Tags
conservatism, Glenmary Research Center, John Shelby Spong, Ken Wilber, modernity, mystical experience, Paul J. Griffiths, Unitarian Universalism, United States
As I discussed last week, Ken Wilber’s recent work argues that spirituality must be taken to a new and higher level, one associated with the “orange” and “green” worldviews of modernity and postmodernity. What does such a higher spirituality entail? Wilber points to examples of liberal Christianity like Hans Küng and John Shelby Spong. This is well and good; I’ve drawn a lot from liberal Christianity and I think it offers crucial methodological lessons for the study of Asian traditions. But his enthusiasm for them goes much too far. He claims that “any premodern spirituality that does not come to terms with both modernity and postmodernity has no chance of survival in tomorrow’s world”. (IS p225)
I would have little problem with this claim if by “come to terms” Wilber meant only that they must acknowledge and react to the existence of post/modernity – as fundamentalism does, by mostly reacting against it. But in his explanations it becomes clear he means significantly more: they must embrace and adopt it. In this claim Wilber echoes the title of one of Spong’s works, a work he names approvingly: Why Christianity Must Change Or Die. The implication of both Wilber and Spong on the topic is that only a post/modernist liberal or postliberal Christianity will be able to survive the coming decades and centuries, as post/modern ideas become more widespread through the world.
But is this claim right? It’s a version of the secularization thesis, a sociological thesis so popular in the 1950s through the 1970s that its truth was almost assumed. People saw societies abandon their “religious” traditions and abandon them faster than a single generation – as Québec did in its startling Quiet Revolution, or Spain after Franco. This, it was assumed, was the fate of all societies as they came to develop economically and technologically: their youth would throw off the shackles of myth and superstition and greet the moderns as liberators.
Anyone who has observed the history of the past few decades, however, will have seen that that’s almost the opposite of what actually happened. From Iran to India to the United States, “religion” made a huge comeback, and it was not the liberal modernizing religion of Spong and Küng, but the supposedly backward, superstitious, conservative traditions of Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Wilber, of course, is one of those who has observed this history. He has been able to watch it for considerably longer than I have; I was blissfully unaware of Zia ul-Haq‘s fundamentalist takeover of Pakistan because I was in diapers. This is the history that Wilber explains as the result of modernity’s discarding of spirituality, the one that can be fixed with a turn to modernizing liberal (“orange and higher”) Christianity or Islam.
Does this explanation hold? Are people turning to fundamentalist Christianity because they haven’t been exposed enough to liberal Christianity? If this explanation was the best, one would expect to see liberal Christianity growing and thriving as an alternative to fundamentalism. But it isn’t.
The Glenmary Research Center’s Religious Congregations and Membership study – comprehensive enough that the US Census directs researchers there for detailed data on “religion” – shows some eye-opening statistics for the period 1990-2010. The large liberal denominations that have embraced a Christianity like Spong’s have shown a drastic drop in the number of adherents (including “all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend services.”) Spong’s Episcopalian church is down 20%; the still more liberal United Church of Christ, 35%. Meanwhile the Southern Baptists, who enshrined fundamentalism, grew 5%; the Catholic Church, 10%; the Mormons, a whopping 74%. And that’s just the United States. Philip Jenkins reads the global demographic data and notes that Christians in the southern hemisphere are rapidly coming to outnumber those in the north, if they do not already – not just because of population growth but because of conversion. And the churches growing so rapidly there are filled with strict sexual taboos, faith healing, exorcism – a Christianity significantly less liberal than American fundamentalism.
Recent history has made a mockery of Spong’s title. For the actual sociological evidence shows the title’s opposite: the Christianity that has changed is the one that has been dying – at least, the Christianity that has changed in the way that Wilber and Spong would have wanted it to. The Christianity that thrives is the conservative one, laden as it is with magic, taboo, “superstition”.
That this is the case should not come as a dramatic surprise. This conservative “amber” or “red” Christianity (using Wilber’s colour codes) offers people in a secular age an alternative that liberal “orange” Christianity does not. For orange Christianity is often quite hard to tell from atheism. Wilber’s descriptions of it are often phrased primarily in the negative: it does not privilege its account of truth over others’, it does not believe literally in myths. But many forms of atheism do not do these things either. What exactly does liberal/orange Christianity have that atheism doesn’t? And why should anybody bother with it at all, when they can simply be atheists?
