Sermon preached by the Rev. John Kirkley
January 20, 2019, St. James Episcopal Church, San Francisco
This morning’s scripture readings are about weddings and spiritual
gifts. I will return to those themes in
a moment, suggesting that they help us to see how Christianity differs from
some other religious options in our culture.
But first, I need to say a little bit about those other options.
Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian, defines religion in
his recent book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, as “any
all-encompassing story that confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms,
and values. It legitimates human social
structures by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws.”[1] A religion does not have to include belief in
god. The superhuman laws need not be
supernatural in origin. They can be
grounded in some notion of natural law or historical or biological necessity;
for example, the inalienable rights of the individual in Liberalism or the
dynamic of class struggle in Marxism.
The point is that religion offers an overarching explanation of reality
that gives it meaning and legitimates a specific way of organizing society.
Harari argues that, in the modern period, the dominant
religion is humanism; not in its number of formal adherents, but in it its
practical influence on our common life. In
the past, the cosmic plan revealed in scripture, myth, and ritual gave meaning
to human life and by so doing were held to be authoritative. The humanist revolution reversed this age-old
way of thinking about religion. Now it
is human beings who give meaning to the cosmos, and human experience is
considered the supreme source of authority and meaning.[2]
Like all successful religious revolutions, humanism soon
split into sects. In our culture,
humanism in its liberal form remains dominant.
Liberal humanism holds that the individual is a sacred center of
creativity and bearer of inviolable rights.
Liberty is the supreme value, guarding the natural right of the
individual to pursue his or her project of creating meaning. Thus, in liberal humanism, the voter knows
best, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the customer is always right, and
if it feels good, do it. The liberal
self is the ultimate source of authority and meaning in life.
The problem plaguing liberal humanism is that it struggles
to handle conflicting beliefs about the good life in society. In the 19th Century, liberalism
combined with nationalism to provide a shared cultural consensus to minimize
conflict, but pluralism and globalization have undermined that solution. Suspicion that this consensus masked the interests
of dominant groups within society at the expense of the masses led to another
form of humanism: socialist humanism.
Socialist humanism also grounds meaning and authority in
human experience, but in collective rather than individual experience. Much of what enriches our lives is shared with
others and depends upon cooperation, and we need to examine the social forces
that shape our experiences. We need
strong communal institutions to ensure equity and harmony. There is a strain of utopian idealism in
socialist humanism. In socialist
humanism, the collective is the source of meaning and authority; not the
individual.
Unlike liberalism and socialism, evolutionary humanism views
conflict in society and between nations as a positive good; reflecting the
dynamism of the survival of the fittest, rather than as a problem to be
solved. In its milder forms, it is
reflected in every system of aristocratic privilege or meritocratic
preference. In its strongest expression,
it takes the form of fascism, emphasizing the experience of the “superior”
human being or people as the ultimate source of meaning and authority. It rejects “lesser” human beings as
impediments to the fulfillment of the human evolutionary project.
One way to understand the twentieth century is as a religious
war waged between these three sects of humanism: liberalism, socialism, and fascism. We are living on the far end of that
conflict, in which liberal humanism dominates; for now, at least. Liberalism has survived, in part, because of
its capacity to internalize the critique of socialism by building strong social
welfare systems and advancing the quest for equality. But evolutionary humanism, in the form of a
resurgent xenophobic nationalism, is on the rise and the temptation of turning
to a “strong man” and comforting ourselves with racist myths of national
superiority remains, both here and abroad.
What does Christianity, a decidedly minority religion, say
about any of this?
First, Christianity is adamant that the individual is not
the source of meaning and authority, either as a “realized” self or as part of
a collective human experience, much less as part of some “superior” race or
class. What give meaning to our life is
not that we are autonomous subjects, but rather that we are objects of a love
that massively precedes us.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of God delighting in God’s people,[3]
and the psalmist sings of God’s priceless love that covers the whole creation;
a love in which we take refuge.[4] We are loved.
This is what gives our lives value and purpose. Our life is not an achievement. It is a gift.
