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The Persistence of Religion
with Harvey G. Cox

Preface by Harvey Cox

​Key points
  • The problem contains the solution:
    • The challenges of the present age demand dialogue between belief systems including atheism and agnosticism.
    • Our varied viewpoints can be precious resources if we are willing to learn from each other.
  • The need to allow for “radical uncertainty” in one’s belief system.
    • The desire to learn from each other becomes evident when we allow an element of doubt or uncertainty to coexist with our belief system.
    • The existence of uncertainty in the “package” of one’s beliefs does not have to compromise one’s faith because faith is theoretically possible without the full “package” of ideas that define the belief system aka religion.
    • To further substantiate this pov, Dr Cox quotes St Paul who wrote: ‘Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience’ (Romans 8: 24, 25).
    • In other words, it is perfectly reasonable for faith to coexist with the hope that one’s belief is true even when that belief is simply in something that hasn’t fully been proven yet. If it were already proven, there would be no element of “hope” left to apply to the object of one’s faith.
    • Dr Cox calls this “not seeing” as “radical uncertainty” and explains how such uncertainty helps face the terrors of unexplainable phenomena such as those described by Blaise Pascal as the farthest reaches of space and time wherein lay the source of “…the eternal silence of these infinite spaces” that terrified him as it has terrified every thinking person.
    • For with this radical uncertainty comes the question that can rock any religious belief system when the question is asked (paraphrased) “Why would a God/creator create and be concerned with something as minute as the Earth or the Sun which is at once miniscule and transient in the overall scope of universal space and eternal time”.
  • Hallmark and benefit of mature religious faith
    • When one poses such an unanswerable question as the “why” question above, one demonstrates “mature religious faith” because such a faith “keeps questions open, against all attempts at premature foreclosure”.
    • Such an outlook [of radical uncertainty] shows its value because it allows the possibility of dialog across belief systems. It makes possible a “multidimensional way of living [which] is spiritually more adult than is striving for some final resolution of the great mysteries of life. Therefore I do not consider Buddhists, or the followers of other religious paths, or open-minded atheists to be rivals or opponents. They are fellow travellers…”
  • Faith in the absence of Religion:
    • With a nod to Jesus’ “Kingdom of God”, the Jewish yearning for malkuth Yahweh and Daisaku Ikeda’s “Buddhist humanism”, Dr Cox tells us that a future manifestation of the utopian outcome that each religion years for would essentially obviate the religion itself. For in “the New Testament, the book of Revelation describes the heavenly city, which is to appear on earth, as one in which ‘. . . there is no temple,’ presumably because the Spirit of God pervades everything so that no separate ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ sphere is required.”
  • The Benefit of Interfaith Dialog (from a Christian perspective)
    • Having established the difference between belief which operates at the level of the mind versus faith which would be located deeper at the level of life, Dr Cox demonstrates how the Chrisitian worldview could benefit from the Buddhist outlook through “the newly emerging conversation among the traditions… [because] if historically Christianity has over-emphasized ‘belief’, it is a genuine strength of Buddhism that it has not.”
    • He further states: “But this does not mean that we as Christians should merely discard our creeds. Rather, in future years we should understand them in a better way. We should appreciate them not as fences to separate us from other people, but as valiant attempts on the part of some Christians at certain specific moments in history to rethink their faith in the light of radically new cultural environments.”

Preface by Daisaku Ikeda

  • The crippling effect of self-serving versions of history…

    • designed as self-protection mechanisms.

    • demonize everything strange and unknown.

    • Manifested as colonial oppression, apartheid and the Holocaust.

    • Conscientious objectors branded heretical or unpatriotic.

  • The Courage of

    • Dr Cox who was imprisoned for participating in King’s peaceful demonstrations.

    • Soka Gakkai Presidents Makiguchi and Toda imprisoned for opposing the fascist policies of the Japanese militarists during the Second World War.

    • Ikeda’s visit to China and the Soviet Union at the height of their rift in the mid 1970s, in order to break down ideological barriers and building bridges of dialogue.

