Some think it's just that I don't like religion and haven't studied it. And they're right. But that doesn't mean we haven't watched a religion emerge since last year.
I've always said it that leftism, from Rousseau and the later stages of the French Revolution to the present day, is an unconscious parody of Christianity. The specific forms vary by country, period, and which false prophet is the preacher. Tom Paine (who was an eyewitness) noted back then the uncanny recycling of Catholic practices and imagery in the Terror phase of the French Revolution. Marx's version is a pseudo-apocalyptic End Time prophecy, with a coming Rule of the Saints, wrapped in pseudo-scientific analysis. America's "woke" revolution is specifically and obviously Protestant, as noted by Michael Lind, a latter-day version of the Social Gospel, but with an emphasis on a personal sense of sin and a need for personal transformation. I've seen striking cases of this over the last few years, in particular, from people who've never exhibited any racist tendencies and stand in no obvious need of confession and redemption, at least on the surface. But who knows the depths of the human soul? "May the meditation of my heart ... be acceptable to my Rock and Redeemer" (Psalm 19).
(A completely different theme is the constant, obsessive search for "noble savages," a link among all modern leftist movements, and also with its Romantic cousin, the "volkish," counter-Enlightenment theorists of German identity that played an important role in the rise of Nazism.)
I believe it was 4 or 5 years ago, I began telling friends about my young co-workers (most coming out of elite higher education programs) and my experience with them. I would share with my friends my surprise at how intolerant and judgmental they were to any other perspectives and that it reminded me of the fringe religious people in a church. I have worked in a church 13 years(loved it), but I have seen that intolerance before. I will say I saw less of it in the church than I saw it in my co-workers.
Also on a side note, as a Christ follower I take no issue with calling this current culture that John is describing a religion. Religion has always been an idea that it was how humans tried to find God. They create God with their ideas, create their norms and their culture. Christian faith is the opposite of that. It was an active God who came to humans to reclaim the lost connection. The problem is humans for centuries still want to do their own way. Love the writing John!
My own experiences being social-justice-culture-adjacent have also led me to increasingly regard it as someone else's religion. That said, and despite also being an atheist (of the don't-care rather than the don't-believe variety), I have found your pejorative use of the religious categorization to be a bit off-putting. I'm glad the final work will soften that a bit.
If you haven't read it already, I would highly recommend Tara Isabella Burton's excellent recent book "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World". She addresses social justice culture along with a range of other practices and communities. You may also be interested in John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism".
(Unrelated to posts below). When comparing the Woke elect to religious believers - is there not a difference between “…I do not have enough evidence to be a believer..” and the outright denial of documented facts (many of the woke elect) per your George Floyd example?
I just pasted this in a reply. I appreciate this ongoing comparison to a religion. But instead of "shitty religion," much of McWhorter's description reminds me more of "shitty therapy" or "shitty Human Potential movement." Being a shitty therapist or Human Potential guru gets you all the exalted specialness of being a cleric without actually having to undertake the deep philosophical and theological training and reflection, not to mention the stodgy uncoolness of the clerisy. This is my favorite example, as the teacher is clearly a caring individual and genuinely believes in what she is doing. Shitty therapy is abound with the notion that you can just love yourself into a sense of purpose and meaning. Alas, purpose and meaning come from toiling away at things outside yourself, such as the academic content she so easily dismisses. https://www.kusi.com/kearny-high-school-teacher-writes-new-curriculum-with-her-students-to-help-them-find-their-purpose-in-life/
True, these matters lend themselves to easily becoming lost in the semantic weeds. Another and more general term for what we're discussing is, of course, "dogma" and those whose attachments to opinion are "dogmatic".
