Javier Prades. © Filmatimilanesi

Witnesses, in a society that does not believe (Extended)

Excerpts from a dialogue between a Spanish theologian and a French political scientist about the time we live in, fear of the future, lack of consensus about values, and the Christian's task.

Andrea Simoncini. This evening’s discussion is entitled From the Mediterranean to Europe, Witness in a Pluralistic Society. The question we want to address is what role different forms of pluralism, especially those that include the religious phenomenon, play and how they can coexist in our context today. What I would like to start from is what I would call the “need for a future.” It seems to me that the characteristic trait of our time is a very blurred yet dramatic vision of the future. According to Eurobarometer surveys, Europeans don’t imagine a future situation that is better than the current one; over 60% imagine that the future will be the same or worse. If we look at popular culture–movies, TV shows, new fiction–we see more and more so-called “dystopias,” in which the future is often depicted as a nightmare. Does this dark outlook have an impact on what we’re living today? Do we need the future? And what road will it take?

Olivier Roy. Today, there is an effective crisis of the collective imagination. Some of the results of this, like various forms of fascism, communism, and nationalism, have done a lot of harm to humanity. Our societies are based on the idea of a “contract,” by which I mean a social pact established so that we can live with each other. That, however, doesn’t build a shared imagination. The consequence of this crisis of the imagination when it comes to the future involve the absence of utopias, and as for the past, it has meant the absence of nostalgia. There is no real nostalgia and no real utopia: we essentially live in the present. This is the problem. If we look, for example, at the young people who get sucked into Daesh, we see that they’re not utopians. On the contrary, their concern is with death: they don’t go to create a better society; they go to die. All of the attacks carried out in Europe have been suicides. I would say, therefore, that the heart of this absolute desire is not a social project, but rather death. We are looking at a crisis of utopias. But the problem is in what we use to counter terrorism. We counter it with European values, but what are these values? For what are we prepared to die? Terrorism instills great fear in European societies, one that is more metaphysical than physical, because it lays bare a central fact: we don’t have a collective response, and this breeds anxiety. We don’t know why we are being threatened or how to fight back, or not.

Javier Prades. On the one hand, yes, there’s this perception of a “dystopian” outlook, a negative utopia, a cosmic tragedy or collapse of civilization. On the other hand, though, I think there are some traces of utopian projects that are underway: the relationship, for example, between biotechnology and cyberculture is not all about technological progress in order to guarantee more opportunities for humanity than before; it is often accompanied by a kind of thinking that holds we can create the future right now using our own abilities. The complexity of all this is beyond my capacity to evaluate it, but this is what we encounter in reading and looking at the world around us. We could go back to the judgment from the great German sociologist Ulrich Beck, one of the most visible European intellectuals, who wrote in his posthumously published book (The Metamorphosis of the World) that he no longer has the categories to judge, to comprehend, the world playing out in front of him on TV; he can no longer understand the world. I’ve always been drawn to one aspect of this varied context that comes from my observation and not any kind of scientific research: the future is tied to our present ability to trust. I really reflected a lot after the famous accident involving the German airline Germanwings in which the copilot willfully crashed the plane into the Alps, killing 150 people. That incident was “ours,” by which I mean we Europeans. There were no Islamist terrorists or external agents from outside our culture. The bewilderment was incredible: bewilderment in the judgments made, and certainly in the affection for the victims; it was really a crisis of our intelligence about reality. What came out as important was one of those values that, when pressed, we all share: trust. If trust fails, society fails. In fact, on this there was no discussion: it’s an unavoidable condition of our lives in the way we’ve lived them for centuries here in the West. It’s a dimension of human experience that we all acknowledge. However, even if we all agree about the value of trust above and beyond any ideological considerations, a minute later we run into the question, “How can we guarantee it?” This is where we see some very interesting alternatives. In the debate in the Spanish media, I identified at least two separate camps: for one philosopher from Madrid, it was a question of the limits of systems that protect against external attackers, but not against this pilot; therefore, the solution was to create more perfect systems. In the other camp was a great sociologist from Barcelona: in his opinion, in the face of this threat to the primordial good of society–trust–we have to bet on freedom and build truly human spaces that can educate this freedom to hold out against the risks of our society as it has evolved. Thinking about the future, I think it’s a really helpful contribution to discover that trust is part of our elementary human experience and that, at the same time, this confronts us all with a question: how can you generate, safeguard, nourish, and communicate trust in the life of society, in the family, at work, with friends and at every level?

