As John McWhorter begins his biweekly “Newsletter” for the New York Times (and there are some newsletters by others that look good), we also see the onset of one that promises to be much more dire. Author Tish Harrison Warren, according to her online bio, is truly washed in the blood in the lamb, and with bona fides like these, why wouldn’t the NYT hire her to to write every Sunday about “matters of faith in public live and private discourse”?
Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year, and the forthcoming Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (IVP 2021). She has worked in ministry settings for over a decade as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations, and, most recently, as the writer-in-residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a monthly columnist with Christianity Today, and her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
What you have to ask yourself is this: do you really want to read about matters of faith from a true believer? Aren’t there tons of websites that already contain such stuff?
Well, the first sample is below. Read and weep—have a pack of hankies on hand.
I can find nothing substantive in this newsletter, nor do I think that liberal religionists will, either. These are the points Warren makes:
a. The priest’s first words in each week’s sermon are about God, not the congregation or “a mention of the weather or how nice everyone looks this week”. She finds that strange. I don’t.
Each Sunday in my Anglican church in Austin, Texas, the priest leading the service takes his or her place in front of the congregation and begins by saying the opening acclamation, usually, “Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
What has surprised me since I first attended an Anglican service just over a decade ago is that we begin not with welcoming anyone in the pews but with a direct announcement about God.
. . . Part of why I find this moment strange is that I’m habituated by my daily life and our broader culture to focus on the “horizontal” or immanent, aspects of life — those things we can observe and measure without reference to God, mystery or transcendence. This can affect my spiritual life, flattening faith into solely the stuff of relationships, life hacks, sociology or politics.
But each week, as a church, the first words we say publicly directly address the “vertical,” transcendent dimension of life. We do not have just an urbane, abstracted conversation about religion, but we speak as if God’s presence is relevant — the orienting fact of our gathering.
b. Faith intersects with the secular world. (SURPRISE!)
Karl Barth, a 20th-century Swiss theologian, is credited with saying that Christians must live our lives with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Barth, who was a leader of a group of Christians in Germany resisting Hitler, understood that faith is not a pious, protective bubble shielding us from the urgent needs of the world. It is the very impetus that leads us into active engagement with society. People of faith must immerse ourselves in messy questions of how to live faithfully in a particular moment with particular headlines calling for particular attention and particular responses.
c. We need to keep discussing faith and the secular world even when religion is on the wane.
Membership in a house of worship has declined steadily in the United States over the past eight decades and, according to a Gallup poll, dropped below 50 percent this year.
So we must ask: Is faith worth discussing anymore? In the vast world of subjects that one could read about, from architecture to Zumba, why make space for a newsletter about faith and spiritual practice?
The answer to her last two questions are, respectively, “no” and “no good reason.”
But Warren has a reason, though I doubt it applies widely to NYT readers. It’s because those who are already religious want to read about religion, and they need religion to answer The Big Questions:
As a pastor, I see again and again that in defining moments of people’s lives — the birth of children, struggles in marriage, deep loss and disappointment, moral crossroads, facing death — they talk about God and the spiritual life. In these most tender moments, even those who aren’t sure what exactly they believe cannot avoid big questions of meaning: who we are, what we are here for, why we believe what we believe, why beauty and horror exist.
These questions bubble up in all of us, often unbidden. Even when we hum through a mundane week — not consciously thinking about God or life’s meaning or death — we are still motivated in our depths by ultimate questions and assumptions about what’s right and wrong, what’s true or false and what makes for a good life.
Clearly, and literally, this column is meant to preach to the choir. And just as clearly, Warren’s column is meant to emphasize our need to reach out to the divine, though any secularist with two neurons to rub together knows that we make our own meaning, and we can ponder what’s true and false and how to live without invoking gods. In fact, it’s better not to invoke a deity for which there’s no evidence when trying to find “meaning” or discern truth. Has Warren ever heard of secular humanism?
The rest is palaver, words without meaning, except to tell you to expect more of the same:
This newsletter, like our opening acclamation, acknowledges the presence of God in the world, believing that God, faith and spirituality remain a relevant part of our public and private lives. In it, I will talk about the habits and practices that shape our lives, the beliefs that drive our imaginations, the commitments that guide our souls.
So here’s my opening acclamation. Let’s discuss our deepest questions, longings and loves and the rituals and habits that form who we are and the way we walk through the world, week in and week out.
I have a better idea: let’s not.
