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http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/08/rejecting-secularism-ideologies-have-become-new-ag/

In rejecting secularism, ideologies have become new again

By E.J. Dionne
Monday, June 8, 2015 | 2 a.m.

The rise of fundamentalism and religious ultra-orthodoxy has taken much of the West by surprise. But the shock is not limited to the world’s well-off democracies.

liberation in developing countries fought twin battles: against Western colonialism, and against what they saw as the “backward” and “passive” religious traditionalists among their own people.

Suddenly, those supposedly backward believers are no longer passive. They are fighting to reimpose the faiths of their forebears. And in its most extreme forms, the religious pushback is genuinely frightening. That the Islamic State is, in certain respects, even more extreme than al-Qaida justifies our alarm.

Ultra-orthodoxy in more benign forms is also on the rise in democratic countries with long traditions of religious tolerance. Marx derided religion as an opiate that was destined to fade away. What happened to make faith one of the most dynamic forces in the world?

Political philosopher Michael Walzer has spent an exemplary life grappling with the intellectual mysteries at the crossroads of modernity, religion, democracy and justice. His latest book, “The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions,” examines the history and trajectory of national liberation movements in Israel, India and Algeria. It could hardly be better timed. It asks why the secular revolutionaries, far from marginalizing religion to the private sphere through what they saw as “consciousness raising,” actually produced a backlash, calling forth often radical forms of religious assertion.

National liberation, he writes, “is a secularizing, modernizing and developmental creed.” Its champions seek not only to free their countries from colonization but also to free their own people from what they see as the burdens of old religious understandings.

The people are not always eager to go along. “Raising consciousness is a persuasive enterprise,” Walzer writes, “but it quickly turns into a cultural war between the liberators and what we can call the traditionalists.”

Many who rose against colonial rule were themselves shaped by ideas first propagated in the lands of their colonial masters â€" France in the case of Algeria, Britain in India and Israel. The new leaders were simultaneously opposed to Western imperialism and avid westernizers within their own societies.

“I am the last Englishman to rule in India,” Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indian independence, told John Kenneth Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to India in the Kennedy years. Indeed, Nehru was a product of some of Britain’s finest upper-class institutions â€" the Harrow school; Trinity College, Cambridge; and the Inns of Court.

Thus, while secularizing leaders were generally on the left, they were often viewed by the traditionalist, religious masses as elitists. Religious revivals that followed independence, Walzer writes, “were fueled by the resentment that ordinary people, pursuing their customary ways, felt toward those secularizing and modernizing elites, with their foreign ideas, their patronizing attitudes and their big projects.”

One of the many virtues of Walzer’s subtlety is that he helps us understand that while the ideologies of today’s fundamentalists and ultra-orthodox are rooted in ancient or medieval ideas, these movements are, in a peculiar way, thoroughly modern. Their resistance to secularization “soon becomes ideological and therefore also new: fundamentalism and ultra-orthodoxy are both modernist reactions to attempts at modernist transformation.”

Reactionary religious politics was, in part, a response to the governing failures of secular ideologues who had been inspired by various forms of nationalism and socialism. But even where secularists succeeded in building working societies, their ideologies lacked the deep cultural roots capable of inspiring the same level of loyalty religious commitments can command. And so, over time, Walzer writes, young people “drifted away, moving toward the excitements of global pop culture or toward the fervency of religious revival.”

Walzer is too good a philosopher to write a simple handbook for a liberal revival. Instead, he outlines a useful long-term project: Liberationists should continue to press for religious reform, but they also need to reform themselves by engaging with the religious traditions of the people they propose to liberate.

This means challenging religious reactionaries for their support of various forms of oppression, notably the subjugation of women, and maintaining a strong defense of democracy and free expression. But it also means engaging traditions from the inside, taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight.

In battling extreme religious orthodoxy, liberal secularists will be more successful if they embrace a certain wariness of their own orthodoxies.

E.J. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post.

I agree completely with your essayist.  The Enlightenment guys were so naive about humanity and history, even Jefferson ... though their vision was so idealistic, it is not surprising that some people still embrace it.  But really, this isn't 1750 anymore.  There has been a lot of ideology under the bridge.  Modern fundamentalism is modern, not ancient (but it dresses up as ancient).  And it is a psychological type, that covers the whole spectrum from atheist to theist, secular to religious.  Basically it is this ... "I am right, you are wrong, and I have not only a right, but an obligation, to enforce my POV and way of life on you".  Secularism has actually been waning since WW I ... when the ascendancy of Euro-American imperialism showed fatal flaws ... and this secularism then and now, has been primarily elitist rather than populist.

