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Spiritual Bankruptcy: A Prophetic Call to Action

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The bad news is that the planet is in the worst environmental crisis in human history, a fact which is as undeniable as it is disastrous. The even worse news is that the humans who have to deal with it are, collectively speaking, insane. And worst of all for those of us in the United States, we are suffering from collective insanity. Our systems of philosophy, education, and economics are too blinded by secularism or religiousness to fully understand the crisis, much less move toward a solution.

If this is the central premise on which Spiritual Bankruptcy: A Call to Prophetic Action is based, the central thesis is that Christians (or any followers of one of the world's great Ways) need to break free of secularism and religiousness. While neither religion nor secular thought should be cast aside completely, we must seek out a path beyond them. To use the author's term, Christians need to "secularize" their tradition. This doesn't mean buying into secularism itself, which is in fact a rejection of the Christian Way. Rather, it means embracing a practice of thought and behavior that focuses not on some otherworldly heaven or hell, but on the real problems of this present world.

In Cobb's view, this process of secularizing is the truest form of adherence to Jewish and Christian tradition. He argues with some force that the most defining moments of the Bible involve one or more persons insisting that mere religion is not the goal of God's work in human history. Figures like Jesus and Paul defied religiousness. They were adamant that any thought about God must manifest itself in certain behaviors in this present world. Reclaiming this tradition of secularizing, Cobb insists, is a necessary correction to the otherworldly religiousness that has taken hold of American Christianity.

Cobb spends considerable time tracing how Christians have lost the ability or will to secularize our tradition. Beginning with Descartes, philosophy sought to derive truth from experience. Divorced from past wisdom, the discipline eventually hit a dead end--but not before helping create thoroughly secularist systems of higher education and economy. Ironically, reactions against secularism have given rise to equally destructive systems, including but not limited to religious fundamentalism.

The final two chapters of Spiritual Bankruptcy take a more prescriptive route. Not surprisingly, Cobb draws heavily from Alfred North Whitehead, the physicist and philosopher who influenced much of Cobb's earlier work on process theology, to make suggestions about a new direction of philosophy. Cobb hopes that new philosophy will in turn lead to Christians breaking with both secularism and religiousness in order to address the major global crises of our time. Although even Cobb admits that secularizing Christians have an uphill battle, he insists that such a movement is a necessary step toward a better life for all who share the planet.

Now in his eighties, Cobb brings a thorough body of knowledge and a blunt writing style to bear on what he considers the key global crisis facing all people, Christians included. However, this Professor Emeritus of Theology at Claremont School of Theology includes such a mountain of analysis and information that the reader must pay careful attention in order to follow the overall argument.

Spiritual Bankruptcy is certain to offend Christians who hold a primarily otherworldly view of their tradition. But given the vocabulary Cobb uses to state his central thesis ("secularizing...religiousness...insanity"), it's fairly clear that giving offense is not much of a concern to him. In truth, it's Cobb's passion for his opinions that makes for the book's greatest victories. Spiritual

Spiritual Bankruptcy (Nashville: Abington Press, 2010), by John B. Cobb Jr., is subtitled a `Prophetic Call to Action.' However, the book could have as easily been subtitled `Secularizing Christianity and all Religious Ways to Confront Catastrophes'--because that is the focus of the book, the catastrophes facing humans and all other living beings on the planet and how to find a way to turn towards a more healthy direction.

Secularizing, however, can lead to secularization. Cobb is careful to always separate the two processes. Secularizing, which is close attention to the natural world as the ground of existence and the source of life and the spiritual, is not the same as secularization, which is exclusive attention to the human world combined with the rejection of other dimensions of the natural, and of the traditional and religious explanations of those dimensions. To repeat, secularism is the rejection of traditional knowledge, whether it is traditional ecological knowledge or the spiritual beliefs of the great Ways of binding people to each other and to their places. By contrast, secularizing is the linking of those ways to all grounds of existence, through recognition and respect. Secularization, as another form of narrow reductionism, has allowed civilization to indulge in the madness of ignoring increasing catastrophes--worse, civilization is accelerating the rush to an almost-certain collapse.

Secularism, in academics, business and science, hastens and contributes to problems and catastrophes, from the loss of justice to ecosystem collapse. Secularism has failed to respond to emergencies and crises. It is shortsighted and destructive. Although religion still plays a large role in human affairs, it also fails. It continues to be anthropocentric, separate, superior, self-destructive, and sometimes violent.

Cobb suggests that there is an option: To recover and refine the wisdom of the past, without abandoning scientific and technological accomplishments. In fact, wisdom could redirect science into creating harmonious societies in an ecological civilization. Hope lies in developing new perspectives and senses of relation with a changing biosphere. Christianity has a great potential to be secularized, as do other ancient Ways.

This book is important because it shows how an underlying trend of secularization can sabotage the understanding necessary to react to dire threats. Because it is based on a long tradition of working ideas. Because it is pandenominational. And, because it emphasizes taking action now to turn from catastrophe to a healthy way for civilization on a healthy planet.

John B. Cobb Jr. is a Protestant theologian. His sensitivity to ecological, as well as to economic and political, problems has led him to address these critical issues. He has spearheaded the broadening of Christian thought as well as ecological and economic thought.