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When reason fails to guide us in our everyday lives, we turn to faith, to religion; we close our minds; we reject austere reasoning. This rejection, which is a faith-based social and intellectual malignancy, has two unfortunate consequences: it blocks the way to knowledge that might enhance the quality of life and it opens the way to charlatans who exploit the faith of others. Examining two unquestionable malignancies of “the Christian Right” in present-day politics in the United States and the “secular religion” of Hitler’s National Socialism, as well as the third, more complex case of Gandhi, the author asserts that we need religion, but we also need to make sure it does no harm.
“In this book, which is carefully reasoned, engagingly written, and resolutely grounded in systematic thinking – as well as seething with incredulity towards the politics of faith – one can sense the passion of Bailey’s academic conviction: that questions are the only true formulations of knowledge worth fighting for.” · JRAI
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: FAITH AND POLITICS
Chapter 1. Faith, Reason and Consequences
- Three kinds of faith
- Only believe!
- Humanism
- Oneness
- A Point of View
Chapter 2. Religion and Persuasion in Politics
- Religion and Political Involvement
- The Problem of Order
- What should go on and what does go on
- Defining Situations
- Information Costs: Political Clairvoyance
- Creating Trust
- Persuading Reality-testing
PART II ANTAGONISTIC RELIGIONS
Chapter 3. Desert, Marketplace, and Forum
- The Religious Right (and Left) Hypocrisy
- Render therefore unto Caesar
- Modes of Clerical Involvement in Politics
- Antagonism
- Paraclerics: Repenting Religion as a Weapon: Mrs. Schiavo
- The Religious Mode of Political Persuasion
Chapter 4. The Need for Enemies
- Pol Pot and Secular Religion
- “Ardent and Even Hysterical Passions”
- Manufacturing Enemies
- Group Sentiment and Violence
- Hitler’s Faith
- Fascism and Christian Fascism
PART III: A RELIGION OF LOVE
Chapter 5. Gandhi: The Freedom Fight
- The Freedom-Fight
- Peacemaking Failures
Chapter 6. Gandhi's Charisma
- Calculation Charisma: the Mass Audience
- Charisma: Elite and Entourage
- Single-Mindedness
Chapter 7. Gandhi's Religion and Political Reality
- Gandhi and Hitler
- Faith and Responsibility
- Secular Disciplines in the Freedom Fight
- Gandhian Morality and “Sectarian” religions
- Gandhi’s Universalism and Political Action
Chapter 8. The First Cause and the Last Word
- Propagating the Faith
- Walk Gently
- Morality and Evolution
- Oneness and its consequences: diseducation
- Oneness and its consequences: strife ~
- Diseducation and Authority
- Only Think!
References
Index