waltondammerung

Timely words

I've finally gotten around to reading The Closing of the American Mind. (No, it wasn't required reading in any of my Hillsdale classes, surprisingly enough.) For a book written twenty years ago, it's surprisingly timely. Here's an excerpt that seems more appropriate now than it was then:

"It goes without saying that Weber never for a moment considered whether Calvin might actually have had a revelation from God--which would certainly change the looks of things. Weber's atheism was dogmatic, but he was not interested in proving that Calvin was a charlatan or a madman. He rather preferred to believe in the authenticity of Calvin was a charlatan or a madman. He rather preferred to believe in the authenticity of Calvin and other such founding figures as representing peak psychological types who have an inner sureness or commitment. The religious experience is the thing, not God. The old quarrel between reason and revelation is a matter of indifference, because both sides were wrong, had faulty self-understandings. However, revelation teaches us what man is and needs. Men like Calvin are the value producers and hence the models for action in history. We cannot believe in the ground (God) of their experience, but that experience is critical. We are not interested in finding out how the understood themselves but rather in searching in the self for the mysterious substitute for their ground. We cannot have, and do not want to have, their peculiar illusions; but we do not want values and commitments. The result of this atheistic religiosity is the mysterious musings and language of Weber and many others (think of Sartre) about belief and action, which culminate in something very different from what either religious leaders or rational statesmen ever said or did. It fuses the two kinds of men, but with greater weight given to the former, to the necessity of faith and all that goes with it." (210-211)

Is it any wonder that seeker-sensitive churches aren't turning out real converts when they have people attending in droves? They're providing what people seek, what Bloom describes, which is the religious experience without the content.