Against Religion

For a number of years I have subscribed to the Christian Century, a progressive monthly magazine on things Christian. Often, one of their articles grabs me as did Douglas John Hall’s article this month: “Against Religion: The Case for Faith.” Hall taught at McGill University in Montreal for years and is the author of many provocative books including, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. What he had to say is worth our consideration; especially those of us who struggle with the obvsious differences between the Christian religion and the faith of Jesus. I have tried to summarize the main points of his essay below -- especially the difference between religion and faith.


Hall begins with a quotation by prominent atheist, Richard Dawkins, written on the day after the attacks on September 11, 2001:

[Heretofore] many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers from killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others [who are] labeled only by a difference in inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let’s now stop being so damned respectful. The Guardian, September 12, 2001.

Okay, let's!  Our spiritual traditions: namely Amos' denunciation of religious pomposity or the more scathing letters to the churches of Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation. It was also the young Karl Barth who wrote, “The message of the Bible is that God hates religion.” What “we must say [of religion] is that it is the one great concern of godless men.” Then there is Paul Tillich in his sermon “The Yoke of Religion;”

We call Jesus the Christ not because He brought a new religion, but because He is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity. We spread his call because it is the call to every person in every period to receive the New Being, that hidden saving power in our existence, which takes from us labor and burden, and gives rest to our souls.

And Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasted two important biblical stories: The story of the Tower of Babel and the day of Pentecost. The Tower was an attempt to grasp God; to possess God – as it turned out, a tragic and futile effort! On the other hand, Pentecost is no longer humans trying to grasp God, but the divine Spirit descending and transforming human beings from within. Pentecost, the birth of our faith, is all about reconciliation -- even among those who cannot fully understand one another. This is powerful stuff. It is the caution uttered by St Augustine in the 4th century: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus” – “If you think you understand, it’s not God you’re talking about”). What better words of caution for today?  But does not organized religion seek an exclusive certitude of God?

As soon as the Christian faith took upon itself to be a religion – a religious establishment – the very experience that once gave birth to a “community of faith” is lost and corrupted. What is lost is the “experience” of faith, of trust not in an individual or institution, but in, as Hall describes, a “transcendent Presence that defies containment, definition, or even comprehension. A religion that wants to commend itself to everyone and to dominate (to be Christendom) cannot afford to be self-critical. It must be promotional, upbeat, positive (my emphasis).

This, Hall reminds us, is what happens when religion seeks “imperial status.” And when imperial status is being sought, out goes critique and doubt – "our way or the highway!" I find great comfort in Hall’s critique of religion (versus faith) especially in the light of most religions (or even denominations within Christendom) stating that they alone have the truth.

This is a time in human history in which we all need to live with the religious diversity that surrounds us in an increasingly smaller planet with diminishing resources. Religion is about certitude and finality and has little interest in other claims of truth. Instead, it develops a "spirituality" that is closed and zealously guarded and, as Hall, cautions, breeds seeds of its own destruction:

With its clamoring for ultimacy, its frenetic triumphalism, its incapacity for existential doubt and the entertainment of alternatives, such religion inevitably courts violent opposition. The newly minted atheism of today understands this an capitalizes on it. It argues with a kind of dogged logic, that the only way humankind can avoid the great catastrophes to which this situation points is by dispensing altogether with “the God delusion.”

To Hall, faith is “awe and trust in the presence of the holy.” Faith will always be a part of religion, but “the thoughtfully faithful will nevertheless be able to distinguish between what comes of faith and what comes of religion. And the greatest distinction of all in this contrast will always lie in the readiness of faith, unlike religion, to confess its radical incompleteness and insufficiency – indeed, its brokenness.”

Hall concludes with a quote Jacques Ellul and what he had to say about faith and what I, too, believe faith is:

Faith… puts to test every element of my life and society… It leads me to ineluctably question my certitudes, all my moralities, beliefs and policies. It forbids me to attach ultimate significance to any expression of human activity. It detaches and delivers me from money and the family, from my job and my knowledge. It’s the surest road to realizing that “the only thing I know is that I don’t know anything.” (Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World, translated by Peter Heinegg).

This is the kind of faith we need today. Not the religious bravado of certitude and exclusivism. Faith, not religion, is the prerequisite for religious dialogue today – and, ultimately, faith is essential for our very survival as human beings living in a diverse, cramped, and unequal world -- not religion.