On the Musings of a Sociologist

I pause today to note an interesting talk by a sociologist of religion. There's many things worthy of note in what Prof. Martin has to say, but the ones that leapt out were when he reminded me of Screwtape. For instance:

I pause also, to pursue the comparison and the contrast between Western Europe and the United States with respect to a couple of related contemporary developments. They are the return of magic and the rise of spirituality that Heelas and Woodhead speak of as ‘re-sacralisation’.

Regis Debray in his extraordinary biography of God over the last three thousand years claims that ‘The Twilight of the Gods is Morning for the Magicians’... in the wide open spaces of the United States the gods and the magicians enjoy high noon together. The same applies to spirituality. In Western Europe spirituality, with art and music as further sources of consolation and inspiration, is often encountered outside the churches. Spirituality tends to offer an alternative to faith, as it does, for example, in Germany.

In Germany, I should note, it's common for the not-particularly-religious to say "Gaia knows" instead of "God knows" (which sounds better in German than English). I didn't spend my time in the Free State of Bavaria examining all the weird and wonderful ways in which human spirituality finds expression outside of established religion, but a kind of secular mysticism does tend to appear in their culture and music. It tended to repulse me so I didn't look deeper; mysticism is Jacob wrestling with God and limping through the wilderness to his family afterwards, blessed and exhausted and with a dislocated thigh; or Elijah, who listened while fire and wind and earthquake raged, but the voice of the Most High was not in them, but then came a whisper in the stillness, and he walked forth to talk to God, covering his face in fear. Post-modern mysticism seems oriented to leaving the soul self-satisfied, coming to an arrangement with that howling external need without actually acknowledging that it is an external need, so it exists to proper mysticism in the same relationship that onanism does to sex.

Although when the Germans do proper Weltschmerz, that's another matter, and they still can.

This reminded me, somewhat tangentially I confess, of Screwtape's oft-quoted comments that:

I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight.

The modern state of affairs isn't quite what Unca Screwtape wants, but then, he's always looking to have his cake and eat it too. There's a lot more scepticism about science these days, and there's widespread acceptance of the fact that science doesn't describe everything worthwhile - the concept of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" is pretty widely-accepted. So I don't know if it's necessary anymore to ally magic and materialism, although I guess it's a useful tool, if only because of the impoverished philosophical state of affairs - positivist logic has usurped the name and place of Reason, but man is a spiritual animal in spite of that; so Screwtape's Materialist Magus is actually pretty well adapted to the modern climate - a sense of reason in keeping with scientific philosophy, but an inchoate and diffuse sense of the spiritual that's carefully calibrated not to make too many moral demands on him.

Professor Martin was a lot closer to Screwtape's thought here, though:

I hope that... I have offered considerations undermining the idea that religion recedes as science advances. At least if I were an atheist anxious to disturb the faith of an intelligent young friend, I would recommend a course in biblical criticism, ‘penny plain and tuppence coloured’, or in psychobabble and sociobabble, or, best of all, a vigorous drench in romantic literary Weltschmertz. But not, definitely not, a bracing course in astrophysics. He or she might rather too easily suppose he or she was tracing ‘the Mind of the Maker’.

Uncle S. got there before him:

Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable 'real life'. But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is 'the results of modern investigation'. Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!