Jeune Street

Ross Douthat can always be counted on to provide an insightful and thoroughly Catholic insight into vexing moral and religious issues. His review of Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God is no different. After lauding Armstrong’s book for most of the review, he ends with putting finger on the weakness of what he calls ‘liberal religion’:

Liberal religion tends to be parasitic on more dogmatic forms of faith, which create and sustain the practices that the liberal believer picks and chooses from, reads symbolically and reinterprets for a more enlightened age. Such spiritual dilettant ism has its charms, but it lacks the sturdy appeal of Western monotheism, which has always offered not only myth and ritual and symbolism (the pagans had those bases covered), but also scandalously literal claims — that the Jews really are God’s chosen people; that Christ really did rise from the dead; and that however much the author of the universe may surpass our understanding, we can live in hope that he loves the world enough to save it, and us, from the annihilating power of death.

Such literalism can be taken too far, and “The Case for God” argues, convincingly, that it needs to coexist with more mythic, mystic and philosophical forms of faith. Most people, though, are not mystics and philosophers, and they are hungry for myths that are not only resonant but true. Apophatic religion may be the most rigorous way to go in search of an elusive God. But for most believers, it will remain a poor substitute for the idea that God has come in search of us.

I am not unsympathetic to Douthat’s take. Armstrong’s analysis often seems spot on, but her conclusions are consistently unsatisfactory. She is known for arguing for a theology of compassion, which seems sensible to me but woefully insufficient in addressing humanity’s spiritual thirst. She praises the good found in all religions, but fails to commit her heart to any at all.

I find myself agreeing with Douthat’s characterization of liberal religion as ‘parasitic’ on its ancient forms, but his nostalgia for old-fashioned dogma strikes me as the wrong place to look for ‘true religion’. True religion may show itself in forms of ritual and symbol, but its essence is the tremendous unifying power it brings to society. I think that the ‘sturdy appeal of Western monotheism’ is more than outward forms, it is the belief that divine revelation can guide us to a path of shared redemption.