Not long after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, in which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became supreme leader, a US official was heard to exclaim: “Who ever took religion seriously?” The official was baffled at the interruption of what he assumed was an overwhelmingly powerful historical trend. Pretty well everyone at the time took it for granted that religion was on the way out, not only as a matter of personal belief, but even more as a deciding factor in politics. Secularisation was advancing everywhere, and with increasing scientific knowledge and growing prosperity it was poised to become a universal human condition. True, there were some countries that remained stubbornly religious – including, ironically, the United States. But these were exceptions. Religion was an atavistic way of thinking which was gradually but inexorably losing its power. In universities, grandiose theories of secularisation were taught as established fact, while politicians dismissed ideas they didn’t like as “mere theology”. The unimportance of religion was part of conventional wisdom, an unthinking assumption of those who liked to see themselves as thinking people.
Today no one could ask why religion should be taken seriously. Those who used to dismiss religion are terrified by the intensity of its revival. Karen Armstrong, who cites the US official, describes the current state of opinion: “In the west the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident.” She goes on:
Today no one could ask why religion should be taken seriously. Those who used to dismiss religion are terrified by the intensity of its revival. Karen Armstrong, who cites the US official, describes the current state of opinion: “In the west the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident.” She goes on:As one who speaks on religion, I constantly hear how cruel and aggressive it has been, a view that, eerily, is expressed in the same way almost every time: “Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history.” I have heard this sentence recited like a mantra by American commentators and psychiatrists, London taxi drivers and Oxford academics. It is an odd remark. Obviously the two world wars were not fought on account of religion . . . Experts in political violence or terrorism insist that people commit atrocities for a complex range of reasons. Yet so indelible is the aggressive image of religious faith in our secular consciousness that we routinely load the violent sins of the 20th century on to the back of “religion” and drive it out into the political wilderness.The idea that religion is fading away has been replaced in conventional wisdom by the notion that religion lies behind most of the world’s conflicts. Many among the present crop of atheists hold both ideas at the same time. They will fulminate against religion, declaring that it is responsible for much of the violence of the present time, then a moment later tell you with equally dogmatic fervour that religion is in rapid decline. Of course it’s a mistake to expect logic from rationalists. More than anything else, the evangelical atheism of recent years is a symptom of moral panic. Worldwide secularisation, which was believed to be an integral part of the process of becoming modern, shows no signs of happening. Quite the contrary: in much of the world, religion is in the ascendant. For many people the result is a condition of acute cognitive dissonance. (...)
Armstrong performs an invaluable service by showing that religion is not the uniquely violent force demonised by secular thinkers. Yet neither is religion intrinsically peaceful – a benign spiritual quest compromised and perverted by its involvement with power. The potential for violence exists in faith-based movements of all kinds, secular as well as religious. Evangelical atheists splutter with fury when reminded that a war on religion was an integral part of some of the 20th century’s worst regimes. How can anyone accuse a movement devoted to reason and free inquiry of being implicated in totalitarian oppression? It is a feeble-minded and thoroughly silly response, reminiscent of that of witless believers who ask how a religion of love could possibly be held to account for the horrors of the Inquisition.
Conventional distinctions between religious and secular belief pass over the role that belief itself plays in our lives. “We are meaning-seeking creatures,” Karen Armstrong writes wisely, “and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we fail to make sense of our lives.” We are unlike our animal kin in another way. Only human beings kill and die for the sake of beliefs about themselves and the nature of the world. Looking for sense in their lives, they attack others who find meaning in beliefs different from their own. The violence of faith cannot be exorcised by demonising religion. It goes with being human.
by John Gray, New Statesman | Read more:
Image: Samuel de Champlain (1574-1635)
