Tonight, something different: prayer* in a moment, but first a little meditation.
I hardly want to start a new religion flamewar here, but something caught my eye in this post by Salon writer Judith Shulevitz on the recent controversy between The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier and philospher and "strong" atheist Daniel C. Dennett:
...[P]hilosophers concluded that there was only one way to tell religion from other apparent aberrations. Religion, they said, is what makes people feel religious. It puts them in touch with the Infinite or with what Freud called "the oceanic feeling." Defining religion as an experience, however, puts us back into the old Kantian world in which science goes here and religion goes there. An experiential definition of religion renders it impervious to empirical observation. You can never prove that someone feels religious, so you can never prove that something is a religion. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard took this idea even further, saying that the nonreligious could never understand the truth of religion, because religious experience could be understood only subjectively, not objectively.
This, it seems to me, comes very close to the heart of an important issue. We often talk about how fundamentalists and rationalists share the same literalistic approach to scripture, without considering much what drives that approach: the need to prove, objectively, that one's perspective is correct. But not everyone subscribes to that philosophy; some of us are satisfied with an admittedly subjective worldview.
Well, better, we believe in a relational worldview. For the other epistemological assumption shared by fundamentalists and their opponents is that truth is available immediately. That is to say, there is no need for a medium to translate or buffer the truth. A person can read the facts for him or herself, which means that they can act as an independent moral agent, with little or no need for outside support. That was Kant's view, and its intellectual heritage includes much of the self-sufficiency of American life - or the atomization, depending on how you look at it.
But as I say, there are those of us who disagree. For us, the truth is best discerned through community. That's not to say that we give up our intellect, insights or opinions in favor of groupthink, but that truth is understood by how it is lived together. "You believe what you do," as the Catholics say, and for some of us, that "you" is a plural.
That thirst for community, for life together, is the greatest gift religious progressives have to offer. Not because it belongs to us exclusively, but because we feel it so keenly. It is also what connects us to other progressives, secular or religious. For we agree, I think, that our communities and our lives alike have been severely degraded in recent years. And so we are all engaged in the work of restoration and healing, in our own ways.
Many of us were moved by the death of the Quaker Tom Fox this week. In large part, I believe, this grief came from the recognition of the beliefs that Fox lived out: that we are one community with the people of the world, even with those we would call "enemies," and especially with the innocents victimized by war; and that no community can be whole while it is ruled by violence and hatred. What makes Fox and his colleagues so captivating, of course, is that this is not starry-eyed idealism for them, but utterly pragmatic. They roll up their sleeves and go to work. They believe, and they do. There's no arguing with it, there's no denying its power, and in some sense, no escape from the judgment it inevitably passes on us.
Brothers and sisters, let us therefore pray* very simply tonight:
- That our beliefs may not get in the way of our actions;
- That we never submerge the needs of our communities to our own selfish ends;
- That our communities and our selves may be made strong and whole;
- That we may dedicate ourselves to the ever-present work of restoration and healing;
- That Tom Fox's death may not have been in vain;
- That he and his family may have peace and freedom;
and
- That we may be loved, safe, and blessed, and that we may have a share in a world made whole.