The Future of Faith

by Harvey Cox

  No one knows, of course. But two core crente beliefs will play a decisive role: conversion (“you must be born again”) and holiness (“be not conformed to this world”). In political and cultural terms conversion means that people can change and that therefore fatalism—either personal or societal—is not acceptable. Holiness means that you need not buy into the latest mind-numbing fads of the commodity lifestyle. You can be “in but not of this world.”

  The question of whether Pentecostals will ultimately help fuel the revolution in Christianity toward a rebirth of faith in an Age of Spirit is still an open one. But if the currents Miller and Yamamori charted keep flowing; if Pentecostals learn to respect their non-crente neighbors; and if the persistence of the list makers of the favellas continues, they might end up on the side of the angels.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Future of Faith

  In his utopian novel Island, a sketch of the future of science and religion published in 1963, Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) ascribes the following prayer to his fictional islanders: “Give us this day our daily faith, but deliver us from beliefs.” Although a bit eccentric in some respects, Huxley got this one right. In the preceding chapters I have shown how Christianity, which began as a movement of Spirit guided by faith, soon clotted into a catalog of beliefs administered by a clerical class. But now, due to a number of different factors, the process is being reversed. Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal, and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in the other world religions.

  Recent developments in Islam and Buddhism provide good examples. Islam, with over a billion adherents, is the second-largest religion in the world. It has demonstrated a sensational renaissance in the past century. There are many theories about why this resurgence has taken place. Some attribute it to a large a pool of newly educated young men without sufficient employment opportunities roaming the streets of Damascus and Cairo and the housing projects of western Europe. Others claim it is due to the failure of either socialism or market capitalism to satisfy the needs of the people. Still others argue that the new oil wealth has sharpened class divisions. One of the most familiar explanations is that the rapid, jarring changes that modern life brings create an identity crisis that prods people to embrace the old certainties of traditional religion, especially when their leaders present them as the answer to all their problems.

  All of these factors are certainly part of the picture, but there is an underlying and more strictly religious explanation. Islam has always emphasized the duty of every Muslim to be concerned about the poor. This is a value it shares not only with Judaism and Christianity, but also with some Buddhist teachings. In Islam, the idea of da’wa states that Muslims have the duty to call their fellow followers to behave according to the Qur’an and subsequent Islamic teachings. In the past, however, this duty focused mainly on encouraging people to be more faithful in the exercise of their perschal practice, such as praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, and abstaining from alcohol.

  During the past century, however, two developments have deepened and amplified the idea of da’wa. One is the emergence of lay organizations among Muslims, often bringing together people in similar trades and occupations, in which they could cooperate in strengthening and applying their faith. The other is the recognition that in complex societies individual charity toward the poor is not enough, but that nonetheless a person must have sufficient material goods to be a faithful Muslim. It follows that society itself has a responsibility to attend to these material needs, and social justice becomes a religious duty, not just a political goal.

  Western observers sometimes mistakenly believe that the use of religious language in Muslim political speech is no more than window dressing, injected by ideologues to heat up motivation, and that this feeds into the quest for identity in a confusing world. The anthropologist Talal Asad, who has studied the Muslim renewal carefully, disagrees. He claims that most Muslim discourse is not the result of tightening economic factors and is not about seeking cultural identity. It is about how to be a better Muslim. It tries to answer the question, “Since I am a Muslim, how should I behave in accordance with God’s commands? And since I live among other people, Muslims and non-Muslims, how should we behave toward one another?”1

  This twentieth-century thrust in Islamic consciousness first took organizational shape in Egypt in 1928. In that year a twenty-two-year-old elementary-school teacher named Hasan al-Banna founded an educational organization called the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna himself nurtured some anticlerical sentiments and had drunk deeply of the gentle and mystical Sufi stream of Islam. The Brotherhood’s basic premise was that Islam is not just a set of observances and beliefs, but a comprehensive way of life. From small beginnings, it grew quickly and expanded its agenda to include political aims. Suspicious of communism, capitalism, and nationalism, the Brothers’ objective was to build a society of equality and justice based on the principles of the Qur’an. This brought them into opposition to the Egyptian government, and since they sometimes turned to violence when it seemed called for, they underwent severe persecution. Al-Banna was assassinated by government agents in 1949. Since then the Brotherhood has generated similar movements in other countries, and some, like Hamas in Palestine, have embraced violent means. But the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt today, which has become a stalwart defender of democracy and especially of an independent judiciary, is still persecuted by the government.

