fast.
By April 6, there was a curfew. Thousands of Blacks were being herded into jail for breaking it. But the police did not care whether whites were on the streets. So for a week, my white co-workers and I brought food, medicine, doctors from the suburbs into the schools and churches of burnt-out downtown Washington.”
Then the miracle happened, the deep sense of connection to eternity.
“And then came the afternoon of April 12. That night, Passover would begin. For me, it was worth doing because it echoed years of family and mentioned freedom. It was my only Jewish ritual, a bubble in time that had no connection with the rest of my life. So I walked home to help prepare the Seder. On every corner, detachments of the U.S. Army. On 18th Street, a Jeep with a machine gun pointing up my block. Somewhere within me, deeper than my brain or breathing, my blood began to chant: "This is Pharaoh's army, and I am walking home to do the Seder."”
Suddenly, the “religious” ritual of the Passover Seder became something real to Waskow.
“For the first time, we paused in the midst of the Telling itself, to connect the streets with the Seder. For the first time, we noticed the passage that says, "In every generation, one rises up to become an oppressor"; the passage that says, "In every generation, every human being is obligated to say, we ourselves, not our forebears only, go forth from slavery to freedom." In every generation. Including our own. Always before, we had chanted these passages and gone right on. Tonight we paused. Who and what is our oppressor? How and when shall we go forth to freedom?”
A few months later, Waskow began work on what would become The Freedom Seder.
“That fall, I dug out my old Haggadah, the one I had been given when I turned 13, the one with Saul Raskin's luscious drawings of the maidens who saved Moses from the river, the one that stirred my body each spring, those teen-age years. Into its archaic English renderings of Exodus and Psalms, I intertwined passages from King and Thoreau, Ginsberg and Gandhi, the Warsaw Ghetto and a Russian rabbi named Tamaret -- wove them all into a new Telling of the tale of freedom. Where the old Haggadah had a silly argument about how many plagues had really afflicted Egypt, I substituted a serious quandary: Were blood and killing a necessary part of liberation, or could the nonviolence of King and Gandhi bring a deeper transformation?”
What happened to Arthur Waskow can happen to everyone of us. Only in this way, can the old rituals live. This is Hallowed Secularism.
It begins as follows:
“Death and Resurrection? Christian theology, of course, centers on that rhythm. Traditional Jewish prayerbooks also praise the God Who "gives life to the dead," but most modern Jews have either deleted or bowdlerized or ignored that passage. Forty years ago, I was the kind of activist secular Jew who not only ignored that passage, but ignored the prayerbook altogether. Yet precisely forty years ago I experienced a profound - and profoundly unexpected -- death-and-rebirth of my own self, deeply intertwined with the American agonies of that spring, that year.”
Waskow describes what happened after the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968.
“By noon on April 5, Washington was ablaze. It was touch and go whether 18th Street - four houses from my door - would join the flames. Just barely, our neighborhood's interracial ties held fast.
By April 6, there was a curfew. Thousands of Blacks were being herded into jail for breaking it. But the police did not care whether whites were on the streets. So for a week, my white co-workers and I brought food, medicine, doctors from the suburbs into the schools and churches of burnt-out downtown Washington.”
Then the miracle happened, the deep sense of connection to eternity.
“And then came the afternoon of April 12. That night, Passover would begin. For me, it was worth doing because it echoed years of family and mentioned freedom. It was my only Jewish ritual, a bubble in time that had no connection with the rest of my life. So I walked home to help prepare the Seder. On every corner, detachments of the U.S. Army. On 18th Street, a Jeep with a machine gun pointing up my block. Somewhere within me, deeper than my brain or breathing, my blood began to chant: "This is Pharaoh's army, and I am walking home to do the Seder."”
Suddenly, the “religious” ritual of the Passover Seder became something real to Waskow.
