CLAL Special Features
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(This article was originally posted on 12-6-01 as part of a set of responses to the question "What is Religion For? that formed the basis of a seminar held by the Jewish Public Forum at CLAL [for more information click on the link below]. We are reposting it here to bring it to the attention of a wider audience.)
Jewish Public Forum Seminar:
“What Is Religion For?”
November 19, 2001
Pre-Seminar Response to the Question:
“What Is Religion For?”
By Nancy Ammerman
“Unfettered access to information, the decline of traditional forms of authority and the willingness to build identities from a multiplicity of traditions have allowed individuals to take control of their spiritual lives as never before. The very boundaries between work and family, private and public, sacred and secular are being redefined.” (from "What is Religion For?" -- pre-seminar materials)
This sounds like it could
have been lifted from one of the many talks I have given to academic and religious groups
over the last 10 years. My concern has been
precisely to help people begin to overcome the polarized, dichotomized thinking that has
posited our alternatives as “fundamentalist religion” versus “secular
humanism,” relegating an eviscerated religion to private enclaves. I have advocated a “both/and” religion
that claims its distinctive ways of living while being at peace in the midst of others who
are different, and of engaging in the public work of jointly seeking the good of our
world.
What is religion for? I am convinced that it is most fundamentally about
relationship with a spiritual power and presence beyond ourselves that puts this life into
perspective. I am also convinced that a
significant segment of the American public had already begun a spiritual search before
September 11. Unsatisfied with what they knew
of “organized religion,” they had sought religious practices they could engage
in on their own. But after September 11,
many of these seekers suddenly knew that they needed more than private expressions of
their own choosing. They needed a sense of
grounding in a tradition and with a community. They
discovered that religion is also about the formation of communities that call us to
commitments beyond ourselves. And so they
went to church or synagogue or mosque. My
question—as personal and down-to-earth as my own work on my church’s
“growth team”—is whether we were ready for them. We desperately need religious institutions that
can model this rooted-yet-open way of life. We
have a population ready to seek it. But will
existing religious institutions be so preoccupied with survival and winning the old
liberal versus conservative battles that they will be unable to respond to this new
challenge?
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