Kind of funny and sort of weird in an off base way

Robin Robert Wright, the author of The Evolution of God—which I know little about except what is on amazon.com—is interviewed by The New York Times:

Your approach to religious history is so nakedly materialist. For instance, you claim the Apostle Paul was a kind of marketing guru who dropped the more demanding requirements of Judaism, like circumcision and dietary restrictions, to attract more followers.
Do the math. How many Christians are there today and how many Jews are there? If his goal was to gain a large following, he seems to have made the right tactical decision there.

Do you have to make Christianity sound like a pre-electronic Facebook?
Institutions thrive when they can serve the interest of a bunch of people, and there’s no reason to think the church is different. None of this is to say Paul didn’t feel divinely inspired.

O.K., but where is the transcendence in your book?
Well, I wind up arguing that the drift of history, however materially driven, has enough moral direction to suggest that there’s some larger purpose at work, and I guess you can call that transcendence.

And:

Were you a churchgoer as a child?
Southern Baptists don’t fool around. At age 8 or 9, I chose to go to the front of the church in response to the altar call and accepted Jesus as my savior.

When did you begin to doubt?
I think it was roughly sophomore year in high school. I encountered the theory of evolution, and my parents were creationists. There was a clash. They brought a Baptist minister over to the house to try to convince me that evolution hadn’t happened. He was not entirely successful, I would say.

That sure sounds familiar. The particular fundamentalist Bible chapel I was raised in didn't really do "altar calls," but I was part of several at summer Bible camp and other outings. (Even as a 12-year-old I thought they were emotionally manipulative and I did my best to avoid participation.) I also watched several anti-evolution videos in high school and heard plenty of anti-evolution talks/sermons. I eventually rejected "Creationism" (that is, the notion that God created the earth 6,000 years ago because the Bible "says so")—and became Catholic. Because, in the end, being a materialist with a vague, Hegelian-lite notion of transcendence isn't satisfying or convincing on any level or in any way. Still, although Wright might not be entirely right, I kind of like his sense of humor.

Comments

[falstaff]

You apparently know even less than what is on the Amazon site. The author's name is ROBERT Wright, not Robin.

[Carl E. Olson]

Apparently I had The Princess Bride on my mind...

[LJ]

Just guessing here but most marketing gurus these days would likely be inclined to modify the pitch, and maybe even the product, if you threaten to cut off their head.

[Andrew]

Why does the foil always have to be a fundamentalist Baptist preacher? "That sure sounds familiar. The particular fundamentalist Bible chapel I was raised in ..."

Suppose he had expressed his doubts about the love of God based upon, say, the existence of the Holocaust. Do you think that the Baptist minister would have had any success in changing the mind of a high school sophomore? Suppose he had said: "I began to have doubts when I watched my mother die of terminal brain cancer and my prayers and the prayers of everyone in my Baptist church went unanswered. How could a loving God let this happen?" Many priests attempting to answer the sophomore Wright would have elicited the same response he gave to the Baptist minister: "He was not entirely successful, I would say."

Instead we have the usual cliches about Creationism, an ignorant country preacher, and fundamentalist parents. This is a book meant to get the author on Colbert, Maher, and Stewart for the laughs. For the NPR crowd it's designed to show that "doubt" is not just the mark of intellectual sophistication but is also actually the highest form of religious belief.

[Carl E. Olson]

Well, some people's "foils" are other people's realities. And it could also be said that some clichés (not all) are clichés because they have a ring of consistency and authenticity. I can't speak for Wright, but I was, in fact, raised in a fundamentalist home and church (using the term "fundamentalist" in its historically correct sense), and I was taught a certain fundamentalist brand of "creationism" (a term I dislike, btw), and so forth. Having said that, I think your last paragraph is right on the money. Well said.