There is something typically dogmatic somewhere in all religious doctrines while not all dogma is religious in character, strictly speaking. A belief might or might not, independent of its content, be applied, held or defended _dogmatically_ by some but not others of those who share the belief(s). There's always going to be _some_ degree of dogma in the set of beliefs, religious or not, held and disputed in any modern society such as our own. The precise beliefs held dogmatically are going to vary from time to time and they may be more or less "religious" in character. John's points remain valid either way one prefers to look at it. They concern tolerance--how much we have of it and in what and where it consists and is found. So there is, by a rough and ready reckoning, some kind of inverse relation between the prevalence of dogma and tolerance. At present, the particular beliefs advanced and defended dogmatically include some very, very unfortunate ones. We no longer burn witches at the stake. 2.01352 cheers for us!
(sorry, it looks like comments on this segment are running long-ish; alas the following comments will be no exception . . . However Substack seems to impose a length limit so I will post in bits & pieces, continuing as replies to my own comment)
I want to weigh in here as someone holding a couple of degrees in the secular study of religion. (Not theological degrees; I did have to read a bunch of religious thought, as well as sociology, philosophy, etc.)
I have a minor bone to pick with McWhorter’s thesis; but it’s only minor. On the whole what he says about the Elect and religion is worth taking seriously.
Surely it is not just hype.
The minor bone is this: the options for defining religion are substantive, or functional. (For those interested, Appendix I to Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy is worth reading. “Definitions cannot, by their very nature, be either ‘true’ or ‘false,’ only more useful or less so.”) McWhorter takes the functional option. The functional view runs: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck. So (runs this line of reasoning) if something not obviously religious carries on like something obviously religious, then it is religion. Possibly the type specimen is communism: sure, it’s officially atheistic, but think about the veneration of Lenin’s body (a relic); the worship of Mao (a cult of personality) and the sacred Little Red Book (canonical scripture); and can fundamentalists even hold a candle to Trotskyites for schisms and sectarianism?
The downsides are: in functional terms, what is not like a religion (in one way or other)? If everything is religion, how can we say anything specific and interesting about religion? Also, one risks a basic logical fallacy (affirming the consequent) if one argues in this way: If anything is a religion, then it [has beliefs/makes leaps of faith/etc.]; communism [has beliefs/makes leaps of faith/etc.]; therefore communism is a religion. Perhaps the G-d that Failed, but a g-d nonetheless.
John's statement "My point is that religion typically includes a wing of belief that must stand apart from empiricism, that at a certain point one must just “believe.” " is true for any system of statements based on logic. That would be my interpretation of Godel's theorem. It is mathematically proven that no system of logical statements can exist without either a contradiction or an unproven assumption, i.e. a belief.
With that as mathematical proof, every empirical system based on logic will require some element of belief (more or less) and will be by your definition a religion of sorts. Some religions require more beliefs than others, any many have beliefs that are contradicted by evidence but I don't think that matters as much as the processes the religion advocates and the results of those processes. That is what makes a religion "shitty" or not. I would acknowledge there is a lot of evidence that different individuals of the same religion can exhibit widely divergent processes with opposite results. So I would not stereotype members of any religion.
I am emphasizing results because those effect other people more than beliefs. People tend to use beliefs to justify their own desires, so religion is a lot like a Rorschach. The way the person expresses their religion tell you far more about them than about God.
Electism as a set of propositions is necessarily going to be a religion. Many (most?) of its beliefs seem contradicted by quite a bit of evidence. However, what is dangerous is that the actions advocated by its more vocal proponents seem to consist of stereotyping, self-righteousness, blaming, and polarizing. These actions are going to have very negative results.
Note that I have anecdotal evidence from a friend in which a public forum on critical race theory ended up with the theme that we all need to be kind to each other. So even adherents of Electism can exhibit divergent behaviors.
I would suggest focusing less on whether Electism is a religion. It is a moot point and spending energy on the argument will just tend to confuse the issue. The problem is that we have people who are justifying using destructive processes of stereotyping, character assassination, self-righteousness, blaming, and the polarization of society based on "racial" characteristics. Those processes are the exact same processes used by white supremacists and other racists, and therefore the Elect are racist.
