GODLESS -- Ann Coulter's provocative glimpse at religion

She's received a lot of criticism, but if anyone would read a few pages they will find a substantive argument that ought to be engaged.

Here's an example:

The absence of a divinity makes liberals’ belief system no less religious. Liberals define religion as only those belief systems that subscribe to the notion of a divine being in order to dismiss other religions as mere religion and theirs as something greater. Shintoism and Buddhism have no Creator God either, and they are considered religions. Curiously, those are two of the most popular religions among leftists—at least until 9/11, when Islam became all the rage.

Liberalism is a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal soul. Their religion holds that there is nothing sacred about human consciousness. It’s just an accident no more significant than our possession of opposable thumbs. They deny what we know about ourselves: that we are moral beings in God’s image. Without this fundamental understanding of man’s place in the world, we risk being lured into misguided pursuits, including bestiality, slavery, and PETA membership. Liberals swoon in pagan admiration of Mother Earth, mystified and overawed by her power. They deny the Biblical idea of dominion and progress, the most ringing affirmation of which is the United States of America. Although they are Druids, liberals masquerade as rationalists, adopting a sneering tone of scientific sophistication, which is a little like being condescended to by a tarot card reader.

Liberals hate science and react badly to it. They will literally run from the room, lightheaded and nauseated, when told of data that might suggest that the sexes have different abilities in math and science. They repudiate science when it contradicts their pagan beliefs—that the AIDS virus doesn’t discriminate, that there is no such thing as IQ, that nuclear power is dangerous and scary, or that breast implants cause disease. Liberals use the word science exactly as they use the word constitutional.

. Everything liberals believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts.

- Our religion says that human progress proceeds from the spark of divinity in the human soul; their religion holds that human progress is achieved through sex and death.

- We believe in invention and creation; they catalogue with stupefaction the current state of our diminishing resources and tell us to stop consuming.

- We say humans stand apart from the world and our charge is Planet Earth; they say we are part of the world, and our hubristic use of nature is sinful.

- We say humans are in God’s image; they say we are no different morally from the apes.

- We believe in populating the Earth until there’s standing room only and then colonizing Mars; they believe humans are in the twilight of their existence.

Ms. Coulter is, for my taste, too shrill; and her sweeping dismissal of all things "liberal" is too categorical, I think, for intellectual honesty, but she is really on to something.

Liberalism is, in fact, an all-encompassing ideology. It fits, therefore, the definition of religion. Paul Tillich famously noted that whatever is the ultimate focus of one's interest and dependence and commitment is one's god. Living is a culture that has been profoundly shaped by theism, we often fail to realize that, as Coulter points out, non-theistic ideologies count as religions. It behooves us, therefore, to make this point again and again in the cultural debates of our day.

But, if liberalism is a religion (as I think it would qualify), what is the Christian response in light of the American experiment. Many would have us turn the all-guiding light of liberalism and instead endeavor to establish a more "christian" nation. However, one of the things that we conservatives must remember is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a critique of every and any ideology. One can easily make an idol when endeavoring to influence the political debate with Christian truths.

Hence, when conservative Christians read "Godless," let us benefit from the way that Ms Coulter's polemical and acidic critique lays bare the liberal pretensions to neutrality. She shows, what John Howard Yoder pointed out in a much different context, that there is no such thing as non-commital positions regarding metaphysics, morals, and spiritual questions. (Yoder helped us see that every truth claim is just one more "provincial" way of looking at things.)

However, we must remember that Christ's kingdom is "not of this world." It cannot, therefore, be reduced to any particular political ideology. So, it is not enough merely to embrace conservative politics and then add a little Jesus into the mix. What, for example, are conservatives to make of God's insistence in the Old Testament that the poor should be cared for or of Jesus' call to "turn the other cheek." In a culture filled with liberal religionists who both deny the truth claims of Christianity and despise conservative, Bible-believing Christians, will we forget that Jesus said to "do good to those who hate you" or to love one's enemies or to consider oneself blessed when persecuted. Far too often, conservative Christians complain about liberals far more than we live as Christ's disciples in the midst of liberals.

Coulter's book, short-comings and all, is an excellent critique, but . . . . . . .

What does God require of us, then?