Joe,
Thank God you care more about the fight than comfort! And I say thank God without irony even as an evangelical atheist who was baptized Catholic and grew up with believing working class people. Even as an atheist who, as I slide into my mid-forties, has decided it's time to cut the delicate respectful crap and fess up to, even confront, anyone who will listen in order to declare what a lot of hooey religion and belief in God really is. And declare it even if, like you, I know that lots of the best socialists and other fighters for a little justice in this life, people who think genuinely of others' well being, got that way and often stay that way through some kind of faith.
I write you this small complaint even if I agree with what I consider the essential point of your essay ("Redneck Liberation Theology") which was to condemn a certain liberal/left condescension to the religiosity of many working class Americans. A complaint I send even if maybe there is some magic spark to our humanity that underlies the transcendent tinglings you described yourself feeling on that tropical beach. Feelings the kinds of which might be the best inspiration for a real human solidarity.
But neither the possibilities of such a spark nor the fact that the better churches, and in some cities mosques, have become an important refuge for from the class war -- often the only refuge! -- this doesn't mean that their superstitions and fairy tales shouldn't be called, straight up, what they are.
What's worse than the snide hostility of academic leftist idiots for how working people manage to find solace and fellowship is the well-bred liberal's polite tolerance of religion, the indulgent atheists who believe, like their Straussian analogs, that religion is necessary. That it's good for the people.
So I have to answer. And repeat, thank God for you, pal. Jesus, am I glad, as someone who has long been called a "redneck leftist," to find your voice in this wilderness.
Onward,
Scott
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Scott,
I got more negative email from that piece than from anything I have ever written, though it drew plenty of positive mail too. In any case, you've put what I was trying to say in better words than I did in that essay. I used the word god in the subtitle symbolically, sort of to indicate that so many "Internet liberals" are afraid to cross over the line and away from their own snug (and I might add smug) positions to at least reconnoiter the surrounding political territory. Afraid to get out and meet their declared enemies face to face.
Personally, I find that people are mostly just people, rich, poor, religious or atheistic. Some are meaner or kinder, some are insightful, some are not, some are absolutely out of their gourds with the grand but temporary power granted them -- Cheney, Bush come to mind, of course -- but what the hell? It still comes down to all of us being just 100-plus pounds of animated meat which takes itself (and that sonic flatulence called language) far too seriously.
I do not believe in "god." Which should be quite apparent to anyone who has read my stuff. But I have no problem with the divine -- things like mercy, justice, humility -- all of which I find to be divine qualities in any person, regardless of religious or political creed. Qualities higher than the natural inclinations of the self, which tend toward greed and excessive self-interest, etc.
As for my remarks about an animating power of the universe, one greater than man, I definitely believe there is one. Or perhaps many. But my experience of it has been as sort of a sublime subatomic consciousness. I guess I took too much LSD when I was young, because I still consider myself lucky on those occasional moments when I feel that strangely beautiful cohesiveness in all things. It is definitely a molecular awareness and perspective. And I am quite certain it is what shamans and Hindu sadhus, zen Buddhists , etc. experience in certain states of consciousness. I never write about it though, because I don't much like the company of the aging, mindless New Agers it attracts.
I dunno. I don't worship it or anything. But I do value it highly when it is available because it feels like some sort of unnameable insight. It is always brief, but in its wake I always feel a sense of release and momentary liberation.
I was quite surprised that so many liberals read so literally and in see-spot-run fashion that a single word such as god can be such a hot button -- actually a profanity for some secular people -- and I consider myself to be among the secularists.
I do not write to play toward an audience or any particular readership, as my Random House editor can tell you from several little episodes we had during the editing process of my book. I just happen to fall on the side of the political fence people in the U.S. call the left. But I am learning that there are some hard core dogmatists over here too. It seems to me that for solidarity to achieve any goal, there must be sufficient numbers to be effective -- which necessarily implies such inclusiveness as is possible -- and not limiting itself to the point of being a small club in total agreement but with no power.
I appreciate your open minded intelligence and thoughtfulness. I'm a pretty lucky guy to get the kind of email I get, varying and always intelligent. Imagine how awful it must be to be Ann Coulter!
In art and labor,
Joe
