Religion, Secularism and Peace

The late and deservedly eminent Professor Lisa Jardine, who died last Sunday (25th October), is reported to have regarded religion as the 'root of all evil'.  It's fair to say that many people today agree with her.  We are familiar with news reports of the activities of organisations such as the so-called ISIS; and for years we have heard of atrocities committed in the name of religion in many parts of the world.  Some of the most intractable political conflicts have some intrinsic connection with religious convictions.  It has to be said that, whenever religion presents itself in a fundamentalist guise, it always seems to lead to entrenchment and suffering.  The simple reason for this is that fundamentalist religion, divorced from reason as it invariably is, can never conceive of even the merest possibility that it may be wrong or that its impulses might need to be tempered.  Jardine's view, in the light of this, appears to be gaining more and more support among observers in the secularised West.

Some of those who support this view say, additionally, that such intractable situations based upon the unreasonableness acknowledged above, are not caused by atheism and secularism.  They argue that people are never killed in the name of atheism.  Influential commentators such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens have made exactly this point.  Even when those who take issue with them by citing the twentieth-century examples of, say, Stalin, Mao, Kim-il-Sung and Pol Pot, the secularists respond by pointing out that the atrocities committed by these individuals were not committed in the name of atheism as such - in the sense of not having been committed in order to advance a secularist philosophy or worldview.

Whilst they may be right, though, it cannot be of no consequence at all that each of these mass-killers rejected religion altogether, believing (it would seem) that morality can be constructed by human-beings without a transcendent reference-point.  It's fair to say, I think, that all human attempts to ground and construct a morality without this reference point have failed.  The tyrants mentioned above, moreover, would seem to have more in common with their fundamentalist-religious counterparts than might at first seem to be the case - precisely in the sense that they cannot conceive of any possibility that they may be wrong and that their convictions may need to be tempered by reason.  Instead, any and all of their actions, however grotesque, are justified by appeal to their over-arching project, in precisely the same kind of way that ISIS, for example, justifies its treatment of 'infidels'.

The idea that, left to its own devices, and with religion ('the root of all evil') banished, humankind would naturally construct a peaceable paradise on earth, is quaint beyond belief.

Thoughts on the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord

Ascension of the Lord 2015

I don’t know about you, but when I read, or hear read, some of the more fantastic Bible stories, I find myself trying to rationalise them so as to make them more reasonable, or thinking of them as stories whose details are unimportant but whose message remains salutary.  The Ascension, which we celebrate today and which is recounted for us in the first reading, is one of them.  Years ago, I couldn’t help but think of the chapel of the Ascension at Walsingham, which tastelessly featured Jesus’ feet sticking out of the ceiling – how it was ever thought that such an image might nurture people’s faith I can’t imagine.

In the story, which St Luke relates to us in the Acts of the Apostles, we’re told that Jesus took his leave of the apostles, having instructed them to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday.  The Spirit would empower them for the mission which they were to take over from him and which he had entrusted to them.  It’s so easy to get bogged down in the details of the ascension account itself, and find ourselves rather nonplussed by it.  And when we do this, we easily miss the message of the event and the feast.

The ascension is a major feast of the Church and has attracted the attention of many theologians and Christian thinkers down the centuries.  It’s an article of faith in the creeds and, of course, rooted in scripture.  In a famous homily written way back in the fifth century, St Leo the Great speaks about the period between the resurrection and the ascension as a time which points to the truths that were revealed by God in Christ. He says, for example, that it was during this period that the fear of death was taken away from Jesus’ followers, since they had seen him in his risen life.  It was during this period that Jesus established the apostles in their leadership roles and entrusted the keys of the kingdom to Peter.

Again, it was during this time that the risen Lord joined two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, rebuking them for their timidity and lack of faith and fearful hesitation, before disclosing to them the truth about himself.  St Leo says that ‘their enlightened hearts received the flame of faith; cool before’, he goes on, ‘they glowed when the Lord unfolded the scriptures to them’. And, ‘as they ate with him, their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread’.

So, God used these days between the resurrection and the ascension to teach the followers of Christ that the Lord Jesus, who was truly born, truly suffered and truly died, should be recognised as truly risen.  And this is why the Easter season is regarded with the significance and importance it is – it is truly the heart of the Christian Year.  We are given a concentrated period of 50 days to celebrate that Christ has triumphed over all that is at enmity with him – all sin, suffering and death; and in addition, every Sunday is to be understood as a celebration of the resurrection; this, in turn, is why Sunday has the importance it has, and why we need to recover this sense today.

St Leo reminds us that ‘all the disciples had been filled with fear by [Jesus’] death on the cross, and [that] their faith in the resurrection had been hesitant; but [that] now

they gained such strength from seeing the truth, that when the Lord Jesus went up to heaven, far from feeling sadness, they experienced a great joy’.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the disciples perceived what has been articulated by theologians ever since, namely, that at the ascension, human nature itself was exalted above the dignity of all the ranks of heaven, that it would truly be admitted to the Father’s eternity in all its fullness.

We can see, too, if we look, that what we celebrate today correlates with what we celebrate at the Annunciation and at Christmas – there, we celebrate the taking of human nature by God in the virgin mother’s womb; here, we celebrate the taking of our nature into the life of God.  Or, to put it another way: God shares our human life so that we might share his divine life – the marvellous exchange which lies at the heart of our faith.

However we choose to think of the ascension, what we can be certain about is that there is no unbridgeable gulf between God and human-beings; any perceived gap has been bridged, and definitively closed by Christ.  And, in turn, this means that there is no person who lies outside the scope of God’s saving grace.  It means that we cannot, as it were, ‘bring God into’ a discussion or a situation, precisely because he is already there. And it means that there is no necessary distinction between the sacred and the secular when we talk about the world.  There is only one world, and it is the world brought into being by God.  It means that human nature is inherently conducive to God and his grace.  Of course, there are many who reject this and who resist divine grace; but we might reasonably say that they are acting against their nature, which is why they can never find a lasting and genuine fulfilment and why they are likely to look for fulfilment in the wrong places.  Of course, we are all prone to this error whenever we act against our nature and forget the God who made us.

After the ascension, the apostles and Our Lady waited in prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that they could live and witness in the power of the divine life that gift would bring to them.  They were able to go out and bring people everywhere to faith.  We have received the same gift and, when we celebrate Pentecost next Sunday, we have an opportunity to consider afresh the nature of this gift and the capacities it bestows upon us.  For, following the Lord’s ascension, his active work in the world and his message of redemption falls upon his followers in each place and time.  It is now our time, and we have been set where we are to be his witnesses.  We have been given all the resources we need to ‘proclaim the Good News to all creation’.