BkRev: Rubenstein's Aristotle's Children

Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages, Orlando, Harcourt, 2003, 368 pages.

The usual reason to write a book review is to bring a book to readers' attention. The usual review either encourages readers to buy it it or discourages them if the reviewer thinks readers are hearing unjustly positive views elsewhere. Sometimes book reviews are useful for other purposes. In the following brief review, one of my purposes is to show that the author uses his book of history to support his side in the today's war between reason and mysticism. His book is an example of indirect activism.

(I have used my own books, The Aristotle Adventure and The Power and the Glory, for activism, though to support the reason side of the war.)

SUBJECT OF ARISTOTLE'S CHILDREN. Often the title of a book is a "hook" that catches readers' attention. The subtitle is the part that follows a colon or appears in smaller type; it states the subject. That is the case for my book, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith. That is not the case for Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages.

Rubenstein's book is partly about the influence of Aristotle's philosophy on intellectuals in the religious cultures of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. However, the book is mostly about the conflicts that arose in the Middle Ages when Christian intellectuals tried to "integrate" Aristotle's philosophy of this natural world with their Christian ethics based mystically in supernaturalism. (Admirers of philosopher Leonard Peikoff's book, The DIM Hypothesis, reviewed here, will recognize the medieval attempt at "integration" as M, misintegration.)

Conflicts, as well as the failed attempts to "resolve" the conflicts, are the dominant subject of the book. That is a natural choice of subject for the author, Richard E. Rubenstein. He was a professor of "conflict resolution," at George Mason University, at the time of the publication of the book, 2003.

The subject is important, Rubenstein says, because in the Latin-reading culture of the Middle Ages Aristotle's philosophy "forever altered the way we think about nature, society, and even about God." (p. ix) Rubenstein says further that

[t]he Aristotelian Revolution transformed Western thinking and set our culture on a path of scientific inquiry that it has followed ever since the Middle Ages. The confrontation between faith and reason that turned the medieval universities into ideological battlegrounds continues to this day in societies around the globe. (pp. ix-x)

Why study this medieval conflict today? We should study it, Professor Rubenstein says, because "the concerns of these medieval thinkers resonate so sonorously with ours." (p. xi); and the underlying conflict of reason vs. faith is emerging again in our own time. (p. 11)

In Aristotle's Children, Rubenstein is mainly a storyteller. He relies on the scholarly research of academics (as I did in The Aristotle Adventure). He uses a story-teller's techniques. He begins with a puzzle: The central medieval conflict over Aristotle's influence was not mainly between the Church and outside Aristotelians, but a conflict within the Church, with the Church leadership generally calling for inclusion of Aristotle's works in the course of university studies. (p. 7) Why did the Church leadership—unlike religious leaders among Muslims and Jews—do so?

Throughout the book, Rubenstein makes a case for his answer:

Rather than choose between the new learning and the old religion, the popes and scholars of the High Middle Ages tried to modernize the Church by reconciling faith and reason. (p. xi)

STRUCTURE OF ARISTOTLE'S CHILDREN. In structure, as well as content, this book is a history, as both the author's own statement (p. 2) and a reading of the chapter subheadings in Table of Contents show. Unfortunately, in the Table of Contents the author does not supply dates to make the progression clear. I have added them here: Aristotle's philosophy of this world and Aristotle rediscovered (Ch. 1); how Aristotle was lost in the ancient world and found again (Ch. 2); Peter Abelard and the revival of reason in the 1100s (Ch. 3); Aristotle among the West European heretics in the 1100s and 1200s (Ch. 4); Aristotle and the friars who debated the heretics (Ch. 5); friars debating friars at the University of Paris in the 1200s (Ch. 6); William of Ockham's divorce of faith and reason in the 1300s (Ch. 7); and the emergence of modern science in the 1500s and 1600s, resulting in today's split between reason and faith (Ch. 8).

THEME OF ARISTOTLE'S CHILDREN. The Aristotelian Revolution erupted in Latin-reading Western Europe in the late 1100s and early 1200s when Aristotle's philosophy overall became available for the first time in Latin texts, thanks to translations from Greek and Arabic sources. Part of the theme of the book is that in the 1300s, a century after the Aristotelian Revolution, "faith and reason were already headed toward the conflict-ridden separation that has characterized their relations ever since." (p. xii)

Rubenstein sees here an opportunity for modern culture: We can learn from the medieval attempt at synthesis of faith and reason that preceded the split. Perhaps we can apply some form of synthesis of faith and reason to our own time. (See Ch. 8, but especially pp. 272-273, 281, 292, 293, and 296-298.)

Today "we have much to learn from their [the Aristotelians'] vision of science infused by ethics [coming from religion] and a religion unafraid of reason." Tying together science (reason) and religious ethics (faith) can lead to "a more humane and integrated global future." (p. xii) In essence that is the theme of the book: To solve the many conflicts of religion versus secularity, such as the conflicts over homosexuality and abortion, modern world culture must integrate religion and science by integrating faith and reason.

What is mythical is the idea that faith and reason have always been implacable enemies—an idea that implies that any other relationship between them is impossible. (p. 273)

Reason could transform the earth, if only science and technology were inspired and guided by a new global morality. Faith would expand and mature, if only the world's religions addressed themselves to long-term trends in society and nature, and helped to create that global morality. (p. 298)

So, a "global morality"—that would be developed, I note, in a consensus among the Taliban in Afghanistan, Christian nationalists in the USA, the orthodox in Israel, Hindu nationalists in India, and others—would "guide" reason everywhere around the world. Knowingly or not, Rubenstein is, in his own multi-cultural way, echoing Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), who in his 1998 encyclical letter (to bishops), Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), called for faith and reason to work together, with faith providing the guidance, that is, the ethics. The assumptions of both Rubenstein and John Paul II are that reason cannot create ethics (our guide to action in this life) and ethics can come only from God through revelation to religious people. (Philosopher Ayn Rand's 1961 essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," has developed the foundation of an ethics using reason alone—here.)

CONCLUSION. Rubenstein's call for "integration" of reason and faith is support for mysticism. Reason and mysticism are opposites. Any attempt to reconcile them gives mysticism respect it has not earned. Rubenstein does not object. "Resolving" conflict is his goal. His book, Aristotle's Children, though informative historically, argues for mysticism.

Burgess Laughlin
Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, described here

Sam Harris on Reason and Mysticism

The May 18, 2013 review of Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith, here, shows that Harris rejects religion because it relies on faith. By "faith," Harris means the acceptance of fundamental principles based on supposed historical authority, not on evidence that we can examine and debate today. Harris offers two alternatives to faith. This post examines those alternatives, drawing again from The End of Faith.

REASON. We need fundamental principles to guide us in living our lives. If, as Harris says, we should not rely on fundamental principles acquired through faith, how should we develop those principles? Harris has a two-part answer. First is reason. In a manner typical of his style, Harris offers no concise, rigorous definition of that concept. He does provide many cognitive elements which he apparently thinks the concept subsumes, though he does not say so explicitly.

