Questioning the political efficacy of faith

A while back, I came across a vegan atheist I respect taking issue with one of my articles attempting to interpret animal activism through a Christian lens. I considered writing a good-natured response, explaining how my panentheism isn’t so different substantively from atheism, and provides me with a number of personal and political benefits.

I don’t want sound as if my adoption of a spiritual practice was wholly cynical. I felt a genuine yearning for it, and it’s helped make me a little more kind and patient. The latter quality, in particular, I’ve desperately needed in recent years. However, I’ve been honest there was also a certain amount of utilitarian calculation behind the choice.

Church membership may be in decline, but the vast majority of the population continues to hold some kind of spiritual belief system and will for the foreseeable future. Learning to speak in that language, and, at the very least, becoming less scornful of religious-minded people could only help my activism. So I set about to achieve this.

Ultimately, though, I decided not to respond to the aforementioned atheist. For one, doing so would reveal I’d Google searched my own name, which is embarrassing! However, more than that, in President Donald Trump’s second term, I’ve been having not so much a crisis of faith, as a crisis regarding the efficacy of faith.

Again, in many respects, my view of the world hasn’t changed significantly since I identified as an atheist. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins apparently refers to pantheism, which isn’t so far from my perspective, as ‘sexed up atheism.’ I think of God as an impersonal force undergirding and extending beyond material reality.

Still, I wonder if merely by accepting certain theological premises I’ve resigned myself to fighting on conservative terrain. Further, as Trump and his fascist cronies dismantle American democracy, I often feel the response that is required is a spiritually unenlightened one. To save the country, we have to instill fear in would-be authoritarians.

Of course, religious people withhold forgiveness and engage in violence all of the time. I think this is a regrettable necessity in some situations, however it doesn’t fit neatly with the best of spiritual teaching. Occasionally, I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense to give up my religious pretensions and jettison the entire theological structure.

Despite these doubts, I’m retaining a spiritual approach for a variety of reasons, including the personal benefits, which I don’t want to understate, and the ways in which I believe it can make me a more effective political communicator. Perhaps just as important, though, is the hope it provides me in what feels like a hopeless time.

With right-wing authoritarianism seemingly on the ascent, prospects for change in the near future look grim. Part of the reason I’ve withdrawn from left-wing struggle in the past is the kind of despair I feel now. Religion, for all its flaws, in my experience, provides a degree of solace than can help counteract this demotivating sadness.

Christianity is sometimes referred to by its practitioners as ‘the good news.’ I’m by no means an orthodox Christian, but, in the current historical moment, I need a certain amount of good spiritual news. This isn’t meant to substitute for good political news. However, it can sustain me through periods when there is very little of the latter.