Is God a Black Hole Sun?

On my vacation this summer I bought a book at a Christian bookstore in Yarmouth Nova Scotia called "Erasing Hell" by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle.  I brought it home and my son Charlie noticed it.  He asked if he could take it back with him to university (he's got an internship this summer at Dalhousie). A week or so later he writes back these observations:

Interesting stuff. I especially enjoyed argument against a line used to advocate universalism which says that God wants everyone to accept Jesus or something; It says that it's important to differentiate between things that please God but that he leaves people to possibly do, and the things he makes sure happen.

Sounds like an argument from freedom is used to preclude universal salvation.  Although God might like universal salvation, God also likes freedom and builds it into us.  As finite imperfect creatures we must inevitably abuse this freedom to some extent and choose evil, so, in the end and to God's regret, universal salvation cannot occur.

I wrote back that I suspected that the book was conservative evangelical propaganda, but that it is good to consider what one's opponents have to say about an important debate such as the debate about universalism.  Which got me thinking about my views on universalism. I wrote back to Charlie this observation:

My position is that we are stuck in thinking only in terms of salvation of whole persons, which pushes us into "either or" thinking. For example, "I'm saved and you are not" and "I'm entirely saved or I'm entirely damned."  Instead I see God as a singularity that/who only draws good into his/her/its event horizon...leaving evil in this finite universe to be destroyed when it ends.

"I'm saved and you are not" beliefs are the result of thinking "either I am right or I am wrong, and if I am right then I am saved and therefore anyone who disagrees with me must not be saved."  The common denominator in all such thinking is that the salvation of individuals is something that can only be distinguished at the level of physical individuals judged at a particular time. Could the entire problem of universalism versus limited atonement boil down to a difference in, to use a computer metaphor, the "resolution" at which we typically view God's judgment versus the resolution that God can view that judgement?

Since we find ourselves typically thinking of people only as discrete physical individuals judged at a particular time, those units must be dropped down the garbage chute of final judgement if any part is found to be truly faulty, regardless of whether other parts are good or have manifested goodness in the past. But clearly this is ridiculous and unscriptural. There are numerous biblical references of God being able to put "new hearts" into us and to God being a "refining fire" who can purify us of our wrongdoings.  But again, these references tend to be read in regards to individuals considered only at particular times. God refines people  away from their former bad lives to entirely new lives (total conversion). Or God refines good people away from bad people (exoduses). Or God refines the saved from damned (the final judgement). Metaphors like that of sheep and goats seem to push us in such a direction. Some people are sheep and some are goats:

Matthew 25:31-46

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

Jesus teaches in parables, which by definition require that we move beyond simple literalism to seek their proper metaphorical/metaphysical meaning. One can very easily take away from this passage an extremely literal meaning that "bad" people are cast into the lake of fire to suffer some form of eternal punishment (a Dante like hell), and "good" people (believers) are granted eternal life.

Such interpretations seem to overlook is the lack of symmetry between the concepts of "eternal life" and "eternal punishment." Clearly eternal punishment, if it involves the Dantesque torture of bad individuals is also a form of eternal life, for one must be alive to be punished if punishment takes the form of harming. It is so easy to succumb to human maliciousness and self righteousness and "fill in" (or read back in the light of Dante's influence) the missing details----God eternally harms bad people (my enemies) and provides (me) with eternal "club med" with my family and friends.  How this attractive and easy move is to be reconciled with other biblical statements like "the wages of sin is death" I don't know, but it is undoubtedly possible and frequent. The mind of the malicious self righteous person can easily invent any number of ways to get back to the notion of the Dantesque eternal torture of his or her perceived foes. Death only refers to our physical death. So the phrase the wages of sin is death only means "behaving badly" can have the natural consequence of leading to an early death. So the phrase now lacks any metaphysical implications and becomes instead simply an iteration of the parental warning to "play safe." Why the concept of "eternal punishment" cannot be understood as "extinguishment" or "death" in its more usual sense, which is to say, the loss of the opportunity of life and why this cannot be understood in terms of aspects of lives, rather than physical individuals considered at particular times, is beyond me.