For example, Harris says we should observe (p. 76), search for evidence (p. 15), and reject ideas that are not based on evidence. (p. 25) "Our beliefs should be representations of the world." (p. 58) We should exercise "commonsense judgments" (p. 75). We should experiment, at least in the sciences (p. 76). We should ratiocinate (p. 76), as well as engage in "discursive reasoning" and "rational discourse" (p. 25) We should critique and discuss our principles, as paths to progress. Religion is not open to progress. (p. 22) "Whatever is true now should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that are not an outright affront to the rest of what we know about the world." (p. 22) Harris also sees that one's ideas must be logically consistent; he says our ideas must not contradict one another, but then he adds: "at least locally." (p. 53) "By recourse to intuitions of truth and falsity, logical necessity and contradiction, human beings are able to knot together private visions of the world that largely cohere." (p. 51)

Most of those cognitive elements, with the exceptions of "commonsense judgments" and "intuition," are referents of the concept "reason" objectively formed. So, Harris has basically the right elements—looking at the world and thinking about it—for forming the concept of reason.

Confusingly, Harris sometimes uses the term "reason" ("rational") to mean merely syllogistic consistency: "In fact, even the most extreme expressions of faith [such as "Jehovah's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions"] are often perfectly rational, given the requisite beliefs." (p. 69) "Which beliefs one takes to be foundational will dictate what seems reasonable at any given moment." (p. 69) And: "Given what Islamists believe, it is perfectly rational for them to strangle modernity wherever they can lay hold of it." (p. 136) Harris does not grasp that reason is present only when objectivity is present, that is, when we form ideas logically from sense-perception of reality. For Harris, a link missing from the cognitive chain that connects observation to our most fundamental principles is a theory of concept formation. He has no way to account for logically building concepts of objects in reality (such as "dog" or "chair") and then building higher and higher level abstractions. We will see how he fills this cognitive gap.

MYSTICISM. Besides his truncated, unintegrated version of "reason," Harris offers a second alternative to faith: a certain other type of mysticism. Some background information is required. For Harris, "spiritual" and "mystical" are synonyms. (p. 40) Harris defines "spirituality" as "the cultivation of happiness directly, through precise refinements of attention," that is, "meditation." (p. 192) Mystical experiences are experiences of "meaningfulness, selflessness, and heightened emotion that surpass our narrow identities as 'selves' and escape our current understanding of the mind and brain." (pp. 39-40)

There is no denying that most of us have emotional and spiritual needs that are now addressed—however obliquely and at a terrible price—by mainstream religion. And these are needs that a mere understanding of our world, scientific or otherwise, will never fulfill. There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life. But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions—Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God—for us to do this. (p. 16)

If our highest purpose requires understanding a "sacred dimension" of our world, but neither faith nor science (which is an application of reason) will provide that understanding, then where will it come from? Harris's answer is "empirical mysticism." (p. 215)

For millennia, contemplatives have known that ordinary people can divest themselves of the feeling that they call 'I' and thereby relinquish the sense that they are separate from the rest of the universe. This phenomenon, which has been reported by practitioners in many spiritual traditions, is supported by a wealth of evidence—neuroscientific, philosophical, and introspective. Such experiences are 'spiritual' or 'mystical', for want of better words, in that they are relatively rare (unnecessarily so), significant (in that they cover genuine facts about the world), and personally transformative. They also reveal a far deeper connection between ourselves and the rest of the universe than is suggested by the ordinary confines of our subjectivity. (pp. 40-41)

The claims of mystics are neurologically quite astute. No human being has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all. You are, at this moment, having a visionary experience. The world that you see and hear is nothing more than a modification of your consciousness, the physical status of which remains a mystery. (p. 41)

What then is mysticism? As usual, Harris defines his terms obliquely.

Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism). (p. 221, emphasis added)

A mystical state thus is a state of consciousness, that is, a state of awareness. Awareness of what? Of "the world," but without thinking about it. Thus mysticism is some sort of direct apprehension of the world, without concepts, without thoughts, without reasoning. That conclusion is confirmed by Harris in statements such as:

There is something to realize about the nature of consciousness, and its realization does not entail thinking new thoughts. (p. 218)

Now we live in ignorance of the freedom and simplicity of consciousness, prior to the arising of thought. (p. 219)

Mysticism, as Harris conceives it, is thus preconceptual consciousness, which, the reader may realize, is the consciousness of an animal.

"My debt to a variety of contemplative traditions that have their origin in India will be obvious to many readers," Harris notes. "The esoteric teachings of Buddhism . . . and Hinduism . . . have done much to determine my view of our spiritual possibilities." (n. 12, Ch. 7, on p. 293)

Harris supports two other forms of mysticism (defined objectively here), though he does not call them that. First is self-evidency. Harris sometimes claims certain insights are "self-evident," even when they are complex and abstract. (See p. 31 for an example.) (For a brief discussion of rational and mystical uses of the term "self-evidency," see: aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/search/label/self-evidency.)

Harris's second additional form of mysticism is intuition.

Whatever its stigma, 'intuition' is a term that we simply cannot do without, because it denotes the most basic constituent of our faculty of understanding. . . . When we can break our knowledge of a thing down no further, the irreducible leap that remains is intuitively taken. Thus, the traditional opposition between reason and intuition is a false one: reason is itself intuitive to the core, as any judgment that a proposition is 'reasonable' or 'logical' relies on intuition to find its feet. (p. 183)

Intuition is thus the same as claiming "It is obvious." (p. 184) (See other discussions here and here.) Harris says: 

How the loom of cognition first begins weaving is still a mystery, but there seems little doubt that we come hardwired with a variety of proto-linguistic, proto-doxastic (from the Greek doxa, 'belief') capacities that enable us to begin interpreting the tumult of the senses as regularities in the environment and in ourselves. (p. 248, n. 14 of Ch. 2, from p. 58)

RELATION OF REASON AND MYSTICISM. The advocates of the major Abrahamic religions often say they support reason and faith, each in its own domain, but usually relying on faith to "establish" such notions as the existence of another world, a god, and the god's ethical rules. Harris rejects the notion of peace between reason and faith as "delusional." (p. 16) What then is Harris's view of the relationship of reason and mysticism as he has defined these concepts (if he has)?

"We cannot live by reason alone," Harris states. (p. 43) To handle the greatest stresses in life—such as losing a loved one or facing an incurable fatal disease—we need something that will give us "an abiding sense of the sacred." (p. 43) Harris says, however, that we do not need to be irrational in order to have that sense of the sacred. "On the contrary, I hope to show that spirituality [which Harris says is synonymous with mysticism] can be—indeed, must be—deeply rational, even as it elucidates the limits of reason." (p. 43)

In conclusion, Sam Harris is indeed an opponent of faith, in the form of religion, but also an advocate of other forms of mysticism, alongside a form of "reason" so limited that we must "intuit" the ethical principles that serve as our guides in life. Adding his reductionism and determinism (not discussed here) to the mixture, one can say that he is not an advocate of reason.

Burgess Laughlin

Author of The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com/

BkRev: Sam Harris, The End of Faith

Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York, W. W. Norton, 2004, 348 pages (paperback with Afterword).

