By David Klinghoffer
David Klinghoffer is a columnist for the Jewish Forward. His latest book is
"The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism" (Doubleday, 2003).
June 17, 2004
Everyone knows that the place of religion in the public sphere is facing serious
challenges. There is some confusion, however, about where those challenges come
from. Is it from civil libertarians? Atheists? Actually, no. The larger answer
to the question may surprise you.
Consider the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals that struck the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Affecting 10 million schoolchildren in nine Western states, the 9th Circuit's
ruling was rejected on a technicality: The Supreme Court felt that the California
atheist, Michael Newdow, who brought the case lacked procedural standing to
do so.
Or consider the battle over the official seal of Los Angeles County. The seal
includes a tiny cross, over which the American Civil Liberties Union threatened
to file suit. After the civil libertarians successfully intimidated the county
supervisors — who agreed to alter the seal — more than 1,000 people
rallied at the county's Hall of Administration to keep the cross on the seal.
Other American cities and counties with crosses on their seals await suits or
threats from the ACLU.
What we are observing here is not what it may appear to be — a struggle
of religion against no religion. It is instead a battle pitting one religion,
broadly speaking, against another. On one side we have, primarily, the biblical
faith of Jews and Christians. On the other side, secularism. If you object that
secularism has no deity, remember that other recognized faiths, for example
Zen Buddhism, likewise lack a belief in God.
What is a religion, then? Simply, a system of beliefs based on stories that
explain where life comes from, what life means, and what we, as living beings,
are supposed to be doing with our few allotted years. Judaism and Christianity
have their sacred stories — the biblical account of creation, followed
by Noah's flood and on through the entire narrative of Scripture — along
with their codes of right conduct. For Jews and Christians, the meaning of human
existence lies in communion with God in the context of eternal life.
For each element of Judeo-Christian faith, secularism has its counterpart. Like
Christianity and Judaism, secularism promises eternal life — well, long
life, which is the central point of the most common strain of secular faith
and which explains the pop-cultural focus on moral commandments having to do
with physical health: Thou shalt not smoke. Thou shalt not get fat. Thou shalt
fight global warming by taking the bus to work. Indeed, thou shalt vote for
public subsidies for mass transit. In secularist doctrine, a fat person isn't
merely unhealthy; he is a sinner in need of salvation. To address his situation,
one secular gospel preaches the good news of the South Beach Diet, another that
of the apostle Atkins.
There is a secular creation account — evolution through random mutation
and natural selection, a just-so story increasingly challenged by scientists.
A few years ago the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank, took out advertisements
in the New York Review of Books and the New Republic listing a hundred distinguished
Darwin-doubting scholars, at institutions from Berkeley to MIT.
There is even a flood story, told in the new movie "The Day After Tomorrow,"
wherein a modern-day Noah (played by Dennis Quaid) warns of an impending inundation
brought on by global warming. As in biblical tradition, his neighbors pay no
attention and subsequently perish. At the film's end, a few survivors are picked
up by helicopter from the tops of Manhattan skyscrapers, just as Noah and his
family survive when their ark is cast up on the peak of Mt. Ararat.
It emerges that, in the controversies surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance and
the L.A. County seal, what we're seeing is an unacknowledged interreligious
civil war. Centuries ago in Europe and the Middle East, intolerant faiths sought
to suppress one another, erasing symbols of their rivals wherever possible.
Churches were converted to mosques, their crosses removed. Synagogues were converted
into churches, their Jewish symbols effaced. Today the church of secularism
agitates against its rival, the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the interest of
honest debate, at the very least it would be of benefit to recognize secularism
for what it is: an aggressive religion competing for converts, a faith lacking
the candor to speak openly of its aims.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times