What I find interesting in this parable is its focus on specific "moments" of care, nurture and mercy (good aspects of individuals lives, such as visiting someone in prison). Clearly any human life considered as a whole will involve some such moments.  Even the worst people will manifest some such moments. And clearly the best people (saints/the elect) will fail in some such moments (only God can be morally perfect). But if this is the case, then how does God weigh such moments in the final judgement? If one's lifetime is constituted of 50/50 of successes and failures in such moments, then hell?  50 + 1, then heaven? Now that we live in a modern age with concepts like film and virtual reality, why cannot we move to a notion that God can perfectly preserve the good "moments" and let the bad ones fall to the cutting room floor?  Pushing further with the metaphor, why cannot one imagine the moments (celluloid is notoriously flammable) that fall to the floor being gathered up and burned--effectively making them to cease to exist ("death" as final "erasing" of all the bad aspects of life)?

What then would the preservation of our lives mean? Well conceivably preservation would mean God eternally preserving and revisiting those truly good aspects of life. What would such revisiting be like? Clearly God's revisiting would not be a pale flickering representation but a full blown reconstitution of that moment in perfect fidelity to the original. We would "live again" (resurrection versus disembodied souls). And if God is eternal then our lives at least in terms of the truly good moments, would also "live eternally" with God. Why cannot eternal punishment be understood as the "second death" of those aspects of ourselves (moments) that will never be allowed to exist again?

Revelation 2.11:
Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Whoever conquers will not be harmed by the second death.
Revelation 20.6:
Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
Revelation 20.14:
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire;
Revelation 21.8:
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.

The prophet Malachi prophesied that “all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up” (Malachi 4:1).  Paul's discussions of corruption putting on incorruption and of the distinction between bodies and "spiritual bodies" point to possible interpretations of the nature of resurrection that move beyond understanding ourselves only as discrete physical beings judged at a particular moment. Jesus' comments in Matthew 22 about how our lives in resurrection are like that of the angels in heaven (consisting only of freely chosen good moments) and beyond temporal categories such as "being a wife of x" (i.e. transcending titles only indexed to specific time frames) also point in this direction.

To return to my computer metaphor about resolution, it is like we are inclined to talk about ourselves and others only in terms of a single screenshot taken at the instant of our death (the widow who had been married seven times when she died), when God's understanding and judgement occurs at the level of pixels and the entire process of animation that has occurred over the course of our lives. Are all saved? That would depend on whether there might be some human beings whose lives could provide not even a single pixel worth preserving. I don't know if this is possible. The Calvinist in me tells me that such knowledge can only be God's. Therefore, my position on the issue of universal salvation is that it would be wrong to either endorse or reject it. It is a mystery. Is atonement limited (a traditional Calvinist doctrine)? Certainly, but not certainly in the sense of physical individuals looked at atemporally (the elect versus the damned), but only regarding the obvious fact that vast swaths of the pixels that make up individual lives as temporal-physical totalities will have to be "erased" in the judgement of a perfectly just and merciful God. In other words, nobody will achieve the preservation of the entirety of themselves and it is unclear how much participation in eternity (if any) any might be granted by a perfectly just and merciful God. All atonement will be partial in the sense of being perfectly tailored to every individual in terms of their unjust decisions and meaningless sufferings.

The problem is that we can find passages that seem to suggest that the burning of the wicked as discrete individuals is an eternal and ongoing affair. For example, Revelation 14:11 reads “And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” Such a passage seems to suggest that a finite group of wicked are eternally tortured. However, this is only an implication if one assumes that this finite World/Universe is the only creation God ever makes. In other words, we can only be supported in interpreting this passage as implying the idea of eternal torture if we assume that there is only one world and that the eternity of the torment can only refer to a finite group of the wicked individuals from this world. But if God creates other worlds or time periods beyond this one (eaons, often translated in English as "eternal" as in Matthew 25:46, but lacking this clear implication in Greek and its Hebrew equivalent olam), then the eternity of the torment of judgement might only refer to the torment of new legions of sinners as they face and truly understand the wrongness of their acts (evil moments) and the eternal destruction of the evil parts of themselves and their meaningless sufferings.

