THE DESECULARIZATION OF  MAN    

                       BYSy Schectman

                             

     A strange new tide seems to berising slowly but persistentlyin our cultural background.  It is the evidentdecline of secularism in the given societalfabric of ourlife,a sort of neo modernism,or if you like, a form of religion lite.   Not a heavy mantle of ritualand orthodoxybut still a somewhat fashionable fabric of the Otherin some unknowableform.   Thisto be worn somewhat lightly but still incorporatingthat code of moralitythat ourculturestill holdsfirmly,   if not indeeddevoutly ,as our current episode in Iraq seems to presage,,where we still are tenuously holdingon,   dubious butdutiful to our apparent commitment not to quitthe countryuntil some order and stability are in place.   Not a fanatic compulsion but the practical and perhaps somewhat guilty fact that since“we broke it,we better fix it”.That is,the horrible lapse in intelligence about the dire threat of weapons of mass destruction,our prime reason for the initial Iraq invasion.

         The growing diminution of this secular trendhas deep historical roots, going back to the 16^th century among Western Christians in Europeand their fierce internecine differences about “divinely revealed” politics, which led to years of warsof blood letting and finally to philosopher Thomas Hobbesdeclaringthat the Great Separation of Church and Statewas an absolutenecessityto preservesocial stability.   No more “God is on our side”and going into battle many times to prove it.  That the rule of manmade convention andlaw wouldbe the final arbiterin international disputes.  Hobbesprescriptionwas notexactlya pleasantpillto swallow whole,for he had a dim view of mankind in generaland believed that onlya totalitarian state ----he called itthe Leviathanstate—would impelthe jurisprudence necessary to enforce thesedegrees.  Gradually, over the succeeding centuries,other philosopherslike John Locke  andJean JacqueRousseau  softenedHobbes  draconianviewsand broughtinto the mixa democratic influencewhere powerceasedbeing transferreddivinely--from kingsor the Catholic Church.  And by the late 18^th centurytheAmerican constitutionstated flat out that Congress “shall make no lawrespecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”.  Not necessarilythe complete wallof separationthat many strong advocates of complete church--state severance would preferbutallowing only for minimal stateaidforbus transportationand books.   

         But in the   over two hundred intervening yearsuntil now,with the growing acceptance  ofDarwin’s theories on evolutionand the more recent “Big Bang”theory of the start of ouruniverse,the great mass of people have been made more aware of greatcosmic eventsthatmay have shapedtheirorigins and still may influence theirlives and those of their cherished progeny. These new generally accepted factsand also the increase material comfort level of many of us due to the industrialrevolution, acted as additional stumulli  to the growing secular backgoundin our culture and many of us  assumed that religion would soon be continually de-emphasized if not totally eliminated.

         But, of course, man does not live bybread alone.Man still seems to have have some sort oftheotropic geneor hormone that seeks the mysterium tremendum of the eternal. And the infinite.  Overwhelming in their long term consequences but only incremental in their slow accretion,but still awe inspiringto contemplatein the totality of one’s conscious appreciation oflife here on planet earth.Miniscule man in a constantly expanding universe.   Where will it end---if at all? But besides those ego shriveling realizationsfor finite man very long term, -- as in the refrain of that once very popular song,What’s It All About Alfie?—all of us in that God awful last century were confrontedwith upfront secular slaughterof wellover a hundred million people who were killed under the sneeringcomfortof Marx’s “religion was the opiate of the people”.Absentany hint of God’s wrath or influence.  Only ardent secularism,it’s own toxic stimulus for boundlessevil.Among its prime ingredients we had history’s greatestdemonic force,  Adolf Hitler and his Nazi minions and their Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles   and the companion civilization curse,   Communism, andthe worker’s paradiseof Stalin’s Soviet Russia---and the Gulag Archipelago---and also more than just a footnote,the  Rising Sunempire of Japan.  Plus many other smaller current events that rose up seeking the dubious honor of genocidealongside the original Nazi holocaustinvolving only the Jews.   

         In the middle of the book Night, still the first and still the best bookon the nightmare of the Holocaust,the author, Elie Wiesel, who is alsothe protagonist, renounces Godbut at the end is resolved that  the traditional Jewish path is the best for him.  At one point in his many continuing profound ruminations onthis utter nightmare eventhe suggests a new addition to the Talmud,the bedrock foundation to theexplication of the Torah,the heart of the Jewish faith.  Thesarcasm of heartbreakat times is evident in his rueful “jokes”,suchasof the hunted and hauntedescapeewho finds refuge in an abandoned synagogue and finds other Jews prayingin the basement.   When he finds them   he warns in hushed tones, …“don’t pray so loudor God will know  that some Jews are still alive here”.Or,in front of other students,the pious chassid states  that God was a liar.  His students demur, insisting that this  was impossible,that Der Ebisher, the holiest of all,did not lie.   Butthe rabbi despairingly insisted.  Moaning and sobbinghe declared “He opens his window in heavenand looks down and declares“I did not cause this”.   And the rabbiretorts   “And He wouldbe a liar”.

         It is certainly remarkable thatin the face of all this justifiable negativity on the manifest inhumanity of mankindand the absence of a caring, nurturing deity, much lessa miraculous Sea of Reeds intervention,that secularism did not run rampant.   Not that some clergyof   variousProtestant and Jewishfaithsdid not postulate that God wasdeadand we should accommodate ourtheologyto this sad fact.  Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, a Jewish leader in the God Is Dead Movement,stated that in the aftermath ofWorld War IIatrocities,his congregation  should be able to still live a religious live going from the “oblivionbefore birthto the oblivionafter earthlydeath” without the fiction   of a caring, nurturing Deity.

         However, this was not the case.  Even in the small Recon-structionist Jewishmovement,which mandated originally that God was not important,that only the rich, millennia old Jewish lore and teachings need be cherished  and studied in prayer meetings,has changed now to allow God to be an integral part of the service again.  Andworldwide,thefive major religious movements---Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish-- accountfor almost 75%of humanityrange from strong theocentricbelief in most of the Christian  and Moslem religionsto still many aspects of supernaturaland otherworldlymanifestationsin the Hinduand Buddhistfaiths.But of coursewe must not cheer too loudly the apparent demise of secularism,and pray for a balance that mitigates the concomitant rise of the fanaticsand crazies of the left and rightwho brook no compromisewith people who disagree with their perfervid ideas.  Most unfortunately there are lamentable exceptions that show that extremism does triumph  and change the course of history----after much bloodshed, war and suffering.( Mao tse Tung’s “justice in history flows from the barrel of a gun” is one such grim truth). Hopefully as we encounter the jihadists of Islam today some compromise can be effected avoiding more suchIraqui or Taliban type episodes.

         Diplomacy or brute force?  The religious burden ofhistoryseems to be, unfortunately,that everything is ordained, butman has free will….and that God is in the wings, waiting for man to do the right thing!  And so we put on the tattered oxymoronic garment of    faith again, dubiously butdeliberately determined to celebrate the miracle of the universe and life on earth once more, hoping “that God is still in the heavens and all’s right with the world.”And the cruel sardonic retort has often been that “be careful of what you pray for---for you just might get it!”But what wehave received so farhas been boundlessly good, whether due to divine providence,good fortune, or astute human planning.

         Long may it continue!  And may the divine mix of God, luck and human reason be always in play.