In Sam Harris's 2004 book, The End of Faith, the title states not a fact but the author's goal: to put an end to faith. "Throughout this book," Harris says, "I am criticizing faith in its ordinary, scriptural sense—as belief in, and life orientation toward, certain historical and metaphysical propositions." (pp. 64-65) In particular, Harris says, "religious faith is simply unjustified
belief in matters of ultimate concern—specifically in propositions that promise some mechanism by which human life can be spared the ravages of time and death." (p. 65) "When the evidence for a religious proposition is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, people invoke faith." (p. 232)

Harris writes seven chapters that arc from the world's problem, which is faith, to Harris's solution. Chapter 1, "Reason in Exile," presents the problem: Religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which are faith-based worldviews, cause ignorance, superstition, oppression, and violence because they are irrational, that is, faith-based worldviews are not based on evidence; they are not subject to criticism; they are welded to events that supposedly happened thousands of years ago; and therefore they are not open to revision today in light of modern knowledge. Cultural taboos, such as the constant call for "tolerance," prohibit us from challenging them, Harris argues.

Chapter 2, "The Nature of Belief" describes belief and reason, as Harris understands those concepts. (A later post here on The Main Event will focus on Harris's views of reason and mysticism.) In this chapter Harris shows that he understands that ideas have consequences and irrational ideas, such as those based on faith, have terrible consequences. In Chapter 3, "In the Shadow of God," he shows the roots of the Inquisition and the Holocaust in religious unreason and particularly in holy scripture. In Chapter 4, "The Problem with Islam," Harris demonstrates that the problem with Islam is Islam itself. In Chapter 5, "West of Eden," he shows that Christianity in great measure shapes the legal system of the United States.

Once he has presented the problem, Harris turns to offering an alternative to religion as the source of ethical guidance. Ch. 6, "A Science of Good and Evil," describes opportunities, problems, and (according to Harris) the initial successes of a scientific approach to ethics.

Chapter 7, "Experiments in Consciousness," claims that, despite all their failures, religions have offered a certain truth: One can have extraordinary experiences if one goes beyond the "ordinary uses of attention," that is, consciousness. (p. 204) After a discussion of such topics as striving to lose one's sense of self as a step toward happiness, Harris admits: "Inevitably, the foregoing will strike certain readers as a confusing eruption of speculative philosophy." Harris goes on to advocate "nondualistic empirical mysticism." (p. 215) The West, Harris says, is standing on the shoulders of dwarfs when it relies on Western philosophers—instead of Easterners who pursue goals such as "liberation from the illusion of self." (p. 215)

STYLE. Throughout this 358-page book, Harris's style is generally clear, except that he does not concisely and formally define his terms. He is often vivid, especially in his indictment of the Abrahamic religions. His writing flows. It is casual, even though he writes about fundamentally important subjects. His metaphors are imaginative.

Imagine that we could revive [and talk with] a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. (pp. 21-22)

Harris is at times sarcastic, which is unfortunate because sarcasm is an indirect form of communication. Readers who need the greatest clarity, those who are first approaching a difficult subject, need direct communication, generally free of sarcasm, except perhaps as an occasional touch for emphasis on the ridiculous. (p. 36, for an example)

Harris's style is often pithy: ". . . 'the rise of Islamic fundamentalism' is only a problem because the fundamentals of Islam are a problem." (p. 148) And, in dealing with Islam today: "We are in the presence of the past." (p. 150)

HARRIS'S ETHICS: APPLIED MYSTICISM AND REASON. Ethics is the study of what humans ought to do—that is, what actions they should take here in this life on earth. Harris is an altruist. He holds that serving others is the standard of action. He rejects religion's support for altruism.

The help rendered to the poor by Christian missionaries in the developing world demonstrates that religious ideas can lead to actions that are both beautiful and necessary. But there are far better reasons for self-sacrifice than those that religion provides. (p. 78)

A rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures. If we are in a position to affect the happiness or suffering of others, we have ethical responsibilities toward them—and many of these responsibilities are so grave as to become matters of civil and criminal law. (pp. 170-171)

Harris thus takes "happiness and suffering" as a utilitarian starting point of an investigation into what is moral and what is immoral. (pp. 170-171) "To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering. It is, as Kant observed, to treat them as ends in themselves rather than as means to some further end." (p. 186) Harris does not explain why he chooses that starting point.

Harris says our ethical rules, such as "Murder is wrong," should be "anchored to the facts of this world." (p. 170) What is the nature of that anchoring? According to Harris, we have ethical "intuitions," but he rejects the idea that religions are sources of them. (pp. 170-172) Instead, we "harbor some rudimentary sense that cruelty is wrong." (p. 172) "Our ethical intuitions must have their precursors in the natural world," where we see that even monkeys have some concern for other monkeys. Thus "our ethical intuitions have their roots in biology." (p. 172)

We should, Harris holds, develop ethics from the science of consciousness. However, that science is in its infancy. (p. 174) "There will probably come a time when we achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness, and of ethical judgments themselves, at the level of the brain. Just as defects in color vision can result from genetic and developmental disorders, problems can undoubtedly arise in our ethical and emotional circuitry as well." (p. 175)

To establish a scientific, rational ethics, we will need to abandon not only religious sources but also abandon philosophical relativism and pragmatism. (pp. 178-179) "In philosophical terms, pragmatism can be directly opposed to realism." (p. 180) "To be an ethical realist is to believe that in ethics, as in physics, there are truths waiting to be discovered—and thus we can be right or wrong in our beliefs about them." (p. 181) This ties directly to "intuitions," because with an intuition the world around us enters our brain to deposit a truth.

INSIGHTS. Harris, despite his fundamental flaws, often has valid insights into our society. Consider five examples:

1. Harris knows that ideas ("beliefs") are important because they motivate actions. (p. 44) Harris knows that ideas move history. He does not rely on the cliches of economic, racial, or other determinism. (Harris is, however, a determinist in the sense that he rejects the idea of free will. [Ch. 6, n. 7, pp. 272-274] That position parallels his reductionism, specifically his notion of wanting to reduce the functions of consciousness to circuits in the brain, as on pp. 56 and 123.)

2. "What is the alternative to religion as we know it? As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask. Chemistry was not an 'alternative' to alchemy; it was a wholesale exchange of ignorance at its most rococo for genuine knowledge." (p. 14) By "genuine knowledge," Harris means scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge gained through the methods of the various specialized sciences such as physics and biology.

3. Harris clearly understands that religious "moderates" are people who have accepted only some elements of their religions or have realized that they are "obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world." (p. 17)

Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us siimply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago—and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture. (p. 19)

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. (p. 20)

Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance . . . . (p. 21)

By failing to live by the letter of the [holy] texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. (p. 21)

To see that our problem is with Islam itself, and not merely with 'terrorism', we need only ask ourselves why Muslim terrorists do what they do. (p. 28) 

The concessions we have made to religious faith—to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence—have rendered us unable to name, much less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict in our world. (p. 29)

Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed. (p. 45)

4. Harris lambastes Christianity and Judaism (e.g., p. 94) as well as Islam, but recognizes that the practices of Christianity and Judaism today are more moderate, that is, adapted to modern knowledge and standards. "While my argument in this book is aimed at faith itself, the differences between faiths are as relevant as they are unmistakable. . . . [and] Muslims have more than their fair share of" bad beliefs.

