In Germany in 1799, just eleven years after the Federalist Papers appeared in America, the Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote a marvelous book entitled On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. He observed, in his high-spirited opening lines, that for a long time “faith has not been every man’s affair,” that only a “few have discerned religion itself, while millions, in various ways, have been satisfied to juggle with its trappings. Now, especially, the life of cultivated people is far from anything that might have even a resemblance to religion.” Teasing his sophisticated audience for their hostility to the subject—“I know how well you have succeeded in making your earthly life so rich and varied that you no longer stand in need of an eternity You are agreed, I know, that nothing new, nothing convincing can any more be said on this matter”—he nonetheless plunged in.
Schleiermacher knew little of religion in the New World, but his comments hit very near the mark for America, then and now. And although our Founding Fathers didn’t know his sermons (which weren’t translated into English for almost a century), they might well have recognized some of the issues as Schleiermacher saw them. All these modern pioneers approached the church-state conundrum with a brilliant intellectual clarity and emotional, spiritual depth that was characteristic of their times. Those early years of our republic were years when religion’s place in society was explored profoundly on both sides of the Atlantic—in contrast to the loud but superficial rhetoric dominating the debate today—and we would do well to recall the terms they used and to consider the issues in the light of that epoch.
Let me first state my dubious credentials for writing on this subject. I think of myself as a Christian or, to use W. H. Auden’s impeccable response to the question as to whether he was one, “Well, I’m trying to be.” I grew up in the precincts of an interdenominational Protestant seminary, and though I was christened and confirmed as an Episcopalian, I attended many kinds of church service in my youth; I learned from my elders and betters that it was best to speak with courtesy to or about other Christians and non-Christians whatever their sect (I didn’t yet know how rare this was). I’m still a devout reader of the Gospels but now almost never go to church, having developed an allergy to the pious self-congratulatory tone that permeates so many of them. So I live as a skeptic and doubter, my view of churches afforded from both the familiar inside and the disaffected outside. Still, I hope I understand the wisdom of the words spoken by the man who brings his ailing son to be healed by Jesus and is instructed to believe. “Lord, I believe,” he answers, “help thou my unbelief.” Plenty of Americans find themselves in this in-between territory.
In college, as a student of the French and Scottish Enlightenments, I was enraptured by the ideas advanced by Descartes, Hume, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot—ideas which I was certain had changed the world for the better. I became a lifelong, fervent enthusiast for the Enlightenment program of ridding human society of superstition and fear, evils that from the points of view of these writers had been most powerfully propagated over the centuries by the church, with the strength of sword and gallows behind it, with royal armies, prisons, and laws supporting the ecclesia. These men wanted, instead, to get people to trust in their own judgment and the workings of their own minds.
Now, is there an inevitable contradiction between those great Enlightenment aims to advance knowledge and understanding and the enlightening goals of true religion? I don’t think so, any more than Schleiermacher did, or John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. Eighteenth-century deists as our Founding Fathers were, they claimed to believe in an almighty being that had created the natural world, while they rejected the notions of “revealed religion.” Their deism gave them an honorable position from which to deal with their conventionally devout fellow citizens, the depth of whose spiritual sentiments they respected.
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"We must learn how to talk to one another."
Ms. Sifton says it all in the last sentence of her brilliant piece.
As a nation we have made it our favorite pastime to have no time whatsoever for anything meaningful.
Talking to another requires listening and sharing. Some patience and some time. We afford ourselves none of this. We have forgotten what it is to be human.
If we want to be relevant even only a decade from today as a people and nation, we have to quickly invest in ourselves and thereby invest in talking to those we love and thereby invest emotion into that exchange and put-out a little effort if needed by the other, to be in a better place.
By not talking we have rid ourselves of some duties. But look where it has brought us? An ugly place where religion seems to give us comfort, but those we love still live in misery, away from us, but staring us at our face, if we only contemplate.
Mother Theresa told a doctor in India something wonderful that also adds to this wonderful piece. I shall quote, but please know I could be misquoting her, but that the thought is accurate. She said something to the effect of; "Hands that serve are more sacred than lips that pray." I wish more people would understand that and become more religious by serving rather than idle (not Idol) worship.
Posted by suvir saran on Sun 21 Nov 2010