IS NOTHING SACRED?

There has been a great deal of noise, most of it generous, in the wake of the killings in France. It seemed useful to ponder a little on the deeper issues, some of which were raised by the Tunisian thinker and essayist Mezri Haddad in a recent article. Apart from immediate political arguments, his chief point was that Western civilisation in its post-Enlightenment form depends on “the de-sacralisation of the sacred”. So is this true, and if so, what does it mean and what does it imply?

The OED’s chief definition of sacred is: “Of things, places, of persons and their offices, etc.: Set apart for or dedicated to some religious purpose, and hence entitled to veneration or religious respect; made holy by association with a god or other object of worship; consecrated, hallowed.” For the related “holy” definitions are longer and multiple, but they all concur in the meaning of “set apart, set aside, dedicated to veneration or worship”, culminating in the moral and spiritual perfection of God (in Christianity, but, I believe, also in Judaism and Islam).

Haddad’s phrase, clearly, is not meant literally in this sense. His invoking the Enlightenment is a clue. What, I think, he means is that in a post-Enlightenment society no specific object or belief can be considered sacred to, and its veneration therefore binding on, everybody, except (a respectful) freedom.

In the last few days, the outpouring of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and its murdered contributors has made this seem obvious; and yet it is not, nor should it be. It is obvious only to the superficial. Nothing – no thing – is sacred: yet I have the greatest sympathy for the outrage of ordinary Catholic Dutchmen in 1556 when gleeful bands of supposed Reformers profaned and destroyed their beloved statues of the Virgin and Child. I have no sympathy whatever for the Inquisition; yet if one believes that certain statements of faith represent objective truth, those who attempt to turn others to unbelief are worse than murderers – a murderer kills only your body, a heretic murders your immortal soul for eternity. Mezri Haddad says, rightly, that the Prophet himself would have disallowed considering him as sacred, for only God the Almighty is so. And yet millions of ordinary Muslims consider him “entitled to veneration or religious respect” as ordinary Catholics do a representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; so that while to insult that respect may not be a crime, it is certainly a blunder.

Several issues intersect here, and should not be confused. In the first place there is the issue of respect. Again, it seems obvious that one should respect what another holds sacred; yet what to do when faced with those who in the name of what they claim to hold sacred maim, torture and slaughter others? As the caption beneath a recent drawing of a Kalashnikov read, “Ceci n’est pas une religion” – this is not a religion.

We might think that in such a case it is better to fight with reason and education (and an efficient secret service); but in every age and especially in France there are those for whom the best weapon against the barbarians claiming religion and/or authority is laughter. When faced with others whose culture knows no irony, these take a grave risk; but it is theirs to take.

What has the Enlightenment brought to Christianity? A conviction that our faith cannot be forced on unbelievers; that if (as we hope) it is one day to become universal, that shall happen by acceptance and not by conquest; that no persuasion, metaphysical, social, or political, shall be allowed to dominate the public sphere; that no thing is sacred; that all faith shall be considered private but as such inviolable. Moreover, a sense that when the ill-bred, the ill-intentioned, the ignorant and the busy mockers invade our religion and attempt to provoke us to retaliation, we are not touched in what is essential and we can say “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

We should, however, be aware that other religions, other cultures, have not necessarily gone through an Enlightenment, and that in a globalized world we increasingly live cheek by jowl with them. We may think that it would be good if some of what Kenneth Clark called “the smile of Reason” should rub off on them; but meanwhile a certain caution and a certain respect should perhaps rule our actions, our words (more about those later), and even our drawings.

( Test your tolerance. For those who have only seen the Mohammed drawings: this was Charlie Hebdo's cover on the gay marriage controversy. Mgr Vingt-Trois is the Cardinal Archbishop of France. "Mgr Vingt-Trois has 3 daddies". )

SQUEEZED BETWEEN TALIBAN AND NIHILISTS

Seeing General Disarray's thoughtful reply to several of my LJ posts, including one from July of last year, it occurred to me that anyone stumbling upon this conversation may be wondering what the hell it is about. So I'm taking the liberty of reprinting that earlier post, while fully aware that my thinking on the subject is frequently illogical and permanently unfinished.


'Hanging Horse', a work of art by Maurizio Cattelan - respectfully exhibited also at the Guggenheim, NYC. 


It occurs to me that many of those who want religion today – as opposed to those who live happily without it and would just as soon it went away -- not only want to be dispensed from thinking, but want strong constraints and rigid rules. This is of course a reaction to the perceived chaos, and the perceived immorality, of modern life. If they are wrong, we should be able to formulate, in reasonably simple terms, why we consider that they are wrong. 