5. He connects faith and politics. "Because we are a people of faith, taught to concern ourselves with the sinfulness of our neighbors, we have grown tolerant of irrational uses of state power." For example: "Each year, over 1.5 million men and women are arrested in the United States because of our drug laws." (p. 162)

CONCLUSION. For students of contemporary culture, The End of Faith offers a chance to look closely at a mixed case. Politically, Harris is neither conservative nor liberal but a composite. Likewise, philosophically, Harris is neither a religionist appealing to faith nor a nihilist. Instead he attempts to rebuild conventional ethics—altruism, the doctrine that reveres self-sacrifice for the sake of others—not on the foundation of religion but on the twin footing of specialized Western sciences and Eastern mysticism. His attempt fails, but his effort reflects the confused nature of our culture. 

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

Today, in the USA, Who Are Reason's Foremost Advocates?

Outside the Objectivist movement, who are the leading advocates of reason alone as the means of gaining knowledge of the world? Following is a working list of candidates who might be worthy of further investigation. Some may turn out to not deserve the title "advocate of reason," either because they are not advocates or because what they advocate is not reason. Nevertheless their story may turn out to be worth telling as a part of the war between reason and mysticism.

By today, I mean our milieu, which includes individuals of the last philosophical generation. Even if now deceased, they still influence our culture in 2013. An example on the mysticism side of the war is C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), whose writings Christians still cite.

By advocate of reason I mean someone who speaks informatively of reason, as a fact, and for reason, as a value. The advocate, when speaking of reason, can explain the basic mechanisms of reason and illustrate it with example applications.

INDIVIDUALS. The following individuals are candidates. They are worth investigating, according to my own reading or the recommendations by some of my associates on Facebook. Are they actually advocates of reason, and reason alone? Only further research will tell.

Brand Blandshard (1892-1987) was "an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_Blanshard)

W. T. Jones (1910-1998) was a professor of philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. He was the author of the five-volume History of Western Philosophy series. In his books, he defended reason, mostly in scattered passages.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), one of the "New Atheists," was a purported defender of reason.

Sam Harris (b. 1967), one of the "New Atheists," is a purported defender of reason, but (I would say, tentatively) is actually a defender of secular forms of mysticism such as the notions of intuition and innate ideas.

Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), one of the "New Atheists," is a purported defender of reason.

Daniel Dennett (b. 1942), one of the "New Atheists," is a purported defender of reason.

One or more of my Facebook associates also recommended the following individuals as advocates of reason in the USA today. However, initially I have found no information showing that these individuals are indeed advocates, part-time or full-time, of reason and opponents of mysticism in the USA today. I welcome specific references to their writings, references that point out books, essays, chapters or even merely passages in which they explain the nature of reason, call for its exclusive use as a source of knowledge, and reject mysticism.

Thomas Sowell (b. 1930) is an author, sociologist, and economist writing in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell.

Antal Fekete (b. 1932) is an author, economist, and professor of mathematics (Canada) who is active internationally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antal_E._Fekete.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947-2011), the author of Theory of Constraints and other fiction and nonfiction works, was a business consultant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Goldratt.

James (Jim) C. Collins (b. 1957), author of Good to Last, is a business consultant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Collins.

ORGANIZATIONS. The following organizations, apparently all institutions, seem to support reason, at least judging from their names and self-descriptions. Do they actually support reason? Do they advocate reason and reason alone as the means of gaining knowledge of the world?

Reason Foundation (founded in 1978 by Robert W. Poole, Jr.; Manuel S. Klausner; and Tibor Machan). The founders of Reason magazine published their first issue in 1968. "Reason Foundation is a nonprofit organization advancing free minds and free markets. . . . Reason Foundation's mission is to advance a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law." The headquarters of the foundation is in Los Angeles. (http://reason.org/about) Initial sources: http://reason.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_Foundation

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (founded in 2006) has this purpose: "The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering." Initial sources: http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/mission and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins_Foundation_for_Reason_and_Science

Project Reason (founded in 2007 by Sam Harris and Annaka Harris) says its purpose is to spread "scientific knowledge and secular values in society." Further, "Project Reason seeks to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects." By what means will the Project achieve its goals? "The foundation will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific studies and opinion polls, publish original research, award grants to other charitable organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals—all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world." A special focus of the foundation is countering religious dogmatism with critical thinking. (project-reason.org/about) Initial sources: http://www.project-reason.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Reason

INITIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY           

1. MOVEMENTS

Ari Armstrong, "Atheism Rises in U.S.—But What About Reason?," posted August 25, 2012 in the weblog of The Objective Standard. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/08/atheism-rises-in-u-s-but-what-about-reason/

Alan Germani, "The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists," The Objective Standard, Vol. 3, No. 3. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mystical-ethics-new-atheists.asp

2. ORGANIZATIONS

"Reason Foundation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_Foundation

"Reason Foundation." http://reason.org/

"The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science." http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/

"The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins_Foundation_for_Reason_and_Science

"Project Reason." http://www.project-reason.org/

"Project Reason." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Reason

3. INDIVIDUALS

"Sam Harris (Author)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_(author)

Ari Armstrong, "Sam Harris Can Sound Like an Egoist; Too Bad He Isn't One," posted December 23, 2012 in the weblog of The Objective Standard. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/12/sam-harris-can-sound-like-an-egoist-too-bad-he-isnt-one/

Ari Armstrong, "Sam Harris's Failure to Formulate a Scientific Morality, " The Objective Standard, Vol. 7, No. 4. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2012-winter/sam-harris-unscientific-morality.asp

Ari Armstrong, "Sam Harris Couldn't Help But Smear Ayn Rand," posted May 17, 2012 in the weblog of The Objective Standard. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/05/sam-harris-couldnt-help-but-smear-ayn-rand/

"Sam Harris." http://www.samharris.org/

Ari Armstrong, "Sam Harris Pointedly Defends Free Speech," posted September 22, 2012 in the weblog of The Objective Standard. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/sam-harris-pointedly-defends-free-speech/

Suggestions for additions, deletions, or modifications are welcome in the comment thread.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: They Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com/

The Activism of Young "Orthodox" Christians

BACKGROUND. In my previous post, I reviewed Colleen Carroll's book The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. In this post I am merely recording some of my many notes on the activism of "the new faithful," as presented by Carroll. Keep in mind that Christian holy scripture calls Christians to be activists at least to the extent of "witnessing," that is, identifying themselves as followers of the worldview of Jesus Christ.

What sort of actions do the "new faithful" take? What sort of problems do most of them encounter when living by their faith in a partly secular world that seems hostile to them? On what scale do they act—locally or nationally?