A very good article.  I'm with it 100% until it gets to this part:

QuoteWalzer is too good a philosopher to write a simple handbook for a liberal revival. Instead, he outlines a useful long-term project: Liberationists should continue to press for religious reform, but they also need to reform themselves by engaging with the religious traditions of the people they propose to liberate.

This means challenging religious reactionaries for their support of various forms of oppression, notably the subjugation of women, and maintaining a strong defense of democracy and free expression. But it also means engaging traditions from the inside, taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight.

In battling extreme religious orthodoxy, liberal secularists will be more successful if they embrace a certain wariness of their own orthodoxies.

We already do criticize religious people for their support of oppression and try to mount a defense of democracy and free expression.  But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about "taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight"?  I mean, what exactly am I supposed to say of religion?  I think the best compliment I can muster is that it in some ways, Christianity and Islam were somewhat progressive for the time and adherents of both made some important scientific contributions in the past.  *shrugs*

And now I need to embrace a certain wariness of my own orthodoxies.  Okay...so...secularism is bad somehow, freedom of expression is problematic, and science doesn't necessarily trump religious belief if the religious belief is unfalsifiable.    How'd I do?  I think I'm doing this wrong.  Or maybe I'm just wary of unwarranted wariness.

Could this also be a form of 'future shock'--that things are moving too fast for the vast majority of people?  It seems to me that when one gets that feeling of the world is just moving and changing too fast that I need to stop and hunker down in my traditional thoughts and actions.  Temporary change is okay--but we really do like our ruts.  Tradition--the hedge against change, which is the great unknown--and we don't really like the unknown.  Religion is like an addiction.  One cannot go off it cold turkey--we need our nicotine patch or methadone.  So, going from religious to atheist may be just too big a step.  But what is an intermediate step?  I don't know. 

Quote from: Baruch on June 18, 2015, 11:30:04 AMThe Enlightenment guys were so naive about humanity and history, even Jefferson ... though their vision was so idealistic, it is not surprising that some people still embrace it.

True, the "Enlightenment guys" were idealistic.  But yanno, to put it mildly, their ideas carried the day and then some.  We live in an age where the supremacy of reason and empiricism is pretty much a given across most of the world.

QuoteModern fundamentalism is modern, not ancient (but it dresses up as ancient).  And it is a psychological type, that covers the whole spectrum from atheist to theist, secular to religious.  Basically it is this ... "I am right, you are wrong, and I have not only a right, but an obligation, to enforce my POV and way of life on you".

I believe you might be referring to Right-Wing Authoritarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism), which is indeed a psychological type.  However, this is not the same thing as fundamentalism.  To quote wikipedia, fundamentalism is "a markedly strict literalism as applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which it is believed that members have begun to stray."  The term makes little sense outside of a religious context.  And to tar secularists and atheists with the sins of their opponents is a blatantly false charge.

I'd also challenge the assertion that atheists or secularists desire to force their POV or way of life on you.  When's the last time atheists demanded that the dying repent of their religion?  Or gone knocking door to door?  In all but the backwards communist countries, atheism is not mandated, and western atheists tend to strongly frown on state atheism.

And among the religious in the US, there's a tendency to view secularism as somehow not allowing people to be religious or to practice their religion - that "secular theocracy" is somehow oppressive to religious people.  I really hope you do not subscribe to this idea, because it is most assuredly wrong.  Secularism doesn't force anyone to not be religious nor does it take away freedom to practice religion.  Simply put, the state is neutral on matters of belief (otherwise, how could the government hope to represent a populace that holds many different religions and no religion?) and rejects the imposition of religion or religious practices upon its people through the government (governments have different duties to attend to than churches).  That's it.  Secularism is hardly the bugbear it's made out to be.

QuoteSecularism has actually been waning since WW I ... when the ascendancy of Euro-American imperialism showed fatal flaws ... and this secularism then and now, has been primarily elitist rather than populist.

I very much disagree with this assessment.  It's difficult to find hard data on its popularity (and I strongly suspect your assessment was made in the absence of any such data).  From what little I've been able to gather, roughly two thirds of Americans support separation of church and state (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/06/christianity-state-religion_n_3022255.html).  That's suspiciously high for something that's allegedly been on the wane for decades.

Quote from: Hydra009 on June 18, 2015, 11:48:43 AM
A very good article.  I'm with it 100% until it gets to this part:
We already do criticize religious people for their support of oppression and try to mount a defense of democracy and free expression.  But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about "taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight"?  I mean, what exactly am I supposed to say of religion?  I think the best compliment I can muster is that it in some ways, Christianity and Islam were somewhat progressive for the time and adherents of both made some important scientific contributions in the past.  *shrugs*

And now I need to embrace a certain wariness of my own orthodoxies.  Okay...so...secularism is bad somehow, freedom of expression is problematic, and science doesn't necessarily trump religious belief if the religious belief is unfalsifiable.    How'd I do?  I think I'm doing this wrong.  Or maybe I'm just wary of unwarranted wariness.

