Tara Burton, Strange Rites: How should the Christian apologist respond?

The fall in church attendance suggests a decline in religion.

How are would-be Christian evangelists to respond? 

I ask, because upon our answer to this question will depend how we preach the Gospel. 

Here is why.

No religion or the wrong religion?

Every presentation of the Gospel in my experience begins by diagnosing the human state of spiritual need – as the Bible calls it ‘sin’.

Now, if the issue for non-believers is just that they have, as it were, ‘lost religion’ – or never had it in the first place – that is one thing.  I guess, this such an assumption lies behind the attempt, in the average missional talk or sermon, to arouse the listeners’ awareness of our natural human state of moral indigence – what Spufford has recent termed HPtFtU, ‘the Human Propensity to Fuck things Up’.

But suppose the issue is rather that ‘non-believers’ have got the wrong religion?  Or, that they have somehow got the wrong religion, all the while not being aware they had a religion at all?  In that case we would have a situation resembling, not a marital relationship that had broken down due to reasons internal to the couple, but one which had been displaced by another sexual relationship (perhaps without the offending party having faced up to the fact of what had occurred).  It would, in such a case, evidently be a mistake for a marital counsellor to proceed on the assumption that there was no underlying problem of fidelity.  In the same way, I would suggest, the diagnosis of ‘idolatry’ might influence the way the evangelist chooses to present the Christian faith to non-believers.

Now it is an implication of a recent book, Tara Burton, Strange Rites, that the situation of religious belief, at least in the US, does indeed resemble the second rather than the first of these scenarios.  If she is correct (and she is only the latest of a long line of religious commentators to have reached this conclusion), then the only adequate response to the non-believer’s widespread claim ‘not to be religious’ is: ‘Yes, of course you are; and here is how’.  Once a religious position has been acknowledged, we can proceed to a comparison and contrast of the religions in question, theirs and ours – as the apologists of the early Christian church did in the case of ancient paganism.  But evidently this requires us to have an adequate understanding of the contemporary alternatives to Christianity, much as Justin or Augustine seem to have possessed of the paganism of their day.  In the words of C. Wright, the disclosure of idolatry requires the application of both ‘theological and sociological tools’.

Unlike earlier commentators, Tara Burton seems to have attracted the attention of the pundits, both secular and religious – partly no doubt thanks to the rich topicality of her focus on the digital landscape.  Hopefully, then, this book will highlight a long-needed reconfiguration of our understanding of contemporary religion.  Unlike earlier attempts of a less obviously relevant kind, this book may prove hard for Christian evangelists and their interlocutors to ignore.

That said, Burton’s focus differs from that of evangelists, or of those previous commentators I mentioned, in that her focus is not idolatry – a descriptor implying the perspective of commitment to a single religion as ‘true’ – but religion.  For the purposes of analysis, this is no doubt a strength, since, if our aim is properly to understand the phenomenon in question, then we have to begin by viewing it sympathetically, as would an anthropologist or a sociologist of religion.  But, as will become clear in this discussion, the aim of evangelist does not limit itself to that of a sociological analysis – even if, as I would strongly argue, that is where it must begin. 

In other words, from the evangelistic perspective, Burton’s study only takes as so far towards our goal.  A good illustration of this would be her use of the term ‘religion’.  The word is used, as we shall see, in a number of senses in her book; but rarely in the sense it has when we speak of ‘the Christian religion’ (as opposed to, say, Islam or Buddhism) – i.e. the apparently rather abstract sense of a body of practices and beliefs sanctioned by historical tradition.  Correspondingly, she isn’t primarily interested in the respects in which the contemporary phenomena she examines stand opposed to orthodox Christianity, understood as a ‘religion’ in this sense, and the extent to which they could be said to constitute, within what was previously a Christian consensus, a distinct religious alternative. 

