Jeune Street

Love your blog Geoff - keep it up!

Not sure whether I understand your last comment here, about the Protestant reformation being a mistake. I know it's easy to pick strands of American Christianity that are distasteful, but on the whole the proliferation of viewpoints and approaches that a lack of central authority allows is what has led to the vibrancy of religion in the US (versus its stodginess in Europe). I listened to a podcast about this a few years ago but can't remember its name or where I found it. Somewhat relatedly, I was impressed by this talk (from TED of course) by Dan Dennett:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren.html

Incidentally, I just decided with a friend here in Montreal to start a joint blog. I'll send you a link if it goes anywhere :)

Thanks for commenting, Munir. Looking forward to seeing your blog up and running! I'm always open to guest-blogging around these parts, if you've got the itch.

What I meant about the Protestant reformation is that several hundred years after the fact, there's nothing to distinguish a cleric from a charlatan. I'd argue that Sunni Islam, which operates on some of the same principles, is undergoing a similar crisis in many parts of the world. The whole idea of clergy emerged from the real need for a scholarly elite to guide an often illiterate community to align themselves with religious teachings. I'm sympathetic with that idea, for, like, a millennium ago. So, history trampled the need for this scholarly elite and people like Calvin and Luther somewhat understandably thought that clergy had become irrelevant. I'm sympathetic with that idea, too, for several hundred years ago. But today, we have to ask ourselves what guys like Driscoll represent in the name of religion?

A Dennett-loving guy like you must be sympathetic to my contention that far too many religious leaders are just making this stuff up as they go along...

Oh, I agree that many are making it up as they go along, but I also believe there's some value to that, in the same sense that there's value in a free economy to allowing silly/impractical businesses to have a go at it. There has to be a demand for their product to survive. The problem in my opinion is as much on the demand side as the supply. Instead of carefully vetting who is allowed to make religious opinions, why not focus on making sure we live in a society where racism (for example) is not in demand? We can then accept that there will always be a lunatic fringe but that the mainstream will be within reasonable shades of disagreement.

I realise I'm just pushing off a difficult question to another area. I'm reading this book now on The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. The author (Benjamin Friedman) argues that economic growth (rather than the level of wealth) in a society encourages all sorts of moral goodies - openness, tolerance, liberalism. So the goal is to make sure incomes of the middle class are consistently increasing. And yes, I realise that's pushing off the question to yet another field. Hmm, I should write a blog post about this.

I'm dangerously close to agreeing with you. If you want to run with the market metaphors, though, every good economist knows that markets require good regulatory systems to function effectively. Without regulatory bodies, firms can corner the market and then produce shoddy or dangerous goods at inflated prices. Firms win, public loses, trust erodes.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we need a world religious regulatory body, but (to return to an earlier point) there *is* a crisis of authority within Christianity (and many other religions). And, like a market without regulations, that erodes people's trust in religion.

Continuing further with the market metaphor, I agree there can be a role for the state (or whoever) in regulation, but it should be more akin to allowing an entity to be a corporation, rather than monitoring its activities and vetting its products. You could argue that just as governments censure false advertising, charlatans should be exposed, but "truth" in religion is hard to adjudicate. Obviously any encouragement of racial hatred or bigotry of any kind should be judged by standard hate-speech laws.

I guess fundamentally I'm wondering what this "crisis of authority" within Christianity is. The way I see it, Christianity has never been more robust than it is now in the US. Certainly before the Protestant Reformation the Roman Church had tighter control on Christians' lives, but with only clergy able to read the bible, etc. it's hard to make the case that people then were more religious (in the modern sense of the word, implying a personal relationship with God and all).

Yeah, my vantage as a Baha'i makes my opinion on this matter a little different from most. Authority flows much more reliably than most other religions.

I suppose the crisis of authority comes down to the question of what Christianity is *for* in the world today. The Roman Catholic Church could articulate a pretty coherent response, but I don't know if Protestants could. That, to me, is a crisis.

But in regions that are Catholic, most people don't agree with their church. In Northern European countries where the church is semi-instutitionalised (within the state) attendance is minuscule because all opinions are watered down enough to be offensive to no one. The vigorous diversity of Christian opinions in the US may not have a single coherent voice but to each believer their own slice of Christianity is highly relevant to their lives.

Sure, I agree. I don't suggest getting between people and their God. I just take issue with where, exactly, some of these clerics are deriving their authority.

So what do you propose as the arbiter of authority? How do we decide that the catholic church is legitimate (or acceptable) authority, while Driscoll is not? Is it a question of unity more than content? (Having a central authority may allow disparate groups to find common ground and prevent the worst of fringe behaviour.) That might get around the problem of judging whose sermons or whose beliefs are acceptable.

My critique is directed at theological coherence and the basis from which social and doctrinal leadership are developed. I'm not suggesting we need a person or institution as arbiter of authority. Ultimately this problem is one Christians will have to address for themselves.