What they are doing is using their religion to justify destructive processes. This is a common and regrettable tendency in humans. "Others are "bad" and so when they use a destructive process they bad things. We are "good" so when we use a destructive process we do good things." This is utter nonsense but it is used to justify all sorts of atrocities. The Elect are falling into the same delusion.
I’ve long held that many people who do not consider themselves religious, in fact are. Indifferent agnostics are probably the least religious of my acquaintances; rather ironically, outspoken, “evangelical” atheists are some of the most devoutly religious people I know. An affirmative faith that there is no god — for this can’t be empirically proven, any more than that there is a god or gods — can be a central, motivating life’s belief.
McWhorter makes a compelling argument for Electism being a religion; depending on how one differentiates religion from cult, Electism could fall into either or both categories: One man’s cult is another’s religion. Electism evidences many hallmarks of a religion, e.g. public confession of sin, shibboleths, and excommunication of heretics — to list only three. How much evidence is necessary to definitively say that a social movement has morphed into a religion? When is religious critical mass reached? It’s difficult or impossible to quantify, but it seems to me that it isn’t ridiculous or offensive to call Electism a religion.
People who may object to the characterization of woke racism as a religion don’t want their own religion denigrated. Thus many may fail to see that, while religions have always served the human need to comprehend or make use of that which cannot be explained or proven by physical means, they also have been used to control large swaths of people. They have existed on two sides of the coin in varying degrees over human history: they comfort, unite and uplift, or persecute, divide and exploit. While the Elect likely feel the former regarding their activism, McWhorter argues the latter.
Leftism is a religion in general then. Everything that promises salvation and healing and offers a faith which makes one a member of the group is by definition a religious enterprise. Communist Parties are churches, as well as the Democratic Party is one. Every political vision, which projects some objectives onto the future is a religion, according to this definition.
The Elect are a cult. They promise salvation and membership by faith through religious means, but to be a religion you have to be universal. A religion is a means to an end, which is to stabilize society, reduce conflicts and guarantee the status of non-believers. Even Islam, the most intolerant of religions provide something like that. The Elect doesn't.
The Elect just demonise "whiteness" and thereby strengthening the disintegration of the society which created them in the first place.
"I will be roundly slammed for seeming disrespectful of religion, and for not knowing enough about it to sully it with a comparison to Elect ideology." It's possible that you're being overly sensitive here, Professor McWhorter. In fact, you've forced me to confront the source of some of our pushback. Many of us commenting here are deeply worried about the current, blithe, one-size-fits-all societal prescriptions (evangelization, actually) aimed at eliminating religion entirely from the human condition.
Putting others down for having faith or believing in something that is "irrational" or "can't be scientifically proved" is disrespectful. Admitting that religious commitment "perplexes and sometimes even irritates" you is **not** disrespectful: it's an expression of, well, your lived experience, not to mention the unique quality of your mind which is, after all, the source of all the important ideas in the new book. Everything you've said about religion in "The Elect" is valid as far as I can tell based on my dated M.Div. and subsequent spiritual exploration. (While a strict reading of the Calvinist doctrine and its subsequent development through all the branchings and mergings of Christian theology can only lead to rabbit holes, you're using the term "Elect" in a more conventional, ecumenical sense that is completely correct, appropriate and marvelously effective.)
Perhaps we "pro-religion" folks have sometimes been too quick to respond with knee-jerk (but hopefully thoughtful) reactions triggered by what we see as the unrelenting, cold rationality of present times. Nevertheless, I haven't seen anyone "slamming" you in the wonderfully stimulating comments to this substack. And actually, I have a confession: those of us who worry about society's increasing beleaguerment of religion are always on the lookout for any forum in which we can proclaim our side of things, whether or not our comments are strictly related to the source ideas we're commenting on.
