Blair, Hitchens, and Marcion's Dilemma

When Christopher Hitchens debated Tony Blair tonight on the resolution "That religion is a force for good in the world," each man's virtues were in high relief.

It was, I think, a foregone conclusion who would win the debate: Hitchens' skepticism and critique of religion has been carefully honed, researched, and perfected.  Blair's optimism about what he cast as "true faith" (essentially, human goodness, the proposition that "God is love," though he wisely avoided using the Christian phrase) seemed childishly simple next to Hitchens' characterization of religion as a dangerous co-opting of goodness.

The debate was surprisingly deep.  Hitchens' strongest blow was his most predictable: the observation that the divisiveness and oppression that stems from religion is not done "in the name of religion" but is intrinsic to it and its scriptures.   He has made a great deal, in his critiques of religion, of the moment at which Christianity elected to embrace the unity of the Old and New Testaments, taking on the baggage of the deuteronomistic god.  Marcion, he reminds us, cautioned Christianity against this, and his voice was rejected.  For this, Blair had no persuasive answer.

Blair skirted out from under one other serious question (the Catholic Church's doctrinal opposition to birth control and its role in poverty), but he had profound things to say about human spirit.  The two had very interesting things to say about the elevation of the human mind and heart, and what it does and does not imply.

A few things occurred to me as I listened.  

As I listened to Blair talking about the good that religion can do and how it can overcome divisions between people (divisions which Hitchens quickly pointed out religion frequently causes), I thought a little about human tribalism.

Jonathan Rauch has written that human beings are "naturally tribalist."  Religion in the end is a form of our tendency to draw lines around ourselves, excluding the other.  And I've been in Christian circles long enough and deeply enough to know how Christians allay that charge: how they make love and service and dedication to the god of love their central business.  And I want to affirm that so far as it goes.  

But there does come a point at which your doctrine, your sexual orientation, your personality, or your choices rub religion the wrong way, and you find yourself uncomfortable within the family. 

Religion puts up a standard around which people can congregate with others whose desires or experiences resemble their own: it serves, in that sense, a function much like art does, letting us know we are not alone.

Or, if we happen to be differently minded on something important enough, that we are in fact alone.

But organized faith flies flags of surpassing beauty, as Marcion of Sinope knew in the second century after Christ, flags that snap in the wind of the spirit.

When you have had an experience of The Great Spirit, or The Holy Spirit, or of extraordinary love, as a human creature you ache to give it form and structure.  It's what we do.  We ritualize the things that matter.  And there is something even Hitchens acknowledges, something "ecstatic" that (?some of) us experience. 

And whatever that might be, we're uncommonly needy to have that affirmed socially. 

But we're also uncommonly prone to control that, to jealously guard it, to be powerful within the community that has undergone such a transformative experience. 

And to evict the trespasser, to declare who has a strong claim to the birthrights of these experiences.

Marcion (who had no shortage of weird ideas) was excommunicated.  Rumor had it that he had seduced a virgin, and Bart Ehrman is perhaps not far off the mark when he says this might have been a metaphor for the pure virgin church.  

Perhaps Marcion felt that a thing of beauty is given so one might love.

Perhaps he was more ecstatic than the ecstasy of the church could comprehend.

Maybe he was just vile and impure of mind.

Who could tell.  All we can say for sure is that he was drawn by the snapping flags of faith, and wounded for it.

Point to Hitchens.

Comments

[Natalie]

I was poised to start a discussion elsewhere about this debate, and one of my key points addressed tribalism as well.

Blair said several times that Christianity isn't really about divisiveness, us vs. them. But is that a universal? What about the increased tribalism associated with poverty? History demonstrates that as times get tough we define Our Own more stringently. What responsibility do people well-off enough to state confidently, "Christianity is really about loving your neighbor" have toward people not well-off enough to get past Take Care of Our Own?

Religion's ugly divisiveness seems to rear its head more as education and overall quality of life go down. Do people like Hitchens and Sam Harris carry the point when they speak of the massive potential energy of such divisiveness?

[Otter]

Natalie, I've responded to your comment here, as I thought it was so good. But I hope others come back at you with their own thoughts here in the comments section. I know you like a good fight. ;)