In what follows, I shall not only be presenting her findings, but simultaneously discussing their relevance from an evangelistic perspective.  That involves, as I have already indicated, introducing elements of analysis that are largely absent from the original study – such as the particular sense of ‘religion’ to which I have just alluded.  In so doing I hope to demonstrate her findings actually lend themselves to the discernment of entities corresponding to this sense of religion, and that her data allow this religion to be characterized in a manner that is readily identifiable from other studies treating modern religions from a more explicitly theological perspective.  I also hope to show how our own analysis, superimposed on that of Burton herself, can in turn contribute to the sociological objective of Burton’s book, which is the description and characterization of contemporary religious phenomena.

Defining ‘religion’

Burton speaks of ‘religions’ (plural) – as in ‘new religions’ – far more frequently than she does of instances of ‘a religion’ (indefinite article), at least where the present day is concerned.  What is she referring to?  Practices classified as pertaining to: 1. Internet fandom communities; 2. wellness culture; 3. New Age spirituality and witchcraft; 4. non-traditional sexuality.  What kind of practices?  Group activities like SoulCycle, Wellness for Health (formerly WeightWatchers), CrossFit (wellness), transcendental meditation, acupuncture, protests, installations (New Age), play parties, polyamorous and kink communities (sexuality).  Under the decisive influence of the internet and consumer capitalism these quickly veer off into lifestyle brands (Goop), products, and internet fandoms, as evidenced in internet message boards, subscription boxes, fan communities, blogs, online journals, etc..  Support for such practices no longer requires physical presence of people in one place, but is increasingly evidenced in Facebook platforms, websites, message boards, which number their support-base in terms of registered members, internet visitors, ‘hits’ etc..  The extent to which such phenomena often depend upon the influence of gurus and celebrities allows Burton easily to segue from the enumeration of practices into a commentary on their philosophies and general rationale.  The effect is to focus on the many points of convergence, out of which the sense of a fairly uniform ‘remix culture’ emerges – a consistent theme of self-actualization, emotional authenticity, and suspicion of institutional structures.

The classification of such practices as ‘religions’ Burton justifies initially on the basis of four overall criteria she sums up in the words: ‘community’, ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ and ‘ritual’. 

I would broadly agree with this definition of religion – with two reservations.  First, greater clarity would be achieved, in my opinion, by condensing the four criteria into two: 1. generation of common identity and community; 2. establishment of a common world-view and values through rituals and beliefs.  Second – and more importantly, there is something missing from her definition.  In fact, Burton herself almost acknowledges the fact, since she introduces the additional criterion in the final two chapters of the book (see pp. 165ff.).  For now, I shall say no more.  Suffice it to say, it concerns the ideological – that is to say, the systematizing and totalizing – aspect of what we often call religion.  

Even on Burton’s own initial definition, then, the phenomena considered in the earlier chapters could be considered lacking an essential feature of ‘religion’, as commonly understood.  Certainly, this feature is not mentioned in relation to ‘new religions’, as earlier defined.  My own impression is that by and large, the ‘new religions’ listed above lack this characteristic. 

At the same time, it could equally be said – and, I think, more helpfully – that Burton uses the term religion in more than one sense.

Leaving to one side, for the moment, the sense that term acquires in the final chapters (pp.165ff.), we have the following three senses, all of which are present from the outset.

First, there is the sense defined by features of ‘community’, ‘ritual’, ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ – the sense in which religious practices like transcendental meditation, Reiki, or CrossFit might be considered religions.  As already indicated, in this sense, the term figures mainly in the plural, ‘religions’, rather than ‘a religion’ (as in ‘new religions’).

Second, there is the sense that religion sometimes acquires in the second chapter, entitled ‘A brief history of intuitional religion in America’.  The purpose of this chapter is to set ‘new religions’ against the background of religious developments in the past, with a particular emphasis on forms of religion Burton describes as intuitional (orientated to individual need), as opposed to institutional.  Already, in the C19th, these include an enormous range of ‘sects, cults, manias, movements, fads, religious excitements’, some Christian, or partly Christian, some quite definitely not.  But they also include ‘churches’, both relatively orthodox Protestant ones, for example those of pietist, evangelical or Pentecostal persuasion, and others more on the Christian fringe (e.g. the Church of Christ Scientist), as well as still others that are certainly non-Christian.  In contrast to the religious practices Burton describes as ‘new religions’, some of the more church-like communities of the past, especially the non-Christians ones, would, for all their ‘intuitional’ character, fit most people’s idea of ‘a religion’ (note the indefinite article), with their location-based congregations, and totalizing worldviews.   

