The World of Religions, March-April 2008 —
Dear Régis Debray,
In your column, which I invite the reader to read before going any further, you challenge me in a very stimulating way. Even if you somewhat caricature my thesis on Christianity, I fully admit a difference of point of view between us. You emphasize its collective and political character when I insist on the personal and spiritual character of its founder's message. I understand very well that you question the foundation of the social bond. In your political writings, you have convincingly shown that this always rests, in one way or another, on an "invisible," that is to say, some form of transcendence. The God of the Christians was this transcendence in Europe until the 18th century , deified reason and progress succeeded him, then the cult of the fatherland and the great political ideologies of the 20th century . After the sometimes tragic failure of all these secular religions, I am concerned, like you, about the place that money is taking as a new form of religion in our individualistic societies. But what can be done?
Should we have nostalgia for Christianity, that is to say, for a society ruled by the Christian religion, as there are societies today ruled by the Muslim religion? Nostalgia for a society on whose altar individual freedom and the right to differ in thought and religion were sacrificed? What I am convinced of is that this society which bore the name "Christian" and which also built great things, was not truly faithful to the message of Jesus who advocated on the one hand the separation of politics and religion, and insisted on the other hand on individual freedom and the dignity of the human person. I am not saying that Christ wanted to suppress all religion, with its rites and dogmas, as the cement of a society, but I wanted to show that the essence of his message tends to emancipate the individual from the group by insisting on his personal freedom, his inner truth and his absolute dignity. So much so that our most sacred modern values – those of human rights – are largely rooted in this message.
Christ, like the Buddha before him, and unlike other founders of religions, is not primarily concerned with politics. He proposes a revolution in individual consciousness that could lead, in the long term, to a change in collective consciousness. It is because individuals will be more just, more aware, more truthful, more loving, that societies will also eventually evolve. Jesus does not call for a political revolution, but for a personal conversion. To a religious logic based on obedience to tradition, he opposes a logic of individual responsibility.
I grant you, this message is quite utopian and we are currently living in a certain chaos where the previous logics based on obedience to the sacred laws of the group no longer work and where few individuals are still engaged in a true process of love and responsibility. But who knows what will happen in a few centuries? I would add that this revolution of individual consciousness is in no way opposed to religious or political beliefs shared by the majority, nor to an institutionalization of the message, the inevitability of which you rightly point out. It may, however, set a limit to them: that of respect for the dignity of the human person. This, in my opinion, is the whole teaching of Christ, which in no way annuls religion, but frames it within three intangible principles: love, freedom, secularism. And it is a form of sacredness, it seems to me, which can today reconcile believers and non-believers.