Monthly Archives: April 2021

(Juan Carlos/Reuters)

The left-wing thinker Freddie deBoer wrote a provocative little Substack essay about the New Atheism phenomenon, of nearly two decades ago. What interests deBoer is that so often liberal and progressive Christians engaged in debates with New Atheists by specifically avoiding any theological content at all. Sometimes literally refusing to argue that God exists. DeBoer comments:

If a being exists, of whatever nature, who created reality, exists within all of reality, set realitys physical and moral rules, watches over all of reality, judges all of us on how devout and moral we are, and determines reward and punishment based on that judgement, that clearly is the truth that trumps all other truths. Strange to let it slip out of the debate quietly in the night.

Indeed! DeBoer observes that instead a certain kind of believer seemed only to believe that religion was worth practicing because it was socially expedient. In this they seemed to agree with non-believers who have come to a strangely utilitarian appreciation of religion. He writes:

People have commented for centuries on the phenomenon of religious observance carried out by people whose authentic religious belief is dead or dying. But I think the next evolution in religion is to move from the religious believer who sadly watches their faith slowly ebbing away to the religious consumer who sees sincere faith as traditionally conceived as an anachronism. This is the inevitable outcome of perspectives like those of Jonathan Haidt , who advocates for atheists to accept religion as a positive force even as we quietly snicker to each other that its all fake. Haidts belief that we should champion religions forms while quietly marinating in our superior understanding that religions truth claims are bunk can only contribute to the gradual erasure of the metaphysical underpinnings of traditional religion.

DeBoer in some ways welcomes the hypocrisy and evasiveness of progressive believers and comes around to speculating that religion can be defeated by atheism not by confrontation but through abstraction, the abstraction of religious teachings into meaninglessness.

I found the non-engagement of liberal believers with New Atheism as frustrating as deBoer did. It was something Christopher Hitchens remarked on frequently himself. Most of the ministers he debated wanted to argue that religion was socially expedient that it had some good effect not that it was true. One notable exception was the Calvinist pastor Douglas Wilson. I think there were some other good debates too. William Craig Lane took it up with Sam Harris. And Peter Hitchens debated his brother Christopher and later wrote a book that took on the contention that religion poisons everything and then proceeded to make a case that atheism was a handmaiden of totalitarianism.

At one point, deBoer writes that this metaphysical evacuation of religion betrays what religious identity has been for most practitioners for thousands of a year, and later this process of abstraction allows Christianitys teachings to become a pure canvas onto which one can paint whatever one feels like in the moment.

I dont know if this is a uniquely modern phenomenon. It seems to me that for Christianity, at least, many practitioners accepted the metaphysical propositions as their reality, in the same unthinking way most of us accept astrodynamics. One can operate within this reality but still not consciously acknowledge it or take it to heart very often.

And that is why, successive generations of Christians and reformers have noticed that the Church is often captured by putatively Christian societies and that Christian faith is often confused with the reigning ideals of our culture. G.K. Chesterton also identified five deaths of the faith in history times when Christian belief seemed to be fading out of existence, when the world seemed to be moving onto ideas that made the Church irrelevant.

I think we should expect that there will always be people who are lukewarm about the faith, unwilling to defend its propositions, and all-too-willing to pretend that their private projects or cultural taboos constitute the Gospel truth itself.

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The Problem of Non-Theological Religion - National Review

Society has also become increasingly polarized on the churches' role on social, ethical and political matters, the survey found, with few people sitting on the fence on this.

At the same time, general religiosity in Estonia has not seen any significant change in the five years since the last survey on the topic was conducted.

Whereas in 2015, 20 percent of people aged 15-74 said they would describe themselves as religious, this figure stood at 19 percent in the recent survey, conducted by the Estonian Research Center (Eesti Uuringukeskus) on behalf of the Estonian Council of Churches (Eesti Kirikute Nukogu).

Number of convinced atheists rises slightly

Meanwhile the number of people who described themselves as a committed atheist only rose a little, from 7 percent to 9 percent, over the same period.

Nonetheless, the Estonian populace is as a whole a little less certain about the existence of a deity now, than it was in 2015, the survey found in other words the proportion of agnostics has grown, from 10 percent, to nearly three times that, at 28 percent, 2015-2020, the Estonian Research Center said.

This worked the other way too the proportion of respondents who said they did not believe, and had never believed, in the existence of a deity, but did not describe themselves as convinced atheists as such, shrunk from 44 percent in 2015, to 31 percent in 2020.

