Human nature abhors a spiritual vacuum
Thursday February 28, 2008
Categories: Decline and fall
The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, the Anglican bishop of Rochester, who is living under guard now for having spoken out against radical Islam in Britain, says: "The real danger to Britain today is the spiritual and moral vacuum that has...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Hang on here, hasn't one of the primary themes hammered on in this blog been that materialism and consumerism and the cult of the individual is, in fact, not a cultural vaccuum, but is a way of life, however decadent, that has replaced Christianity in Western culture?
There seems to be the suggestion in this post that in terms of cultural attractiveness, secular decadence is stronger than Christianity, but Islam is stronger than secular decadence. Logically, this implies that in terms of cultural attractiveness, Islam is stronger than Christianity.
Which I don't believe to be the case.
I find it unsurprising that an adulterous Christian minister has endorsed an adulterous US Senator for President. Like follows like. Hagee got his trophy wife and abandoned his 3 and 6 year old children, not unlike McCain's abandonment of his first wife and their children.
We'll see if his "ministry" can stand up to scrutiny of the IRS. The million dollar plus salary he takes and that ritzy dude ranch he runs just might attract Sen. Grassley's attention.
Birds of a feather, Rod. McCain is still in his Keating mode.
I remarked on the "why people leave Catholicism" thread that the reason Christianity was attractive in the late Roman Empire was that it challenged people to live in a way that bucked the tide of the hedonistic values of the larger society, and offered the promise of something deeper. I'm sorry to say this, but for many people today, especially people living in immigrant communities in Western countries, it is Islam that appears to offer this kind of alternative, not mainstream Christianity. I think that many people want to believe in *something* larger than themselves.
I find it unsurprising that an adulterous Christian minister has endorsed an adulterous US Senator for President. Like follows like. Hagee got his trophy wife and abandoned his 3 and 6 year old children, not unlike McCain's abandonment of his first wife and their children. We'll see if his "ministry" can stand up to scrutiny of the IRS. The million dollar plus salary he takes and that ritzy dude ranch he runs just might attract Sen. Grassley's attention.
I didn't know any of this about him (I don't pay much attention to Planet Hagee). If he's guilty of lawbreaking, let him hang. So to speak.
In a country were the majority of adults are or will be divorced at least once, McCain's marriage will not even be a blip on the radar.
I'll bet the page against the period that more people have lived and died without the wit and wisdom of an Abrahamic faith than there have been that have lived and died with it.
I'll do the same wager on the percentages of people who have passed on feeling they've had a good life the same in those blessed with an Abrahamic faith and those without it.
So, with everything equal the fact that one's a Christian, Jew, or Muslim is really incidental and not necessarily pivotal to happiness and or fulfillment as a person.
However, I do agree the space that any faith fills in a life does need to have something there to provide the benefits any faith gives us. We need to believe in something.
What's sad about the topic of this discussion is Christianity was removed and nothing was allowed to replace it, especially reason. That's really sad in fact. Sad because allowing reason to be taught would make Christianity more relevant to those who want to believe in Christianity. There's a reason people find Christianity appealing. Accepting that it's reason makes the choice of Christianity, well, reasonable.
That in itself is interesting when you think about it. Reason accepting Christianity as a reasonable choice. Because Christianity doesn't feel the same about reason. I wonder if that's because Christians don't feel comfortable in the reasons for their faith.
Hagee falls into the extremely small crack in my sidewalk of life where if he was on fire I wouldn't offer to urinate on him unless I could urinate gasoline.
For me he personifies what can happen when religion is in the wrong hands and abused for all the wrong reasons.
All the people quoted here expressing extreme concern and warning of some kind of nihilistic or apocalyptic consequences to the decline of the religion they like...all coincidentally happen to be people whose careers are invested in its prosperity.
To slightly understate it, perhaps a little skepticism is warranted that these are the best sources for an objective assessment.
"spiritual and moral vacuum"...
I bet it's news to most Brits that they have no morals...
so rumors of such a vacuum are greatly exaggerated...
the author hasn't considered that something has filled that so-called vacuum "for the last 40 or 50 years"...
there must be something internal that Brits have that has carried them through 40 or 50 years without reliance on the Christ Myths...
that internal something should be sufficient to carry them through future years without turning to any other Myths...
vacuum schmacuum...
faith hope love joy peace to all...
Impeach God...
The old saying: if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
"Hagee falls into the extremely small crack in my sidewalk of life where if he was on fire I wouldn't offer to urinate on him unless I could urinate gasoline."
