[Disclaimer: In the letter that follows, which was written in response to David Brooks' NY Times column from May 25th, I am guilty of shameless, though at least not unwarranted or unrelated, self-promotion.]
Dear Mr. Brooks,
On the pages of The Atlantic Monthly during the aftermath to 9/11, you once described yourself as a "recovering secularist." By that, you admitted that you had long held certain assumptions about the modern world -- principally, the classic secularist assumption that the more modern we become, the less religious we would be. As you wrote then, this secularization theory was "yesterday's incorrect vision of the future."
Obviously, this mistake was not yours alone. It is one reason why those on the more liberal-progressive wing of the political spectrum have consistently underestimated the staying power of religion as a mobilizing force (for a full documentation of this point, see Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, or Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief, or more recently, Jim Wallis' God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It). As you rightly point out, it is also one reason why 9/11 was such a shock to our system because while many of us had been lulled to sleep by a type of religiosity that is worn lightly on the sleeve, 9/11 proved a tragic reminder of how religion is a potent force (both for good and for evil, I should make clear). And as many others have predicted long before, most significantly the French philosopher Michel Foucault in reference to the Iranian Revolution, religious fundamentalism -- whether in its Islamic, Christian, Hindu nationalist, Jewish Zionist forms -- would fill in as the default ideological alternative to globalization as the Cold War came to an end. All of which is to say that you were right on so many levels about the urgent need to consider the religious impact within the cultural and political realm. Our neglect would be our peril.
But now in your most recent NY Times column from May 25, 2007, you put your finger on the pulse of change yet again. You start by mentioning the pope and Christopher Hitchens as polar opposites, one speaking on behalf of the "thoroughly religious," and the other for the "antireligious." Then you ask the question, "But who speaks for the quasi-religious?"
I have not been contributing to the Huffington Post for long, but some readers might be aware that in my first two posts the targets of my critique were first the pope and second Christopher Hitchens. I found myself somewhat amused by the very different responses I got from each of these posts. In the first case, the assumption was that if I was so critical of Pope Benedict's absurd pretense to authority as reflected in his recent statements about the eternal fate of unbaptized infants, then I must be one of those in the antireligious camp. In the second, the repeated accusation was made that I was some closet believer offering some blanket apology for religion.
I hope that you, at least, can understand that I am neither an enemy of religion, nor an apologist for religion; rather, I am a critic, and as such, my aim is not only to identify the dangers of the religious sentiment at its most extreme, but also to understand the quasi-religious sentiment that characterizes the great bulk of us. As you put it, "Quasi-religious people attend services, but they're bored much of the time. They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant. They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts." As I put it, this is the religion for the rest of us -- those of us caught between belief and uncertainty, faith and skepticism, a love for (at least the idea of) God and a genuine fear of what is so often done in God's name.
Lastly, you conclude your column by saying that "The problem is nobody is ever going to write a book sketching out the full quasi-religious recipe for life." On this last point, I must beg to differ. There are many scholars, philosophers of religion, and secular theologians (yes, I realize that that is an apparent oxymoron, but it is also a school of thought that grows out of the 1960s radical death-of-God movement) who are engaged in such discussions and writing such books. My own efforts, while paltry in comparison to the likes of Mark C. Taylor, John D. Caputo, Gianni Vattimo and others, are nevertheless sincere grapplings with the meaning of religion in a pluralistic, if not completely relativistic, world. These are not recipes per se, but they are genuine expressions of an authentic, though still quasi, religious sensibility.
The reality is, however, that you are mainstream, and we are not; you enjoy millions of readers, while our books are deemed a success if they sell over 1000 copies. I do not say that begrudgingly. I simply state it as a fact that can easily be confirmed by checking the sales rank of any of our latest books on Amazon.com. The question is, why? Is it because, as some have suggested, that academia is completely out of touch? Or that Americans in general are anti-intellectual? Or might it be something even more fundamental -- namely, the paradox that once the quasi-religious recipe for life is written, it forfeits its title as being quasi-religious. In other words, what makes the quasi-religious sensibility what it is is precisely what precludes it from being wildly popular.
Nevertheless, for those like you who feel themselves on the outside looking in whenever you hear the latest directive from Pope Benedict or Pat Robertson, or the latest rant from Christopher Hitchens, for those not sure what you believe but who know you at least believe in belief, for those for whom God is fundamentally a mystery beyond our knowing and our conception and not some tool by which one bludgeons one's enemies, or less ominously, some grandfatherly figure in the sky -- in short, for you who are longing for a religion for the rest of us, I humbly and foolhardily commend my words and my works to you.
Sincerely,
Jeff Robbins