Now I’m sure that Pastor Warren is a nice lady, but that doesn’t mean that her lucubrations deserve column inches in the Times every Sunday. Nor do I have to say, “This column is a valuable addition to media discourse.” Rather, I ask myself WHY ARE THEY PUBLISHING THIS STUFF? The Times is increasingly osculating not just faith, but also woo like dowsing and astrology. What explains this? I have no answer.
Wouldn’t it be better—wouldn’t it go ahead of the curve—to have a weekly (or at least a semi-regular) column on secularism and nonbelief? There are plenty of people who could write such a piece, and they wouldn’t have to purvey mindless platitudes to do so.
But, Ceiling Cat help me, I have subscribed. I feel like I’ve just bought a hair shirt or a cilice that will cause me constant irritation.
h/t: Barry
But by subscribing, or not cancelling your subscription, you’re just encouraging them, no? A blizzard of cancellations (with explanation why) would surely get them to rethink this massive regression into the kind of mindset the good pastor is pushing for all she’s worth…
You have to subscribe before you can cancel. You don’t even get to see the column unless you subscribe.
Ah, OK. Sneaky buggers, the NYT…. the place has changed a lot since I stopped paying attention to it about twenty years ago, and not in a good way.
Gee, I think this criticism is way too disrespectful. Father Tish is highly qualified to write for the NYT: she’s a founding member (although not a Founding Member) of The Pelican Project, fer gawd’s sake. AND she’s a Senior Fellow (not just a senior fellow) with the Trinity Forum. I mean, it’s the friggin’ TRINITY FORUM, Jerry!!! Just shows what a waste of time it was for me to get that PhD.
When I read the headline to her piece, the first thought that came to my mind was that it sounded like the opening of a conversation between the parents (and perhaps the teachers) of a troubled teen whose grades are falling and who is hanging around with the wrong crowd and possibly even getting involved with drugs. This might actually be a nice approach to take when talking about people who talk and gods.
I’m so tired of religionists thinking that they need to be consulted to answer the “big questions.” The “big questions” are no different in kind from the other, “smaller,” questions that we answer every day. Even the big questions—where consciousness comes from, how the values of the cosmic constants were set, where we go when we die—have either been answered already or will eventually be answered by ordinary scientific means. Personal incredulity (“I just can’t believe that question X can be answered via ordinary causes.”) is not a valid reason for thinking that there are “big questions” that are beyond the range of methods of inquiry we already have or will develop in time. We don’t need religion to help us in this endeavor.
The NYT can do better—but they won’t. They need to pander to this segment of their constituency.
The benign answer is to attract readers with her views so that — once reading the NYT — they might be exposed to other points of views.
The probable answer is that readers with her views will spend money to get reinforcement of said views, and the NYT likes money.
But my question is different: why use “osculation”? Is that the correct application of the word to the subject at hand? Is the NYT really kissing religion? Not criticizing, but would like to be educated in its usage.
I also believe it’s all about more readers and more money.
I think its shorthand for ‘osculating the fundament’ of religion, which is Latin for kissing religion’s a*se.
Yep.
I know what it means . . . I’m questioning the usage (the Latin definition makes no mention of anyone’s posteriors).
But, OK. Not my site, not my problem. I was just wondering
And it’s a little more than just a metaphorical arse-kissing: an osculatory was an image of Christ or the Virgin Mary which the priest and the congregation would kiss during mass in mediæval times.
I think it is also appropriate to question the meanings of Pastor Warren’s ‘questions of meaning’.
Especially when you consider the fact that her ‘questions’ actually presuppose certain answers—that there is a reason or purpose to our ‘being here’, that there is a reason why beauty, horror and pretty much anything else you can think of exist, that there’s some mystery to ‘who we are’ that has to be solved, presumably by identifying us as part of Someone’s Big Plan. She’s pretty transparently building her conclusions into her questions. But the readers she’s apparently aiming at already accept those conclusions, so no problem, eh?
Exactly. Often, questions have implicit premises. Many religious people, either deliberately or inadvertently, miss this. It is important to formulate concrete questions and think about the nature of admissible answers. Are there any answers that we would reject? If so, why?
I would not even consider subscribing to the NYT until they have daily and Sunday comic strips. Many years ago, their circulation department called me and, as usual, I asked “do you have funnies?” The voice on the telephone replied in the affirmative. Perhaps it was referring to columns like the one promised for Pastor Warren.
My friend, you really bring the🔥!
I wrote the NYT, “letters”, subject :religion & Warren: (no, they won’t publish it).