Regarding religion and belief in God: Religion nor belief in 'God' is necessary to know God. Belief, and religion based on belief, is testament to the uncertainty of actually knowing. Beliefs as such can actually hinder knowing because conceptualization(s) more often than not serve as substitutes for knowing. Knowing God is like knowing the sun. One just steps outside, sees the light and feels the warmth on one's body. It doesn't require belief, or even description. It only requires stepping outside. The sun, without a doubt, is.
Similarly the 'is-ness' of 'God' is available for anyone and everyone. All it takes is faith and trust in the un-figure-out-able, the unknown, in all-that-is. The stepping outside of one's separateness (Yes, it is a tall order.) reveals the reality of It, (or 'God', for lack of a better word). Whether or not one 'believes' in God or even has a concept of 'God' is irrelevant.
McWhorter would be good to make a distinction between ordinary religious, political and ideological beliefs and associated identities, from the possibility of coming upon what exists beyond belief.
This section of John McWhorter's piece stuck out for me: "Here’s another grand old academy being choked by CRT ideology, while smart media types stand by claiming nothing’s going on because legal theorists forty years ago had no such things in mind and thus it isn’t CRT and thus if you don’t like it, you’re a racist..."
Did anyone see this past week the interview on MSNBC by Joy Reid with Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute? It was an embarrassment... for Reid. She didn't let him speak, dismissing what he struggled to say because "people could look up his talking points." Plus, Reid specifically took the view of what John states in the citation above -- that what's going on now has nothing to do with CRT as written in the 1970s and 80s. The segment was really a nasty contest of wills than an enlightening interview.
It's time for a substantive, drama-free discussion of exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is and what it isn't to combat the constant noise going on from 1. the crazy right-wing who co-opt the term (along with "cancel culture") with no idea what either actually mean and 2. the Elect left who make the same claim as Reid did in the interview with Rufo. Ideally, this discussion could be in the form of a debate, of no less than 2 hours, among knowledgeable, level-headed people -- to set the record straight and express good faith opposing views. How refreshing would that be?
I've always said it that leftism, from Rousseau and the later stages of the French Revolution to the present day, is an unconscious parody of Christianity. The specific forms vary by country, period, and which false prophet is the preacher. Tom Paine (who was an eyewitness) noted back then the uncanny recycling of Catholic practices and imagery in the Terror phase of the French Revolution. Marx's version is a pseudo-apocalyptic End Time prophecy, with a coming Rule of the Saints, wrapped in pseudo-scientific analysis. America's "woke" revolution is specifically and obviously Protestant, as noted by Michael Lind, a latter-day version of the Social Gospel, but with an emphasis on a personal sense of sin and a need for personal transformation. I've seen striking cases of this over the last few years, in particular, from people who've never exhibited any racist tendencies and stand in no obvious need of confession and redemption, at least on the surface. But who knows the depths of the human soul? "May the meditation of my heart ... be acceptable to my Rock and Redeemer" (Psalm 19).
(A completely different theme is the constant, obsessive search for "noble savages," a link among all modern leftist movements, and also with its Romantic cousin, the "volkish," counter-Enlightenment theorists of German identity that played an important role in the rise of Nazism.)
I believe it was 4 or 5 years ago, I began telling friends about my young co-workers (most coming out of elite higher education programs) and my experience with them. I would share with my friends my surprise at how intolerant and judgmental they were to any other perspectives and that it reminded me of the fringe religious people in a church. I have worked in a church 13 years(loved it), but I have seen that intolerance before. I will say I saw less of it in the church than I saw it in my co-workers.
Also on a side note, as a Christ follower I take no issue with calling this current culture that John is describing a religion. Religion has always been an idea that it was how humans tried to find God. They create God with their ideas, create their norms and their culture. Christian faith is the opposite of that. It was an active God who came to humans to reclaim the lost connection. The problem is humans for centuries still want to do their own way. Love the writing John!
My own experiences being social-justice-culture-adjacent have also led me to increasingly regard it as someone else's religion. That said, and despite also being an atheist (of the don't-care rather than the don't-believe variety), I have found your pejorative use of the religious categorization to be a bit off-putting. I'm glad the final work will soften that a bit.
