25AR30-09

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AR 30:9 - "Believe" - a Modern "Mere Christianity"?

In this issue:

FREEMASONRY - A fitting last fling for one famously unfit to do so?

WORLDVIEW - "If you're out there looking and something feels like what you were supposed to find...." vs. "a Mere Christianity for the 21st century"

Apologia Report 30:9 (1,698)
March 5, 2025

FREEMASONRY

Contextually strange behavior, in more than one way, the following still seems to ironically fit in with the Freemasonry's long history - which is similarly quite bizarre: "Former US President Joe Biden risks excommunication by joining Freemasons" by Simon Caldwell (Catholic Herald, Jan 29 '25) -- begins: "Former US President Joe Biden has joined the Freemasons even though the Catholic Church can punish membership of the secret society with excommunication. 

   "Mr Biden, a Catholic, was admitted to the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of South Carolina on January 19, the day before he handed over the US presidency to Donald Trump. 

   "His membership was announced at a ceremony in which Victor C. Major, the Most Worshipful Grand Master of the South Carolina lodge, said: 'I … on behalf of the members of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of South Carolina, hereby confer membership upon President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in recognition of his outstanding service to the United States of America.' 

   "By joining the Masons, Mr Biden, 82, puts himself starkly at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church." The remainder of the piece develops the perceived spiritual jeopardy in greater detail. <www.tinyurl.com/3spcjkec>

 ---

WORLDVIEW

"Looking for Faith? Here's a Guide to Choosing a Religion." by Ross Douthat (New York Times, Feb 1 '25) -- "It's one thing to be newly open to the evidence for cosmic design and supernatural possibilities. But it's harder, in a pluralist society, to pick just one religious option as more likely than all the others to be true.

   "For the atheist, this difficulty is often invoked as an argument for general disbelief. .... The idea behind this aphorism is that every serious religious worldview is a closed system and that to really practice and believe in one is to necessarily reject all the rest as incredible and false. ...

   "If religion isn't chosen for you, by inheritance or revelation, how can you credibly hope to choose one for yourself? ...

   "The bookstore of all religions isn't necessarily a library of total falsehoods with one lonely truth hidden somewhere on the shelves, and embracing one revelation doesn't require believing that every other religion is made up. ...

   "So the religious seeker, looking out across a diverse religious landscape, should assume that there exist less-true and more-true schools of thought, not one truth and a million fictions. ...

   "Let's call this the Emeth principle, after a character in one of C.S. Lewis's Narnia novels. Emeth is a devout adherent of the religion of Tash, a vulture-demon, who ends up being welcomed into heaven on the grounds that in performing works of virtue, he has served the true god of Narnia, the lion Aslan, without knowing it. ...

   "The idea ... is that if God ordered the universe for human beings, then even a flawed religion will probably contain intimations of that reality - such that a sincere desire to find and know the truth will find some kind of reward. ...

   "This doesn't imply, however, that a religious search should begin at random. ...

   "If this sounds like an argument that the more popular and enduring world religions are more likely than others to be true, that's exactly what I'm arguing. ...

   "Some are moral: If you follow the ethics of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, you will not be that far-off from the Noble Eightfold Path, and vice versa. Some are mystical: Overlapping experiences of divinity across the big religions suggest some participation in a shared spiritual reality. ...

   "But convergence also obviously has its limits - and if you take the big faiths seriously, you shouldn't assume that their differences vanish when seen from the correct God's-eye perspective. ... One answer is to imagine yourself approaching religion the way one might approach an ideological allegiance. ...

   'In a similar way, it's OK to initially let your answers to a few big questions condition your initial religious choices. ...

   "Or the question might be personal: What are you looking for from religion? ...

   "Or the big question might be: How has God acted in history? ...

   "Any developed religious tradition will have places of overlap with its rivals that can be bridges outward as well, should you decide that something deeper and truer is present somewhere else.

   "This is also why it's defensible to make an initial religious choice without having definite answers to the questions I've just sketched. ...

   "If that's where you find yourself, there is an argument for trusting in the Providence that you suspect might exist, and letting down your spiritual bucket somewhere close to where you are - maybe in an ancestral tradition, or maybe in a tradition that somehow presents itself to you. ...

