Keith Ward acknowledges that there is a lot of bad and ugly things in religion. He doesn’t shy away from the fact that religion has been an important source of intolerance, hatred, violence, and cruelty in human history. Can he, however, manage to argue that there is enough good in religion to justify it?
I think that it can be argued that there is enough good that comes out of religion that it cannot be condemned wholesale. I think that it can be argued that there is enough good that comes out of religion that any one-dimensional portrayal of it would be a serious error. These, however, are not Keith Ward’s goals. He isn’t looking to demonstrate that religion is complex and expresses a range of human qualities, good and bad. He didn’t write a book in order to say that “religion isn’t all bad.”
No, Keith Ward is making a case for religion — that religion should be embraced rather than simply tolerated. This requires demonstrating that the good in religion far outweighs the bad, and perhaps that the bad can be excised entirely. At no point does he accomplish any of this.
Many people who try to do what Ward is doing seem to find that allowing for the evil in religion makes their job too hard, and therefore seek to argue that badness in religion isn’t “real” religion in the first place — “real” religion is all good. This is a circular argument that assumes what it seeks to prove and only ends up “convincing” those who agreed with the conclusions to begin with.
Ward doesn’t quite go this far, but I think that he comes perilously close. He argues that religions must change in order to become “forces for good,” thus implying that they aren’t entirely forces for good right now. Such an argument depends, however, on assuming the truth of other disputed propositions, both political and social as well as religious.
Orthodox believers would have a field day picking apart Ward’s predictably liberal admonitions about the importance of religious pluralism — all made without the benefit of explanations as to why claims of Absolute Truth are wrong. Such orthodoxy may be intolerant, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Conservative religion cannot be effectively criticized on the basis that its political and social consequences are unpleasant, but rather only on the basis that it is wrong. That, however, forces one to adopt tactics and positions that make it very difficult to continue defending liberal religion or religious pluralism. Maybe that’s why Ward doesn’t do it?
The Case for Religion, by Keith Ward
This is always the problem. Liberal believers like Keith Ward want to defend religion generally, not just their religion, because they want to be tolerant and pluralistic. Unfortunately, defending religion generally means defending beliefs they don’t like and beliefs with consequences they don’t like. They must attempt, therefore, to defend “religion” that is defined in a manner that includes what they like but not what they don’t. Thus far, none have managed to walk the line successfully — in this, Ward does no better and no worse than those who have come before.
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