The Formation of Religious Consciousness

in the Twenty-first Century

Our contemporary horizon presents an endless variety of religious invitations which beckon humankind. Ancient and pre-reformational traditions, New Age religions, secret schools of Gnosticism, Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian sects, and various psycho-spiritual and occult movements vie for the human search of one’s ultimate meaning and destiny. The rapid proliferation of the latest sisterhood, spiritual bonding, denominational offshoot, or transcendental drug escapade compete vigorously with the more traditional main-line churches, mosques, and synagogues.

The Questioning of Inherited Authority

The winds are changing. The historic Judaic, Christian, Islamic traditions are not accepted with undiminished approval. Post-modern people are less deferential to traditions than their forefathers and more apt, for various motives, to critique the formerly sacrosanct regions of institutional religions. The rulers of these organizations—from rabbi to pandit—no longer bear the unquestioned authority in life matters that was formerly attributed to their office.

The doubting of inherited orthodoxy is symptomatic of a climate in this century whose inhabitants resent placing their full trust in any official authority. This supposition received its inspiration less from the official encouragement of religious leaders than from the legacy of Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Marx, and a host of historic events from the marvels of industrial technology to the endless cultural tragedies of international and local conflicts. These ever-flowing eddies of ideas and unsettling episodes have shaken citizens into a profound uncertainty about the positiveness of life.

Two different historic events share a tragic reflection. Rabbi Richard Rubenstein stated: “If there is a God of History, he is the ultimate author of Auschwitz.” Could not Americans likewise utter the same about 9-11? Political and economic events have propelled an existential movement in philosophy and literature that indicts the inherited values of the past, mocks ultimacy, and documents a depth of anguish about human destiny in which it is hard to avoid the conviction that there is less meaning to life with any faith in God and religious beliefs.

If this brief description approximates the cautious yet intelligent spirit of our age, then to speak of forming religious consciousness is not necessarily to identify automatically with an institutional religion or tradition. At a local scene, in years gone by, old time Chicagoans, when asked where they resided in the Windy City, would almost always reply by naming the Parish to which they belonged. Not today. Although institutional religions and religious consciousness are, for the most part, coincidental by western standards, these two phenomena appear, in view of last century's upheavals, tenuously equated and immediately suspect.

Let us clarify the distinction. The composition of religious consciousness presupposes a fundamental basis in humankind, namely, the dynamic presence of a personal quest for ultimacy. No doubt this endeavor customarily received its specification from an orthodox religion. In the leeway of our times, however, the availability of official religions and their hallowed dogmas cannot assume that the inherent impulse for ultimacy, this desire to render unconditional coherence and purpose to existence, will always conform to parochial choices. Intellectual assent to a series of revered orthodox propositions appears less than pious propaganda. How real does formal religious appeals seem in the stark, nuclear world that worries people?

The Quest of Religious Consciousness

Since the quest of religious consciousness ought to clarify the meaning of life seen in its total perspective, it would necessitate a breath of contact with the range and levels of life, undertaken individually and collectively, fostering personal integration of its findings. It pressures for more than a purely theoretic understanding. It is a self-learning search through finite, contemporary experiences testing for hopeful clues of its possibility. Without these discoverable signs it remains a pious illusion.

Sought for today is less a religious revival of beliefs or one version of religious credentials exchanged for another, than a process of self-transformation whereby people can measure those successive experiences which validate the movement toward their pursuit of ultimacy. To assume that formal orthodoxy can compel assent on the proof of its historical longevity misses the crucial issue: post-modern people feel estranged from history.

The paradox and drama today amidst the superabundance provided by technocratic attitudes is the human skepticism in achieving a level of spiritual autonomy over the forces of historic suffering. The aftermath of the belief in "progress", “manifest destiny,” “salvation,” even the Marxist versions, has profited only a few at the expense of others. The recurring social and moral catastrophes of these decades corrode his faith in institutional authorities. Arguably the greatest of Western powers has been the aggressor in nearly two hundred military incursions since 1945. How can one not feel bereft of any stable reference that there is an ultimate coherence to life? On these regrettable terms, the transience of life easily competes with religious presumptions of heavenly rewards, bluntly challenging their authenticity in the dark wake of twentieth century events.

