Religious Experience in a Secular Age

Part 2, Cross-Pressured

Today, let's ponder the opening lines of "Human Being" by Denise Levertov:

Human being—walking
in doubt from childhood on: walking

a ledge of slippery stone in the world’s woods
deep-layered with set leaves—rich or sad: on one
side of the path, ecstasy, on the other
dull grief.        Walking

the mind’s imperial cities, roofed-over alleys,
          thoroughfares, wide boulevards
that hold evening primrose of sky in steady calipers.

In his influential treatment of secularity, Charles Taylor describes religious experience in modernity as "cross-pressured." 

Typically, we describe "secularity" as a process of disenchantment, the collapse of transcendence. Heaven falls due to materialism and scientism. All the cultural pressure is experienced as "downward," toward unbelief, doubt, and skepticism. The sacred canopy evaporates and all we are left with is what Taylor calls the "immanent frame"--a one-dimensional, flat, wholly material existence. We move from faith to skepticism.

And yet, as Taylor recounts, this is not the whole picture. Secularity remains haunted by transcendence. The question of God persists. As I put it in Hunting Magic Eels, God might be dead but we sure do miss him. We grow disenchanted with disenchantment, disillusioned with our unbelief. Our skepticism is restless. We question our questions and doubt our doubts. Yes, in our secular age Christians come to doubt the existence of God, but at the same time atheists wonder if God might actually exist.

In short, in addition to the downward pressure of skepticism there are also updrafts of transcendence, wonder, and awe. We are pulled upward toward heaven. There is a longing for God, what I call "the Ache" in Hunting Magic Eels. 

Levertov's poem "Human Being" is a lovely illustration of our cross-pressured religious experience, a tension that carries from the beginning to the end of the poem. We see two examples of this in the lines above.

First, human experience is walking a path where "on one side of the path, ecstasy, on the other dull grief." Human life is composite and conglomerate, a mixture of bliss and pain, beauty and ugliness, wonder and desolation. The agony here is how these experiences do not allow the other easy resolution. Our grief and disillusionment are interrupted by moments of goodness and beauty. Our steady convictions are repeatedly unsettled by tragedy, cruelty, and loss. We are pulled back and forth between doubt and belief.

Beyond this experiential tension, we also become disillusioned with the scientistic mind that has come to characterize our default epistemology, an age of science and technology that reduces Truth to facts. Our minds try to "hold evening primrose of sky in steady calipers." The image of "calipers," as a mechanical device used to measure physical objects, is evocative. How can the calipers of science quantify or capture the beauty of an evening sunset? A word of revolt is spoken here. There are things in human being that cannot be reduced to empirical measurement. Life transcends the facts.

Such are the cross-pressures of religious experience in a secular age.