On New Atheism, Part IV: New Atheism Was Good, Actually.

The bright side of New Atheism, a Profane Holiness.

Okay, so we are on part four. Instead of ragging on low-hanging fruit, I figured it was time to paint a fuller picture of the implications of New Atheism — namely, concerning the religious landscape. In preparation for this essay, I read several journal articles to help me orient the direction of the essay. One of the primary angles comes from an article by Thomas White, titled “Profane Holiness: Why the New Atheism Is (Partially) Good for True Spirituality and Religion,” in which White touches on how the New Atheism movement does good in that it was aptly critical of the worst of religion from the perspective of Simone Weil’s observation that atheism is a “purification of the notion of God.”¹ For the religiously inclined who wish to take this confrontation seriously, a sort of call to temperance or cleansing is brought to the forefront. This cleansing comes about by challenging the old narratives and systems in place that enable a religious tradition to entertain terrorism, oppression, bigotry, bloodshed, and anti-intellectualism.

In using the term "the New Atheists" (TNAs), I am primarily referring to the works and opinions of the four or five horsemen of atheism — I do include Hirsi Ali, pre-conversion, in here — but also the views of "Old Atheists" who you would likely find in Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist," and my personal experience in New Atheist communities. I will also draw from Diana Butler Bass’s “Christianity After Religion,” which, in brief, outlines shifting trends in the US regarding spirituality and religion. These books should enable me to address what I believe, namely, the five horsemen of atheism that are rightfully critiqued, and how the critique may benefit Christianity within the US. Not only this, but I also mean to point toward how some people come to develop a spiritual and/or religious commitment after experiencing either a loss of faith or starting with a lack of faith. Although not cited here, I came across several articles that detailed a person’s renewal only after they had shed their preconceptions of what it means to engage in a religious tradition. This essay only touches on how the triumph of a fundamentalist kind of Christianity gave rise to the misconception that Christianity must necessarily resemble fundamentalism and the Christian Right. The first part of the essay sets the scene for how this came to be. The second part touches on how the religious landscape has evolved over the past 50 or so years.

In the third part, I will discuss some of my frustrations with how the Christian landscape seems to dismiss the critique brought forward by New Atheism, and what this may mean for the future. The fourth part of this essay will touch on how Swami Vivekananda took some of this cleansing seriously nearly 130 years ago today (~1890 - 1900s). He, however, utilizes his appreciation for Buddhism as a means for purifying Sanatana Dharma or religion more broadly. In his various letters, he once mentions how he wishes the “great teachings of the Hindu faith” could be joined with “the wonderful sympathy of that logical development of Hinduism — Buddhism.”² The idea to conjoin the New Atheist critique of religion with what we may call the Buddhist critique of religion came to me while listening to Nishanth Selvalingam’s lecture given at the Atlanta Vedanta Center wherein he mentioned how a lot of his congregation became interested in religion — namely Hinduism — by way of Buddhism after having left Christianity due to experiencing bad religion — religion at its worst. He had mentioned something like Buddhism was a cure for those who felt negatively toward (traditional) religion — namely Christianity, of course. After having taken that cure, many of them began to see Christianity as something meaningful and not as bad as they once thought it was.³ Buddhism here effectively negates the bad ground that deters certain people from finding anything of worth in a religious tradition.

Nishanth had mentioned something like that Swami Vivekananda functioned similarly to the Buddha by being heavy-handed in advocating for Advaita while traveling and teaching the West (primarily the US and England, but also France and Switzerland) about Hinduism. The US and England, of course, were, in some sense, much more Christian and unfamiliar (and perhaps suspicious or judgmental) about a foreign religious tradition like Hinduism in this period in such a way that Vivekananda would likely not have made much ground in reaching people’s minds about the philosophy of the Vedas and Upanishads if he were heavy-handed on the more bhakti elements of the tradition. Vivekananda, who declares the Buddha his Ishta in one of his letters, was the perfect candidate for reaching and teaching in the West. His approach is, perhaps, best exemplified in one of his first addresses during the parliament of the world’s religions in which he states that he does not aim to convert anyone to Hinduism, instead he wishes to see the Methodist become a better Methodist, the Presbyterian a better Presbyterian, and the Unitarian a better Unitarian.⁴ He seemed to be of the mind that knowledge of Vedanta could spur the improvement, not unlike how he figures that Buddhism could improve Hinduism. I could also have written about how Advaita Vedanta could serve as a means to purify a religious tradition or landscape in a manner similar to Buddhism, but we shall keep this as brief as possible — which is likely not all that brief.⁵ While this part will be brief, it cannot be overstated just how influential Vivekananda was, both directly and indirectly, in the US. Not only influential, but he did bring a revitalization to the religious landscape in the US in his time. Unfortunately, now that a century and more has passed, it requires a bit of snooping to see his influence on, namely, American Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, theosophy, and many authors like Aldous Huxley and Joseph Campbell, as well as having introduced yoga (with its meditation) and the Vedanta Society to the US.

Part I, Setting the Scene

To begin, I will preface that, of course, there is nothing too new in the external and internal critiques of religion that will be mentioned here. Religious traditions and institutions often undergo significant reforms when there is sufficient cause. Without delving too deeply into the historical context and causes of the New Atheist Movement, the movement arises, in part, due to the rise of a particular strain of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, extremism, and other political developments. I will hone in on the US and the US’s Christianity, which had experienced what some would call a “Fourth Great Awakening.”⁶ This awakening was, of course, not without controversy. Brought to the forefront was often a more (reactionary) conservative politic and different theological outlook in comparison to the Christian Modernism that had peaked around World War 2, coupled with a reaction to modernity (and soon postmodernity) with its secularism, women’s suffrage, changing social norms, legal abortion, desegregation, the theory of evolution, and so on. The coming to terms (or lack thereof) with the fruits of the changing times, both modernity and postmodernity, will be an underlying point in this essay.

We begin with looking toward the conflict that ensued when the emerging Christian Right of the ~1970s⁷ finds itself unable to come to terms with the changing socio-cultural and political landscape within the US. One movement or faction that came to meet this challenger was what would become the New Atheist Movement, though there were (and still are) various secularist and humanist groups (outside of but also within religious communities)⁸ that were challenging this vocal and active coalition of Christians that vied for more attention and weight in political decisions. Additionally, the rise of the Christian Right was not left unchallenged by the many Christians who found themselves at odds with the politics and/or theology of the Religious Right. Regarding the Religious Right, I have in mind what would become the Moral Majority and other similar coalitions often lumped under the “Christian Right” or “Religious Right,” which were responsible for electoral victories, most notably those of Jimmy Carter,⁹ Richard Nixon, and later George Bush. This political development is at least one prong of many that beckons for a profane holiness, for the critiquing of a religion.

The political victories of the Christian Right throughout the 1970s to the present day came at a cost. The cost being the reputation and reception of Christianity to the youth, the religiously unaffiliated (religious nones), the politically moderate or liberal, and many Christians themselves. The victories also seem to signal the closing of alternative horizons, as the US did not have an organized Christian Left coalition comparable to the Christian Right, and this is one of many gaps that the critics of Christianity (e.g., Sam Harris) used to argue that Christianity cannot be moderate or anything other than politically conservative and theologically fundamentalist in the way that the Christian Right postured itself. The political views of the Christian Right and cultural-political battles of this period centered on whether the theory of evolution should be taught in public schools, the place of religion in public schools, sex education, secularism (or the relationship between church and state), homosexuality, and so on.¹⁰ It is within this period that Christianity begins to gain the reputation that it must lean politically conservative in sharing the views held by the Christian Right. Due to this, it is not uncommon to hear something along the lines of the left having “handed over religion and values” to the (far) right so that the right may “define religion in totally partisan ways.”¹¹¹² As it stands, the Christian Right dominates the Christian image in the US. It does not need to be this way, however, and the critiques of religion from the New Atheists (TNAs), if viewed from a particular perspective, shook the many assumptions about Christianity within the US.

This consolidation of the Christian Right occurs as fundamental evangelicals outnumber the other Christian movements in many states — particularly within the Bible Belt. As I would rather focus on the theology of Christian fundamentalism and its critique, we will jump into the what and why of Christian fundamentalism.