If God's creation re/creation of finite imperfect beings is something that never stops then there will be a need for an eternal "lake of fire" to burn up the eternal dross of wickedness. Conservative evangelical critics will undoubtedly say that I am inventing here and that I am moving beyond plain scripture. But the Bible does speak provocatively of "new heavens" and a "new earth" and of multiple worlds or eons:

Isaiah 65.17: For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

Isaiah 66.22: For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain.

2 Peter 3.13: But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Revelation 21.1: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Heb 1:2: but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.

The Bible also speaks of the renewal and refreshment of creation such as when it is stated in 2 Peter 3:10-12:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?

Also, in a very real sense conservative evangelicals already assert the reality of the eternal creation of finite imperfect individuals. Clearly if individuals are being eternally burned in a lake of fire they must also be eternally recreated. Or if they are simply maintained in eternal torment, then God is involved in an act of the eternal maintenance of otherwise finite beings, for no finite/mortal being can be eternal unless its mortality is somehow overcome by an act of maintenance. But if such finite evil beings are being maintained in their physical totality at the point of judgement, then clearly their  recollection of their evil deeds are also being maintained. And since God is all-knowing, God will be privy to their minds and the meaning of their recollections. So God will have to be continuously revisiting (in the act of recreation or maintenance of their physical totality) their depraved acts. So a record or memory of their depraved acts will, in a sense, exist eternally as a by-product of God's continual act of recreating/maintaining mortal sinners. But this makes no sense. Why would God preserve eternally any recollection of depraved acts or the meaningless sufferings of innocents? But one could say that God either does not know such thoughts (lacks or makes him/herself unaware of the recollection of such acts) or that God obliterates depraved memories (and thus is punishing mere bodies that have no actual ongoing mental connection with specific wrong acts).

We seem to come to a reductio ad absurdum here. It might be better to conclude along with more liberal readings of scriptures that the punishment of sin is recognition of one's wrongdoing and then eternal obliteration of that wrongdoing and its unredeemable effects on innocents. Black Hole Sun, please come and wash away the rain. Amen.

Letter to Minister Morneau: Stop Supporting Fossil Fuel Extraction Now!

April 27, 2018

James Gerrie

118 Cromarty Street

Sydney, NS B1P 4W2

The Honourable Bill Morneau, Minister of Finance
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Dear Minister Morneau,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about the supports that Canadians provide to the fossil fuel industries today.  We have reached a critical juncture as a country and a species.  We should no longer be relying on fossil energy to power our society.  We must undertake with resolve and apply all our creativity to fashioning a new way of life that does not involve despoiling our environment.  Only governments can ultimately facilitate the kinds of changes we need to consider to make this transition.  We need leadership and law to help us to begin thinking and acting differently as individuals and communities.

Please consider as you meet with G-7 leaders ways to stop supporting fossil fuel extraction and to begin supporting and rewarding actions that lead to the reduction of the use of fossil energy.  We must not just wait for hoped for technological saviors.  We must begin making better decisions about all aspects of our lives as citizens when it come to energy consumption.  We will not begin making such decisions when our laws and institutions distort the costs of energy and fail to internalize their true costs.

As a parent and a teacher, I worry for the future that the young will receive from us.  While our society still has the wealth and resources necessary, we must use our treasure to lay the foundations for a secure and sustainable future.  It is not acceptable for us to leave this task for future generations.  It is the moral challenge of our generation—the equivalent of the great wars of the previous century.  We must be prepared to sacrifice now and show leadership in the face of powerful forces and groups who will inevitably resist facing the discomforts that we must face in making this difficult transition.  This is why I am writing to you.  We need leadership, not just custodial government.

Thank you for your efforts to make Canada’s tax system fairer.  You are obviously not a person concerned only with flattering the wealthy.  All Canadians by world standards are wealthy and although many will bemoan the risks of changing the status quo of our economic system, with good will, ingenuity and (I say this as a life-long NDPer) free-markets and entrepreneurial spirit, we can find ways to respond, which will not hurt the poor or unacceptably hamper leaders of industry.

Sincerely,

James Gerrie

cc. Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Hounourable Catherine McKenna, Mr. Peter Julian NDP Env. Critic

Must God have Lived a Life from a Finite Perspective?

