Spiritual Innovation

April 18, 2008

In the comments thread of a long-ago post, Samuel Skinner writes:

And remember fundamentalism used to be the norm. It wasn’t until recently that people started reading their bibles more figuratively.

Whether or not that’s true is doubtful. After all, it was called “fundamentalism” by those who felt that religion had to return to the Bible-believin’ basics. And while some of the United State’s founders might have felt comfortable in Fallwell’s congregation, it’s also true that some of our founders were Unitarians, diests, and in at least one instance a Jeffersonian.

But even if it’s true that fundamentalism used to be the norm, so what? Is innovation in religion a bad thing? A chorus of voices says “yes!” but I disagree.

Even if God is eternal and unchanging (and I am as unsure of that as I am that God is singular) we are not. Especially in light of the scientific and industrial revolution. Many aggressive, materialistic atheists are right on at least this point: the old religious structures are inoperative. We do not relate to the world the same way we did two centuries ago.

Discussing the revival of Drudry — and embracing its modern background — is Grand Archdruid John Michael Greer.

Even more important was the simple comment in old texts that Druids worshipped in groves and forest glades. This glimpse of woodland spirituality evolved into a potent theme of the Revival. Druids and forests fused so totally in the imagination of the age that a 1743 book on growing oak trees, among the first English books of silviculture, was titled The Modern Druid. This needs to be understood in the context of the age. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution was under way, and its human and ecological costs were soaring out of sight. Mines, factories, and vast, fetid slums sprawled across England. In urban slums and factory districts, a new industrial landscape took shape, defined by brick, iron, and choking clouds of coal smoke.

This desecrated landscape gave a potent new meaning to Druidry. In an age drunk with the power of an earth-damaging technology, the vision of an older wisdom learned among trees and green places posed a forceful challenge to the new industrial order. The Anglican church offered no such challenge, and as the eighteenth century continued it lost touch with its own mystical traditions as well. [ What is the Druid Revival? ]

Faced with scientific materialism, industrial blight, and Christian dogmatism, revivalists sought to recover what they saw as best from near prehistoric times and integrate that with the best of that they had currently, a remarkable if occasionally comical feat of spiritual innovation that continues, with varying degrees of success in religious groups across the spectrum.

Some are more ready than others to admit that they are being creative. The AODA — Greer’s order and my own — is one of the more forthright about it.

I do not see novelty as a negative; I see novelty as necessary. And the process of spiritual innovation — as opposed to atheistic rejection — is an appropriate one if you are willing to assume that spiritual experience is real and not just hallucination brought on by an undigested bit of beef or blot of mustard. It’s exploration taken in a spirit of inquiry.

And it’s rarely if ever dogmatic, studiously tolerant, aggressively dedicated to other people’s freedom of religion and religious expression.

So even if fundamentalism was the original way of looking at things: what of it? That was then, this is now, and what we need — what we’ve always needed — was religion for now.

Posted in Religion