In brief, Christian fundamentalism emerged in the early 20th century as Christians in the US were divided on how the church, with its traditions and doctrines, should respond to emerging theological views, higher criticism of the Bible, modernism, and new scientific knowledge. This was not the first time there was widespread religious division in the US, however, as there were numerous schisms and divisions since Independence Day. It could be said, however, that this was one of the most far-reaching divides that eventually involved nearly every denomination in the US. Christian modernists were those willing to work with the emerging changes, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. In adapting to evolution, however, a question arises regarding the authority and reliability of the Bible. The fundamentalist objection to adapting to evolution is that it compromises Biblical inerrancy, the idea that the Bible does not contain any errors. This sets the scene for the development of the Five Fundamentals by the Presbyterians; it was the adherence to these fundamentals that made one a Christian fundamentalist in the theological sense. Although outside the realm of theology, the term “fundamentalism” has come to mean many different things. When I speak on Christian fundamentalism, I am primarily referring to the adherence to all or most of the Five Fundamentals.¹³

Part II, Changing Landscape

In her book Christianity After Religion, Diana Butler Bass highlights how “American religion is essentially a two-party system,” or as a tripartite system composed of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. In light of this, much of what is happening and continues to happen in the larger political and cultural public arena also occurs within American religious traditions. One result of this was that the Mainline churches had suffered a loss in respectability during the intense infighting on the matter of women’s ordination and of homosexuality when, previously, they held more respect from the general public. Thus, we have a division of churches resembling the political divide and distrust, paired with the general suspicion of religious authorities or organized religion among US Americans.¹⁴¹⁵

Bass spends a good deal of time on how and why we have seen a rise in those who self-identify as spiritual but not religious, and one factor seems to be that those who find themselves unenthused¹⁶ with the state of one or many churches or denominations eventually opt out of organized religion altogether. For those who do or do not completely opt out of organized religion, the self-identification of spiritual but not religious (SBNR) may be done so in (un)consciously wanting to appear socially desirable. This may particularly be the case for those who do not completely opt out of organized religion, so they may signify that they may not wholly agree with a church’s doctrine.¹⁷ In this era, those who find themselves more interested in emulating Christ Jesus and/or not aligned with the Religious Right seem to have to preface their participation in religion or in church attendance in such a way to signify that they are not religious in that sort of way — that is, in the way the Religious Right postures itself. Bass also cites statistics that, unfortunately, suggest that most unchurched Americans hold negative views toward Christians or Christianity.

The issue here may be that Christianity, as an institution, like all or most institutions in the US, is not viewed as trustworthy — one 2010 poll, perhaps outdated for better or worse, rated clergy as trustworthy as bankers after the Wall Street Crisis of 2008. Not only are the clergy viewed as untrustworthy, but there may be real attrition of churchgoers brought on by the relentless culture war, compounded by real dissatisfaction with religious institutions. The dissatisfaction, as Bass touches on, may be related to how a church seems unable or unwilling to promote social justice or various sorts of aid to those who need it, or in how some churches/denominations are still arguing about homosexuality, women’s ordination, and who one should vote for. One way dissatisfaction manifests is that fewer people view Christianity or religion broadly as having any relevance in their lives or worldviews. The Mainline Christian tradition has been steadily declining from around the end of World War 2 for a variety of reasons.¹⁸ One of those reasons was that the fourth great awakening, the birth and surge of the fundamental-evangelical tradition as most may know it, drew in many of those who were dissatisfied with the Mainline tradition. This gave some of those in the fundamental-evangelical tradition the ability to claim a sort of victory, but toward the turn of the new millennium, the fundamental-evangelicals and the megachurches have also faced a steep decline in attendance and membership as, primarily, the youth in these fundamental-evangelical Christian churches find the church’s positions (both theological and, sometimes, politically) untenable. If the polls are anything to go by, the majority of Americans, especially the late millennials, zoomers, and more recent generations, hold opinions that run contrary to what the Religious Right may espouse regarding homosexuality, the woman’s role, abortion, Biblical inerrancy, the existence of hell, religious pluralism, and so forth.¹⁹

Given the political victories of the Christian Right, many have come to understand Christianity as one and the same with the Christian Right. This, I would think, gives the New Atheist movement, or the New Atheists (TNAs), all the more power in a time when both the religiously affiliated and the religiously unaffiliated were feeling displeased and distrustful of the state of both their religious institutions and communities, as well as the ongoing cultural and political changes. That is to say, TNAs came to prominence in the yawning gap, the growing contradiction between what the Christian Right stood for and the socio-cultural reality that was moving away from what the Christian Right vied for. Bass frequently notes how most critiques lodged toward religion are themselves a hope for a sort of renewal or reformation — “spiritual outbursts almost always precede real reform.”²⁰ Despite the fame and best-selling books produced by TNAs, the polls suggest that Americans still consider themselves to be spiritual or open to spirituality. The rise of the nones, religiously unaffiliated, agnostics, and so forth has not precluded an interest in spirituality. This should not be a surprise, as even someone with the certainty of Dawkins in the non-existence of God can affirm a spiritual practice — see, perhaps, Sam Harris and his advocacy for Buddhism. We can then understand some of the SBNR phenomena as being born out of dissent with how Christianity came to be understood and experienced from around 1960 to the present.²¹

The role of TNAs in this period of changing religious landscapes, then, is not much different from that of the reformer or the one who is dissatisfied with a powerful but now waning religious faction. Insofar as TNAs can be credited with contributing to the decline of the conventionally religious or Christian, TNAs may have done some good at tempering the Christian fundamentalist. The critiques and lambasting of religion from TNAs remind society at large that religion can indeed run backward and degenerate into a sort of clerico-fascism, and/or produce a tremendous amount of anti-intellectualism, and hostility at its worst. We may also be reminded not to take certain historical developments for granted, because, again, TNAs emerge as a response to a particular facet of Christian history: the rise of fundamentalist-evangelicalism, which itself is a response to Christian modernism. To highlight what it means to be a Christian fundamentalist, we must look toward the Five Fundamentals developed around 1909-1910. While it could be said that some churches held to all or some number of the five points before this doctrinal declaration, a part of its novelty and importance is that this (The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.) was the first denomination to articulate and pass ecclesiastical legislation in favor of what would become the common ground for future Christian fundamentalism. This articulation occurred during the modernist-fundamentalist divide as churches in the US²² grappled with changing times and in reconciling theology to developments in modern science, the question of slavery, rights of women, and so on.²³

I have likely criticized TNAs in at least one previous essay regarding how they often target the low-hanging fruit of religious circles or pundits. When being more generous or charitable, I cannot really take issue with this because a lot of low-hanging fruit came about with the rise of the fundamentalist-evangelical and Christian Right.²⁴ Beyond the leveling of Christianity (or of any movement) that tends to occur when cooperating with the secular politics at the level it was and is, the fruits of modernity came to fruition and were reaped. Birth control, the theory of evolution, changing population demographics, access to critical biblical scholarship, and the like could not have been and were not reversed. Saint Augustine’s warning about Christians making fools of themselves by spouting scientific nonsense eventually proved itself by how the fundamentalists built their castle on shifting sands. This allowed TNAs or just about anyone to easily point out the flaws in Christianity or, for example, the Five Fundamentals.

Four of the Five Fundamentals are easy to pick apart or, at the least, four of them quickly come into tension with easy-to-access data.²⁵ First, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy causes an upholder of such a doctrine to defend a spectrum of difficult-to-reconcile facts. It should be noted, however, that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy can have different meanings for certain individuals or churches. Sometimes, an error or contradiction in the Bible can be brushed off as a scribal error without violating the doctrine of inerrancy. For example, the discrepancy regarding who killed the giant Goliath (see 1 Samuel 17 and 2 Samuel 21:19) is a matter of debate, depending on who you listen to, and may be attributed to a scribal error or to competing scriptural and authorial traditions being conjoined into what eventually became the Bible. In any case, there can be a disagreement on what constitutes an error. Depending on how a Christian fundamentalist understands what constitutes an error, it can be easy to point a discrepancy out in such a way that the Christian begins to see how the Bible obviously contains some error — be it scientific, historic, or a contradictory narrative (sequence of events). Speaking from experience,²⁶ many former Christians of the fundamentalist sort begin their deconversion after they find some Biblical detail that is seemingly impossible to reconcile within reason. This is not typically the case for Christians who belong to traditions that did not subscribe to biblical inerrancy. The poll data we have on the percentage of US Christians who held to something like Biblical inerrancy around the heyday of TNAs suggests that about half or more of all US Christians held to inerrancy.²⁷ This being so, I cannot really rag on TNAs for picking on low-hanging fruit. I do bemoan that I agree and understand why Richard Dawkins responds the way he does when told that he attacks the worst of religion and not the best, the “sophisticated theologians like Tillich and Bonhoeffer.” He answers, “The melancholy truth is that this kind of understated, decent, revisionist religion is numerically negligible.”²⁸²⁹ Depending on how Dawkins means revisionist here, I may disagree, but I cannot disagree that the theology I am fond of is not a theology reflected in, perhaps, even 10% of the US Christian population at any time passed. It is a theology, however, that TNAs do not give attention to, and, I think, is a theology that is much more difficult to take issue with — as Dawkins himself suggests in the answer he gives. Additionally, Dawkins (not unlike Nietzsche) does give respect — though nuanced and, sometimes, difficult to discern — to religion or some religious individuals.³⁰ Back to the Five Fundamentals, however.

