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was with barely concealed delight that
Chicago Sun Times columnist Neil
Steinberg reported the findings of the
Pew Forum study just came out that talks
about the rise of nuns in America the N
o n is those who claim no particular
religious affiliation
he further crowed that an awful lot of
the younger contingent seemed to be more
and more unaffiliated with religion what
followed from this little reportage was
even for Neil Steinberg a remarkably
anti religious screed here's how the
argument basically unfolded is he said
the founding fathers planted like a
virus in the body politic of America
this idea of freedom and that freedom
has so grown over the centuries that now
it threatens religion itself the people
are finally throwing off the shackles of
oppressive religion and with its petty
superstitions and weird arcane liturgies
and is now joining the ranks of the
liberated moderate well two major
problems with this line of argument the
first one is that it utterly ignore
something I've emphasized a lot namely
that the Liberty rightly prized by
Enlightenment people and rightly prized
by its its advocates today is correlated
very tightly with religious assumptions
namely that each individual person is a
subject of infinite Worth and dignity
freedom and equality is not an idea that
was commonly shared in the ancient world
a pre-christian world at all if you
doubt me consult Plato Aristotle Cicero
any of them furthermore look at the 20th
century totalitarianism those that have
thrown off religion what happens to
individual rights dignity freedom I'll
leave that to you but look at the piling
up of corpses in the 20th century by
anti religious modern ideologies
the idea is as Jefferson so clearly saw
we are endowed by our creator with
certain inalienable rights among these
life liberty and the pursuit of
happiness
it's the Creator who grounds human
dignity equality freedom when God is
moved out of that picture what happens
is a profound violation of the very
freedom that Neil Steinberg and his
colleagues of praised but you're playing
a very dangerous game indeed when you
bracket religion from that picture
here's you know one example he brings up
is how african-americans found so much
freedom in the course of American
history through the abolitionist
movement the civil rights movement
conveniently forgetting at least failing
to to announce that those two movements
were deeply influenced by religious
assumptions think of the William Lloyd
Garrison's and John Browns in the 19th
century the Martin Luther King's in the
20th century these were not a secularist
ideologues these were profoundly
religious people who were calling for
Liberty precisely because of religion
not and not as opposed to religion
here's the second problem with it and I
always smile when I see this from people
like Steinberg it's as though the kind
of secularist modern view is simply the
neutral view of sweet reason and
everybody else especially religious
people are these kind of peculiar
marginal figures with their odd
superstitions and liturgies and so on as
though here's my point as though secular
modernism is not itself a very peculiar
ideology here's what I mean the 18th
century gave rise to the Enlightenment
Sandberg is a is a 21st century advocate
of sort of the radical enlightenment you
might say the Enlightenment view
rationalist subjectivist empirical anti
traditional ok is a view it's a
philosophy it's an ideology good points
in it yes
I'd never deny it but it's got its own
shadows its own weird
profiles and angles it's its own limited
view it's as if you want sectarian and
peculiar as any religion the claim that
somehow the 18th century enlightenment
is just reason is just the neutral way
things ought to be come on it's as
ideologically conditioned really as any
religion now I'll get back to we can
have an argument about it I've no
quarrel with that but don't claim that
the 18th century enlightenment
represents somehow just sweet reason and
everything else has to come up to it in
many ways Steinberg is a popular
representative of the position of Jurgen
Habermas maybe the greatest living
philosopher but Habermas over the years
has argued passionately for the
enlightenment paradigm he'll say for
example the only people legitimately
allowed around the table of conversation
in a civilized society are those that
accept the assumptions of enlightenment
well I mean first of all it's a pretty
aggressive move but secondly it excludes
from the table religious figures who
represent the oldest intellectual
tradition in the West who come out of a
tradition conditioned by some of the
greatest geniuses of the West I mean
from from Dante to Thomas Aquinas to
Anselm to John Henry Newman but those
people by this sort of enlightenment
prejudice are excluded from the table of
conversation now utterly congruent with
all this business is Steinberg's really
kind of sneering relegation of religion
to the level of a hobby let me call it
right from his article here life is a
long time and you have to fill it
somehow and adhering to the various
tenants of Lutheranism or baptism or
seventh-day Adventism
it's not inherently a worse use of your
time than oh knitting colorful Afghans
are playing John Madden football or
anything else
see I mean about sneering no religion is
sure it's a nice little hobby that
certain people have we know it strikes
I've had is here's this religious tural
to speak from the Catholic Christian
tradition st. Paul origin Agustin and
some Aquinas
Numan Dante shark Cathedral the motets
of Palestrina the music of Mozart and
Bach oh that's just the level of
Knitting Afghans that's just a nice
little hobby that a few weirdos have I
mean give me a break
Christianity has got this extremely
powerful intellectual tradition and in
fact has largely shaped Western culture
and by the way invented the university
system but see this is just the kind of
move you find in the hopper Mustaine
Berg line that religion oh it's fine for
a few you know simple-minded people
well we Enlightenment rationalist take
care of serious business you religious
folks just go off and have your little
hobby you know come on I think what we
ought to do we religious people is
engage in a kind of nonviolent
resistance to this very violent very
aggressive move we should do what
Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King
and frankly John F Kennedy did namely
bring religious language very much into
the public conversation not be cowed by
this aggressive secularist rationalism
but bring forward our religious language
in its appropriate public context and
thereby resist this tendency to push us
off rather aggressively to the margins
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you
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