If you haven't read it already, I would highly recommend Tara Isabella Burton's excellent recent book "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World". She addresses social justice culture along with a range of other practices and communities. You may also be interested in John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism".
(Unrelated to posts below). When comparing the Woke elect to religious believers - is there not a difference between “…I do not have enough evidence to be a believer..” and the outright denial of documented facts (many of the woke elect) per your George Floyd example?
I just pasted this in a reply. I appreciate this ongoing comparison to a religion. But instead of "shitty religion," much of McWhorter's description reminds me more of "shitty therapy" or "shitty Human Potential movement." Being a shitty therapist or Human Potential guru gets you all the exalted specialness of being a cleric without actually having to undertake the deep philosophical and theological training and reflection, not to mention the stodgy uncoolness of the clerisy. This is my favorite example, as the teacher is clearly a caring individual and genuinely believes in what she is doing. Shitty therapy is abound with the notion that you can just love yourself into a sense of purpose and meaning. Alas, purpose and meaning come from toiling away at things outside yourself, such as the academic content she so easily dismisses. https://www.kusi.com/kearny-high-school-teacher-writes-new-curriculum-with-her-students-to-help-them-find-their-purpose-in-life/
True, these matters lend themselves to easily becoming lost in the semantic weeds. Another and more general term for what we're discussing is, of course, "dogma" and those whose attachments to opinion are "dogmatic".
There is something typically dogmatic somewhere in all religious doctrines while not all dogma is religious in character, strictly speaking. A belief might or might not, independent of its content, be applied, held or defended _dogmatically_ by some but not others of those who share the belief(s). There's always going to be _some_ degree of dogma in the set of beliefs, religious or not, held and disputed in any modern society such as our own. The precise beliefs held dogmatically are going to vary from time to time and they may be more or less "religious" in character. John's points remain valid either way one prefers to look at it. They concern tolerance--how much we have of it and in what and where it consists and is found. So there is, by a rough and ready reckoning, some kind of inverse relation between the prevalence of dogma and tolerance. At present, the particular beliefs advanced and defended dogmatically include some very, very unfortunate ones. We no longer burn witches at the stake. 2.01352 cheers for us!
(sorry, it looks like comments on this segment are running long-ish; alas the following comments will be no exception . . . However Substack seems to impose a length limit so I will post in bits & pieces, continuing as replies to my own comment)
I want to weigh in here as someone holding a couple of degrees in the secular study of religion. (Not theological degrees; I did have to read a bunch of religious thought, as well as sociology, philosophy, etc.)
I have a minor bone to pick with McWhorter’s thesis; but it’s only minor. On the whole what he says about the Elect and religion is worth taking seriously.
Surely it is not just hype.
The minor bone is this: the options for defining religion are substantive, or functional. (For those interested, Appendix I to Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy is worth reading. “Definitions cannot, by their very nature, be either ‘true’ or ‘false,’ only more useful or less so.”) McWhorter takes the functional option. The functional view runs: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck. So (runs this line of reasoning) if something not obviously religious carries on like something obviously religious, then it is religion. Possibly the type specimen is communism: sure, it’s officially atheistic, but think about the veneration of Lenin’s body (a relic); the worship of Mao (a cult of personality) and the sacred Little Red Book (canonical scripture); and can fundamentalists even hold a candle to Trotskyites for schisms and sectarianism?
The downsides are: in functional terms, what is not like a religion (in one way or other)? If everything is religion, how can we say anything specific and interesting about religion? Also, one risks a basic logical fallacy (affirming the consequent) if one argues in this way: If anything is a religion, then it [has beliefs/makes leaps of faith/etc.]; communism [has beliefs/makes leaps of faith/etc.]; therefore communism is a religion. Perhaps the G-d that Failed, but a g-d nonetheless.