   "If you're out there looking and something feels like what you were supposed to find, you're generally better off crossing the threshold and seeing what's inside."

   Douthat concludes that a T.S. Elliot "line is apt: 'For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.'" <www.archive.ph/LqKdb>

   The editors add the following afterword: "This essay is adapted from the forthcoming book <www.tinyurl.com/4scedw2t> "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious."

Contrast the above to Francis J. Beckwith (professor of philosophy and church-state studies, affiliate professor of political science, Baylor University) <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Beckwith> and his review of Douthat's Believe for the March 1, 2025 issue of World magazine. From it, we gain insight regarding the perspective of the NYT editorial approach.

   "In 'Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious' (Zondervan, 240 pp.), the New York Times columnist offers a more capacious defense of the reasonableness of religious belief than did Lewis in [Mere Christianity]. Although a Catholic Christian, Douthat's project is not to draw converts to Rome or even to Christianity (though he would, of course, welcome them), but to offer an intellectually compelling account of the philosophical, experiential, and historical credentials of the worldview and attitude shared by the world's leading religious bodies. For Douthat, although certain forms of religion are closer to the fullness of truth (Christianity) than others, he argues that it is better for someone to embrace and practice an imperfect religion than to reject religion in toto. Better to be an observant Muslim or Buddhist than a disciple of nihilism.

   "Some Christians will bristle at this approach, thinking Douthat is suggesting a kind of sloppy interreligious ecumenism that dilutes the urgency of the gospel message. But that's not a fair reading of Douthat, who is writing for a particular audience: educated, secular skeptics with virtually no acquaintance with serious faith or sophisticated responses to the pieties of intellectual atheism. ...  Because the universe is far more enchanted than elites in the West have led us to think, Douthat argues it is perfectly normal to believe the restlessness in our hearts (as Augustine would put it) longs for something beyond what the material world alone can satisfy. For this reason, we have an obligation to cultivate that inclination, explore how we can achieve its rightful end, and most certainly not gainsay its reality. ...

   "Lewis' target audience in 1952 consisted almost exclusively of readers who, despite their unbelief or nominal religiosity, were born into Christian countries tightly tethered to confessional traditions that were fairly easy to identify. Lewis crafted his apologetic accordingly. The members of Douthat's target audience are secularists fully ensconced in a globally connected, instantaneously communicating, highly pluralistic, and largely irreligious milieu.

   "Believe's first chapter challenges conventional reasons for unbelief attributed to advances in modern science. ... Douthat deftly points out that this stance ignores the existence of an underlying natural order necessary for the Darwinian process as well as other areas of science, such as cosmic fine-tuning and the Big Bang theory, both of which arguably lend strong support to belief in God.

   "Chapter 2 addresses the hard problem of consciousness.... This hard problem confirms what traditional religions have taught for centuries: We are not purely material beings. In Chapter 3, Douthat shows that despite modern secularism's promise of progressive disenchantment, the world is teeming with credible claims of miracles, mystical experiences, and divine encounters.

   "Chapters 4-7 focus on the challenges of making a religious commitment. While offering practical guidance, Douthat suggests that the secular seeker would be wise to only consider long-established religions with identifiable traditions and practices. He also says it makes sense to initially gravitate to a faith with which one is familiar given one's intellectual, cultural, and temporal limitations. Among the other issues Douthat addresses are the problem of evil, the existence of wicked religious institutions, and why religion seems so hung up on sex. In answering each challenge, Douthat reframes the query and provides his reader with real insight.

   "His final chapter explains why he is a Christian, with an emphasis on Jesus' indelible mark on history, the reliability of the Gospels, and the resilience and attractiveness of Christianity's strangeness. ... In the spirit of the Apostle Paul, Douthat has 'become all things to all people, that by all means [he] might save some' (1 Corinthians 9:22).

   "What makes 'Believe' particularly effective is Douthat's unusual combination of deep intelligence, firm religious conviction, intellectual modesty, and an understanding and conversance with the strongest contemporary arguments for unbelief. Believe is truly a Mere Christianity for the 21st century." <www.tinyurl.com/zv6rm4hh>

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