Tippett, Einstein's God

A book review of Krista Tippett, Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).

Einstein's God is an excellent introduction into a new place that people of science and people of faith are beginning to discover, a place that puts behind us the science and religion debate.  In this book, science and spirituality occupy the same space in a way that is both comfortable and not so comfortable.  Most of the inhabitants of this new space have stumbled into it unexpectedly and some of them are still not sure that they really belong in it.  it is a place for thinking new thoughts and making connections between things that seem unrelated.  Residents tend to ask unsettling questions.  They reject cliches, prejudices, and what seems only commonsense to the world at large, be it the religious or the scientific world.

In Einstein's God, author/editor Krista Tippett has pieced together segments of interviews with leading scientists, thinkers, theologians, and her own reflections.  The result is a beautiful exercise in dialogue, which is one of the key habits of mind in the new place of spirituality and science that we are discovering.  Tippett frequently asks good questions as she probes the thinking of those she interviews.  She is always their friend, but she is constantly seeking to dig deeper into their thinking.  In the book the interface between Tippett and her guests isn't always seamless, and a somewhat slipshod editing job resulted in repeating material in her introductions to each chapter verbatim in her commentary in the chapters.  It is a minor flaw.

The book opens with reflections on Albert Einstein's understanding of God, which has sparked a good deal of debate and controversy in some quarters.  Tippett relies on scientists Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies to discern Einstein's belief in Something larger that inspires a religious awe in those who study the mysteries of the universe.  She includes this quotation from Einstein himself: "My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality.  Morality is of the highest importance, but for us, not for God." (p. 40)  Einstein's unorthodox spirituality sets an important tone for the rest of the book.  It is a place for voicing unorthodox thoughts, as much scientifically unorthodox as theologically so.

A number of those Tippett includes in the book are medical scientists who are discovering that there is much more to us than our bodies.  They are finding that healing is as much about the human spirit as it is about muscles and tissue.  These scientists have come to realize that their medical and scientific training did not prepare them for the real realities of healing people.  Dr. Sherwin Nuland, for example, talks about the human spirit as being something greater than our consciousness that is a product of human evolution.  He speaks of the human spirit in almost religious terms and calls on religion and science to engage in conversations (a dialogue) for the sake of better understanding the human spirit (see p. 61).  Dr. Mehmet Oz, a surgeon, reflects on his experience of discovering the importance of faith and religion in healing.  He observes that as a physician, "I began to recognize that as dogmatic as I thought I could be with my knowledge base, there were certain elements of the healing process I could not capture.  And even if I was right in the science, I could be wrong in the spirit." (p. 74)

The book includes reflections on Darwin's views of religion and science, the contribution Hindu thought can make to understanding reality, and the implications of quantum physics for that understanding,  Janna Levin thus says that, "There are limits in quantum mechanics to how much we can ever really know.  There are fundamental limits to certainty." (p. 149)  Tippett's chapter on revenge and forgiveness, based on an interview with the psychologist Michael McCullough,  as much as any other points to the ways in which scientific and religious thinking intertwine in this new spiritual-scientific territory.  For McCullough, both revenge and forgiveness are important evolutionary strategies that are far more commonplace in our daily lives than we usually recognize.  He argues that we constantly exercise forgiveness as we "get along" with others, overlooking "occasional defects and mistakes." (p. 179)  McCullough is one of those who is convinced that we are slowly creating a better, more peaceful world.  The book also looks at the place of stress in our lives and the nature of depression.  All of this is timely, relevant to a better understanding of the world from a spiritual-scientific perspective.

Tippett concludes the book with a chapter "on the complementary nature of science and religion" with the short title, "Quarks and Creation," which features discussions with John Polkinghorne, physicist-theologian.  [See my review of Polkinghorne's Belief in God in an Age of Science (here).]  Covering a number of subjects including quantum physics as well as the possibility of life beyond death, Polkinghorne concludes that increasingly, "the science and theology conversation is getting more theological."  Theology is posing more of the important questions that both science and theology must grapple with including questions about the nature of humanity and about the possibility of "continuity between life in this world and the world to come."  He says, "And that's a healthy development.  You want the conversation to be very even-handed in that respect." (p. 279)  Polkinghorne's conclusion is evidently Tippett's as well, because she doesn't include a conclusion of her own.  Those are the last words in the text.  It is a hopeful, helpful conclusion: dialogue is taking place.  It is meaningful, honest, and respectful dialogue aimed at making sense of a mutual search for understanding and wisdom.