Second, the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. How Christians understand this issue depends on their tradition. For Protestants outside of the Mainline, older church traditions tend to have a diminished influence on their theological stances. Whereas, historically, most Protestants held to the virginity and perpetual virginity of the Theotokos Mary, when one gives much more authority to scripture over tradition, there is room for disagreement. The virgin birth is sometimes understood as fulfilling a prophecy or expectation (Isaiah 7:14); however, the point of contention is that the Hebrew word used for “young woman” (not necessarily a virgin) was translated into the Greek word παρθένος, meaning “virgin.” Given that the Hebrew Bible was not originally written in Greek, some prefer to give more weight to the Hebrew reading and thus reject the virgin birth for this reason. Regardless of the tradition, it is a bit of a messy affair as the New Testament mentions that Jesus had siblings, and there are apologetics for those who do subscribe to the perpetual virginity. Given that TNAs tend to eschew the use of theological insider knowledge, they can — albeit crudely — demonstrate the discrepancy between the Hebrew word used and the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ and/or the mention of Jesus' other siblings. At the very least, we can notice a tension here that may give way to doubting or rejecting the doctrine of the virgin birth. Underlying the previous point, this point, and future points is that the critique of these fundamentals gives rise to tension, and this tension should disrupt what are (metaphysical) assumptions that are taken for granted. As of right now, this disruption is commonly going by the name of “deconstruction” by those who notice the discrepancy between dogma and data. This deconstruction can serve as a means of profane holiness by scraping away what is stagnant and no longer in service of what is good and holy.³¹

The third and fourth points can be touched on together. The doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ and the historical reality of Christ’s miracles attempt to affirm the resurrection and miracles as historical facts. These are, maybe, too easy to take issue with, because it only requires a modicum of skepticism. One can ask, “How can we know with certainty that these are veridical historical facts?” or “Can you demonstrate these to be veridical historical facts?” To which one may respond by attempting to argue that the Bible is a reliable historical document, but this can easily fall flat due to its often circular reasoning. This, I think, is more troublesome for the denominations that eschew arguments from church tradition because there is, at least, another source to try to draw upon beyond solely the Bible. Nonetheless, it is impossible to reach scientific proof for the historical resurrection or the miracles performed in the New Testament. Frankly, I do not think there is a need to rely on verification for the miracles; one can simply acknowledge the possibility of such events. To require someone to affirm something in the absence of a good defense is an easy way to introduce doubt — not unlike how a suspect without an alibi is quickly put under scrutiny. We should also perhaps remember that, narratively, the apostle Thomas doubted the resurrection until he touched the resurrected Christ. In reading John 20:29, I do not think a doctrine of the bodily resurrection and, by extension, the performance of miracles is necessary, as we may have faith in the absence of evidence. I may go a step further in that this faith does not necessitate an affirmation of a veridical historical resurrection but, instead, an openness to the possibility and/or some allegorizing of the resurrection. My thoughts aside, TNAs tend to have the upper hand in questioning the fundamentalists’ affirmation of a historical fact that they may think is somehow provable. This, like the problem of Biblical inerrancy, is where I have seen many Christians eventually lose their faith because emphasizing something as provable when it is not provable only leads one toward doubt.

The fifth point concerns a theory of atonement. The reason why I am not touching on this point³² is that it is not something readily put into tension, and, frankly, I am unsure of which theory of atonement (if any in particular) is being mentioned. There are ways to scrutinize theories of atonement, and, as I recall, TNAs did touch on one or two of the common theories of atonement, labeling them as laughable or strange. This should not be surprising, because the idea that the God-Man was crucified was something that many would have thought odd in the first century and beyond. Another reason why I will not touch on this is due to how multifaceted theories of atonement are, but also because these are pointedly theological in the way that both the average Christian and TNAs are not learned on, and I think this is visible in how TNAs’ arguments or quips about, say, the penal substitution theory are coming from a common moral sentiment rather than an appeal to science or history. Try to give an intensely Calvinist argument in favor of total depravity to the average person, and you may understand how the Calvinist worldview can be difficult for a modern person to find appealing or true. Even if total depravity could be evinced, the language that comes with it and, say, the penal substitution or satisfaction theory may likely run contrary to modern sensibilities.³³ It should not be ignored that some of TNAs arguments are pointedly more in the realm of sensibility or sentiment; sentiments are not something to pass off as trivial in comparison to what one may call proper reasoning or argumentation. If a particular theory of atonement is doctrinally required, it may be a matter of changing sentiment that causes dissent, and this can be another pruning of something unnecessary. Historically, most churches allowed for a range of theories of atonement, and beyond what was allowed within the status quo, there are many other theories of atonement. The diversity, I think, is suggestive of the importance of having some choice (αἵρεσις) without invoking the label of heresy (αἵρεσις).³⁴ However, without the knowledge of these alternative choices, the process of deconverting or deconstruction is left with little to no chance to contemplate the choices. In some of my conversations with ex-Christians (usually those who were formerly fundamentalist), they tell me that if they had been aware of the different denominations or theological positions, they might have tried to join a different and more appealing Christian tradition. In being unaware of the options, however, many ex-Christians drop out of being in relatively conventional religions, and some entertain Buddhism, Wicca, (neo-)Paganism, or other smaller traditions available in the US (or elsewhere).³⁵

On the bright side, the critiques lodged at the fundamentals by TNAs helped draw people away from these assumptions that were taken for granted by many or most adherents. This leaves the individual to try to find something better or something that speaks to their condition. In going further in disrupting the assumptions Christians may have concerning their tradition, we can note how TNAs frequently — sometimes haphazardly — highlight how atrocious some verses within the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, or Quran plainly read. While, again, most religious traditions have a way to prevent these verses from being understood as atrocious, we are nonetheless reminded that religious traditions and their hermeneutics have developed over centuries. The hermeneutics are, themselves, not readily apparent within the text itself; instead, meaning is negotiated between the members of the religious community. However, there are two-fold issues: one, not every layperson is aware of how some of these atrocious verses were interpreted and understood by theologians and other clergy; two, not every religious community is interested in reading some of these verses in a particular way. What I mean to say is that, for example, instances of God condoning violence in the Bible can be understood in such a way as to further condone acts of violence instead of allegorizing or spiritualizing the violence to condone a sort of self-purging of vice so as to participate in theosis. If a community is predisposed to favoring violence, then they are more likely to eschew a non-violent reading when there is an attempt at scriptural justification.

From my understanding, because early Christians (particularly, but not exclusively, the Church Fathers) often vied for non-violence, this commitment to non-violence was then read into the Old Testament, thus giving rise to the allegorizing or spiritualizing of those more violent or atrocious verses that could and sometimes were read plainly (or literally). I think Tolstoy writes beautifully about how concerning it is that Christendom at large has come to abandon the commitment to non-violence, despite how plainly Christ seems to call his followers to turn the other cheek. With how Christendom either seemed to overlook certain hermeneutical understandings of biblical texts or, instead, defended a doomed hermeneutic (for example, the theological justification of practicing slavery or segregation), TNAs had an easy and effective target. Most Christians, then and now, were not able to reconcile their moral sentiments with what we may now call genocide, mass-slaughter, slavery, and other cruel acts within the Biblical narrative. Many times have I overheard ex-Christians discussing how they began to lose their faith, either because someone like Hitchens can quote a gruesome verse from, say, Judges, or by simply reading the Bible and finding these verses themselves. Unfortunately, the New Atheist quip that someone who reads the Bible cover to cover becomes an atheist, whereas a Christian believes because he has not read the Bible, holds some truth.³⁶

In any case, by pointing out the gap (or bridge) between the plain text and the hermeneutic reading or understanding of the text, we can bring new life to old texts, realizing that how we interpret and derive meaning from the Bible has been a long historical process that does not need to be stagnant. In my experience, some of the more theologically liberal Christian denominations have taken up the ancient and living Jewish tradition of engaging in Midrash. This has the benefit of imparting a sense of relevancy to old texts. In keeping a particular interpretation stagnant, we may be at risk for participating in idolatry — a hardened tradition may not be unlike a hardened heart, and neither interpretation nor the heart should be hardened. This flexibility can also prevent a religious tradition from degenerating into villainy — we may hope that the Holy Spirit delivers us from such degeneration in peeling off the hardened scales of tradition. Regardless of how Christians felt about the abolition of slavery, the ability to refrain from theologically sanctioning slavery can be said to have been a good development.

