Secular Faith, Spiritual Freedom

A new book by Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith, Spiritual Freedom may be a tough read. But it’s worth the effort. It is one of the best critiques of global capitalism, including our contemporary postindustrial kind, i.e. the liberal economics that saves capitalists from themselves, and of American and European social democracy. It is also a critique of undemocratic and dogmatic central planning socialism.

The reviews of This Life raise two good questions. However, one of them misunderstands what he is saying about religion and secular faith, the other misses what he is saying about democratic socialism and spiritual freedom. For one, he does not deny many religions’ contributions to social justice (as long as their religious beliefs do not undermine their secular faith); and for two, he does not advance some utopic plan for the democratic socialist society that ensures spiritual freedom.

Strong adherents in a democratic republic will like that he advocates not only a democratic politics of the means for distributing wealth, but a democratic politics of the means of production in creating wealth. The democratic politics requires an evaluation of value itself as defined in our political economy. And this is a heavy and long-term process for which we have a questionable amount of time thanks to our unfettered exploitation of the very condition of this life.

I have my own critique and recommendation as to what practice we might undertake to exercise our own faith in this life so that we might advance a more just democratic society with the institutions for personal and collective spiritual freedom. This I’ll state in my conclusion. But first let me deal with his advocacy for secular, over religious, faith and, second, how that makes possible the spiritual freedom he attributes to democratic socialism.

Secular Faith

Hägglund stipulates that the defining characteristic of all religion is the belief in a Transcendent — a person, place, state of being, or time that is beyond the world and universe in which we humans are born. That religious belief consoles, motivates, explains, and justifies a human existence continually aware of its fragility, vulnerability, mortality, and evil. The belief is expressed in many metaphors: gods and demons, paradise and hell, nirvana and divine love, and especially infinity and eternity since temporality, beginning and end, is the defining existential experience.

He contrasts religious faith in eternity with secular faith which focuses on human bodily existence in this world. Religious faith for contemporary humanity can be a distraction and an obstruction to the realization of human potential. It need not be, he admits. He recognizes that many religious movements and institutions have been resources for the secular faith that is needed to move the social structures of this world to advance the potential of men and women, personally and collectively, to a state of freedom beyond the realm of necessity. He is not at all promoting atheism or anti-religion. Rather he is promoting secular faith in which, despite evidence to the contrary, human beings collectively decide and commit themselves to better the conditions for a long, prosperous, healthy, and meaningful life for all. He claims that this faith, different from religious faith, is contingent on the acceptance of human finitude, i.e. temporality and mortality.

I articulate the truth of what he is proclaiming differently. Instead of making the distinction between religion and secular humanism which can also have many of the elements of religion, I rather make the distinction between faith, the experienced commitment to transcend, and belief, the particular cultural memes that express that commitment. Faith, whether in a secular or religious context, is the sense of homo transcendens, human transcendence as a dimension of human existence which is in and to the world in all human activities. To be human is to transcend, to pass beyond what-is towards what-could-be as limited by that-which-was. Transcendence is the very dynamism of humans expressing themselves to others in the world. But transcendence should not be confused with belief in transcendent persons, places, times.

Beliefs emerge from acts of expression in the world. They are words, symbols, models, propositions, laws with which humans come to terms with their personal and communal worlds in ordinary language, science, philosophy, art, politics, and religion. They are the tools by which humans understand and shape the reality of their world. Beliefs have a background and context within which they have meaning. They emerge in a belief system that relates to space and time. Beliefs take meaning from the culture and history in which they are formed. In other words, beliefs change. They are revised, modified, expanded, and adjusted to new times and spaces.

While beliefs and systems of belief evolve within their changing situation, the structure of human existence remains constant (even though the expression of it does not). To be human is to call into question and thus surpass conventional beliefs. To be human is to transcend. What Hägglund calls religious faith, a faith that ends in beliefs in a transcendent person, place, state, or time is evidence of the human desire to pass beyond limitation, frailty, and mortality. It is the desire to pass from the realm of necessity where life’s needs dominate to the realm of freedom where, with the needs of life met, one can enjoy the recognition of others, the ability to be a subject rather than an object of action, and a sense of meaning and purpose. Faith is the commitment to transcend fixed beliefs, the status quo, and the necessities of life including wealth or the requirement to consume. Faith, whether fixed on this life or another, is a distinguishing trait of human nature as evolved (or created, if you wish) and a dynamic dimension of human consciousness and existence.