    • Ikeda’s subsequent visits to the former socialist states in the communist bloc to pave the way for cultural and educational exchanges to increase mutual understanding.

  • The Cox – Ikeda Dialog:

    • Dr Cox expressed his hope that Buddhism might provide a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to solve the long-standing problem between them. This formed the basis of Sensei’s second Harvard speech where he explored the idea of religion for the sake of humanity.

    • The role of religion in building a global society of peace and symbiosis has interested both men.

    • Explores non-violent movements, “evils of materialism, the pros and cons of the Internet society, the elimination of nuclear arms, and university education.”

    • Over-arching objective of the book: “creating a world of respect for humanity in a peaceful society, transcending ethnic and religious differences”.

Chapter One: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations

Contradictions of the times: Religion with a side of Spiritual Hollowness

​​

  • Religion and God seen as unscientific and detrimental to humanity.

  • In the 1800s, Nietzsche saw the “death of God” coming. Dr Cox says: not so fast.

  • Materialism meanwhile has cause spiritual hollowness in humanity and lead to barbarous conflicts.

  • Paradoxically: conservative Christianity, Islamic movements and other signs of “religiosity” are on the rise.

  • What to make of this religious resurgence?

    • It can become “either medicine or poison” but it does not have to be.

    • Dialogue is needed as the guardrail that prevents narrow exclusivism.

​

“Without open dialogue, religion can become self-righteous and self-engrossed. When that happens, religion runs the danger of being a source, not of happiness, but of conflict and misery. It is then not true religion. The same kind of thing applies in cultural, ethnic and national relations. Lack of dialogue generates friction and conflict and, in the opinion of some (namely Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard writing in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1993), can lead to what is called the ‘clash of civilizations’.” – Daisaku Ikeda.

​

Not a conflict of civilizations, but a dialogue of cultures

​​

  • What are the causes of conflict?

    • Samuel P. Huntington sees religion as the basis of civilizations and the cause of conflict.

    • However Huntington’s approach completely ignores all other and likely larger causes. Ikeda Sensei says:

 

“Terrorism and bloody ethnic conflicts are less clashes of civilization than clashes of the anger, egoism and brutality inherent in life and disguised as narrow nationalism and fanatical religious ideas.”

​

  • Problems with Huntington’s view

    • Religion as the primary cause of conflict arouses unnecessary and misdirected fear and apprehension among people.

    • That “breeds imaginary enemies”, thereby making mutual understanding harder if not impossible.

    • His prediction generates prejudice, a catalyst in itself of a vicious cycle of conflicts.

  • Construction of True Value Creating Dialogue:

    • Dialogue must be deliberately sought.

    • Needed everywhere not just in academic or elite circles.

    • The most natural settings for dialogues: Not seminar rooms but everyday places like homes, offices, coffee shops and travel settings.

    • Informality and openness needed to breed the best dialogues.

    • Warmth stressing our shared humanity must be the basis.

    • Sensei said:

​

“We must realize that people of different races and cultural backgrounds have beloved family and friends, and that they experience the same joys and sorrows that we experience. Dialogue must embody the fervour and compassion we all share as human beings.”

​​

  • Point of Awareness: First encounters may get one’s defences up. This may be evolutionary. Seeing someone new and different may prompt cautioness even among open minded individuals who intellectually accept diversity and equality of all human beings.

​

The roots and the influences

  • The two men were born within a year of each other and grew up from the depression era.

  • Both came from humble backgrounds away from big cities and closer to nature.

  • Dr Cox expresses his admiration for Ikeda Sensei’s published collection of photos titled Rendezvous with Nature.

  • The anti-war and anti-violence stance of their parents played an important role in their life stories.

  • Dr Cox’s father came from a tradition of Quakers and mother came from Methodists influenced by the anti-military mentality of the Mennonites.

