Faith, Continued

In my regular Sunday stint at The American Street, I posed the following questions:

• Are you a religioius/ spiritual person?
• Were you born into your faith or did you come to it later?
• Was there a particular event in your life that changed your religious/ spiritual philososphy?
• Do you share your faith with others?

The questions drew some very interesting responses. In short, it seems that many Lefties are religious/ spiritual. Yet, progressives get painted with a brush that doesn't accurately reflect the impact spiritual values have on their approach to public policy and political ideology. I have some thoughts as to why that is, but I want to hear your opinions first. More from me later ...

Comments

[The Heretik]

Spiritual
Born into.
A series.
Here now, yes.
Roxanne, u rule!

[PSoTD]

No/Yes
No/Yes
No/Yes
No/Yes

[norbizness]

It's gotten long over there, so I'll answer in good faith here:

1. No, despite Kevin's question as to whether we're "all spiritual." Unless spirituality is so broadly defined that it's absolutely meaningless.

2. I was a non-denominational Protestant from ages 5-14, later atheist, later apatheist.

3. I don't remember a break, but I do remember a couple of "bullshit" moments... my youth pastor's anti-gay tirade and the furor over The Last Temptation of Christ. Oh yeah, and creationism.

4. I share my lack of faith all the time, which seems strange for an apatheist. While indifferent to the prospect of a God existing or not, I still need to deal with spurious claims as they arise.

[The Heretik]

Apatheist?

[norbizness]

Yes. In brief:

1. The existence of a Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable.

2. If there is a Supreme Being, then that being appears to act as if apathetic to events in our universe.

3. We are apathetic to the existence or nonexistence of a Supreme Being.

[Matt]

I'm certainly not religious, and I'm not spiritual in any sense I understand the word.

I was born and raised Methodist in a predominantly Southern Baptist community in North Georgia.

I can't say there's any particular event that drove me away from religion, but after being told so often that being religious meant being conservative, I began to feel a constant frustration with this narrow-mindedness. By the time I was in college, I finally began realize I didn't believe in God. It wasn't a choice, so much as an admission.

You can't really share a lack of belief--or at least I don't know a way to do so without disrespecting the faith of someone else. If asked, I say that I'm an atheist, and I leave it at that. I'm not proselytizing nonbelief.

[The Heretik]

Well, Norb, you know what some say, not me, but some people. It doesn't matter whether you believe in god, it matters whether god believes in you.

Or it could be a question of matter/anti matter.
Or: matter/don't matter

Oy.

[John P. Hoke]

1) In my own way. I consider myself spiritual, but Deism is tough to define in these terms...

2) Came to it later. I was raised Roman Catholic and was even groomed to be a priest (a Jesuit no less) at one point... which may have lead indirectly to me being a Deist. (The best way to lose one's faith is to become a priest goes the old saying...)

3) Hmmm... a couple. My mother dying when I was 9, turned me to the idea of a Catholic God of Revelation when I was young ... then turned me back away from a 'personal god' when I was older. Then reading Paine's Age of Reason when I was about 15-16. Later I had that moment of 'satori' where I found an answer to the universe - for me. While most Deists talk about the divine watchmaker, I call it an absentee landlord.

4) I do not "share" my "faith" ... if you mean evangelisizing... but I do not hide it either and have posted about my beliefs on my blog from time to time.

I hope that answers the questions ... without 'punting' too much :)

[KeyStroke]

Are you a religious/ spiritual person?

Yes.

Were you born into your faith or did you come to it later?

Born into a Baptist family. (One of the evangelical fundamentalist groups who are also anti-catholic... heavily influenced by Calvinism.)

Was there a particular event in your life that changed your religious/ spiritual philosophy?

Yes. At about age 28 I became "baptized in the Holy Spirit" (as we say). This has had the effect (over time) of reversing my theological position... so I am now quite anti-Calvinism and have even begun to adopt an 'open theism' viewpoint.

Do you share your faith with others?

All the time. Mostly in internet chat, but also in person.

