Encountering the Secular: Philosophical Endeavors in Religion and Culture

6. Disturbance

6 DISTURBANCE I believe you are latent with unseen existences. . . . —walt whitman, “song of the open road” What do we expect from a disturbance? The paradox of such a question should be obvious: Disturbances are typically things we don’t expect—interruptions of the ordinary, the routine, the established. A disturbance becomes an issue only when there is a desired consistency of condition that is vulnerable to change. Hence, disturbance can be rendered as motion, and the condition it changes can be rendered as rest, stability, or stillness. Disturbances move. Nevertheless, are there not things we expect from disturbances —shock, anger, awe? For many reasons, this moment within the first decade of the second millennium is a rich time for such a question. Most obvious, of course, is the place religious and political terrorism now occupies in the minds of many. We board trains, planes, and buses (sometimes defiantly with sentiments of stoicism or patriotism) possessed by irrepressible apprehensions about the next violent strike, the next subterranean group, the next political reality that will create monsters. Less obvious, however, is how we have come to see disturbance as a catalyst of culture. We expect new creations when status quos are disrupted: new technologies, new products, new works of art. Thus, accord- 112 E N C O U NTE R I N G TH E S E C U L A R ing to this pattern, disturbance can produce both terror and delight. Such a thought can be upsetting because it acknowledges structural similarities between the terrorist, the entrepreneur, the scientist, and the artist. I begin with these reflections because I want to think about the possibilities for disturbing the secular. Of course, any disturbance of this kind is likely to be rendered as parallel to terror. After all, isn’t one of the primary motivations of contemporary terrorism to protest and disrupt a civilization that has chosen to separate religion from political government and public life? So we have often been told by our leaders and media commentators. Hence, secular modernity, as we typically understand it, is most disturbed by the extreme demand that, instead of our own finite capacities, god should be demonstrably running things. We are right, of course, to be disturbed by such a demand. But the force of this demand and the simplicity of our current responses to it keep us from seeing how what we take as secular can be upset by something other than bombs, airplanes, and holy war. * * * One reason for bringing up this topic in this context (America ? the West?) is that many of us assume the secular, take it for granted, even if we don’t know it, acknowledge it, or articulate it—even if we are traditionally religious. The secular is our status quo, not only because we separate religion from government, but even more because we consider religion to be something special, something set apart (the meaning of religare, one of the two possible etymologies of religion). For those gripped by a traditional religion, it is special because it is sacred (that is, really important). For those not gripped by a traditional religion, it is set apart because it is retrograde (something we should allow others to do, but it shouldn’t get in our way). Also, there is the pervasive , Protestant-derived notion that religion is something deeply personal, a matter of fundamental belief and commitment—its most natural and appropriate place is in the heart, not the public. 113 D I STU R BA N C E Meanwhile, doesn’t the fact that we do with the world what we will, that the world is a collection of objects we exchange to satisfy our needs and desires, indicate that religion (if not also the object of religion—the sacred, the divine, the gods) is situated in some innocuous, even invisible, place in culture? I do not mean to sound like a Holy Roller preaching that we should all get a little more religion in our lives. In fact, it is the idea that religion is something to go and get, that it is something separate from world and culture, that I want to criticize. This idea presupposes the secular. We typically understand the secular as what is not religion, and the secular is what greets us at our doors, whether we welcome it or not. Hence, it is a prevailing condition vulnerable to disturbance—call...