The Enrichment of Dialogue

If religions are to take a positive role in forming the twenty-first century, they must foster dialogue both among themselves and with the leading fields of knowledge that shape the mentality of modern cultures. In order to prepare themselves adequately for this interchange, religions must carefully examine their own worldviews. This examination is not for the sake of new opportunity to expound their religious version or a triumphant utterance to entice converts, but an examination that candidly submits to a dialogic criticism. Few religions escape superstitious elements and the pious resort to a Deus ex machina. Few sciences escape the ease of overgeneralization and empirical reductionism. for correction and revision. Even if one takes umbrage with the biblical scholar, Professor Bultmann, and his full recommendations for demythologizing the bible too stringent, religious denominations, to be heard in a world not entirely of its making, can hardly avoid re-mythologizing. Although the flatlanders may object.

In dialogic communication two concerns eventually become paramount: first, the problem of translating humane, transcendental meaning into a conflict-torn world with its political forces that are obviously concerned about expanding its own agenda; second, the problem of competition between the religious/spiritual appraisal of humankind and the standing beneficial values of the times. Associated with these concerns is the inter-dialogue between Confessional visions in their differing views of ultimacy and its practical import.

Religious portraits of human nature tend to use broad strokes. Fervid designations such as children of God, sinner, believer, prayerful, blessed ones, etc., are consistent with scriptural mythology. But how do these terms compare with the fields of anthropology, medicine, psychology, and perennial philosophy when these allied sciences attempt to elucidate the meaning of humankind? Freud and Jung's theories of the unconscious, the existential notion of human nature, in which one makes up his or her own essence, the neurophysiologist's equivocation of the mind with a physiological function of the brain, for example, all provide an irresistible alternative to religious concepts of human nature. Religious consciousness cannot afford to neglect listening seriously to what the arts, sciences, economies, and philosophies declare about the human condition. These fields of endeavor, more than religious affirmations and liturgical attendance, disclose the immediate aspirations, social complexities, national interests, and creative potentials of the present status for the human quest. They represent if not a substitute for ultimate meaning, then at least for survival.

The Values of the Post-Modern World

Just as no religion can hope to survive, let alone influence the trends of the world, by distancing itself as an exclusively other world reality, so religious consciousness carries an ambiguous burden into the day-by-day confrontation with global existence. On the one hand, it’s very positiveness brings a criticism to those realms of knowledge and life patterns that would deny by their manifestos and lifestyles the human possibility for transcendence. On the other hand, the dynamics of culture and the promotion of research, either into the past or in a discovery of something new, may actually yield positive results that rival traditional religious concepts about the world.

Recently, the innovative studies of biofeedback and meditation demonstrate man's virtual self-control over his entire nervous system and his innate ability to heal himself. Techniques of extending longevity, as well as the regrowth of limbs and organs are not far from actualization. The success of radionics and psychotronics that involve newly discovered realms of energy have brought about the startling surprise that conscious intent can modulate and pattern electromagnetic energy itself.

We are on the verge of broadening our comprehension of the cosmic laws that affect the molecular structures of the universe and enlisting human consciousness, not as a spectator, but as the primary and participating architect. These kinds of discoveries make the Age of Enlightenment only a special case in a much vaster world of self-knowledge, in much the same way that Newtonian physics became a special case in Einsteinian relativity, which in turn is now a special case of a more

These advances have a direct bearing on one's vision of the possibilities and limits of human nature, a vision that religious consciousness has had a great deal to say about in the past. But why stop here? Would not these kinds of research have also a great deal to say about a religion's concept of divine reality? Can a religious seal its mythology from the possible enrichment of current fact finding? Some of these discoveries profoundly affect the living conditions and ultimate significance of life on this planet and so can be connected to the composition of religious concepts.