I don't know in any strict philosophical sense of "knowing" that God exists, but I do know that if there is no Crucifixion, or something like it, there should be no God. Only a God who has experienced something of a life like one of the worst possible for finite flawed creatures like us from the perspective of such creatures-- with omniscience somehow set aside-- would be able to obtain the requisite moral knowledge for making a decision to allow a world like ours to exist. Purely notional or virtual knowledge would not do.

It has taken the human race a long time to understand the almost inestimable worth of people. The theistic traditions have contributed to the growth of this understanding. But for a very long time such notions were largely only paid lip service. But without such a robust notion of human worth, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of the doctrine of the atonement. So we have the paradox that the central doctrine of Christianity could be scarcely understood by the majority of people of the time of the advent of Christianity and for many years after. One must understand the horrible injustice of the loss of a single human life (any sentient life), before one can understand why God would have a moral obligation to test the waters by living a finite suffering existence from the limited perspective of such beings, before allowing a finite and imperfect world to come into existence. But until fairly recently the tendency has been for people to believe that human beings are essentially worthless and unworthy, especially in comparison to the vision of the perfect God.

This vision of God's perfection easily led to a self-critical and the essentially grovelling attitude, which made it difficult for people to understand the atonement. Why would God have to die for pieces of shit like us? And what force could demand/require such a sacrifice of God? Faced with this paradox, early Christians came up with theories of atonement like the substitution theory, so that God's act of sacrifice in living the life of Jesus became an unwarranted act of God satisfying a bizarre requirement of honor that punishment, if not to be born by perpetrators themselves (us), must be born by someone (God himself). But slowly over the centuries these early understandings of the atonement helped foster cultures that did begin to nurture the belief that human beings might actually have value--After all, even God had felt compelled to sacrifice him/herself for us!

I'm not denying we are shit. We are pretty shitty beings, as we can see by how we are treating the planet and our fellow creatures at the moment. If there is a God, he/she is undoubtedly trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. We will probably taste that vintage very soon. But we do finally understand that despite such intense failings, human beings have value, almost infinite value, and therefore are deserving of absolute efforts of care and the preserving of our dignity even when we don't deserve it. The pathetic liberal pronouncements of children's television programming really are true (I'm important and you're important)! The power that compels God's sacrifice is the power of God's own sense of moral responsibility to discern whether it is acceptable to allow flawed beings of potentially inestimable worth like us to exist. And to verify that such is the case, even in the face of the great suffering we can both cause and undergo, God would have to live a life-- somehow and sometime-- like ours.

God, if you exist, as I hope you do, thank you.

Is Secularization a Form of Unwitting Ethnocide?

David Voas provides a neat breakdown of the powerful trends effecting the main religious communities (and apparently also minority communities as well now) in the industrial democracies in his TED talk "Why there is no way back for religion in the West." His analysis of the facts show that "the secular transition" is not explainable in any other way than as an actual substantial decline and is mostly a result of "generational replacement." Older people who are more interested in participating in the activities of religious communities are replaced by younger people who are less interested. As he comments, "you have to be raised with religion for it to seem natural." In advanced societies today it would appear that young people are raised in ways that increasingly prevent this from happening. In other words, the process is not primarily a result of individuals consciously rejecting religion. Rather, as he notes, "It's a matter of culture." He goes on to explain that new generations enter adulthood with increasingly weaker ties to a religion than prior generations, and its is very hard to develop such ties later in life.  As a result, the religious cultures-- the denominations that once dominated entire societies in Europe and other places-- are now increasingly not successfully transferred. There is as he puts it "something about modernization" that leads increasing numbers of young people to look on their family's religious traditions as "alien" and "exotic."