I highly recommend Tippett's Einstein's God to those who are concerned with the relationship of religious faith and science today.  It is one witness to the way in which religious values, attitudes, and perceptions are finding a new place in our scientific age.  It is also witness to a discovery more and more scientists are making at the boundaries of their fields of study, namely that there is Something beyond those boundaries that is as real as anything but not quite in ways that scientists have usually considered real.  Quantum physics, in particular, is having a truly humbling impact on the world of science.  Reality is so not like what scientists have thought it to be that more and more of them have had to acknowledge that science alone is incapable of comprehending What Is Becoming.  Einstein's God takes its readers to the place where humbled scientists and equally humble people of faith are seeking to better understand spirituality and that which lies Beyond and Within the human spirit.  This is a winner.

Reflections on Rick Santorum"s View of Faith

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has injected religious concerns and issues into presidential politics in a way that has delighted some, angered others, and raised again the thorny issue of the relationship of religious faith to politics.  Drawing on a speech that Mr. Santorum delivered at the Oxford Center for Religion & Public Life in August 2008 (here) and his Q& A responses (here), a speech he gave at Ave Maria University that same month (here), and a talk he gave recently at Grace Church, Eden Prairie, Minnesota  (here), I would like to  describe Rick Santorum's faith as best I can and then reflect critically on the potential impact of his faith on a Santorum presidency, as unlikely as it seems now that there might ever be one.

In his book, Dynamics of Faith (HarperOne, 2009 [1957]), Paul Tillich defines "faith" as "the state of being ultimately concerned" and writes that, "the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man's ultimate concern."  When Santorum spoke to the Eden Prairie congregation, he affirmed that Jesus Christ is his saviour, God, role model, teacher, and the center of his life.  He spoke of Jesus as "my friend."  More generally, he often refers to the fact that he encountered God in a deeper way once he entered the United States Senate in 1995.  Thus, personally, Rick Santorum's faith is in Christ.  At Grace Church, he spoke of the importance of grace in his life and of embracing the Cross.  He spoke of the world as broken and fallen and drifting further and further away from Jesus.  In his whole life, Santorum wants to witness for Christ, be faithful to him, and not separate himself from him.

There is more to his faith than Christ, however, and it is here that the true nature of Santorum's ultimate concern becomes harder to track.  In his speech to the students at Ave Maria University, he said that in his upbringing in Western Pennsylvania there were two important influences.  First, he was raised in a "Catholic ghetto," and the Catholic faith stuck with him.  It was this faith that "took off" in the Senate.  At the same time, his parents taught him an inmmigrants' love for America.  He is not just a faithful Catholic Christian.  He is also a faithful son of America.  And this is where things become confusing, because in his public speeches it frequently seems that the boundaries between these two concerns are porous and ill-defined.  God and nation blend to such a degree that they can seem to be two facets of a single ultimate concern.

These two, God and nation, especially seem to coalesce into a unity in Santorum's concept of Christendom, which means apparently any society that gives faithful allegiance to Christ and lives by the "Judeo-Christian" code of morals and values.  Most generally, however, he defines it negatively.  He is painfully aware that Christendom is under attack in America, indeed seems to be all but lost.  The enemy is secularism, which is embodied in many dangerous forms including the mainstream media, academia, left-wing radicals, the ethos of the 1960s, Democrats, Hollywood, the NBA, liberal so-called Christians, evolutionary thinking, atheism, homosexuality, and supporters of abortion.  He believes that Western Europe has already fallen under the influences of secularism, and his is convinced that President Obama intends to take the United States down the same path to secularity.

