Arguing Religion

Argument is the way to turn even fierce opponents into allies.

The “I Have a Dream” speech21 was not a sermon; it was a political address. But its author did not feel that he had to relegate his religious faith to the private and subjective sphere. He knew that certain truth claims were central to his Christianity, and he did not hesitate to argue for them in the full glare of publicity. Though King met with f

They must come to understand—and put into practice—the convictions that authentic faith is not opposed to reason; that scientism must be put to rest; that mere toleration must not be tolerated; that voluntarism must be eschewed; and that opponents must seek to really listen to one another. As an exemplar of these various intellectual and moral virt

faith and reason are not opposed to one another but that they are, in point of fact, mutually implicative.

I’m convinced that a dumbed-down religion, practiced across the denominational divides for about the past fifty years, has been a disaster.

What commenced in Locke gained momentum throughout the modern period. One thinks of the move in the nineteenth century, so abhorred by John Henry Newman, to exclude religion from the circle of academic disciplines on the presumption that religion had to do with private and subjective matters.

the hyper-valorization of tolerance has proven to be a major block to constructive argument about religious matters. For in our postmodern society, toleration of religion typically goes hand in hand with the radical privatization of religion, the relegating of faith to the arena of interiority and its practice to the level of a hobby.

Locke, persuasively enough, argued that religious toleration was good for religion, since no authentic conversion can be compelled through legal constraint. And he held that such broad acceptance is legitimate precisely because the goal of the state (fostering the common public good) and the goal of religion (the saving of souls) are qualitatively

authentic faith is not, in fact, infrarational; it is suprarational. The infrarational—what lies below reason—is the stuff of credulity, superstition, naiveté, or just plain stupidity, and no self-respecting adult should be the least bit interested in fostering or embracing it. It is quite properly shunned by mature religious people as it is by sci