Differends

As I mentioned last night, a heated discussion has been going on regarding religion over at I Cite, here, and now the Weblog. In one of the most recent exchanges over at weblog, Adam Kotsko writes:

Regardless of your token gestures toward the little pieces of Christianity that you think are good, you have always shown yourself to be a knee-jerk secularist. Don't you remember that one of the first things you ever said to me was "since God is dead, shouldn't we avoid theological discourse"? You have a right to your opinion; I have a right to think your opinion is so oversimplified as to be fucking stupid

Admittedly this was a pretty inflamatory thing to say. I only have vague recollections, but if memory serves me correctly the discussion in which I said this was similar to the current discussion, where some rightwing fundamentalist action was being discussed and suddenly the discussion shifted to religion being under assault and the importance of religion for certain political movements as in the case of Martin Luther King. As in this discussion, claims were made about all the blood secularists have on their hands, and it seemed implicitly suggested that religion is the only thing capable of protecting us from these horrors.

What interests me in Kotsko's remarks above is his phrase "knee-jerk secularist". Kotsko is right, I am secularist in temperament. I believe that the world should be explained through natural causes, and also believe that moral and political deliberations should be undertaken without referring to revealed or sacred texts as a ground of moral claims. I take that this is in part what it means to adopt the principle of immanence-- To think immanently is to refuse any transcendent standards or considerations that would be "out-of-field". I believe this is desirable as immanence is something that can collectively be shared, whereas the other who I would like to persuade cannot necessarily share revelation. But this is all a side-issue. What interests me in Kotsko's expression "knee-jerk secularist" is how it resonates with something else he recently said here on Larval Subjects. Here Kotsko wrote:

I unequivocally reject and denounce the contemporary American religious right. Maybe we could be allies! In fact, I know a lot of people who could be allies with you against the religious right -- the president of my seminary, for example, who very regularly appears in the press propagandizing against them.

Oh, except that you gratuitously insult people like me because of your (completely false and unfounded) position that we're somehow apologists for the religious right due to our refusal to make the (obviously empirically false) claim that the religious right just is religion tout court.

If you need to vent, that's okay. Venting is cool. But your doctrinaire atheism is blinding you to necessary distinctions and to potential allies.

I'm not sure where Kotsko gets the idea that I believe he's an apologist for the religious right, as I've never said such a thing. I do feel that some of the writers for Weblog sometimes behave like thugs and bullies, as they seem to swoop down on any discussion involving religion and shut those concerned with this or that issue down by claiming those involved don't know what religion is or that it can't be defined. That is, I don't know why these acrimonious discussions occur whenever some action of the religious right is being discussed. There seems to be an apparent identification here. The discussion over at I Cite has now gone on now for some 58 posts and perhaps what is most remarkable about this discussion is not what it discusses, but what it omits. That is, in these 58 posts there has hardly been any discussion of what Newt Gingrich has proposed and everything has revolved around whether or not religion has been mischaracterized.

This is what I was referring to in my original post when I mentioned my frustration with the religious studies crowd. While Kotsko and Anthony Paul Smith might not intentionally align themselves with the fundamentalist religious right, they nonetheless functionally promote the aims of the religious right by diverting discussion away from these things. In the case of Anthony Paul Smith this diversion takes the form of dismissing the reality of these social movements. Describing the predominance of fundamentalist discourse in the United States, I had written that, "It just so happens that a particular flavor happens to be particularly dominant in the United States." To which Anthony responded, "In the popular imaginiation, yes, but I think that it is effectively over in reality." That is, Anthony refuses to even acknowledge the reality of things such as Gingrich or what I described in the original post on religion, instead arguing that they aren't worth thinking about or that they don't exist. He would prefer, for whatever reason, to change the subject.

Kotsko is far more sophisticated in his argumentation and a lot less reactive. With Kotsko you either get a discussion of the vital role that religion has played in some progressive movements (about which he's right), or about the horrors perpetrated by secular movements (here he's a bit dishonest, I think, in his argumentation as he seems to want to claim that secularism ineluctably leads to this bloodshed), or about knee-jerk secularists such as the above. Nonetheless, despite Kotsko's occasional name-calling, he is nonetheless to be commended for both firmly denouncing rightwing Christian fundamentalism and for not dismissing it as something that is real and out there.

What perplexes me about Kotsko's denunciation of "knee-jerk secularism" is how it is possible to square this with what he says about forming alliances. Kotsko writes, "But your doctrinaire atheism is blinding you to necessary distinctions and to potential allies." What I wonder is under what conditions it is possible for Kotsko to be an ally with me. If I am a secularist, then I'm committed to the immanence thesis that would explain the world in its own terms and make no appeals to the divine or the supernatural. I am also committed to producing arguments and critiques that advance such a line of thought and which seek to persuade others. Kotsko's rejection of me as a "knee-jerk secularist" sounds a bit like rejecting a duck for being a duck or doing what ducks do. Kotsko has said that he has no problem with people being atheists. As he writes over at I Cite, "Go ahead and be an atheist all you want. I don't mind. I personally don't practice any particular religion right now and have no concrete plans to restart."

But is Kotsko really being honest here? When the two passages are read above side by side, Kotsko's conception of an alliance seems to be something like the following: 1) I will be allied with you if you never discuss religion or criticize anything religious, and 2) if you allow me to speak about religious issues without any dissent or disagreement. In short, even if Kotsko agrees with others in political or ethical matters, he is only willing to form alliances on the condition that the other person be a believer like himself or never speak of religious issues. Consequently, the secularist is expected to be tolerant and silent with respect to the believer's appeal to non-worldly principles of explanation and ethical deliberation, yet the believer is given free reign to criticize and reject the views of the secularist. Isn't this really the crux of the matter and the whole problem? And isn't the rhetoric that's unfolded in these exchanges carefully crafted to shut the secularist up and back them into a corner, forcing them to make claims that they staunchly oppose. Is there any real or genuine possibility of alliances here?