Cross-Pressuring within the Congregation

Something extraordinary still happens our time, a time characterized by an intellectual and cultural horizon that seems inimical to its occurrence. All throughout North America, people still draw together into communities to worship a god who putatively creates and sustains the entire universe. This gathering together does not happen in the numbers it did in the 1950s and 1960s, but it still does occur. On any given Sunday morning millions of people are in worship.  

Charles Taylor, in his magisterial A Secular Age, adroitly interprets the cultural and intellectual horizon of our time with its attendant social imaginaries. His major question in the book is this: How is it that in the sixteenth century not believing in God was generally unthinkable, while believing today is very difficult, even for those professing such belief? What has happened? 

His answer to this is actually quite complicated, and I won't summarize it here, except to say that Taylor is no fan of subtraction theories, a view that conceives humans as being largely able to know the world in which they live and how to act within that world. Subtraction theory claims that human beings have largely not achieved their potential as responsible epistemic and moral agents because they have inter alia lost themselves in religion and have, accordingly, not developed the potential that they have had all along. According to subtraction theory, secularization is a good thing because as religion wanes, human beings are increasingly fulfilling the dream of the Enlightenment: Aude sapere ("dare to know").  It is a captivating view: we humans can finally turn away from the superstitions of the past and attain genuine positive knowledge of things.  

Taylor claims that in the North Atlantic countries (North America and Europe), secularization tends to bring with it either a closed "take" or "spin" on the universe and our place within it. A spin or take is closed when it accepts a naturalism that excludes traditional views of the transcendent; when it holds that there is nothing that "goes beyond" the immanence of this world. He distinguishes a closed "spin" from a closed "take", pointing out that while people adopting a closed take hold that rejection of traditional transcendence might be reasonable, but that it is not wholly irrational to hold otherwise, those in a closed spin assert that holding to traditional transcendence is completely irrational, and thus one's rejection of a closed view is either due to the mendacity or the irrationality of the one doing the rejecting. 

Much of the intelligentsia, argues Taylor, simply assumes a closed spin on things. Scientific theory gives us the best causal map of the universe and such theory makes no appeal to supernatural forces of gods. In the cities, the young often understand their human sojourn in this way: 

• Human beings are the products of a long evolutionary process beginning with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago.  
• The universe came into being in an explosion from a infinitely dense point that had no magnitude. 
• The subsequent history of the universe is due to natural events and processes developing as they did out of earlier conditions of the universe. There is no supernatural agency involved in the origin and development of the universe. 
• Explanations why there was an infinitely dense point at the beginning that subsequently exploded are mostly not something that science can rightfully provide, although theories of quantum cosmology recently sketched suggest the prior existence of a multi-verse of which the particular development of our universe is one possible actualized trajectory. There is yet not a theory of why there was at the beginning a multi-verse. 
• Why deterministic processes propel the universe forward into concrete actualization, there are throughout these processes the presence of "far from equilibrium" situations that allow for the introduction of novelty. Thus, the history of the universe, while basically deterministic, has some elements of chance within it. 
• Since human life is a natural product of the natural life of the universe, it must be understood naturalistically. 
• Understanding human life naturalistically means that complicated features of human life, e.g., intentionality, reason, etc., must be understood in natural ways: What are the natural processes that drive forward the development of our species? 
• Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has wide acceptance as providing some explanation for why our species developed as it did: Genetic features are passed down from generation to generation, and the natural characteristics of the environment in which genetic mutation happens limits or excludes the development of some genetic variations while helping the development of other genetic variations.
• Accordingly, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory makes no appeal to purpose or teleology, for the particular genetic variations that survive for later genetic variation are clearly caused by natural features of the environment. There is thus no pull (final causality) in neo-Darwinian genetic theory, only pushes (efficient causality). 
• Since human beings are natural products of natural processes, understanding them profoundly requires the casting of natural scientific theories, e.g., human characteristics like reason, love, empathy, etc., must be explained naturalistically.  
• To understand humans naturalistically, is to understand them in ways quite different from traditional great chain of being understandings. According to the great chain of being, human beings are created lower than the angels and higher than the beasts, and thus to understand what it is to be human is to look both above and below us: What are those features of human existence that clearly fall under the category of the imago dei, and what features are due to the fall into nature and flesh of those beings initially created in the imago dei?  
• Since human beings are fully natural beings developing as they have through natural processes since the beginning of the universe, the true key to understanding their existence is found by looking below ourselves and not above ourselves, e.g., what can the sexuality of orangutans teach us about our own sexuality? 
• Trying to look above ourselves for clues to our nature is the practice of idealism, and proceeding in this way is find putative answers in our own projections. While natural science can give us insight into our causal natures, traditional religion and philosophy obviates this causal nature by appeal to non-natural or supernatural processes and entities. In the words of Feuerbach, God did not create human beings, human beings created God. 
• Since we are natural beings, our sexuality should be understood along the lines of other natural beings, and our reason and communication should be understood in the way of other natural beings. Human beings do have a capacity to reason, communicate, and form sexual alliances, but these are not causa sui. Rather, it is a matter of degree, and not ultimate of kind, that separates our experience from that of the other higher primates. 
• The young living in vast urban areas who understand themselves naturalistically have, accordingly, very little motivation to either adopt religion or be open to it. Religious belief, they think rather confidently, does not track with our actual knowledge of the natural world in which we believe. It is thus a backward-looking movement motivated by wish and not knowledge. Religious people, they think, need a crutch to live in this naturalist world that is all around us. Thus, they think, religious people project views of the gods and pray their wishes to their gods. 
• The religious person is thus maladapted to the actual existing world. They don't have the courage to live in the actual world, and thus project upon the actual world a religious worldview that makes living easier. Religious people are thus more cowardly than those understanding themselves naturalistically, but also more dangerous, because in ignoring the causalities of the natural world and embracing superstition, those who could have been helped by the knowledge of natural processes are now not treated properly. Death that might have been avoided, now befalls the befuddled religious believer or those unlucky enough to take their advice and counsel. 
• Given that there is no God who cares or no ultimate metaphysics in which meaning and purpose are ingredient, human beings must simply create their own meaning in the limited days they have to live. 
• Since there are no objective structures corresponding to the good, the beautiful, and the true, human beings are free to develop in the ways that they might find pleasurable and useful. This does not mean that they act irrationally, but rather that they must assume the mantle of having to be their own law-givers. Reality does not come with moral structures. They must be sown and cultivated by human beings, and harvested only if the present situation is illuminated by them. 