One answer is the ties of social community that a church provides: a place to meet new people when one moves residence, a place to give one’s children the kind of ethically rich education that is difficult in secular public schools. The most prominent liberal tradition that has indeed been growing is Unitarian Universalism: 11%, better than the Southern Baptists. But Unitarians are often described as “atheists with children”; most Unitarian churches are community centres more than spiritual ones. With the exception of a few more traditionalist churches in New England, a Unitarian church is as modern a place as the biomedical engineering department at Cal Tech; atheism is typically more welcome than prayer. Is this going to be enough to satisfy people’s spiritual longings, to turn back the disaster of modernity? Do people turn to fundamentalism just because they haven’t been exposed to Unitarian community centres?
I don’t expect that Wilber would answer that question yes. As far as I can tell, the spirituality that he preserves has to do primarily with meditative and mystical experiences. But those are a feature which, as the article I’m writing argues, was not central to most premodern traditions – even for their élite practitioners, let alone the majority. The idea that mystical experience is at the core of the traditions is an invention of the 19th century, as many religion scholars like Wayne Proudfoot, Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass have noted. It seems very unlikely to me that fundamentalism would cease if its practitioners had access to mystical experiences that they could interpret within a liberal framework.
Rather, I think, fundamentalism and other forms of conservative tradition thrive because of a discontent with modernity itself. Modernity is a gain in many ways, but it is also a loss, and a loss that cannot be fixed merely with the mystical experience whose prominence is itself a modern phenomenon. Many of the things that most turn us moderns off about premodern tradition – its rigid restrictions on sexuality, its supernaturalism, its literal readings of sacred texts – are themselves the appeal for conservatives. The promise of an afterlife allows the hope of a transcendent future better than the suffering we experience in this lifetime. Rigid behavioural rules allow a comforting and often necessary structure – certainly to those in trouble whose lives are falling apart, but even to successful intellectuals like Paul Griffiths who celebrate the joy of submitting to a tradition.
I think Christian conservatives or fundamentalists are wrong about most issues. But I also think they’ve got a point, one that cannot be easily argued away. They do not merely represent an earlier stage of human development, but a considered reaction to modernity and the real problems it involves, and one we would do well to take seriously. I intend to take the point up further next week.
elisa freschi said:
Thanks Amod, very interesting and honest post. I see your point: fundamentalism is an “easier” and appealing religion, insofar as it promises a lot (e.g., a wonderful afterlife, whereas our hated neighbours will burn in hell), and demands only a strict discipline (which might be difficult, but is still easier than a critical stance towards oneself and the openness to mystical experiences). If, however, we agree that fundamentalism is bad (at least insofar as it entails the fact that the “others” may be persecuted, have no rights, etc.), we might start asking how to counter it. A possible answer, I think, is that we need something equally appealing. And if critical thought is not appealing enough, we might add some nice narratives about it (in the Muslim world, for instance, I would try to re-build the myth of the tolerant Ottomans, or of the openness of the Arabic culture during our dark Middle Age). And, of course, have faith in the fact that the good will finally overcome;-)
Amod Lele said:
Thanks, Elisa. I agree that it’s important to build up strong liberal “religious” traditions as alternatives, and your proposals for doing so have merit. My point above is that such liberal traditions need to recognize that they’ve been losing; the winners have been the fundamentalists on one side and the atheists on the other, *not* the liberal monotheists who seek a proper balance. Wilber, Spong, and other liberals don’t seem to get that; their claims suggest an inevitability to the liberal religious view, which is not borne out by what’s actually happening.
Ben said:
I’ve always felt that the appeal of fundamentalism has, among its myriad explanations, the appeal of not making decisions. You bring up the same idea in terms of the appeal of restrictions, but I think this idea can be developed further in light of recent research on human happiness. If people commit to something, their opinions and preferences will shift to help make them happy with their choice. Indecision -specifically, the chance to rethink and rescind decisions- prevents that process and makes people unhappy.
