"God Is Dead."
No. When
Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God in 1882, he thought that in the
modern, scientific world people would soon be unable to countenance the idea of
religious faith. By the time The Economist did its famous “God Is Dead” cover in
1999, the question seemed moot, notwithstanding the rise of politicized
religiosity -- fundamentalism -- in almost every major faith since the 1970s. An
obscure ayatollah toppled the shah of Iran, religious Zionism surfaced in
Israel, and in the United States, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority announced its
dedicated opposition to “secular humanism.”
But it is only since Sept. 11,
2001, that God has proven to be alive and well beyond all question -- at least
as far as the global public debate is concerned. With jihadists attacking
America, an increasingly radicalized Middle East, and a born-again Christian in
the White House for eight years, you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who
disagrees. Even The Economist’s editor in chief recently co-authored a book
called God Is Back. While many still question the relevance of God in our
private lives, there’s a different debate on the global stage today: Is God a
force for good in the world?
So-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins,
Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have denounced religious belief as not only
retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to
expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions,
strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines
are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the
unsophisticated and gullible.
These writers are wrong -- not only about
religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature.
Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human,
men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures.
While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or
agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t
find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the
quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat
religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying
its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time
we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate
manner.
"God and Politics Shouldn’t Mix.
Not necessarily. Theologically illiterate politicians have
long given religion a bad name. An inadequate understanding of God that reduces
“him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred
sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to
atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to
check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting
themselves on the world.
In the West, secularism has been a success,
essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved
gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance
time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world,
secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large
sectors of the population, who are still deeply attached to religion and find
Western institutions alien.
In the Middle East, overly aggressive
secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more
conservative, or even radical. In Egypt, for example, the remarkable reformer
Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) so brutally impoverished and marginalized the clergy
that its members turned their backs on change. When the shahs of Iran tortured
and exiled mullahs who opposed their regime, some, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, concluded that more extreme responses on the part of Iran’s future
religious rulers were necessary.
Shiism had for centuries separated religion
from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a
cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation. But moderate
religion can play a constructive role in politics. Muhammad Abdu (1849-1905),
grand mufti of Egypt, feared that the vast majority of Egyptians would not
understand the country’s nascent democratic institutions unless they were
explicitly linked with traditional Islamic principles that emphasized the
importance of “consultation” (shura) and the duty of seeking “consensus” (ijma)
before passing legislation.
In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949),
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by translating the social
message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding clinics, hospitals, trade
unions, schools, and factories that gave workers insurance, holidays, and good
working conditions. In other words, he aimed to bring the masses to modernity in
an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s resulting popularity was threatening to
Egypt’s secular government, which could not provide these services. In 1949,
Banna was assassinated, and some members of the Brotherhood splintered into
radical offshoots in reaction.
Of course, the manner in which religion is
used in politics is more important than whether it’s used at all. U.S.
presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a
shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes
the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right.
Still, this consensus is not satisfactory to American Protestant
fundamentalists, who believe the United States should be a distinctively
Christian nation.
"God Breeds Violence and Intolerance.
No, humans do. For Hitchens in God Is Not Great, religion
is inherently “violent … intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry”;
even so-called moderates are guilty by association. Yet it is not God or
religion but violence itself -- inherent in human nature -- that breeds
violence. As a species, we survived by killing and eating other animals; we also
murder our own kind. So pervasive is this violence that it leaks into most
scriptures, though these aggressive passages have always been balanced and held
in check by other texts that promote a compassionate ethic based on the Golden
Rule: Treat others as you would like them to treat you. Despite manifest
failings over the centuries, this has remained the orthodox position.
In
claiming that God is the source of all human cruelty, Hitchens and Dawkins
ignore some of the darker facets of modern secular society, which has been
spectacularly violent because our technology has enabled us to kill people on an
unprecedented scale. Not surprisingly, religion has absorbed this belligerence,
as became hideously clear with the September 11 atrocities.
But "religious"
wars, no matter how modern the tools, always begin as political ones. This
happened in Europe during the 17th century, and it has happened today in the
Middle East, where the Palestinian national movement has evolved from a
leftist-secular to an increasingly Islamically articulated nationalism. Even the
actions of so-called jihadists have been inspired by politics, not God. In a
study of suicide attacks between 1980 and 2004, American scholar Robert Pape
concluded that 95 percent were motivated by a clear strategic objective: to
force modern democracies to withdraw from territory the assailants regard as
their national homeland.
This aggression does not represent the faith of the
majority, however. In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35 Muslim countries,
only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September 11 attacks were
justified. Their reasons were entirely political.
Fundamentalism is not
conservative. Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it
always develops in response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some
fundamentalists distort the tradition they are trying to defend. The Pakistani
ideologue Abu Ala Maududi (1903-1979) was the first major Muslim thinker to make
jihad, signifying “holy war” instead of the traditional meaning of “struggle” or
“striving” for self-betterment, a central Islamic duty. Both he and the
influential Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) were fully aware that this
was extremely controversial but believed it was justified by Western imperialism
and the secularizing policies of rulers such as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim -- is
rooted in a profound fear of annihilation. Qutb developed his ideology in the
concentration camps where Nasser interred thousands of the Muslim Brothers.
History shows that when these groups are attacked, militarily or verbally, they
almost invariably become more
extreme.
"God Is for the Poor and
Ignorant."
No. The new
atheists insist vehemently that religion is puerile and irrational, belonging,
as Hitchens argues, to “the infancy of our society.” This reflects the broader
disappointment among Western intellectuals that humanity, confronted with
apparently unlimited choice and prosperity, should still rely on what Karl Marx
called the “opiate” of the masses.