Boy, that's pleasant, Harvey. And here I am hoping Hitler's in heaven...
"All the people quoted here expressing extreme concern and warning of some kind of nihilistic or apocalyptic consequences to the decline of the religion they like...all coincidentally happen to be people whose careers are invested in its prosperity."
Example No. 1494 that poster Jillian knows nothing about Christianity. Did the Christians persecuted by the Soviets, or those under the Moslem yoke decry the systems of their persecutors because their careers were invested in the prosperity of their faith? Even you can't be ignorant enough to believe that. Then again...
"there must be something internal that Brits have that has carried them through 40 or 50 years without reliance on the Christ Myths...
that internal something should be sufficient to carry them through future years without turning to any other Myths..."
I strongly suggest, GIAH, that you read some of Theodore Dalrymple's writing. Young Brits, both male and female, are drinking and fighting in an unhithero unheard of manner, because of the sheer hopelessness present in their society. I have friends who live there who attest to this most strongly.
True. In 2002, when I was in the Netherlands on a story, I interviewed a criminologist about the stability of the Dutch population. Holland is almost entirely secular and liberal, yet prosperous and stable and bourgeois. Doesn't that suggest that religion is not required for a stable social order?
He said that it's too early to tell. You have to remember, he said, that there is a deep streak of Calvinist bourgeois propriety in the Dutch character. But we're beginning to see in the young, he said, a breakdown of the order that previous generations had internalized as part of their cultural inheritance. Having cut themselves off from the transcendent source of their moral order, they are starting to wither.
"I strongly suggest, GIAH, that you read some of Theodore Dalrymple's writing. Young Brits, both male and female, are drinking and fighting in an unhithero unheard of manner, because of the sheer hopelessness present in their society. I have friends who live there who attest to this most strongly."
Theodore Dalrymple's writings are exaggerated, to my mind, except with respect to Muslims. However, there does seem to be more violence and simple disrespect in the air than there was when I was young, although this doesn't show up on the statistics all that clearly.
Is this due to lack of religion? It certainly could be, if only because religion gives people something to keep them occupied, and something other than aimless wandering. My hunch is that there are all sorts of factors involved-
Cheap drink - some beer is now cheaper than water
Collapse of heavy indutry - people have nothing to tire them out, and no obvious way of expressing masculinity other than by fighting
Finance-sector-based economy - the richest members of scoiety share in a "chancer" attitude to life, and there is more obvious great wealth, encouraging envy, than in more manufacturing-based economies like Germany
Gun laws - people can beat each other up without anyone getting shot dead. I suspect that the availability of guns in the USA reduces low-level violence, bt that has to be weighed against the higher murder rate.
Did the Christians persecuted by the Soviets, or those under the Moslem yoke decry the systems of their persecutors because their careers were invested in the prosperity of their faith? Even you can't be ignorant enough to believe that. Then again...
First of all, the people I refer to are in no way persecuted by those by comprehensive, e.g. state, power. They might have to fear a few extremists. They aren't victims.
As for your query, I think you brush too lightly over the historical record of Christian passivity, rationalizations of waiting out the oppressor, cooption, outright collaboration, and submission in the name of some greater good. Have a close look at the record of the Polish bishops under Communism, the Russian Church, etc.
The heroic minority is always a small minority, and it isn't as identical with the alarmists and pessimists as you seem to believe.
However, there does seem to be more violence and simple disrespect in the air than there was when I was young, although this doesn't show up on the statistics all that clearly.
That sounds like the traditional class codes of conduct becoming more ambiguous, less stringently enforced by social pressure. And people motivated to exploit that.
"First of all, the people I refer to are in no way persecuted by those by comprehensive, e.g. state, power. They might have to fear a few extremists. They aren't victims."
Ah, but they are. It may not be persecution, and it may not even be "direct" action against them (yet), but when an elderly woman can't walk to the corner store without fear of being mugged or worse, or when you can't safely advise your children to go outside and play after dinner and "come home when the streetlights go on," then we are all victims of a collapsing culture. The more acute attacks of persecution and totalitarianism do not generally occur overnight. I think that what we are probably more likely heading for is a species of "soft totalitarianism."
"The heroic minority is always a small minority, and it isn't as identical with the alarmists and pessimists as you seem to believe."
I don't believe that. I do believe, however, that there always tends to be a certain amount of overlap between the groups.
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