Charles Blow On Faith & Modern America
Charles Blow, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, recently published a rather provocative piece looking at a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life called “Faith in Flux.” Mr. Blow first dispels a notion put forth by his “nonreligious friends” that “most people are religious because they’re raised to be. They’re indoctrinated by their parents.”
[The Pew Study] questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.
(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)
…
Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met. And the most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they simply enjoyed the services and style of worship.
For these newly converted, the nonreligious shtick didn’t stick. There was still a void, and communities of the faithful helped fill it.
As a lifelong Catholic, my first surprise was that only 14 percent of Catholics ended up becoming unaffiliated later. Perhaps its merely my cyncism, but I expected a slightly larger percentage. I’ll be curious to see if that fairly low defection rate holds over the next few decades.
The overall finding, though, that most reported joining a religion in response to a felt need, or a spiritual void, is I think something most folks will recognize as a pretty fundamental aspect of the human experience. We all naturally seek an understanding of ourselves within the greatness of the cosmos and the vastness of a perplexing universe.
In seeking to know, as best we humanly can, who or what is responsible for all of this — this “stuff” — the idea of a benevolent Creator seems to be not only a natural answer, but more importantly, a logical one.
This leads to Mr. Blow’s next points:
While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?
Mr. Blow here is guilty of some serious misrepresentation, falling into the ideological rut of the left which vilifies religious communities for their supposed hostility to science, logic and reason. Yes, history has documented hostility from the Church toward Gallileo. We all remember learning about the Crusades.
These mis-steps in Christian society in opposing social or scientific developments pale in comparison very real and far more damaging tragedies. The Spanish Inqisition resulted in perhaps 3-5,000 deaths over the course of its 400 year course.
Josef Stalin, the head of a Soviet regime whose persecution of faith communities and atheistic principles are well documented, ran a government that systematically slaughtered more than 60 million in less than a century.
The point, though, is that Mr. Blow’s assertion that “science, logic and reason” are exclusively on the side of the atheistic or nonreligious are, at best, historically misinformed, and at worst, intentionally misleading.
To say that faith and science, or faith and logic, or faith and reason, are mutually exclusive concepts is to willfully ignore the development of Western civilization and modern science.
Faith and science? The big bang theory — today understood as the most plausible explanation of the origin of our universe — was explored and developed only a century ago by Georges Lemaitre, a young Jesuit priest, initially derided by his critics though ultimately supported by Einstein.
Faith and logic? It was medieval scholars and theologians who developed the working concept of “human rights” in the first place. From my Dec. 22, 2008 column on “The Christian Founding of the University System:”
In ‘The Birth of Freedom,” a documentary produced by the Acton Institute, George Weigel, Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explains the relationship between the Church and Western Civilization in this way:
“The fact that the Church insisted on its independence created the social conditions for the possibility of free space throughout all society. European humanity learned its dignity in the school of Christian freedom, which taught young men and women that they were somebody and not just some thing.”
Faith and reason? The Catholic Church was the first body to understand the implications of an exceptional humanity and spirit, and over its long history has proven itself as one of the most effective organizations in human history at protecting and advancing the conditions for reason, logic and scientific exploration, founding some of the first hospitals and orphanages. It founded the college system and today educates more children than any other scholarly or religious institution, it is the largest charitable organization on the planet and developed the scientific method and laws of evidence. (Source / PDF)
I found Mr. Blow’s (perhaps rather facetious) final questions to be outlandishly inadequate examples of that “felt desire” for one’s Creator or more generally for knowledge beyond the self. I don’t think so many are joining faith communities simply in response to loneliness or lack of plays and picnics.
As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.
We are more than cells, synapses and sex drives. We are amazing, mysterious creatures forever in search of something greater than ourselves.
Mr. Blow’s final comments are as perplexing as his aforementioned disregard of the historical contributions and proven goodness within advanced society.
If, as the author claims, reason, logic and science are in the court of the nonreligious, why are conversion rates among previously non-faith oriented Americans still representative of the majority? Again, it cannot seriously be the parkside picnics.
I would argue that the reason that we are naturally drawn toward the experience of faith and search for God in seeking to fill that “void” Mr. Blow spoke of is because only faith and spirituality — an understanding or pursuit of transcendent meaning and purpose — can fill it.
And so the nonreligious — and especially the actively atheistic — movements are by their organizing principles fundamentally inadequate at addressing those things Mr. Blow writes about, of “appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism … that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.”
Isn’t it the lack of those things in a life outside of transcendent meaning — or at least a pursuit of such faith and meaning — that was precisely what has led the majority of those nonreligious Americans to seek religion in the first place?
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Thomas,
Thank you for your wonderfully thoughtful and well-written piece!
Thank God that there is someone out there defending the marriage of faith and reason!
Though I think that, if we are going to hang some ‘Enlightenment’ categories out to dry, then let’s go one further.
The concept of ‘religion’ is a distinct fabrication ‘Enlightenment,’ conviently constructed upon the foundational presupposition that all religions are somehow equal. Beyond this, is was supposed that reason can only handle that which is tangible and verifiable by something like a logical syllogism. All that was not, all that was previously posited to fill the void (the transcendent principles), is simply left to speculation. Therefore, if religion is all about faith and ‘blind’ speculation, how can we NOT characterize them all equally?
