IRISC

International Research Institute into Spirituality and Change

Democratising Religion: An Agenda for I.R.l.S.C.

by John Reader

The role of the ordained person in parochial ministry in the Church of England has reached another turning point. Listening to clergy in my capacity as a training officer conducting follow-up visits after an appraisal by either bishop or archdeacon, I am now regularly encountering the question of how one is to operate in a context where many clergy have charge of a number of parishes and where there is an evident need for greater lay participation and leadership. Very often the discussion focuses upon the impossibility of doing routine visiting. People complain that they no longer see the vicar, and the vicar complains that he or she is so bogged-down by additional meetings and administration that this form of pastoral contact is no longer viable. However, just beneath the surface lies a more fundamental concern that clergy themselves are loathe to articulate because they perceive it as threatening to their self-identity. It can be summed up by a phrase that I recall being used by an experienced clergyman of an older generation when challenged over some local church activity; "I am in charge of religion here".

Of course he was right - then - the role of the parish priest, (and one might add an understanding of God), fitted neatly into the prevailing hierarchical social structure. Certain individuals, by virtue of their role and status in local society, exercised that sort of control, whether it be over religion, politics or the local social order. The problem now though is that that hierarchical ordering of society has largely disappeared to be replaced by what might be described as forms of democratisation. Many people no longer unquestioningly accept an authority imposed upon them in that way. That can leave clergy high and dry as surviving remnants of a past age and certain interpretations of familiar Christian doctrines, e.g. God as an authoritarian father figure, as further anachronisms.

The failure or the refusal of the churches to own up to these changes and their implications manifests itself in increasing clergy angst. We are still supposed to be in charge of religion here on one interpretation of the charge given to us at ordination, and yet increasingly unable to give this substantial reality as lay participation and leadership become the only means of survival for local churches. Religion is being democratised - if only by default - and clergy are left worrying what is going to happen next in the name of the local church. Plus there is the increased knowledge of other religious faiths and practices now readily available in bookshops, through the media and on the Internet, let alone through personal contact in a multi-faith society. The old control systems of religious orthodoxy are breaking down to be replaced by potentially disturbing alternatives. Into the vacuum created by this collapse ride either the cavalry of new fundamentalisms, offering certainty and security but at the price of autonomous critical judgement (religious addictions), or a tempting multiplicity of eclectic spiritualities bearing only a tenuous relationship to institutional religions (religious consumerism). Both tacitly acknowledge that religions are human constructs, by the ways that they operate if not in terms of content. One attempts to disguise this under a veil of authority, the other may not even bother to do so beyond appealing to some dubious historical claims about Celts or medieval mystics.

One could argue that religious institutions are unwittingly being forced to play catch-up, as other social structures have already faced up to this new situation and adapted accordingly, but perhaps that is to give credit where it is not wholly due. Although practical responses have indeed been initiated, any theoretical underpinnings are still largely under-developed. Even the terms that one encounters to describe these changes fail to capture what is happening and often merely add to the confusion, "Post-Modernity" being the obvious example. I now believe that the most appropriate candidate for this task is the term "Post-Foundational" and I will hope to explain why this is so.

However, a further preliminary reflection is called for. It is this notion of a vacuum that seems to dominate peoples' concerns. At the heart, base or foundation of our lives, both at a personal and collective level, we humans appear to need the concept of a principle, belief or practice that is secure and unassailable - that by reference to which we can make judgements about matters of existential importance. We may then spend much of our time challenging, questioning or even undermining whatever we place in that location, but the one thing we seem unable to contemplate is that the location should remain unoccupied. In order to justify the particular occupant of the location we expend energy surrounding it with supportive ideas that suggest the occupant is not of our own making. Words like sacred, divine, natural, traditional and so on are designed to give the occupant an external, objective authority and an existence not dependant upon the human imagination. Western philosophy since Kant and possibly certain strands of Buddhism have incrementally blown this piece of self-deception wide open. We now have to live with the knowledge that all the occupants of that location, including our ideas of God or divinity, are the products of human thought.

This knowledge has exposed those who still desire the location to be filled with deep insecurity. How can we continue to put our trust in, let alone worship, that which we ourselves appear to have created? The Old Testament story of the Golden Calf and the perennial prophetic warnings about idolatry have powerful resonances here. Even with this knowledge we seem unable to resist projecting content into this location. Most people seem to still require their foundations or their gods. Apart from the fear engendered by the thought of abandoning a psychological prop - life can only be given meaning by reference to an external reality - there is the understandable anxiety that any vacuum will be filled, and that who does that and how it happens will depend upon human power. Remove one idol and half-a-dozen more will rapidly occupy the vacant space, reflecting merely which groups or individuals are powerful or bright enough to get in there first. Hence the second predicament is worse that the first and an authoritarian foundation is replaced by sheer anarchy. Whether these are in fact the only two alternatives is a question yet to be fully considered.