Have you turned in to a religion proselytizer? ENOUGH! For every inch you give to religion in the NYT, you must please also provide equal for secular humanism matters.
Pretty soon churches will be handing out NYT with the bible and psalms at Sunday services. Maybe that is your plan?
Alexandra Moffat Orford NH
I can find nothing substantive in this newsletter, nor do I think that liberal religionists will, either.
But it wasn’t written for you, any more than John McWhorter was hired to write to the Charles Blow crowd. Nor is she even on the most liberal end of the scale. She recently wrote a column defending the right of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, of which she is a member, to restrict leadership positions on campus to believers (a term which to them does not encompass a belief in the legitimacy of gay marriage).
Clearly, and literally, this column is meant to preach to the choir.
Which columnists at the NYT do not preach to their own choirs? McWhorter’s columns on anti-racism are just that.
but that doesn’t mean that her lucubrations deserve column inches in the Times every Sunday.
According to Gallup, in 2020 about half the people in the country responded that religion is “very important” in their lives. Even if that percentage doesn’t hold for the NYT readership, If the NYT wants to supply what many of its readers want to read why shouldn’t they include this? Their purpose is not evangelism — they are trying to sell subscriptions, after all. Most of the remaining 50% are likely uninterested atheists. Likely very few are as actively incensed by religion as you are, so your reaction should probably not guide their decision as to what will upset the readers.
Wouldn’t it be better—wouldn’t it go ahead of the curve—to have a weekly (or at least a semi-regular) column on secularism and nonbelief?
Do you think there is likely a market for this among the readership?
I don’t care if it wasn’t written for me: it says NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE and nothing thoughtful. At least many of the op-ed columnists show evidence of neuronal activity. If they want to write about religion, do so in a way that isn’t this kind of shameless pandering.
And yes, I bet at least half the NYT readers are “nones.”. How do you know they wouldn’t be interested in a column by the likes of Richard Dawkins.
I don’t care if it wasn’t written for me: it says NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE and nothing thoughtful.
Your view is that religious beliefs are pernicious delusions, with nothing about them that can be termed benign or innocuous, even if some people are comforted by them. To you such a column is at best a species of psychotic babbling and is clearly undesirable in that it tends to legitimize and strengthen a belief system incompatible with science and with personal mental health. It is incomprehensible to you why any rational person would tolerate such twaddle, much less engage in it.
This is analogous to the view that Charles Blow takes with respect to John McWhorter, regarding him at best as utterly misguided but more likely as a sellout to the white overseer in exchange for filthy lucre. He can’t fathom how any person of good faith could call McWhorter’s views legitimate.
Nevertheless, there are people on the other side of both viewpoints whose opinions are regarded by society as reasonable, substantive and thoughtful.
How do you know they wouldn’t be interested in a column by the likes of Richard Dawkins.
My question was whether you thought that they would. Many religious believers already have an interest in reading articles of this type. But I don’t think that atheism tends to generate a similar eagerness to read articles promoting and singing the praises of the atheistic lifestyle. My understanding is that Christians sometimes come away from reading such articles feeling uplifted (in part because they are encouraged to see themselves as righteous). But atheism doesn’t seem to carry the same dynamic — the approach is rational and there is no heartening component that congratulates people for being righteous (enabling them to generate additional dopamine and serotonin). So while a column by Richard Dawkins giving irrefutable arguments for atheism may be intellectually and even emotionally satisfying in allowing them to congratulate themselves for not falling for the flimflam that has captured others, the problems are that (a) atheists do not appear to have the same appetite for or built-in desire to read such articles, (b) insignificant dopamine rewards such reading, and (c) likely few of these people would count such articles as significant reasons for maintaining their subscription. They are not on a crusade against religion.
You would no doubt point to the above facts as the mechanism that religion has been using since the dawn of Homo sapiens to ensnare people, but this doesn’t change the fact that it has this mechanism and atheism does not. Perhaps the NYT should not pander in such a way but their eye is on their bottom line.
By that line of reasoning, the NYT should be expected to publish columns promoting astrology, psychic spoon-bending and Elvis-is-alive craziness. IOW,, to become essentially no different from the National Enquirer. Because what you’ve sketched in your posts is exactly the rationale for the Enquirer‘s business model. In all likelihood, no one who believes Elvis is well and truly dead gets anything from reading arguments to that effect remotely like the pleasure those who still believe the King is alive somewhere do in seeing their desperate desire defended. What our host is decrying, so far as I can see, is that the NYT is, among their other major failures, adopting the journalistic ethic of the gutter tabloids.