You did fine! I think religion itself is just about control of the masses by ignorant authorities that they themselves have been controlled to think with very poor logic along with magical thinking, when what they have is ignorance and delusional emotional reaction to the silliness of having blind faith in an imaginary God that takes away their responsibilities for their actions like God's children because it is thought to be divinely inspired and therefore can't be wrong. They're like little children holding a security blanket holding on with dear life if you try to take it away. I really don't have the answer to how to take a child's security away without causing havoc. 

Hydra009 ... on your first response ... yes, lets we wary of wariness ... sigh.  This is why people ignore philosophy, because it seems pointless in practical terms.  The article was a bit philosophical, and so lost some of the audience.

Mike CL ... like your point about Future Shock.  Only I am not a believer in progressivism ... like Alvin Toffler would have been.  Most of history for the last 200 years has gone faster than human biology can keep up.  But given the population and competitive pressure, it has to be faster.  Did you know, that if we had kept the telephone technology of the 1950s ... to make all the phone calls that are made now, we would have to employ the whole female population of the 1st word and then some, as switchboard operators?

Hydra009 ... I think you took my point too hard ... I am describing types, not relative strengths.  The average atheist and the average theist (controversial?  why?) aren't dangerous.  Unfortunately as per Biblical analogy, the yeast works thru the whole dough, and blows everything up.  The religiosity of Gorbachev vs Reagan decides nuclear war or not.  Today Putin vs Obama.  On the rest, we will have to just agree to disagree.

Solitary ... very good reasoning.  We are a developing species made up of interacting individuals who are interacting with their environment as well.  What the net trend of all this is ... I think is anyone's guess.  Fortunately or otherwise ... the lifetime of any individual is too short to escape childhood, as viewed by someone wiser.

Quote from: Baruch on June 18, 2015, 07:39:19 PMHydra009 ... I think you took my point too hard ... I am describing types, not relative strengths.  The average atheist and the average theist (controversial?  why?) aren't dangerous.  Unfortunately as per Biblical analogy, the yeast works thru the whole dough, and blows everything up.  The religiosity of Gorbachev vs Reagan decides nuclear war or not.  Today Putin vs Obama.  On the rest, we will have to just agree to disagree.

I have literally no idea what you are saying here besides the very last sentence, so I guess we will.

Quote from: Mike Cl on June 18, 2015, 11:55:45 AM
Could this also be a form of 'future shock'--that things are moving too fast for the vast majority of people?  It seems to me that when one gets that feeling of the world is just moving and changing too fast that I need to stop and hunker down in my traditional thoughts and actions.  Temporary change is okay--but we really do like our ruts.  Tradition--the hedge against change, which is the great unknown--and we don't really like the unknown.  Religion is like an addiction.  One cannot go off it cold turkey--we need our nicotine patch or methadone.  So, going from religious to atheist may be just too big a step.  But what is an intermediate step?  I don't know. 

The intermediate step is education, I think. Education, just in learning to read and write and math and logic, has made people atheists more than any other factor. But it also depends if it's a true education, and not some corrupted, watered down, religious indoctrination disguised as education. I'm of the opinion that if you simply give people the educational tools of free thought and free inquiry I'm positive a good deal of people will either only pay lip-service to religion, like a cultural adage, or simply discard it outright.

Quote from: Sal1981 on June 19, 2015, 06:58:58 AM
The intermediate step is education, I think. Education, just in learning to read and write and math and logic, has made people atheists more than any other factor. But it also depends if it's a true education, and not some corrupted, watered down, religious indoctrination disguised as education. I'm of the opinion that if you simply give people the educational tools of free thought and free inquiry I'm positive a good deal of people will either only pay lip-service to religion, like a cultural adage, or simply discard it outright.

Yeah, Sal, I think you are right.  A decent education is the best tool.  And you are right about being leery of allowing religion a hand in that education.

Quote from: Mike Cl on June 19, 2015, 09:00:15 AM
Yeah, Sal, I think you are right.  A decent education is the best tool.  And you are right about being leery of allowing religion a hand in that education.

Yes, I agree with "future shock", and also agree that the first step is education - as it is with so much of what ails Homo sapiens sapiens. Allowing religious fundamentalism to have any role in this education, aside from as a history lesson, would be incestuous. Yep, incestuous, that's my analogy and I'm sticking to it, because I can't think of a better one.