Are men abandoning God?
Religion is increasingly a woman's domain in America. Two-thirds of church and synagogue attendees are women, studies show, with young men fleeing the pews even faster. On any given weekend, 13 million more women than men will attend religious institutions.
Home is even worse. Moms are usually the ones talking about God around the dinner table. When the topic turns to faith, Dad is usually out to lunch.
What a shame. Fathers can find great inspiration in faith. For the last dozen years, I've traced the influence of the Bible through the Middle East and America, looking at how religious figures from the past are relevant to today's families. In Walking the Bible, I climbed Mount Ararat, crossed the Red Sea, and spent weeks traveling the route of the Exodus through the desert. In Where God Was Born, I continued that journey through the second half the Bible in Israel, Iraq, and Iran. In America's Prophet, I explored how the story of Moses has influenced Americans from the Liberty Bell, through the Statue of Liberty, through Cecil B. DeMille.
Two years ago this week I was struck by a life-threatening illness, and suddenly my travels took a more personal turn. What lessons of faith would I pass on to my three-year-old twin daughters? My new book, The Council of Dads, includes a Father's Four Lessons of Faith for my daughters:
1) Wrestle with God. In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with a messenger of God. The two come to a standstill, and the messenger leaves a mark on Jacob. The scar does not end up on Jacob's hand, nor on his head, his heart, or his eyes. Humans experience God, the text suggests, not by touching him, imagining him, feeling him, or seeing him. Jacob is scarred on his leg, for the essential way humans experience God is by walking with him. Forever after, Jacob is called "Israel," or one who wrestles with God. Don't be afraid of doubt. The true way to experience the divine is by struggling with it.
2) Befriend the stranger. There's a reason the Exodus story has inspired so many Americans. It's a narrative of hope: "This year we are slaves, but next year we can be free." History is not set in stone. It is not an immovable pyramid. The pyramid can be flipped. When you despair, when you hurt, when you fear, and especially when you encounter those feelings in others, remember the slaves who first groaned under bondage. You should read the Israelites' story and remember: there is a moral dimension to the universe. Right can prevail over might; justice can triumph over evil. Flip a few pyramids yourselves along the way. Overturn injustice. Befriend the stranger, for you, yourselves, were strangers once in a land with no hope.
3) Plunge into the waters. Moses became America's true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty. The visionaries who have been inspired by him -- Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King -- were not born to greatness. They became great by tapping into the anger and hope within themselves. Imagine your own promised land, girls; plunge into the waters, persevere through the dryness, and don't be surprised -- or saddened -- if you're stopped just short of your dream. Because the ultimate lesson of Moses' life is that the dream does not die with the dreamer, and the true destination in a narrative of hope is not this year at all, but next.
4) Be reunited with the ones you love. The Council of Dads tells the story of my "lost year" fighting cancer and the men I asked to be father figures to my daughters. Today I am cancer-free, and I learned a powerful lesson during that experience. The Liberty Bell has a quote from Moses on its side: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the world, unto all the inhabitants thereof." This line refers to a tradition whereby every seven years, farmers are obliged to give their fields a year of rest. Every 49 years the land gets an extra year of rest, during which all families are reunited, and all people reunited with the ones they love. That fiftieth year is called the jubilee year. That tradition perfectly captures my experience. My "lost year" was my jubilee year. I was needy. I was a stranger. I was reunited with the ones I love. Don't forget to slow down, girls. Reunite with the ones you love.
Take trips. Take chances. Take off.
To watch me speak about The Council of Dads, click here, or watch below:
Follow Bruce Feiler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeiler
I just wanted to say thank you for being such a great dad to your kids. Your children are so blessed to have a father that will proudly stand up for what he believes in. It's a shame that your positive story has been met with such distain and negativity. May God Bless you and your family.
My best wishes to you and your family, and for your continuing health.
As an atheistic woman, rather than being surprised that men are leaving religion, I am confounded that women continue to embrace the misogynistic religions of the bible. In that light, I have four lessons of reason that fathers should teach their children:
1. Question the existence of a god that would allow suffering in the world, including the deaths of millions of women and children who are forced to live an oppressed existence under religion. Embrace reason in all things.
2. Encourage sons to be involved in the lives of their family, not as patriarchal dictators, but as partners for their wives, and role models for their children.
3. Act as if your morality comes from your heart rather than a book that condones slavery, murder, and rape.
4. Live what you preach. Don't tell others how to live their lives. Be kind to others regardless of their religion or lack thereof.
As an afterword, I strongly disagree with your analogy of Moses in the formation of America. I will leave you with a quote from Thomas Paine:
"Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book
(the Bible)."
And it's often the very people who complain of the same behavior of others. Go figure.
They can also find great inspiration in reality. I don't need to believe that some nice old legends are real any more than I need to believe Santa is real in order to feel inspired.
Want to feel inspired?
Get rid of religion. It is a fog that covers life. Lift it and you really do see how wonderful life is. For real.
Your convictions do not justify being judgmental and patronizing about a different belief system than yours.
And I will always be against anyone that says their belief system is the only way to really experience life.
Life is much much better without fairy tales covering up and muting your real experience.
You don't need a "religious narrative" to break out of whatever shell of lethargy you believe the Western culture to be. You just need to look at life the wonderful thing it is.
Why keep indoctrinating our children and abusing the trust they place in us? It makes no sense to cultivate and endorse false beliefs when a suitable epistemology exists from which our children can examine the world.
You don't have to teach your kid to be a non-believer, but you should be teaching them how to weigh evidence critically.
The above statement is predicated on what one defines as faith. If by faith we mean a kind of repressive superego or a modality to exclude and devalue the difference in others than I would certainly agree—faith needs to go. But I don’t think this is what the author meant by faith—so right off the bat your comment is responding to a straw-man kind faith and not at all what the article was attempting to convey.
Furthermore, like it or not, faith has been and still is one of the primary modes towards inspiration and action. So it seems a better tactic to transform faith into a modality that inspires people to act towards justice than to devalue faith, which in an ironic turn of events, only shuts people out—the very thing progressives hate about religious faith. So in the long run you’ve traded an exclusionary religious faith for an exclusionary secular philosophy.
I am by all means open to evidence that the spiritual exists provided you define it for me and in that same vain, I'll gladly accept definitions of god and evidence ones exists.
If not, then why all the bother? Faith is pointless, wastes time and is more-often-then not counter-productive.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/faith
Faith:
1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs
Which one was the author using? It's not the first. And the second and third are EXACTLY what gthnk was talking about. Unless you're going to create your own definition of the word. By all means, please define faith; 'cause it's your personal definition that really matters.
You're of course right that Mr. Feiler's article did not include any attack nor show any explicit disrespect toward atheism. However, the article was presented for us, this generally open-forum HuffPost community at large, to read and digest, not just those believers who the author typically addresses in his books and talks, who undoubtedly would give him far less grief.
While certainly your "irrelevant" label may stick pretty well to a lot of the posts you're talking about, this may be in part because this article - to this atheist, at least - reads not as an attack on our beliefs, but as an advertisement. Not just the multiple hyperlinks to his books for sale (as cringe-inducing as I find those), but advertisements to a belief system we feel is irrational (and to some, harmful).
So I come to the question: if this is my opinion, at least, should I or should I not address it on this forum, even if Feiler wasn't "talking" to me? Often, I think so. This is our community, too, and to some degree silence of opposition feels like an implicit endorsement.
Then again, the god-thingies may be insane tyrants. The ancient texts insist that they are.
There is nothing virtuous in belief, aside from a feeling of false comfort (which is just as real as actual comfort --- save for its truth).