Third, in addition to ‘religions’ (plural), instances of ‘a religion’ (singular with the indefinite article), there is a more general sense of ‘religion’ (uncountable noun, no article).  This third definition denotes the general category of all forms of practice capable of being described as religious by the criteria stated above, as opposed to ‘non-religion’ as characterized by Dawkins, Hitchens et al..  This third sense of religion differs from the first in that one could refuse to consider the various practices described in chapter one as religions, while holding that in their globality they constituted something you could call religion.

Burton’s argument in the first two-thirds of the book is essentially that the ‘new religions’ (first sense) have as much claim to be regarded as religion (third sense) as the often more conventional-seeming religions (second sense) of the past, including such non-Christian or fringe-Christian ‘churches’ as, let us say, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Unitarians.  Burton also claims that, if religion is defined as in the third sense, the ranks of the American religious, even among Gen-Z, count a far greater membership – and the ranks of the properly ‘atheist’/’secular’ a far smaller one – than is usually supposed.  On this basis it seems unreasonable to equate the diminished membership of mainstream churches, like the Methodists or Presbyterians, with a decline in religion per se.  Yet, the reality of this situation is partially masked by the strongly intuitional character of new religions.  This means that religion today presents a very fragmented appearance by comparison with religion of the mid-twentieth century, dominated, as that phase of US history was, by the dominance of a mainstream Christianity of strongly institutional character.  So, from the perspective of a traditional Christian, or a militant secularist whose notion of religion is largely that of institutional Christianity, one can understand why the situation might be misdescribed as one of religious decline.

The missing criterion

Evidently, much depends on how we define religion.

An interesting, though very remote, parallel can be drawn with the situation in the Roman Empire as recently described by classical historians such as Mary Beard, Simon Price, John North and Richard Gordon.

To the modern eye, Roman religion, even in the early days, presents a bewildering heterogeneity of rituals and cults.  With the expansion of Empire, this situation is further complicated by the influx of a profusion of foreign cults (Cybele, Attis, Mithras, Serapis and so on).  In the cities of the provinces, official cults were imposed upon a still vaster array of alien religions and cults, with which they often fused in an elaborate and geographically highly diverse polytheistic mosaic.

In such a context, one might ask what sense there could be in speaking of ‘a Roman religion’, or even of ‘Roman (or Graeco-Roman) religions’. 

Yet, the historians mentioned do appear to make such a case.  How?

First, the Roman state, from which this religion seems inseparable, patrols the boundaries of what is, and is not, acceptable.  (Christianity seems to have found itself on the wrong side of these boundaries).  Second, Roman civic religion seems to have set the institutional pattern for religion in Roman colonial cities, and, beyond that, for the cities of the empire, just as Rome set a pattern for all civic institutions.  Here, worship of the emperor – or his ‘genius’ – gained an important place with the Empire.  Third, there is syncretism between Romano-Greek deities and the indigenous cults; the cult of Sul Minerva at Bath is a well-known example.  Given the Romano-Greek deities were the same throughout the empire, while the indigenous gods were local to their particular regions, the overall effect will have been the progressive Romanization of an increasingly cosmopolitan culture.

There is, of course, a fundamental difference between ‘Roman religion’ and Christianity, even at its most institutional – especially since the Reformation: namely, that the latter has never been identical with the state.  That said, there is an evident similarity between the kind of entity just described, and the ‘mainstream Protestantism’ which Burton describes as having ‘shored up American civic identity’ in the mid-twentieth century.  We might speak, in such cases, not of ‘a religion’ but of ‘the religion’ (of America).

