By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
The recent headline in The Christian Science Monitor, discussing a survey of millions of books, periodicals, and other records that now have been digitized, startled me. It stated that Americans today are talking less and less not just about religion, but also about love and kindness.
Maybe I should not have been surprised. After all, we did just finish a national campaign where the pre-election airwaves were saturated with negative attacks and the loudest post-election commentary has included accusations of widespread cheating and voter fraud. These are not exactly, in the phase used my wife Vicki who teaches pre-school for three year olds, “warm fuzzies.” Still, the notion that we are speaking less and less of things like love and kindness is rather disturbing and potentially cataclysmic.
The newspaper reporter (see full article found at: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2018/1024/Why-Americans-are-talking-less-and-less-about-love-and-kindness) attributes part of the change to the overall demographic decline in religious affiliation. The reporter also noted a certain “politicization of religious faith” as well as a greater stated concern in the survey that any discussion about religion and spirituality would lead to “tension or heated arguments.”
As a result, the article says, “nearly three-quarters of all Americans rarely speak of spiritual or religious matters.” Moreover, words such as love, patience, faithfulness, humility, modesty, and kindness have each “declined in use by some 50 percent or more in the modern age” and “moral ideals and virtues have largely waned from the public conversation.”
This development not only is bad (potentially) for The Boy Monk blog, which bills itself as “a friendly conversation about church, religion, and spirituality in the twenty first century.” The trend also concerned others in the article, including atheists and persons unaffiliated with a particular denomination, who think we should be able to find a common way to discuss and use and understand words with secular meanings, such as love and kindness.
Along with its rather dismal news, the article notes a few ironies. One is that although millennials are less likely than their parents to identify with a specific religion, they seem to have a strong hunger for and curiosity about spirituality. And even the younger members of a community of atheists and humanists cited in the article are “expressing a new interest in discussing morality and similar topics.” Also intriguing is the article’s citation to a study showing that “religious attendance moderates political attitudes, including the polarizing issues of race, immigration, and identity.”
My own self-image is that of someone who is a religious and spiritual person but who tries not wear his religion on his sleeve. (Granted that writing a blog about religion might arguably be considered sleeve-wearing.) This self-image stems from my conviction that the essence of my Christian religious belief is consistent not just with what most other religious people (Jews, Protestants, Latter-day Saints, Muslims, etc.) believe, but also with what I think are the basic beliefs of most persons who are atheist, humanist, and/or secularist.
What is this essence? It is the Sermon on the Mount, proclaiming that blessed are the peacemakers, and the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for justice. It is the soothing words of love and comfort in the face of death as found in the Twenty-third Psalm. It is the Gospel words of Jesus commanding us to love one another and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It is a letter from St. Paul reminding us that love is patient and kind, and endures all things, and that of the core virtues of faith, hope, and love, “The greatest of these is love.”
These are universal principles about…wait for it…love and kindness, those two words that we apparently use less often today than in all the past history of writing.
British writer J.K. Rowling gave us this great bit of wisdom: “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” (Dumbledore in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.)
All of us need to use the words, to talk and write more about love and kindness, not less. We need to love more and show more kindness. We need to speak of and reflect love and kindness regardless of whether or not we, or those to whom we are speaking, believe in God.
I hope this blog post is a good start.