I could continue with a description of what seems plausible to the urban young. It is important to see all of this under the category of a closed spin. To many of our urban youth, what I have sketched above is simply settled. Just as it is true that the earth revolves around the sun, so is it true that human beings are natural beings who must develop their science, societies and families ultimately without appeal to heavenly beings. To give up on what I have articulated is, for them, to descend into irrationality. There simply is no other option for them not to believe this. There is a new social imaginary at work, a communal way of seeing that can imagine a fulfilling life without gods, prayers, divine laws, or even transcendence itself. While earlier generations hoped for life out beyond our physical deaths, this new way of imagining existence is one where death is not a problem. In fact, death is part of the circle of life, and this circle of life can be understood naturalistically. 

people participating in congregational life in the North Atlantic countries today are sons and daughters of their age. While they may be attending Christian congregations, their intellectual and cultural ethos is likely one wherein naturalism makes sense. They have learned from their teachers about the difference between facts and values, and they believe that natural science somehow is concerned with the facts, while perhaps their religion deals with the values of those whom are at some level aware of these facts. People in Christian congregations today in the North Atlantic countries are thus decidedly cross-pressured. They participate in Christian life, even though their deepest understanding of the world provides little rational justification for that participation. 

Preaching to men and women today must take into account the cross-pressuring felt by those in the pews. While their participation in congregational life probably points to them not holding a closed spin, such a participation is entirely congruent with them assuming a closed take. While it seems like materialism or physicalism is true, there are some features of our experience that does not fit a closed spin on the universe. Perhaps it is because of these features that certain people become congregational members. Maybe they sense that the naturalism that they ought to believe is inadequate to their experience in its totality. 

Most of the time we leading Christian congregations underestimate, I think, the cross-pressuring that our members are likely experiencing. Yes, clearly many are waiting to hear the saving Word proclaimed in the sermon and celebrated in the sacrament. But in their desire to hear that Word, they remain deeply conflicted. As twenty-first century men and women, they cannot easily affirm the views of their sixteenth century ancestors. The naturalism everywhere regnant today was not known to Luther and his contemporaries. Luther had the advantage of having a metaphysical view of things that was consonant with his theological accents and innovations. 

But this is not the case today. Contemporary Lutherans who wish to retain Luther's theology must now do so in a culture whose dominant social imaginaries reject the metaphysical underpinnings Luther simply presupposed. So how does Lutheran theology play now in congregations whose members have little understanding of how God could truly be possible and relevant? It is to this question that we shall turn in the next post.