Thus far, we have not touched on how TNAs “unveil religion at its absolute ugliest.”³⁷ Instead, I have only used the Five Fundamentals as an example for what may be dropped. On some level, I feel as if I do not need to go in depth on how ugly religion can be as I would hope most people are aware of how, say, religious authorities may abuse their power, aware of how often child abuse cases crop up in religious communities, aware of bizarre religious justifications to avoid professional medical care, aware of the religious justifications for murder, war, and strange politics, and so forth. One root of all these evils may be in that Christendom has collectively attempted to maintain itself as it is (or has been) for the sake of maintaining itself as it is. This is made possible by assuming the current state of affairs as given. In highlighting how TNAs disturbed US American Christians of their metaphysical assumptions, I mean to demonstrate that the stagnant old ways can be pruned. Given the poll data, we can say that the stagnant old ways have been and continue to be pruned as religious attendance or participation declines. In declining, some of these evils may diminish as we no longer nourish them. It is difficult for clergy to escape prosecution for abuse from a church that is going under. What is difficult to discern is whether Christianity in the US will adapt and reform in a way that revitalizes itself. Will physical churches be something of a bygone era? Spirituality sure does not appear to be going anywhere any time soon — neither is religion. Regardless of what happens, change is already here.

Part III, From Religion to Religio

Despite the criticism and, say, partial victory of TNAs,³⁸ I do lament that it appears as if Christian communities in the US have been unresponsive to critique. From what I have observed, Christian influencers or pundits on social media continue to peddle the same interpretations or theological positions that can only have a limited appeal, despite the abundance of data and research that should raise some doubts about traditional narratives. Coinciding with this unresponsiveness is the lack of attention given to theologians who are known for disturbing the more traditional theology. I am thinking of Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, Levinas, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, as well as the more recent John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, Gianni Vattimo, Charles Winquist, and Richard Rohr, to name a few. From what I have seen, the more recent troublesome theologians tend to have an audience primarily among the greying Mainline tradition, as you may see from some of their speeches uploaded on YouTube. To me, this suggests that it is unlikely we will see a revitalization or surge in the US Christian population beyond the immigrant communities. According to Bass's report in “Christianity after Religion,” a certain percentage of Christians opt out of church participation due to the church's unresponsiveness and lack of relevance in the lives of its congregants. “They are judging Christianity on its own teaching and believe that American churches come up short. Thus, their discontent about what is may reflect a deeper longing for a better sort of Christianity, one that embodies Jesus’s teachings and life in a way that makes a real difference in the world.”³⁹

I do not mean to overestimate the importance of theological stances supported by a church and their ability to keep a healthy religious community, as Bass also details how a part of the failing is in church (dis-)organization or (in-)activity, or the mere fact that there are more fun things for people to enjoy on a Sunday. Additionally, people may practice their faith or spirituality outside of a church. The popularization of spiritual pursuits during the hippie era did not fade away. The SBNR crowd has their solo and communal practices, and these practices may suffice as a substitute for participating in conventional religion. It seems, then, that the church could not court such people. In my experience, I have found many people like this in Buddhist or meditation centers, as well as in areas with crystal shops or New Age merchandise. Also, in my experience, some of the SBNR crowd incorporate bits of the Christian tradition into their spirituality; others may vehemently abhor and avoid combining the Christian tradition into their practice. Regarding the former, I do wonder if this is what it may mean to have a religionless Christianity in the way Bonhoeffer seemed to have predicted in his prison letters. I also wonder if this is what it means to return to the more antiquated notion of religion (religio).

Another phenomenon Bass details in her book is the trend of separating two formerly synonymous words: spirituality and religion. People in the US (and perhaps in the general anglosphere) increasingly define religion as something like church membership and an adherence to official denominational doctrines, while associating religion with words like institution, rules, order, hierarchy, boundaries, and certainty; whereas spirituality evokes words like experience, connection, searching, meditation, inner life, inclusive, doubt, and is more of a “private realm of thought and experience.”⁴⁰ In pushing off a lot of what many think is negative onto the label of religion, even those who may self-identify as Christian may describe themselves as SBNR. Any reader who gives considerable attention to the Graeco-Roman world of Antiquity may already be aware of how the term religio (religion) can be defined in a manner that differs significantly from its modern usage. It may have only been in the 17th century and onward when we began to define or use the word “religion” to “signify a system of ideas or beliefs about God.” There is much to be said about the particular (and recent) nature of our understanding of what religion entails and why it has come to be understood in this way, but this essay will already be long enough.⁴¹ To be brief, the more ancient understanding of religio resembles how people define and understand spirituality in the present. Bass writes, “The only thing that needs to end is the modern Western definition of religion. It is already ending. For a generation or more, many people in the West have been reaching toward religio — only they call it spirituality…” And toward the end of chapter 3, “Religio is never satisfied with old answers, codified dogmas, institutionalized practices, or invested power. Religio invites every generation to experience God — to return to the basic questions of believing, behaving, and belonging — and explore each anew with an open heart.”

In addition to the divergence of meaning in “religion” and “spirituality,” Bass spends some time noting how the word “belief” has changed throughout the centuries. Essentially, it could be said that we (the English language) began with the German belieben and the Latin credere, the former being closer to “to hold dear” or “treasure,” and the latter being like “to trust, to rely on.” As far as believing in God or the creeds, the words functioned more as a way to pledge loyalty rather than affirming propositional statements or intellectual opinions — these are not meant to invoke a sort of empirical claim. Bass uses the wedding vow as an example as to how belief was meant in some instances. She notes that one step toward the misidentification of belief-as-opinion and belief-as-experience came about as the Biblical Greek uses πιστεύω to mean “I have faith,” but English does not use faith as verb, and this causes confusion between what one may mean when they say they believe something. The difference is in having an impersonal affirmation or doctrinal truth, and in trusting in something or someone. That trust having been built through experience, relationship, and authenticity. Though not always the case, some Christian fundamentalists give the impression that there is confusion between belief-as-opinion and belief-as-experience. In suggesting that one must affirm something like the Five Fundamentals in order to be a Christian, that is, to either experience something to trust the fundamentals or affirm as a matter of fact the Five Fundamentals, we already envision a natural conclusion of either experience or reason. Seemingly, not everyone can or will experience or reason their way to trusting in the fundamentals, despite all the apologetics one may formulate in defense of the fundamentals. Given all the easy-to-access information many people have these days, the old apologetics seem all the less effective, but I continue to see the peddling of the same apologetics nonetheless.

The peddling of old answers that I continue to witness, and from what I see of the current trends, makes me suspect that the SBNR are here to stay, while Christianity in its conventional form will dwindle and level out — still existing, but without great replenishment or revitalization. As someone who adores a lot of what I think Christianity has to offer, this frustrates me a bit, but I know better than to attempt to grasp at impermanence. Instead of letting this frustrate me, I put my time into thinking about how I may pass on what I think is worthwhile within what we may call the Christian tradition. Traditionem tradere volo aut traditor esse volo (quippe non volo simulare traditores qui scripturam tradunt ut vitam suam servent). Finge, si vis, Prometheum facem tradentem primo homini, qui rursus facem per saecula tradit iis huius aetatis. Discard the unusable charred wood, but keep the flame. To some degree, this is already happening. Although I am unsure of who exactly buys and reads from whom, I will call alternative theologians and/or authors like, say, Richard Rohr, Richard Kearney, John D. Caputo, Elaine Pagels, and (even) Bart Ehrman; they still manage to reach large audiences. Whether most of their audience consists of Mainline tradition followers, religious nones, non-spiritual individuals, SBNR, or some combination, I am unsure. For better and worse, alternative perspectives in this direction do not receive much attention online, which perpetuates the issue whereby the average person will never encounter these alternative perspectives. Personally, when I mention some, say, the weak theology of Caputo to someone who may be SBNR but has never delved into the messy world of Christian theology, I am often met with puzzled looks because it sounds too unlike how they understand what being a Christian may entail even if they may like what weak theology entails. The development of weak or postmodern theology comes about because of the spirit of the age, wherein we find some traditional approaches to religion untenable. With the critiques lodged toward the old ways, having not been addressed, it would seem unlikely that those in whom the critiques have made their home will give much attention to the transformative power of the Christian traditions.