A number of other questions need to be registered. First, is the location itself still required or justified? (Perhaps it is an inescapable factor in the human condition). Second, if that is so, then may it not be the insight of religion that the location must remain unoccupied and that all attempts to project into it amount to idolatry? Third, does there then not need to be a constant critique of any such projections? Fourth, accepting that these projections will inevitably occur, the question arises of how this is to happen - will it be according to the old authoritarian model, or according to the other extreme of anarchy yielding to the most powerful human groupings? Finally, is there not another alternative here, that of a democratised religion, self-consciously operating in Post-Foundational mode? This seems to me the content of a new agenda for the study of religion.

To gain a glimpse of this from within another discipline I turn to Anthony Giddens' third Reith Lecture, that on the notion of tradition. As a sociologist schooled within the classical mode and therefore very much a child of the Enlightenment, Giddens has tended to see traditions as being coercive, oppressive and opposed to the development of human autonomy. Thus Christianity, as a tradition, is essentially an anachronism and to be either discarded or discounted. However, of late Giddens has shifted perspective somewhat and is now prepared to argue that traditions play a positive and important role. "We shouldn't accept the Enlightenment idea that the world should rid itself of tradition altogether. Traditions are needed, and will always persist, because they give continuity and form to life". However, the context in which traditions are set has changed, largely because there is now an accepted plurality of traditions and thus, in this setting of active interchange, it is incumbent upon traditions to defend themselves in a non- traditional way. People - even within religious traditions - must be prepared to defend to themselves and to others, where they stand and why, and this will involve argument and debate and therefore presuppose some notion of rationality. Traditions - or rather their adherents - need to become reflexive, in other words, self-aware, self-critical and open to challenge by other traditions and prepared to engage in debate with them.

It is encouraging that Giddens is now moving towards a position some of us were arguing for a decade ago. Yet he brings to the discussion valuable insights about the shadow side of this process. This new freedom brings its own problems and we find ourselves caught between autonomy of action and compulsiveness and between cosmopolitanism and fundamentalism. A reaction to the first of these Giddens describes as addiction, or frozen autonomy, a failure or refusal to engage with the required reflexivity and a clinging to the past in the fear of letting go what may no longer be acceptable or appropriate.

"Addiction comes into play when choice, which should be driven by autonomy, is subverted by anxiety. In tradition, the past structures the present through shared collective beliefs and sentiments. The addict is also in thrall to the past - but because he or she cannot break away from what were originally freely chosen lifestyle habits".

Yet exercising this autonomy can be perceived as threatening and undermining - perhaps the real challenge to the Anglican clergy - and requires the courage to more self-consciously construct one's identity rather than accepting it uncritically from a received authority. Hence the current interest in therapy, counselling and self-help groups as potential aids in that process of self construction or reconstruction.

Similarly, this same tension is played out at a collective or even global level as a struggle between cosmopolitan communication across traditions and fundamentalism. "Fundamentalism is beleaguered tradition. It is tradition defended in the traditional way - by reference to ritual truth - in a globalising world that asks for reasons ...... it is a refusal of dialogue in a world where peace and continuity depend on it".

All of this is plausible and illuminating and Giddens concludes that we are faced with the question of whether we can live in a world where nothing is sacred. He believes not, and that even cosmopolitans like himself require that tolerance and dialogue be guided by values of a universal kind. In other words, the location must still be occupied even though democratisation is the order of the day. What is as yet unclear is whether and how the values of a universal kind that derive from religious traditions are compatible with democratisation.

To offer another contemporary example of where we are in this debate I turn to the current controversy over genetically modified food. Without going into detail, it is now fairly obvious that the notion that something is natural or normal and that therefore some developments are unnatural and abnormal is struggling to hold the line against commercial pressures. To argue simply that the forms of genetic modification now being experimented with are not "natural" and represent human beings interfering with "the natural order" will not be enough to carry the day. It is too easy to counter that humans have always done this and that the latest experiments are just a further development, a difference of degree but not of kind. Add to that the knowledge or self-awareness that what is deemed "natural" or "normal" is a human construct and thus subject to change and negotiation and the rug seems to be removed from beneath the protesters' feet.

