Blog post, “Walker Percy on Non-Believers and Believers“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America

Ledewitz, Bruce

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Duquesne University: Digital Commons

Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Hallowed Secularism The Collective Works of Bruce Ledewitz, Adrian Van Kaam C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Scholarly Excellence and Professor of Law 2-2-2010 February 2, 2010: Walker Percy on Non-Believers and Believers Bruce Ledewitz Duquesne University, ledewitz@duq.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/ledewitz-hallowedsecularism  Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Law and Philosophy Commons Repository Citation Ledewitz, B. (2010). February 2, 2010: Walker Percy on Non-Believers and Believers. Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/ledewitz-hallowedsecularism/387 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Collective Works of Bruce Ledewitz, Adrian Van Kaam C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Scholarly Excellence and Professor of Law at Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hallowed Secularism by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact beharyr@duq.edu. Title: Walker Percy on Non-Believers and BelieversDate: 2010-02-02T18:59:00.003-05:00 2/2/2010—In his 1980 novel, The Second Coming, Walker Percycreates the character Will Barrett, a successful widower,whom one observer aptly described as “trapped in…a sort ofliving death” at the beginning of the novel. At one point inthe novel he writes a strange pseudo-suicide note in which hewrites about religious believers and nonbelievers. He doesnot care at all for believers: “if the good news is true, why[is] the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?”219. But unbelievers are even worse. The unbeliever is “crazybecause he finds himself born into a world of endless wonder,having no notion how he got here…. Not once in his entirelife does it cross his mind to say to himself that hissituation is preposterous, that an explanation is due him… .”For such a person it is all “boredom and… farce”. 220.Percywas one who felt the weight of religious doubt and of belieffor that matter. Barrett concludes on this note: “I amsurrounded by two classes of maniacs. The first arebelievers, who think they know the reason why we findourselves in this ludicrous predicament yet act for all theworld as if they don’t. The second are the unbelievers, whodon’t know the reason and don’t care if theydon’t.”Secularism in America just does not think about suchmatters, which are the perennial matters that have occupiedhumankind. I can hear the response to Percy: You just liveand then you die. What is the big deal? The answer is, we arethe big deal. Our lives are the big deal. Even though wedon’t believe in God, we still must ask what all this isabout.

February 2, 2010: Walker Percy on Non-Believers and Believers

https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1386&context=ledewitz-hallowedsecularism

February 2, 2010: Walker Percy on Non-Believers and Believers

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