Returning to Bass’s finding that some are judging Christianity by its own standards, if you read Christopher Hitchens’ “The Portable Atheist,” you would find an anthology of texts. Some of the texts can be read as a yearning for a better world and/or a better religion. In the book, a selected writing of Dawkins reads, “I think we owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time.”⁴²⁴³ In The God Delusion, Dawkins calls us to imagine with John Lennon a world without religion, a world without “suicide bombers, 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’,” and so on.⁴⁴ Similarly, Carl Sagan, in his “The Demon-Haunted World,” highlights how religion has contributed to some of the historical atrocities named by Dawkins. In Sagan’s “The God Hypothesis,” we read a similar comment to that of Dawkins’ remark that the theology of Tillich and Bonhoeffer are numerically insignificant with, “And the subject is further confused by the fact that prominent theologians such as Paul Tillich, for example, who gave the Gifford Lectures many years ago, explicitly denied God’s existence, at least as a supernatural power.”⁴⁵ Although I am unsure if Carl Sagan can or should be grouped under TNAs, the critiques toward religion in the last century by those outside of a conventional religious tradition tend to share this hesitation or confusion in addressing what we may now call postmodern theology.⁴⁶ In the confusion, the postmodern theology is often brushed aside after a quick mention, and this is understandable because the target audience of these skeptics, as well as the object of critique (the general Christian population), are themselves not invested in understanding such theology — again, as Dawkins says, this theology is numerically negligible. Thus, there is an abundance of readily available critiques of religious traditions that have not responded to this body of criticism.

This unresponsiveness has seemingly left Christianity in the US to degenerate further as the Christian Right continues to play at politics and sees little to no qualm in repeating historical unpleasantries. This may be a contributing factor in how self-described political liberals who identify as Christians have fallen 25% between 2007 and 2023-24 (from 62% to 37%).⁴⁷ Whereas self-described political conservatives have not experienced such a drop (89% to 82%). This is one reason why Bass comments that although the Religious Right had won politically, it lost the youth. The public image of Christianity in the US continues to be one of the Christian Right, rather than the older Christian traditions, which are not associated with the Christian Right. These traditions may not necessarily align with the politically liberal, but they are at least not aligned with the Christian Right. As things stand now, Christianity has, at times, become synonymous with the Christian Right, and this seems to be one factor of many as to why self-described Christians either drop that identification and/or opt out of Christianity. I see this among some Friends (Quakers) who feel hesitant in calling themselves Christian if the public image of the Christian is the sort of Christian Nationalist in favor of the Trump presidency and in attempting to usher an imagined past into the present. I should add that I do not suggest that US Christianity must conform to a particular political party — I do not seek conformity — but, rather, Christianity ought not to conform or appear to conform to the Christian Right and, by extension, to the old ways that are rapidly losing appeal.

Politics aside,⁴⁸ if postmodernity can be spoken of as ushering in a suspicion or incredulity of grand narratives (or metanarratives), it would seem as if dogma and the claiming of exclusive truth are under suspicion. Instead of repeating the stories and data Bass includes in “Christianity After Religion,” I urge you to read or skim the book. However, if you have lived in the US as a teenager, there is a chance that you have had some encounters with young Christians who emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus and the usual Non-Denominational rhetoric that seems to minimize the importance of doctrine. This sort of approach gained popularity during the Fourth Great Awakening and, later, the megachurch. It conveniently attempts to court those who (consciously or unconsciously) see religion and spirituality as being at odds. So, what we have in the US is some number of people who yearn for a spiritual connection without all the dogma (to some degree), and this is not exclusive to the person attending a Non-Denominational church. To quote one story about a Lutheran girl, Bass mentions, “Whenever I say ‘I believe in Christianity,’ they look at me as if I’m crazy. Besides, I don’t even know if I believe ‘in’ Christianity or Lutheran doctrine or anything like that. I just experience how to love God and how God loves me through these people… I don’t know what to call it, but it is less about believing and more about living. Does that still count as being Christian?” Bass, in quoting professor Harvey Cox, “Faith is resurgent while dogma is dying… A religion based on subscription to mandatory beliefs is no longer viable.” Despite this seeming to be the case, so-called Non-Denominational churches do have dogmatic views, and they do tend to skew theologically or politically conservative, though not always. This does still cause some tension, such that Christians attending these churches may fall out over questions of religious pluralism, universalism, homosexuality, abortion, women’s ordination, the relevancy of the Old Law, biblical inerrancy, and so forth — and, of course, many simply grow out of it or do not find it appealing.

For the church to suddenly adapt itself to court as much of the SBNR as possible is likely not feasible. I cannot really imagine how the American churches can court the spiritually inclined, in part because I think one has to be of a particular disposition to want to attend church service on a Sunday over, say, sleeping in or having fun elsewhere. Virtually every town and city in the US is no longer centered around church participation as it once was. This inability to court the crowd may be fine. To use what is often a polemical phrase, this decline in Christianity may bring for a faithful remnant. I do not say this to suggest that the remnant is somehow true (correct) and good⁴⁹, but that those who are deeply interested in Christianity may continue to participate in what we may call Christianity.

However, given the data that suggests that there are people who yearn for a, say, Christian-flavored religious community without certain types of (dogmatic) baggage, I think it would be nice to see some progress in this direction. Progress that, perhaps, should have been made with the critiques of TNAs, as they demonstrated much of what is wrong with Christianity or religion broadly. What progress was made is that more people can voice their opinion on religion or Christianity, particularly fundamentalist Christianity. To quote Harvey Cox in Bass’s book again, “Fundamentalisms, with their insistence on obligatory belief systems, their nostalgia for a mythical uncorrupted past, their claims to an exclusive grasp on truth . . . are turning out to be rearguard attempts to stem a more sweeping tidal change.” However, this attempt to do as much relies on the effort to demonstrate that mythical past, but under modern academia and easy-to-access information thereof, this attempt fails. The traditional way of evincing Christianity as an exclusive and historical truth is no longer tenable — arguably, it has not been tenable since the Enlightenment. Your average teenager in online atheist communities can sometimes see and articulate the flaws in conventional apologetics. This is something I lament, because this fundamentalist approach to Christianity, no longer being tenable, tends to shut off any positive conversation about Christianity or any positive interaction with the Christian tradition. There is an air of dismissiveness amongst some of the SBNR or religious nones, some of whom may readily quote from one of the Five Horsemen of Atheism. Further, with a great deal of people growing up without a religious affiliation, there may be an opening to court the religiously unaffiliated. A large percentage of the population has grown up without quite receiving a religious education, and so there is the potential to start anew with those who have not developed the dismissive and suspicious attitude, as some have. In any case, the tide has turned, and spiritual pursuits are ongoing, unburdened by some millennia of doctrine. This somewhat reminds me of the general idea of religious reformation, and I will touch on one man’s words about a particular reformation.