  The Muslim world is a divided and fractious one. On the whole, thoughtful Muslims insist that Islam is not just a set of ritual obligations, but a community and a way of serving God and neighbor. In some places radical Islamist groups threaten the ecumenical and democratic currents that are struggling to come to birth. But like fundamentalist movements elsewhere they are swimming against the stream. In Egypt, in 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood publicly announced that its objective was the establishment of a democratic state, not an Islamic one. In November 2008 the American national intelligence agencies issued a report indicating the steep loss of support for Al Qaeda among Muslims, because they are alienated by its “indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment, and education.”2

  During the years of this important change in the Muslim world, a sweeping transformation has also been under way in the Buddhist sphere. The best illustration is what has sometimes been called the “Buddhist Reformation” that has taken place in Japan in the past few decades. It occurred in the Nichiren Shoshu, the largest Buddhist denomination in Japan, the one stemming from the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin (1222–82), who is sometimes compared to the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century. Early in the twentieth century, some lay followers of this tradition founded a movement called Soka Gakkai (the word means “value creation”) in an effort to move education in Japan away from its authoritarian methods and to encourage students to think creatively. It grew rapidly and now has chapters in 128 countries, where its members work for world peace, women’s rights, and interfaith dialogue.

  At first the priesthood of the Nichiren Shoshu and its lay affiliate got along well and cooperated in the building of an impressive modern temple at the foot of Mt. Fuji, the sacred mountain of Japan. But tensions grew as leaders of the Soka Gakkai began to suggest that true Buddhism requires lay leadership, equalitarianism, human rights, and the reform of society. As the conflict heated up, in 1991 the Nichiren priesthood, in a colossal act of clerical hubris, excommunicated 11 million Soka Gakkai members. To enforce this decision, the priests banned Soka Gakkai members from entering the temple, and then the high priest Nikken Shonin ordered the splendid building’s total demolition. Against the wishes of these members and to the horror all architects, the high priest’s directive was carried out. The temple was demolished. But Soka Gakkai, as an expression of what some scholars call “Bud
dhist humanism,” thrived. Perhaps the split was inevitable. As Jane Hurst, a student of this movement, puts it, “the pragmatic, goal-oriented, this-worldly focus” of the members of Soka Gakkai was bound to come in conflict with “the otherworldly focus” of the priesthood.

  I first came into contact with Soka Gakkai when its international president, Daisaku Ikeda, gave a lecture at Harvard in 1993. Knowing of my interest as a Christian in dialogue with Buddhists and that I had been a Visiting Intellectual in Japan in 1986, the sponsors asked me to respond. Ikeda spoke about the need for intercultural and interreligious exchange. After the session, he told me he would like to assure some kind of presence of his movement at Harvard, both to learn from proximity to the university and to become the voice of humanistic Buddhism. I suggested they buy a building and offer an “open space” where people from the community and from different parts of the university, who are sometimes at odds with each other, could meet for conversation at a neutral place without arousing departmental jealousies. Today the resulting Boston Research Center, inspired by the principles of Buddhist humanism and the conviction that all life can be made sacred, supports a range of programs in global citizenship. The worldwide organization sponsors similar efforts.

  Judaism, although much smaller than the other world religions, nonetheless is undergoing analogous changes. A contemporary successor of the joyous, mystical strand of the tradition, stemming from the Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), is growing in popularity. In America Rabbi Zalman Schachter freely adopts spiritual tropes from Eastern sources and is one of those responsible for what has come to be called “Jewish renewal.” In Israel Gabriel Meyer mixes generous elements of Hasidic, Asian, and Sufi spirituality, attracting thousands of Israeli young people who are not content with the rigid orthodoxy that is the unofficial established religion of the country. Some American synagogues now characterize themselves as “postdenominational,” leaving behind the former labeling as Orthodox, Conservative, or Reformed. Despite persistent tensions between Jewish and Muslim die-hards, dialogue and cooperation between Jews and Muslims on peacemaking is on the increase.

  These examples indicate that both the renaissance of spirituality and the transmutation in the nature of religiousness are happening in a variety of traditions. The similarities are striking. One clear Christian example is what is being called the “emerging-church movement.” Beginning in New Zealand, far from the old power centers of Christendom, it is now expanding in America. It is nondenominational, decentralized, suspicious of many aspects of the institutional churches, and critical of the suffocating role dogmas have played in Christianity. Like that of the earliest Christians, it is a movement of the Spirit that focuses on following Jesus and striving to actualize the Reign of God. Its participants retrieve elements of the Christian mystical tradition that are often frowned upon by the more conventional churches, and in dealing with other religions they prefer conversation and cooperation to conversion.

  In the past two decades the emerging-church movement has spread in mainline churches. Marcus Borg describes its theology as “historical, metaphorical, and sacramental” and its view of the Christian life as “relational and transformational.”3 Emergent congregations are especially well equipped to live creatively in the newly post-Western Christianity. They are careful not to confuse the life and message of Jesus with the “Western” elements in which it has been packaged. They try to assign equal weight to both the message and the context so that a new version of the old story can take shape. They strongly underline “living the message” rather than simply proclaiming it. They experiment with settings, like cafes, in which two-way exchange rather than one-way preaching is possible.

