Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 09:22:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Carl Davidson <cdavidson-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: Are Jesus, Buddha & Company Enemies of the People?


 So Adolpho wants us to use "militant materialism" to wage class struggle
 with modern religious thinking.  I don't think he'll have much luck. If
 religious belief were simply based on a lack of scientific knowledge, he
 might have a case.  But most modern believers have no problem accepting 
 scientific knowledge.  They simply point out that many kinds of concerns and
 questions many people have about how to live and how to die, about the meaning
 and significance of life, about their place in the universe, are not yet
answered
 by science, either by "militant materialism" or any other variety. That's why
 many people, even nonbelievers, are drawn to the community of the local church
 at turning points in life--birth, the end of childhood, marriage, death--to
 celebrate or gather emotional strength and meaning through rites of passage.
 There are few secular institutions, especially any rooted in militant
materialism,
 that exist today that can supplant this role of the church.

 I uphold science against any kind of ideology, whether it labels itself
 bourgeois, humanist or proletarian ideology. I challenge anyone on this
 list to scan the entire works of Karl Marx and find an example of the use
 of the term "ideology" that is not perjorative. By the same token, I recognize
 that the universe is infinite and our knowledge of it, while growing, is
 still quite finite. Nor does the universe, which includes the human psyche,
 easily reveal its secrets to us. Like class struggle, the work of scientific 
 endeavor is difficult, protracted and full of twists and turns. Soviet science,
 for instance, got itself in deep trouble when it decided both genetics and
 cybernetics were anti-scientific and bourgeois.  Science in that part of the
 world is still trying to recover from those detours.

 Today's religious thinking, more the most part, tends to center precisely
on those  areas of human concern where science does not yet have answers, or
has conflicting   answers, rather than on those areas where science does
have answers. The main
 exception is the right wing fundamentalist's promotion of creationism against
 evolution. Marxist-oriented scientists, like Stephen J Gould, have done great
 work taking on these reactionaries in the courts. Yet the realm of the unknown
 is still large--and that is where faith resides.

 I do not consider myself a person of religous faith. By pursuing an interest
 in science, I find the universe itself an awesome place of terrible beauty. I
 find it even more wonderful that it has evolved our own species, and perhaps
 others, to become more and more conscious of it and reflect upon its mysteries.
 I don't feel the need for traditional religious belief to embellish it.

 Unlike Adolpho, et al, however, my political awakening was combined with a
positive
 experience with the Black church in the Deep South. As a young working-class
 white youth from the North, alienated from the dominant culture of the
1950s, I became  a student and was drawn to the sit-ins and freedom rides.
In 1966, I marched
 with 500 others across the State of Mississippi for several weeks, Every night
 we were received by small Black churches, where the parishoners often set up
 armed guards against the Klan at night, while we slept on the floors. The 
 ministers called mass meetings in the evenings where discussions of Black
power, the
 Bible, the evils of class domination--all filled the air with an electricity
 of revolutionary consciousness I will never forget.  The church was the center
 of those communities, and in most cases they were mobilizing centers of the
poor for  struggle the like of which I have rarely seen repeated. It fueled
my own revolutionary
 transformation and that of many others. This is the same reason that
 many of these churches are being burned by fascists today. To my way of
thinking,
 liberation theology did not begin recently with Latin American clergy and
intellectuals, but has its roots in the African American church from the
days of   slavery to the present.

 Of course the Black church in the US is not the whole church.  But that's just
 my point--the "church" is not a monolith or an institution we should analyze
 with an a priori set of dogmas of our own. We need an acutal analysis of the
 different trends and layers as they exist and engage in politics today.

 Here's a final point for Adolpho, et al. to chew on: Does one have to be a
 "militant materialist" or atheist to be a communist or a communist party
member?
 If so, then we end up restricting party membership to the tiny strata of
 nonbelievers in society and the working class. In my experience, even among
 those who would qualify as advanced class fighters by every other criteria,
 the atheists are still a minority.  If not, then the party itself contains both
 believers and non-believers.  Does it then still take up its cudgels against 
 religion in the fashion that our anti-clerics recommend, even though it would
 be offensive and divisive to many party members with religious beliefs? Or
 does take a more protracted view, seeing religious belief as primarily a 
 private matter, and the struggle against reactionary obscuratism narrowed to
 the worse targets, like the Creationists and White Christian Identity movement
 in the US today, and waged, as a famous man once put it, "on just grounds,
 to our advantage and with restraint."

 Carl Davidson, Chicago.

 
   
Keep On Keepin' On



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