If we, the thinking animals, once experience something of this love (and most of us experience at least intimations of it—in our own loves), we shall know perfectly well that we can never rightly explain it. But we shall also know what it is not. And that knowledge will make us question everything that is put forward, or that puts itself forward, as though it were ultimate, the last word. Christians are skeptical about all alleged last words, because the only last word they honor is a Word that was “made flesh and dwelt among us,” and a Spirit that lives among us still—appearances notwithstanding!
Beloved children, may you, through all the adventures, crises, joys, ups and downs of your lives, be and become more and more conscious of that Word, that Spirit. To be sure, it is a Word that defies translation into words and a Spirit that, like the wind, cannot be seen. But if and insofar as it touches your life, you will find rest for your souls and a peace that passes understanding.
Lovingly,
‘Opa’
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montréal
A.D. 2012
Preface
With the break-up of Christendom, serious Christians throughout the globe find themselves confronted in new and urgent ways by the question, What, really, is Christianity? Shorn of its ‘religious’ accretions, what remains of this faith-tradition? How, as Christians, can we remain faithful to the core of the gospel whilst opening ourselves in modesty and compassion to others who are “not of this fold”?
In its quest for religious certitude and political ascendency, Western Christianity in particular has too often ignored or obscured the transcendent mystery that gave and gives rise to faith in the first place. ‘Negative’ or apophatic theology aims to preserve that mystery through the development, in the Christian community, of a critical vigilance that recognizes the tendency of the penultimate to claim ultimacy. Thus this theology critiques many things held sacred by believers—such as conventional cultural assumptions, moral codes, doctrinal systems, ecclesiastical polities, and even the Bible—in order to keep faith focused on the One who cannot be reduced to codes or systems, ideas or words.
In this book I have tried to apply this theological method to the question historical providence has put to all of us who claim Christian identity in this post-Christendom world: What is Christianity, really? While the book necessarily reflects its author’s North American identity, it aims to speak to and for the global—or, better, the ecumenical Christian—situation. The various ‘provinces’ of what was once ‘Christendom’ experience somewhat different aspects of the overarching question, and at differing levels of intensity, but the great problem is addressed to all of us. With the disintegration of ‘the Christian religion’ can we say, finally, meaningfully, what Christianity is? Or at least what it is not?
D.J.H.
Introduction
Si comprehendis, non est Deus.
St. Augustine
Religion in a Violent World
On the 12th of September, 2001, the following paragraph appeared in the English newspaper the Guardian:
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them the false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let’s now stop being so damned respectful.3
A much shorter version of the same message appeared on the wall of the Presbyterian College in Montreal in the form of a huge graffito. It read simply, “RELIGION KILLS!” All of us who taught in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill had to walk past this taunt. That particular wall had borne many other antireligious slogans over the years, but this one was punctuated by the dramatic collapse of the Twin Towers in Manhattan, an image seared on all our minds. The graffito didn’t single out any one religion, though we all knew that it had been a debased form of Islam that had inspired the event of 9/11. In our Faculty, most of the great religions of the world were represented, some more prominently than others; so the accusation was intended for—and, I think, felt by—all of us.
Nor has that message been lost on the general populous. Professor Richard Dawkins’s statement in the Guardian makes sense to a great many people, and though Dawkins is famous for his “new atheism,” more than a few of those of us who eschew atheism find much to commend that statement; for, as Christians, we have our own quarrel with religion, as I shall explain presently. The current resurgence of public interest in atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism has been stimulated by the dastardly events of 9/11, but it has been lingering beneath the surface of public consciousness throughout the Modern period. The horrifying image of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers has only pinpointed and made concrete a disdain for religious zeal that has long been a subtheme beneath the song of technological triumph that our civilization has been so lustily singing. Now the subtheme, roused not only by 9/11 but by a whole host of catastrophic occurrences (perhaps the most characteristic occurrences of the twentieth century and beyond!), has risen to a pitch and, for many, quite drowned out that old triumph song. Until now it has been possible for most people, even skeptics and agnostics, to assume that on the whole religion is a good thing. But when so much of the planet’s violence seems inextricably bound up with religion, this assumption is increasingly questioned by large numbers of people. It does not take great insight to come to the conclusion that if indeed “religion kills” or creates attitudes that may well result in the degradation and destruction of life, it would be better to avoid religion, or at least to exercise a certain caution in that area. This too contributes incalculably to the exodus from the churches, especially from those churches that have encouraged people to think for themselves.
In the face of this renewed questioning of religion, many who are committed to a faith tradition are prone to become defensive. Typically, their defense, when it is not just emotional, draws upon three observations: (1) While, throughout recorded history, religion may have caused occasional harm, its major contribution to human civilization has been positive. (2) Religious factions that create or foster hostility and violence are usually distortions of the faiths they imagine they are serving. (3) Very often where religion is blamed for destructive attitudes or events, the truth is that the religion is being used to bolster causes that are ideologically or politically driven. For example, few if any informed persons believed that “the troubles” in Northern Ireland were really the consequence of genuinely Catholic and Protestant agendas, even though the media invariably referred to the situation in those terms.
Such defense of religion is legitimate enough when it is sensitively stated; but it rarely gets at the heart of the problem. For the problem is not only that religion is frequently misinterpreted and misused; the problem is that there are dangerous and vulnerable spots in most if not all religious faiths, which, if they are not recognized and their practical effects closely monitored within the communities holding these faiths, are likely under certain social conditions to become vehicles for the expression of suspicion, prejudice, fear, or hatred of others. And the really subtle aspect of all this is that such dangerous and vulnerable spots in a religious system cannot be confined to those rather obvious places where religious belief treads a fine line between strong personal faith and bigotry with respect to others; rather, such flash points can and do emerge in connection with the most apparently innocent or seemingly positive affirmations of a faith tradition. It is obvious enough, for instance, that a religious community that blatantly excludes from salvation or fullness of humanity any who do not consent to its self-same dogmas is actively courting conflict with others. But it is not at