Whatever freedom we exercise is derived from humble
acceptance of this gift. Merely
consulting our desires or our cultural programming is hardly a sound basis for
authentic liberty. Christianity affirms
that God is the source of a love that is the well of life, issuing in a river
of delight; to paraphrase the psalmist again.
It is as we become open to this love that we discover a source of
authority to guide our lives. It is an
authority that critiques, transforms and empowers our desires.
The power to exercise our freedom rightly comes from the
Spirit, and it is directed, not only to self-satisfaction, but also in service
to others. “To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” writes St. Paul.[5] Notice that this power is given to each and
all. The gifts manifest in each of us
are different. We are not the same. But we are all equally necessary for the life
of the community. We all have a
contribution to make. There is no
superman or superior group. There is
instead the universalism of love and the pluralism of gifts in service to the
common good.
Christianity adopts a stance of humility about knowledge and
power, as well as personal and collective perfectibility. It is suspicious of individual desires and
institutional forms, which often serve self-interest rather than the common
good. Self-examination, repentance,
forgiveness and reconciliation, recourse to the experience and insight of
others, including the insight of our ancestors reflected in scripture, and accountability
to communal discernment are all valued.
Whereas liberalism is quick to sacrifice equality for the
sake of liberty and community for the sake of the individual, and socialism is
quick to make the opposite sacrifices; whereas evolutionary humanism is willing
to sacrifice “inferior” people for the advancement of the “superior” race;
Christianity is suspicious of sacrifice whenever is it separated from the power
and purpose of love.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it best, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and
love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love
implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love.”[6] In this sense, Christianity serves as both
the inspiration and the critique of the religion of humanism.
The scientific and technological achievements of the modern
age have provided human beings who control their implementation with great
power. It has not provided much wisdom
or humility, and is incapable of providing meaning. The triumph of the religion of humanism,
coupled with this power, in many ways presents the greatest threat to love and
justice in history.
Developments in genetic programming and artificial intelligence may well make millions of human beings economically superfluous while enhancing a new race of supermen and women. Unchecked consumerism and globalization, driving energy consumption, threaten to destabilize the climate system in ways that will devastate large portions of the planet and the people who live there. Data is becoming a new god – “in the algorithm we trust” – demanding sacrifices of privacy and liberty and even human consciousness in the service of increasing intelligence.
Developments in genetic programming and artificial intelligence may well make millions of human beings economically superfluous while enhancing a new race of supermen and women. Unchecked consumerism and globalization, driving energy consumption, threaten to destabilize the climate system in ways that will devastate large portions of the planet and the people who live there. Data is becoming a new god – “in the algorithm we trust” – demanding sacrifices of privacy and liberty and even human consciousness in the service of increasing intelligence.
Christianity, and the world’s other great wisdom traditions,
have an important role to play in the crisis of humanist religion. It is, to be sure, a minority voice in the
centers of power, but it continues to offer a vision of human flourishing that
is an important antidote to the anomie, loneliness, exploitation and
meaninglessness of contemporary life. But
its capacity to inspire and renew our common life depends upon its ability to
differentiate itself from the various forms of humanism.
Liberal Protestants are hard to differentiate from liberal
humanists today. Catholicism, with its
commitment to the centralization of institutional power is not unlike some
forms of socialist humanism. And
Evangelical Christianity has aligned itself with a racist nationalism that
legitimates the worst forms of evolutionary humanism. What a renewed Christianity will look like
in response to the crisis of humanist religion remains unknown.
Our responsibility, as bearers of Christian faith, is to be
open to revitalizing our tradition in ways that serve the common good. We need a new miracle at Cana, a
transformation of water into wine, for the renewal of the wedding feast that we
celebrate as the central act of our worship:
a joyous meal reminding us that God has chosen us in love to be God’s
partners in the consecration of all life.
In the name of God, Source, Wellspring, and Living
Water. Amen.
[1]
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (New
York: HarperCollins, 2017), p. 182.
[2]
Harari, pp. 222-249.
[3]
Isaiah 62:4.
[4]
Psalm 36:5-10.
[5]
I Corinthians 12:7.
[6]
King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1967. "Where
Do We Go From Here?" Annual Report Delivered at
the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, August 16, Atlanta, GA.
