Taking religion seriously
Pfaff, William
O F S E V E R A L M IN D S WILLIAM PFAFF TAKING RELIGION SERIOUSLY They do it in godless Europe A striking difference between intellectual debate in Europe and in the United States...
...relations between the developed countries and the poor ones...
...1999, Los Angeles Times Syndicate Commonweal 10 November 19,1999...
...The United States has the churchgoers, the highest level of religious attendance in any of the industrial countries...
...Some call it a hypocritical tribute from an annual celebration of capitalist materialism, but the accusation of insincerity is unjustified...
...Possibly the old and sterile battle between scientists and Protestant literal interpreters of the Bible is responsible for American intellectual and academic intolerance of religion...
...Russian human-rights defender Serguey Kovalyov...
...Notable, though, was the mix of backgrounds among those invited...
...In the United States, the great universities that began as Protestant seminaries have secularized themselves since the 1930s...
...In Europe, religion seems to have lost its mass following or—as in the North European Protestant countries—to have transformed the religious inheritance of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Methodism into versions of secular ethics...
...Whatever the explanation, the intellectual coexistence of religious and secular thought is common in Europe, rare in the United States—and Americans are the worse for that...
...Most presidents make a point of conspicuous Sunday church attendance, even when their piety is not otherwise evident...
...Yet religion is still considered a legitimate participant in intellectual discourse, and is so treated in universities, public institutions, and even the press...
...I know of little comparable to this in the United States...
...and the prospect before us as we enter the new millennium...
...South Africa's former president, Willem de Klerk...
...Meetings on relations between Islam and the West—the "clash of civilizations"—as in Barcelona last April, sponsored by the government of Catalonia, routinely include Islamic and Christian religious scholars...
...This is not uncommon in Europe...
...Public school prayer and other civic manifestations of establishment Protestantism—which were commonplace in the United States in the 1950s and before, when the country had not yet decided to become a multicultural society—would still be widespread were it not for the modern Supreme Court's rulings against them, and the unflagging vigilance of the American Civil Liberties Union...
...George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs, and Osval-do Sunkel from the worlds of finance and economics...
...Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel...
...Clergy are invited to deliver the innocuous homily or bestow an "interfaith" blessing on public occasions...
...Each year the famous Davos World Economic Forum includes sessions on issues of religion and society...
...and political intellectuals from academia and journalism...
...However, there was also a Christian Orthodox metropolitan from Turkey, a Tendai Buddhist abbot from Japan, an American rabbi now living in London, a German theologian, and an Islamic scholar...
...But when political figures, academic specialists, and public intellectuals get down to serious business, the clergy are expected to leave and shut the door behind them...
...The president presides over "prayer breakfasts...
...O F S E V E R A L M IN D S WILLIAM PFAFF TAKING RELIGION SERIOUSLY They do it in godless Europe A striking difference between intellectual debate in Europe and in the United States is the importance accorded religion and religious thought in what otherwise is a largely secularized—even "post-Christian"—Europe...
...Communities are riven by the abortion debate and "creation science...
...A part of the explanation may lie in the American tradition of philosophical pragmatism...
...However, religion and religious thought find virtually no place in the mainstream intellectual debates of the nation...
...Recently, I spent three days at a forum sponsored by the Czech government and presided over by Czech President Vaclav Havel...
...Religion has a place in American public life, but a narrowly limited one...
...the Hashemite Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan and Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestinian Legislative Council...
...Most Catholic universities, since the 1960s, have experienced a crisis of identity...
...Americans go to church or synagogue (and, increasingly, to mosques), but religion is rarely acknowledged as having something serious to contribute to general intellectual and policy debates...
...The Italian lay Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio is greatly respected for the quality of its annual conferences on society and religion, as well as for astute and discreet peace-making interventions in Kosovo and Algeria...
...Religions exercise public influence only as pressure groups or lobbies—not on the merits of the arguments they make about society...
...Religious and "value" issues are intensely debated in the country's political campaigns...
...Their statements on general public issues have an impact on congressional debate or executive policy making only when there is a threat of political campaign intervention...
...Participants included former Communist-bloc dissidents—President Havel and Adam Commonweal 8 November 19,1999 Michnik from Poland...
...This was one of many such meetings held this premillennium year...
...The topics included issues confronting the so-called "transitional" countries of the former Communist bloc...
...The Christian religions, and Catholicism in particular (despite the fact that it has the most imposing intellectual legacy of all the churches), are the only minority groups in the United States today whom it is politically correct to denigrate...
...The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs is the only mainstream group I know that continues to foster the ethical dialogue on political issues between secular and religious thinkers...
...The Senate has a chaplain who prays over its deliberations...
...They joined one another in a religious assembly in the fourteenth-century Saint Virus Cathedral, together with President Havel and the other participants, but they were mainly at the meeting to contribute intellectually...
Vol. 126 • November 1999 • No. 20