“For the first time, we paused in the midst of the Telling itself, to connect the streets with the Seder. For the first time, we noticed the passage that says, "In every generation, one rises up to become an oppressor"; the passage that says, "In every generation, every human being is obligated to say, we ourselves, not our forebears only, go forth from slavery to freedom." In every generation. Including our own. Always before, we had chanted these passages and gone right on. Tonight we paused. Who and what is our oppressor? How and when shall we go forth to freedom?”
A few months later, Waskow began work on what would become The Freedom Seder.
“That fall, I dug out my old Haggadah, the one I had been given when I turned 13, the one with Saul Raskin's luscious drawings of the maidens who saved Moses from the river, the one that stirred my body each spring, those teen-age years. Into its archaic English renderings of Exodus and Psalms, I intertwined passages from King and Thoreau, Ginsberg and Gandhi, the Warsaw Ghetto and a Russian rabbi named Tamaret -- wove them all into a new Telling of the tale of freedom. Where the old Haggadah had a silly argument about how many plagues had really afflicted Egypt, I substituted a serious quandary: Were blood and killing a necessary part of liberation, or could the nonviolence of King and Gandhi bring a deeper transformation?”
What happened to Arthur Waskow can happen to everyone of us. Only in this way, can the old rituals live. This is Hallowed Secularism.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
What Makes Hallowed Secularism Hallowed?
7/17/2007--How can secularism be “hallowed”? This would seem the crucial question. It would also seem to be a contradiction in terms. Surely secularism cannot be holy unless you think humanism can be holy, which would be a pretty tough sell after Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
We seem to have only two choices: God—a transcendent being outside space and time—or man as the measure of all things. We cannot believe that such a God exists and man on his own is a horror. So we seem stuck.
Some people find the answer to this dilemma in nature. They worship, or purport to anyway, the sun or the earth and its spirits. Perhaps I have just not seen this done properly, but for me it is not an option. Nature can be just as cold as the human heart, after all.
What is needed is a source of power and order and beauty outside humans themselves. This is what Our Religions give us. How can we have this without God?
To put the matter bluntly, human beings can encounter the mysterious Other, the transcendent, personally and historically.
Personal accounts of spiritual experiences are common. Here is a beautiful example from Dr. Rachel Remen’s book, My Grandfather’s Blessings:
A neighbor, a down-to-earth and practical person, shared…an experience with me. . . She had been cleaning her house…when suddenly it was as if her life were passing rapidly in front of her and she became aware of something she had not recognized before, that there was a coherence and direction that ran through it like a thread. …Though she had never experienced this direction before, it was familiar to her. It was as if she had been following something unseen for many years and she had not known.
* * *
As she stood in her kitchen…she became deeply certain that what was true of her personally was also true of life in general. Everything was unfolding according to a direction. It underlay all existence, binding it all together. For a heartbeat, it seemed to her that she could experience this directly. “A steady unseen force, like a wind,” she told me.
This reported experience might be called an encounter with God by the religious believer. But that is not how this woman experienced it. Nor am I suggesting that Hallowed Secularism should be charismatic, seeking personal and emotional encounters with the unseen. Rather, I mean that Hallowed Secularism acknowledges the depth of human life and its meaningfulness. That mystery of human life must be authoritative, not subject to my feelings and choices.
This sense of oneness with all reality is a common theme in non-“religious”—I just mean non-dogmatic--thinkers as diverse as Eric Voegelin and John Dewey. In fact such a sense of cosmic unity may underlay all our religions. Thus, the religious leaders in human history have a great deal to teach us about the nature of reality. Hallowed Secularism must be open to such teaching.
This is not the same as a God who is a personality with a will, plans and actions. Yet, it is not atheism either.
This sense of depth is not just a matter of personal experiences. There is also public consciousness of transcendence. In order to recover from consumerism and the flatness of American life, this sense of depth must be present in public life as well. This means, on the one hand, the end of the scorn secularists now exhibit toward anything “religious”. We are not dealing here with superstition or the supernatural, but with a broader sense of human life. Secularists must be open to that.
