Miles: Can religion serve the common good in the 21st century?

This is a joyous day! Even those of us whose feelings of accomplishment do not always obligingly coincide with the appropriate ceremony are likely to feel our blood stirred, our pulse a bit faster, a hint of moisture in the eye on a day like this. Faculty and graduates are gathered to celebrate their work together, the part of their lives they have shared. Parents, partners and friends of the graduates deserve congratulations also. You have sacrificed and stood by (in the profoundest sense of that expression), supporting, encouraging, sometimes comforting and now rejoicing with loved members of this graduating class. It is a special day, and one that presses me to try to say to you the most useful and usable words I can.

What I most want to say to you today has to do with religion and religious people in the rapidly approaching 21st century. The question I’d like to consider is this: Can religion, which has so often divided people and set them in opposition to one another, serve the common good in the 21st century? Can people motivated by religious convictions offer resources that address the dramatic problems of American public life? Consider first the present situation of religion in American public life.

Americans are becoming increasingly religious, though many of us may still shy away from thinking of our commitments as religious because we are critical of some features of religious institutions and/or people. But America is no longer what Will Herberg called a “three-religion country,” by which he meant Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. In the rapidly changing American religious landscape, mosques and temples dot the horizon not only in Manhattan and Berkeley, but also in Phoenix, Detroit, Toledo and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Professor Diana Eck at Harvard University has recently published a book and a CD entitled The Pluralism Project. The project offers a directory that includes Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples, Islamic Centers, Sikh gurdwaras, Baha’i temples, pagan groups and Zoroastrian Centers. Moreover, religious loyalties are increasingly shaped by ethnic identities:

“There are Hispanic Baptists, Chinese Catholics, and Thai, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Buddhists. Los Angeles has over 200 Buddhist temples with congregations from all over the world. New immigration has brought Jewish immigrants from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.”

These religious groups do not exist across vast geographical distances from one another as in the recent past. I quote The Pluralism Project again:

“A Muslim Community Center, a Ukrainian Orthodox church, a Disciples of Christ church and a Hindu temple are virtually next-door neighbors on Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland. A Vietnamese Buddhist temple and a Baptist Church are neighbors on the same road on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A Lutheran church and a Buddhist temple are across the street from one another in Garden Grove, California.”

We are neighbors. To recognize this new situation is to realize that some of our assumptions about being religious, individually and in communities, need examination. For the diversity of American religious life is rapidly creating a new, stimulating and demanding situation. What does it mean to be religious in a society in which one’s own religious beliefs and practices are not broadly shared?

Growing up as the daughter of immigrant fundamentalist parents I inherited some religious attitudes that I now think are unhelpful – even dangerous – at the end of the 20th century. I speak, then, from the perspective of a long process of identifying what I will call some dangerous “old ways” of being religious, and I must speak from within my own religion, Christianity. Then I will explain why it is still – and more than ever – both necessary and important to be religious people.

First, an observation: In a religiously diverse society, what it means to be religious is changing. The struggle to believe, and to believe in, doctrinal truth is no longer quite at the center of what it means to be a religious person today. From John Bunyan in the 17th century to the orthodoxies of the 20th century, the anguished intellectual struggles of individuals to believe certain difficult doctrines have occupied much of the literature about religion. But religious communities are not primarily communities of people who believe in unison. They are communities of people who come together to encourage each other – to “egg each other on” – to live out, to body forth, their commitments to certain worldviews and values. Insight into the meaning of specific beliefs occurs through practicing religious commitment in such communities.

Second, if religion is to serve the common good in the 21st century, religious people must recognize the danger of religious chauvinism, whose most blatant form is religious wars. Most religions have a shameful past in which religious coercion has been practiced whenever there has been the power to do so. It is time to notice that people of different religions have more in common with one another than they do with people who claim no religious orientation. But sibling rivalry lingers, and it can be a very powerful form of conflict, as anyone who grew up in a family can attest.

A more subtle form of religious chauvinism has been prevalent in scholarship about religion. In the mid-20th century the theologian Paul Tillich pointed out that scholars tend to describe their own religion on its most profound level, while considering other religions on their most superficial levels, as “futile human attempts to reach God.” It is possible to believe strongly in the divine revelation of one’s own religion while recognizing that its beliefs and practices emerged in history as human efforts to give form and substance to that revelation. As human products, then, religious beliefs, practices and institutions are always in need of critical scrutiny. We must constantly ask: Do our religious institutions, language and rituals effectively body forth the generous and life-giving heart of the universe?

