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Ledewitz, Bruce

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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Ledewitz Papers The Collective Works of Bruce Ledewitz, Adrian Van Kaam C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Scholarly Excellence and Professor of Law 3-1-2010 The Future of God—and Secularism Bruce Ledewitz Duquesne University, ledewitz@duq.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/ledewitz-papers  Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, and the Law and Politics Commons Repository Citation Ledewitz, B. (2010). The Future of God—and Secularism. Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/ledewitz-papers/88 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 Ledewitz Papers by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact beharyr@duq.edu. The Future of God—And Secularism Bruce LedewitzTikkun, Volume 25, Number 2, March/April 2010, p. 50 (Article)Published by Duke University PressFor additional information about this articleFor content related to this articlehttps://muse.jhu.edu/article/594712/summaryhttps://muse.jhu.edu/related_content?type=article&id=59471250 T I K KUN WWW. T I K KUN . O RG MARCH / A P R I L 2 0 1 0SPECIAL SECTON: GOD AND THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYThe future of God depends on the future ofsecularism.Mostpeoplewillhear inthatsentimentapre-diction about the growth of secularism: If secularismgrows,belief inGodwill commensurately shrink. If secu-larismstagnates, theworldwillcontinuetobelieveinGodin2100.A hundred years ago, such predictions would have seemedstraightforward. At the height of the secularization thesis, it wasassumed that religion would decline with the growth of science.But, with the resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and other faithsworldwide, thesecularizationthesisseemeddiscredited,asarguedinbooks suchas the recentGodisBack.Yet the secularization thesis hasprobablybeendismissed tooquickly. InMarch 2009, the American ReligionIdentification Survey reported that 15percentofAmericanshave“noreligion.”That report, coupled with PresidentBarack Obama’s reference to “nonbe-lievers” inhisInauguralAddress,meansthat America no longer understands it-self as apurely religious society.By 2100, I believe that the numbersof nonbelievers in the world will haveincreased dramatically. Surprisingly,however, seculargrowth isnot themostimportant issueforthefutureofGod.Thequestionis,whatkindofsecularismwill emerge?Currently, theNewAtheists—people likeChristopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins—dominate secularthought. They identifyGod as a supernatural being commandingthenaturalworldanddemandingsubmissionfromhumankind.Ifthisremainsthemessageofsecularism,thisconceptionofGodwillalso tend to remaindominant. Sucha course of eventswouldulti-mately weaken belief in God because this is precisely the kind ofGod that sciencediscredits.Fortunately, another kind of secularism is emerging, one thatwould foretell a different future forGod. In February 2009, PeterSteinfels called it the “new new atheism” and, in October, DanielBurke used the term “Atheism 3.0.” These terms apply to writerssuch as Ronald Aronson, André Comte-Sponville, Austin Dacey,and Greg Epstein. These thinkers defend ideas often associatedwith religion, such as the objectivity of values and the reality ofmystical experience. I have called this phenomenon the “newnewsecularism”becausesomeof thesenonbelieversuse thetermGod;for example, biologist Stuart Kauffman writes of God as the cre-ativity at theheart of theuniverse.It should come as no shock that God could entail much morethan a supernatural being. There are plenty of religious believerswhoalso seebeyond the supernatural, including, of course,RabbiGreen in this issue of Tikkun. If secularism continues to grow inthis direction, then conceptions of God that are not rooted insupernaturalismwill grow as well. In such a world, believers andnonbelieversmightbegin tocometogetheras their conceptionsofreality overlap. And we could even see the end of disputes aboutreferences toGod in thepublic square, as secular ideas aboutGodbecomemore sophisticated and inclusive. This is a future forGodofharmonyratherthandivision.It isnotafutureofholywar,butofholy community.THE FUTUREOFGOD—ANDSECULARISMby Bruce LedewitzBruce Ledewitz is professor of law at Duquesne University Law School. He is author ofAmerican Religious Democracy: Coming to Terms withthe End of Secular Politics (2007) andHallowed Secularism: Theory, Belief, Practice (2009).WWW.NAOMIFUKS-MISHOL.COMASKTHEAUTHOR!March 8: Bruce Ledewitz6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern)Call 1-888-346-3950 for free! Thenenter this code: 11978#See full schedule at www.tikkun.org“Desire (three pieces)” byNaomi Fuks-Mishol.

The Future of God—and Secularism

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The Future of God—and Secularism

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