Estonia is popularly referred to, particularly online and by Estonians themselves, as variously the most atheist, least religious or least god-fearing nation in Europe, or sometimes the entire globe. Upon her inauguration as president in late 2016, Kersti Kaljulaid turned down the offer of a ceremony to mark the occasion and to be overseen by head of the Lutheran Church, Archbishop Urmas Viilma.

Nearly a third are 'spiritual but not religious'

As regards to those who would describe themselves as fitting the popular "spiritual but not religious" motif, in the latest survey, 29 percent described themselves as such, with 26 percent saying they were non-religious and 22 percent that they were indifferent to organized religion.

Nineteen percent, on the other hand and as already noted, said they were religious.

Ten percent described themselves as a religious or spiritual "seeker", nine percent as noted said they were atheist or god-deniers, while 6 percent would not put themselves in any of those categories, the survey found.

Participation in worship has declined, however though this would presumably also need to be seen in the light of coronavirus restrictions, which have banned in-person services at religious buildings, off-and-on for the past year or so.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they had not been to a worship service of any kind in the preceding year, compared with 53 percent in the 2015 survey.

Those who said they had been to church once or twice in the preceding year also fell, halving to 15 percent in the latest survey.

Six percent said they attended church four or five times a year, four percent said they went around once a fortnight and five percent of respondents said they were weekly attenders of church services.

Fewer people want the church involved in social affairs

The share of respondents who would like to see the church more involved in social matters has also fallen; 23 percent wanted the church to take a public stance via the media on issues of morality and ethics, down slightly from 26 percent in 2015.

However, the figure who wanted the church to reduce its public pronouncements on social issues had nearly doubled, to 20 percent (from 11 percent) of respondents during that time.

A recent example of such an issue would be an abortive referendum on whether the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman should be enshrined in Estonian law.

The sections of society who said that it should, as evidenced by a bill presented by the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), climbed down from originally saying such a definition should be mentioned in the constitution (which would reportedly require the assent of two consecutive Riigikogu compositions ed.) to saying it should be worded as such in legislation.

When it became clear that a definition along these lines does in fact appear in the Family Law Act (which can be amended ed.), the referendum was presented more as a much-needed thermometer to take the nation's opinion temperature on the issue.

The bill was ultimately withdrawn in the face of vast numbers of amendments from both opposition and coalition MPs, late last year.

Society more polarized on church role

Society also has become polarized on the position of the church in social and political issues, however, since 2015.

The proportion of those who want an increased role to be played by the church in domestic politics, environmental and national security issues doubled, but so too did the proportion of people who wanted such activity to be toned down. The proportion of uncommitted respondents thus fell significantly.

Similarly, those who opposed same-sex relations and those who supported them was almost split 50-50 and made up the vast majority of respondents on the issue i.e. only a small proportion declared no view on the matter.

The death penalty, too, divided respondents, with 51 percent utterly opposed and 41 percent finding it acceptable.

The death penalty was abolished in Estonia in the 1990s.

From 66 percent who said in 2015 that they though the church should play a larger part in helping the poor (64 percent in 2010), the figure had fallen to 46 percent in the latest survey.

Conversely, the proportion who said the church should provide less assistance to the poor, for whatever reason, rose from 2 percent to 9 percent over the five years.

Exactly a third of respondents said that they had, regardless of their beliefs, experienced unexplained or even supernatural incidents which they found hard to rationalize.

More than half feel 'close' to Christianity

As to actual religions, Christianity of all or any denominations attracted the largest number of respondents, with 34 percent saying they felt "somewhat close" to it and 29 percent saying they felt to a large extent close to that religion.

Twenty-five percent of respondents said they did not feel close to Christianity whatsoever, while 12 percent said they could not answer.

Denominational, theological and other questions were not delved into in the survey. Lutheranism and Eastern Orthodoxy are the largest denominations by attendees in Estonia, and also historically and culturally the dominant strands.

Twelve percent of respondents said they felt very close to atheism, and 19 percent said they felt somewhat close to it or its main perceived tenets.

Of other religions, as many as 20 percent said they felt somewhat close to the two major Dharmic faiths, Buddhism and Hinduism, while 56 percent said they did not feel at all close to them.

By contrast, the figures for Islam were four percent and 75 percent respectively, while the other major Abrahamic faith, Judaism, posted similar figures of 6 percent and 70 percent respectively. Far fewer than 6 percent of the Estonian population is actually Jewish.

Four percent of respondents said they considered themselves to be largely close to some other religion or worldview.

Pandemic only had slight effect

About half of respondents said the pandemic had not affected their interest in or attraction towards religious and spiritual issues; two percent said that it had dampened their enthusiasm towards Christianity.