However, once the controversy is conceded in that manner, what clearly happens in practice is that the field is left wide open for the big multinationals to drive their own financial interests through unchallenged. A quote from a Monsanto official makes the point, "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A's job".

So the buck is passed to a government monitoring agency that is itself subject to a political regime receiving financial support from the very multinational concerned. Remove any agreed values, standards or principles, and all that remains is the power of the strongest to impose their will upon the rest. Except that information about what is going on and presentation of counter arguments are available on the Internet and through various publications and interested networks. Open public debate - as far as is possible - is being created and fuelled by the general process of democratisation as supported by wider access to information and the use of global communications. So the multinationals will not have a completely clear run at this. Consumers and activists are being mobilised in opposition. Will there however be a consensus on the actual grounds of this opposition, some general agreement as to the values by which the multinationals are to be opposed? It seems more likely that there will be shifting coalitions of various interest groups motivated by a variety of concerns and values, and therefore more vulnerable to being picked-off by their political opponents. This perhaps will be the pattern of things in a Post-Foundational world.

If we turn now from practice to theory we find a picture of parallel complexity. I would want to argue that academics from different disciplines are now operating in a Post-Foundational mode, even if that term is not being explicitly employed. As examples I would offer Ronald Dworkin's work on jurisprudence, John Rawls from political philosophy, Roy Bhaskar within the philosophy of science, Jurgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel from within philosophy and possibly Anthony Giddens as a sociologist and on the basis of his more recent writing. I also know from conversations from colleagues across a range of disciplines that interest in a Post-Foundational approach is gaining momentum. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the people mentioned are part of a coherent research programme or would even describe themselves in the terms I have just used. There are significant differences and disagreements between them and this highlights the fact that Post-Foundationalism is currently defined negatively rather than positively. In other words, there are individuals who are unhappy with old-style foundationalism on the one hand, but who are equally uneasy with the anti-foundationalism often associated with Post-Modernity on the other. Beyond that, views as to how to tackle this subject vary considerably. As with the related arguments about both metaphysics and modernity, there is a shared concern not to simplistically assume that foundationalism has now come to an end, but to examine what it is evolving into in the light of other things we currently believe or accept. The sharp dichotomy between Foundationalism and anti-foundationalism is seen as positively unhelpful.

Once again I can only offer some examples to try to illustrate the general location of the debate in the belief that others may recognise themselves as exploring the same territory. My first example is from the field of literary theory where there has recently been considerable overlap with philosophy in any case. Horace. L. Fairlamb from the University of Houston, Victoria, Texas, in a book entitled "Critical Conditions: Postmodernity and the Question of Foundations", presents one of the reasonably convincing responses to this range of issues. Having surveyed and critiqued the work of some of the potential key players, Rorty, Foucault, Gadamer, Derrida and Habermas, he concludes that it is a mistake to dismiss what he prefers to call foundationism. A reason to do just that might be the argument that any suggested foundation is inevitably reductive, oppressive and mistaken. In other words the claim of a privileged perspective from which it is possible to evaluate all other beliefs and practices cannot itself be substantiated and reflects no more than the power of a particular grouping. Any supposed "universal" is only in the end another "particular' making exaggerated claims. Such is the Post-Modern or anti-foundationist critique. But to adopt that position as the only viable alternative brings its own problems. First, in order to dismiss all foundationism it must itself become another foundation, making universal claims and thus contradicting itself. Second, its adoption would lead to the anarchy so feared by its opponents as one is left with no shared public means of making or defending judgements.

As Fairlamb says: "This all-or-nothing view of the search for critical conditions degenerates into false dilemmas between objectivity and freedom, domination and anarchy. In pragmatic terms the significance of the foundationist debate is not that we must choose between reduction and anarchy, but that we cannot so choose, since neither option works" (P255).

The frustration is that one can see all too clearly how and why the debate gets trapped in this dichotomy. The search for a scientific method that would guarantee reliability of knowledge is an understandable reaction to a scepticism that threatens to undermine all human progress. Yet when the scientific claims are revealed as being fallible and themselves subject to external influences ( e.g. Monsanto), it is equally tempting to switch to the other extreme of a sceptical or nihilistic stance. One can see that the Post-Modernity debate is just the latest metamorphosis of this fruitless dichotomising. So Post-Modernity's claim to be a new revolution has to be treated with caution:

"We do better to note that postmodern anti-foundationism is not another revolution in philosophy, but the critique of a failed revolution. When one considers that modernism was a reaction against classical theorising, postmodernism's genealogical identity comes into focus: i.e. as a scepticism towards an earlier scepticism; a negation of a negation that does not constitute an argument against foundations except in their reductive form. Postmodern localism is a symptom, a cluster of reaction formations against modernism's failure to totalize" (P256).

