(Talk Given to Lutheran Pastors, Kelowna, B.C. November 8, 2005.)
I hope I can be forgiven if what I have to say to this issue might not
be particularly profound or radical, but I can assure you that it is an
answer delivered with sincerity.
I want to avoid the temptation to make this talk autobiographical, but
I should begin with something of a disclaimer. I don’t profess to have
any specialized theological training or knowledge, and while I’ve
always had a literary interest in the Bible, certainly all of you here
have a deeper and broader understanding of the Bible than I do. My
interest in theological and Church matters is strictly that of an
amateur, if sympathetic critic, one who has followed these matters from
an agnostic’s point of view. I have not been blessed with the gift of
faith. I am, as they say, a “cradle Catholic”, and my schooling was
almost exclusively with the nuns and Christian Brothers and they have
doubtless left their mark. So perhaps I have come upon these interests
honestly.
Like
many Canadians of a certain age, I have lived through an era which has
witnessed the remarkable decline of the Christian Church as a
significant social force in this country. And clearly it is more than
simply a Canadian phenomenon. John Kenneth Galbraith, when asked what
social change he had found most remarkable over the course of his long
life, answered that it was the “decline of the Catholic Church as a
critical institution in American life.” And I think we could easily
generalize this statement to include the decline of the Church, writ
large, in other industrialized, first–world nations.
There is of course a vigorous growth of the Christian Church in
third-world nations, but I shall not have anything to say about this. I
want to confine my remarks today to the situation in the west, largely
because this is the only part of the world I feel competent to remark
on, and partly because I, like many others in the west, have witnessed
this loss of faith in our contemporary society as something of a
decline and loss, even as our civilization progresses in so many other
ways. Perhaps this sense of loss is nothing more than a romantic
nostalgia for an earlier, simpler way of life; the fabled “Golden Age”
of yesteryear, where all was right with the world, God was in his
heaven, and one knew with absolute certainty where one stood in the
“great chain of being.” This kind of romantic sentimentalism is what
George Steiner once called the “Nostalgia for the Absolute.” And one
must, of course, always guard against sentimentalism and nostalgia,
just as we need to avoid the claim to absolute knowledge. Pascal’s
formula about knowing too little to be dogmatists, and too much to be
skeptics, perfectly captures our human dilemma. It is not pride, but a
simple assertion of fact that prompts one to say that we simply know
too much to go back to such simple and naïve absolutist pieties.
But nevertheless, when surveying our contemporary society and culture,
there is a real enough sense of decline. However we might struggle to
define it, and as elusive and imprecise as it might be to categorically
state it, something important has been lost. For want of a better term,
we might call it a certain corrosion of the spirit – a profound and
unsettling occurrence that can be witnessed throughout the western,
first-world nations.
We in the first world are, I believe, living in a time of great
transition, marked in part by the questioning of ancient traditions,
where old certainties are brought before the tribunal of reason and
science, and where the authority of institutions and hierarchies are
universally contested. There is a general and widespread kind of social
crisis and malaise, and the truths and ancient verities upon which we
in the west have built our civilization are rapidly being eroded, if
not destroyed entirely. We daily bear witness to this on-going
phenomenon in our various institutions; in higher education, liberal
learning is rapidly giving way to new forms of an industrialized
utilitatrianism; in our courts and judiciary, we seem to mistake legal
proceduralism with justice; and in our governments, crony capitalism
and corruption all too often seem to be the order of the day. One could
easily expand such a catalogue.
In addition, of course, we have, over the past 20 years or more,
witnessed an enormous decline in the attendance of mainstream churches.
Probably there is no more poignant and concrete a symbol of this
phenomenon than the on-going de-consecration of churches throughout
England and the U.K. and their conversion into urban dwellings and
coffee bars. Even as the U.K. population surges, mainstream churches
are unable to find sufficient congregants to keep their doors open.
But all these features of the contemporary social order can, I think,
be best conceived as a part of a widespread re-orientation of society;
an old way of life is dying, and something new is waiting to be born.
It is, I think, a simple truth to note that if the Church expects to be
heard in the coming century, it will somehow need to take into account
these social changes and address them head-on. In other words, the
church will have to change alongside society in order to maintain its
relevance.