John's statement "My point is that religion typically includes a wing of belief that must stand apart from empiricism, that at a certain point one must just “believe.” " is true for any system of statements based on logic. That would be my interpretation of Godel's theorem. It is mathematically proven that no system of logical statements can exist without either a contradiction or an unproven assumption, i.e. a belief.
With that as mathematical proof, every empirical system based on logic will require some element of belief (more or less) and will be by your definition a religion of sorts. Some religions require more beliefs than others, any many have beliefs that are contradicted by evidence but I don't think that matters as much as the processes the religion advocates and the results of those processes. That is what makes a religion "shitty" or not. I would acknowledge there is a lot of evidence that different individuals of the same religion can exhibit widely divergent processes with opposite results. So I would not stereotype members of any religion.
I am emphasizing results because those effect other people more than beliefs. People tend to use beliefs to justify their own desires, so religion is a lot like a Rorschach. The way the person expresses their religion tell you far more about them than about God.
Electism as a set of propositions is necessarily going to be a religion. Many (most?) of its beliefs seem contradicted by quite a bit of evidence. However, what is dangerous is that the actions advocated by its more vocal proponents seem to consist of stereotyping, self-righteousness, blaming, and polarizing. These actions are going to have very negative results.
Note that I have anecdotal evidence from a friend in which a public forum on critical race theory ended up with the theme that we all need to be kind to each other. So even adherents of Electism can exhibit divergent behaviors.
I would suggest focusing less on whether Electism is a religion. It is a moot point and spending energy on the argument will just tend to confuse the issue. The problem is that we have people who are justifying using destructive processes of stereotyping, character assassination, self-righteousness, blaming, and the polarization of society based on "racial" characteristics. Those processes are the exact same processes used by white supremacists and other racists, and therefore the Elect are racist.
What they are doing is using their religion to justify destructive processes. This is a common and regrettable tendency in humans. "Others are "bad" and so when they use a destructive process they bad things. We are "good" so when we use a destructive process we do good things." This is utter nonsense but it is used to justify all sorts of atrocities. The Elect are falling into the same delusion.
The latest from Victor Davis Hanson brings together all the main themes being discussed in this thread --and J McW's essay.
The Cruel Progressive Creed Undoing Civilization
The Left’s progressive wasteland is an acceptable price to pay for the terrifying visions of its anointed. | By Victor Davis Hanson | June 27, 2021
Link : https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/27/the-cruel-progressive-creed-undoing-civilization/
I’ve long held that many people who do not consider themselves religious, in fact are. Indifferent agnostics are probably the least religious of my acquaintances; rather ironically, outspoken, “evangelical” atheists are some of the most devoutly religious people I know. An affirmative faith that there is no god — for this can’t be empirically proven, any more than that there is a god or gods — can be a central, motivating life’s belief.
McWhorter makes a compelling argument for Electism being a religion; depending on how one differentiates religion from cult, Electism could fall into either or both categories: One man’s cult is another’s religion. Electism evidences many hallmarks of a religion, e.g. public confession of sin, shibboleths, and excommunication of heretics — to list only three. How much evidence is necessary to definitively say that a social movement has morphed into a religion? When is religious critical mass reached? It’s difficult or impossible to quantify, but it seems to me that it isn’t ridiculous or offensive to call Electism a religion.
People who may object to the characterization of woke racism as a religion don’t want their own religion denigrated. Thus many may fail to see that, while religions have always served the human need to comprehend or make use of that which cannot be explained or proven by physical means, they also have been used to control large swaths of people. They have existed on two sides of the coin in varying degrees over human history: they comfort, unite and uplift, or persecute, divide and exploit. While the Elect likely feel the former regarding their activism, McWhorter argues the latter.
Leftism is a religion in general then. Everything that promises salvation and healing and offers a faith which makes one a member of the group is by definition a religious enterprise. Communist Parties are churches, as well as the Democratic Party is one. Every political vision, which projects some objectives onto the future is a religion, according to this definition.
