Losing my Religion Again

Very briefly, I've had a complicated relationship with organized religion for a long time, and a less complicated relationship with theology. I haven't really believed in God for over a decade now, but an amorphous spirituality influenced by Deistic beliefs has really morphed in James Randi-esque skepticism for the last many years. I have attended the United Church throughout. Partly this is a nod to the value I think humans get out of organized communities, with attendant routines and traditions. Partly, however, this was in explicit antagonism towards the more conservative theologies, wherein my attendance and bolstering of liberal institutions of open worship would hopefully place me in the best position to oppose these more perverse and illogical routines and traditions. I saw mainline conservative theologies as one of the predominant threats to human flourishing, and wanted to model an alternative. I still do.

Increasingly, I see the rising religion of the left as a firm roadblock to my continued progress with liberal theology. This is not remotely my idea first. I've been seeing the dangerous tendrils of religion in left politics for years, but have also been reading those takes for years. John McWhorter's upcoming book will be a welcome contribution to this field, and I've been looking forward to it ever since he gave birth to the idea on Glenn Loury's show a month ago.

In my life, this may mean in the medium term that I'm going to have to move churches to find something that 100% rejects pseudoscience and doublethink in all aspects, even the soft, "harmless" areas that my current church allows it to linger in (They'd be very sad to hear that, but the good news is that no one reads the blog anymore). It also means a couple of blogs on where I see the danger of the neo-religious left most specifically. These will be mostly for my own benefit.