In the latter chapters Burton considers three potential – admittedly intuitionist – successors to the former role of ‘mainstream Protestantism’ as ‘the religion’ of America.  In so doing, she appears to be feeling her way towards yet a fourth definition of religion.  The candidates are: ‘the Gospel of social justice’; ‘techno-utopianism’; ‘new atavism’.  How do these differ from the religious practices described earlier in the book?  Well, in addition to the earlier-mentioned characteristics of generating community and establishing meaning and purpose, there is, in these cases, another characteristic in play whose significance is alluded to in her use of the word ideology: a totalizing and uniformizing tendency that aspires to view everything from a single perspective.  This characteristic is not unconnected with the fact that phenomena like the Gospel of social justice or techno-utopianism present themselves as alternatives that are mutually exclusive, whereas ‘new religions’ seem happily to mix and mingle in almost any combination.  

These ‘ideological’ religions are possibly closer to our second sense of religion.  I would argue, however, that their aspiration to the comprehensiveness of ‘the Protestant mainstream’ places them into a different category from such instances of this second sense as, say, a Transcendentalist community or Quakerism.  Hence, perhaps the need for a fourth definition. 

When speaking of the necessary qualification for religion in this sense, Burton specifies that it will ‘need to provide a wholesale ideology no less powerful than, say, American evangelical Christianity or the Catholic church’.  ‘Can the Remixed intuitional strain be reworked once more into a civil religion?’  she asks. (Note the introduction of the idea of ‘civil religion’ at this point).  ‘Are there ideologies’, she goes on, ‘rooted in and derived from intuitional culture, that provide a sufficiently strong narrative, that offer a robust sense of not only meaning and purpose but also ritual and community, that could replace the benign optimism of mid-century Protestantism?’

That final sentence strikes me as evasive.  Yes, the reference to the four criteria gives us the impression that the phenomena she is about to explore qualify as religions on the same basis as ‘new religions’; yet, the notion of ‘ideologies’ and the specific reference to American ‘civil religion’ introduces something obviously not adequately covered by her four distinctive criteria of ‘new religions’, nor always evidenced by the cases of ‘a religion’ in chapter two.  Evidently, Burton wants to distinguish ‘ideologies’ from new religions like CrossFit, yet she is not very explicit about the basis of this distinction.

It is also curious that she seeks the convergence of ‘the many and varied religions of the self’ in some future religion of America, waiting in the wings, such as ‘the Gospel of social justice’.  Has she not already adequately demonstrated such a convergence here and now, in the case of … well … ‘the religion of the self’ (if that is what we wish to call it)?  In fact, much of Burton’s text, to this point, has been devoted, not so much to an exposition of the innumerable outward forms of such a religion, as to a thorough demonstration of its coherence.  Her text abounds in statements such as: ‘Our sexual utopianism and spiritual self-care, ultimately, are two sides of the same coin’.  Indeed, the reader need only have followed Burton through those four cultural zones through which she laboriously stalks her prey – internet fandoms; wellness culture; the magic resistance; the new perfectionism – to appreciate that the this particular ‘coin’ has four sides that could be demonstrated in any pairing of these zones.

A new religion of ‘self’?

So, why does she not conclude that the new intuitionist religion of America is indeed already with us?  She would not be alone in so doing.  Indeed, such a religious phenomenon has even received a name – which, incidentally reflects its real content far more adequately that ‘the religion of self’: namely, expressivist individualism.  Whereas those three ‘ideologies’ Burton admits to be conflicting manifestations of ‘the religion of self’ (rather as Protestantism and Catholicism might be considered conflicting manifestations of Christianity), the phenomenon of expressivist individualism has absolute and exclusive boundaries that set it in opposition, for example, to orthodox Christianity, and other traditional faiths.  So why would we deny it the status of a religion in some sense – even of, potentially, the religion of America?