    • Ikeda Sensei points out that he learnt in his dialogue (Into Full Flower: Making Peace Cultures Happen) with Dr Elise Boulding, a Quaker herself, that Quakers are thoroughgoing pacifists and advocates of non-violence.

    • Sensei observes that Philadelphia, the capital of Pennsylvania, the state Dr Cox comes from was founded by the Quaker William Penn, on ideals of peace and religious freedom.

    • He also notes that the Methodists, who were firm Abolitionists, take a great interest in social problems and support educational equality.

    • Dr Cox states bluntly: “My parents were not at all fond of the military. Sometimes they were very disparaging of it, even to the point of ridicule… Not particularly pious or churchgoing, they were both wary of established religion, too (though they lived by Christian ethics).”

  • Major Influencers that shaped Dr Cox’s worldview and career:

    • James Luther Adams, renowned theologian and social ethicist of the 20th century.

    • Paul Tillich, philosopher, Christian socialist, and one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.

  • Ikeda Sensei’s mentor who he met at the age of 19 was Josei Toda. Mr Toda and his mentor Mr Makiguchi founded the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value Creating Educational Society) in 1930. They were both incarcerated for resisting the militarists during the Second World War, with Makiguchi dying in prison.

Chapter Two: Inheriting the Spirit of Non Violence

There is no undertaking as serious as a life dedicated to the struggle of faith and shared with comrades in truth – Daisaku Ikeda

The Shared Struggle with Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

  • The inevitable pull of the civil rights movement

    • Dr Cox’s first encounter with Dr King was in 1956 at Vanderbilt University at Nashville Tennessee. Both were 27 then and shared the same intellectual interests.

    • Dr Cox saw early on the discrimination faced by African-American kids in the single non-segregated school (where he grew up iin Malvern, Pennsylvania) despite their talent and merit being no less.

    • Wanting to do something about it, he “hoped to make work for racial reconciliation one of the main parts of my teaching and my ministry”.

    • The friendship with Dr King lasted right upto the latter’s assassination in 1968. They saw each other frequently, met at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), visited and interacted in each other’s institutes, consulted, worked together and marched together. Dr Cox was even unjustly arrested for protesting the racial injustice of depriving African Americans of the right to vote and access to restaurants.

  • The courage to stand up to the tyranny of authority

    • Ikeda: “I honour the courage with which, careless of your own personal danger (threat of being held in prison for upto 5 years), you fought bravely in the front lines of the struggle. Only a person who has been imprisoned knows what it feels like. In 1957, I was jailed…on trumped up charges… Finally I was exonerated, but the experience left me with a deep impression of the tyranny of authorities who despise and wish to suppress the masses.”

    • Cox: That is understandable. I, too, have witnessed the fearsomeness of authority.

  • The draw of MLK Jr:

    • One: “I will continue to advocate non-violence, because it is the only way to solve human problems without humiliating the other person. The other person, too, is a child of God and must not be harmed. You don’t defeat your enemies, you win them over if possible, and non-violence is the way to do that.” – MLK Jr

    • Two: His “absolute, sheer, physical courage – the courage to walk into screaming mobs of people who were throwing things and screaming insults, and calmly lead us with no sense of anger, and assure the rest of us that everything would be all right.”

The wisdom and courage of non-violence:

  • The wisdom of non-violence

    • Ikeda: “Violence breeds more violence and intensifies hatred. Only the spirit of non-violence can sever the endless chain of violence.”

    • Dr King believed not only for racism, but for international conflict as well, violence and war were not an option. So, he opposed the Vietnam war and the build up of American military power.

  • The courage of non-violence

    • Gandhi’s comment to Benjamin Elijah Mays – the sixth president of Morehouse College, Dr King’s alma mater – who travelled to India to learn about non-violence: “Practising non-violence takes more courage than practising violence”.

    • Cox: “You have to confront your own fear and hatred. If people insult you, throw things at you and try to harm you, never respond with either inward or outward hatred. You must respond with love. You have to love your enemy. Jesus said this, and King believed it. He knew it is hard to do but insisted that people who cannot do it should not be involved in the civil rights movement.”