In his Ave Maria speech, Santorum described the growth of secularism in America in an insidious process that is destroying the nation's traditional values and its connection to its Judeo-Christian heritage.  He states that prideful, vain academia fell first to secularism followed by mainline Protestantism, which he sees as no longer being Christian.  The next domino to fall was American culture, and while he didn't give a precise date to the secularization of culture comments in his Cambridge Center presentation suggest that it was the 1960s, which he equates especially with sexual immorality.  According to Santorum, American politics and governance resisted secularization until the last twenty years or so partly because ordinary Americans still elected their officials.  The nation, in other words, has remained more faithful than academics, some Protestant denominations, and many of the carriers of culture.  His feeling that he didn't really find God until he became a senator and his insistence that many people on Capitol Hill are faithful Christians reinforces his sense of the residual faithfulness of the nation.  Christendom, then, is an all-encompassing concept that covers culture, politics, ethics, and of course religion.  Church and state may not be one, but they should be congruent and share the same faith and moral code.

Rick Santorum speaking at Ave Maria University, 2008

Mr. Santorum believes that a spiritual conflict is taking place in America between Christendom and secularity and that he is a combatant, almost a gladiator in that war.  As he said at Ave Maria University, Satan is attacking America.  He told the students that God needs them to be soldiers of faith, and he assured them that victory was certain.  At the Cambridge Center, he stated in his opening remarks that he saw evidence of "a very great divide in American politics" in which the nation "is wrestling with its own Judeo-Christian identity."  He went on to brand the Democratic Party as a key agent of secularization, and he has a deep-seated mistrust of President Obama whose political agenda, he believes, is "a more secular, government-driven, top-down, elitist culture, which is more reflective of what we're seeing in Western Europe."  Mr. Santorum believes himself to be at war in what is a "life struggle here in America."

Santorum rejects the idea of multiculturalism, which he identifies with the values and attitudes of Western Europe.  Multi-culturalism teaches that Western culture is not superior to other cultures and may even be inferior to them.  In a recent article entitled, "Multiculturalism Threatens America," he recounts how his grandfather left fascist Italy and migrated to the coal mines of Pennsylvania in order to live in America, a land of equality.  But now, he writes, "As a result of multicultural relativism, however, we are seeing the American aspiration eroded, our common purpose lost, and a 're-appearing tyranny and oppression' that is not only poised against us abroad but is also pointing its dagger at us here at home."

The struggle is not, moreover, just in America.  If the agents of secularity are the domestic enemies of American faithfulness, Islam is its external enemy.  At the end of the Q&A session at the Cambridge Center, Santorum  criticized President George W. Bush for failing to identify Islam as America's enemy.  President Bush and his State Department refused to acknowledge that Muslims are a people motivated by faith, and they are in a religiously-motivated holy war directed against America.  Santorum specifically identifies, in the article on multiculturalism cited above, Muslim communities in America as being a danger because they resist assimilation into the nation.  He stated at the Cambridge Center that it was part of his task to warn the American public of the dangers of Islam.  It was not a politically popular thing to do, "but I'll continue to talk about it."  It was on this note that he ended that presentation.

At the end of the day, Rick Santorum places his faith in Christ, which drives him to seek and to fight for God's will.  As he understands it, God wills that America be restored to its place in Christendom and that it reclaims its Judeo-Christian heritage.  He feels that in this struggle he must be a spiritual person who is honest, stands on his principles, speaks forthrightly for what he believes, and takes public policy positions consistent with his faith. This is what motivates him to run for the presidency. He wrote in the article on multiculturalism, "Because we are an optimistic people, Americans generally do not face up to challenges until we absolutely must. In a brewing crisis, we need a leader who has the political courage to speak the truth not only about our enemy but also about ourselves; a leader who has faith in all we are as a people, to inspire America and keep her free, safe and good."  Santorum's faith is intense and driven.  In his chat with the Grace Church congregation, he said that his personal faith journey "has been through fire."  He has had to stand up and fight for what he believes is right at some sacrifice to himself and his family.  He feels himself frequently attacked and deliberately misunderstood especially by the mainstream media.

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Rick Santorum wears his faith on his sleeve.  It matters deeply to him.  It also matters to the rest of us because he has become an increasingly significant political voice over the last few months. The most recent set of national polls (here) show Santorum leading the Republican field by an average of 5.2%.  If he does become president, furthermore, his profound reliance on his faith, which is what motivates him to seek office, will be an important factor in how he governs.  It will inform the policies he pursues, his style, and his attitudes—things that matter to the rest of us.

