63 – After Religious Humanism

Editorial

A Responsible Theology News 19 SoF 2004 20 Student Christian Movement (SCM) 21 Flotsam and Jetsam 22 John Butler, on Apartheid in Palestine Cover Image The Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Bruegel (about 1525-69), usually known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Oil on oak panel, 114 x 155 cm; Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna After Religious | Humanism Two years ago, in January 2001, SOF 45 was published as a special edition of the Sea of Faith magazine entitled ‘Life is God’. The edition carried papers on ‘Religious Humanism’. These were papers that had been presented at a London conference of the Sea of Faith in September 2000, to which members of some humanist organisations had been invited. Yet just a year on, some of the assumptions in some of those papers had already been put in question, on 11 September 2001. Two years later, after wars in Afghanistan, [raq, and—while our attention was diverted—in Palestine, the idea of a religious humanism now seems dated.

Belief in humanism grew as religious belief in the West waned, from the Enlightenment onwards. In the West, after Nietszche, Darwin, Freud, et al., a certain, objectifying, theological discourse had become increasingly difficult to reconcile with the other spheres of knowledge—to the point, in the twentieth century, of being impossible for many Westerners. Our old God was dead. It therefore seemed, for a time, that the sacred should be abandoned for the secular, heaven for earth, belief in God replaced by belief in ‘Man’. What else was there but humanism? Yet even as the idea of humanism was being born, the inhumanity of man was becoming apparent. From the gallows of the French revolution to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the gulags of Siberia, the idealising discourse of humanity became difficult to reconcile with our awareness of human behaviour. It became apparent that humanism, too, was based on a set of beliefs. In democratic countries a belief in the sovereignty of the autonomous and rational individual replaced belief in the sovereignty of God and the authority of his church. Belief in the state replaced belief in the church. Ideas of social progress were a secularising of messianic expectation. With the loss of a certain theological discourse—of sin, guilt, and evil that might check our thinking—the West had become susceptible to new beliefs and new myths that served new power interests.

The 1980s’ myth was the myth of the economic market. This myth served the most powerful and most wealthy most of all. The myth proclaimed the freedom of the individual but the freedom it proclaimed was that of consumer choice. The sovereign individual was replaced with the sovereign market, and this God was named TINA: ‘There Is No Alternative’, argued Margaret Thatcher. Before this God, all people must bow. Life was not God, money was—life was determined by this God. The idea of humanitarian responsibility was reduced to the charity of private benefaction: to the point at which it was believed there was ‘no such thing as society’.

With the death of God and the end of Man, in the West, we invested our value in Money. Money is the measure of worth, and is worshipped. Its cathedrals are shopping malls and the heavenly chorus is the global exchange of electronic economic data. In the holy hierarchy of Money, those closest to this God have status: they have global dominion and power and might and the personal blessings of opportunity, privilege and sexual appeal. The media and its advertisers are the ministers of this religion.

Fostering greed as the prime motivating force, they raise rich celebrities to the status of saints and icons, fashion gurus serving their own market interests, only to crush them again for a salacious tale and a sof 63 January 2004 greater market share.

After the failure of religion and rationality, by the turn of the millennium we were also becoming dissatisfied with this vision of humanity and suspicious of the myths of religion and secular power. Religious humanism seemed, for a time, to be an attractive answer, and even plausible. It seemed that, building on the vestiges of the Christian tradition and celebrating the wealth of its cultural heritage and its aesthetic splendour, religious humanism could provide an answer. While building on the secularism of the West with “religious values”, religious humanism would not resort to the escapist fantasies of esoteric religion. It would bring some of the ethical and communitarian values of Christian religious tradition into an individualistic Western humanism that had been overtaken by the market. Or so it seemed.

Perhaps that idea of religious humanism appealed to some in the SoF (UK) network. It offered hope for a new network for a new millennium. Might it be that if the network could be defined by what we believed, defined by creedal hypotheses—a religious humanism—that proclaimed simply what we stood for, that we would convert humanists and religious people to this new truth and become a great organisation, an institution to challenge the power of other political and ecclesiastic institutions. But the network was full of argument. Some were not ready to be committed to an institution! Others were suspicious of anew monotheism with a new mission.

And then came 9/11.

Terrorist killings of civilians are never justifiable. But the symbolic targeting of the symbols and servants of money and power led some in the West to reflect on why these were targeted. For those who were suspicious that ideas and mythology served the interests of power, it was a reminder that we, the West, are the powerful. Capitalism is our monotheism and our God is all powerful. The reaction, a “war on terrorism”, was initially said to be a holy crusade against the axis of evil, but it would also advance the economic interests of the West. Such “preventative measures” against terrorism were later said to be in the interests of Sof 63 January 2004 security, by Britain, America and by Israel. But the term “preventative measures” functions within a protectionist myth that defends economic power while being closed to dialogue. It is a myth that is being used to extend the sovereignty of capitalism, a new messianism of Western monotheism, the “gift of faith” to the rest of the world. The West would advance this vision of society, to extend its profits, profits from market opportunities, consumption of oil, and cheap global labour.

It is not surprising that those who hold to older religious discourses, such as Islam, find reason to be suspicious of the West.

Although we advance an idea of democracy as the best form of government, arguing a Western Enlightenment myth of a government based on the sovereignty of human reason, in our version of democracy popular opinion is persuaded by money, and Western governments must serve the global market, to have their share in it. It is money that supports parliamentary parties and money that owns and subsidises the media that together persuade us how to vote. It is the rich who hold power in Western democracies. But the overvaluing of money leads to caring family roles being: undervalued, because they are unpaid, and so the extended family and even nuclear families are suffering breakdown, whilst the vulnerable elderly and young lack care. With such a view of the barren monotheism of the West, faith in a God of justice and compassion seems preferable.

In the Sea of Faith we approach religion with the suspicion that it is a human creation. But from this understanding of religion it is not necessary to stand united behind one version of truth. Religious humanism is just another Western monotheism, another export! Far more important is the willingness to learn from different religious views, different religious stories. Only by being open to the polytheism of the world can we overcome the cultural imperialism of the West. Only by learning from other religions and other philosophies can we overcome the violence of a single unifying mythology, any mythology, but especially that of Money. Only then can we advance the possibility of Life, Life as our God.