Simoncini. It’s true that religions create relational ties, but, paradoxically, they create ties based on truth claims that, as such, sometimes lead to conflict. The model of secularization, which sought to build trust using alternatives to religion, seems to me to have failed. Or, at least, it has been revealed to have serious limitations. How, then, in a context like the present one, can religiosity or religion go back to being a positive factor in the creation of ties and no longer perceived as a factor from which to defend oneself?

Roy. Religion could be the creator of social ties under two necessary conditions: either that everyone is religious, which could happen inside a monastery but not in actual society; or that religion recognizes the right not to believe. Historically, when believers and nonbelievers share the same religious culture, this has been possible. When the French Minister of Education Jules Ferry created mandatory secular schools at the end of the 19th century, the problem of which values to communicate came up immediately. To avoid a war between believers and nonbelievers, he wrote a letter to teachers that would be unthinkable today in which he said basically, “There’s no problem; we all share the same morality.” Today, instead, this is precisely the problem: in Western European society there is no longer a consensus on values. Religions, therefore, have a problem; what is the solution? Either they can turn in on themselves and, to use the language of American thinker Rod Dreher, take the “Benedict Option”–living in a kind of “monastery without walls” within society–or they can try to find a common playing field based on all that can be shared when religious values are not shared.

© Davide Galalis

Prades. In the history of European thought, a great divide has opened between the use of reason and the act of trust, of faith: what’s considered universal is based on a use of reason “purified” from any contamination, from any taint by the dimensions of affection, freedom, or relationships. This shows the way we Europeans have guaranteed the neutrality, objectivity, and universality of reason for centuries now. Clearly, within this view religion could guarantee the tie, but it comes at too great a cost: it implies irrationality, non-universality, and, therefore, all the dangers that derive from fanaticism and arbitrary truths. These are not things that can be overcome in one day, which makes it really interesting to look at the evolution of the thought of some of the big names in the sociology of contemporary religion, who are beginning to say that this view of epistemology doesn’t work, because if we try to separate the integrity of human experience from its origin, we’ll end up with a functional reason that’s technically exceptional, but with no soul, no humanity, and incapable of creating bonds; and our experience of relationships will be entirely sentimental and emotional, incapable of contributing to a peaceful society. This means that the challenge of building or rebuilding those spaces Roy spoke about becomes a task needing patience, which may take centuries of living witness to the unity and integrity of human experience. How can we recognize shared values as they emerge? There is no “bargaining table” where we come to agree on values, but every time we are all able to recognize a shared dimension of humanity in action, we’ve taken a step forward. This is the dimension we need to cultivate and persevere in; it’s a use of reason that’s possible for those who are religious and those who are not. It’s only in looking together at the fact of that lived dimension of humanity, watching as it happens, that we can truly take steps forward toward living together in social consensus, which is then no longer a predefined moral system, which, unfortunately we have innumerable examples of. What, then, can reestablish the connection between truth–the great ideal of Enlightenment Europe–and freedom, the great ideal of contemporary Europe and the ideal to achieve full self-realization? What can put truth and freedom back together? I think the West could re-introduce a typically Hebrew and Christian category: that of witness, which is a way that everyone can contribute by means of the communication of a lived experience. It’s a way of communicating truth: this is indispensable. The West cannot give up on truth, nor can it give up on freedom, which is manifest in the act of witness. Along these lines, it’s not just any religious tie that contributes to the common good. It’s a true challenge. What can we offer to the public debate? I’m not a big fan of the “Benedict Option” in the way that it’s typically presented. We are all in the world and live with everyone: I don’t think creating a ghetto is the way to go; the road is rather the responsibility of living in a kind of social reality that, in itself, contains the dimensions we want to propose to everyone. I was struck by the fact that Beck, in that same book, affirms that what is needed to push “beyond” the boundaries of an established mindset doesn’t involve a pure act of thought: we don’t recover categories or invent new ones simply because we can conceive of them. We need–he uses a sociological term–Handlungsräume, “spaces of action.” This made me think–it’s my own free interpretation–how true it is that every creative thought that broadens the boundaries of “what we already know” is born within a place that’s alive. We will not reach any new ways of thought without social ties, community, or trust. I can’t help but think of the communitarian nature of Christian life. If you want a new way of thinking, you don’t sit down around a table, you live. And you live together, generating places of creativity where, by engaging yourselves and bearing witness, you advance a way of thinking. I’ve always seen this in great witnesses; Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis both come to mind.