Hence what is required is a theory that can avoid the pitfalls of these two extremes; the rationalism that by abstracting from context excludes the uncertain and the contingent, and a postmodernity that too readily dismisses the benefits of translocal or generalising theory and cannot in fact substantiate its own critique. What Fairlamb does not do though is to develop the contours of an alternative approach, beyond suggesting that we attend to the plurality or heterology of approaches that we encounter in different disciplines. As I have tried to suggest elsewhere ("Beyond All Reason: The Limits of Post-Modern Theology"), the appropriate alternative to "only one foundation/narrative" is not "no foundation/ only local narratives" but a plurality of fallible foundations or major narratives, each with their own rationality, but held together by a commitment to open discourse and debate. Fairlamb seems to be pointing in a similar direction.

The second example comes from the work of a theologian concerned with the issues raised by an engagement with science. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen in "Essays in Post-Foundationalist Theology" (Eerdmans 1997), correctly points out that if both science and theology pursue a foundationalist path they destroy the possibility of meaningful dialogue. "Foundationalism, as the thesis that our beliefs can be warranted or justified by appealing to some item of knowledge that is self-evident or beyond doubt, certainly eliminates any possibility of discovering a meaningful epistemological link between theology and the other sciences. The claim that knowledge rests on foundations is the claim that there is a privileged class of beliefs that are intrinsically credible and that are able, therefore, to serve as ultimate terminating points for chains of justification" (P226). In the realm of science we can see what such foundations might be, sense-data, the appeal to evidence, universal structures or laws of nature and so on. Theology has its own equivalents:

"...the doctrine of the 'given' can indeed be called the 'comrade-in-arms' of all foundationalism In theology foundationalism implies biblical literalism, or, on a more sophisticated level a self-authenticating 'positivism of revelation' that isolates theology because it denies the crucial role of interpreted religious experience in all theological reflection: here the theologian is left speaking a language whose conceptuality might be internally coherent but which at the same time is powerless to communicate its content because it is unrelated to all non-theological discourse" (P226-7).

However, the solution to this is not to retreat to some Post-modern version of anti-foundationalism as that too drives a wedge between all the local narratives and creates insuperable barriers to cross-discourse communication. Instead one needs to investigate further the specific rationalities of all disciplines, but with the belief that there can be enough common ground between them to facilitate open discussion and genuine engagement. So van Huyssteen is advocating" a postfoundationalist shift to a fallibilistic epistemology which honestly embraces the role of traditioned experience, personal commitment, interpretation, and the provisional nature of all. our knowledge-claims" (P228). Once again the actual details of this are still in process of being worked out and will appear in further publications.

I hope it is clear by now that a number of scholars from different disciplines are operating in this liminal territory dissatisfied with both traditional forms of foundationalism and Post-Modern anti-foundationalist responses. Although there are differences of emphasis and indeed terminology, one shared concern does seem to be that of rationality - not in the expectation that there will once again be a single definition of that to cross all disciplinary boundaries, but in the belief that a plurality of rationalities might yield enough common ground to sustain genuine dialogue. Perhaps many of us would share with Giddens the conviction that future peace and continuity depend upon keeping channels of communication open across traditions, faith communities and disciplines. However, there is a tension here for those who still feel it necessary to hold that they have a privileged access to the truth and are therefore unwilling to submit their beliefs and practices to increased democratisation. Can religious traditions become Post-Foundationalist in the ways suggested in this article? Understanding what this might mean and examining both the theoretical positions and what is happening in practice is the research programme for I.R.I.S.C. and we invite all interested parties to contribute to this process.

One final reflection on the example with which I began this paper. It seems as though the content of future religious belief and practice is to be determined in the indeterminate realm between the former guardians of tradition (priests and theologians), and an increasingly articulate and critical laity who may well be more eclectic in their views. To suggest that either side has the monopoly of Christian truth would surely be unjustified. If the guardians need to loosen their grip, accept that change is acceptable and take risks in the name of truth, then the eclectic adherents need to share in the task of developing criteria that will facilitate informed and faithful judgements about what Christianity is and to how it might contribute to wider debates. Discerning the nature of Christian, and perhaps religious rationality appears essential to this process. Without it all judgements will be arbitrary and impossible to defend. On the other hand, the insight that the location cannot be adequately described or articulated must remain in constant judgement upon all such attempts. So there is both Identity and Difference and a hint that religion is the rationality of difference.

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