[John P. Hoke]

Well, Norb, you know what some say, not me, but some people. It doesn't matter whether you believe in god, it matters whether god believes in you.

As the Mission UK wrote in their song Wasteland (one of my favorite bands...)

"I still believe in God, but God no longer believes in Me"

:)

[norbizness]

"It doesn't matter whether you believe in god, it matters whether god believes in you."

I think that's a direct quote from Archbishop Blossom (formerly Mayim Bialik) in her NBC public service announcement. It may have even been 'one to grow on.'

[The Heretik]

Oy. Channeling children now, I am.

Matter/Don't Matter? The dualism of the senses. Of outrage and humor. Oyus dei. Could it be it goes all the way back to Saint "oh god, look I've fallen off my horse" Paul and Man is saved by faith alone?

Is this getting too serious for a base fool like The Heretik? Where is that rabbithole?

[Alex]

Raised almost entirely without religion -- probably as a proto-apatheist, I suppose. Briefly moved on to militant Asimovian atheism, then standard agnosticism. But I've read all the good bits of the bible.

I tend to have a negative reaction to the term "spiritual" because, as norbizness pointed out earlier, it's usually "so broadly defined that it's absolutely meaningless." Strikes me as a bit flaky/new agey, but that's probably just the remnants of a prejudice against the oh-so-enlightened pan-spiritual hippie types I knew back home.

And I can't get past uneasiness about mixing progressive politics with religion... i love the social justice bits, but it can easily morph from abolitionism into, say, the temperance movement (see: Bryan, William Jennings).

I'm the disrespectful godless-liberal type that gives the secular state a bad name, I know. But, as Mr. Konigsberg said: "Eternal nothingness is fine, if you happen to be dressed for it."

[bryant]

Great questions. Interesting that the first was addressed/answered from a Judeo-Christian standpoint - both positively and negatively. I am both religious and spiritual as a Buddhist. I was raised generic Protestant. I became a serious believer when I saw the effects (positive) that the practice had on so many people...especially my father. I always share but only when asked ;-)

B

Are you a religioius/ spiritual person?

No. My experiences with churches has been rather bad. Including a guy who I worked for. His wife wanted to have an affair with me.

Were you born into your faith or did you come to it later?

My parents were people that believed in God who never went to church.

Was there a particular event in your life that changed your religious/ spiritual philososphy?

I have never felt touched by God. Even at my darkest times in my teens. I tried praying and no feeling of God's presence. So I said fuck it.

Do you share your faith with others?

Yes, I tell everyone that I believe the last two Star Wars movies were a huge waste of money and digital film.

[Anthony]

Warning: this is going to get long.

I already answered your questions on American Street, so I will address your statement that "progressives get painted with a brush that doesn't accurately reflect the impact spiritual values have on their approach to public policy and political ideology."

Going back to my post on The American Street, I noted that: "I feel that my Catholicism is the reason that I am a liberal Democrat and that had I been raised Protestant or Jewish, I would be a soulless Republican. As such, I often interject religion into political discussions, and I won’t let it drop when someone else brings it up first. I understand now that Catholicism is as much a cultural thing as it is a religious thing and I could no more ignore being a Catholic than a black man could ignore the color of his skin or a woman can ignore her ovaries in day to day life."

The American left in recent decades seems to have the worldview that there is a place for religion in private life, but that there is no place for religion in public life. At times, it seems that the private sphere is given primacy over the public sphere, that the individual is always deemed more important than society as a whole. Modern American liberalism has been about expanding the size of the private sphere at the expense of the public sphere, and it is a valid concern to question whether there is a point when such expansion becomes detrimental to society.

In conservatism, the belief is that the rules should be the same for the private and public spheres, although the punishment for rules violations may be different between the two spheres.

(Personally, I prefer a more postmodern understanding that these two spheres have an indefinite boundary, that some things belong in both public and private life.)