Simoncini. Would this witness, this capacity to hold truth and freedom together, be possible in other religions, in Islam, for example? In essence, how can we relate to religions that do not recognize freedom? Is there common ground? How can we build on it?

Roy. I don’t believe the problem is a theological one, which is to say it’s not a question of comparing what’s written in the Bible with what’s written in the Qur’an. The real question is how people manifest their religion within their society. With Islam, for about 40 years in this part of the world, we’ve been dealing with the specter of “oneness”: an attempt to create a uniform society under sharia law. This project, however, has failed. It has been demonstrated in history, in politics; things simply happen. From Iran to Tunisia, the majority of Muslims have drawn their own conclusions. Then there’s the road Daesh, ISIS, takes: since it has all failed, all we can do is die and take everyone with us. Today we see many devout Muslims asking themselves the question of what it means to be a believer in a society that doesn’t believe. Many Christians have the same question. The concept of witness makes me think of the current return to Sufi religions–something we see in many countries, in Egypt and Morocco but also in Iran and Turkey, among the middle classes, and intellectuals and professionals–an increase in Sufi communities, which don’t focus on politics, but rather on what it means to be a believer in a society that does not believe.

Prades. The fact that his is happening in the Muslim world is interesting, and so is the emergence of the question you pose: what does it mean to believe in a society that no longer does? This is a question that’s easier to perceive in the West, where the social context can be called non-sectarian. Perhaps in Islamic society it’s important to grasp in action what it means to live that elementary religious human experience: to grasp that God could not want relationships with Him to be forced, without involving our freedom. Historically Christians, but surely the Muslim world as well, have managed to misrepresent this dimension of religious experience, which can be nothing but free. Finding common ground, something that–I repeat–will not happen sitting around a table, is a question of people and social entities, of communities, relationships, and mixtures of different kinds of humanity. The urgent need to contribute to the recovery of the strictly personal, interpersonal, bodily, incarnate dimensions of religious experience that are open to everyone, open to the other: this is the challenge. Ghettos are no good. Abstract cosmopolitanism is no good. Oneness, like that of the Muslim community in the classical sense, is no good. We need something different: the experience of a concrete particular that carries inside it a universal horizon and impetus. I’m not asking for something crazy; it’s the way human experience is made. No child is satisfied with the universal principle: “Mothers love their children.” He wants his mom to love him, which says everything. How can he come to understand the universal significance of the judgment, “A mother loves her child”? Not by reading an encyclopedia of contemporary pediatrics, but through a living relationship with his mother: concrete, bodily, human. If this applies to all human experience, it applies for Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, atheists, everyone. Having this concrete dimension of lived experience that introduces us to universals is a great grace that can happen in each of our lives, and it’s the big contribution we can offer for the good of everyone. The attempt to separate knowledge of values from the relationships in which they develop has already left its legacy on the history of Europe. We can refuse to look at this and insist on our culture being ab-stracta: disconnected. We can continue to insist…until we all disappear. But if we want to provide a future, we need human ties that are truly human, that are capable of coming to terms with this question: what does that relational tie par excellence, the tie to God, mean for a person who does not acknowledge it? Until we can answer this, we haven’t arrived. Until a Muslim can answer this, we haven’t arrived. The Pew Research Center says that in 2060, 63% of the world’s population will be Muslim or Christian. I hope that, for all our sakes, between now and 2060 we can take at least some steps forward with regard to this integral connection between the universal exercise of reason and trust, faith.

