As a Christmas message, I don't think much of it. One might, at this time of year, reach out to people, to build links of shared humanity, to seek to address common problems. Instead, Toynbee creates a crude caricature of religion, constructs some vague, unspecified threat to secular society, draws the humanist wagons into a circle and fires arrows into the dark.
Religious commentators seem to feel threatened by secular society, while at the same time secular commentators feel threatened by an apparent resurgence of religion. This mutual suspicion only benefits the extremists. In fact, most of us muddle along together most of the time.
In the UK, various religious movements have been highly progressive on many issues - with the notable exception of sex and sexuality. Even there, it makes more sense to engage and attract moderate opinion than to push them away into the shadow of the extremists.
To take an example, in the realm of sexuality, some branches of Christianity (most notably the Catholics and the American Right) campaign against the availability of contraception. This stance kills people; I think it is evil. The C of E, for all its faults, supports the use of contraception.
Similarly, it is not the C of E that seeks to teach creationism in science classes.
To take another example, Toynbee complains that faith schools select the brightest children. Instead of railing against this, how about trying to bring the church back to the notion that its duty is to minister to the poorest; that it should select children from poor families and troublesome estates rather than set up havens for the middle classes? Not that I like faith schools, but neither do I like banning people for their beliefs.
I'm an atheist, to the extent that I care little about religion one way or the other. Sometimes I oppose religious groups (as with the Pope's appalling speech this week), when they do good, I support them. Some parts of the Christian message, including tolerance and humility, seem worthy of support, at least some of the time.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-12-23 10:42 pm (UTC)Religious commentators seem to feel threatened by secular society, while at the same time secular commentators feel threatened by an apparent resurgence of religion. This mutual suspicion only benefits the extremists. In fact, most of us muddle along together most of the time.
In the UK, various religious movements have been highly progressive on many issues - with the notable exception of sex and sexuality. Even there, it makes more sense to engage and attract moderate opinion than to push them away into the shadow of the extremists.
To take an example, in the realm of sexuality, some branches of Christianity (most notably the Catholics and the American Right) campaign against the availability of contraception. This stance kills people; I think it is evil. The C of E, for all its faults, supports the use of contraception.
Similarly, it is not the C of E that seeks to teach creationism in science classes.
To take another example, Toynbee complains that faith schools select the brightest children. Instead of railing against this, how about trying to bring the church back to the notion that its duty is to minister to the poorest; that it should select children from poor families and troublesome estates rather than set up havens for the middle classes? Not that I like faith schools, but neither do I like banning people for their beliefs.
I'm an atheist, to the extent that I care little about religion one way or the other. Sometimes I oppose religious groups (as with the Pope's appalling speech this week), when they do good, I support them. Some parts of the Christian message, including tolerance and humility, seem worthy of support, at least some of the time.