  Not only does the present trajectory of Christianity suggest a growing distinction between faith and belief; the trend has been visible for quite some time now. In March 1969 I attended a symposium in Rome sponsored by the Vatican Secretariat for Nonbelievers (mentioned in Chapter 8). The secretariat had been created as a result of the Second Vatican Council. Some forty scholars, including Catholics, Protestants, and even a couple atheists, gathered, read papers, and exchanged views. On the last day Pope Paul VI received us and bestowed his blessing.

  The most memorable paper at the meeting, entitled “Religion and Belief: The Historical Background of ‘Non-Belief,’” was given by University of California sociologist Robert Bellah. It was a prophetic statement, foreshadowing some of the changes I have documented in this book. Bellah traced the question of “unbelief” back to the split that developed in ancient Greece between the traditional religion of the time and a new way of thinking, namely, philosophy. He pointed out that in Book 10 of his Laws, Plato (428–348 BCE), who did not believe in the gods of Olympus, nevertheless argued that the stability of any society depends on certain theological beliefs such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Plato therefore made unbelief in these propositions a crime, punishable by five years of solitary confinement for the first offense and death for the second. Plato was talking about the belief that these theological ideas are true. But, Bellah rightly added, this “belief that” has little to do with the biblical concept of faith as trust and confidence, which is not a matter of cognitive assent. Therefore, Bellah went on, when the word “belief” is used to translate the biblical terms for faith, it amounts to a mistranslation and creates a serious misunderstanding.

  A scholar of comparative religion, Bellah suggested that this confusion vexed serious thinkers for centuries. Philosophers and theologians were often torn between two convictions. On the one hand, they believed their societies needed religion to maintain order, but, on the other, they themselves could not honestly assent to such mythical propositions. Their uncomfortable solution was usually to defend—at least in public—a set of beliefs for ordinary people, but to reserve for themselves the right to have their private doubts. They knew these public beliefs were “noble lies,” but they felt they were needed to manage the restless masses. This tactic was not the sole property of intellectuals. A Mexican landowner candidly remarked during the revolution in his country, “I do not believe in God, but I believe in the priest.” Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), two thousand years after Plato, demanded in his Social Contract that people subscribe to the “dogmas of civil religion,” which for him included the existence of God and the happiness of the just and the punishment of the wicked in the life to come. Not to subscribe was to be punishable by banishment from the realm.

  Setting aside its obvious hypocrisy, this two-tiered solution was always fragile. It separated people into the many who believe (or are supposed to believe) and the few who know. The same strategy took place in the Muslim world as well, where the philosopher al-Ghazzali (1058–1111) worked out a similar Islamic solution. But there was always leakage. The books of the cognoscenti, even when hidden away from the masses, could not be concealed forever. As more people learned to read, the double standard gradually came unraveled. Now, in the past century, the portion of the population that can read and ask questions has become a majority, and the spread of the scientific method, which requires publicly verifiable evidence, has challenged the credibility of propositions that must be accepted on authority. A religion based on subscribing to mandatory beliefs is no longer viable.

  Still, for both Christianity and Islam something more than hypocrisy was involved. For both, it was their movement into the sphere of Greek and Hellenistic modes of thought that made the difference. In entering the Greek world, Plato’s turf, the early Christians mixed biblical ideas into a Greek framework that often distorted their original meaning. They tried to fashion a Christian philosophy to replace the pagan one, and Christianity gradually slipped away from faith and into ideas. The triumph of the clerical elite under Constantine cemented this perversion into the structure of the church.

  It is important to remember, however, that the same garbling did not occur in the Asian religions. This explains why representatives of Buddhism and Hinduism
are often hard put to set forth a list of their “beliefs.” More than one course on comparative religion in the West has foundered on this reef, as students, and sometimes professors, search in vain for the Hindu equivalent of the Nicene Creed. In Asia religion is a matter of seasonal rituals, ethical insights, and narratives handed down from generation to generation. Ironically, in this sense it is more like the Christianity practiced by most ordinary people both today and throughout its history. Creeds were always something theologians invented, often to stake out spheres of authority. The vast body of lay Christians knew little about them and cared less. Their faith was embodied in stories, saints’ days, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. But these everyday people constituted, after all, the vast majority. The priests and theologians always remained a tiny minority. Consequently the recent emergence of “people’s history” is facilitating the recovery of Christianity’s original faith orientation.

  As the revival of religion and the change in religiousness spread around the world, it becomes clearer why the extraordinary growth of Christianity beyond the West is helping Christianity regain its initial impetus. These areas lie far removed from Plato’s orbit. To be a Christian in India or Korea or Africa today does not mean to be a Christian à la grec. It means to be what is sometimes called a “postdogmatic” Christian. The content of the faith of non-Western Christians is much like that of the early church, even though the embodied style of their religion often resembles that of their non-Christian neighbors.