Did you miss my assertion that there are people on the other side of his viewpoint whose opinions are regarded by society as reasonable, substantive and thoughtful? Take, for example, Francis Collins. Do you contest this? Surely you’re not saying that the dominant view in society today is that a religious belief is to be equated with “promoting astrology, psychic spoon-bending and Elvis-is-alive craziness.” If so, you’re living in a serious echo chamber.
‘Did you miss my assertion that there are people on the other side of his viewpoint whose opinions are regarded by society as reasonable, substantive and thoughtful?’
No, I didn’t miss it; I just found it irrelevant. If the empirical support for some position is no better than that for astrology, spoon-bending or a living Elvis, what on earth difference does it make whether there are ‘there are people on the other side of his viewpoint’ who are regarded by, uh, ‘society’ as all of those good things. When you actually demand a rational accounting, you get the same number—zero—for religious mythology as for any of the other I mentioned. So what that tells me is that regardless of whether there’s any factual basis for belief X, you figure it’s fine for the soi-disant ‘journal of record’ to devote column space to fallacy-laden defenses of X… as long as some undetermined ‘society’ views those who believe X to be ‘reasonable, substantive and thoughtful’. Got it.
So, to summarize . . . believers need constant reinforcement and atheists don’t.
I’m no psychologist (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express) but that points to deep insecurities for believers — and hence their need for reassurance — contrasting to confidence from reason for atheists — hence why they don’t need constant or even occasional reassurance.
The gray lady has published some news stories about Astrology; see:
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/astrology . Moreover, once the NYT has published a few of Pastor Warren’s columns, it will come under pressure to evade the charge of dread Islamophobia by publishing columns following the lines of the religion which has the Answer to Everything. Therefore, we can eventually expect NYT columns explaining prophet Mohammed’s night journey—the one by flying horse to Jerusalem, and then to Heaven for a series of seminars with Moses, Jesus, and Elvis.
This is a good point and speaks to Sean’s argument that there are lots of Christians on the other side of this divide who will pay the NYT to be able to read this kind of stuff. There are many fewer English-speaking Muslims who will pay to do so. Will the NYT extend this effort to Muslim columnists (as predicted if this effort is driven by wokeness)? Or will the Times stick to Christian apologists only (as predicted if this is driven by money)? StephenB@13 makes a similar point.
Well, if you want to defend the belief that religion is not a God delusion, please adduce some evidence for god that would convince most rational people that there is a divine being.
Your argument that Charles Blow disaagrees with John McWhorter is a non-starter: lots of rational argument, like about a virus causing Covid-10, are opposed by a gazillion people. So no, your analogy isn’t convincing. We are arguing about evidence here, not about whether someone can see someone else as delusional. But I’m done here.
Well, if you want to defend the belief that religion is not a God delusion, please adduce some evidence for god that would convince most rational people that there is a divine being.
Where did I propose, imply, or even suggest that religion is or is not a God delusion?
So no, your analogy isn’t convincing.
The analogy was not for the purpose of saying that just as Blow is wrong, so you are wrong. I don’t even understand what the logic of that would be. The analogy is that each of you believes implacably that the belief system he despises (both belief systems being subject to significant controversy among people of good faith) must not be considered legitimate for any purpose whatsoever, and that anybody who proposes to the contrary must be considered an advocate for that belief system, as you are doing with me right now, instead of as someone not taking a side.
The thrust of my post was simply that religious columns can make people feel better about themselves in a way that other subjects cannot, and that the NYT has decided to leverage this to enhance its subscriber base. Your response, and apparently also that of Type Logician, is that it is intolerable to speak of religion as anything other than a malignant cancer on society, or to suggest that any viewpoint accepting of religion should be accorded any semblance of legitimacy.
You have mischaracterized my take on religion, apparently because you’re not familiar with what I’ve written about it. Of course religion can make some people feel better about themselves, but you simply don’t know if other forms of “intervention” might do better. And of course for many many people religion doesn’t do anything to help them.
As far as “legitimacy” is concerned, no, I don’t think any claims about divine beings or religious dictates are legitimate. So yes, those who base their “feeling better” on any factuality of religious claims are deluded. You said that “Nevertheless, there are people on the other side of both viewpoints whose opinions are regarded by society as reasonable, substantive and thoughtful.” Well, I deny that opinions that God exists are “reasonable and substantive.” And I stand by my view that religious beliefs are delusions, even if they’re helpful to some people. As I said, as a whole, religion should go, because it is a net bad.
I’m done here.