The proportion of those who thought that the church should bear an increased role in education in fact increased, to 22 percent (from 16 percent in 2015) though the share of "don't knows" also rose on this question.

More than half said that religious education in schools, covering all the world's major religions, should be compulsory, however; 31 percent said it should not or definitely should not.

Among native speakers of Estonian, however, 62 percent supported widespread education on religion, compared with 48 percent for those whose native language is Russian or another language.

Those with higher education tended to favor religious education more, while slightly more women (60 percent) than men (55 percent) were in favor of it.

On other issues, close to 80 percent thought divorce ethically fine, and only slightly fewer, 77 percent, thought unmarried cohabitation was acceptable.

Three-quarters of respondents had no issue with premarital sexual relations, while the proportion who found abortion and euthanasia ethically acceptable were similar, at 71 percent and 69 percent respectively.

Meanwhile, 75 percent of respondents said they opposed human cloning.

The survey was held between November 25 and December 31 2020, and randomly polled 1,000 residents of Estonia, both online and via a postal survey.

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Survey: Church attendance has fallen slightly in past five years - ERR News

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Weve probably all seen pictures of books being burned. In the 1930s, the German Student Union gathered up books they viewed as critical of Nazi thinking and held ritual book-burnings. It was a sure-fire (pun intended) way of keeping the wrong ideas from circulating.

As I have stated here before, my attitude is that we should allow all sorts of views to be published and discussed. A truly educated person is one who can look at both sides of an issue and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the reasons each side puts forward to support its position. Richard Dawkins should be allowed to write books in favour of atheism, and John Lennox can write on why believing in God makes sense. If you dont like an article written by a smart person, find a better article written by a smarter person. But dont burn the book or blow up the magazines print shop.

(Full disclosure: I once and only once burned a book in my backyard. Out of curiosity I had picked up a used copy of something by the Marquis de Sade, and was so appalled at the cruelty depicted in what turned out to be child pornography that I destroyed the book.)

Todays world doesnt usually hold actual book-burnings, but those who dont like certain ideas still do their best to prevent others from even considering those ideas. Speakers at universities are de-platformed if some deem their opinions to be wrong. Students shout the speaker down or threaten to harm her. In Montreal, I was once part of a peaceful protest (standing in silence with signs) that was disrupted by a group with trumpets, drums and tubas.

Cancel culture can mean that your company fires you just for holding views that are not considered correct.

According to The Interim newspaper, Amazon, the giant online bookseller, has decided that it will not carry the 2018 title, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T Anderson.

Usually, Amazon follows a policy of contacting publishers to discuss the possible removal of controversial books, but for some reason this was not done in this case.

Banning a book could have the effect of making people want to read it all the more, so this could backfire. However the title is apparently becoming scarce if the price of second-hand books is any indicator. Bookfinder.com is charging hundreds of dollars for a copy. My favourite is the dealer who will sell you one for $23, 930.58! (Its the 58 cents that really gets me.) Fear not, you can obtain a copy for a reasonable price if you look in the right places.

Amazons action raises the question of whether there is only one possible, respectable view of gender dysphoria, the feeling of being confused about whether one is male or female. Is only one view now allowed? Can we no longer talk about this topic? Are we to shut down those who say trans-women should not compete in female sports because their essentially male bodies give an unfair advantage?

Why cant we have books that give different perspectives on issues like this?

Anderson says that his is not a bomb-throwing book of red meat and heated rhetoric. Instead, he claims it is rigorous and civil, and presents facts.

If Amazon had its way readers wouldnt be able to check for themselves. They would not be able to make up their own minds whether Anderson has written bigoted nonsense or a scientifically convincing argument.

I pray well have a society in which people want to hear different sides of important subjects, not a world where the public is protected from Christian viewpoints (or any alternative ideas).

John Vaudry is a retired minister, living in Pembroke.

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VALLEY PULPIT: Don't burn the book - The Kingston Whig-Standard

Ever since the ancient Romans decided to honor the agricultural goddess Flora with lewd spectacles in the Circus Maximus, the beginning of May has signaled the coming of spring, a time of revival after a long, dark winter.

In Europe, the holiday usually celebrated on May 1 became known as May Day. Though traditions varied by country and culture, celebrants often erected maypoles and decorated them with long colorful ribbons. Townspeople, while indulging in food and drink, would frolic for hours. These rituals continue today in parks and on college campuses across the U.S. and Europe.

Throughout history, millions have embraced the holiday except for the Puritans of early modern England. Though we tend to lump them together, the term Puritans included different groups of religious dissenters. Among them were the Pilgrims, who eventually decided to migrate to North America to create new communities according to their religious vision.