When humans arrest their transcendence, they obstruct existence itself. If they refuse or neglect to pass beyond their positions and question their beliefs, whether secular or religious, they stop the process of humanization or commitment to improve the world and the species towards greater equality, freedom, and fulfilment. And that is the danger of religious belief or, rather, beliefs held religiously. When we ascribe these beliefs to some transcendent person or to the writings of some inspired prophet or to the rules of the priests of a religion that claims ultimacy, infallibility, and absoluteness, we have not only denied, but destroyed the transcendence that is present in the heart of every conscious being.

What is vital to human existence, then, is faith in whatever context, the on-going conscious ability and exercise to question and surpass previous beliefs and not get stuck in a belief system that does not work, i.e. that no longer furthers humanity’s coming to terms with their social and material environment as it is here and now. Faith is a moment of human temporality by which humans commit themselves to their temporality including the appreciation of the contingency of their birth and cultural inheritance and to their future in hope for a better existence in and for the world.

Faith, the acceptance of one’s concrete situation as it has become, and hope, a promise to the human future personally and collectively make the commitment to human temporality. But “the greatest of these is love,” says St. Paul, which is the here and now action with others that acquires from the past and projects to the future.

Beliefs, whether considered religious or not, are expressions of the acceptance of human existence with all its contingency and finitude and the here and now commitment to its future not by escaping our bodily, material, temporal condition but by immersing ourselves creatively within it. When beliefs, whether considered religious or not, distract us from that commitment by appealing to some unchangeable dogma found in some holy writing or political constitution or scientific theory that claims ultimacy, we deny our own transcendence. I like to say that in choosing Transcendents, we deny transcendence. And so, we opt out of existence.

And here is why a Jesus, a Buddha, a Gandhi, a Gamaliel, a Thomas Merton, a Prophet, a Martin Luther King can be interpreted by “political theologians” as promoting communal action for a just society here and now in this life using language like “the Kingdom of God on Earth,” “abolition of slavery” or of violence and oppression, and MLK’s favorite “the Beloved Community.” Authoritarians, including priests and clerics, use the religious language and heroes inherited by societies as an opiate to help people adapt to their oppressive conditions and to encourage violence against dissidents and infidels. But political theologians use these symbols and heroes to challenge traditional religious beliefs, condemn oppressive power arrangements, and encourage people to own their own beliefs and to take responsibility for their own goals and actions. Thus, religious language and symbols become a tool in a process of emancipation.

I thank Martin Hägglund for his critique of, what he calls, “religious faith.” I accept his argument that only by coming to terms with our own finitude and by removing our attention away from an eternal life beyond life in order to engage in our present life with our neighbors can we understand and practice spiritual freedom.

Spiritual Freedom

What does spiritual freedom mean to Hägglund?

He contrasts it with “natural” freedom — which does not mean that spiritual freedom is unnatural or non-corporeal. It is an expanding reflective consciousness, a self-consciousness that, so far as we know, resides naturally only in homo sapiens since we have not yet verified the Firangi or Klingon of Star Trek or artificially fabricated Data or the Doctor. Reflective Consciousness is the contemporary notion for Geist/Spirit and for speculative and practical Reason (Mind). The natural freedom of animals is the ability for self-movement and choices within the inherited norms and ends of their species’ genetic identity. Spiritual freedom is the ability of humans to call into question and modify their norms, ends, and even genetic identity thus expanding consciousness.

Another important distinction is between liberty, the removal of obstacles to movement, and freedom, the decision to set one’s own goals and norms and act to achieve them. We know the difference when we see a Thomas More, Malcom X, or Mandela at loss of liberty in prison but exercising the highest level of freedom by taking responsibility for their decisions in the use of their time.