You implicitly sink this structure of thought, for you suggest that the Catholic Church supercedes those nasty dichotomies of ‘faith vs. reason’ and the like. But I would not expect you or anyone else to suggest that Wiccanism or Voodoo can breech these categories with the same force! Thusly, if we are going to move past some brash assumptions of a sometimes confused age, then we need to make some sort of distinction between ‘religions.’ Dr. Larry Chapp, a theologian and professor at DeSales, comments constantly that, if a Catholic is ever to debate against an atheist with any kind of hope for standing their ground, the non-believer must debate against Catholicism, not some generic-brand ‘religion;’ after all, is there any such thing as ‘religion,’ or is it rather true that there are a bunch of (sometimes very contradictory) religions?
I could not agree more with your use of ‘void’ here, Thomas! I dig it! To reinforce your point, it is said that the base unifier of all religions is this: the thought that what is is not what it ought to be. The actual experience of life limps behind our conception of the normative! And it is from this void between who we are and who we think we should be, the void between meaninglessness and meaningfulness, that we can start to talk about specific religions. I hope you are patient with this, for I’m sure it is not only very general but probably very wrong, but I will spew it anyway…
We might divide the human response to this void in three ways:
1.) Grasping
2.) Recieving
3.) Denying
1.) Grasping – These could probably be characterized by a sort of Shaman figure, in which man must reach out to the gods and appease them. The supernatural, though it might be all around in structures of animism and pantheism, is far away in the human, personal sense.
2.) Recieving – These could be characterized by an active god or gods who takes interest in human activity and reveals himself or themselves to man. While the means of revelation vary, these usually monotheistic religions have a generally more personal view of the supernatural.
3.) Denying – These systems seek to deny this void from the start. I include it because it is still a reaction to the void! Whether this be a naturally scientific structure which seeks to explain religion through brain activity or a psychological approach which blames the void on some emotional insecurity, these still seek to explain it, thereby heightening something above the void. Could these approaches be deemed religions, just of science or psychology instead of God?
From this first division of the basic structures of religions, we can surely make many more dichotomies. But my goal here was to show that it can be done, and it should. Interestingly, these categories are a function of reason, but they have been applied to an area of faith; maybe the chasm is not so wide as is suggested by the ‘Enlightenment’? ‘Fides quarens intellectum’, is the definition of theology: ‘Faith seeking understanding:’ a sort of network of human reason that operates on the first principle of faith, but once the confession of belief is made, reason does NOT stop!!! In fact, it just begins…
Frankly, I think that there are more religions that would fail the defense of such a marriage of faith and reason, fides quarens intellectum, than would actually support it. Even our Christian brothers and sisters who tend towards the congregational Protestant tradition: I doubt that they would want to defend the marriage of faith and reason, but moreso, even if they wished to, I doubt that they could. In other words, your defense of faith and reason is quite elaborate and formidable in the Catholic tradition; would anyone like to try such a defense outside of her ramparts?
When Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris attack ‘religion,’ I suggest that they are actually attacking a specific religion (albeit without knowing it, maybe) and that religion is NOT Catholicism. Catholicism and Orthodoxy have long answered the questions which they pose as if they are the hottest trend, and if they would only read some Fathers, Augustine, Anselm, or Aquinas without their presumptions of diachronic pride, they would soon understand this.
Interestingly enough, Dr. Kerr, a philosopher at DeSales, comments often that in one of Richard Dawkins books, the evolutionary biologist writes that he would never wish to espouse his scientific principles in his life outside the laboratory. So the distinction is made: even though many will account for humanity’s presence strictly by natural selection evolution, it is also true that there are at least some areas of life into which no one will allow those same principles. Could one imagine living your life being treated as if you were simply a product of natural selection? Not only would that be absurd, but it would also grate against that void! This is enough to suggest that all these atheists do, then, is to claim that science disproves the void while attesting to the very void by the way they live their lives! In fact, their denying actually might do more by way of proving the void than disproving it!
In summary of this (maybe unnecessarily) long diatribe, I wish to posit that I agree with your assertions whole-heartedly! Two points which I may hastily add are:
1.) I have doubts about the possibility of defending the reasonability of ‘religion;’ if we are to defend Catholicism’s reasonability, then I do not fear the gates of Hell.
2.) Even if we are terming reasonability here as the defense of the void, I do not think ‘religion’ will do, for there have been many religions who have filled the void with bad things: hence the cult of alcohol, drugs, sex, and the like: they seem to fill the void but do not satisfy. Therefore, I would claim that, in order to truly fill the void, we might wish to stick to particulars instead of universals. Afterall, God chose to reveal Himself fully and perfectly in a single man, Jesus Christ!
Praised be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever!!! Amen!
Enjoyed this. I think it’s interesting that of the 13-14% of people who unaffiliate; only quarter are willing to say that they’re atheist or agnostic. I wonder what’s holding them back; why the attraction towards the ‘no particular religion’ classification?
Great to see a bright young man like you on the right side of things. Enjoy your blog very much. As for Catholics not shfting to “non-denominationalism” or outright atheism, well, I think about 75% of Catholics may think of their religion as a sort of “cultural” identity, much like being Irish or Hispanic. I have close friends (and former friends!) that will get very angry when we discuss why they don’t go to mass, don’t go to confession, do not believe in the dogmas and teachings of the Church, practice contraceptions or live with “common law” partners or are pro-gay and pro-”choice” and yet still want to be called Catholic. When I point that they are no longer Catholics de facto, they get very angry. Well, perhaps it is a good sign, perhaps not.
Regards,
Rudy