But how, and in what ways, does this Brave New World differ from the
old? There are many points of entry into this debate, and one must
always be cautious and humble about prognostications of this kind. But
there are, I believe, certain features of our own day and age which
provide us with some clues. And here I want to borrow from a superb
little book by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, called the
“Malaise of Modernity.” In it, Taylor points out that in the west,
modernity – by which he means the world from the 17th Century on – has
achieved enormous strides in almost every area of human accomplishment:
in science and technology, in politics, in social justice, in the more
equitable distribution of wealth, in the abolishment of slavery, and so
on. It is easy to disparage our world for its many shortcomings, but it
would be foolish to deny that we have, by any yardstick, achieved great
and remarkable things, accomplishments which when taken together have
wonderfully improved the human lot. By almost any index of human
well-being — comfort, security, health, educational levels, and so
forth — we in the contemporary west are better off than any society
that has ever existed.
And yet these achievements have come at a cost. According to Taylor,
the rise of science and the subsequent “disenchantment of the world”
pose a real risk to human well-being. Older systems of meaning no
longer resonate with us; the ancient rituals and symbols which once
carried with them enormous and powerful significance, have been
stripped bare of their profound truths; and there appears little in our
world which cannot be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. For Taylor,
reason has become instrumentalized, and kept contained within the
service of science. Whereas thinkers of every previous age had stressed
the importance of deliberating about how best we ought to live, in our
own day reason is reduced to directing only the means of existence,
never its ends. This is why Bertrand Russell accused the American
pragmatists – who famously proclaimed that the “truth” is whatever
happens to work — of what he termed “cosmic impiety.” On how we
should, ideally, live our lives, reason is silent. It has been rendered
useless for directing our selves to rich, rewarding and meaningful
lives. Whatever meaning we find in our existence, is therefore — to
the degree that it is no longer tied to the rational faculties —
entirely arbitrary: does one prefer chocolate or vanilla?
Fundamentalist faiths or philosophy? Charles Dickens or Danielle
Steele? Should one be a sinner or a saint? All such value-laden
questions are laid on a Procrustean Bed, where the only answer we are
able to give is that of the emotivist: it is really just a matter of
individual preference and valuations. In the realm of values, reason is
mute. Beyond the scientific realm, we no longer recognize objective
truths. Valuation of any description, whether they be moral, political,
or aesthetic, are simply to be understood as expressions of personal
preference. Ultimately, even good and evil are just personal
preferences.
According to Taylor, this “slide to subjectivism” results in two
insidious social effects: the first is that we have made
self-fulfillment the holy grail of modern life; secondly, we have
created what Christopher Lasch refers to as the “culture of
narcissism”. Both these developments celebrate the individual at the
expense of the community and social solidarity, and both encourage what
might be called “social solipsism” (if such a thing is conceivable),
where there is no “thou”, but only the ever-present “I”.
Our media is constantly filled with bizarre accounts of the lengths to
which some individuals go in order to “find themself,” and I’m sure
each of you has had first-hand experience with this phenomenon. But
what strikes me most forcibly about this particularly modern view of
“finding oneself” is that it is construed primarily as a voyage of a
subjective inner-movement, of “looking within”. In contrast, for the
Greeks, knowing thyself was not the creed of a subjectivist, but rather
a call to actively engage with others in dialogue, in community and in
action, for it was only in the polis that one could come to know
oneself. On the other hand, in the name of subjectivism, modernity
breaks the bonds of community, so that society is said to be composed
merely of a collection of social atoms, each of us, in his or her own
solitary way, radically professing our need for personal identity and
self-fulfillment, while, at the same time, denying our ties to others.
This narcissistic self-absorption (or self-indulgence) is the dark side
to individualism, and it runs the danger of creating a society where,
as Tocqueville famously remarked, each is “enclosed in his own heart”;
where individuals pursue their own private pleasures and satisfactions
at the expense of the commonweal.
In very broad strokes then, this is how Taylor rather pessimistically
characterizes our current cultural situation. It is, of course, an
analysis which is not without controversy, and it is sometimes too easy
to forget that the opposite of individualism is not necessarily a
romanticized, communal solidarity, but very frequently the hysteria of
the masses.
But on one count of his indictment, I think Taylor is absolutely
correct: we in the west, having voided all older systems of their
meaning, are still left with an all too human yearning for community,
social solidarity and in seeking a higher meaning to our lives. That
is, in common with our ancestors, we still possess the human longing to
seek connection with a transcendent wider whole and a greater truth.