I believe this contributes to the eternal appeal of tyranny and rigid rule systems, but also of marriage and the belief in fate. Commitment can be more appealing than choice, for good or for ill.
Amod Lele said:
I think that’s right as well – at least, that’s one part of the appeal. I’ll be examining the appeal of conservative traditions a bit more next week. I think Wilber’s reaction to this is likely to be something along the lines of “well, people should grow up and make choices.” Which is, as Wilber would say of most of his opponents, true but partial – we need to recognize that something of real and significant benefit is lost when we take up that individual autonomy. It’s not just that people who want choices made for them are at a lower developmental level; there’s something good about having the responsibility taken off you, even if on balance it is overall better to have the choice and the responsibility.
Ben said:
If you aren’t familiar with the research, this TED talk by Dan Gilbert is a good way to get a quick overview. The photography-class experiment speaks most directly to the idea that people are less happy with the same action if they have the opportunity to reverse it- even if they never execute that opportunity.
http://blog.ted.com/2006/09/26/happiness_exper/
Jesse said:
I’ll break that down in evolutionary terms for you Amod – we cannot BE a social species AND have total individual autonomy. It would be mathematically impossible.
An autonomous person is either a hermit or a leader – and you cannot have leaders without followers.
A follower, by definition, is someone who is more comfortable taking direction than making their own decisions.
If we were a species with total individual autonomy, we would behave like Tigers – restless, territorial, coming together only for mating or short discussions, forever pushing away from each other.
We aren’t. We’re a social species with leaders and followers, and even the simplest thought experiment immediately reveals that the MAJORITY of us must be followers. Probably a large majority.
But make no mistake, we don’t have followers because we are ‘stupid’ or ‘undeveloped’ – we have followers because we are SOCIAL. We have to have them, and the instinctive discomfort so many people feel regarding making decisions is the primary mechanism by which we follow – it makes us ready to listen to another, not because they are smarter, but because several people acting in unison are much more powerful than an individual.
Of course, in the modern era, we have learned that this natural tendency can be horribly abused, and so it worries us deeply that we are like this. But as of yet, there seems to be little we can do about it.
Jesse said:
To tie things into current hot topics and rampant geekery:
Loki’s spiel in ‘The Avengers’ about ‘freeing humanity from freedom’ may have sounded like hack action-movie writer double-speak – but in fact it was one of the more profound statements in the movie, because there appears to be a very real and unfortunate truth to those words.
A great many people prefer to be told what to do, even if what they are told to do is terrible, or self destructive – anything to avoid having to decide for themselves.
Ben said:
Not that the movie developed it at all, but I had the same thought about the “freedom from freedom” line, Jesse :)
JimWilton said:
It seems to me that there is little or no relationship between being a leader and a follower and being free or not free.
In the first place, the American notion of freedom (“They hate us for our freedom”) is naive, self-congratulatory and superficial. Although the concept has likely changed over 200 years, in its 20th Century incarnation it has to do with fulfilling desires (which car to buy, which deodorant to use). A less superficial notion of freedom must address the reality that our emotions and desires constrain our behavior and our choices to a much greater extent than any social, legal or political system.
From that point of view, it is possible to be a follower or a leader and to be free. It is also possible to be a follower or a leader and to be unfree and governed by passions and prejudices.
To view freedom and individual autonomy in other terms than these requires saying that a heroin addict embodies freedom as he scrounges for change in the sofa cushions looking for enough to buy his next fix.
Jesse said:
Yes, it is true that one can be a follower and still retain some degree of autonomy – the devil is in the details.
Fundamentalist religions generally permit relatively little individual autonomy, though even they are more lax than most corporations within the scope of their workplace.
Conversely, the tie between a corporation and its worker is usually quite lax, whereas the tie between a fundamentalist religion and its followers is often highly coercive, with those trying to leave often being sanctioned.
Of course, the corporation has its own coercive mechanism in the form of threatened dismissal – no joke when so many economies suffer from chronic unemployment.
Freedom is a complex animal. I can say one thing about it with certainty however – the more there are of us, the less we each may have.
