losing my religion

I don’t agree with everything in this. However, the point of the Intramuralist has never been to all agree; in fact, whoever assumes that unity only comes when everyone all agrees — or, colloquially, “all agree with me,” so-to-speak — most likely has a false sense of unity. We see that a lot these days. We also see a lot of angry people.

I’ve never associated angry people with being happier or healthier — in fact, quite the opposite. But where do we learn to surrender anger? To embrace goodness, kindness, and justice? …humility, compassion and more? I can think of nothing better, timeless and noncontradictory than Judeo-Christian values.

But we have a problem. We are increasingly forgoing the wisdom of said values. We are more untethered to religion and faith and Christianity than ever before. The “nones” are growing — not those cute, respected women in homogenous habits, but rather, those who don’t identify with any faith in particular. It’s as if it’s become ok for those once accepted values to matter less. It’s as if we think we can learn virtue elsewhere. It’s also as if politics has become our religion.

Hear from the words of author and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, Shadi Hamid, in an insightful piece from March of this year. Remember I don’t share all of his entire opinion. We also learn from those opinions we fail to share…

“The United States had long been a holdout among Western democracies, uniquely and perhaps even suspiciously devout. From 1937 to 1998, church membership remained relatively constant, hovering at about 70 percent. Then something happened. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history…

But if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like…”

Religion is an organized system or a pursuit to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Hence, one can be religious absent any reputable, proven faith. 

Hamid offers further, undoubtedly divisive but poignant examples…

“… On the left, the ‘woke’ take religious notions such as original sin, atonement, ritual, and excommunication and repurpose them for secular ends. Adherents of wokeism see themselves as challenging the long-dominant narrative that emphasized the exceptionalism of the nation’s founding. Whereas religion sees the promised land as being above, in God’s kingdom, the utopian left sees it as being ahead, in the realization of a just society here on Earth. After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, droves of mourners gathered outside the Supreme Court—some kneeling, some holding candles—as though they were at the Western Wall.

On the right, adherents of a Trump-centric ethno-nationalism still drape themselves in some of the trappings of organized religion, but the result is a movement that often looks like a tent revival stripped of Christian witness. Donald Trump’s boisterous rallies were more focused on blood and soil than on the son of God. Trump himself played both savior and martyr, and it is easy to marvel at the hold that a man so imperfect can have on his soldiers…”

The hard place we’re in, as Hamid — not a Christian — suggests, is that “Christianity was always intertwined with America’s self-definition. Without it, Americans—conservatives and liberals alike—no longer have a common culture upon which to fall back.”

We didn’t just fall back upon that common culture; we also practiced and learned to rely upon it. We not only learned but knew that kindness, goodness, peace, patience, justice, self-control, and respect for our brother/sister/neighbor — whoever they are — are good. They are values to be vigorously sought after and held in high esteem. This is thus perhaps the only means capable of unifying us now. Politics pales woefully in comparison.

Hence, let us continue to seek humility over any pride — potentially veiled as anger, remembering what will always be wisest to fall back upon.

Respectfully…

AR