Aren’t religious people underrepresented among the NYT readership of largely highly educated liberals? The title of the column has a proselytizing feel about it (“We need to start talking about God”), and its content seems to be trite drivel. I am not as militantly anti-religion as Jerry is (seeing that religious people I know derive psychological and social benefits from their self-deception), and there are columns/books/magazines with a religious perspective that I find interesting to peruse when I happen to come across them, but this text was not among them.
Perhaps the NYTs new openness to all types of woo is because intellectualism and rationality are seen as white and ableist by the new woke crew.
Ms. Warren is just a propagandist. The Christians of the “Third Reich”, a majority of the Germans at the time who mostly subscibed to one of two major denominations did “immerse [themselves] in messy questions of how to live faithfully” and informed by centuries of Christian-mainstream antisemitism found “particular responses” to such “particular headlines” such as a “Jewish question”: a Holocaust.
That’s what you get from Abrahamitic faiths, which has assigned non-believers, heretics and those of other faiths the status of “Untermenschen” (sub-humans) where even God Himself — the greatest being ever — thinks they deserve eternal torture. Ms. Warren would likely weasel herself out of this by saying that hell is but voluntary rejection of God, something people do to themselves, but that just turns a disgusting belief system into an utterly ridiculous one.
For starters, the Great Faiths did (and sometimes do) preach hell as pubishment for centuries. And given a fair choice between the best wellness hotel, and a burning torture chamber — who in their right mind would voluntarily choose the latter? Indeed, the whole idea is such a transparent nonsense that one has to be somehow cognitively impaired to accept this for an answer.
Not only did they preach hell as an inducement to believe (or at least, show outward compliance), they were willing to give demonstrations at the stake. I sometimes wonder if the growth of unbelief tracks the ending of inquisitions, burnings etc quite closely. How the mighty are fallen! – I grew up in the Anglican church, and it was a joke that they were so mild-mannered that they would do anything rather than offend. Even their version of ‘muscular Christianity’ involved a stronger cup of tea and leaving the crust on the cucumber sandwiches.
“As a pastor, I see again and again that in defining moments of people’s lives — the birth of children, struggles in marriage, deep loss and disappointment, moral crossroads, facing death — they talk about God and the spiritual life.”
Of course it would seem to her that everyone wants to talk about God at defining moments of their lives: her experiences are probably skewed heavily by members of her congregation who request a pastoral visit at these times.
Exactly, it’s what she does and she is paid to listen and respond with empathy, care, and religious guidance.
But, at those points in my life, I don’t find any satisfaction in religious bromides. I just want some empathy from a human who truly cares.
I don’t find that this newsletter adds value to my NYTimes subscription but most newspapars have some sort of “Faith and Values” section for selling church ads, and this helps bring eyes to the pages.
I can only offer the sad point that with declining readership, they broaden their readership. But perhaps as mentioned above this could be a way to expose a broader audience to more left leaning columnists.
must broaden their readership. The edit tool does not always appear.
My fellow readers, I’m enjoying this discussion, thank you all! I’m still scratching my head, though, concerning this: I think it’s valid to suppose that the NYTimes is publishing the Rev. Warren’s newsletter to attract a certain religious audience and so increase the number of readers thereby leading to more profits. But if an increased religious readership is its aim, why is the Times giving space to an Episcopal priest, since, according to the recent research of Pew Research Center and other reputable survey organizations, Episcopalianism is one of the Christian denominations in steepest decline? Indeed, Christianity as a whole is in decline. If the Times wants to broaden its readership among the believers, why not publish newsletters appealing to the fastest growing segments of the religious in the USA, those being the Muslims and the Mormons? And I’m not mentioning the other fastest growing segment of the “religious,” in the broadest sense of the term for survey purposes, that being the Nones. As our host has mentioned, why not a newsletter from someone like Richard Dawkins to appeal to the Nones?
If I’m reading Sean Wood’s posts correctly, one story would be that those who agree with Dawkins don’t get nearly the same kick from a defense of rational materialism that believers in the kind of thing Warren is pushing get from credos like hers, its crap logic notwithstanding. The membership of the faithful may be declining but their fervor of is not, on that view. I don’t know that that’s true—I really love a piece of excellent demolition, of the kind that Dawkins is so good at—but maybe the editorial managers at the NYT, who are trying to squeeze every last dime out of the Gray Lady, figure that folks like me (and probably a major chunk of this site’s regulars) aren’t more likely to subscribe just to get access to a regular column from RD.