The public sense of depth also means a new appreciation of the power of justice in history. Abraham Lincoln understood the Civil War as God’s judgment for the sin of slavery. Thomas Jefferson feared for such a civil catastrophe out of the same concern for God’s judgment. I feel that way about global warming.
Reality is structured in such a way that there are consequences for national injustice. Mistreat the poor and your society will end up in ruin. This is what the Hebrew prophets taught us. Hallowed Secularism must be open to this message, too.
Once we clear out the brush of dogmas that conflict with the natural laws of the universe: resurrection, heaven, hell, messiah, apocalypse, reincarnation and a being called God, Hallowed Secularism may just fall out as what’s left. What’s left is neither materialism nor rationalism. It’s beyond both. For there is reality to the unseen. Remember, the number 2 cannot be seen. And neither can love.
We seem to have only two choices: God—a transcendent being outside space and time—or man as the measure of all things. We cannot believe that such a God exists and man on his own is a horror. So we seem stuck.
Some people find the answer to this dilemma in nature. They worship, or purport to anyway, the sun or the earth and its spirits. Perhaps I have just not seen this done properly, but for me it is not an option. Nature can be just as cold as the human heart, after all.
What is needed is a source of power and order and beauty outside humans themselves. This is what Our Religions give us. How can we have this without God?
To put the matter bluntly, human beings can encounter the mysterious Other, the transcendent, personally and historically.
Personal accounts of spiritual experiences are common. Here is a beautiful example from Dr. Rachel Remen’s book, My Grandfather’s Blessings:
A neighbor, a down-to-earth and practical person, shared…an experience with me. . . She had been cleaning her house…when suddenly it was as if her life were passing rapidly in front of her and she became aware of something she had not recognized before, that there was a coherence and direction that ran through it like a thread. …Though she had never experienced this direction before, it was familiar to her. It was as if she had been following something unseen for many years and she had not known.
* * *
As she stood in her kitchen…she became deeply certain that what was true of her personally was also true of life in general. Everything was unfolding according to a direction. It underlay all existence, binding it all together. For a heartbeat, it seemed to her that she could experience this directly. “A steady unseen force, like a wind,” she told me.
This reported experience might be called an encounter with God by the religious believer. But that is not how this woman experienced it. Nor am I suggesting that Hallowed Secularism should be charismatic, seeking personal and emotional encounters with the unseen. Rather, I mean that Hallowed Secularism acknowledges the depth of human life and its meaningfulness. That mystery of human life must be authoritative, not subject to my feelings and choices.
This sense of oneness with all reality is a common theme in non-“religious”—I just mean non-dogmatic--thinkers as diverse as Eric Voegelin and John Dewey. In fact such a sense of cosmic unity may underlay all our religions. Thus, the religious leaders in human history have a great deal to teach us about the nature of reality. Hallowed Secularism must be open to such teaching.
This is not the same as a God who is a personality with a will, plans and actions. Yet, it is not atheism either.
This sense of depth is not just a matter of personal experiences. There is also public consciousness of transcendence. In order to recover from consumerism and the flatness of American life, this sense of depth must be present in public life as well. This means, on the one hand, the end of the scorn secularists now exhibit toward anything “religious”. We are not dealing here with superstition or the supernatural, but with a broader sense of human life. Secularists must be open to that.
The public sense of depth also means a new appreciation of the power of justice in history. Abraham Lincoln understood the Civil War as God’s judgment for the sin of slavery. Thomas Jefferson feared for such a civil catastrophe out of the same concern for God’s judgment. I feel that way about global warming.
Reality is structured in such a way that there are consequences for national injustice. Mistreat the poor and your society will end up in ruin. This is what the Hebrew prophets taught us. Hallowed Secularism must be open to this message, too.
Once we clear out the brush of dogmas that conflict with the natural laws of the universe: resurrection, heaven, hell, messiah, apocalypse, reincarnation and a being called God, Hallowed Secularism may just fall out as what’s left. What’s left is neither materialism nor rationalism. It’s beyond both. For there is reality to the unseen. Remember, the number 2 cannot be seen. And neither can love.
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