For Americans, today is the celebration of the American colonies declaring freedom from their European owners. The problem with this is that it has become a common thing to celebrate within the church. My main concern is that church worship is supposed to be dedicated to the worship of God and Christ, not a government.
Perhaps the most telling reasoning behind this marriage is one that confronted me recently. Recently, I commented that today I get to go to church without needing to worship the State. An old friend replied that one should be thankful to the State for the freedom of worship, even if it cuts into the time one spends worshiping God and Christ.
Yet this is exactly the kind of civil religion that ultimately harms the church. Over the next few posts in this series, I will argue that the separation of church and state that we find in secularisation. Through secularisation, Christians have greater freedom to worship God because there is no pretense to glorifying the State before, with, or after God. In other words, a secularised society is better than one in which State and Church is married.
In this respect, American Christianity is largely backwards in its love of civil religion. I wish to analyse the theological underpinning of this marriage, showing that the marriage of Church and State has developed out of a poor understanding of Christian theology. It is only through a secularised politics that Christian theology will grow.
In later parts, I will look at the present condition from different angles, however for now I wish to discuss the history behind what I will call ‘traditionalism’. Traditionalism takes a stand against secularisation because it wants to prevent corruption of the tradition and loss of the tradition’s stature. In other words, traditionalism does have good intentions; and this needs to be acknowledged upfront. My defense of secularisation rests not on dismantling traditionalism but arguing that secularisation attains the goals of traditionalism as well as does something more: secularisation creates more avenues for tradition to grow beyond its preservation.
The greatest problem with traditionalism is that it cannot achieve its intended goals. In order to protect tradition’s freedom, traditionalism requires its believers to enter the political realm and play the game of political power. This inevitably leads to disastrous outcomes. Two examples are: [1] the corruption of tradition’s goals by enforcing the tradition upon everyone, leaving it open to later overthrowing and [2] the subjugation of tradition to the game of political power. Whenever a religious tradition enters the political realm as a political power, it becomes subject to the political realm. It is important to read the last sentence as a critique of religion as a political force. Secularisation in the strictest sense is the separation of religion from the political realm as a political power. Secularisation is not the absolute separation of religion from the political realm, as two completely unrelated realms of participation. In other words, secularisation is a rejection of all religious traditions as unified political parties, allowing people to be religious and political participants without needing to be a particular kind of one to be another (i.e. without needing one to be of a particular political party in order to participate in a particular religious tradition and vice versa).
The greatest benefit of secularisation is that one is free to participate in both the political and religious spheres without one interfering with the other. Closely related to this is that each sphere can influence the other but to the extent that one is free to ‘pick the battles’. In short, one can preserve one’s tradition better if one’s tradition is not tied into the rise and fall of political power. This is strength that secularisation provides over traditionalism. While this post is largely a proof-of-concept demonstration, my following posts will analyse details secularisation entails.
While the spectacle that has received the buzzword title ‘Ground Zero mosque’ continues to rage, there seem to be a few points of fact that have been overlooked. It may be known that the address for the site (currently Park51 but previously Cordoba House) is 45-51 Park Ave. What is less known here is that 45 Park Ave is already a mosque — and has been since July 2009. It isn’t a new site ex nihilo but an addition or expansion of an already existing community. Further, the new site is two-fold: first is a community centre created by refurbishing the Burlington Coat Factory already at the site (which has been in disuse since 9/11); second is a separate prayer centre (i.e. ‘mosque’) within the community centre complex. The relationship between the prayer centre and community centre is analogous to the relationship between a department store and a shopping mall: independent while overlapping.
The second issue I wish to look at is the response to those who oppose the site. It has been said that it is being opposed because the site is taken as an offense. My primary concern is that this offense is based on an illusion. The common arguments on the offense is that it is because, ultimately, it is believed that the Muslim community behind Park51 is no different from al Qaida. However, there is little non-circumstantial evidence to this argument. In many cases, it would be a good idea to change location in order to show that the Park51 community is peaceful/non-threatening/sensitive. But the problem with that response isn’t that it’s wrong: changing locations will make the people opposing it feel justified/vindicated for having their perceptions based on illusions. At some point, someone needs to stand up for honesty (and dare I say truth, in a generalised sense). Feeding a bad, false impression is never a good solution, and it seems that no matter what the Park51 group does now, that bad impression will be fed: it’ll either be ‘see, they backed down because we were on to their schemes’ or ‘see, they are so bad that they do not even respect our opinions’.
It’s a lose-lose situation, and the biggest loser isn’t them nor the relatives and victims of 9/11, but the American people who will have let the media (left or right wing, doesn’t matter) think for them, decide for them, and act for them. It is the feeding of false perceptions that is the worst consequence, as it leads us further into our sollipstic relativism and disavowal of the public sphere. The false perceptions being touted as prima facie evidence is a radical form of individualism. It is a condition in which we’re sinking away into ourselves where the only things that matter are what we think and believe for ourselves, divorced from any kind of public sphere that mediates between the many individuals to create a kind of community. In other words, it doesn’t matter what is real and/or true but what “I” (here being used to mean anyone) think is real or true. “I” make my own reality and substitute it for the one in which we used to live. Such relativism, whether it comes from the left or the right, needs to be addressed. This case is all the more why a truly secularised society is necessary, as it creates a neutral public sphere in which false perceptions regarding religions can be righted.
Recent Comments
Tom Degan
Darius, Jasen, Christopher Roussel
Colin, Jubal Biggs, Colin, Jubal Biggs, Jubal Biggs, Christopher Roussel [...]
Bryan Jenkins, Colin, Christopher Roussel, Colin, Christopher Roussel, Darius [...]
Bryan, B, Colin, Bryan, Christopher Roussel, Jew [...]