Newspaper editors pay attention to the placement of stories. They put key stories on the front page ‘above the fold.’ They also, I’m convinced, will lay two stories side by side to comment on one another.
The Raleigh News & Observer Thursday offered a story on atheists who set aside a religious upbringing through de-baptism. In the rite a hair dryer labeled ‘reason’ removes the (long evaporated) water. A certificate announces the exchange of reason for superstition. The de-christianized can send the paperwork to a former church and ask to be removed from the rolls. In their minds reason excludes religion.
Next to this story the editor put one to illustrate the other side of the matter — Buzz Aldrin celebrated communion on the moon forty years ago. He asked for a radio blackout and received the sacrament blessed at his home church in Texas.
I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.
Aldrin found a way, as many of us do, to keep reason and religion together.
I think most of us are able to maintain reason and religion in our lives. I don’t take the protest literally – that reason is what is at stake. Something else other than defense of reason is going on in this protest.
No doubt other issues are at work. Religion can hurt as well as heal. But the de-baptism rite stresses reason displacing religion. If the initiates had read Aquinas they’d know this isn’t necessary. Faith and reason can work in tandem.
How do reason and faith relate to one another in Tillich?
Interesting question. As a liberal theology it seems that reason is integral, and yet his theology is existentialist, which is romantic, which is, to some extent, or from some angles, irrational, or, at least, places some value on the irrational. Romanticism is, in part, a reaction to enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, but not an abandonment of reason.
That is another interesting thing about the debaptism ritual. It seems to embrace the enlightenment in a way that few people today would consider reasonable. I think today most of us value reason, but believe it has limits.