Over the last few weeks we’ve been talking about the relationship between the story-verse and the matter-verse. As human beings we must inhabit stories yet as we saw with Jim Carrey there is an uneasy relationship between the stories we inhabit and the stuff of the matter-verse upon which our stories seem to depend.
In the Western world our ability to believe that the matter-verse is dependent on the story-verse has become susceptible to skepticism. Why is it so hard for some to believe but not others? Who is right? Are there reasons behind people’s beliefs that expose them as being illegitimate?
Russell Shorto in his history of the city of Amsterdam notes the startling transformation in belief in that city as illustrated by one woman.
Indeed, by the later twentieth century, that kind of religious freedom was itself able to evolve in the direction of freedom from religion. Maybe the most profound post-1960s transformation in the city was in the role that religion played in people’s lives. In the city of the miracle of Amsterdam, in what had been one of Europe’s most devout societies, people simply stopped going to church. A single set of statistics tells the story. In 1900, more than 45 percent of Amsterdammers identified with Dutch Protestantism, the Christian denomination for which their ancestors had fought a war of independence against the Spanish empire. By 1971, only about 18 percent considered themselves part of the faith. In 2000, the number was 5 percent. If liberalism is, as many of its adherents and detractors alike have said through the centuries, a force that ultimately stands in opposition to religion, or as an eventual replacement for religion, then here too Amsterdam seems to be leading the way.
The implementation of the social welfare state after World War II also brought sharp and nearly instantaneous changes. People suddenly got subsidies: unemployment payments, sick leave. Jobs came with built-in pensions. There is a relationship between the rise of the welfare state and the steady unchurching of the city and the country, as the welfare state took over some of the security-blanket functions that churches had provided. And many people found this to be a positive development. Jan Donkers, for example, told me how throughout his childhood in North Amsterdam his devout Catholic grandmother kept three statues of saints on her living room mantel. Then she started getting welfare checks of forty guilders a month. The next time he went to her house, he said, he saw the statues outside next to the trash. “She said, ‘What has the church done for us, apart from anointing German tanks when they came? Churches didn’t buy bread for us. The Labor Party did.’ ”
Shorto, Russell (2013-10-22). Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City (pp. 299-300). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Shorto’s reading of the source of this is with the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. He was part of the Jewish community that fled Portugal in the 17th century and found refuge in the Netherland who had been resisting the Roman Catholic Spanish. Shorto’s reading of Spinoza on religion is nearly post-modern.
Devils, hell, and sin, and for that matter miracles and heaven: these were seen by freethinkers as invented devices for controlling people, for keeping them chained to the will of the established authorities. The new philosophers promoted common sense and reason in ordinary life. Theologians saw at once what was at stake: if a system such as what Spinoza advocated took hold, society would not be rooted in church and monarchy; instead, people would insist that politics have as their guiding principles things like the promotion of individual life, individual liberty, and the pursuit of individual happiness.
Shorto, Russell (2013-10-22). Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City (pp. 207-208). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Now four centuries later, we inhabit a world where religion seems a lifestyle option, something that might be useful if we’re hungering for meaning or comfort especially in the service of personal happiness, expression or fulfillment. If it doesn’t pan out we can, as the Dutch woman did, throw it in the trash and embrace politics, art, entertainment or whatever works for us.
Lent in the Consumer Culture
Lent was the practice of Christian communities for centuries that embraced a renunciation of pleasure or comfort in anticipation of the remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. James Smith, a philosopher at Calvin College notes that the change in the cultural water around us similarly impacts how we experience and imagine this traditional practice.
“even our self-denial is an act of self-expression. Our submission to discipline is converted to act of will power.”
All over social media men and women will tweet and Facebook what it is that they are giving up. This will all be a part of the assumed effort of self-improvement. Even though it tends to rub against Jesus’ comments on fasting in the Sermon on the Mount on the whole the selective appropriating of the tradition for edification is likely no worse than selective neglect. What Smith helps us see is that the dominant story-verse that grips us is that of the individual pursuit of happiness and if religion can be called into service to pursue such an end even ardent atheists can become selective libertarians.
Jesus Changes Time in the Story-verse Continue reading →
