external monologue

recovering secularists

There are six steps in the recovery process. First you have to accept the fact that you are not the norm. Western foundations and universities send out squads of researchers to study and explain religious movements. But as the sociologist Peter Berger has pointed out, the phenomenon that really needs explaining is the habits of the American professoriat: religious groups should be sending out researchers to try to understand why there are pockets of people in the world who do not feel the constant presence of God in their lives, who do not fill their days with rituals and prayers and garments that bring them into contact with the divine, and who do not believe that God's will should shape their public lives.

this is an excerpt from an incredible article by david brooks (one of mesh's favorites i believe) in the march 2003 Atlantic Monthly. i find it fascinating that the backlash against secularism seemingly kicked off by the events of september 11 still continues. and that it not only continues but seems to be reaching higher and higher into what brooks calls the "professoriat" -- what you and i might call elitist-left-wingers.

brooks honesty is disarming (I suspect I am not the only one who since September 11 has found himself reading a paperback edition of the Koran that was bought a few years ago in a fit of high-mindedness but was never actually opened.), however, even with these sorts of confessions, i have to wonder where this all leads. what does a man like brooks do with this sense of unrest? is it enough merely to be spiritual? or will he proceed down some more exclusive path? but even that issue he doesn't shy away from: Human beings yearn for righteous rule, for a just world or a world that reflects God's will—in many cases at least as strongly as they yearn for money or success. Thinking about that yearning means moving away from scientific analysis and into the realm of moral judgment...One has to try to separate right from wrong. The problem is that once we start doing that, it's hard to say where we will end up.

you can say that again...