Jesse said:
My relatively short opinion:
Religion can no longer compete with science in any fashion when it comes to Enlightenment – if you want to know how the world works, you need but ask. Alas, we long ago passed the inflection point where you’ll readily understand most of the answers without a wholehearted embrace of esoteric knowledge that most people are unwilling to undertake. The answers are often as complex as the questions, which many people cannot accept.
Thus, religion has retreated to its old columns of Simplicity and Coherence – aspects that Fundamentalism excels at, and the liberal religions do not.
Liberalized religions are left in an ever widening limbo between the rational, complex secular world, and the irrational, simplistic conformity of Fundamentalism. They offer an uncertain sampling of both in a world that is becoming very rapidly polarized between the extremes, and frankly in my region at any rate, I pretty much just see lots and lots of lapsed Catholics falling into that slot, secularists in all but name, unwilling to give up the rituals they were raised with.
So long as governments disregard their duty to maintain economies and social structures that are understandable to their citizens, then Fundamentalists worldwide will continue to sweep up adherents who are overwhelmed by the insane complexity and cutthroat competition of the modern world.
I would very much have liked for liberal religions to provide an effective bulwark against that trend, but I agree with Amod that they have not been able to for the most part.
Amod Lele said:
Is it even possible in this day and age for governments to “maintain economies and social structures that are understandable to their citizens”? Has there been an example of a recent government that has done this?
Jesse said:
It has never been a priority for them, so no, I don’t think any have.
It would mean tight restrictions on how financial activity is conducted, so there are a great many vested interests (bankers, investment houses, insurers, etc) laid against doing so.
But in theory, yes, I think you could render an entire economic system transparent and (reasonably) comprehensible, particularly with modern information technology.
Ethan Mills said:
While the mid-20th century decrees that religion was going to go away were wrong, I don’t think we should let the fact that many Fundamentalists are loud and obnoxious lead us to the opposite conclusion that religion is always going to remain the force that it is now. Religion isn’t going to go away any time soon (probably never), but younger people (at least here in the US) are extremely turned off by Fundamentalist stances on things like homosexuality, birth control, politics, science, etc.
This recent story in my university newspaper was interesting:
http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/index.php/article/2012/05/study_fewer_believe_in_god
If those statistics are right, only 53% of American millennials (people born after 1981) believe in God and 26% claim no religious affiliation. I can definitely see this anecdotally in my students. Granted, very few of those are Dawkins-style atheists, but I don’t see people who are “spiritual but not religious” getting into the sort of mischief Fundamentalists get into. Of course many of them will turn to organized religion as they get older, and some of them may become Fundamentalists for the reasons Amod cites. But still, about 16% of Americans claim no religious affiliation. I couldn’t find the statistics, but I remember reading somewhere that this number has doubled or tripled just in the last 20 years, and will probably continue to grow. I should point out that these statistics are just for the US. The story may be different elsewhere.
If I were to predict what’s going to happen, I think Fundamentalism will be less of a force over the next several decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant part of the US population will identify as unaffiliated by say, 2050. This doesn’t mean they’ll be irreligious atheist materialists (the dream of many 20th century atheists), but I think organized religion in general will be less of a social and political force by the middle of the 21st century. Although I’m personally an irreligious atheist, I’m not sure if this is a good thing. While “spiritual but not religious” people are certainly less obnoxious than Fundamentalists, I have a lot of respect for the communal and moral dimensions of liberal religions. If anything, it gives people a middle ground between Jerry Falwell and Richard Dawkins.
Amod Lele said:
The 53% statistic is the interesting one to me. However, I don’t think that’s incompatible with the story the numbers tell above. I think what we’re seeing is a polarization: traditionalists including fundamentalists on one side, and people who express no affiliation or even belief on the other – including the atheists and the “spiritual but not religious”, and more than a few who are affiliated in some way with Yavanayāna Buddhism but may not call themselves Buddhist. What gets squeezed out on both sides is the Christian mushy middle, the historical mainline churches – that’s what’s declining, in the US anyway and perhaps elsewhere.
(Note the Western US has always had a higher proportion of unbelievers and unaffiliated than the rest of the country, too, at least when you get away from Mormon country. If you were to take that poll at the University of Tennessee, you’d get verrrry different results.)
