The trouble with a secular world without religious tradition

• Author: PAUL SOCKEN
• Published date: 27 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Even America, the most religious of Western countries, is losing its religion: for the first time, a Gallup poll reveals that fewer than half of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship.

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Secular culture is the result of a complex series of historical developments, such as the Enlightenment and the rise of science, but also a result of abuses of power, hypocrisy and arrogance in which "pious frauds" masqueraded as religious leaders and adherents.

It is, indeed, a great irony that the same religions that gave us our ethical order have often exhibited discrimination and worse.

For all that valid claims can be made against religions throughout the ages, the problems of today's secular age are known to all: low birth rates, depression, anxiety, addictions and the loss of a sense of community. We think of ourselves as highly educated, sophisticated and advanced but we are adrift as a society, beset by personal problems that ravage the body and the self.

In The Atlantic magazine, Shadi Hamid writes that "if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith's inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed."

Instead, the fervor of religious belief has been channeled into the political arena.

In addition, social issues and moral issues of great import seek resolution. If society makes fame and celebrity, financial success, science and technology the new gods, how are ethical and moral decisions to be made?

We already see that lack of purpose, meaning and identity give rise to profound problems. Religion has been part of our civilization and our identity for millennia. When it is removed from our culture, our society loses a part of its identity.

Religion embodies our history, wisdom literature, reflections on life and the search for truth. Not "my truth" but Truth in the philosophical and theological sense. The late chief rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks, wrote that there are times when each of us has to decide, not just "What shall I do?" but "What kind of person shall I be?" It has historically been religion's role to assist people in that quest.

There is no doubt that science has been a spectacular benefit to the world and its achievements in improving the quality of life are astounding. But as Sacks used to say, science takes things apart to see how they work and religion puts things together to find out what they mean. Science is about physical nature and religion is about human...