Part IV, Vivekananda’s Buddhism

After taking up a recommendation to read Swami Vivekananda’s letters, I became intrigued by his opinions on both Christianity and Buddhism. One thing that struck me in particular was in his letter from New York about US Americans, “This is a huge country, the majority do not care much about religion. . . . Christianity holds its ground as a mere patriotism, and nothing more.”⁵⁰ This resonated with what Bass mentions concerning how it was not until around 1890 that churches in the US structured their organizations to resemble the novel and burgeoning corporations like General Motors. Before the Civil War, “religion was typically the matter of small-town or village dynamics… Denominations were ad hoc, messy affairs consisting of people bound by ethnicity, language, prayer practices, confession, or theological tradition. Most churches did not even think of themselves as part of “denominations” until well into the nineteenth century.”⁵¹ I take Vivekenanda’s use of “patriotism” to mean something like a civil affair, or religious participation for the sake of social standing and village dynamics.⁵² Vivekananda’s mission can be said to be one that promotes both the unity of religions and the pursuit of the spiritual disciplines, the four yogas. Of the yogas, he says, “they’re not centered on culture, history or geography, which inevitably spawns dogmas and doctrines.”⁵³ Though there is some nuance, it can be said that Vivekananda is not one to promote dogma and doctrine that would prevent both a unity of religions and the diversity of religions. Given that it seems as if dogma and doctrine are unfashionable these days, Vivekananda may speak to the postmodern condition shared by the SBNR. Additionally, Vivekananda speaks of Buddhism as a movement that reformed the old Brahminism of India, and this reform, “b[roke] wide open the gates of that very religion which was confined in the Upanishads to a particular caste.” I am thinking that this dechurching of the US can be likened to this breaking open of religio or spirituality, and we may give some credit to TNAs for this. People are now some degrees freer to pursue spiritual practice without a tense relationship with dogma.

The decline in the appeal of doctrine and the desire for spiritual experience seems to have coincided with the Fourth Great Awakening and the rise of the SBNR. It could be said that the experiences people are having and have had for some decades now do not align with or validate the doctrine of a church, and thus, some tension or dissonance ensues. Both with Bass and Vivekananda, we can find this critique that Western Christianity, or people in the West, have come to focus too much on belief and whether one agrees with a set of doctrines, at the detriment of prioritizing relationships, practice, and experience. Bass, in clarifying that while Christianity continues to grow in the Global South, it is not necessarily a conservative form of Christianity, as some claim. Instead, Christianity in these parts of the world is much more experiential and concerned with their lived realities, which often invoke what may be considered progressive or liberal issues in the US (e.g., climate change, colonialism, economic exploitation, and health care). To some degree, this ties into how and why Christianity appears quite different in the Global South. We do not always find the highfalutin theological debates on doctrine that seem very removed from the lived lives of the churchgoers. Instead, we may return to something Jesus preached, “a beloved and beloving community, a way of life practiced in the world, a profound trust in God that eagerly anticipates God’s reign of mercy and justice.”⁵⁴

The Early Church seemed to function similarly, as seen in Paul’s letters (with all the hortatory speeches, vice and virtue lists), with a greater emphasis on how one should behave, while also reducing the emphasis on Jewish practices. Also absent are the theological formations and creeds that the Early Church would later formulate. Given that the earliest Christians did not call themselves Christians, many of whom likely thought themselves Jewish, the Christian movement was reformative — seemingly subtracting more practices than adding. Vivekananda sees Buddhism as having done something similar, as, for example, he said that the Buddha “brought the Vedanta to light, gave it to the people, and saved India,” only for “the teachings of the Buddha became in time degenerated… Buddhists taught no God, no Ruler of the universe, so gradually the masses brought their gods, and devils, and hobgoblins out again, and a tremendous hotchpotch was made of Buddhism in India.”⁵⁵ Throughout his written works, Vivekananda consistently describes Buddhism or Shakyamuni as making available the practicality of religion with the love and mercy that Shakyamuni taught while avoiding superstition, caste, and ritualism.⁵⁶ The early Buddhist communities would then, like the early Christians, avoid repeating the ways of those they had parted ways with — until both religious traditions began to add to their practices.

In other words, what Vivekananda saw in Buddhism is not too unlike how New Atheism subtracts from Christianity in the US what may be better left behind. In his day, Vivekananda saw how “religion is not in fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees in Hinduism, hypocrites, who invent all sorts of engines of tyranny in the shape of doctrines of Paramarthika and Vyavaharika.” He, himself, functioned a lot like his ishta Shakyamuni in reconciling his understanding of Hinduism — in part derived from the emerging Ramakrishna Order — and the emerging developments in the West (e.g., Darwin’s evolution, the many scientific advancements and theories, theosophy, and Transcendentalism).⁵⁷ This is why some speak of Vivekananda as a sort of Hindu reformer or proponent of Neo-Advaita, as he went against the cultural grain at times. His experience with women in the West seemed to have inspired him to advocate for women’s rights in education, both within the Vedanta Society he was forming in the US and back home in India. The solution that both Bass and Vivekananda seem to agree on is turning toward tempering the religious tendency to get caught up in not only superstition and doctrine, but also the tendency to withdraw from practice (yoga), experience, and the community (sangha).⁵⁸

I could go on, but the length of this essay has proved quite unwieldy. In retrospect, I should have split this into several shorter essays. There is a good chance that I will elaborate on some topics touched on here in later essays. I will also likely edit this essay a bit after its publication.

I could not find a name for this woodprint, at best I found this site.

I liked this emblem and motto, vicissim traditur, in part due to my fondness of the narrative of the Great Conversation, and because it fits with what I had written in Latin in the essay. On some level, all dialogue and interaction fits into the Great Conversation regardless of where we may stand on some viewpoint. In participating in the conversation, we may choose to devote ourselves to catching up with everything that has been said before we were expelled from the womb, only to participate in some exchange briefly before returning to the tomb.

1. White, Thomas. “Profane Holiness: Why the New Atheism Is (Partially) Good for True Spirituality and Religion.” _Cross Currents_, December 1, 2009. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=86fb397d-95cc-30bf-bb38-9c03f4bbd8f1.

2. Swami Vivekananda. (1893, August 20). Vivekananda. Frank Parlato. Retrieved May 26, 2025, from https://www.vivekananda.net/KnownLetters/1893America.html.

3. This somewhat tracks with my experience in interreligious dialogue.

4. Sometimes I will hear this put another way that matches the sentiment, but is tailored for the ongoing religious landscape. I tend to prefer this adaptation because it is more universal in scope, but also matches both Sri Ramakrishna’s and Vivekananda’s vision and teachings. That saying being that Vivekananda wanted the Christian to become a better Christian, the Jew a better Jew, and the Muslim a better Muslim. The denominational landscape for Christianity at large has drastically changed since Vivekananda’s time. In the US in particular, Methodism and Presbyterianism are not quite the same heavyweights they once were — triply so for the Unitarians, who have somewhat fallen into obscurity when compared to their heyday.

5. Further, although knowledge about Hinduism had slightly trickled into North America via the Transcendentalism movement, which had started about a century before Vivekananda reached the US, Vivekananda (and the attendees of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in general) arguably signaled what would become of the religious landscape in the US half a century and more later, and of the religious landscape (predominately) in the global north at large. It may also be worth noting how Transcendentalism did not seem to pick up on the, say, bhakti yoga (and, maybe, raja yoga) of the Hindu tradition. It primarily borrows its philosophical sentiment as it pertains to non-duality, the Oversoul/Paramatman, unity, and other Unitarian-like overlaps. The same can roughly be said about how Buddhism was received during and after the Parliament of the World’s Religions, in that the sort of Buddhism that garnered the most attention was (Japanese) Zen Buddhism. A more explicitly bhakta-oriented tradition would not catch on in the West (including, say, Eastern Europe) until the Hare Krishnas came about.

6. In Diana Butler Bass’s “Christianity After Religion,” it is mentioned that we may or can still speak of this fourth great awakening as still unfolding — it is not yet at a close. I am inclined to agree with her, as she highlights the rapidly changing religious landscape in the US.

7. Often, the label “Evangelical” or “Evangelical Right” is used in political discourse to describe this relatively new voting bloc. While there is a substantial overlap between the so-called evangelical denominations and the Christian Right voting bloc, it would be a bit misleading to invoke the evangelical label, as there is a substantial number of evangelicals who abstain from politics or lean toward progressive/liberal politics — Jimmy Carter may be one such example of a sort of moderate or moderate left evangelical. Theologically speaking, evangelicalism is a vast category that encompasses many denominations throughout the centuries. As Christianity (in the US and, to various degrees, worldwide) was confronted with modernity, with its new historical criticism of the Bible and scientific developments such as evolution, many denominational schisms occurred and brought about the fundamentalist-modernist divide that further complicates generalizing Christianity. Speaking of the fundamentalist-modernist divide, the fundamentalist label is another term often used with little discretion. Christian fundamentalism is or was a self-professed label based on the so-called Five Fundamentals put forward in 1910. To affirm these fundamentals was/is to be a fundamentalist Christian.

