I read the whole thing, and though I won’t pretend I followed everything you were saying, MUCH of it struck a chord of truth. It set me to thinking where I fit in all of it, imagining your groans as I reveal my inevitable connections to the (poor, in my case, but) educated class. I’ve been writing to try to tease out where I belong in the great mystery of complexities of race in my family, work relationships, and friendships. And how do I define myself in relation to religion? I am not an atheist, but I don't embrace any one organized religion. I do not respect those who claim religion but act against the values they claim to love. Politically, where are my people? Bernie is still the closest point of comfort. But my greatest joy comes from being in the woods where I am lucky to live, being with beloved humans and animals, and being useful when possible. In the past, I may well have been burned as a witch. when I read there was a surge of misogyny after trump won, I wondered if the practice might re-emerge.
I did enjoy when I got to the end of your post, there was lunchy all delicious as could be.
What do you think left-wing atheists should do? Convert? Pretend to convert? Have you seen or heard about many such ones getting in the faces of working-class people, white, black or Latino, about the latter's religious beliefs? Should we adopt a diplomatic silence about Christian nationalism, or, to call the latter by another name, the tribalist Christian garb that C21 U.S. fascism wraps itself in? I've been reading your work for many years, since before your conversion, and I'm pretty sure you consider the latter a Constantinian heresy. What, then, is one to do or say when working-class Christians of whatever political stripe are in earshot? Expound on why Catholics and black Baptists have got it right but the white evangelicals don't? I'm not saying an atheist can't be a theologian, but I don't know how many atheists really feel that they're qualified as such, or that they have a stake in theological disputes.
While I'm quite skeptical of the way the term fascism gets thrown around these days, I take you point. I'm not suggesting that there's nothing problematic about Christian nationalism (or any nationalism, for that matter . . . CN is nationalist well before it's 'christian'), nor am I saying atheists are the problem (though the evangelical ones, ie, Dawkins, are part of it). I'm saying there's a class divide at work here that has to be taken into account, and that shitting all over people's faith--the Biden Easter stunt, eg--is really bad politics. I wrote a long article about the failure of secularism (on this platform, even did a Spanish version), where anyone whose interested can see my extended argument on that account, but here I'm talking about how utterly lost the Democratic Party is--both its institutional bosses and the upper crust of its rank-and-file--with regard to winning elections. That's what parties are supposed to do. As to the left-wing, I am extremely pessimistic. It's politically insignificant, for starters. It's always been so wrapped up in ideological development that it breaks out--inevitably--in fratricidal warfare. And since it's withdrawal into 'intellectual' spaces, the left has been dissolved in a vat of poststructuralist acid. The question of atheism, as a proposition, is metaphysical, and I'm all for principled, peaceful, philosophical reflection, discussion, and debate. We can't avoid the fact, however, that metaphysical convictions ramify into politics, because the very question of what is the good? can only be answered standing on a metaphysical foundation. Here's where I say that, at bottom, our crisis now IS metaphysical, a MacIntyrean claim that we have no agreed upon basis for determining truth, which defaults in governance to increasingly invasive and authoritarian bureaucratic management (by people who are, by and large, liberal atheists . . . which itself defaults to Agamben's "bare life" as the governmental constant.) People experience this without a philosophical grasp of it, but they know nonetheless that it's dehumanizing. This is then magnified during times of economic precarity, whereupon we begin to see variously incoherent forms of reaction. Along comes a carnival barker, and give that its focus. We look back, and there's nothing in our quiver with which to stop it. Speaking for myself, some of my best friends have been atheists. (-;
A couple of nights after the first Trump election, I was in a blue-bubble city's bourgeois brew pub playing pool & listening to a woman seething w fury at what They had done to our country. I tried to suggest that the liberal & progressive left had dug themselves into this trench, in part by the contempt radiated as regards many things ordinary folk in middle America regard as essential to the good life. "Like?" she demanded. "Religion, for example." "Religion is *inherently patriarchal*," she snapped. To which I responded, "And how's that working out for you?" That was the end of that conversation.
I now view my history as a Dem with the same embarrassment I view my history with a particular dysfunctional ex boyfriend. Thank goodness I didn’t marry him.
