On Saturday, February 28, 2004, at 02:21 PM, Jim Tantillo wrote:

> Gus wrote:
>
> 3.  That some scholar, or set of scholars, chooses to expand a word 
> beyond its
> common meaning may or may not be appropriate.  It depends on the yield 
> in
> understanding compared to the misunderstandings it generates.  Such 
> expansions
> may be useful in certain contexts, but quite possibly not in others.  
> For
> example, if "religion" simply means "comprehensive world view" then as 
> Jim
> stated, liberalism can be a religion.  But then the separation of 
> religion from
> government, a central liberal notion, is incoherent and illogical.  
> Yet it
> clearly is not incoherent or illogical in practice, even though there 
> are areas
> where distinctions and boundaries can appear contestable.
>
> The separation is of "Church" and state, not religion and state.  
> There IS a difference.  Church would refer to organized or 
> institutional religion, in the "substantive" Durkheimean sense.  
> Religion is something else, related of course, but something else.

Note that the below, whatever else it accomplishes, leaves my critique 
of Crichton untouched.  Which is what started all this.  But Jim wanted 
to stir things up, and he sure did!  ;-)
>
> Consider what Tillich has to say about rejecting religion in the name 
> of religion: this would take away some of the incoherence and apparent 
> illogicality noted by Gus above.

I don't think so - let's see....
>
> Tillich writes:
>
>        ". . . [Religion] is at home everywhere, namely, in the depth 
> of all functions of man's spiritual life.  Religion is the dimension 
> of depth in all of them.  Religion is the aspect of depth in the 
> totality of the human spirit.
>
>        "What does the metaphor _depth_ mean?  It means that the 
> religious aspect points to that which is ultimate, infinite, 
> unconditional in man's spiritual life.  Religion, in the largest and 
> most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern.  And ultimate 
> concern is manifest in all creative functions of the human spirit.  It 
> is manifest in the moral sphere as the unconditional seriousness of 
> the moral demand.  Therefore, if someone rejects religion in the names 
> of the moral function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the 
> name of religion.  Ultimate concern is manifest in the realm of 
> knowledge as the passionate longing for ultimate reality.  Therefore, 
> if anyone rejects religion in the name of the cognitive function of 
> the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion.  
> Ultimate concern is manifest in the aesthetic function of the human 
> spirit as the infinite desire to express ultimate meaning.  Therefore, 
> if anyone rejects religion in the name of the aesthetic function of 
> the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion.  You 
> cannot reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate 
> seriousness, or the state of being ultimately concerned, is itself 
> religion.  Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of 
> man's spiritual life.  This is the religious aspect of the human 
> spirit."
>

Jim - how can I have many "ultimate concerns" as my examples pretty 
clearly indicated - such as Pagan liberal environmentalist?
> At this point Gus (or SB, or Ben, or someone else) might object, "Hey, 
> wait a minute, that's not how I use the term 'religion'," and Tillich 
> is ready with a response.  He continues:
>
>        "But now the question arises, what about religion in the 
> narrower and customary sense of the word, be it institutional religion 
> or the religion of personal piety?  If religion is present in all 
> functions of the spiritual life, why has mankind developed religion as 
> a special sphere among others, in myth, cult, devotion, and 
> ecclesiastical institutions?  The answer is, because of the tragic 
> estrangement of man's spiritual life from its own ground and depth.  
> According to the visionary who has written the last book of the Bible, 
> there will be no temple in the heavenly Jerusalem , for God will be 
> all in all.  There will be no secular realm, and for this very reason 
> there will be no religious realm.  Religion will be again what is 
> essentially, the all-determining ground and substance of man's 
> spiritual life.  But this is vision, not reality.  In the real world, 
> which is our destiny, religion has received a narrower meaning.  It 
> has become a function of the human spirit among others and often in 
> conflict with them.  This situation is unavoidable; it is an element 
> in man's tragic predicament.  Religion is, like everything human, 
> great and tragic at the same time.  And since it expresses our 
> _ultimate_ concern, it is greater and more tragic than anything else."
>
>        --from MAN'S RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE (1954), reprinted in PHILOSOPHY 
> OF RELIGION: SELECTED READINGS, eds. William I. Rowe and William 
> Wainright (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1973), p. 244.
>
If I read Tillich correctly (I may not because I am relying only on 
this passage), he appears to be writing of the mystical insight that 
there is no where that the sacred does not exist, that the One (using 
Plotinus for the moment) is in all.  If this is what he means, I'm 
afraid you misapply him when you say that environmentalism is a 
religion based on Tillich's argument.

