Religion for atheists – 2. Creating community

In Religion for Atheists Alain de Botton has a high ambition. He ... hopes to rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that no longer seems true (p19). De Botton acknowledges that religions have bestowed many of these beautiful, touching and wise things on humanity in a way unmatched by the atheism he espouses. And thus his dilemma. He asserts the fundamental falsehood of religion yet wants to preserve and recover its helpful bestowments to help meet the yawning gaps in modern life.

First up he addresses the problem of loneliness and community.

In many ways people are closer than ever before. Many of us live in the near proximity of cities and the almost-daily digital discovery makes it easier to be in touch over the voids of space and time. But here’s the problem: we are closer together and further apart. Who talks to the person they share a bus seat with? Or the person of a different social group whom we see every day? We have become experts in the art of being ‘so near yet so far’ and few of us make friends once over 30 years of age.

De Botton both documents and laments this sad state. He speaks of a past sense of community that is now largely lost n the privatization and stratification of modern life. The pain is eloquently expressed in his words on love. Love is now mono-dimensionally romantic and we have lost … the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind (p27). But even romantic love is an artefact of the loss of community, for we have  ... a maniacal quest for a single person with whom we hope to achieve a life-long and complete communion, one person in particular who will spare us any need for people in general (p29). How sad. Love has lost its open-hearted inclusiveness of the many and instead becomes a closed-door exclusiveness of the two.

From this perspective, De Botton takes a long look at the Roman Catholic Mass. He admits that it is not ... the ideal habitat for an atheist (p30) yet sees much of value in creating and maintaining a community. He sees value in its mixed composition, the stripping away of the distinctions that divide, the care for the poor and the attack on human pride.

In keeping with his programme of atheistic borrowing, de Botton wants to strip the Mass of its distinctly religious elements. He identifies its heart in such things as a discrete venue, rules to shape constructive human interactions and its origins in a love meal of the Christian community. By contrast much modern dining keeps people separated from outsiders to their group and does not foster meaningful contact between fellow-diners.

Next comes the atheistic reconstruction of the Mass in the form of an Agape Restaurant followed by a godless Day of Atonement and Feast of Fools.

Let’s look at the Agape Restaurant. Diners will enter an open door, pay a modest entrance fee, be scattered over tables of mixed composition and have conversation on prescribed topics according to a schedule laid out like a Catholic missal or a Jewish Haggadah. De Botton acknowledges that this will seem awkward at first, but expects it will be a learned behaviour in which our fear of strangers recedes and we humanize one another. As he remarks: Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity (p43).

All this sounds wonderful and is an earthly echo of the Christian metaphor for heaven as being like a vast wedding dinner. But where is the centre of the secular love feast and what lifts eyes upwards to a higher aspiration in order that we may then look downward on one another with warmth?

The Roman Catholic Mass is derived from the Jewish Passover meal that Jesus celebrated with his followers and also turned into what we know as the last supper (Matt 26:26-29). It in turn became the eucharist, holy communion and the mass in later Christian tradition. This meal has a backward focus as Christians remember the great work of God to save his people through the death of Jesus. It also has a forward focus, for as Jesus himself said, he would not drink the fruit of the vine with his followers until he does so in his Father’s kingdom.

All this gives the Christian meal an upward lift and a transcendent centre. All who gather at the table are united in their sense of needing divine forgiveness, recognising their ability for self-help and in saying to their God ‘you must save and you alone’. Those who participate indeed participate in the one supper, eating from the one loaf and drinking from the one cup (1 Cor 10:16-17). In doing so they participate in the crucified and raised body of Christ and are the one body his church.

All this gives a strong point of unity at God’s love feast – strong enough to cross the human divides and create a remarkable community.  It’s hard to see how all this happens in De Botton’s secular Agape Restaurant. Where is its centre and what is the point of community?

The Christian feast can create community because it is based on a Day of Atonement grounded in the historical acts of God to save through the Old Testament sacrifices and the New Testament sacrifice of Jesus. He is the one whose blood is the grace-given propitiation for sin that brings redemption. Against that De Botton’s secular and quarterly day of atonement seems just so much wishful thinking and his Feast of Fools empty escapism. The real human loneliness is loneliness with God and because of that we face loneliness with one another. Real community starts with connection to God through his Day of Atonement in Jesus and that alone creates lasting communion with one another that will be celebrated in heaven’s feast of faith.

This post is a response to chapter two of Religion for Atheists by Alain De Botton (Hamish Hamilton, 2012).