A number of years ago after a Christmas Eve service at our church, a young man came up to talk with me. He had been raised in our congregation and was well remembered by those who had nurtured him in his faith as a youth. He was now living in New York City doing social work and he was home for a visit.<\/p>\n
His comment after the triumphant, late-night Christmas Eve service was, \u201cso, you\u2019re really still doing all of this? You guys really still believe all of this?\u201d I suspect that \u201cby all of this\u201d, he meant the brass ensemble, the familiar carols and the sentimental red ribbons, green garlands and twinkling lights. But at the same time, he was saying something else as well.<\/p>\n
Because this alumni of our church youth group, has now proudly transitioned from his \u201creligious upbringing\u201d into a time and place where a humanistic, skeptical and even ironic approach to faith is the norm and expectation. He\u2019s doing good work in New York City, helping people re-settle as refugees in their new country and his question exposes a kind of disappointment with the church of his youth.<\/p>\n
In a sense, he was wondering, \u201cwhat does any of this have to do with the real needs, of real people, in the real world?\u201d<\/p>\n
In his stimulating book \u201cThe Soul of Doubt\u201d, scholar Dominic Erdozain explores aspects of this same question. He takes on the notion of the distance and difference between the \u201creligious\u201d and the \u201csecular\u201d, and argues that this is really a false-dichotomy. His argument throughout the book is that the rise of what we often call \u201csecularism\u201d today, is not an outside force that is set against the church, so much as it is a kind of reform movement that emerges from within the church.<\/p>\n
As one reviewer puts it, \u201cfor some time now\u2014at least since John Wesley\u2019s work in the eighteenth century\u2014sharp minds have noticed that an intensified religious consciousness may paradoxically stimulate secularization.\u201d[1]<\/a> Erdozain is one such \u201csharp mind\u201d, and he does a good job at surveying and describing the variety of ways that this thesis shows up.<\/p>\n He gives the example of the Enlightenment figure Baruch Spinoza, who was also a father of biblical criticism. Erdozain writes that \u201cSpinoza\u2019s criticism was not a first draft of scientific naturalism but an extension of the Radical Reformation\u2019s spiritual protest against dogma and all its works\u2026 Spinoza was not trying to destroy Christian faith: he was trying to rescue it from historical corruptions.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n He also cites other surprising heavyweight figures, usually associated with \u201csecularism\u201d or even atheism. Of Karl Marx, he writes that, \u201cMarx was both a materialist and a moralist\u2026 his materialism emerged from his moralism\u2026 his religious criticism, centering on theology\u2019s nefarious habit of massaging power, was part of a tradition of prophetic protest\u2026\u201d[3]<\/a> Marx\u2019s materialist outlook (meaning, that the physical\/material world is all that there really is) emerges from a moralistic <\/em>perspective. In this sense, Marx\u2019 words and work are not some outside force simply against religion, but seem to actually be echoing the Old Testament prophets and even Jesus himself, when it comes to the actions of religious authorities.<\/p>\n In a similar way, Erdozain compares Ludwig Feuerbach, the materialist and atheist, to, \u201ca small-town preacher, maddened by the inertia of his flock\u201d[4]<\/a> It is worth noting that Feuerbach, like Spinoza, emerges from a strong religious background and tradition, rather than simply being an alien or outside force.<\/p>\n Erdozain frames his whole book within the past 500 years or so, essentially seeing the outworking of the Protestant Reformation and then the Enlightenment, and onward as related phenomena. As Erdozain writes, Feuerbach even consciously saw himself in line with Martin Luther, calling himself, \u201cLuther II\u201d.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n One response that I have to the book is to ask at what point does a \u201cprotest movement\u201d that emerges out of a tradition still connect to it, and at what point is it really something totally different. Martin Luther is a good example of that. He was the progenitor of the Protestant Reformation, which ushered in sweeping changes to Christendom, and yet, even for all of his bold positions and combative writings, he remained a life-long Christian (even though it was in a new form).<\/p>\n As the author tries to link together the modern \u201csecular-humanists\u201d and even the \u201cnew-atheists\u201d with their own religious roots and \u201cmoral\u201d impulses, I wonder at what point that stops being helpful. Luther and other reformers (even radical ones) sought to re-invigorate or refocus or reform the faith tradition in which they stood. The modern notion of doubt and unbelief, in our contemporary time, has grown from that same base, but is now entirely something of its own.<\/p>\n Another critique or question that I have is to what degree the book\u2019s central thesis will continue to be true as we move into the coming generations. This book gives a clear and compelling case for the way that modern doubt arises out of faith, especially the disappointments with the unfulfilled promise of the Church. However, in the future, there will be increasing numbers of people who are not reacting against the religion of their childhood or their family, but instead, who never had that kind of faith tradition to begin with. This is a change from a \u201cpost-Christian\u201d stance to a \u201cnever-was-to-begin-with\u201d position. Some of the \u201cNone\u2019s\u201d would fit under this category.<\/p>\n In the end, The Soul of Doubt is a challenging read for anyone in the church who would allow lazy thinking to simply let the \u201csacred versus secular\u201d divide stand as stated. This book undermines that narrative and gives a much more nuanced view. At the same time, it is a challenge to those in the \u201csecular\u201d world, those who would judge or react to faith claims, because in the end, their work and their thoughts also often spring from a religious or moral basis.<\/p>\n Thinking again about that young man who visited my church on that Christmas Eve night, I wonder what he would make of a book like this. My prayer is that my congregation and the Church in general would be a place where a person like him, full of wrestling\u2019s and doubts and ideals and ideas, could be embraced again, and discover that our faith is wider and deeper than he had previously been led to believe. Doubt, in the end, is a part of a healthy faith, not in opposition to it.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Vincent P. Pecora, review of\u00a0The Soul of Doubt<\/em>, by Dominic Erdozain,\u00a0The American Historical Review<\/em>\u00a0122, no. 4 (October 1, 2017): 1300-1,\u00a0https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/ahr\/article-abstract\/122\/4\/1300\/4320369<\/a>\u00a0(accessed January 25, 2018).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Dominic Erdozain,\u00a0The Soul of Doubt<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 71.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Dominic Erdozain,\u00a0The Soul of Doubt<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 223.<\/p>\n