Lucy Putnam said:
One small correction…The Glenmary Research would love to take credit for this Religious Census, however we cannot. For the most recent publication, Religious Congregations and Membership Study, 2010, we gathered the Catholic data and our partners in this project, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) published it. The Glenmary Research Center published previous versions in 2000, 1990, and 1980.
Amod Lele said:
Thank you for the correction, Lucy (and welcome to the blog)! Whom I should be giving the credit to instead? I didn’t quite get that from your comment.
elisa freschi said:
Amod, while I was thinking about your point (to put it in a very short and unnuanced way: “liberal religions did not gain followers, and people either became atheists or fundamentalists”) it came to my mind that many educated people in Europe (and, I am sure, in the US) turn to Buddhism exactly because they look for a “rational” and “modern” religion, one that does not condemn homosexuality nor sexuality in general, which does not contradict science, and so on. We have already discussed this issue (https://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/07/why-was-gay-sex-considered-misconduct/) and “traditional” Buddhism is most probably not the way they conceive it. But “Westernised Buddhism” (or Yavanayana;-)) has succeeded in gaining followers exactly because it offered them a “modern” approach + the benefits of religion (rituals, belonging to a community, hope…).
Amod Lele said:
That’s a really good point, Elisa. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. In the west, people who turn to Christianity are generally looking for more strictures; people who turn to Buddhism are often looking for less. I presume that’s because of the way the two traditions are perceived in each culture, with Buddhism having been “sold” as a less strict tradition, and being perceived as such. It would be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out in modern Asian societies.
elisa freschi said:
Yes, interesting point. For comparable data, one might look at the spread of Buddhism among “untouchables” in India and Nepal (through Ambedkar’s conversion). In this case, too, it seems that Buddhism was a way to free oneself from caste-bondages. The only girl I know coming from a newly-converted family was proud of the larger freedom women in her family could enjoy if compared with other families in their area.
JimWilton said:
I suppose by strictures you mean dogma and moral prohibitions. Certainly among the American Buddhists I know, the discipline is much greater than most Christian traditions (at least outside of monasteries). What Christian practice are you aware of that even approaches the rigors of the Zen sesshin — much less Tibetan ngondro practices or three year retreat?
I know that for me the main difference between Christianity and Buddhism is the lack of a coherent path in Christianity. This is made most explicit with the evangelical and fundamentalist focus on the Gospel of John and salvation through an act of belief — which seems to me a real perversion of the Christian notion of grace.
Amod Lele said:
Jim, I don’t really have experience with Zen practice. My question is: what discipline is there when people leave the meditation centre and go out into the world? What community standards enforce it?
JimWilton said:
The whole point of meditation practice is to develop insight that is applicable in the world (dealing with relationships, coping with loss, sickness and death, being of benefit to others). The specific post-meditation disciplines are the same as discipline in meditation.
As far as I can tell, the meditation discipline extends to post-meditation either through (i) the cultivation of virtue or “good” habits, habits that tend to reduce conflicting emotions, and (ii) realization of non-duality (egolessness, shunyata, etc.) that generates insight and confidence in a view that fundamentally alters the practitioner’s assumptions about and relationship with the world.
In terms of community standards, you have varying levels of precepts that help to heighten awareness. It remains to be seen how Western sanghas will develop culture that enhances insight derived through meditation and develops of virtue in post-meditation practice.
michael reidy said:
If religion supplies a lack of certainty then most of the commentors here have no need of it. Anyway in my view that is a shallow characterisation of people of faith who though they may not be stricken with fear and trembling struggle with uncertainty and doubt. Von Hugel (bring your own umlaut) and his classification of the religious journey into 3 stages (institutional, intellectual questioning and ethico-mystical) makes excellent points. The transition from one to the other is critical. At the second transition and of course he is talking about cradle Christians or Buddhists etc, there may be a tendency to
(from The Mystical Element of Religion pub.1923)
JimWilton said:
Thanks, Michael. One reason I appreciate this blog is for posts and references like this one to interesting texts I hadn’t heard of before.
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