    • Gandhi once told Mays that exhortation will not temper people. Non-violence must be practised, not just preached. While some black people argued that non-violence would solve nothing and that violence must be met with violence, this idea didn’t gain traction because MLK Jr stood in the forefront and demonstrated the might of the human spirit through his own practical non-violent actions.

  • Inheriting the Legacy of non-violence

    • Dr Lawrence E. Carter, director of the King International Chapel at Morehouse College, has said the important thing is to pass on the spirit of non-violence for which MLK Jr gave his life.

    • Sensei believes that true heirs are not those who merely pass this spirit on but “those who endure actual suffering and struggle their way to the goal.”

  • America’s descent into a nightmare

    • The promise of America manifested through the presence and efforts of tall leaders like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy.

    • RFK’s campaign for president had 3 pillars: Ending the Vietnam War, Racial Justice and Economic Equity.

    • The assassination of these 3 men – America’s best – made Dr Cox question if the hope of a better America was dead. He almost gave up and moved to Mexico.

    • However, like minded friends who hadn’t given up on the dream, pulled him back up. Such is the value of genuine friendships in living a “spiritual and moral and socially effective life” where support for one another is key because such a life cannot be lived alone.

Chapter Three: The Market Religion and the Spiritual Crossroads

Material prosperity: The truly best way to live?

  • Human Beings: Spiritual Beings or Mindless Consumers?

    • Inundated by messages that tell us why we need the consumer goods being pedaled.

    • “The consumer culture trivializes and destroys values such as simplicity and compassion that traditional religions uphold. The market does not reward compassion. It doesn’t even know about compassion.”

    • Cox: “Many of modern humanity’s desires are not real needs. In their pursuit of profit, market controllers always have to stimulate false appetites.”

    • Delusion of self worth by association with specific objects and brand names.

  • Market religion:

    • Main rival of the traditional religions of the world built of questionable fictions. For example, obese people are told that an advertised pill can make them slender opening the gates to romantic love.

    • Based on Commodity Culture: Where commodities are used falsely as proxies for values (such as happiness, success, love or belonging), without imparting those values in reality.

    • Pedals in artificial stimulation of false desires for essentially useless objects

    • Unbridled greed: Market Economy and technological developments fuel insatiable desire. The inability to be satisfied amounts to “spiritual death”.

  • ‘Know How Much is Enough’

    • Ikeda: The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) wrote (in Community and Society)  that vanity needs others as a mirror and that egoism needs others as tools. A fulfilled mind, not the possession of many things, is the primary condition for satisfaction and happiness.

    • People less swayed by the mass-media are content with little and are often extraordinarily happy – HC

  • Traditional Religion as the antidote

    • Human greed tends towards limitless hypertrophy. Traditional religion’s role in invoking Spiritual Strength to control desires is paramount.

    • It can help “control the energy of unrestrained greed and channel it towards the creation of good values”

    • Cox: Escaping from the prison of ignorance requires a revival of spiritual power. Religious values are important to this indispensable undertaking. Because it evokes spontaneous strength from within, Buddhism is going to be absolutely vital to the coming age.

    • Ikeda: The Buddha’s Legacy Teaching Sutra explains that recognizing sufficiency makes life rich, pleasant and tranquil. On the other hand, failing to know satisfaction means that even a life that seems rich is in fact impoverished and dominated by vanity and desires for material things, power and fame. A truly rich person overcomes basic egoism and controls greed, prejudice and antagonism. Such a person works hard to create a spiritual, ethical way of life aiming for the happiness of the self and of others. Buddhism calls deep-seated, uncontrollable tendencies of life and desires ignorance (avidyā). Unless we are courageous enough to reform this state of ignorance, no fundamental solutions to the problems it causes are possible, and we must remain confined in its darkness.

  • The Buddhist Way: The Middle Way

    • Cox: … Some Christian teachings, too, advocate practically perpetual fasting in the hope of eliminating sexual desire. I think this is a mistaken way to try to deal with the situation, although, in the light of the consumer culture’s efforts to fan human desire, a certain kind of asceticism makes real sense.