First, for an intriguing overview of Christian activism, listen to Onkar Ghate's 90-minute lecture, second in the "Cultural Movements: Creating Change" series of videotape lectures by Dr. Ghate and Dr. Yaron Brook. That series of three lectures is on the website of the Ayn Rand Center (Participate, Activism, right column): aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=participate_arc_activism. The lectures contain many insights and suggestions useful to pro-reason advocates.

Who are the young orthodox Christians Carroll interviewed for her book?

The young adults profiled in this book…are an eclectic mix. They are college students, monks, beauty queens, rocket scientists, and landscape architects. . . . They tend to be cultural leaders, young adults blessed with talent, intelligence, good looks, wealth, successful careers, impressive educational pedigrees, or charisma . . . They are the sort of people who . . . made conscious commitments that are having an impact far greater than their numbers would warrant. . . . They are the sort of people other young adults look to when considering what to do, how to live, and what to believe. So what they do, how they live, and what they believe matters to America—a lot. (p. 12)

Publicly or privately, activists spreading orthodox Christianity pursue their goals in a variety of settings: university campuses, churches, work places, beauty pageants, small Bible study groups, magazines (such as re:generation quarterly), and seminaries.

The new faithful rely ultimately on mysticism in one form or another. "In our hearts, we know the truth," says one activist. (p. 3) Though none of the newly orthodox Christians in Carroll's account devote full time to spreading mysticism as an explicit purpose, they do promote it implicitly and explicitly in all they do, to the extent that they can articulate their reasons for holding a particular orthodox position. For example—as I have seen personally—God, revelation, and faith are not far away when a Christian opponent of abortion begins to justify his position.

The following notes record a few examples out of the many projects orthodox Christians have created in the USA in the last generation. My purpose here is to show the range of their activities and indicate a few of the problems they encounter as radical Christians.

SOME ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS ARE SERIOUS DONORS. If only by implication, Carroll demonstrates repeatedly that donors are activists to the extent of their donations. Carroll devoted a year to "researching and writing this book" (p. ix), The New Faithful, which at one level is a sort of handbook for orthodox Christian activists. Who paid for her time while she was working on the book? The Phillips Foundation provides not only financial support for young, conservative, Christian journalists working on long-term projects, but also the lifetime benefit of networking. Through the foundation's special projects, such as awards dinners, the young journalists meet other professionals in the field. Those contacts lead to new projects and stable jobs. These benefits sustain activism.

SOME PREPARE OTHERS FOR ACTIVISM.  Some Christian activists attend training courses such as the leadership academy of The Trinity Forum (ttf.org/), founded by Os Guinness, a Christian author. The teachers and administrators at TTF are as much activists as the young activists who attend the training, but the activism of the trainers is indirect.

SOME PUBLISH. Bill Haley publishes re:generation quarterly, "a magazine for young orthodox Christians." (p. 23)

SOME PARTICIPATE IN SOCIAL GROUPS FOR LIKE-MINDED INDIVIDUALS.  Orthodox Christians value being members of some form of a religious community. The three common forms of community are: a full-time religious life, as in a monastery; regular participation in church fellowship groups; and informal alliances of religious laymen. (p. 119) Each community offers indirect opportunities for activists to spread their ideas to the larger culture outside the Christian community. For example, even though they may live in some manner of seclusion, monks may spread the word of Christ while aiding the poor in the neighborhood of the monastery.

Consider a second example. Bill Haley established Kairos . . .

a community of young, professional, mostly evangelical Protestants who meet for weekly worship . . . in Falls Church, Virginia. . . . Haley hopes to offer young adults something they may not be getting elsewhere: authentic community, the challenge to live a moral life geared toward serving others, and a genuine connection to a transcendent God. (p. 23)

In the following example note the ripple effect of (1) dedicated individuals meeting other individuals (in social settings organized by still other individuals), (2) networking, (3) developing a clearer idea of the sort of world they want, and (4) taking action to create that world locally for like-minded individuals.

[John] Hart [a student at Kansas State University] discovered the power of Christian community when he became involved with the National Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values. The ecumenical event brings college students together in Washington, D.C., to interact with political leaders, discuss the role of faith in their lives, and examine "servant leadership," using Jesus Christ as a model. The forum grew out of the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual gathering of diverse political leaders in Washington that student leaders participate in and help coordinate. The people Hart met through his involvement with the forum and the prayer breakfast embodied the sort of Christian community he admired—and hoped to imitate. When he returned to Kansas State [University], he and a handful of his college buddies decided to think strategically about how to spread the gospel on campus, hold each other accountable as Christians, and live together in community. . . . The group . . . worked to ease the divisions between believers on campus . . . Their nucleus grew from five to fifteen and, eventually, to several hundred loosely connected friends around the nation who share the same vision for strategic evangelism. . . . Through his community-living experiences . . . Hart grew to appreciate the rewards and struggles of Christian community. . . . He has learned, in essence, to 'die to self'. (pp. 92-93)

SOME ORGANIZE SCHOOLS THAT PLANT SEEDS IN FUTURE ACTIVISTS. In Carroll's account, the careful reader sees the role that specialized schools have in introducing young people to ideas that grow for years and then blossom into a conversion and perhaps into activism. Some of the "schools" are ad hoc events devoted to a particular form of religious education. Other schools are institutions and may be devoted to a broad education but provide a meeting ground for religious students.

A young man in a Boston high school attended a "confirmation retreat," that is, a gathering (usually in an area isolated from distractions) devoted to learning about Catholicism and to contemplation or prayer. Later, the young man graduated from high school and entered Brown University to study physics, with the intention of applying it to a career in business. Instead he became a Dominican friar (a "brother" who preaches the word of God), partly as a result of the long-term influence of the retreat and partly from the influence of a campus ministry on the Brown University campus. (pp. 30-31)

An evangelical group that boldly defends Christianity, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, at Harvard University and about 560 other campuses in the USA, is an example of an educational organization that is a " satellite" to a university. (pp. 32, 161, 176, 177-178)

Some newly orthodox Christians attend Christian universities for the purpose of living a more moral life or learning more about their religion or both. That is what Luke Fletcher did. He attended Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, a charismatic Catholic school. (pp. 37-38)   ("Charismatic" refers to a Christian's direct and dramatic experience of God, and proof of having had the experience is the ability to "speak in tongues," that is, babble, as the Pentecostals do.)

