Happy Consumers In A Suicidal Economy: A Review.

The world is beset by fire, flood, famine and pestilence (pandemic) at unprecedented levels. We can see our climate changing, we can feel the weather, but we are still mired in controversy about what to do. Why?

Brian McClaren thinks the problem starts with what he calls toxic orthodoxies: institutionalized systems of belief, whether religious, political or economic, that cannot be questioned. Because to do so would be heresy. “I'm concerned with how faulty religious beliefs and approaches are actually plunging our species towards self destruction,” McClaren told me in an interview. “But that’s equally true of economic orthodoxy.”

His book, Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working And What To Do About It, starts by identifying the crisis of doubt within American religion, and then draws parallels with other sacrosanct American beliefs. Like “the idea that economic growth is the solution to all problems. I think those are those are matters of belief for an awful lot of people who don't consider themselves religious,” says McClaren.

When beliefs don’t work in our reality and people are told not to question them, doubt emerges. For McClaren, doubt is crucial path to growth, both personal and in our thinking. He believes doubt might just save the world, because when people grapple with doubt they often emerge with more empathy, intellectual humility and nuanced thinking.

Crisis in the American Church

McClaren understands why 65 million U.S. adults have dropped out of active religious attendance, and why that number increases by roughly 2.7 million a year. An insider, McClaren was raised in a Christian fundamentalist church, where he was warned that, “An open mind is like an open window, you need a good screen to keep the bugs out.” (7) Later, he went on to become a pastor, thinking that “more time exposed to hymns and worship songs, more time in Christian fellowship meant my doubts would decrease, not increase.” (25) But after years of listening to people and counseling them in his role, McClaren found himself sharing his parishioners doubts. And that doubt launched him and the church he served for 24 years on a journey of exploration that led to (sometimes painful) growth. Since retiring from the pastorate, he’s continued his work as a spiritual teacher and author.

“Most Christian denominations have painted themselves into a corner,” says McClaren. “They have defined themselves by beliefs. And that leaves them unable to change their beliefs. When you define the boundaries and those boundaries are beliefs, then if you change your beliefs you're out.” In the book, McClaren shares heartbreaking stories of people who were “disfellowshiped” from their communities and even their families when they confessed to doubting some of their church’s beliefs.

“You're setting up people for dishonesty,” says McClaren, “Because in order to maintain their identity in the community, they have to keep saying they believe things that are harder and harder for them to believe.”

His goal is not to give up on religion, but to transform it. “Something is wrong, dangerously wrong, not just in my religion but in all the interconnected religions of the world,” McClaren writes. “People like you and me can play a part in detoxifying and healing our religious traditions,” a process in which “doubt can play a surprisingly constructive role.” (xviii)

Doubt could save the world

For McClaren doubt is a process that can lead to growth and change. “What if our doubts are actually like medicine, like nourishment, and we need them, and so does our world?” he writes. (xviii) Doubt is a powerful corrective for what McClaren thinks is the root issue that keeps us from coming together and addressing the world’s problems: dualistic thinking. Black or white, right or wrong, us or them, friend or enemy, sinner or saint: dualistic thinking creates either/or categories that limit our growth and our ability to think in sophisticated ways.

We are attracted to dualistic thinking because it makes the world seem clear cut. “If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” McClaren says. And religious institutions have a way of organizing around this kind of thinking because it allows for definite boundaries and teaching. Buy into the either/or beliefs and you get a warm supportive community. Question them and you could lose your friendships, the activities that structure your life, and even your sense of identity as a religious person.

“People fear doubt because it feels like they may peel all the layers of the onion and only be left with tears,” says McClaren. But that is exactly where the opportunity for genuine growth lies. Early in the struggle with doubt “we're often very angry. We're angry at the structures and individuals that gave us incomplete answers and made us feel guilty for asking questions. And who told us that we had to believe certain things, even though they now seem to us to be untrue and even harmful,” says McClaren.

“But eventually, you begin to turn [that anger] on yourself. And when that happens, you realize that just because you have a kind of X-ray vision for other people's hypocrisy, other people's ignorance, it doesn't make you a morally superior person,” says McClaren. He finds that when you turn that scrutiny back on yourself, it has a humbling effect. “It's messy. I don't think there's any way for it not to be messy.”

Harmony after doubt

When the anger of doubt drives people to stop judging other people by dualistic categories and forces them to question themselves, it creates a portal for what the book calls “harmony,” a state of empathy, humility and higher level thinking that is the goal of McClaren’s model of spiritual growth. People often emerge from doubt with a greater sense of the oneness of all humanity, and at the same time a more passionate motivation to seek social and climate justice. And when it comes to their religions, those who emerge from doubt into McLaren’s "harmony" often reengage with their religion in a more meaningful way.

And the climate is a big issue for McLaren. In the book he points out that as our world becomes inhospitable due to climate change, the suffering we will face will affect all of us, regardless of wealth status or religious affiliation. But instead of facing this and working together, McLaren takes aim at another orthodoxy which drives us to continue polluting the world.

Economic orthodoxy

“I called an economist friend of mine a while back, and I said to him that I'm starting to think that economics has a way more powerful of shaping people's lives than theology,” McLaren said. His friend responded, “‘Oh no, don't tell me that. If you think religious fundamentalists are bad, you've never met an economic fundamentalists.’”

McLaren points out that many of us have a blind trust in economic systems. “It really does feel that the United States Gates is engaged in a kind of struggle over strong economic fundamentalism,” says McLaren. “Especially when we talk about the environment and the changes that are going to have to happen to capitalism to keep capitalism from destroying the world through through carbonizing the atmosphere.”

In the book, McLaren points out the impact of economic orthodoxy: that we are all trained to be "happy consumers in a suicidal economy.”

The book may initially seemed to be about those who have struggled with religious doubt, but in the end it provides a compassionate and often heartbreaking roadmap through doubt in any institution or belief system. And the book is powerful because it shows how doubt can lead to a harmony in thinking and a greater sense of connection to those around us.

And while he didn't address parents directly, the book just as easily apply to the toxic orthodoxy of intensive parenting that has arisen over the last two generations. An orthodoxy that tells parents they should do this, they should do that, and they should not do that other thing. Or they will mess up their child for life. A ShouldStorm the drives parents and kids with criticism and anxiety. And this is another belief system that deserves our doubt, so that parents and kids can emerge with greater empathy and connection.

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