In my experience[0], most religious people use their religion to create and foster a sense of difference with Others, and do not keep the focus internally. American politics is a crucible of religious sources of obligational determinism locked in combat with secular forces.
If you genuinely think you've found meaning, it's not selfish to keep it to yourself, until such time as someone asks for your thoughts in their own search for meaning. Which means it's likely to only happen with people you've grown close enough to that they open their private selves to you.
[0]: A born-and-raised ethnic Christian who helped start two churches, whose family is still extremely religious, and who lives in the still very religious southeastern US.
>In my experience[0], most religious people use their religion to create and foster a sense of difference with Others, and do not keep the focus internally.
Having lived in both religious and secular communities, it seems to me that tribalism is a human universal. Secular people have no trouble judging the religious by secular standards. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just not clear about what the secularist complaint is at that point.
Also, my point was not that Christians (and religious people in general) never pass judgement on the rest of the world, but that most outsiders don't see the investment Christians make in subjecting themselves to scrutiny by the standards of their beliefs.
Complaints about religious hypocrisy are sometimes relevant, but sometimes they are a red-herring.
> American politics is a crucible of religious sources of obligational determinism locked in combat with secular forces.
Could you clarify what you mean by "obligational determinism"? The only google search results I could find lead me back to this thread.
> If you genuinely think you've found meaning, it's not selfish to keep it to yourself, until such time as someone asks for your thoughts in their own search for meaning. Which means it's likely to only happen with people you've grown close enough to that they open their private selves to you.
I'm as annoyed by the door-to-door evangelists as the next person (I think there are better approaches) but if you genuinely think other people might be missing out on eternity, then isn't it a bit schadenfreude to not reach out to them at all?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can respect a secular person who says to a religious person "please don't talk to me about religion". Assuming the secularist agrees to do the same, the theist should generally respect that wish. I can also respect the secularist who engages theists and attempts to dissuade them of their beliefs. It makes no sense to me that secularists should ask theists in general to keep their beliefs private, as if they were talking about the color of their underwear or something.
Apologies for missing your reply till now, first of all.
> Having lived in both religious and secular communities, it seems to me that tribalism is a human universal.
Unfortunately, this is all too true. I did not mean to imply the non-religious were excluded from being tribal and differentiating themselves from Others, as well. I was only responding from my experience that, particularly within the public sphere, religion occupies just as strong a force in identity politics as other personal features.
> Could you clarify what you mean by "obligational determinism"? The only google search results I could find lead me back to this thread.
Thanks for asking. You've caused me to go back to an old text and discover I had, somewhere over the years, inadvertently mis-remembered a particular phrasing. The phrasing I should have used is "sources of religious obligation" or "religious sources of obligation". Basically, minus the determinism—too much time between studying and recalling philosophy led to a pretty boneheaded error. I draw the phrase from the excellent debate between Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff in Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate. My error, over the years, is rooted in a careless recollection of the role religious sources of obligation play in determining what a person thinks should or should not be done, particularly where coercive public policies are concerned.
Thank you for the response, and for finding the reference.
> I was only responding from my experience that, particularly within the public sphere, religion occupies just as strong a force in identity politics as other personal features.
That is true. In contrast, one of my main points was that there is a significant amount of private, sincere religious practice that is not (primarily) political in nature.
I did not wish to downplay the role of religion in politics (which you correctly point out is significant) but rather the role of politics in religion.
Now, the question of what role religion should play (or should be afforded) in politics is an interesting one; one that I don't have a clear position on at present. I read some Wolterstorff while I was studying philosophy, but I don't recall that specific book. From what I have sampled so far it seems quite interesting.
> Now, the question of what role religion should play (or should be afforded) in politics is an interesting one; one that I don't have a clear position on at present.
I definitely recommend the Audi-Wolterstorff book. They both tackle this specific issue from opposing perspectives, and I found it highly illuminating at the time. It has remained with me to this day—even in misremembered form.
If you genuinely think you've found meaning, it's not selfish to keep it to yourself, until such time as someone asks for your thoughts in their own search for meaning. Which means it's likely to only happen with people you've grown close enough to that they open their private selves to you.
[0]: A born-and-raised ethnic Christian who helped start two churches, whose family is still extremely religious, and who lives in the still very religious southeastern US.