Natalie Barsoum, an evangelical student of music attended a secular music college where she joined meetings of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Then she transferred to Catholic University in Washington, D.C., continuing to study music. At Catholic University she met charismatic Catholics. She converted to Catholicism.  (pp. 41-42)

Jeff Barneson, who runs the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship graduate ministry at Harvard University, said he has seen signs of young believers' hunger for stories and lack of interest in purely rational [theological] arguments in Harvard's fellowships. He cited a group of several dozen graduate students who meet weekly . . .  for an after-class Bible study session. (p. 176)

SOME ADVOCATE TO NICHE GROUPS. Some organizations achieve small-scale but more intense success by offering a meeting point for individuals who share some value. One example value is a profession, such as medicine for medical students. Another example value is a particular national culture such as for first or second generation Korean immigrants. A third example value is a particular style of worship, such as for some African-Americans who enjoy singing without instruments, responding aloud to speakers, and praying aloud. The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is a "multiethnic" organization, but it has ethnic branches such as the Asian-American Students for Christ. (pp. 176-177)

SOME JOIN ESTABLISHED CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATIONS. For activism, some new orthodox are joining long-established Christian organizations. One such organization is the Legionaries of Christ (www.legionariesofchrist.org), an institution composed of priests and students of priesthood. It was founded in Mexico in 1941, and dedicated to training priests, spreading Christianity, and aiding the needy. Legionaries of Christ works closely with Regnum Christi (Kingdom of Christ), an organization of laymen. Another example of an already established organization which today's young orthodox Christians in the USA are joining is the Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (franciscanfriars.com/cfr-mission/), founded by eight priests in 1987, for two purposes: aiding the poor and spreading the Gospel of Christ. Guided by a desire to "renew" the Church, the organizers were following the example of renewalists in Italy in the 1500s. A third example of an established organization suitable for activism by today's "new faithful" orthodox Christians is Sisters of Life (sistersoflife.org). It is an organization of Catholic women formed in 1991 and dedicated to supporting "pro-life" causes such as opposing abortion and euthanasia. (p. 36)

SOME HELP CHRISTIANS ACROSS DENOMINATIONS. Some activities and some organizations bring Christians together for common interests, at least temporarily and partially.

When it comes to topics like abortion, [Father Willard] Jabusch [who directs 'the Catholic ministry at the University of Chicago'] said, conservative Catholics, evangelicals, and orthodox Jews often are united by their similar stands. (pp. 178-179)

Some organizations regularly bring evangelicals and Catholics together. An example is "Iron Sharpens Iron, an interdenominational Christian group at Notre Dame that gathers evangelical and Catholic students for worship, teaching, and prayer." (p. 179) "If young Catholics are mimicking evangelicals in the realm of faith [for example, in more demonstrative displays of worship], evangelicals are copying Catholics in the world of works." They are learning "how the gospel applies to such issues as poverty, racism, unbridled individualism, and materialism." (p. 45)

Sometimes Protestants and Catholics participate in the same ecumenical institutions. An ecumenical Christian monastic community in Taize, France, "attracts about a hundred thousand pilgrims a year, who come to participate in Taize's prayer rituals, Bible studies, common meals, and chores." The Taize monastic community holds communal prayer meetings near Chicago and San Franciso. (p. 91)

SOME APPRENTICE FOR A RELIGIOUS CAREER. "At the University of Notre Dame, an estimated 8 percent of graduating students apply to the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), a faith-focused, university-run teaching program that sends its members to live in Catholic community houses and work in understaffed Catholic schools across the nation." About two-thirds of the eighty applicants who are accepted "stay involved in Catholic education after their two-year service stint ends." (p. 33)

SOME WORK FULL-TIME ADVOCATING THEIR IDEAS.  In college, when Jason Evert "conducted [Christian] retreats, chatted with women friends, and counseled pregnant women outside abortion clinics," he saw "the pain and remorse that accompanied premature sexual activity." At age twenty-five, Evert became a "chastity educator." He "travels the nation talking to teenagers and young adults about chastity." (p. 135)

SOME PRESENT ORTHODOX THEOLOGY IN UNORTHODOX PLACES. Held in a tavern . . .

Theology on Tap … exposes young Catholics to the teachings of the church in an unconventional setting. In Washington, D.C. [as well as Chicago and Atlanta], speakers ranging from priests to graduate students address a standing-room-only crowd of twenty- and thirty-something Catholics each week on topics spanning from sexual morality to religious devotions. The setup feels unconventional, but the theology is utterly orthodox. And the crowd eats it up. (p. 34)

SOME WRESTLE WITH PROBLEMS COMMON TO ACTIVISTS. Some newly orthodox Christians wrestle with a problem that affects some activists in some other movements: retreating from a hostile world, with the result that the activist ends up talking only to like-minded individuals and does not change the world. This problem, for some members of the "new faithful," is related to the broader problem of how best to apply the basic principles of one's worldview to daily life.

The struggle to infuse faith into daily life is a perennial one for committed believers. In a secular, pluralistic culture where all religions are considered equal and none are entirely welcome in the public square, the challenge of integration [of one's worldview and one's daily actions] looms even larger. . . .  The decision to be an orthodox Christian today entails a conscious choice, not a passive inheritance. And living that choice is . . . no easy task. (p. 45)

Orthodox Christians are few. Some of them—perhaps the ones most committed to altruism—need spiritual support from others in order to live their lives as consistent Christians.

In a culture that often derides commitment, young adults need support to make faith commitments that last. In many Protestant churches, help often comes from accountability groups—small circles of peers who come together regularly to discuss choices made in daily life and to keep each other on track. Some Catholics have formed similar groups, and orthodox believers of all stripes say the choice of friends, as well as the support of formal faith communities, can make the difference between short-lived enthusiasm for Christianity and long-term commitment. (p. 52)

Some orthodox Christians enjoy associating with like-minded Christians but recognize a need to spread the word of Christ to non-Christians. One Christian magazine, re:generation quarterly, sponsors discussion groups in twenty-five cities in the USA. The mission of those discussion groups is "community transforming culture" (p. 116). They discuss the dual problem of living by their beliefs in their own personal lives and sharing those beliefs (their "faith") with nonbelievers in the broader culture.

SOME USE THEIR INTRANSIGENCE AS A MAGNET. Some Christian activists find that either "steadfast moral teachings," the "authority of tradition," or the refusal to appease relativistic secularists attracts some young "spiritual seekers" to the Christian cause. (pp. 68-69) A 2001 survey found that generally congregations that have a "commitment to [explicitly] high moral standards" are more likely to grow and prosper financially. (pp. 69-70)

SOME SPECIALIZE IN CHRISTIANIZING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.

Carroll shows in Ch 6 ("The Campus"), that orthodox Christians are especially interested in spreading Christianity to college and university students and faculty. One particular project serves as an example. In 1987, orthodox Christian Kelly Monroe enrolled as a graduate student in "the notoriously heterodox" Harvard Divinity School. Relativism, postmodernist deconstructionism, and anti-intellectual mysticism dominated the school. "Monroe and fellow Christians wanted to see Jesus Christ and orthodox Christianity taken seriously in an intellectual setting." (p. 157) In 1992 The Veritas Forum began at Harvard. The founders of The Veritas Forum were all Christians and locals: Harvard students; Harvard alumni; Harvard professors; and Kelly Monroe, by then a chaplain to the Harvard Graduate School Fellowship, an evangelical group.

The name of the Forum comes from the original Harvard motto: Veritas: Christo et Ecclesiae, Truth for Christ and for the Church. (pp. 156-157) The "forum" consisted of a series of seminars and lectures. The effort was "grassroots," that is, the leaders of the seminars and the lecturers were Harvard students and Harvard alumni, not imported from elsewhere. The principle that organized the various events was the purpose of the forum: to examine "the truth and relevance of Jesus Christ by raising the hardest questions of the university, society, and human heart." (p. 157, quoting Monroe from her 1996, best-selling book, Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians.)