Agreed. Remember that The God Delusion sold millions of copies, and you can say that that is preaching to the choir. It certainly sold more copies by orders of magnitude than any of Warren’s books!
But if an increased religious readership is its aim, why is the Times giving space to an Episcopal priest, since, according to the recent research of Pew Research Center and other reputable survey organizations, Episcopalianism is one of the Christian denominations in steepest decline?
First, she’s not an Episcopal priest. Her denomination is Anglican Church in North America which, according to Wikipedia, was founded in 2009 by a group of conservative Episcopalians who thought that the existing denomination had gone too far to the left. The Episcopal Church membership apparently declined 19% between 2007 and 2017. According to the Washington Post, Mainline (liberal) Protestant churches (such as the Episcopal Church) are dying but conservative churches are thriving. This might be part of the reason that the NYT would choose someone from a more conservative denomination. Furthermore, the attractiveness of her writing style would be a major consideration, as would the probability that she won’t be stressing points that distinguish her denomination from everybody else’s but rather will be writing about things common to all, perhaps putting a conservative spin on it.
why not publish newsletters appealing to the fastest growing segments of the religious in the USA, those being the Muslims and the Mormons?
The problem is that in the 2020 census 70% of the population identified as Christian and Warren will be able to appeal to all of them, whereas Muslims constitute about 1.1% of the U.S. population and Mormons a little over 2%.
Thanks for the explanation about the Anglican Church in North America. I remember reading about this schism when it happened but haven’t read much more about this new denomination. Concerning the demographics of the religious, I’m keeping an eye open for the time when the population of Muslims in the US reaches a large enough number that a Muslim version of Pastor Warren is given a newsletter similar to hers in the NYT, perhaps sooner than later, according to CNN:https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/10/politics/muslim-population-growth-second-religious-group-trnd/index.html
I agree with your last point. As much as I like RD and as important as his books have been in my life, he is long in the tooth (written by one who is also long in the tooth 😉). I and perhaps others of our ilk might be excited by a fresh, young humanist voice. Who can be that voice? Drew McCoy? Sarah Haider? ???
I thought the truly awful Ross Douthat was enough.
Ohhh I saw that last week – I didn’t know it was a new column.
Damn. It/she was terrible – more touchy-feely than the hideous Ross Dotard (who thinks he is an intellectual, but is really just a chubby christ clapper).
I’m seriously considering my subscription to my local New Woke Times, as if dowsing and astrology articles weren’t enough.
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Years ago, I was an admin of a philosophy forum on *shudder* Facebook. What struck me about certain posters was that they had a fascination with all things “spiritual”, and kept trying to make that the topic they discussed. As we tried to make it about philosophy, we tried to keep the focus to where there is legitimate philosophical debate. But for those of the religious mould, talking spirituality was talking philosophy and any attempt to keep the group focused was seen as heavy-handed and dismissive of what was so important to them.
So I totally get those who want their spirituality to be front and centre of not only their private lives but alive in the public square. It’s what gives their life meaning, and what they think others are missing in their lives. The challenge is more how one can do that in a pluralist society, where religion invokes strong reactions from believers of different kinds. The secularisation of society is at least as much a means to stop the religious going at each other’s throats as it is the rise of truth beyond the religious institution.
Really the problem that needs to be solved – how do you have multiple competing faiths from fighting over dominance rather than how to be a religious person in a secular society. Making our beliefs largely a private matter is the least bad solution conceived so far. It also happens to be the least psychologically-satisfying…
It was clear right from the article title “We need to start talking about God” that this would be yet another “Big Tent” invocation of “God” – don’t want to leave any denomination or ANYONE out who believes in “God,” right? We’re all God-believing friends, right? Oh, and you who may not be believer, but who are open to the possible wisdom of religion? Welcome!
In other words, this column was, and clearly will be, an excuse for any clear thinking person to exercise his/her hair-pulling muscles. It will be “God” and “religion” constantly cast in the vaguest manner, with as few specific commitments as possible. It will be, like this first edition, like trying to make sense of cotton candy sculptures blown apart by the wind.
The kind of bland, vague musings that every person of any religion can fill in the dots with their own beliefs, and think the author has said something clear and profound.
What Ms. Warren is actually saying is that I am afraid of the dark and of dying and it would give me great comfort if you believe the same campfire stories that I do.
We need to start talking about God? Why? Has he said anything substantive in the last X number of years? Is it because he isn’t taking credit for submerging Haiti or hundreds of other disasters? Has he forgotten how to do publicity?