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I am posting this in GD just to get some discussion going for those who dont check the other forums, I thought this was an interesting read:
Rick Salutin
Mar. 12, 2010. The Globe and Mail
It is striking
and, to use a religious term, a bit awe-inspiring to see how central
that religion has become to politics in the post-Cold War era. For more
than 200 years, the defining split was left versus right. Now religion
is in the equation in a big way.
It's clearest in the United
States. Bill O'Reilly once told me, on air, as if it should be obvious
even to Canadians, that The Globe and Mail is a “left-wing” paper
because it is “secular.” Secular equals left, religious is right. The
best explanation I know for Sarah Palin's refusal to tell Katie Couric
what news sources she reads isn't that she reads none but that she
relies on biblically based reportage in Christian media. It's hazier
elsewhere, but, in Europe, there's born-again Tony Blair. (“God will be
my judge on Iraq.”) Over here, Stephen Harper plays it down, but his
church has strong theological grounds for supporting Israel; one can
wonder what effect that has.
This all slots “the left” into a
pretty reflexive role as secularists or atheists, simply rejecting the
faith and piety of the right. I thought about this when someone asked me
recently about beliefs I'd held back in my days as a seminarian.
Instead of just saying I don't think that now, I tried to say what I do
feel: a sort of awe at the world, an amazement that anything is, from
rocks to thoughts; even a kind of divinity suffusing existence. But no
transcendent Being as a source of comfort and intervention, who reveals
Himself in a scriptural text. Reverence without religion, perhaps.
Now
there used to be a word for that, back in the 18th century, during the
runup to the U.S. and French revolutions, when the great left-right
division was taking shape. The word was deism. If you read James
Boswell's London journal of 1762, you learn that a standard debate in
the coffee houses then was over “revealed” – i.e., biblical religion
versus natural religion, or deism. Many of America's founding fathers
were deists. People still argue about who was and who wasn't. An article
in The New York Times Magazine last month asked, “How Christian were
the founders?”
That debate was far more interesting than the
crude name-calling between current atheists such as Richard Dawkins and
the believers at Fox News – which is more like bumper stickers in Mexico
that used to read, Dios si existe and Dios no existe. A sixth grader I
know who's entering the age of pondering such things asked whether
there's a word for people who don't care if there's a god. These days,
I'd call that a sophisticated position.
Oh for a modern version
of deism. But wait, there is: environmentalism. It can take
spiritualized forms, like venerating Gaia, with radical practices such
as extreme ecology. Sometimes, it shades over into faith, which you can
see in the zealotry of some of the hacked e-mails on climate change, or
the fervent tone of the Rev. Al Gore's sermons. Mostly, though, it has
an overtly secular form, like The Globe and Mail, and avoids
religiosity. It's where the long debate between deism and revealed
religion still thrives. It reaches beyond intellectuals, into ordinary
people's lives (with ordinary rituals, such as recycling) and a place in
popular culture, in a film such as Avatar.
The Oscar combat
between The Hurt Locker and Avatar, I'd say, was miscast as low-cost,
feisty, relevant war film versus costly, hyped Hollywood blockbuster.
But really, The Hurt Locker was a formulaic, “blow everything up real
good” movie that concealed social reality (all Iraqis as faceless
villains or passive victims), as well as environmental impacts. It's
Avatar that had the deist spirit of environmentalism, with a reverence
for all forms of life, including newly evolving ones. It also had, I'd
say, the true documentary spirit, appearances notwithstanding, and all
the kids I know adored it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi
... le1497914/
Rick Salutin
Mar. 12, 2010. The Globe and Mail
It is striking
and, to use a religious term, a bit awe-inspiring to see how central
that religion has become to politics in the post-Cold War era. For more
than 200 years, the defining split was left versus right. Now religion
is in the equation in a big way.
It's clearest in the United
States. Bill O'Reilly once told me, on air, as if it should be obvious
even to Canadians, that The Globe and Mail is a “left-wing” paper
because it is “secular.” Secular equals left, religious is right. The
best explanation I know for Sarah Palin's refusal to tell Katie Couric
what news sources she reads isn't that she reads none but that she
relies on biblically based reportage in Christian media. It's hazier
elsewhere, but, in Europe, there's born-again Tony Blair. (“God will be
my judge on Iraq.”) Over here, Stephen Harper plays it down, but his
church has strong theological grounds for supporting Israel; one can
wonder what effect that has.
This all slots “the left” into a
pretty reflexive role as secularists or atheists, simply rejecting the
faith and piety of the right. I thought about this when someone asked me
recently about beliefs I'd held back in my days as a seminarian.
Instead of just saying I don't think that now, I tried to say what I do
feel: a sort of awe at the world, an amazement that anything is, from
rocks to thoughts; even a kind of divinity suffusing existence. But no
transcendent Being as a source of comfort and intervention, who reveals
Himself in a scriptural text. Reverence without religion, perhaps.
Now
there used to be a word for that, back in the 18th century, during the
runup to the U.S. and French revolutions, when the great left-right
division was taking shape. The word was deism. If you read James
Boswell's London journal of 1762, you learn that a standard debate in
the coffee houses then was over “revealed” – i.e., biblical religion
versus natural religion, or deism. Many of America's founding fathers
were deists. People still argue about who was and who wasn't. An article
in The New York Times Magazine last month asked, “How Christian were
the founders?”
That debate was far more interesting than the
crude name-calling between current atheists such as Richard Dawkins and
the believers at Fox News – which is more like bumper stickers in Mexico
that used to read, Dios si existe and Dios no existe. A sixth grader I
know who's entering the age of pondering such things asked whether
there's a word for people who don't care if there's a god. These days,
I'd call that a sophisticated position.
Oh for a modern version
of deism. But wait, there is: environmentalism. It can take
spiritualized forms, like venerating Gaia, with radical practices such
as extreme ecology. Sometimes, it shades over into faith, which you can
see in the zealotry of some of the hacked e-mails on climate change, or
the fervent tone of the Rev. Al Gore's sermons. Mostly, though, it has
an overtly secular form, like The Globe and Mail, and avoids
religiosity. It's where the long debate between deism and revealed
religion still thrives. It reaches beyond intellectuals, into ordinary
people's lives (with ordinary rituals, such as recycling) and a place in
popular culture, in a film such as Avatar.
The Oscar combat
between The Hurt Locker and Avatar, I'd say, was miscast as low-cost,
feisty, relevant war film versus costly, hyped Hollywood blockbuster.
But really, The Hurt Locker was a formulaic, “blow everything up real
good” movie that concealed social reality (all Iraqis as faceless
villains or passive victims), as well as environmental impacts. It's
Avatar that had the deist spirit of environmentalism, with a reverence
for all forms of life, including newly evolving ones. It also had, I'd
say, the true documentary spirit, appearances notwithstanding, and all
the kids I know adored it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi
... le1497914/