He acknowledges, as do an increasing number of other researchers in the field of the empirical study of religion that despite over a 100 years of study of the process of secularization the specific causal mechanisms behind this process are still obscure. But there is no doubt that something about the structure of modern societies contributes to young people becoming increasingly alienated from the traditions of prior generations. Voas suggests a few possibilities which boil down essentially to greater personal liberty, prosperity, mobility, and physical and material security. In other words, only inherently good things that no person in their right mind would wish to see reduced. But he does not seem entirely confident whether these are actually the only root causes or whether they are simply roughly correlated. The exceptions of Poland and the U.S., and until recently, Ireland, for example, suggest that there is not a completely smooth correlation. Also, it is not made clear by Voas whether more subtle distinctions in levels of religiosity between advanced nations can be explained by differences in such factors. For example, he mentions that in certain cases advanced societies that actively suppressed religion have experienced levels of "spring back" when repressive policies were reversed. It seems as yet to be fully determined whether there are other factors at work besides inherently positive social trends.

The question I want to raise is why this description of the process of secularization does not sound major alarm bells for empirical scholars of religion like Voas? Although he uses technical terms like "generational replacement" the process he describes seems to potentially hold much in common with  processes of ethnocide, or forced assimilation when the actions of majorities disrupt and even destroy the ongoing connection of succeeding generations of minority groups to the traditions of their forebears. That such processes have been unleashed by "enlightened" modern liberal societies on various minority groups, such as indigenous peoples, is beyond question. Could such processes also have been unwittingly unleashed on formally dominant religious groups in these societies, such as their "old conventional churches?"  It seems a strange coincidence, for example, that the denominations most effected all happen to be those that created the school systems, universities and public health and social service institutions that were transformed in the second half of the nineteenth century into public institutions.

Voas is willing to acknowledge, as I would myself as a religious person, that religion is, at least in significant part "a matter of culture" in which practice and community involvement are critical factors in the successful transference (See the video at the bottom of this blog). However, the fact that unspecified causal factors of modern societies lead inevitably to young people looking upon their potential inheritance as "exotic" is something I find disturbing. Would not such a description fit at least in part the experience of First Nations people under residential school systems here in Canada? Becoming detached from ones religious cultural heritage to the point that it becomes almost impossible to find one's "way back" is not something we should look at with dispassion or resignation.

Voas must believe that the "causal" factors are either impossible to reverse, or that the positive trends associated with them can only be obtained by public policies that result in increased generational displacement. But such attitudes were also characteristic of  those who unleashed the residential schools on First Nations people. The culture of the British Empire was either destined to dominate according some historically determined process of "progress," or simply deserved to dominate because it represented the highest form of human society. But in a world of a plurality of visions of what the good ultimately consists of, such triumphal assumptions are highly problematic. Religious traditions are, in fact, significant aspects of the plurality of visions of the good that make up the diversity of our society. But if Voas is correct, then significant numbers of such traditions are destined to wither away. "There is no way back" is equivalent to asserting that certain kinds of cultural diversity are inevitably diminished by certain undetermined cultural features of our society.

The obscurity of those features is the only thing protecting us, as citizens of "modern societies," from having to face the accusation that we may be involved in yet another form of ethnocide. If these factors are even partially a result of public policies then we have some potential complicity in a great wrong. Can we be sure, for example, that the increasing monopolization of certain institutions by the state over the course of the twentieth century, such as education systems, has not played a role in the processes of religious decline?  After all, reasserting control over such systems has been one of the priorities of First Nations in order to make curricula more "culturally appropriate." Can we be sure that other policies implementing state neutrality regarding religion have been the right ones? For example, is removing observances such as prayers in public institutions, such as before city council meetings, the best way to proceed versus more complex forms of sharing between diverse views?  Why must publicly supported forms of counselling, such as grief counselling, be limited only to "scientifically trained" professionals?  Have processes of secularization of public service organizations with religious roots, such as the Y been based on philosophically coherent principles, or have they been largely ad hoc?  Do we actually have appropriate forms of accommodating religious diversity in place? Or have we in most instances taken the route of simply removing forms of cooperation between such groups and the wider political community? Is such an approach the best way to have responded to increasing religious diversity?

