Motus Mentis

In a recent post, Kevin Kim offers a rebuttal to Sam Harris’s argument that religious moderates are in fact an impediment to progress toward a more rational world.

Kevin, reading from an online excerpt from Harris’s The End of Faith, quotes the following passage:

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God.

Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question– i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us– religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness.

The benignity of most religious moderates does not suggest that religious faith is anything more sublime than a desperate marriage of hope and ignorance, nor does it guarantee that there is not a terrible price to be paid for limiting the scope of reason in our dealings with other human beings. Religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics, and the building of strong communities.

Kevin, who has a laudable personal interest in the promotion of interreligious dialogue, and whose fascinating book Water From A Skull examines the topic in great depth, makes the following objection:

Harris seems to think that moderates and pluralists are purposely or inadvertently protecting their more rabid co-religionists, but I think the assertion in the first sentence of the above-quoted text is in error. Contrary to Harris’s claim, I would contend that religious moderation and pluralism are often critical responses to fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and similar orientations.

I am also unsure how Harris can justify calling moderation and pluralism “an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion.” Theologians like John Hick or the far more radical John Shelby Spong would probably style their project as one of deconstruction: both Hick and Spong are willing to go so far as to throw out the resurrection — the very cornerstone of Christian faith — in their radical recasting of the Christian message. What Harris is talking about is more reminiscent of the humorous stereotypes one hears about the Catholic Church: every announced revision in Roman dogma begins, “As we have always contended…”

In speaking this way about religion, Harris mischaracterizes the phenomenon as non-evolving, which is ludicrous even from a non-religious standpoint. I would agree that religious traditions are highly, highly resistant to change; as my former pastor used to say, “If you want to find a group of people more unwilling to change than any other, go to a church.” There’s truth to this. But Harris should know better than to view religions as static phenomena. They do indeed change, the doctrines within them change, and one of the ways they evolve is by interacting with scientists, the non-religious, and yes, with other religious traditions.

Kevin’s point is well taken. Much of moderate and progressive religion is indeed a critical response to the dogmatic rigidity and palpable absurdities of literalism and fundamentalism. And as moderate religious groups evolve and interact, there can plainly be a softening, and sometimes a casting aside, of previously non-negotiable doctrine (that theologians like Hick would be willing to abandon the notion of the Resurrection is a particularly striking example). This in turn does make it possible for progressive religious communities of different faiths to find common ground, to reach out across ancient divisions.

But Harris is right as well, I think: the problem is that no amount of evolution by moderate and progressive congregations will address the problem of religious fundamentalism and extremism. To such believers, the moderates are seen, and quite defensibly so, simply as heretics on their way to apostasy, and ultimately to Hell. Particularly in the case of Islam, there is not a great deal of wiggle-room: the belief that the sacred Muslim text is the verbatim, literal word of God, dictated to a chosen prophet who then reigned on Earth for ten years as political leader as well (thereby providing a clear example of how God thinks human society ought to be arranged), is a core tenet of the religion. Anyone who does not accept this as incontestible truth is arguably no longer a Muslim at all.

I think also that while progressive religious pluralists may indeed make occasionally harsh criticism of the fundamentalists in their own traditions, their agenda of tolerance and respectful dialogue makes it far rarer for them to have anything unfavorable to say about other faiths. After all, it is one thing to bicker amongst one’s own family, but human groups are notoriously prickly when it comes to perceived insults from without — and there are few subjects about which folks are more sensitive than their religion (this is yet another of religion’s exquisitely evolved defenses). A perfect example of this is Anglican leader Rowan Williams’s recent abject prostration in the face of Muslim demands for the establishment of Shari’a in England.

So while I agree with Kevin that Harris underestimates the extent to which, at its growing tip, religious thought may evolve, I do think it is fair to say that moderate, progressive, tolerant religious pluralism can indeed provide cover behind which noxious fundamentalisms may fester.