This morning that potential for mischief was realized. There was a terrible almost head-on collision, bent metal, broken bodies, emergency helicopters, and traffic hopelessly snarled. I observed at least one other major accident caused by panic over the delay. Late to work for me too late, perhaps, for others. In recent years I have noted an interesting array of convergence.
When I was younger and first began to travel the world, it was a remarkably diverse place: the abacus-and-street-market economy in an isolated economy seemingly oblivious to the assembly-line controls in another. Now we rush toward convergence, a McWorld uniformity often wearing little difference beyond the language dubbed on the latest video. The few holdouts are seen as hostile to the new world order and cultural clashes as last-gasp futility.
The world of faith, too, is on a convergent path. As the faithful become less so, there is a rush to create a generic, catchall version. The reasons for a past Reformation are avoided in the urge to merge. Perhaps a fear of religious conflict, as we read about in old history books, animates the trend. But it extends beyond Christianity. It is marked by New Age generalizations, dialogue between major faiths, and political distrust of all religious zealotry.
The generation gap rather accurately described traditional cultures and their respect for age and experience, and caution against allowing the young to dictate society’s norms. The Cultural Revolution in China pitted the young against the old guard in vicious ways. But that experiment pales next to our glorification of the young—aided by the illusion created by their computer literacy. In the process we are losing the lessons of the past, guarded historically by the elders.
Many years ago—half a lifetime to this still-thinks-he’s-young editor—I visited hard-line Communist Bulgaria. It was a militantly secular state. Religion was seen as antithetical to the stability of the state, something to educate out of the young. I met a teen girl who tearfully explained how her faith commitment put her at risk. She had been attending church instead of classes, and now the state was determined to remove her from that corrosive family influence.
Many years later, visiting newly independent, once-Communist Latvia, I spoke on religion and my faith at a number of public high schools—at the request of a government anxious for religion to fill the moral void. The eyes of the students widened with disbelief when I told them that in the United States such a thing was not generally allowed. That to them was a hallmark of the repressive Soviet system.
I believe in the separation of church and state—a concept implicit in the United States founders’ vision and the terminology of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is the protection against both the religion of humanity propounded in Communist times and the compulsion to faith again likely, even with the best of intent, in religiously hungry places, such as Latvia. How curious a convergence of opposites that now well-meaning religious voices in these United States are decrying the separation and calling for a state-led moral revival—such is the stuff of red banners, persecution, and intolerance.
True religious freedom allows even the irreligious the right to dissent, and all sorts of private religion to practice. But the tide, the convergent current, is against that. France in particular among Western examples is aggressively targeting socially suspect religions and cults under anti-cult laws. Registration of acceptable religions there is inherently promoting them and allowing ever more extreme measures against the nonregistered cults. And in a newly “faithful” Russia, religionists loyal to what they intend to be the state religion are using the registration process to delegitimize as many “cults” as they can.
Are we seeing the makings of such crashes in the United States? I am afraid the evidence points that way. Cut loose of history, carried along by mass mood, less restrained by the calming voices of reason, we are moving toward crisis on several levels. As I write this the post-presidential-election wrangle for legitimacy is in process. It has revealed beneath the superficial voter apathy a rapid hardening of ideology (as well as an abysmal ignorance regarding the electoral college system). Pushed too far, a contest such as this may threaten in a palpable way the social contract. Leaders in such a situation seek extreme concessions to “buy back” the contract.
This issue touches more than tangentially on some of the concerns I raise to the dynamics of convergence. Some of the articles show the conflict already forming.
“Tolerating the Intolerant” analyzes just one of many troubling developments in a polarizing election. Against a background of ecumenical convergence a university was publicly attacked and government censure attempted. How should our society deal with such situations? It could easily lead to something akin to the inherently repressive policy of France today.
The term cult is almost automatically pejorative to most, but as “Cults in the Crossfire” points out, today’s legitimate faiths began under that designation. But if the experience at a Maryland cult task force is any indication, there is a reflex tendency to condemn and disallow any group outside the religious norms. Troubling indeed in a land in which religious faith is ostensibly protected by constitutional mandate.
“When Rights Clash” shows the incredible convergence possible as our society confronts unorthodox belief. In Communist times religious and other dissidents were routinely deemed mentally unfit, and committed to institutions for reeducation. This article documents how a cult member is imprisoned because her mental state is suspect, and her future actions “might” be illegal. This is a dangerous path of legal logic to follow, even if the woman and the cult are as deluded as it seems.
Much of the danger of convergence lies in the desperate efforts sure to come from those resisting the cultural and religious melange it tends to create. There is indeed a culture war, but soldiers are being recruited by emotional and often misleading rhetoric. Canadians too are having to deal with this call to arm and evaluate how to respond. “A New Day in Canada” shows concerns shared throughout North America.
Conflict may be inevitable in this age of convergence, but it does not have to displace our commitment to freedom—and in particular our freedom of religion. “The Revolution of 1800” should somewhat moderate the sense of derailment in this election. The American republic has held its course in other challenges, and by applying the Constitution fairly can do it for many crises yet to come.
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