The Elect are a cult. They promise salvation and membership by faith through religious means, but to be a religion you have to be universal. A religion is a means to an end, which is to stabilize society, reduce conflicts and guarantee the status of non-believers. Even Islam, the most intolerant of religions provide something like that. The Elect doesn't.
The Elect just demonise "whiteness" and thereby strengthening the disintegration of the society which created them in the first place.
I would say it is more like cult or sect.
"I will be roundly slammed for seeming disrespectful of religion, and for not knowing enough about it to sully it with a comparison to Elect ideology." It's possible that you're being overly sensitive here, Professor McWhorter. In fact, you've forced me to confront the source of some of our pushback. Many of us commenting here are deeply worried about the current, blithe, one-size-fits-all societal prescriptions (evangelization, actually) aimed at eliminating religion entirely from the human condition.
Putting others down for having faith or believing in something that is "irrational" or "can't be scientifically proved" is disrespectful. Admitting that religious commitment "perplexes and sometimes even irritates" you is **not** disrespectful: it's an expression of, well, your lived experience, not to mention the unique quality of your mind which is, after all, the source of all the important ideas in the new book. Everything you've said about religion in "The Elect" is valid as far as I can tell based on my dated M.Div. and subsequent spiritual exploration. (While a strict reading of the Calvinist doctrine and its subsequent development through all the branchings and mergings of Christian theology can only lead to rabbit holes, you're using the term "Elect" in a more conventional, ecumenical sense that is completely correct, appropriate and marvelously effective.)
Perhaps we "pro-religion" folks have sometimes been too quick to respond with knee-jerk (but hopefully thoughtful) reactions triggered by what we see as the unrelenting, cold rationality of present times. Nevertheless, I haven't seen anyone "slamming" you in the wonderfully stimulating comments to this substack. And actually, I have a confession: those of us who worry about society's increasing beleaguerment of religion are always on the lookout for any forum in which we can proclaim our side of things, whether or not our comments are strictly related to the source ideas we're commenting on.
Regarding religion and belief in God: Religion nor belief in 'God' is necessary to know God. Belief, and religion based on belief, is testament to the uncertainty of actually knowing. Beliefs as such can actually hinder knowing because conceptualization(s) more often than not serve as substitutes for knowing. Knowing God is like knowing the sun. One just steps outside, sees the light and feels the warmth on one's body. It doesn't require belief, or even description. It only requires stepping outside. The sun, without a doubt, is.
Similarly the 'is-ness' of 'God' is available for anyone and everyone. All it takes is faith and trust in the un-figure-out-able, the unknown, in all-that-is. The stepping outside of one's separateness (Yes, it is a tall order.) reveals the reality of It, (or 'God', for lack of a better word). Whether or not one 'believes' in God or even has a concept of 'God' is irrelevant.
McWhorter would be good to make a distinction between ordinary religious, political and ideological beliefs and associated identities, from the possibility of coming upon what exists beyond belief.
This section of John McWhorter's piece stuck out for me: "Here’s another grand old academy being choked by CRT ideology, while smart media types stand by claiming nothing’s going on because legal theorists forty years ago had no such things in mind and thus it isn’t CRT and thus if you don’t like it, you’re a racist..."
Did anyone see this past week the interview on MSNBC by Joy Reid with Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute? It was an embarrassment... for Reid. She didn't let him speak, dismissing what he struggled to say because "people could look up his talking points." Plus, Reid specifically took the view of what John states in the citation above -- that what's going on now has nothing to do with CRT as written in the 1970s and 80s. The segment was really a nasty contest of wills than an enlightening interview.
It's time for a substantive, drama-free discussion of exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is and what it isn't to combat the constant noise going on from 1. the crazy right-wing who co-opt the term (along with "cancel culture") with no idea what either actually mean and 2. the Elect left who make the same claim as Reid did in the interview with Rufo. Ideally, this discussion could be in the form of a debate, of no less than 2 hours, among knowledgeable, level-headed people -- to set the record straight and express good faith opposing views. How refreshing would that be?