Two Opposing Views on Religious Change

1
Two Opposing Views on Religious Change

• Philip Rieff
• Robert Bellah

2
Rieff The Triumph of the Therapeutic

• Religion has become therapeutic rather than
  authoritative
• It reflects a general cultural trend in which
  there are no absolute standards
• There are few positive communities
• Built on bonds of commitment to a common symbolic
• Instead, we are a society of negative
  communities
• United around information and services

3
Freud/psychoanalysis

• Therapy has no doctrine of the good life
• Rather, it is nondirective, non-preachy
• The goal of therapy is to make the individual a
  self-determining being
• Therapy typically teaches the individual to be an
  artist of his/her own life
• Freuds goal was to enhance the patients ability
  to choose
• There was no cure in the moralistic sense of a
  way of life or set of values to affirm

4
The goal of psychoanalysis, according to Rieff is

• To limit the power of the community over the
  individual
• To resist all external moralizing (and instead
  attend to ones personal goals/desires)
• There is no corporate salvation
• I.e., identified with a group or ideology
• Meaning is what you create for yourself

5
Psychological Man (modal character type of our
time)

• Individualistic (self is the prime center of
  value)
• Emphasis on remission and release rather than
  renunciation
• Uninterested in a unified worldview
• Partial insights only
• Live guiltlessly (being your own judge)

6
Implications for religion of this shift in
character type

• Death of book religions (Judaism, Christianity,
  Islam)
• Rise of religions that celebrate
  self-fulfillment, self-actualization
• Rise of new barbarism
• Rieff thinks that it is infantile to think that
  one can have/do everything
• Faith, says Rieff, requires interdicts (I.e.,
  limits, restrictions, rules and principles)
• Truth cannot say yes to every alternative

7
Robert Bellah Beyond Belief

• He rejects literalistic, non-metaphorical
  interpretations of religion
• Religion is always symbolic
• There is a mysterious, non-cognitive element to
  the deepest expressions of religion
• Therefore, religious truths cannot be frozen in
  creeds, theological systems, or institutional
  structures
• Symbols point beyond themselves to some larger
  reality

8
Two approaches to religion

• Historical realism (which he rejects)
• Non-metaphorical, literalistic approach to
  religion (attempting to represent history/truth
  as it was)
• E.g., literal stories of origin of world,
  resurrection
• Symbolic realism (which he endorses)
• Sacred scriptures contain stories, images, and
  myths that point beyond themselves to more
  universal truths and realities

9
Unbelief in contemporary culture

• The inability to accept the literalism of old
  myths correlates with a rise in literacy and
  education
• There is no necessary tension between science and
  religion (unless one takes a literalistic view of
  sacred texts)
• Religion is that set of symbolic forms by which
  one comes to terms with his/her fate

10
Wallace Stevens (quoted by Bellah)

• The final belief is to believe in a fiction,
  which you know to be a fiction, there being
  nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know
  that it is a fiction and that you believe in it
  willingly.

11
Thomas Luckmann The Invisible Religion

• The most revolutionary trait of modern society is
  that personality and truth are cultivated in the
  private rather than public sphere
• Individual is left to his/her own devices in
  choosing goods, services, friends, and ultimate
  meanings
• Individual is a buyer purchasing elements of
  identity

12
Implications of Luckmanns theory for religion

• Religion has become a private phenomenon
• Truth is something that is marketed rather than
  taught
• Religion is taking its marketing cues from the
  demands of its potential audience
• Thus completely reversing the locus of authority
  (and, potentially, the integrity of the product)