To the organizers' surprise, seven hundred participants attended the forum. The idea of the forum spread rapidly to seventy-five colleges and universities. One function of each forum is to unite the local campus Christian community. Each forum draws from its university's own academic community, and each forum speaks to local interests. The Veritas Forum, as a central organization, provides an informative website (veritas.org). Monroe, now an employee of the Forum, travels to schools that are struggling to set up their own events. (pp. 157-158)

The Veritas Forum serves multiple purposes, as Carroll's discussion shows: (1) helping committed Christians intellectually articulate their positions on issues that arise from Christians as well as from objecting nonbelievers; (2) increasing cooperation among Christians of various denominations; (3) publicizing Christian ideas, both the fundamentals and the applications, to non-Christians; and (4) helping committed Christians cope with a largely secular campus culture.

SOME SPECIALIZE IN CHRISTIANIZING POLITICS. "Young believers often reject the separation of sacred and secular that marks modern political thought. Instead, they see the two as inextricably connected, and they hope to transform the public square with the same faith that has transformed their personal lives." (pp. 201-202)

Washington—and the political realm at large—naturally attracts devout young believers who are born leaders with a passion for transforming culture. Several Christian organizations have attempted to tap into and contribute to that reservoir of talent and zeal by organizing programs and fellowships that help young adults integrate faith and politics. The Family Research Council . . . Focus on the Family . . . . And the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, an evangelical organization that includes about a hundred religious schools, sponsors an American Studies program that brings college students to Washington for a semester to examine public policy and their professional callings as Christians. These initiatives, known as worldview programs, are designed to help young Christians make the connection between their orthodox faith and its implications for politics and society. Most programs are conservative and are concerned with preserving traditional morality in a culture they see as desperately in need of principled Christian leaders. Their emphasis on integration [of beliefs and actions, religion and politics] is designed to help young Christians take their convictions from the religious community to the public square, where they can help transform culture from positions of political influence. (pp. 214-215)

Though many Christian activists, as such, are conservative and Republican, not all are. Some support causes ordinarily associated with the other side of the usual Republican/Democrat, conservative/progressive split. For example, Sheila McCarthy, a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame, spent her activist time at the university organizing pacifists in the local chapter of Pax Christi, the Peace of Christ.

She coordinated a hunger awareness day in the campus cafeteria . . . . After graduating . . . she joined the Catholic Worker movement . . . . McCarthy now lives in a Catholic Worker house in Los Angeles, near . . . Skid Row. She and her housemates serve six meals a week on Skid Row and tend to the sick and dying people who live with them. They pray, work, and study as a community, advocating for the rights of the poor and against violence and war in any form. (p. 203)

The conservative Catholic activists and the progressive Catholic activists disagree about some issues, but they agree about others, such as banning abortion. Then they join forces.

Catholicism is a "cafeteria" religion. Some proponents pick some elements of holy scripture and de-emphasize others. The "Gospels arguably support the political philosophies" of both conservatives and progressives. "Christian orthodoxy entails a defense of traditional values in the areas of sexuality, marriage, and family . . . . But that same orthodoxy is rooted in the Gospel passages that inspire [progressives], parables that praise the poor and peacemakers and rail against the dangers of money and power." (p. 205)

SOME ARE FACILITATORS FOR A CHRISIAN WAY OF LIFE. Now "a husband and father," Anthony Buono remembers with hatred . . .

how it felt to wander through the singles scene as an orthodox Catholic committed to church teachings on sexuality. . . . He knew many single Catholics who felt alone in their opposition to premarital sex and contraception and hopeless about finding spouses who shared their values. He wanted to heed the pope's call to help build strong Christian families in the new millennium. So in May 1998 he launched Single Catholics Online—now known as Ave Maria Single Catholics Online since its purchase by billionaire Catholic Tom Monaghan. The Web site links orthodox Catholics to one another for a $60 fee. (pp. 141-142)

Another route for living a Christian way of life and spreading Christian ideas is homeschooling. The aims of orthodox Christian homeschoolers include improving academic skills, teaching Christian values, and avoiding the relativism that has infected public schools and many private schools, including some religious schools.

Homeschooled students can [now] also attend colleges geared to their worldview. Patrick Henry College, a new evangelical in Virginia, was founded specifically for homeschooled students. Several small orthodox Catholic schools also attract a large number of Catholic homeschooled students seeking an education that entwines faith with reason and steeps them in classical thought. (pp. 151-152)

THEY TEND TO JOIN ORGANIZATIONS THAT DISSEMINATE THEIR HARDLINE VIEWS. Serious religionists are those individuals who adapt their lifestyle to their religious principles; unserious religionists adapt their religion to their lifestyle. (p. 70) Organizations that hold orthodox views tend to attract individuals who hold orthodox views. For instance, Catholic Answers (catholic.com/magazine) is an organization dedicated to apologetics (defense) and evangelization (dissemination of doctrines), according to Rosalind Moss, an employee of Catholic Answers who was drawn to Catholicism from Judaism. Catholic Answers does not soft-pedal Catholic positions. (pp. 69-70)

As another example, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, in Manhattan, attracts . . .

young urban professionals to morally conservative evangelical Christianity . . . Each Sunday, the church—which holds most of its services in a college auditorium . . . draws a crowd of several thousand with its vibrant worship style, small-group communities, and openness to spiritual seekers who are skeptical of Christianity. But for young Christians like [John] Chao [a technology consultant], Redeemer's greatest strength is [Senior Pastor Tim] Keller's preaching. The message is undiluted orthodox Christianity that does not equivocate about conventional [Catholic] morality. (p. 71)

THEY REJECT AN "OBSESSION WITH RATIONALITY". Scott Jackson, "a twenty-nine year old pursuing his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School," said that most Catholic members of the "boomer" generation have a different agenda than his generation. (p. 82) "Boomers" are individuals in the U.S. who were born between 1946 (just after World War II) and 1964 (the beginning of the Vietnam War began). "One example, said thirty-one-year-old seminary professor Melody Knowles, is the boomer obsession with rationality." (p. 82) "[John Shelby Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism], Knowles said, represents the boomer attempt 'to prove you can be a rational Christian. And my big thing is: Who cares?" (p.83)

THEY APPLY THEIR CHRISTIANITY IN VARIOUS WAYS. Young orthodox Christians have different personalities. They have different lifestyles. They join different denominations. They worship differently—some solemnly in traditional liturgy (candles, Gregorian chants, and so forth) and some boisterously in handclapping, calling out, and singing contemporary worship songs. (pp. 83-85) Some are fully "in the world," raising families, working, and entertaining themselves. Others live in full-time or part-time "faith communities" such as convents, monasteries, and friaries. (pp. 87-88)

Most orthodox Christians are devoted, to some degree and in some form, to "serving others." Andrew Witmer joined Jonathan House, a community of single Christian men living in a row house in Washington, DC. He said (p. 112): "I've had a lot of opportunities for servanthood. There's always a chance to do something for someone else." A Baptist, "he took on the job of structuring the house's weekly Bible-study and faith-sharing sessions."

