It seems to me that skepticism about religion doesn’t consort well with overtrustfulness of human motives and human honesty. I would counsel our contemporary atheists to study some of their more consistently skeptical ancestors: George Orwell, for instance, who exposed the fundamental and incorrigible dishonesty of most political speech in his great essay “Politics and the English Language.” Or, better yet, Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” with its ruthless exposure of the ways that the Christian emperors of Rome manipulated religious language for the foulest of ends. Surely Gibbon would help even the most optimistic modern atheists break the habit of trustfulness.
Is religion powerful? I suppose it often is. After all, if people were not religious — or, to take a Gibbonesque view of the matter, if people did not want to be thought of as so — no one would use religious language to promote political or social or ethnic goals. That those seeking to acquire or keep power do use such language, and regularly, indicates that religion has influence. But the idea that without religion people would stop seeking power, stop manipulating, stop deceiving, is just wishful thinking of the silliest kind. Though it may seem ironic for a Christian to be saying this, it’s time to talk less about the power of religion and remember instead the dark forces in all human lives that religious language is too often used to hide.
When I first saw the heading for this article by Prof. Jacobs, I assumed that it was written for First Things, a journal to which he often contributes. What a nice surprise to discover that it was instead published by the unlikely secular source with a much larger circulation: the Wall Street Journal. And as usual with Alan Jacobs, it was written with a winsome wit and grace.
Since Dr. Jacobs himself refers approvingly to that masterpiece of Enlgish literature, Gibbons’ “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” in support of the notion that religion can and often is used as a cover for nefarious purposes, I’ll again bring up here my favorite quote from Edward Gibbons. Somewhere in those three big volumes, the famous Enlightenment skeptic made a very astute and revealing abservation with regard to the fact that the early Roman Empire was highly syncretistic, pluralistic, and remarkably tolerant of a welter of religious cults. That is, it didn’t really matter if you were a devotee of the Egyptian goddess Isis, or of Mithraism, or some other mystery cult (you could belong to all of them if you had the money and desire), Rome didn’t mind as long as you honored the imperial cult and paid due homage to the Emperor.
Gibbons made the following incisive but ultimately cynical remark about that social situation, so similar to our own contemporary one:
“To the masses, all religions were equally true.
To the philosophers, they were all equally false.
And to the politicians, they were all equally useful.”
The wry irony of that last line is typical of Gibbons’ urbane, comopolitan attitude: it’s delightfully clever and brilliantly perceptive, but in the end it’s also just nihilistic. Alas, that’s how Enlightenment rationalism always ends, in cynicism and despair. It ends with Nietsche and the conclusion that since there is no God, and all religions are equally false (as all sophisticated people supposedly realize), then there is nothing left but that “might makes right.”
In a presidential election year like this, it’s all too easy to see how politicians continue to find all religions “equally useful.”
Well done, Professor Jacobs.
David Handy+
Wheaton alumnus (’77)