What has changed however, is that the conceptual resources available to
us in our public realm seem, somehow, to preclude precisely this sort
of enquiry, this attempt to recapture something that is vital to the
human good. And it is at this juncture that I think the church has a
real role to play in confronting what many see as the hollowness of
contemporary life. .
In so far as Taylor’s analysis is correct, then I think that the
Christian Church has a vital role to play in mitigating the current
culture of narcissism and the corresponding fragmentation of community.
The first order of business, of course, is to come to know our own
situation; to understand in a deep and meaningful way the various
forces that are at play and to take these to heart. I know that this
sort of sage advice comes perilously near to the usefulness of telling
the batter in a baseball game to “try and hit the ball.” But it is
sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion — when reading about some
of the latest pronouncements of the Catholic Church, for example – that
the contemporary Church fathers are not really connected to the same
world I inhabit, at least not in any significant way. Positive change
and reform can come about, but only after an understanding of our age
has been established; to do it otherwise is to be perennially engaged
in fighting a rearguard action, a maneuver which is guaranteed to
condemn any institution to irrelevancy.
But how, in a practical way, might the Church go about this? How can it
ameliorate our modern dilemma, improve the lives of individuals, and
renew itself? To put the matter bluntly, I think the church needs to
take a vital role in the education of its congregants, and, in general,
begin to define itself much more self-consciously as an educational
institution (in addition to a spiritual one). The educative mission has
long been a part of the Christian ministry, and there is an ancient
connection between learning and Christian theology. One needs only
think of the establishment of the great Cathedral Schools of Europe –
Bologna, Paris, Cambridge and so forth.
But what I have in mind is something vastly more humble than a
Cathedral School, more widespread than seminaries and theological
colleges, and infinitely more practical. I think that every individual
Church and its pastors could, with a modest investiture of time and
effort, begin, for example, a series of small salons, where congregants
are encouraged to discuss matters openly and freely among themselves,
without the restraint of dogma; invite guest lecturers to address
various topics in a series of occasional lectures; or more ambitiously,
Churches might sponsor through an accredited institution courses
leading to university credits or diplomas. One can easily envision a
curriculum with wide appeal, and one which could help congregants think
through the dilemmas of contemporary life, not to mention going some
way toward easing the tensions between the pulpit and the pew.
Education must stand at the fount of any kind of re-vitalized church.
It is by far the single most important thing the church can do. And
also because, to be somewhat calculating about the matter, there is, I
believe, a real opportunity here for churches to renew themselves.
Increasingly, as our institutions of higher education move away from
liberal, humanistic education, there is a corresponding need to provide
in society alternative institutions of learning. There is a gap that
needs to be filled, and — to slip into the language of marketing – an
opportunity to exploit. Let me briefly elaborate.
As a society, we increasingly tend to see education merely as a means
to an end, so that one is “educated” in order to get a good job. I fear
that we’ve allowed our proud Canadian tradition of “education” to
become a synonym for what, in a former age, was more accurately and
more honestly called “job-training.” It sometimes seems to me that like
the boy in the fairytale, we have traded the milk cow for handful of
magic beans. We conflate the educational mission of our schools with a
vocational imperative, so that our schools, at every level, are seen as
institutions whose only mandate is preparing students for the job
market.
Hence one of the unfortunate consequences is that our schools have
become more and more concerned with credentials and diplomas, with
providing students with marketable trades and skills, and less
concerned with cultivating in students that same, pure, desire to know
that Aristotle spoke of as the defining characteristic of the human
condition. But for some time I have detected in students a desire and
thirst for what might be loosely termed “spiritual” kinds of knowledge
and understanding, ie. those understandings which don’t necessarily
translate into “workplace skills,” but which speak immediately and
directly to human aspirations and longings: to seek visions of an
exemplary way of life, and to seek how we might make that life
plausible. Perhaps the best summation of education is given by Leo
Strauss: “Education consists of learning to read with accuracy and
precision what the best minds have said about the most serious
questions.” And it is difficult to conceive of a question more serious
than how one ought to live.
What we as a society are in danger of forgetting is that there exists
in all of us a desire for learning and knowledge, and that this desire
corresponds to a very noble part of our psychic makeup. Learning is, in
and of itself, an intrinsically rewarding experience, one which makes
us more fully and completely human. And surely, it must be among the
foremost aims of the Church to contribute to the enrichment of lives,
to liberate us from the contingencies of time and place and from the
categories that bind us.