Back to Sharon Welch in After Empire. An atheist, she writes:
What, then, is the religious? This is the name we give to those encounters and energies that are constitutive but amoral, those encounters that are vivid, compelling, and meaningful, but fragile. (Page 30.)
I’m still chewing on that.
It’s constitutive, not constituative. I know cause I had to look that one up. ;)
With such a small (admittedly profound) quote, I’m hankering for more. Does she unpack that in the rest of the book? Even after looking up ‘constitutive’ (found) and ‘constituative’ (not found) I still wonder about the meaning and, perhaps more importantly, the implications.
I can’t imagine an encounter with the holy being amoral. Such experiences become foundational to all morality. Ethics and theology are inseperably intertwined. Can one have an atheistic philosophy without it also containing or adhering to an ethic?
I had to look it up as well.
My answer to the question “Is religion amoral?”, but rephrasing to: “Are religious encounters amoral?” because that is what the quote was about.
My answer is yes.
My reasoning rests on the part of Sharon’s Definition that the experience be meaningful.
What is meaning? We use it in common language to mean the intent of the person “He really meant to say” or a personal interpretation, “this meant ____ to me”.
I think that when used in the context of the religious encounter it it is of the sort, “I think it meant _____”. That is a guess as to the intent of the thing responsible for the event.
I think a religious encounter is one where people associate an intent with an event that either has none, or only God knows (as he rather than man decided to do it).
If you believe in the Christian God, then all such events (those started with Him) are indeed moral (by definition).
If like me you do not believe in a God, then these events are amoral because there is no intent of the event itself.
She continues:
She says the four dangers of her model are complacency, settling for too little, disdain for “ordinary” life and “ordinary” people (who haven’t had those “encounters” in the original quote) and escapism.
Then finally (on page 32):
Chutney, I’m reading that book now for her class in a few weeks. So I’ll probably have a reflection up tomorrow or the day after.
Honestly, I got to that quote and wrote “WTF?!” in my margins, because as a useful definition of religion, it fell woefully short. A definition is supposed to mark out some boundaries, not include everything!
Constitutive of what?
Encounters with whom/what?
What is not “meaningful” in some way?
Part of my frustration is that I had to slog through Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit and I feel like people with whom I share values are lazy in their thinking and expression (not that I’m the paragon of concise rationality…witness this rambling comment!)
I appreciate the prose in postmodernist writing–it’s complex and beautiful and whatnot–but surely they can write down what they believe in some bullet points and make an argument that can be replied to!?
Since Welch is my prof for a week, I’ll need to rein it in quite a bit and be open to what she can teach me–which is probably a lot, as she’s quite well read and very sharp. Still, it’s hard for me not to just shout out, “What the hell are you trying SAY?!?” when reading a few of these books.
That said, I’m looking forward to YOUR thoughts to see what I am missing….
Religion can be amoral, just as atheism can be extremely moralistic. Amoral religion usually deals with radical experience that leads to the dissolution of social conventions and taboos, e.g. mystery religions, radical gnosticism, some varieties of taoism, were and are amoral.
Would amoral then be the same thing as quietistic? Or maybe amoral would be the larger category and then quietism would be a subcategory? Hmm…
At least in Welch’s others writings, it seems like she means “amoral” in the sense that it is not explicitly turned in one ethical direction or the other. She emphasizes the fact that any religion, ideology, etc. can easily be turned in the service of evil and injury, and that “we” (whoever is in question, whatever group) are not immune to that.
So she criticizes just war theories, talk of essence and natural reason, because they’ve been just convenient monikers for whatever ends the group in power has. They’re excuses, essentially, and they change throughout history, anyway.
So I am not sure that it connects to quietism, at least how she means it.
(I can find out tomorrow, though, because her class starts then…)
Jaume–
“Amoral religion usually deals with radical experience that leads to the dissolution of social conventions and taboos, e.g. mystery religions, radical gnosticism, some varieties of taoism, were and are amoral.”
Can you clarify this a bit? How do you understand Taoism as amoral? Morality (as I understand it, at least) in Taoism has to do with the natural order and the social order, which are intertwined. In Confucianism filial responsibility etc. are cornerstones of the Tao. (And do you mean philosophical Taoism, or Taoism as practiced by the lay Chinese?) Ethics doesn’t come from an external Deity or proscriptions, but is there nonetheless.
Oh, you’re spot on with Welch. I took Jaume to be talking more about ecstatic, liminal experiences.