But God refuses to be outgrown, even in
the United States, the richest country in the world and the most religious
country in the developed world. None of the major religions is averse to
business; each developed initially in a nascent market economy. The Bible and
the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians,
and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced
thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that
Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and
mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber
suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
was integral to modern capitalism.
Still, the current financial crisis shows
that the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant. Although
not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to counterbalance
some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, by means
of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the aggressive acquisitiveness of
the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths have inveighed against the
injustice of unevenly distributed wealth -- a critique that speaks directly to
the gap between rich and poor in our society.
To recover from the ill effects
of the last year, we may need exactly that conquest of egotism that has always
been essential in the quest for the transcendence we call “God.” Religion is not
simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work,
requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from
achieving a more humane humanity.
"God Is Bad for Women."
Yes. It is unfortunately true that none of the major world
religions has been good for women. Even when a tradition began positively for
women (as in Christianity and Islam), within a few generations men dragged it
back to the old patriarchy. But this is changing. Women in all faiths are
challenging their men on the grounds of the egalitarianism that is one of the
best characteristics of all these religious traditions.
One of the hallmarks
of modernity has been the emancipation of women. But that has meant that in
their rebellion against the modern ethos, fundamentalists tend to overemphasize
traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, frontal assaults on this patriarchal
trend have often proven counterproductive. Whenever "modernizing" governments
have tried to ban the veil, for example, women have rushed in ever greater
numbers to put it on. In 1935, Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi commanded his soldiers
to shoot hundreds of unarmed demonstrators who were peacefully protesting
against obligatory Western dress in Mashhad, one of Iran’s holiest shrines. Such
actions have turned veiling, which was not a universal practice before the
modern period, into a symbol of Islamic integrity. Some Muslims today claim that
it is not essential to look Western in order to be modern and that while Western
fashion often displays wealth and privilege, Islamic dress emphasizes the
egalitarianism of the Koran.
In general, any direct Western intervention in
gender matters has backfired; it would be better to support indigenous Muslim
movements that are agitating for greater opportunities for improved women’s
rights in education, the workplace, and politics.
"God Is the Enemy of Science."
He
doesn’t have to be. Science has become an enemy to fundamentalist
Christians who campaign against the teaching of evolution in public schools and
stem-cell research because they seem to conflict with biblical teaching.
But their reading of scripture is unprecedentedly literal.
Before the modern period, few understood the first chapter of Genesis as an
exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th century, theologians
insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it must be interpreted
allegorically.
The conflict with science is symptomatic of a reductive idea
of God in the modern West. Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern
science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather
than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien
literalism.
Popular fundamentalism represents a widespread rebellion against
modernity, and for Christian fundamentalists, evolution epitomizes everything
that is wrong with the modern world. It is regarded less as a scientific theory
than a symbol of evil. But this anti-science bias is far less common in Judaism
and Islam, where fundamentalist movements have been sparked more by political
issues, such as the state of Israel, than doctrinal or scientific
ones.
"God Is Incompatible with Democracy."
No. Samuel Huntington foresaw a "clash of civilizations”
between the free world and Islam, which, he maintained, was inherently averse to
democracy. But at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all leading Muslim
intellectuals were in love with the West and wanted their countries to look just
like Britain and France. What has alienated many Muslims from the democratic
ideal is not their religion but Western governments’ support of autocratic
rulers, such as the Iranian shahs, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have
denied people basic human and democratic rights.
The 2007 Gallup poll shows
that support for democratic freedoms and women's rights is widespread in the
Muslim world, and many governments are responding -- albeit haltingly -- to
pressures for more political participation. There is, however, resistance to a
wholesale adoption of the Western secular model. Many want to see God reflected
more clearly in public life, just as a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent
of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.
Nor is
sharia law the rigid system that many Westerners deplore. Muslim reformers, such
as Sheikh Ali Gomaa and Tariq Ramadan, argue that it must be reviewed in the
light of changing social circumstances. A fatwa is not universally binding like
a papal edict; rather, it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues
it. Muslims can choose which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a
flexible free market of religious thought, just as Americans can choose which
church they attend.
Religion may not be the cause of the world’s political
problems, but we still need to understand it if we are to solve them. "Whoever
took religion seriously!” exclaimed an exasperated U.S. government official
after the Iranian Revolution. Had policymakers bothered to research contemporary
Shiism, the United States could have avoided serious blunders during that
crisis. Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and
accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we
learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive,
and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.
And study it we'd better, for
God is back. And if "he" is perceived in an idolatrous, literal-minded way, we
can only expect more dogmatism, rigidity, and religiously articulated violence
in the decades ahead.
Want to Know More?
Karen Armstrong has
spent the past 25 years writing about the centrality of religion to the human
experience. Before her most recent book, The Case for God (New York:
Knopf, 2009), she wrote The Bible: A Biography (New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 2007), an account of the not entirely orthodox way that the Bible
came into being.
Over the last few years, the so-called New Atheists have
become increasingly vocal about the dangerous shortcomings of religion in such
books as Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of
Reason (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), Richard Dawkins' The God
Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), and Christopher Hitchens'
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hachette
Book Group, 2007).
Recently, some books have sought out a middle ground
between atheism and fundamentalism. These include Robert Wright's The
Evolution of God (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), which
incorporates evolutionary psychology to explain shifts in belief over time, and
Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's God is Back
(New York: Penguin, 2009), examining the curiously vital relationship between
modernity and religion.
Religion scholar John Esposito and polling expert
Dalia Mogahed argue in Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really
Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007), a book based on more than 50,000
interviews in Muslim countries, that Westerners have been getting Islam wrong
for decades.