Does it make sense, for example, to treat religious traditions differently from other facets of culture when it comes to our multicultural policies?  Various theories of multiculturalism, such as those of Charles Taylor and Will Kymlikca, for example, present rationales for why the state might be required to help support certain aspects of culture.  They reject the traditional liberal approach of treating culture only as a matter for individuals to support purely as voluntary efforts. As some religious studies scholars have argued, not all religions conceive of themselves by way of the model of "voluntary association," but manifest more community centred or educationally focused, approaches to the preservation of their traditions. For example, some commentators note the connection between certain First Nations communities and the specific lands they inhabit and their duties to be custodians of those specific lands. But, multicultural policies typically presume that religions can and must be distinguished from other forms of cultural adhesion, or in other words, that they must operate only according to the model of voluntary association, like the Rotary Club or Boy Scouts. In the light of such different conceptions about culture and religion and their interconnection and how to approach state neutrality regarding religion, can we simply assume that only factors too good to question are at work in processes of religious decline?

Unless we can be confident about our answer to this question, we should not be indifferent about the process that Voas describes. I don't mean to imply that he is indifferent.  As he states at the beginning of his talk, his focus is on "quantitative" matters so a certain level of dispassion is in order. But his choice of title does suggest a degree of resignation regarding the process. But empirical discoveries can raise significant moral questions, and in this case they raise significant questions about the ability of  modern societies to sustain certain kinds of cultural diversity. It is those moral and political issues regarding the practice of multiculturalism and religious neutrality, and the relationship between the two, that we must engage, if we are to take anything of significance from Voas's proposal that "generational replacement" is the best explanation for religious decline in advanced societies.

On a personal note, this reflection was prompted by my desire to organize an after school choir in the Reform tradition of hymnody (which I will note is a word that my spelling checker does not recognize--yet another lack of public recognition?) at my local public school for the children of families interested in that tradition, to be paid for by those families. Such an activity would be helpful not only for the purpose of helping to maintain my tradition, but also because after school care is such a pressing need  here in Nova Scotia, and thus would dovetail nicely with providing a useful social service. But people within my religious community felt it would be unthinkable to ask the state for such an accommodation. When I pointed out that "yoga" activities were already occurring at the school my fellow congregants still insisted that religious people must forgo the usefulness of such an activity and the efficiency of already having children at a central location to make young people come to Church on Sunday.  I started to feel that they had perhaps internalized the values of some perceived "secular" norm that made them feel ashamed of making demands on the state to recognize, support or at least avoid hindering attempts to preserve a tradition by way of useful forms of cooperation with the state.

Perhaps, I'm slightly less inclined to such feelings because I'm one of those rare cases (as Voas notes) of a person who has joined a religion after a secular upbringing. It seems strange to me to look on my adopted tradition as a potential danger to public order such that people in it should feel obliged to exclude themselves from seeking accommodation in public institutions and opportunities for fruitful cooperation between religious groups and the state. In the subtle economy of such decision-making regarding public utilities (which are structured by specific public policies) and personal sacrifice to help preserve complex traditions there is some kind of cultural tragedy of the commons at work. Countless such decisions are I think a part of the subtle pressures of decline that inevitably push people to simply give up on bearing the complex burdens of preserving religious traditions in favour of some easier secular alternative.

Sadly, when I have discussed such reluctance with others both within and without my tradition, the most common rationale given for why religious groups must exclude themselves from seeking accommodations from the state the general answer has boiled down to nebulous fears about the state becoming implicated with "terrorist madrasas" or non-progressive religious belief systems. When I suggested that prejudging groups on such nebulous fears and lumping all religious groups together regardless of their teachings before they have actually occurred, are not particularly good grounds on which to base public policies, the most frequent response was that I was being naive in my understanding of the teachings of "most" religious groups. In other words even people within my tradition have come to suspect that religion in general is a negative and even dangerous aspect of society. But I can't help but wonder whether there is a kind of feedback mechanism at work here. As religious people exclude themselves from the public sphere, it becomes easier and easier for succeeding generations to fail to perceive religion as something useful or positive. And as such belief grows, it contributes more and more to suspicions that religions are unimportant, useless or even sinister. Which just reinforces the need to self-exclude even more. In other words, it might be the case that the real motives behind the forms of religious disestablishment and state neutrality that we have adopted might have more to do with ignorance about and outright distrust of religious people, than openness to and respect for religious diversity.

"Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice."-- Dr. Karen Armstrong