Just when Christianity began to deal seriously with the secular world, secularity as a religious perspective died. It is as if Christian and secular leaders had been sparring with each other for years and finally sat down for a serious conversation. The video cameras were rolling, the sound crew was ready, and the audience waited. Each made opening remarks … and then the secular leader died. The crew packed up, the audience left the room … but the Christian leader is still their debating with a corpse about issues nobody cares about.
This is why The Soul of Christianity by Huston Smith (Harper San Francisco, 2005) is an important book, although it has not received much attention from clergy (many of whom are still debating a dead corpse without an audience). With his remarkably comprehensive style, Smith reviews the plight of our major cultural institutions now that modernity’s major metaphor (“endless progress through science-powered technology”) has perished. At that time, Bill Gates had yet to leave Microsoft for philanthropic service, but then even Bill Gates is just catching up to the spiritual and existential flight from a one-dimensional modernity of his own creation.
The first chapter of the book describes the essentials of Christianity’s two-tiered worldview of the infinite embracing the finite. Smith admits (what I always feel) that the principles of Christianity, stated simply, seem esoteric. That is because most people emerging from the demise of secularity are so profoundly exoteric. Three consecutive generations have been raised, educated, and acculturated to perceive the macro-world of experience to be concrete, and the micro- and mega-worlds of the mind and universe as abstract. We can’t even read the memoirs of our great-grandparents and see a difference. Most people before, and increasing numbers of people today, appreciate the esoteric because they sense that this is actually more “real” than the supposed reality of secularity.
Confused? Let’s just say that while exoteric church leaders waste time exploring the historicity of Jesus and the legitimacy of sexuality, esoteric pagans have moved on searching the distant stars and the inner heart for the meaning of life and the touch of God. There is more authentically religious conversation happening in the local coffee shop than in church worship on any given Sunday. Ouch!
Smith’s summary of the Christian story may miss lots of profound nuances and cultural applications, but it is not intended to be a systematic theology. It just enumerates the key points in the Christian story where pagan (non-secular) interest and Christian (non-dogmatic) insight intersect. Relevant preaching to the secular world, and relevant preaching to the emerging pagan world, are two very different things. Among other things, it ain’t preaching. It’s conversation.
Finally, Smith broadens the “conversation” about “esoteric things” to include three distinct Christian voices … not just American Protestantism which is often the most strident voice. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians have a voice, too. Each of the three bring their own insights into the conversation about incarnation, that mystical intersection of infinite and finite so crucial for salvation, profoundly defined (but not confined) by the experience of Jesus the Christ.
I read this book along with several religious articles from major magazines, including “Turning Away from Jesus: Gay Rights and the War for the Episcopal Church” by Garret Keizer in the June 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine (pp.39-50). Smith helped me understand why the debate about sexuality reveals a church at is exoteric worst. Ideological rivals beat each other up developing an opinion about sexual behavior in which nobody is really interested. Meanwhile, the general public is hoping the church can function at its esoteric best to help them find the meaning of life and experience the touch of God.
Keizer poses a great question for a post-secular time: “How does a Christian population [or western people in general] implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor, and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night?” That is the legacy of dead secularity and its myth of endless progress through science-powered technology. The answer lies in the Soul of Christianity.
Tom Bandy
www.easumbandy.com
www.netresults.org
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