Viewed theologically, Santorum's faith displays certain potentially troubling characteristics.  To begin with, it is intensely dualistic.  There are various kinds of dualism, and the type that Santorum articulates is often called "moral" dualism, which traces its roots to ancient Persia's belief the god of good and the god of evil are engaged in a cosmic battle.  A dualistic worldview of this type thus divides reality into two distinct camps, one good and the other evil.  There is no overlap.  Humans have to choose sides, and they can't be allied with both.  Indeed, all of reality is divided into categories of good and evil.

Moral dualism normally comes with other concepts, most notably exclusivism, a battlefield mentality, and a rejection of compromise.  If the universe is sharply divided into spheres of good and evil, then there is only one or the other.  It follows that if Christianity is good all other forms of belief that do not conform to Christianity are evil.  Mr. Santorum thus considers mainline churches to no longer be Christian because they do not conform to his understanding of the Christian faith.  By the same token, there can be no such thing as a "liberal Christian," because liberals believe things antithetical to the Christian faith as he understands it.  In his speeches, he habitually divides people, policies, ideas, and political parties into the categories of Christendom (good) and secularism (evil).  And it follows from his exclusivism that Santorum considers himself to be involved in a great battle between good, embodied in his Judeo-Christian heritage, and evil, embodied in secularism in all of its manifestations.  Santorum has used the metaphor of fighting in the arena to describe his political style.  And from all of this it follows that when it comes to the fundamentals of his faith he cannot compromise.  He must stand up for what he believes.

That is to say, Mr. Santorum shares the marks of the tea party adherents whose unwillingness to compromise has brought Congress to a standstill and seriously weakened the federal government's ability to govern.  If he remains true to his principles, a Santorum presidency is likely to be short on compromise and long on seeking to impose his theocratic agenda on the nation as best he can.  Now, with his pre-tea party experience in Washington, he may be better able to govern than the tea party faction has thus far, but the rhetoric we have heard during the Republican primaries suggests otherwise.

But, let's back up to the word, "theocratic."  It sounds incendiary, but in fact it is a good name for Santorum's stated philosophy of government, which is to restore America's Judeo-Christian heritage and return the nation safely to the fold of Christendom.  According to Wiktionary, the word "theocracy" means either rule by God or by government under the control of a church or state-sponsored religion.  Santorum wants to restore the rule of God over America, and in doing so he would certainly sponsor his understanding of faith as much as possible as president.  "Christendom" is a political term.  It means the place or area in which Christianity rules.  Christian prayer would return to the schools.  Christian religious displays would be permitted on public property.  As president, Santorum would pursue a pro-life agenda and, apparently, work to end the use of contraceptives.  These are theocratic measures, and he would govern as theocratically as the realities of American politics will allow.  He says so repeatedly, and we should believe him.  The ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition and Christendom as Santorum uses them, furthermore, encompass all that is good.  They are, strictly speaking, imperial categories.  There is nothing good outside of them, and they do not recognize the validity or value of any beliefs, values, attitudes, or behaviors they do not encompass.

It is important to understand, moreover, that Santorum identifies the larger set of Republican policies with God and faith as well.  He says that the Republican Part is the party of faith, thus his whole conservative agenda is equally a part of his theocratic agenda.  We are already seeing what this means in Wisconsin, Virginia, and other states where the tea party Right won control of state government.  It means little short of a crusade to repeal the social, economic, and political program of the Democratic Party and, in a sense, to return America to 1928.  Again, the word "crusade" is the correct label for the political agenda that tea party governance pursues, the kind of governance Mr. Santorum advocates.  A crusade is a war on evil—in this case, the evil of secularism.  It is a war on the agents of evil, that is the long list of "secularists" given above.