When we question the religious chauvinisms based on the claim to possess Truth, we come face to face with the need to revise our understanding of religion. What if, instead of thinking of religions primarily as defined by beliefs, we were to think of religions as based on communities, worldviews and practices that encourage their members to treat one another in certain ways. If, for example, we understand the center of reality as a loving, life-giving energy, we will realize that we must treat one another and all living beings with respect and responsibility. When we think of religions as providing orienting pictures of a greater whole in which all living beings are interrelated and interdependent, we will not worry so much about possessing the only Truth. We will become interested – fascinated – by others’ ways of describing and practicing their commitment to the good of the whole. We will come to understand the ultimate mystery in which we live and the richness of considering our own religious identities in conversation with people of religions other than our own. The diversity of American religious life is not merely to be tolerated; it is a profoundly exciting opportunity to learn from, and delight in, our religious differences.

There is a third “old way” of understanding religion that must be questioned if religion is to serve the common good. This is the assumption that religious and cultural values necessarily confirm and support one another. Certainly, religious warrants are regularly invoked to sanction social arrangements, economic policies, political stances, gender roles and expectations, and assumptions about race and class. But in the context of American public life, a religious identity should challenge rather than reinforce the relationships, values and attitudes of a consumer and entertainment culture.

Consider, for example, an example from my childhood: My parents placed John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress on my bedside table and I was urged to read it. I sometimes did, when nothing more exciting was available. The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 17th-century devotional manual that was a best-seller for centuries, offers some not-very-subtle gendered instructions for living a Christian life. When the protagonist, Christian, receives training in how to conduct the Christian life, he is taught to be on the alert for, and fight against, adversaries of all sorts. When Christiana, Christian’s wife, is given parallel instructions, she is taken to a shed where a sheep is being slaughtered. Her instructor says to her, “You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and to put up with wrongs without murmurings or complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death, and, without objecting, she suffers her skin to be pulled over her ears.” These devotional instructions supported and reinforced – rather than challenged – both of the main characters’ gender socialization in 17th-century England. A deliberately chosen and cultivated religious life should instead provide an alternative perspective from which to look critically at one’s socialization.

Finally, among what I call the “old ways” of being religious, I suggest that some forms of traditional and contemporary spirituality must be challenged. The word “spirituality” is often used today as an antonym to “religious.” People say, for example, “I’m not religious, but I’m a very spiritual person.” What does this statement mean? It could mean that the person rejects religious organizations but acknowledges some of the values ordinarily associated with religious worldviews. Or, the person who claims to be “spiritual but not religious” may avoid religious community and practices, thinking of spirituality as disembodied, a transcendence of body by mind. It could, and often has, meant disconnecting one’s spirituality from any political and social responsibility.

No spirituality should help us transcend the needy world in which we live, a world that requires our attention, affection and, most of all, our work. Christianity has traditionally been very concerned about the danger of attachment to power and possessions. But the equal dangers of resignation, passivity, cynicism and indifference to the suffering and struggling of other living beings have not been articulated as frequently or forcefully. To be sure, the possibility of transcending our immediate circumstances is, in some situations, a useful insight. But as a statement about what Christianity most centrally is, it is a potent danger.

Similarly, Christians often emphasize the power and greatness of God in ways that de-emphasize human responsibility. Theologies that focus on humans’ child-like dependence on God can fail to challenge Christians to mature acceptance of activity and accountability. The feminist philosopher Dorothy Dinnerstein once wrote, “We never feel as grown-up as we expected to feel when we were children.” Because we do not always (or, perhaps, often) feel confident and capable, we evade responsibility. Yet we are the grown-ups.

It is time to collect from the litter of “old ways” of being religious what I see as the particular importance and excitement of being a religious person in our society and world. First, I defined religion in a way that highlights our relationships within and across communities and toward all living beings. Religion is about how we care for one another, for life in its many forms, and for the earth’s precious and vulnerable resources. Second, I suggested that we need to think of religions as offering resources for vivid and passionate engagement with our needy world in conversation with religious others. Third, I urged that we distinguish between our religious commitments and our socialized assumptions and attitudes. Finally, I urged that we resist disembodied spiritualities and accept the responsibility of working together to address the urgent needs of our unjust world.

At the age of 100 years, at the close of a richly productive life, the 19th-century African American educator Anna Julia Cooper wrote: “It’s not what you say, or even what you do that matters. It’s what you stand for.” Becoming a person unified enough to stand for something is not easy in a culture organized by consumption and pacified by entertainment. In fact, however, personal and communal integration has never been easy or automatic. Becoming a person or a society that can stand for something is, and has always been, a project, a religious project. We do not, finally, have the prerogative of not being religious. Our loyalties, longings and goals effectively organize and direct our choices. Whether acknowledged as religious or not, they constitute our religion. We can be religious in ways that are isolating and self-serving. Or we can be religious in ways that support the common good. We can work to spread the gifts of love, beauty and lifefulness to all living beings.

It is an exciting and a demanding time to be a person with religious commitments. In the rich religious diversity of our nation and world, let us accept the responsibility of grown-ups for recognizing, appreciating and finally to delighting in the many ways of seeking and bodying forth the sacred that surrounds us as we approach the 21st century.