Simoncini. If what makes social ties possible is found in an experience between people and not a theology or explanation, do you see a point within today’s disorienting and challenging situation from which we can start anew?

Roy. I would answer from proximity, what’s near to us: daily life; life at work. I’m not talking about massive movements–we already have enough NGOs and organizations that do good work–I see a need to recreate social ties starting from the bottom up. Neighborhood life, trade associations, manufacturing…they have all come to an end. Our societies have broken down horizontal ties. Now you have to work all on your own.

Olivier Roy. © Filmatimilanesi

Prades. What seems most necessary to me is trust, as I was saying. What builds or rebuilds this? We have all experienced suspicion: between husband and wife, parent and child, among colleagues at work, toward politicians, toward one’s boss, toward one’s employee. Suspicion is like a worm that slowly eats away at you. A person isn’t freed from it just because he decides to or by saying it doesn’t affect him. It’s not true. Trust, this social good that repairs the social fabric, is fragile. As necessary as it is fragile. If, therefore, there is not an increase in trust, we’ll be condemned to skepticism. After 40 years, disappointments have sucked up all the energy we had to continue building, and we keep on going out of inertia, out of responsibility, in the worst sense of the word. In my experience, what restores trust is mercy. I cannot help but say that to live together well, you need a lot–and I mean a lot–of mercy. Each of us could probably give examples of this. I’ll give one that became well-known all over Spain that shows that what is good for one person is good for everyone and, if it’s not good for everyone, it’s not good for the individual person either. An event in the news: an eight-year-old boy disappeared on the short trip between his house and his grandma’s house in a small town. For two weeks, everyone looked for him but didn’t find him. The boy’s parents were divorced. At the beginning, the police suspected the father, but after awhile they apprehended his new girlfriend and held her responsible for his disappearance. After a few days, the boy was found dead. It was the girlfriend who had killed him, perhaps out of jealousy. His mother spoke to the press two or three times, expressing her personal pain and her gratitude for the boy’s life in its eight years and the good it brought. She took on the pain of her ex-husband, she took on the drama of the woman who killed her son, and she asked the rest of the country not to pile on bitterness, hatred, and resentment. The impact it made in social media and in the newspapers was incredible. We’re somewhat aggressive in Spain and for such an act there’s usually a circle of people shouting, “Kill him! Assassin! We can’t stand him anymore!” All it took was a woman capable, incredibly, of embracing suffering and evil to undermine hatred. For days, the newspapers resonated with the silence of people moved by the one person who could legitimately call for revenge but instead asked that hatred not be spread in her son’s name. These are things you can’t make up; you can only recognize them when they happen. I haven’t been able to forget it since it happened. What was most moving was her response, and the thing that indirectly restores our hope is that the humanly impossible experience of not hating the murderer of your child finds a correspondence in every heart. Not a single journalist had the courage to criticize this woman, flying in the face of Nietzsche and his critique of the “morality of servants” rejected by the “overman.” The social dimension of this story that impresses me is that when we see a gesture of true humanity, we have not become so bestial as to not recognize it in its universal uniqueness. I don’t know where this woman came from, I don’t think she’s particularly Catholic, but there’s a kind of humanity that becomes a witness for one’s own good and the good of us all because of its universal testimony. So long as there are people like this in Europe, we can have hope.


Javier Prades (Madrid, 1960), priest of the Diocese of Madrid with a law degree and a doctorate in Theology, is a tenured professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Ecclesial University of San Dámaso, where he is currently Dean.

Olivier Roy was born in La Rochelle (France) in 1949. A political scientist and expert on Eastern cultures, he is a professor at the European University Institute and since 2009 has held the Mediterranean Chair of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. He is a consultant for the French Foreign Ministry and has collaborated with the United Nations and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).