Presented at Folio Books. San Francisco, Sept. 5, 2019
Agnostic at the Altar was second choice for the title of my book. The first was Living With Uncertainty, but that title was already taken. For years I tried to run away from uncertainty and escape into certainty. When I was a teenager, I saw this man. He was a Catholic priest and he seemed happy and confident. People liked him and he was rumored to do good things for others and I said to myself, “ I could do that.” And so at 14 I escaped into a Catholic seminary. Although most of my classmates left over the 12 years of seminary training, I stayed and became a priest. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned for the 1960s when everything was changing. I became really uncertain and did what many do in such a situation: I went into therapy. I saw a psychologist. He seemed happy and confident. People liked him and he was rumored to do good things for others. So I said to myself, “I could do that.“ And I did, but the uncertainty didn’t go away.
After I retired, I decided to go back and look at both religion and psychology. Perhaps I could find in these two disciplines that were so important to me something that would help me make sense of things. In my first book I emphasized just how archeologists and scripture scholars had undercut the historical underpinnings of the basic scriptural story. Moses probably didn’t exist; Jesus didn’t start a new religion. However psychology continued to demonstrate that many of those who participated in religious services benefited from their religious participation. How could those benefits be squared with other evidence that religion can harm? My second book, Agnostic at the Altar takes place in that in-between place, that uncertain land where one tries to hold on to opposites: the reaching out for what is valuable in religion, such as community, ritual and meaning making, while at the same time protecting oneself from the harm that religion sometimes brings: unnecessary anxiety, damage to one’s self-esteem and an over evaluation of obedience. How can something so helpful simultaneously be so harmful?
I focused on the Hebrew prophets because they illustrated both the help and the harm that comes with religion. They bravely spoke out against injustice, but invoked an angry, punishing god that could really scare you. Yet their experience of the transcendent inspired them to create a magnificent story about everything. Their story begins with an omnipotent God who not only creates the world, but also monitors it by entering into history, often righting wrongs and punishing evildoers. He appears to get discouraged by his human creatures but promises to end history by creating a new golden age, a paradise even better than the original one.
Their wonderful story has lost its attraction, particularly in our Western world. But we still need big stories.
The American writer David Foster Wallace introduced a talk with this story. Two young fish were talking when an older fish swam up to them and said, Hi. How do you like the water? The older fish swam off and the two looked at each other and one said what the hell is water? We can take so much for granted that we may not question the cultural environment that profoundly influences us. It takes hard work to become more conscious, especially of of our connections to others.
Another narrative we take for granted is the story science tells of our unbelievably vast, expanding universe and our inconsequential role within it. Yet this scientifically based story tends to reduce everything to matter and to miss the importance of transcendence in our own evolution as a species. It is that sense of transcendence that can enable us to care for and respect each other.
Transcendence isn't something new. In what we now know as Palestine, the Hebrew prophets reached a point where they understood transcendence as the one God. They then realized that if there was just one creator God all people were somehow related. All were creatures of this one God. They struggled to move beyond their tribal identities and reach out to others.
We all inherit that struggle. We are each concerned about our own security needs and those of our family, our tribe, our country, but at the same time feel the connection to or at least the appreciation of others who are not like us. Religion offers the opportunity to help us navigate between those two pulls. In a religious service, there is the opportunity for reflecting upon our own struggles, but also time to consider those in need. Additionally in our efforts to search for what is helpful and avoid what is harmful in religion, we practice the skills needed to survive and thrive in our overwhelming and demanding culture.
What I realize is that religion’s take on the transcendent will always be limited and psychology’s analysis stops with observable behavior. What is certain is that our search for the transcendent is never ending and our attempts to articulate the ineffable are subject to rigorous examination. I find in religion and psychology, not the certainty that first attracted me, but the resources to help to help me live with the uncertainty.
Biography: John Van Hagen, Ph.D, is a former catholic priest, psychologist and author of two books, Agnostic at the Altar and Rescuing Religion. He makes a compelling case that the ancient prescriptions for a just way of living together, such as stories told by the prophets in the Axial Age, provide a view of transcendence that gives meaning and purpose to life and a rational for caring for others. John uses recent scientific evidence, psychology and evolutionary theory as well as his own Catholic experience to bolster a case that allows him to come to altar and Jewish and Christian Scriptures with an agnostic’s inquiring mind. John finds that ancient prophets are relevant to our own times and evolutionary-based desire that all people live in harmony.