SOME ADVOCATE THEIR IDEAS TO OTHER INDIVIDUALS, ONE TO ONE. In Hollywood, a homosexual coworker of Emily Finnelly, a young orthodox Christian, asked Finnelly for her view of homosexuality. Finnelly said she believes that the Bible forbids homosexuality, at least as an activity. Finnelly then asked the coworker if he was offended. The coworker said he was not. Finnelly "saw the conversation as an opportunity to witness to her faith and values. 'No lines of communication have been closed'," Carroll reports. (p. 130)

THEY HELP ORGANIZE AND ATTEND EVENTS THAT DRAW THE LIKE-MINDED According to Wikipedia, World Youth Day is an event sponsored every two years by the Catholic Church. Young Catholics from all over the world celebrate the day at a particular location that changes from event. In between the World Youth Day international events, each diocese holds a youth day event locally each year. The purpose of the events, both internationally and locally, is to celebrate young Catholics, who are "the future of the faith," according to Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), the founder of the series of events. "The communal atmosphere of the event, and the pope's [1993] exhortation to young adults to lay down their lives in service to Jesus Christ and his church, left an indelible mark on many young Catholics." (p. 101)

THEY USE A VARIETY OF MEDIA TO COMMUNICATE. Consider one example among thousands. In 1981, Mother Mary Angelica founded Eternal Word Television, a conservative Catholic network. (p. 102, http://www.ewtn.com/) Now EWTN is on mobile devices too: http://www.ewtn.mobi.

CONCLUSIONS. First, Carroll's broad look at the "new faithful" demonstrates the main points that Dr. Ghate made in his lectures: Christian activists speak out; they organize a wide range of groups, some broad and some very specialized; they act locally and nationally; they intellectualize; they write books; and they push to change the world around them.

Second, none of the "new faithful" Carroll profiled in her book worked full-time or even part-time to directly spread mysticism—such as faith, revelation, or the commands of holy scripture— as an isolated element of their worldview. Instead, at least for these Christians, mysticism is a means to an end. It is the means by which they claim to have acquired the knowledge about a supernatural world and that supernatural world's edicts about how to act in this world. Mysticism appears indirectly in all their advocacy, always only one or two steps away from the principles of ethics they advocate. Mysticism is integral to the ethical and other messages.

Burgess Laughlin
Author of The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com/

BkRev: Carroll's The New Faithful

Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, Chicago, Loyola Press, 2002, 321 pages.

SUBJECT. In The New Faithful, author Colleen Carroll looks mainly at two subjects: (1) the motivation of the young men and women who are becoming orthodox Christians; and (2) the nature of their activism as young, orthodox Christians.

For various meanings of "orthodox" among Jews and Christians, see the Jan. 27, 2013 post here on TME. Carroll defines Christian "orthodoxy" as a set of ideas about God, God's relation to man, and God's ethics for man's guidance:

The Apostles' Creed [supposedly formulated by Christ's twelve apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit, and possibly written as a set by later Christians as early as the 100s CE] confesses belief in a triune God who created heaven and earth; in the full divinity and humanity of his son, Jesus Christ; and in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. The creed also affirms the existence of a universal church, one baptism, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, among other doctrines. Its embrace … has implied adherence to the Ten Commandments … as well as … faith, hope, and love, and acceptance of the Beatitudes delivered by Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. For the Christians introduced in this book, the acceptance of a transcendent moral authority as revealed in the Scriptures translates into a commitment to regular worship and prayer, a belief in absolute truth, and a recognition of objective standards of personal and public morality. (pp. 13-14)

THE AUTHOR. Colleen Carroll (here) wrote speeches for President George W. Bush, worked as a journalist for news magazines, and now hosts a television show, "Faith and Culture."  She herself is an orthodox Catholic. Without God, she says (p. xi), "nothing else would be possible or meaningful." Her worldview, plus her youthfulness at the time of her research for the book, around the year 2000, gave her an entrance to interviewing other young Americans who are the "new faithful."

The individuals she interviewed were aged nineteen to thirty-seven. (p. 13) Those individuals who had committed to a particular denomination of Christianity were generally either Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism for various meanings labeled today by the term "evangelical"), but some were from eastern Orthodox Churches or "mainline" denominations such as the United Methodist Church. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant).

STYLE. The author's style is effective in communicating her theme. She describes individuals in their settings. You can see them and hear their voices speaking of their spiritual aspirations and identifying the problems they face. With those concretes established, the author can then occasionally draw conclusions. Those are the abstractions, the generalizations, she forms from her personal experiences and her research.

THEME. The theme of the book is multipart. First, there is a movement of young individuals into orthodox Christianity. How large is the movement? That is not clear in the book. Overall, the author is cautious about using statistics, as she should be. Measuring movements and gauging their direction are difficult to do with confidence. The author occasionally reminds readers that the "new faithful" are a minority of the youth of the country, but an articulate, ambitious minority that is upcoming and will probably have a cultural effect in the decades ahead.

The author is also careful to note contrary evidence. For example:

Countertrends clearly exist, especially in the realm of sexual behavior and morality. Divorce is rampant among evangelicals. Many Catholics disregard Vatican bans on contraception, premarital sex, and remarriage without annulment. And New Age spirituality—which often accompanies a movement away from moral absolutes—is gaining steam in many circles of American culture and in many American churches. Many polls of young adults reveal a high tide of moral relativism among the next generation and a deep suspicion of objective standards of truth and beauty. Indicators such as these do not portend a universal embrace of Christian orthodoxy and conventional morality. (p. 8)

A second part of the theme is that many individuals who become orthodox Christians do so as a reaction to two factors in their environment: the emptiness, even nihilism, of secular culture in the USA; and the relativism that infects much of the culture, even sections of religious culture. (The "new faithful" struggle as much against "liberal" Christians as they do against atheists.) The antidote to the meaninglessness of modern secular culture, the new faithful believe, is traditional Christianity with its emphasis on the "objective truth" of an ethics provided by God not humans, all known or at least substantiated by a mystical connection to God through one's personal relationship with God (held especially by evangelicals) and through rituals such as the Eucharist, in which the wafer and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ (a practice held especially by orthodox Catholics).

Across the nation, from the runways of beauty pageants to the halls of Ivy League universities, a small but committed core of young Christians is intentionally embracing organized religion and traditional morality. Their numbers—and their disproportionately powerful influence on their peers, parents, and popular culture—are growing. The grassroots movement they have started bears watching because it has thrived in the most unlikely places, captured the hearts of the most unlikely people, and aims to effect the most unlikely of outcomes: a revitalization of American Christianity and culture. (p. 4)

RECOMMENDATION. The New Faithful is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in beginning a study of a relatively small, but potentially very influential religious movement dedicated to activism, a movement that could affect the course of cultural and political history in the United States. The book explains the reasons interest in orthodox religion has arisen among some young "spiritual seekers."

The book also shows the wide range of forms of activism that these young individuals have undertaken to bring their views to others. Someday this movement may have political power and thereby force their  views on the whole culture.

Burgess Laughlin
Author of The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, described at reasonversusmysticism.com/