Human existence is defined by temporality, which we noted earlier is identical with human transcendence, the ability to retrieve the past and project a future in the conscious moment of presence to the world. Since human being has, or better, is finite time, a time that terminates, a person’s time is of great value. Without the awareness of finitude, time is worthless and meaningless. Consciousness of one’s time and its end gives time great value. What or who steers that time towards their ends owns that time. If I take your time and use it for my own ends subject to my own norms, I am oppressing you — unless, that is, we are sharing our time and using it towards ends and value that we have both set.

When I take your time for my ends, e.g. for my profit, even though I pay you the amount of capital you must have to survive (i.e. living wages), I am still robbing you of spiritual freedom. You are left on the rung of meeting the necessary needs of life without being able to graduate to self-actualization as you define it. Our present economic system of so-called meritocracy becomes the institutional means of time robbery when the definition of value becomes profit — the accumulation of capital. If you are working in a job just to earn a wage so you can attain livelihood no matter how scant or profligate, you are not enjoying spiritual freedom. You are caught in the realm of necessity.

The passage from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom is not a solitary affair. One cannot go it alone. The realm of necessity in which the necessities of life are attended to is where one achieves nutrition, security, reproduction, shelter, and entertainment. It is the private household realm which the Greeks call economia taken care of by the servants and women. This allows the freemen, those liberated from mere economic concerns, to constitute the realm of freedom, the polis, where they together can establish the goals, the norms, the laws that make up the republic. It is the space where freemen were recognized and celebrated, where they determined the building and extension of the walls of the state, the routes of trade, the structure of their relationships, the establishment of temples and theaters, and the alliances with other states.

Spiritual freedom occurs where and when humans join in speech and action, determine shared goals, agree upon the norms and rules by which we live and act together, and obligate ourselves to achieve these ends and follow these norms and rules at a point in time. And at the same time, humans make possible the ability to question and modify their ends, norms, and rules through an agreed-upon process while setting up the social habits or institutions to accomplish all this.

Hagglund names this process and institutions “democratic socialism.” Democratic socialism, the process and institution of spiritual freedom, is the outcome of secular faith and cannot be achieved without it. However, Hägglund gives credit to capitalism for making it possible to transcend to the spiritual freedom embodied by democratic socialism.

To discuss capitalism and socialism as two ideologies in conflict, in my opinion, is a waste of precious time. To defend one against the other as the war between good and evil is irresponsible. Personally, I am fatigued by such mind games. However, to look at our political economy in order to see how in practice it fosters or hinders our spiritual freedom seems to me to be a worthwhile exercise which Hägglund undertakes. Our present economic systems of creating wealth including the new information technology is providing us an opportunity to reduce the time needed to simply survive. It is providing us also the opportunity to distribute wealth in such a way that more people, perhaps all humanity, can use their time to liberate themselves and others from using their time for the necessities of life. And then they are motivated from within, doing what they want to do because they consider it meaningful to do so and not because they have to.

Our present economic system, fixed on the accumulation of wealth, is taking its toll on the earth which is the source and the condition of possibility for our very existence. And it is directing us towards outcomes that may be destructive to our survival and leading us towards an identity that we do not want to be.

This requires a “revaluation of value” according to Hägglund, a paradigm shift that our spiritual nature makes possible. Such a moral Copernican Revolution will probably take generations and perhaps centuries to achieve a state of social being where the primary value of human existence is not the accumulation of wealth and when the measure of success is not the quantity of material capital, but social, intellectual, and spiritual capital. Such a major change in norms and measures of human fulfillment is not merely a matter of theory, but mostly of practice in new ways of interacting with our neighbors so that all can be spiritually free.

Conclusion: What is to Be Done?

In my time of the fight for civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, continuation of labor’s effort to organize, low-income communities organizing to gain power with decision-makers affecting their neighborhoods, and the movements of women and gays for human rights, whenever there was a setback in the movement, we would tell each other to “keep the faith.” What we meant was not any particular plan or belief or strategy or ideology. What we meant was “keep on keeping on.” Stay with the struggle. Don’t give up. Keep your eyes on the prize. Freedom now!