Thus, another key characteristic of moral dualism is the tendency of moral dualists to demonize their opponents, considering them as enemies rather than merely as opponents.  Mr. Santorum cannot believe that President Obama is also a man of faith because his belief system is liberal.  Instead of accepting the president's description of his own personal conversion to Christianity, Santorum states that the president joined an influential church on Chicago's south side in order to further his political agenda.  More largely, he believes that Democrats plan to turn America into a secularized state after the model of Western Europe.  Liberal churches are no longer churches at all.  While it is his right to believe all of these things personally, it will make it much more difficult for him to govern all the people when he believes that so many Americans are carriers of the evils of secularism.  How will he find sufficient common ground with Democrats to govern given his demonic view of them?  How will he compromise when compromise is necessary to get things done?  How can he find common ground with enemies with whom he has nothing in common so that there is no place that can be called "common ground"?  These are important questions.

Viewed theologically, Rick Santorum has fallen into the trap of placing his ultimate concern in things that are not ultimate.  In Dynamics of Faith, Tillich describes this danger of faith.  It begins with the failure to recognize the fact that there is something about every truly ultimate concern that cannot be grasped and that is profoundly beyond the understanding of the faithful.  Tillich says that faith entails risk and courage—risk because we can never be entirely sure that our ultimate concern is truly ultimate and courage because by our very nature we must take the risk of having faith.  If we are absolutely sure that our ultimate concern is ultimate, we can be sure it is not.  By its very nature, an ultimate cannot be grasped in that way.  Tillich argues that doubt is an important element of faith because we can't be absolutely sure of our ultimate concern.  The presence of at least some residual doubt is an indication that our ultimate concern may indeed be ultimate.  Tillich observes that we must therefore be self-critical of our sense of ultimate concern.  Speaking as a Christian theologian, he says that people of faith must always stand "under the Cross" by hearing criticism and subjecting ourselves to prophetic judgment and doubt (p. 33).

Mr. Santorum, so far as his public pronouncements are concerned, displays all of the traits of a "true believer" who does not doubt the ultimacy of his ultimate concern.  Furthermore, he generally treats a preliminary, finite reality—the United States of America—as an ultimate concern.  He identifies God with nation to the extent of giving his ideal America the name of Christ, Christendom.  Throughout Dynamics of Faith, Tillich repeatedly uses nationalism as a prime example of a finite reality that is frequently treated as an ultimate concern.  He insists that finite realities cannot bear such weight and necessarily collapse, betraying the faithful with their failure.  Tillich calls the act of putting one's faith in a finite reality "idolatry."  He warns of the grave danger especially of turning faith symbols and stories into idols, the Bible itself being a prime example of a finite reality that millions of faithful people treat as if it is God.  Tillich calls this form of idolatry literalism and writes, "Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty.  It draws him down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite and conditional." (p. 60)

This is what Mr. Santorum has done.  In his failure to be doubtful and critical of his faith and in associating a finite reality with God to the extent that God and nation become an ideological unity, he has turned "God" and "nation" into idols.

He, of course, would disagree, which his right.  The thing is he wants to be president, and his form of idolatry demonizes all who disagree with his theology and his politics, which he sees as one.  These demons, who are not just his enemies but also God's enemies, include liberals, Democrats, mainline Protestants, union members, homosexuals, people who advocate pro-choice positions, Muslims, Western Europeans, academics, members of the mainstream media, and in fact moderate and "establishment" Republicans (RINOs) as well.  And that is a problem because these groups include a lot of good Americans and good people of faith who love their country just as much as Mr. Santorum does.  He cannot accept that fact any more than he can accept the idea that Barack Obama is a born-again Christian.  And that is a problem.

It is also a problem that Mr. Santorum, with his dualistic crusader mentality, does not accept fundamental realities of American life.  First, we are a multicultural nation and draw great strength from that fact.  Second, according to the highest law in the land, the Constitution, the United States is a secular state.  We do not have a state religion or church.  There are no religious tests for holding public office.  The state does not regulate the practice of religion so long as that practice does not violate the civil laws of the land.  Third, tens of millions of Americans are liberals and have a rightful place in deciding what kind of a nation we live in.  They are not enemies of their nation, and they are Mr. Santorum's enemies only because he chooses to make them such.

In sum, a Santorum presidency, would be reactionary, divisive, and manipulative.  The goal of his administration would be to gain theocratic control of the nation and limit to the largest extent possible the power and the voice of his enemies.  The policies and governance of the tea party state governments foreshadow those of a Santorum presidency.