Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton Page B

‘Will you say Amen? I say will you
say
Amen?’
    However powerful any proposition may be, it becomes so much more so in front of a crowd of 500 people who exclaim in unison after every point:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜â€¦ Thank you, Jesus.’
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜â€¦ Thank you, Saviour.’
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜â€¦ Thank you, Christ.’
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜â€¦ Thank you, Lord.’
    Could a lecture onWalt Whitman be as moving? ( illustration credit 4.11 )
    There is little chance of resisting a theological argument which flows like this one, from the stage of the New Vision Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee:
    â€˜None of us today is in jail.’
    (‘
Amen, All right now, Amen, Preacher,
’ say the members of the congregation.)
    â€˜Lord have mercy.’
    (‘
Amen.
’)
    â€˜So, brothers, sisters, we should never be in prison in our minds.’
    (‘
Amen, Preacher.
’)
    â€˜Do you hear me, my brothers and sisters?’
    (‘
Amen, amen, amen!
’)
    The contrast with the typical lecture in the humanities could hardly be more damning. And unnecessary. What purpose can possibly be served by the academy’s primness? How much more expansive the scope of meaning in Montaignes essays would seem if a 100-strong and transported chorus were to voice its approval after every sentence. How much longer might Rousseau’s philosophical truths linger in our consciousness if they were structured around rhythmical verses of call-and-response. Secular education will never succeed in reaching its potential until humanities lecturers are sent to be trained by African-American Pentecostal preachers. Only then will our timid pedagogues be able to shake off their inhibitions during lectures on Keats orAdam Smith and, unconstrained by false notions of propriety, call out to their comatose audiences, ‘Do you hear me? I say do you
hear
me?’ And only
then
will their now-tearfulstudents fall to their knees, ready to let the spirit of some of the world’s most important ideas enter and transform them.
    4.
Aside from needing to be delivered eloquently, ideas also have to be repeated to us constantly. Three or five or ten times a day, we must be forcibly reminded of truths that we love but otherwise will not be able to hold on to. What we read at nine in the morning we will have forgotten by lunchtime and will need to reread by dusk. Our inner lives must be lent a structure and our best thoughts reinforced to counter the continuous pull of distraction and disintegration.
    Religions have been wise enough to establish elaborate calendars and schedules which lay claim to the lengths as well as the depths of their followers’ lives, letting no month, day or hour escape without administration of a precisely calibrated dose of ideas. In the detailed way in which they tell the faithful what to read, think, sing and do at almost every moment, religious agendas seem at once sublimely obsessive and calmingly thorough. TheBook of CommonPrayer, for instance, decrees that its subscribers should always gather at six-thirty in the evening on the twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity, as the candlelight throws shadows against the chapel walls, to listen to a reading from the second section of the deuterocanonical Book of Baruch, just as on 25 January they must always think of the Conversion of St Paul, and on the morning of 2 July reflect on the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary andimbibe the moral lessons of Job 3. Schedules are more exacting still for Catholics, whose days are punctuated by no fewer than seven occasions for prayer. Every evening at ten they must, for example, scan their consciences, read a Psalm, declare
In manus tuas, Domine
(‘Into your hands, Lord’), sing the
Nunc