Many progressives speak as though religion is something that belongs solely in the private sphere, while politics is a matter of the public sphere. As such, they choose not to demonstrate any linkage between religion and politics, since those things that are part of the private sphere ought to remain there. In fact, some progressives take great pains to show how they could come to political opinions in the public sphere as if the private sphere did not exist in some stupid approximation of the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. It is not entirely unsurprising that some people get the impression that progressive thinkers are uninformed by religion.

Another factor is that the more libertarian-minded lefties place the individual as more important than group identity (except in certain cases such as labor unions and minority group identities such as "African-American" or "Hispanic"). For many religious people, their conception of religion is communal, at least on Sundays. A church, a parish, a congregation, these are primary groups formed around religion. A good number of the progressive blogs I have read recently reflecting on faith seem to mention going off on a more solitary form of spirituality, leaving groups because they grow unhappy.

To sum up, for most people, religion is something that is communal in nature; as such, it cannot be restrained to the private sphere of life. For many progressives, religion seems to be more individualistic; as such, it becomes compartmentalizable and separable from the rest of human existence.

One of the problems with modern liberalism is that it has become too concerned with individualism and with justifying hedonistic behavior by idiots in order to permit liberties to more responsible individuals. I can point to the abortion debate, as few on the left are willing to take a stand and say that there are people having sex who shouldn't be having sex and that some restraint is within the realm of human capability (and I am happy that Democrats are trying to reduce the desire for abortions). This hedonism is the same thing that leads people to buy exurban houses causing urban sprawl so that they can commute for an hour to work in their SUV in an era of global warming and rising oil prices. It is the same hedonism that fuels unrestrained capitalism and the desire for profits without any corporate responsibility. Progressivism should be about opposing this culture of selfishness.

[Scott Lemieux]

1. No.
2. I was reaised in the Canadian equivalent of Unitarianism, so I suppose getting to agnosticism isn't much a strech.
3. Nope.
4. Nah.

[harry near indy]

here are my answers to your questions.

1) about 50 percent. i believe there's something outside us that is greater than us. you could call it the great spirit, as native americans do, or the numinous, as thomas mann did. or the big cheese upstairs, if you're feeling irrelevant. (the b.c.u. doesn't care what you call it, just as long as you be nice to others.)
also, i don't pray for my own benefit -- well, some of the time i do, but it's to help bring up the courage in my soul -- but if people i know are in bad shape, i pray they get through it or for strength for them if they don't.

2) both sides of my family were nominal members of the disciples of christ, an offshoot of the presbyterians. as a junior high student in the 1960s, i joined a local methodist church because that's where all my friends were going.

3) i left this church for two reasons:
a) i quit believing that jesus was the messiah, and that it christianity was the only way to salvation. i wouldn't believe in a god that would send to hell a rabbi or a brazilian tribesman who lived in the 1300s.
b) it was the snobby church in my town, and too many adults had too much praise for richard nixon.

4) if people ask me, i tell them my beliefs. and if i post anything that isn't pro-christianity, i want people to know that i don't come from a view that says your christianity is the devil's work while mine in the true one.

[mds]

(1) No/No

(2) Brought up in a conservative, quasi-evangelical household, though initially not too over-the-top. In recent years, my former household has become more fanatical about religion.

(3) Watching Angel. Well, okay, I had already slid into cranky agnosticism/atheism, probably partially as a reaction to some of (2) above. Plus, the churchiest people I met kept turning out to be jerks.

(4) Being married to a Christian, and with family members that range from nominal to batshit religious, I either keep quiet, or focus on the admittedly very good stuff in the Gospels. I'm cranky enough to play a reverse Pascal's wager myself, but feel somehow awkward about convincing others. Sometimes I do dispute with pre-millenialists, since I was actually encouraged to read the Bible during (2), and most of the LaHaye crowd have never blown the dust off of theirs.

[maurinsky]

Anthony, I don't have a problem with religion in public life (although I know that other secular types do). I do have a problem with religion in the sphere of our laws. I do have a problem with people who are not satisfied with their faith, they want to shape their world to deny that anything other than their faith exists.