    • Ikeda: Totally eliminating all desire would be to extinguish mind and body. Buddhist teachings hold that destroying the body extinguishes wisdom (in Japanese the term is keshin mecchi). Extreme asceticism is virtually suicide.

    • The Middle Way: Veering to neither extreme, the moderation of this Way… enables us to cope with and overcome the tempests of a constantly changing society.

    • Cox: … As the etymology of the word (from Latin religare, to retie) indicates, the great role of religion today is to re-form the bonds that connect people. Accomplishing this is one of the areas in which my hopes for SGI are very high.

Post-Secularism: The Resurgence of Religion

  • Secularization

    • A topic of vigorous discussion among theologians

    • In the face of advances in science, technology, the market economy, urbanization and other global trends, religion appears to some to be losing its former power.

  • Revival of Religion

    • Instable times created by rapid social changes have reignited the desire for religion among people. Some examples:

      • Growth of new religious groups (attracted by oriental mysticism) sprang up in the 1960s on the West Coast of the United States.

      • Latin America witnessed the spread of the popular movement called liberation theology.

      • In 1979, the Iranian Islamic Revolution caught the attention of the world.

      • Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the traditional Russian Orthodox Church has revived vigorously.

    • The new face of old religion: Adapting to the needs of the changing times.

    • Ikeda: To continue contributing to broader human happiness and social development, a religion must adapt to the changing times. But it must never abandon its essential teachings, its core spirituality.

    • SGI’s separation from a corrupt priesthood unleashed a religious renaissance.

Chapter Four: Prizing each individual, in an era of individuality

Values to Guide Us in the Internet Age

  • The internet opens up new opportunities and challenges.

  • Ikeda: The greater the influence of the Internet becomes, the more energetically the ethics and responsibility of its users come into question. Setting up rules based on reliable ethics and value criteria is indispensable.

  • Most religions share certain values. These “golden values” that are near universal prohibit the taking of life, stealing and deceiving.

  • Compassion: The fourth value with varying interpretations

    • Christianity teaches: Love they neighbour and even your enemy.

    • Judaism: Without justice, love/compassion are merely sentimentality

    • Buddhist compassion: Relieve suffering and give joy. Requires developing a caring heart that struggles to rip out the cause of suffering from the root. One cannot be a true friend without the mercy to correct another. “Mere superficial kindness is not the true meaning of either love or compassion. It is the product of indifference.”

    • Islam: According to Prof Nur Yalman in ‘A Passage to Peace’, Islam strongly emphasizes divine love which is a metaphor for the love of human beings for each other.

  • The above values espoused across religions point to a common view of the value of human life.

    • Buddhism upholds that the pure and mighty force of life itself – the Buddha nature – is inherent in all human beings.

    • Christianity and Islam meanwhile uphold respect and recognition of the image of God in all human beings

  • Thus, to solve the problems accompanying the advent of the internet, the starting point of efforts must be the universally accepted notion of the supreme dignity of the human being.

 

The Need for Spiritual Organizations that Prize Every Individual

  • Spiritual organizations aid individuals in maintaining their faith amidst modern tendencies toward individualism.

  • People don’t join religions or denominations. They join congregations where they can bond with others in a supportive atmosphere.

  • Supportive religious communities are those where personal connections based on trust allow members to share hopes and challenges safely. A prime example of a successful community is the Buddhist sangha.

  • Soka Gakkai International’s (SGI) zadankai serves as a model for inclusive discussion groups that support and encourage members.

  • Josei Toda, SGI’s founder, valued the organization and its members’ well-being above his own life.

  • The organization’s strength lies in its warm-blooded human ties; forgetting individual members can lead to selfish misuse of the organization.

  • A humanistic approach that respects each individual is essential for preventing exploitation and ensuring the organization’s genuine progress.

Coming up Next... Overview of Chapter 5 (WIP)

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