1)    Modern life is no more chaotic than life in any past one cares to study (as opposed to the ‘past’ of a reasonably happy childhood, which is invariably seen selectively and idealized – quite rightly so). No other period of history produced events less chaotic and less depressing. Ponder the Great Depression; ponder World Wars 1 and 2; ponder the dark satanic mills with their child labour and their tuberculosis; ponder the imprisonment without trial of  the Ancien Régime and the trials without justice and guillotines of the New; ponder the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the expulsion of thousands of families, with their children taken away and forcibly re-educated in convents; ponder the St Bartholomew’s Massacre and the slaughter of the Indians in the Americas; and keep pondering as you go back. No; what I have called the ‘perceived chaos’ is in fact the chaos of perception: caused, not by an overwhelmingly terrifying situation (though some families may have that) but by the ceaseless presence of TV, Internet, radio and newspapers, and the ceaseless barrage of information about much of the planet that it brings. Much of this, if information, is information twisted, not just by op-ed (Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow) but by the fundamental and undiscussed bias of news media, which is their appetite for drama and conflict, and their conscienceless stimulation of generalized anger. 

2)    Modern life is indeed in some ways more immoral. And here the culprit is not so much the news media as, perhaps, the arts.[1] In the latter, what began as a reaction and a protest against a certain kind of hypocritical Victorian bourgeoisie has by now, ca. 125 years later, triumphantly outlived said bourgeoisie but still dons what is now a specious mantle of courageous rebellion.[2] The real immorality, though, often has nothing to do with sex, and goes well beyond what fundamentalists protest against. The number of modern plays, films and novels (to say nothing of video games) in which fundamental values, not only of faith but of humanity, decency, kindness and worth are ridiculed, trodden underfoot, or ignored in favour of violence, cruelty, amusing worthlessness and plain evil – in some cases covered by an ostensibly noble moral purpose -- is depressingly great; and the visual arts have in large measure followed them. So yes: here the seekers after stricter rules are more understandable. They are also, to our understanding, wrong in that a) it almost certainly won’t work except in closed communities (from which many young adults will escape); and b) if it did work, it would necessarily go against other values that we also value, e.g. freedom of expression and democratic consultation and decision-making. It would, in other words, create a Taliban society – and how little that works in a modern context can be seen in Iran. Moreover, in such a society the very values of humanity, kindness, respect and consideration for the other would once again be trodden underfoot in an orgy of punishment.

Psychologically, this need for a religion of intellectual simplicity and moral constraint may also proceed from a need and desire to see others punished; but that edges into speculation. It does, though, have another and deeply negative consequence: the sustaining and encouraging of an aggressive (and equally simplistic) atheism and spiritual (as opposed to moral) nihilism on the other side.

What are the remedies against such tendencies? They may be twofold. For the intellectually sophisticated the first thing is not to give way to the temptation of confusing fundamentalism with faith, and to believe or proclaim that Muslim Jihadism or an obscurantist and condemnatory Christianity is what all ‘religion’ really is. The next step on this road is actually to study theology, with either an open mind or one ready to explore faith for oneself. It is not enough just to have questions. If Jews can study scripture and centuries of rabbinical wisdom, we can read the odd Church Father. Moreover, it involves regarding the fundamentalist with a positive eye upon his faith, not just his rules: for his faith may be stronger than ours.

Which brings me to the second remedy: working out a solid theology of one’s own, and not fleeing conversation with the fundamentalist but being ready to counter his arguments with equally strong ones, while showing respect for those aspects of his faith one can admire. A little spiritual séduction would do no harm.

As for the spiritual nihilist – who often calls himself, not without some self-satisfaction, an agnostic – with him there seems to be little possibility of conversation, since he doesn’t want it and sees no need for it. He regards the faith of another either as idiocy (in which case he is closer to the real atheists) or as a private hobby which he may personally think ridiculous but would not openly denounce or deride, out of good manners or out of fear of giving it unwarranted importance.

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[1] I leave aside, here, the political or economic ‘immorality’ vigorously denounced by some protest movements: it is not except tangentially concerned with matters of religion.

[2] Just as the work of Lacan gave a whole new lease of life to Freudianism, so the cultural revolution of the Sixties gave a whole new lease of life to the ‘revolt against the bourgeoisie’.

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David Czerny, Permanent Installation at FUTURA Gallery, Prague
Info: you climb a ladder and stick your head in the sculpture’s arse to see a video of two Czech politicians feeding each other slop to a soundtrack of ‘We are the Champions'.
Thanks to: http://villageofjoy.com/controversial-art-by-david-cerny/