I pride myself in saying I never worked for the money. Or only for the money. I mapped out my aims early in life and never took a job that was not in sync with my long-term values. I never considered the amount of wages. That is until I had married and had a family. Then the amount I was paid for my work came under consideration; but it was not a primary consideration. I was doing what I wanted to do and when the time came in a position where I felt I had done all I can or where an obstacle emerged to doing what I wanted, I looked for a new opportunity or created one. Despite the anxieties of picking up, moving on, and starting over, I enjoyed spiritual freedom! And still do.

But let me confess the reasons I was and am able to be free.

1) I grew up in a middle-class home supported by an at-home mother and a father with a well-paying job in management at GM who received promotion over promotion and bonuses. They were able to encourage and pay for the best education, had plenty of books and conversation at home, provided a good home in a safe neighborhood, the best in health care, and even a car in my teen years.

2) I signed up with the Jesuits, a religious order which ran high schools, universities, research centers, retreat houses, scholarly journals, and domestic and foreign missions for teaching and social justice. I was provided free of charge an excellent classical and liberal education and given opportunities to experiment with teaching high school and university, learn to organize communities, study and act in social and political venues, write articles, have conversations and debates with proficient experts. I would contribute a bit through my teaching and solicitations when I could. But I never had to worry about lodging, food, spending money, transportation, health care. And I was able to pursue two master’s degrees and take part in a doctoral program at the University of Chicago. As my wife Bernie says: I had a whole corporation behind me.

3) When I fell in love, I married a person who shared my values and goals. She valued education, achieved her master’s degree in social work, was able to live simply, and encouraged me to follow my vocation in life. At times we were statistically in poverty. But we never felt that way. Because we always had back-up with family, friends, education, experience, and public services. Nor did my Caucasian and male appearance hold me back.

In California, we both were able to work in the areas of our choosing in government where we received much better pay than we were used to, pensions, tax deferred annuities. We both retired when we decided — her at 67 and me at 72 with benefits of health care, pension, and annuities.

Now we live in a Continuing Care Retirement Community, sartorially landscaped, with pool and fitness center, theater, continuing education, easy transportation, close to Metro downtown, 5 restaurants and a meal plan. We are able to afford it thanks to our pensions, 501Ks, social security. It’s a great gift to our nearby children and grandchildren whom we never have to fear burdening as we age. I work in the surrounding community, do lots of reading and writing, enjoy theater attend lectures, engage in local politics, and exercise regularly.

I am grateful. Everyone should have this opportunity. Yet I know so many who do not because they did not have the opportunities I had. I see the kids at schools where I volunteer and work with their parents who do not have health insurance, extra money for special or remedial studies, living from paycheck to paycheck often in jobs they do not like just to make the rent in a large housing complex where maintenance and safety are issues. I have studied the widening chasm between wealth since the 1950s when I grew up.

Human transcendence is the transition from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, from satisfying limited human needs to fulfilling limitless human potential. Wherever we liberate our kind from spending time on satisfying needs for physical life, whether by greater technology or a better means of capital distribution, the more time we can spend making products that we consider valuable to ourselves and each other. We do this by thinking and experimenting both individually and communally, personally and collectively, without, or at least with less, need to satisfy the basic requirements of life. This is more than adding a purpose or another bottom line beyond profit. It is a total revolution in values that puts human freedom and potential above, or even in place of, capital accumulation.

If that sounds like a utopian and idealistic aspiration, something like “freedom and justice for all,” I agree with Hägglund that it is indeed. There are many action steps along the way to expand the realm of freedom for all: 1) insure that all have their basic human needs met (e.g. by proper nutrition, health care, continued and free education, living income), 2) remove the obstacles that keep people bound by force (e.g. class or race supremacy, segregation), 3) incentivize people to choose and master their destinies especially by making higher education available to all, 4) democratize production so that workers are setting the goals and norms in their businesses and organizations, 5) promote the rights, responsibilities, and means of universal citizenship, 6) foster the creation of civil organizations for public service and action at all levels.

The realm of spiritual freedom, MLK’s Beloved Community, is not a once and for all accomplishment. The reign of God is not a future reality in some transcendent time and place. Its reality is here and now in the struggles and acts for a social order of health, freedom, and justice for whomever we touch.