Our ultimate concerns underlie environmental concerns (and everything 
else), they form its ultimate foundation, but to equate 
environmentalism with religion in Tillich's first sense is to miss his 
point.  Tillich does not argue above that morality, knowledge, or 
aesthetic is a religion, but he would have to do that to make his point 
in harmony with yours that environmentalism is a religion.

As to his second sense - with which I happen to agree by the way - my 
earlier comments on why it makes no sense to call environmentalism a 
religion whereas it does make sense to say that Nature can be a 
religion still seems to stand.

> Jim again:  so I think there is an ongoing and pressing need to 
> continue to distinguish between the narrower, institutional sense of 
> the term, "religion," (we might call that, Religion Big "R") and this 
> broader, more philosophical sense of the term (religion small "r", if 
> you will).

Fine.  I think the distinction is useful if I understand it - but it 
does not impact my argument.

> I will continue to make the argument that environmentalism for many 
> people--you read that right, "many", as in hundreds of thousands if 
> not *millions* of people--is in fact a religion in the small "r" 
> sense.  It gives an overall metaphysic and depth to people's 
> existence, providing compass points by which many people get their 
> spiritual, cosmological, and metaphysical bearings in trying to make 
> sense of the world.

> I do not believe that the presumptive, _a priori_ rejection of 
> "environmentalism as religion" is warranted, especially if we seek to 
> understand this quality of _depth_ to which Tillich refers.
>
I think your arguments apply to Nature as a (big R and maybe small r , 
depending on the person) religion, not to environmentalism as a 
religion.

> And I would go further . . .  I actually think that environmentalism 
> can be comprehended as an instititutional, Big "R" Religion as well.  
> There are formal sects and denominations of environmentalism, each 
> with its own peculiar code and internal ethos that govern the 
> behaviors and beliefs of its adherants: "No compromise in name of 
> Mother Earth!"

I am impressed how often when people make this argument they turn to 
Earth First!  How many times do I have to write that some in that 
organization do fit such a description - I have only and consistently 
argued that they are not typical of environmentalism in general.  Now 
you seem to be arguing that different schools of thought and analysis 
constitute sects and denominations.  Jim, you can use words any way you 
wish so long as you don't mind being misunderstood, but please tell me 
how the differences between, say, members of the Sierra Club and 
members of Nature Conservancy become sects?  Especially because, unlike 
sects, membership over laps a lot.  I belong to Save the Redwoods 
League.  Is that a sect?  I belonged to the Sonoma Land Trust while I 
lived in Sonoma County.  Was that a sect?  It had an outlook, a 
strategy, and a focus.  Sometimes I like the ideas of Free Market 
Environmentalism, sometimes I think they are pernicious - depending on 
the idea involved.  Am I a heretic?  From which side?

In my opinion, you are using a metaphor that simply does not fit.
>
> Some environmentalists ARE in fact zealots, the original Zealots being 
> fanatical members of a fervent Jewish sect in the first century A.D. 
> (who among other things opposed the Roman domination of Palestine).
>
But zealotry was not a religion.  One might almost say - and I suspect 
Tillich would say - it is a perversion of the religious spirit, a wrong 
turn, a focus on the small while giving it the force of the infinite.  
Here earth First! might in some cases be a good example.

> I think there's a lot we can learn by "interpreting" environmentalism 
> in this way.

But Jim - referring now to your comments at the top of this post after 
incorporating what you added since, Tillich's small r religion does not 
apply to liberalism - it may be the ground of liberalism, but it is not 
liberalism.  IF liberalism is a religion, it is a religion in the sense 
that religion with a big R is a religion - doctrines, sects, etc.  As 
you yourself have written above.  And so the incoherency I described 
returns.  Liberalism is a "church"  so the separation of church as 
state is incoherent, at least whenever it is justified on liberal 
grounds.

Again - I do not think your expansion of the term "religion" helps 
here.  Crichton used it to attack, and I attacked back.  You use it for 
the far better reason to understand - but I don't see the pay off.  I 
really don't.  I think all the good that can come from the insight that 
there is a spiritual dimension to the motives of many environmentalists 
that cannot be easily fitted into traditional,organized religion 
Western style  comes out much more clearly from the Nature as religion 
point, which is hardly unique to me, and that confusing a religious 
approach to Nature with a supposedly similar or identical approach to 
environmentalism is a cause of more confusion than clarity.

best wishes,

Gus
>
> Jim