I have had an epiphany. For years I have engaged the New York sophisticates in conversation about religion. Invariably these people scoff at religious observance contending that it is sheer pretense. Yet in recent weeks it has occurred to me that the naysayers have much in common with true believers.
In a world made perilous by terrorists acts and threats, the pursuit of salvation is very much in the air. This is true for those who believe in traditional religion as well as secularists who embrace a religion they can scarcely identify – the religion of transformation.
Mapping this secularist religion involves a careful recitation of goals since the catechism is submerged in rational exegesis.
First is the proposition that truth is elusive, a figment of a rigid cosmology. Presumably truth is relative or contextual. That there may be spiritual truths is a matter rejected as myth or the febrile incantation of innocents.
Second is that rationality can explain existence and remove fear. The Thomistic faith that inspires wisdom is rejected as hoary fairytales. Science is the liberator of knowledge; positivism the Rosetta Stone for explaining the unknown.
Third is that national loyalty or patriotism is an anachronism since we are all children of the globe, an international family united through a common humanity.
Fourth, the welfare state based on the redistribution of wealth is a progressive idea that boosts the condition of the poor and enhances a generalized belief in doing good.
Fifth, unrestrained sexual joy is regarded as the "completed life." Any measure that forbids or censors sexual expression will be opposed as an effort of mindless prohibitionists with prudery being a designation of blistering proportions.
Sixth is the belief in self transformation, what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called self actualization. A Clairol ad in the ‘50's embodied this spirit: "If I have one like to live, let me live it as a blond." At the moment changing one's identity through plastic surgery or being all you can be in the service of your country, has supplanted the view that "you can be loved just the way you are." In fact, you don't have to be who you are, you can be anyone you want.
Seventh is the view that discrimination is the great demon of social intercourse. "Who are you to say…" is the calling card of the orthodoxy of tolerance. Moreover, this position invariably reduces to caricature any notion of racial profiling even when evidence supports this belief.
Taken as a whole, these are the secularists suppositions behind an emerging religion. Since this stance is rooted in individualist acts as the source of salvation and the manifest disapproval of the transcendent, one might accurately describe it as paganism.
In fact, there are pagan symbols in this religion such as peace signs, new age books, and reflexive environmental attachments. There is the claim to be in tune with nature, often by people who carry cell phones and hand held computers.
Just as there is an evangelical revival in America, there is a secularist revival with individual acts of spiritual intention. "The Passion" may have resuscitated interest in Jesus Christ, but each passing day the secularists find new and redeeming needs for liberation.
Apparently the secularists, preoccupied with self interested quests, overlook the Tocquevillian theme that self interest isn't well served only with self interest. Yet this isn't the only preoccupation. There is the conflation of private and public realms, a belief that what is good for me is invariably good for others.
A continuous refrain in this pagan sphere is transformation. Make yourself over internally and externally. Secure the symbols of a new life; the car that restores youth, the necklace that offers solitude, the book that provides wisdom.
There is no end to the possibilities. Here is the commodification of religion. The "thing" delivers salvation.
When the avatars of secularism, who often use appellations such as secular humanism, claim they are in opposition to religion, its time to remind them that despite protestations to the contrary, they speak for and represent a religion of the head and the heart. What they lack is a religion of the soul. Of course, they might well contend this is yet another myth perpetrated by the faithful.
Herbert London is President of the Hudson Institute and John M. Olin Professor of Humanities, and author of the recently published book Decade of Denial, Lexington Books. He can be contacted through www.benadorassociates.com
©2004 Herbert London
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