Reaching out to others
A recent report indicated that nones (non-believers in God) are the world’s 4th most numerous (non) religious grouping, after Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Most atheists are to be found in formerly Christian countries. The same report holds that in the U.S. two thirds of nones were brought up as Christians. In a country with the largest number of Christian Churches, one might think it was a case of information overload which ultimately led to this lack of religious engagement.
Whether or not this is true, the fact of religious disengagement is itself an interesting phenomenon. In the Western World atheism has been a natural follow on from rejection of Christianity so there would seem to be a link. Stephen Bullivant in his book, Faith and Unbelief gives three reasons for religious disengagement in our Western World. Among them he cites the fact that Christianity proposes something both radical and subversive and so it is not unreasonable that it would require a little explaining and unpacking.
When there is no appetite for belief, however, we are in a different space. Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age, calls this an immanent frame where people are no longer bothered by the “God question” as a question because they have found a way of being in the world that offers significance without transcendence. They don’t feel like anything is missing. “You came with what you thought were the answers to all the unanswered questions “secular” people had. But it didn’t take long for you to realise that the questions weren’t just unanswered; they were unasked. And they weren’t questions. That is, your “secular” neighbours aren’t looking for “answers” – for some bit of information that is missing from their mental maps. You’ve realised that instead of nagging questions about God or the afterlife, your neighbours are oriented by all sorts of longings and “projects” and quests for significance. There doesn’t seem to be anything missing from their lives – so you can’t just come proclaiming the good news of a Jesus who fills their “God-shaped hole”. They don’t have any sense that the “secular” lives they’ve constructed are missing a second floor. In many ways, they have constructed webs of meaning that provide almost all the significance they need in their lives (though a lot hinges on the “almost”).
A haunted space – nostalgia…
In his book, Nothing to be frightened of, Julian Barnes opens with the statement “I don’t believe in God but I miss him”.. Like many agnostics, Barnes has a tenderness towards the spiritual impulse and is suspicious of militant atheism. What really draws him to God is the beauty of religious art in music and paintings, “Missing God is focused for me, by missing the underlying sense of purpose and belief when confronted with religious art”. He is tempted by an aesthetic argument as he was never tempted by Aquinas’s Five Proofs of God.
Michael Russell, also an atheist supports this position: “The existence of the deity, to be a believer, a theist in some sense, or to be a non-believer, an atheist in some sense – is no mere matter of academic concern and interest. Nor is it something merely of moment for the here-after, beyond the deaths of each and every one of us. A world without God and a world with God are two very different places, with very different meanings and obligations for us humans who occupy them. Human created, loved and supported by the deity are humans very different from those who wander alone, without external meaning or purpose, creating their own destinies”.
What is clear is that the significance of meaning in a believer’s life is different to a non-believer and between the two there is a space that is calling out to be inhabited. Is our post-Christian Western culture both a little jaded and overly-familiar with Christianity? And if so we may need to “clean our windows so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity – from possessiveness!”.
So long as there is an appetite for respectful dialogue in the search of the truth we are in a good space, “Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief”. It is a space of risk for both; for the believer there is the lingering doubt as whether his ideas and arguments might hold up and for the none the concern that he or she might insult a believer by their seeming distaste for their belief system. It is definitely not a comfortable space, but it is a space of trust and it is a thrilling one if you decide to take on the adventure of inhabiting it!
———
Maire Cassidy