It should not be surprising that historical and scientific research will disclose evidence that is associated with religious knowledge. The unifying principle involved in both enterprises is the developing self-awareness of people. The investigation of nature's realms, the probing into the unconscious regions of the mind, the cultural influences of belief systems, all intersect in man himself.

Moot Recommendations

The immediate needs for homo religiosus in his estranged conditions are to recover sense of transcendence and revive the practical import of religious values for shaping society. To avoid appearing anachronistic in our world, religions must find intelligibly appealing ways to guide humankind through this harrowing period of history. In its task of formulating guidance, religion will find out whether its symbols still possess the communicative power to overcome the contemporary negations to future hope. At the same time, it may discover its own historic limitations as well as new possibilities for vital improvement. To this end, the following points are offered.

1. Religions can engage the phenomena of post-modernity in its images, prevailing ideas, language uses, art forms, literature, economics, political agendas, the entire cultural complex. In this way, religions maintain their credibility for inspiring people by being concerned with the concrete world of daily occupations. It may turn out that searching and plumbing the hidden values embedded in today's ways of thought and living enrich religious concepts. Whitehead mentioned that "Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development." (A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. Cambridge Press, 1953, p. 233).

2. If religion speaks only in language of the past it has effectively retired divinity to its heavenly rest home and may turn center stage over to a contemporary skepticism that denies transcendence.

3. In religious consciousness there must exist a criterion of rationality that respects religious diversity, and at the same time exposes the shallowness of any scriptural fundamentalism, which should be unmasked as a scylla breeding mindless fear in a people shaken by nuclear anxiety.

4. The uncertainty that people feel today in the currents of life is not an adolescent insecurity, requiring only a few more years to outgrow; on the contrary, panic is a quite understandable adult response to the fissures of human destiny. In this matrix of anxiety people do not lack for religion. From Africa to New Zealand, religions abound. More than anything else, people seem to lack the recognition of a center in themselves, an abiding, inextinguishable awareness that is unthreatened by the flux of life. The primal responsibility of religious consciousness is to bring about the kinds of experience and evidence that awaken the human spirit to its humane and divine wisdom.

5. In explicating its program for liberation, individual religions can engage the vital core of other spiritual traditions, East and West. No radical pursuit of essential questions can be intelligently conducted without acknowledging the necessary co-existence of other viable traditions. This accommodation is a not a surrender to theological relativism but the honest admission that absolutes are clothed in finite garb for human communication. Theological language, no matters how scrupulously devised, is a finite enterprise and thus can hardly exhaust the intelligible meanings available for investigation. No religion corners the market on divine truths.

6. In their disclosures, religions run the risk of antinomies. One benefit of this exciting risk is that it guards against the subtle disease of spiritual ideology that aspires to conformity at any cost. Culture and religion are borne by people, not clones who measure their allegiance to synagogue, church or pious movement with a notarized loyalty oath.

7. The temptation to imperialism always lies in wait. The more authoritarian and doctrinaire a religion becomes, the more its zeal distorts spiritual growth. People whose spirit is underdeveloped, as it were, may find in the ideals of authoritarianism a collective strength in which they as individuals have failed to far to achieve. Like people rushing to surrender their rights to an authority that promises to protect them in times of crisis, blind submission to an external code either satisfies their dimly understood need for power and significance, or for freedom from self-responsibility.

In conclusion we may note that the spiritual impulse to grasp the totality of life, in the past as now, whether it conforms to a formal religion or not, impels humankind today to relieve its defective condition by seeking sounder health, better shelter, the elimination of social privations and disparities, the stewardship of nature's secrets, and the ultimate answer to the question of existence. This vision of an increasingly humane culture recognizes, however vaguely, the sacredness of all life. As much as possible it must be a civil, tangible recognition. In this way, it integrates its optimism for transcendence. It is my hope that one day the forced competition between the empirical and the transcendental, the secular and the sacred will dissolve into a harmony of life in which peace, both within and without, will prevail.