In one form or another, most everybody has heard the old fable from India in which a committee of blind men decides to research the nature of an elephant.
One blind man grabs the beast by its curling trunk and confidently declares that an elephant is like a snake.
Another bumps into its massive leg and announces that an elephant is like a tree.
A third gets ahold of its tail and avers that an elephant is like a rope.
Most of my sympathies in this story lie with the elephant. We never get to hear what this noble creature thinks of all the groping, or for that matter, how it likes being called a snake.
But as somebody who is paid to observe the wide world and characterize it by the end of the work day, I have more than a passing familiarity with the job of the blind men. And I enjoy reading the pronouncements of those who apparently have a much better grip on the animal than I do.
This week I encountered two such declarations about religion and American society, from men who are clearly working on opposite ends of the beast.
The first came from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and an articulate voice for conservative Christianity at large. In an article about the watered-down nature of faith in our times, he wrote:
“The larger culture is now a `theology-free zone’ in which Christian conviction may be tolerated, but only in so far as Christians do not intend for the truth they proclaim to make any difference in the culture.”
The second came from Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken writer perhaps best known for criticizing Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, before and after their deaths. In the journal Free Inquiry, a periodical devoted to promoting rationalism and secular humanism, Hitchens wrote:
“In the United States there is a strong prejudice against open, public discourse because anything that is divisive is assumed to be wrong, whereas anything that’s unifying or healing is assumed to be OK. This gives an advantage to self-centered religious speech . . .”
So which is it? Is America a place where religious prejudice stifles independent discourse? Or is it a place where serious religion is barely tolerated?
Hitchens and Mohler themselves are proof that it is neither.
Hitchens has made a flourishing career in magazines and on television, mostly by skewering whatever wanders into his sights. Being a contrarian of the most acidic sort may put Hitchens in the minority. But society has not stifled his thoughts or put him at any obvious disadvantage; on the contrary, one suspects it has rewarded him handsomely for being entertainingly divisive.
For his part, Mohler has worked hard to make a difference in American culture through his Christian convictions. The larger culture, in turn, has not only tolerated Mohler, but speeded his passage to a prominent post in religious academia, and repeatedly acclaimed him as a rising national leader.
But from their opposite ends of the elephant, Hitchens and Mohler do seem to have identified something in the American character upon which they agree. As a culture, Americans shrink from intellectual certainty; as individuals, we often waver in our convictions, or fail to act upon them with any rigor.
There are plenty of bad reasons for that. As Mohler suggests, most Americans don’t have the intellectual foundation to sustain traditional beliefs. As Hitchens implies, there is a bias toward sentimentality. As both point out, America will choose easy over hard any time.
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But there is a redeeming trait that undermines intellectual and religious absolutes in America as well: humility.
By definition, a person who believes in God is a person who understands that humans do not have all the answers. And while faith brings with it some absolutes, might it not be better in other matters for a believer to err on the side of uncertainty than to slide into worship of one’s own ideas? In the old days that was called pride, and it was not a trivial sin.
For those who put their faith in pure human rationality, meanwhile, there is plenty of hard, historical proof that humans know less than they think.
I suppose one could say, “That was then, and this is now; you’re wrong, and I’m completely, unvaryingly, logically right.”
But I think–and this is just a hunch–that those are the people most likely to get stepped on by the elephant.
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