I read the whole thing, and though I won’t pretend I followed everything you were saying, MUCH of it struck a chord of truth. It set me to thinking where I fit in all of it, imagining your groans as I reveal my inevitable connections to the (poor, in my case, but) educated class. I’ve been writing to try to tease out where I belong in the great mystery of complexities of race in my family, work relationships, and friendships. And how do I define myself in relation to religion? I am not an atheist, but I don't embrace any one organized religion. I do not respect those who claim religion but act against the values they claim to love. Politically, where are my people? Bernie is still the closest point of comfort. But my greatest joy comes from being in the woods where I am lucky to live, being with beloved humans and animals, and being useful when possible. In the past, I may well have been burned as a witch. when I read there was a surge of misogyny after trump won, I wondered if the practice might re-emerge.
I did enjoy when I got to the end of your post, there was lunchy all delicious as could be.
What do you think left-wing atheists should do? Convert? Pretend to convert? Have you seen or heard about many such ones getting in the faces of working-class people, white, black or Latino, about the latter's religious beliefs? Should we adopt a diplomatic silence about Christian nationalism, or, to call the latter by another name, the tribalist Christian garb that C21 U.S. fascism wraps itself in? I've been reading your work for many years, since before your conversion, and I'm pretty sure you consider the latter a Constantinian heresy. What, then, is one to do or say when working-class Christians of whatever political stripe are in earshot? Expound on why Catholics and black Baptists have got it right but the white evangelicals don't? I'm not saying an atheist can't be a theologian, but I don't know how many atheists really feel that they're qualified as such, or that they have a stake in theological disputes.
While I'm quite skeptical of the way the term fascism gets thrown around these days, I take you point. I'm not suggesting that there's nothing problematic about Christian nationalism (or any nationalism, for that matter . . . CN is nationalist well before it's 'christian'), nor am I saying atheists are the problem (though the evangelical ones, ie, Dawkins, are part of it). I'm saying there's a class divide at work here that has to be taken into account, and that shitting all over people's faith--the Biden Easter stunt, eg--is really bad politics. I wrote a long article about the failure of secularism (on this platform, even did a Spanish version), where anyone whose interested can see my extended argument on that account, but here I'm talking about how utterly lost the Democratic Party is--both its institutional bosses and the upper crust of its rank-and-file--with regard to winning elections. That's what parties are supposed to do. As to the left-wing, I am extremely pessimistic. It's politically insignificant, for starters. It's always been so wrapped up in ideological development that it breaks out--inevitably--in fratricidal warfare. And since it's withdrawal into 'intellectual' spaces, the left has been dissolved in a vat of poststructuralist acid. The question of atheism, as a proposition, is metaphysical, and I'm all for principled, peaceful, philosophical reflection, discussion, and debate. We can't avoid the fact, however, that metaphysical convictions ramify into politics, because the very question of what is the good? can only be answered standing on a metaphysical foundation. Here's where I say that, at bottom, our crisis now IS metaphysical, a MacIntyrean claim that we have no agreed upon basis for determining truth, which defaults in governance to increasingly invasive and authoritarian bureaucratic management (by people who are, by and large, liberal atheists . . . which itself defaults to Agamben's "bare life" as the governmental constant.) People experience this without a philosophical grasp of it, but they know nonetheless that it's dehumanizing. This is then magnified during times of economic precarity, whereupon we begin to see variously incoherent forms of reaction. Along comes a carnival barker, and give that its focus. We look back, and there's nothing in our quiver with which to stop it. Speaking for myself, some of my best friends have been atheists. (-;
Okay, fair enough.
A couple of nights after the first Trump election, I was in a blue-bubble city's bourgeois brew pub playing pool & listening to a woman seething w fury at what They had done to our country. I tried to suggest that the liberal & progressive left had dug themselves into this trench, in part by the contempt radiated as regards many things ordinary folk in middle America regard as essential to the good life. "Like?" she demanded. "Religion, for example." "Religion is *inherently patriarchal*," she snapped. To which I responded, "And how's that working out for you?" That was the end of that conversation.
yup
I now view my history as a Dem with the same embarrassment I view my history with a particular dysfunctional ex boyfriend. Thank goodness I didn’t marry him.