Wow Lawrence great post. I have been beating a similar drum for some years. I am a humanist/Universalist but previously I was a Christian pastor, and I have No negative thoughts toward religion, in fact as a Universalist I admire all religions and as a humanist no religion. But like you I understand there is so much good useable stuff to be mined from religion. I think Anabaptists are also similar in many ways to Quakers and I’ve learned so much from them, though never a member myself.
As a community of Altruists wanting to reach peak effectiveness it seems so obvious to me we should do what you’re saying. The single greatest altruist communities on earth today are religious communities and it’s always been that way…Universities as a thing, hospitals as a thing directly created by religious groups. Research and Science all comes from religious origins. Of course religion in Europe got so toxic just at the same point the scientific revolution took off that science was a meaningful refuge away from religion…you could have a life that made sense and do good things in the world for the first time away from the toxic religious situation at that time so educated people began fleeing religion. That set up the current unfortunate situation of secular humanists looking down their noses at religious people, culture, etc. I feel it’s a pendulum thing where they had to swing away, to escape the toxicity of hundreds of years of European religious wars following the reformation in 1500’s but now we can swing back and realize how much good was in religion as you’ve shown.
Religion has these swings itself, where it goes good for some years and then usually gets a taste of political power and swings towards doing bad. I experienced this swing when the religious right in the 80’s discovered they could elect Presidents and Legislators and grabbed the power leading to the current poor state. I was in a big movement in the 90’s and 00’s where basically a bunch of us ejected ourselves out of the horrible directions things were going and started an alternative movement much inspired by Quakers, Anabaptists and others, called the Emerging Church Movement. It was a bunch of young leaders wanting to go in a way different direction and lead to a lot of great things. Unfortunately it was too white and male and we decided to lay it down and let others not white and male lead us forward…a very good death.
One example of a useful thing for EA is cross cultural communication. For millennia religious people have crossed borders to communicate their messages…motivated by pure pragmatism they slowly but surely got good at it. My Bachelors degree is 50% exactly that…we got into it at a deep level. It has helped me so much in so many areas of life over the years. I think EA needs it in this way — to cross the cultural divide between Elite/STEM culture and creative/business and working class culture. For EA to grow and prosper these folks need to come in and there is a lot of work to be done to be able to communicate to them in ways they feel culturally comfortable with. That’s the goal of cross cultural communication- for the other to hear you in their own language and culture, the place they feel comfortable.
Here’s where I think the trajectory of your post can be very fruitful…it’s not so much setting up a bunch of EA groups to study Quakerism…I doubt that would happen, rather it’s just to culturally swing the pendulum to a place where elite academic STEM people just feel comfortable and are more accepting of religious people and ideas, and lose their penchance to dismiss them, but rather have a new curiosity and openness.
This becomes pragmatically hugely important if you found a new charity in Africa or South America or Asia and find yourself needing to work with stakeholders locally that are frequently going to be religious. Then you are forced to get more religion friendly…why not start now and be ready.
Wow Lawrence great post. I have been beating a similar drum for some years. I am a humanist/Universalist but previously I was a Christian pastor, and I have No negative thoughts toward religion, in fact as a Universalist I admire all religions and as a humanist no religion. But like you I understand there is so much good useable stuff to be mined from religion. I think Anabaptists are also similar in many ways to Quakers and I’ve learned so much from them, though never a member myself.
As a community of Altruists wanting to reach peak effectiveness it seems so obvious to me we should do what you’re saying. The single greatest altruist communities on earth today are religious communities and it’s always been that way…Universities as a thing, hospitals as a thing directly created by religious groups. Research and Science all comes from religious origins. Of course religion in Europe got so toxic just at the same point the scientific revolution took off that science was a meaningful refuge away from religion…you could have a life that made sense and do good things in the world for the first time away from the toxic religious situation at that time so educated people began fleeing religion. That set up the current unfortunate situation of secular humanists looking down their noses at religious people, culture, etc. I feel it’s a pendulum thing where they had to swing away, to escape the toxicity of hundreds of years of European religious wars following the reformation in 1500’s but now we can swing back and realize how much good was in religion as you’ve shown.
Religion has these swings itself, where it goes good for some years and then usually gets a taste of political power and swings towards doing bad. I experienced this swing when the religious right in the 80’s discovered they could elect Presidents and Legislators and grabbed the power leading to the current poor state. I was in a big movement in the 90’s and 00’s where basically a bunch of us ejected ourselves out of the horrible directions things were going and started an alternative movement much inspired by Quakers, Anabaptists and others, called the Emerging Church Movement. It was a bunch of young leaders wanting to go in a way different direction and lead to a lot of great things. Unfortunately it was too white and male and we decided to lay it down and let others not white and male lead us forward…a very good death.
One example of a useful thing for EA is cross cultural communication. For millennia religious people have crossed borders to communicate their messages…motivated by pure pragmatism they slowly but surely got good at it. My Bachelors degree is 50% exactly that…we got into it at a deep level. It has helped me so much in so many areas of life over the years. I think EA needs it in this way — to cross the cultural divide between Elite/STEM culture and creative/business and working class culture. For EA to grow and prosper these folks need to come in and there is a lot of work to be done to be able to communicate to them in ways they feel culturally comfortable with. That’s the goal of cross cultural communication- for the other to hear you in their own language and culture, the place they feel comfortable.
Here’s where I think the trajectory of your post can be very fruitful…it’s not so much setting up a bunch of EA groups to study Quakerism…I doubt that would happen, rather it’s just to culturally swing the pendulum to a place where elite academic STEM people just feel comfortable and are more accepting of religious people and ideas, and lose their penchance to dismiss them, but rather have a new curiosity and openness.
This becomes pragmatically hugely important if you found a new charity in Africa or South America or Asia and find yourself needing to work with stakeholders locally that are frequently going to be religious. Then you are forced to get more religion friendly…why not start now and be ready.