I’ve enjoyed visiting other countries, and it’s inevitable that notable houses of worship are included on the sightseeing lists. Most of those visits took place when I was college age or a little older, and the idea that I was an atheist hadn’t crossed my mind at all, although I really was one even then.
I did feel distanced from the religious history of the buildings, because most of them were Christian or Catholic and I was just starting to get more connected to my own Jewish history. But that never stopped me from being awed by the sheer dedication and artistry that went into building these monuments. When I viewed the striped cathedral of Siena or admired the unique blue stained glass of Chartres cathedral, I thought about the people who created these things so long ago, and all the immense work it took for so many years.
In a way I took a humanistic view of the buildings, although that word wouldn’t have meant anything to me at the time. Of course, yes, they were inspired by the evil Catholic church or other corrupt, money-hungry sects of whatever. That fact remains. But even though the first U.S. transcontinental railroad was partly built by what amounted to Chinese slave labor, can’t we still admire the feat?
Without religion, the requiems by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, Verdi, and others wouldn’t exist. (Actually quite a lot of music wouldn’t exist; I’m just picking out a few.) Imagine the elimination of nearly all music from Gregorian chants to the Baroque era. Both religious patronage and inspiration helped to create that music, but I can’t imagine a world without it. In high school, I sang in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Christmas cantata Hodie, and the fact that it’s about the birth of Christ didn’t do a thing to dent the pure, amazing joy of singing that music in a beautiful hall with a full choir and orchestra.
And then there’s the enormous, secular body of literature, theatre, and film based on stories from religious texts. Okay, the world could probably live without Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but supernatural Greek and Biblical myths alone are the basis for more of our libraries than I’d want to see disappear.
When I saw the Book of Kells, there was nothing religious to me about it. It was impossible to read, but that didn’t stop me from admiring the beautiful illumination by talented scribes. They may have been inspired by Jesus but I didn’t have to see it in that context: it was a work of art. The same went for the poster of Dali’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) that I hung in my apartment during college. There are many things that made me love that painting, perhaps more on the Corpus Hypercubus side than the Crucifixion side. It didn’t feel like I was putting a cross in my room; it was a work of art that moved and intrigued me.
I am not arguing against a secular society. Believe me. I hope one day there’s a place where religion plays no part at all, and science and discovery are worshiped and showered with money instead. I also think religion is generally an outdated and irrelevant system, and I’m not arguing for its promotion in the name of art.
What I’m responding to is when I hear people expressing disgust at the opulence of ancient churches or distaste for any music that has any relationship to God. To each his own. But there’s a further assertion that the world would be so much better if all that time, money, energy, and inspiration went into advancing science and knowledge instead.
That may well be true. But if we really are part of a multiverse, then there’s a version of our world where that did happen. There’s also a version where the U.S. and the Soviet Union destroyed the planet, and one where a space probe comes back infested with a hyper-intelligent sort of jam creature that goes on to form a coalition government with Madagascar.
So speculation doesn’t matter. The past is the past and this is our world. Religion has been the driving force behind shaping so much of our culture, it seems like a losing battle to ignore our history instead of at least studying it, if not embracing it. I don’t personally see the point in rejecting the masterpieces that religion inspired, and that can inspire us no matter what our own views are. I can’t agree with people who assert that religion has never brought any good to the world. Stick with your secular art on principle if that’s important to you — your choice doesn’t affect me, of course — but I can safely say I do love religion for bringing all these things into the world.
