Welcome to the first post on my new blog. I will use this blog to expand on some topics covered in my new book, “Love Songs of the Zombie”, that will be published in October of this year. Having crafted the book, which I will just call “Zombie” for brevity, to portray a certain philosophical point of view, I hope to use this blog to cover some practical implications of that philosophical point of view. I will explore a “middle way” between extremes in religion and politics.
For instance, in religion, how can we maintain the spiritual depth and meaning of traditional religions without including outmoded dogmas and superstitions? This has not proven easy to do, because attempts to do so over the last two centuries have often resulted in syncretic beliefs that lack the most important “meat and potatoes” of the religious communities that have evolved over many centuries that offer deep spiritual nourishment in their respective communities of memory. For instance, how can a new religious synthesis offer a deep spirituality if it doesn’t include the strong set of beliefs in all the miraculous, all the literal meanings of the scriptures, and all the core beliefs around the founders of the religious tradition? These are not easy questions to answer, for instance look at Universal Unitarianism. Around 200 years ago, some thought Universal Unitarianism was the future of American Christianity, as it incorporated a more open minded and expansive point of view, in some ways not unlike what I talk about in “Zombie”, but in fact Universal Unitarianism has not grown because it lacks enough “meat and potatoes”, ritual, and core beliefs to inspire enough spirituality to attract commitments, at least not commitments of a long lasting nature that endure for generations. For that reason, I think an open minded, science-compatible ecumenical set of beliefs may need to be coupled with a commitment by the individual to one of the major world’s religious traditions. In my case, that commitment to a traditional religion is to the Catholic Church, yet I maintain my ecumenical respect for all major world religions, any one of which could be a seeker’s core religious commitment. I will explore what all this means in future blog posts.
In the field of politics, I think we are becoming and more polarized and extreme. For instance, in the USA, our two party system is becoming more and more toxic as, in order to win the nomination of either major party, a candidate must be more and more extreme. Thus in effect, we are presented with two choices for president, one extremely conservative and one extremely liberal. A moderate has no one to vote for. Compromise becomes more and more difficult because advocates of each party focus more on hatred of the other party, winning at all costs, and in the process competing with each other in a downward spiral of ethical laxity. I will in future posts explore a middle way.
Ron Stephens