8. Individuals and groups that do not quite fall under the New Atheist umbrella. Stephen Jay Gould is sometimes understood as a forebearer of Richard Dawkins, with a shared keen interest in evolutionary biology, which is the site of one of many culture war battlefields of the 20th century. However, Stephen Jay Gould is not typically understood as a New Atheist. I mean to highlight that New Atheism emerges from a preexisting debate and neither spawns ex nihilo nor subsumes all the other groups and individuals who share at least one relatively similar goal: pushing back on the encroaching Christian Right.

9. Though Carter lost the Evangelical vote for his second run for office, nonetheless, the election of Jimmy Carter, a self-professed evangelical Christian, was a bit of a shock for some who had surmised that religion (especially the fundamentalist sort) was to decline while the social changes (on a cultural and/or legal level) worked against their favor. Needless to say, the Christian Right’s interest in undoing many of the social changes of the 20th century has set the ground for the political climate up into our current day.

10. Despite the many victories of the Christian Right (some of them being on the topics mentioned), an ongoing narrative shared among the politically conservative evangelicals is that they, the largest religious demographic in the US, are a sort of oppressed minority as the US courts have maintained same-sex marriage and have bolstered the protection of religious, sexual, and gender minorities. This is one narrative that feeds the Christian Nationalist project to bring about an end to this real and/or imagined oppression. See also the rhetoric associated with whether or not a Christian baker can refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage.

11. Cottle, Michelle. 2005. “Prayer Center.” New Republic 232 (19): 21–25. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f4af639e-926f-3312-8dc0-7bfc70cbf812.

12. Additionally, this gives way to promoting assumptions about people in a way that fosters tension — due or undue. It is not uncommon to hear about a Christian, regardless of their opinion, being in a situation wherein someone supposes the Christian is some antagonist. See Jane’s comment in “The Tables Are Turning”: The Evangelical Defense of Anti-LGBTQ+ Religious Liberty.

McDowell, Amy, and Pace T Ward. 2023. “‘The Tables Are Turning’: The Evangelical Defense of Anti-LGBTQ+ Religious Liberty.” Sociology of Religion 84 (4): 406–25. doi:10.1093/socrel/srad007.

13. It is difficult, however, to be consistent on what I or anyone means by Christian fundamentalist. As we get closer to the present day, fewer of these fundamentals seem to be adhered to.

14. Alan Cooperman and Gregory A. Smith, “22. Religion’s Role in Public Life,” Pew Research Center, February 26, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-religions-role-in-public-life/.

15. Lydia Saad, “Americans’ Ratings of U.S. Professions Stay Historically Low,” Gallup.com, March 27, 2025, https://news.gallup.com/poll/655106/americans-ratings-professions-stay-historically-low.aspx.

16. Unenthused or disenchanted, for example, because church doctrine is often slow or unwilling to respond to or match the sentiments of their congregants. The same may be said of the opposite: the church is too willing to change to conform to the whims of the congregants. Similarly, frustration builds when one or both political parties appear unresponsive to the people’s will.

17. Similarly, this is perhaps echoed in the fact that there are more politically unaffiliated voters in the US than there are Democrats and Republicans. The independent voter opts out like the spiritual but not religious.

18. Note how the Social Gospel was strongest amongst the Mainline tradition. Post-World War 2, the US cut most of its economic safety nets, welfare, and other social spending. The Christian Right, however, generally sides with a fiscal conservative policy.

19. One 2004 poll suggests that about 91% of young adults in the US think Christianity is anti-homosexual. As of 2025, roughly 70% of Americans support same-sex marriage. Obviously, perhaps, this is a cause for tension if so many young adults still find Christianity to be anti-homosexual in a time and place when so many find same-sex marriage or homosexuality to be permissible. More personally as a queer in Christian communities, many fellow queers find it very odd — cognitively dissonant even — that I can be as I am in these Christian communities. Despite a good number of Christian churches or denominations that have either softened their previous stance on homosexuality or have entirely accepted the LGBTQ+, the public image remains that Christianity is necessarily anti-queer. This may relate to the issue of how many conservative pundits become the face and voice of Christianity broadly or of particular denominations, while the more LGBTQ+ affirming or politically, say, liberal churches seem to lack any and all voice in the public arena. Those who spend a good amount of time on social media may intuitively grasp this. Most easily accessible religious content (or, perhaps, content in general) in the realm of podcasts, shorts, reels, videos, memes, and the like skews socio-politically and theologically conservative. As Bass wrote after mentioning the statistic of 91% of young adults thinking Christianity is anti-homosexual, “those numbers are sobering, especially to Christians who find meaning in their congregations, have worked for social justice for LGBT persons in their churches, or who practice their faith in loving ways.” Which, again, I can personally relate to as well as the many other Friends who I have heard from and their stories of advocating for the LGBT before, during, and after the AIDs crisis.

20. Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity after religion: The end of Church and the birth of a new spiritual awakening. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013.

21. Though Christian fundamentalism was perhaps properly outlined around 1910, this movement remained relatively subaltern until around the 1960s.

22. As well as Europe and beyond, but the history and the way it all unfolded are a bit different from the US’s case.

23. Although, the cause for this doctrine may be multifaceted (as all or most things are). As Bass mentions, Christianity in the US was a very decentralized affair until very recently (around the 20th century onward). Particularly in the past (but also in the present), a denomination can have religious authorities, say, priests or pastors, with an array of theological stances or lack thereof. However, doctrines like the Five Fundamentals standardize what a priest must confess to be the case, and this is in the way of centralization (something ongoing in the US in this period and even now). More immediately, a cause for this doctrine was that three men seeking ordination refused to agree to the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. In zooming out, we can also note the ongoing modernist-fundamentalist schism, which brought forth new Christian organizations.

24. I could also say that a lot of low-hanging fruit naturally comes to fruition when we level Christianity in the way Kierkegaard warns us about. It is, perhaps, impossible to retain a high quality of one thing when it is shared amongst the masses — the more general the appeal, the lower the quality.

25. I should further clarify that while most Christians hold to these fundamentals in some sense, it is another thing entirely to suppose that one’s, say, salvation is contingent on affirming all of these fundamentals as something of an impersonal and demonstrable fact, as some do. There’s a tendency among fundamentalists to speak cataphatically on what was previously a bit more apophatic, ambiguous, or understood as a mystery. Or, in other words, faith has been made into a work by necessitating an intellectual assent to a series of propositions. I have seen some who charge certain fundamentalists with the heresy of gnosticism on this tendency.

26. Additionally, one can peruse deconstruction stories on a number of social media platforms, and you will likely see what I mentioned and more.

27. Newport, F. (2025, March 26). Fewer in U.S.. now see Bible as literal word of god. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx

28. Johnson, Andrew. 2013. “An Apology for the ‘New Atheism.’” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (1): 5–28. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=bcb7fcb8-e017-38dc-9f14-6014967d4a53.

29. It is precisely these theologians and others like them that have facilitated my interest in Christianity and have kept my interest in Christianity for some time now. Unfortunately, churches that were a part of the Underground Church in Europe did not gain momentum despite all the work Bonhoeffer and those around him did in resistance to Nazi ideology and occupation. While there is undoubtedly a legacy left behind and still playing out today, we cannot really say that his (or their) ideas caught on at the denominational level. One of the closest to catching on in the denominational level is found in some American mainline churches, but these churches have not fared well for a century or more now, and are numerically negligible. Another example may be found in liberation theology. Liberation theology is, perhaps, not numerically negligible, but it is outside Dawkins' purview as liberation theology finds its home outside the anglosphere. I must also agree or relate to Dawkins' distaste for a particular conception of God, and this unfortunately puts me at odds with many religious traditions. I am of two minds: 1) I am hesitant to suggest or advocate that certain religious forms or traditions must reform — who am I to demand as much — there is, sometimes, something charming to be found in religious traditions that I disagree with. 2) ultimately, I do have my own preferences, and some religious traditions foster specific sentiments that do real harm — whether it be to someone or myself, it is the same harm. Sometimes this harm or religious sentiment can be tempered or mitigated by entertaining dialogue with the New Atheist movement (or simply a learned skeptic).

30. See the first chapter of The God Delusion, the opening quotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the second chapter, and Dawkins’ “Atheists for Jesus” article, for example.