It is tempting to attribute the Pilgrims hostility toward the holiday to the doom-and-gloom stereotype of the Puritans as humorless and overly pious the same tendencies that led them to ban Christmas festivities. But their attack on a maypole in Plymouth Colony in 1628 reveals much about their approach toward those who didnt conform to their vision for the world.

Before they arrived in New England, some Pilgrims must have read the diatribe against May Day penned by a moralist named Philip Stubbes, who lamented the mayhem that erupted in communities across England each year as the holiday approached.

Stubbes described how eager participants would select one of the men among them to be the Lord of Misrule, who then led them into pits of debauchery. They would sing and dance in church, much to the consternation of devout ministers. And the participants in these rites always dragged a large tree from a nearby forest to be erected in the town, which became a symbol of their irreligious behavior.

But most in England didnt see the holiday in such a poor light. For many, these maypoles simply represented raucous, good-natured fun. King James, who reigned from 1603 to 1625, believed that erecting such poles was harmless and he castigated Puritans efforts to quash the holiday.

In England, Puritans needed to abide by national laws, so there was little they could do to stop the celebrations outside of voicing their disapproval. More effective protests would need to wait.

Once in New England, the Puritans believed they needed to be exemplars of proper Christian behavior. Everyone in their towns had to abide by their rules, and they punished colonists whose actions seemed to undermine devout religious practice.

As the future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop allegedly declared the Puritans would build their city on a hill. Citing language from the Book of Matthew, he claimed that all of the Puritans actions would be visible to the entire world, including most importantly their God. Any departure from strict obedience to Scripture could threaten their entire mission.

The Pilgrims established their community of Plymouth on the site of the Wampanoag town of Patuxet in 1620. In the years that followed, other English migrants arrived in the region, though many eschewed the Pilgrims strict teachings. They came to make money from trading, not escape persecution for their beliefs.

A small group of these colonists moved about 25 miles northwest of Plymouth. A lawyer named Thomas Morton, who had arrived in New England in 1624 or 1625, eventually became the unofficial leader of this camp, which came to be known as Merrymount. In 1628, with Mortons blessing, the colonists set up an 80-foot maypole crowned with deer antlers in preparation for May Day.

The maypole immediately drew the attention of Plymouth authorities. So did Mortons antics. According to William Bradford, then the colonys governor, Morton had become the Lord of Misrule. The assembled at Merrymount sang bawdy songs and invited Native American women to join them. The colonists in the small community, the governor wrote, had revived and celebrated the feasts of the Roman goddess Flora, which he linked to the beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians.

Morton was running, in Bradfords words, a School of Atheism.

Bradford claimed that Morton and his followers had fallen to great licentiousness and led dissolute lives. Rather than allow them their fun, the Pilgrims sent a group of armed men to arrest their leader. Soon they exiled Morton back to England.

The next year, John Endecott, a recent immigrant who shared many of the Pilgrims beliefs, chopped down the maypole, much to Bradfords satisfaction.

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Why, one might ask, would it matter that stern Puritans would want to quash a good-natured holiday? After all, given many of their other actions, felling a tall tree topped with deer antlers hardly seems worth mentioning.

But as a historian of early New England, I see Bradfords condemnation of Morton and the destruction of the maypole as a harbinger of future violence.

When they chopped down the maypole, the Puritans believed that they were cleansing the landscape, making it more suitable for pious colonists to occupy. It was their way of demonstrating that they could live up their ideals.

Since they believed in predestination, the conviction that everything that occurs is part of a divine plan, they must have figured that God had sent Morton to test them. By exiling him and destroying the maypole, they confirmed what they saw as the righteousness of their cause.

A decade later, with tensions rising between colonists and Indigenous people, the Pilgrims of Plymouth, along with the Puritans of Massachusetts, saw themselves confronting a new test. This time the threat came not from a maypole, but instead from a Native American community that seemed, as Bradford wrote using language that echoed his condemnation of Morton proud and insulting.

The consequences in 1637 were far worse than at Merrymount. The colonists set a Pequot town aflame and shot those who tried to escape. Historians estimate that at least 400 Native Americans lost their lives in a single night.

Like other English colonizers, the Pilgrims believed they needed to displace Native Americans to create their own communities. But before they did so, they had to get their own houses in order. They could not tolerate any who crossed them, attacking those deemed a threat.

Colonial leaders like Winthrop and Bradford believed any sign of disobedience had to be punished. Clearing Merrymount of its maypole was a dress rehearsal for what was to come.

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The Pilgrims' attack on a May Day celebration was a dress rehearsal for removing Native Americans - The Conversation US