The reason, I think, has something to do with Burton’s – on the whole, healthy – orientation towards practices, as opposed to beliefs or philosophies.  We have already commented that she rarely uses the term religion in the sense in which it might be applied Christianity in its relation to, say, Islam or Buddhism, as a traditional orthodoxy of belief.  (This might be regarded as a fifth sense of religion, not this time, much evidenced in Burton’s text).  But, if there could be shown to be a type of ‘sacramental’ practice, as well as a worldview, that unified the various phenomena of expressivist individualism, then that would presumably give us something like a contemporary ideology or ‘civic religion’ that would stand comparison with the mainstream Protestantism of former years.  As it happens, I believe that that ‘sacramental practice’ exists, and that it consists in the phenomenon Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, calls – rather over-solemnly – ‘epiphanic art’.  But to make the case for this would require another blog.

Yet, even without that demonstration, there is no reason why we shouldn’t give some space to that fifth sense of religion I have just mentioned, since it would fit the case of expressivist individualism, I would argue, as well as it does that of Christianity.  Both correspond to traditional orthodoxies that are entirely consistent internally, but manifested in an enormous diversity of rituals, practices, and forms of community.  Both are not only generative of community and worldview (Burton’s initial four criteria of a religion), but ideologies of a strongly totalizing and uniformizing character.  And both are strongly opposed to each other, in the way that the Gospel of social justice/ techno-utopianism find themselves to modern atavism.  But their radical mutual opposition cannot, as in the latter case, be subsumed in some more underlining ideational common ground. 

Religion and idolatry

I am fully aware that my own perspective arises, as I made clear in my introduction, out of a strictly ‘theological’ objective of seeking to characterize – and so bring to conscious attention – religious forces opposed to Christianity, in the sense of a traditional orthodoxy.  Is there an anti-Christian religion that constitutes, in today’s society, an ‘idolatrous’ alternative to Christianity, as did pagan polytheism in antiquity?

The common-sense view, amongst Christian apologists as much as anyone else, has, on the whole, been that these forces emanate from a spirit of religious scepticism and non-religion (‘agnosticm’ and ‘atheism’).  This is, I would argue, a myth that Burton’s sociological analysis can help to dispel.  In practice, it also serves a second theological purpose in offering us a clear characterization of those anti-Christian forces in terms of a coherent system of underlying belief.  

Yet, from my own perspective, Burton fails to take the final step of identifying that coherent system of non-Christian belief as an alternative religion.  There are two, interrelated, reasons for this.  The first, already mentioned, is an emphasis on ritual and practice as opposed to belief.  This is hardly something to be regretted, since it enables her to identify practices as ‘religions’ in the first place.  But it also leaves her without a category (i.e. ‘religion’ in a larger, but not universal, sense) by means of which to register the coherence, and the anti-Christian consistency, of the worldview to which all these ‘new religions’ belong.  Her criteria of what constitutes a religion – which, initially, leaves that of ideology (totalization & uniformization) out of account – also pushes in this direction. 

The second reason has to do with the author’s focus on a distinction – that of intuitional vs. institutional, which cuts across the distinction between expressivist individualism and Christianity.  All religious phenomena on the non-Christian side are, I suspect, intuitionist in character; but Christianity includes both intuitionist and institutional forms of religion.  No doubt, Burton’s overriding emphasis on the distinction of intuitional vs. institutional arises from her primary objective of countering the traditional way of setting up the battle-lines between ‘religion’ (=Christianity) and ‘non-religion’.  But, in so doing, she also excludes (perhaps inadvertently) an alternative way of viewing the situation as a struggle pitting Christian against non-Christian religion, Christianity against expressivist individualism.

Needless to say, this alternative manner of conceptualizing the situation of contemporary religion, as well as making sense in its own terms, strikes me as entirely consistent with the evidence that Burton presents in this book.

PART ONE: HOW RE-FOCUSSING OUR NOTION OF ‘SIN’ ON ‘IDOLATRY’ FORCES THEOLOGY TO ADDRESS A QUESTION IT CANNOT ANSWER

PART TWO: CAN WALTER WINK HELP US ‘UNMASK THE POWERS’?

PART THREE: CARL TRUEMAN AND EXPRESSIVIST INDIVIDUALISM

SPIRITUALITIES OF LIFE