31. As mentioned in previous essays, my foray into Christianity came about primarily through individuals who were rather unconventional and/or outsiders — not entirely accepted by their religious peers in their lifetime. I have in mind Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Simone Weil, William Blake, George Fox, and, perhaps, the Transcendentalists in general. From my perspective, they all, intentionally or not, focused on what I think is more important and more relevant to my condition. I now think of how George Fox said/wrote that he sought someone to speak to his condition. Failing to find anyone that could, he heard a voice… To the religious establishments of their respective times, these individuals were most profane — reformers usually are regarded as such until they are accepted into the status quo. In this day, perhaps TNAs are the profane reformers of today.

32. Or maybe I did inevitably touch on it after I said I would not.

33. In this sixth month, I read Richard Rohr’s “The Universal Christ,” in which, if I remember correctly, he touches on how the penal substitution theory can and should emphasize a restorative justice rather than a retributive justice. The restorative justice model is likely to find appeal in this age.

34. Further, doctrine states something as fact. By eschewing doctrine, we keep the door open to a variety of possibilities and take them as they come. I should disclaim that I do not go as far as to say that a religious community should completely eschew doctrine, however. I am of the opinion that a religious tradition, in order to be a religious tradition, must have some form — a scaffold, so to speak — to be able to be recognized and to be participated in. More personally or observably, every religious tradition has its own particular appeal — it does not seem possible that any one sect/denomination or religious tradition can appeal to everyone. Where I find a particular appeal in Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism, someone else may not. Additionally, on the matter of choice, I recommend both Bass’s aforementioned book and Elaine Pagels’ “Why Religion?”.

35. Now, I am not suggesting that such people are somehow wrong, especially after the previous footnote. It is, however, unfortunate, maybe, that Christianity as it often exists has pushed so many away, when those who were pushed away can sometimes come to see an appeal to the tradition only when it is too late.

36. I do want to bemoan how poor Biblical education is and has been in the US (and elsewhere). I think most avid Bible students can readily admit how difficult reading and understanding the Bible can be for modern readers. Not only are many things lost in translation, but the cultural knowledge and assumptions the text assumes the reader to have present a difficulty. Put another way, the Bible is something people can and do spend their entire lifetimes studying to no end. For those unwilling to tackle such a challenge, the Bible is sometimes, quite frankly, an awful and confusing text to try to read. This brings to mind Alan Jacobs’ “Breaking Bread with the Dead,” and how it appears many people lack the ability to engage with difficult texts or texts about or by people we find problematic or uncomfortable. In not engaging with difficult books or people, we shrink our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom. To read a religious text and to dismiss it so quickly is, I think, to not take people seriously, to not attempt to understand what and how this text resonated with some generations of people — this is to treat the other as other. Naturally, I think it is right and good not to just engage with texts so seriously, but with all things and people. As Simone Weil wrote, “In such a work all that I call ‘I’ has to be passive. Attention alone that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears — is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived.” Love must presuppose everything we do, and in loving we may more readily give attention to what comes our way — “Love is the teacher of gods and men, for no one learns without desiring to learn.” See also 1 John 4.

Simone Weil, “Attention and Will,” essay, in Simone Weil - An Anthology (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2000), 211–17.

37. White, Thomas. “Profane Holiness: Why the New Atheism Is (Partially) Good for True Spirituality and Religion.” Cross Currents, December 1, 2009. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=86fb397d-95cc-30bf-bb38-9c03f4bbd8f1.

38. Victory, perhaps, insofar as to the rise of the religious nones and the agnostics/atheists, and the decline in church membership and attendance. Just how many people came to leave the church because of TNAs, I do not know if we can know. Anecdotally, I know many people who can credit TNAs for their departure from faith, but I likely have known more people who fell away from a religious tradition without any contact with TNAs. I personally have found that former and current Christians under the age of 35 or so are more likely to have some prolonged contact or knowledge of TNAs than those who are older.

39. Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity after religion: The end of Church and the birth of a new spiritual awakening. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013.

40. Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity after religion: The end of Church and the birth of a new spiritual awakening. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013.

41. There is also something to be said about how “religion” and “religio” as concepts or words were hardly used in the way we may use them now. Whereas we, in the current day, may talk about science and religion or religion and the secular as something separate (as different magisteria or spheres, perhaps), this would not have been the case prior to the 17th century or so. Before the 17th century, someone may have spoken of what we would call a specific religious tradition, and after the 17th century someone may speak of a more abstract and general notion of religion (e.g., Locke’s “The Reasonableness of Christianity” vs Kant’s “Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason.”). There may be some truth in that the Enlightenment produced the concept of religion as psychiatry produced the concept of homosexuality. The object of study (religion, homosexuality, or what have you) precedes the particular discipline’s study of the object, but our relationship with the object of study may be informed by one or more disciplines. Foucault’s interest in “problematization” comes to my mind here as well as his attempt at using the discipline of history (or genealogy of history) to demonstrate changes in power relations (pouvoir-savoir), normativity, or the rise of psychiatry and criminology. Similarly, we may speak of the philosophy of religion as a discipline produced by the Enlightenment or some time after the Enlightenment. With any of these examples, we can note that after these objects of study and their disciplines have been around for some time, we take it as a given that both the object and the study are natural. Religion, then, is a natural concept, and we suppose that every culture and society can grasp what we may mean by religion, even though most languages in the world do not have a word that can neatly fit the rather European meaning of the word. The Japanese, for example, repurposed 宗教 to translate the English usage of religion — the Chinese then adopted the repurposed word. Prior to the repurposing, it seems as if you would name the specific sect’s teaching instead of naming or speaking of religion in an abstract sense, and this seems to be the case for Europe until around the 17th century.

42. Hitchens, Christopher. The portable atheist: Essential readings for the nonbeliever. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo, 2007.

43. Maybe another time, I will expand on how we, perhaps, should not exaggerate the marveling at the ethical teachings of Christ. In William Blake’s “Everlasting Gospel,” we read, “If Moral Virtue was Christianity, Christ’s Pretensions were all Vanity…”

44. Dawkins, Richard. The god delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2006.

45. Hitchens, Christopher. The portable atheist: Essential readings for the nonbeliever. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo, 2007.

46. I should note that I do not think that so-called postmodern theology is the only viable theology.

47. Alan Cooperman Gregory A. Smith, “Executive Summary,” Pew Research Center, February 26, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-executive-summary/.

48. Or, as much aside as they can be, which is not at all. Teehee.

49. I am not all that interested in what is “true” or in claiming an exclusive truth. I am more interested in the phenomenological, the how and why people do whatever it is they do, rather than wondering if what they are doing is somehow right. Call me a victim of the postmodern condition or a victim of my own disposition if you must.

50. Frank Parlato, ed., “Swami Vivekananda,” Letters written by Swami Vivekananda from New York (1895) - Frank Parlato Jr., accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.vivekananda.net/KnownLetters/1895NewYork.html.

51. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013).

52. I say this because the modern notion of patriotism did not quite fit the US at this time, when many Americans still spoke the language of the country they had immigrated from (and identified, willingly or not, with their country of origin), and of what I have read in Vivekananda’s books. For example, “We want everything but God. This is not religion that you see all around you. My lady has furniture in her parlor, from all over the world, and now it is the fashion to have something Japanese; so she buys a case and puts it in her room. Such is religion with the vast majority; they have all sorts of things for enjoyment, and unless they add a little flavor of religion, life is not all right, because society would criticize them. Society expects it; so they must have some religion. This is the present state of religion in the world.”

Vivekananda and Brahmavidyananda, Way of the Saint: The Lectures of Swami Vivekananda on a Universal Approach to Devotion (United States: Temple Universal Pub, 2005).

53. Vivekananda and Brahmavidyananda, Way of the Mystic: The Lectures of Swami Vivekananda on a Universal Approach to Meditation (United States: Temple Universal Pub, 2005).

54. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013).

55. Vivekananda and Brahmavidyananda, Seeing beyond the Circle: The Lectures of Swami Vivekananda on a Universal Approach to Meditation (United States: Temple Universal Pub, 2005).

56. “Buddhism is Hinduism stripped of rituals, the superstitions, the abuses of caste, and of priestcraft.”

Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vol. 4. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1948. 180.

57. I think it would surprise many to know just how many important Americans and Europeans Vivekananda came to know and talk with or came to influence directly and indirectly. I think of William James, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, Nikola Tesla, Paul Deussen, and Max Müller.

58. I think this should mean beyond one’s denomination and into, at least, the wider Christian community.