Religious Totalitarianism, Pluralism, Christianity, and Atheism

This morning I was listening to WNYC, the public radio station in New York City. The last segment on the Brian Lehrer Show was an interview with Eboo Patel, the founder of the Interfaith Youth Core. He has also just written a book, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. The following is the audio of the interview:


In the interview Eboo Patel discusses the state of affairs in the world. He believes that the central conflict of the 21st Century is and will be the conflict between religious totalitarianism and pluralism and that young people will be central to the outcome of that conflict. He draws from W. E. B. Du Bois's idea of the color line of the 20th Century and calls this religious conflict of the 21st Century the faith line. His goal is to use the power of young people on the side of religious pluralism and points out how Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela were all young when they began to make great strides for racial pluralism in the 20th Century.

Of course religious totalitarianism and pluralism are not the only options. I immediately thought about my own beliefs. I don't consider myself to be a totalitarian or a pluralist, though I am a fundamentalist by some definitions. The way that Patel describes and defines the two camps he has in mind leaves some question as to where he would put me. The only non-pluralistic religious groups that he mentioned are very radical. It seems that he fails to recognize the middle ground where I stand: I think other religions are wrong, but I am not trying to kill anybody.

The comments on the WNYC website bring up another option for belief as well: atheism. Most of the people that left comments are antitheists, people who believe that all religions are foolish, harmful, and morally wrong. There seems to be a growing movement toward this position. I have to wonder if this idea will eventually replace pluralism as the preferred belief system of liberal thinkers. I suppose it is closer to logical consistency at least. (By the way, Richard Dawkins, one of the leading proponents of this "New Atheism," will be debating John Lennox in Birmingham, Alabama, on October 3.)

This antitheistic New Atheism has more in common with religious fundamentalism than with agnosticism and "weak atheism." It will be interesting to see how the debate among pluralists, antitheists, and the various religious exclusivists develops and how the rise of New Atheism effects how Biblical Christianity does apologetics and evangelism. We may have to take another step back from the questions of the truth of Christianity and the plausibility of Christianity to the question of whether religious belief is even a valid human activity. Antitheism is gaining steam in the face of radical Islam, and it is now as important as ever to show that Christianity has a positive influence on the world by working to build the kingdom.