A Season for Justice: Defending the Rights of the Christian Home, Church and School

Reviewer's Bookwatch, August, 2004 by Proctor S. Burress

Impressionable children weeping their way into a church auditorium fully reveals how dramatically emotional is so much of the faith he espouses. And yet he attempts to portray liberal opponents as similarly locked in into a faith while not recognizing ... much of their profound distrust of what he presents as that faith ... is based on antagonism to the widely seen religious emotional extremism that he actually describes. He finds grace in such experiences while others of us recoil at the Old Time Religion that drags sinners down the aisle to the "mourners bench."

Emotion may be natural to the human condition but as the basis of religious zeal it has proven to be dangerous throughout history. Such strong emotional responses usually exclude rational and calm discourse. The author paints emotional palettes to advance his ideas while apparently thinking that emotion validates his arguments. A better understanding is that emotion is the basis and content of the religious ideas he celebrates. Emotion validates little or nothing in this context.

Typically, it crowds out facts. Of course, certitude characterizes such intense emotion. Liberals cannot be demonized just because they lack such emotional certainty and such can hardly be described as a "faith". Learning greatly tempers certainty while emotional intensity fosters rigidity. Neither may rise to a "worldview!" Ambiguity may be the nature of the cosmos and is, of course, no friend to rigid, inflexible belief systems. Much more than "civil rights" seems to be involved here. Neither can the issues be simplified as "secular" liberalism versus straight- arrow religious faith. The presence of emotion excludes problem solving. The greater the emotion the less problem solving will occur.

Religious communities that define faith and practice it in terms of emotion are not likely to problem solve. More importantly their emotional intensity creates barriers with others in the larger community who might be willing to problem solve. This is not a matter of a "liberal" faith standing in hard headed opposition to simple religious folk. It is a matter of understanding the lessons of history where zealotry rages.

A second matter needs mention. Those, the author champions and has great affection for, those who deny or distort what we have come to understand about human beings. One might say that the worldview he espouses is a crippled and inadequate view of humanity. The cultural split he alludes to is truly great. His co-religionists continue to insist their worldview is the only accurate view, as it was authored by divinity. No values outside of this worldview can be recognized nor celebrated. This is the magical thinking that is so often considered to be the remarkable religiosity of Americans.

Supportive of the contention that the faith being discussed here is of extreme emotional intensity is this: the constant conditioning of church members with song, prayer, sermon, testimony is not seen as conditioning. In fact, the very idea, if put to religious folk, would be rejected as offensive. Somehow the well-understood conditioning that occurs to all of us at work, at home and in school never happens at church. This is a denial of the first order that thoughtful people, liberal or not, should not ignore. Such a lack of insight should make every thoughtful person wary of many religious affiliations.