The Tablet Interview Red Christian
He’s a Marxist public intellectual who has turned his attention to defending religion and next week Terry Eagleton joins forces with the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss how best to respond to the “new atheists”. He tells Christopher Lamb that the Left should rediscover theology
of the times that the cultural theorist has now taken to defending God against the vocal athe- ists Richard Dawkins and his former comrade Christopher Hitchens, a duo he has nick- named “Ditchkins”.
P
It appears that his defence of religion is beginning to gain approval from people of faith. On 19 November, he and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will weigh up how best to knock down the argu- ments of Dawkins et al. at St Mary’s Church, Cambridge, hosted by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Earlier this year Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies (and the English Department) put him forward for an hon- orary doctorate, which he was awarded in July. Not bad for someone who provocatively suggested in 2008 on BBC Radio 4 that Jesus “got off pretty lightly” by dying after only three hours on the Cross. In many ways, however, his return to the-
ology is a return to his roots. He was brought up a Catholic in Salford, Greater Manchester, in an Irish family and spent time as an altar boy at a nearby Carmelite convent. The title
FARM STREET, MAYFAIR JESUIT CHURCH
Sunday 14 November 2010 Mass Times: Vigil: Saturday 6pm
Sunday: 8am, 9.30am (Family Mass), 11am (sung Latin), Fauré, Duruflé, Vierne 12.30pm, 4.15pm, 6.15pm
www.farmstreet.org.uk 14 | THE TABLET | 13 November 2010
rofessor Terry Eagleton has spent much of his professional career bait- ing the Establishment, be it religious, political or academic. So it is a sign
of his autobiography, The Gatekeeper, refers to the time when he ushered novice sisters into the chapel to make their professions
to the religious life. During his early career as an English academic he was also, for a time, the editor of a Catholic-Marxist magazine called Slant. “I never entirely left religion behind,” he tells me in St Chad’s College, Durham, after a din- ner to celebrate his honorary doctorate. “I think I’ve been closer or further away from it at various points in my career. It’s always been a sub-current in my work, but I think what’s changed is that it has become more explicit.”
‘I think it’s appalling the way that so much religion has
been turned into ideology, into a defence of the rich’
Eagleton is softly spoken, a Mancunian
twang detectable beneath his academic brogue, and he peppers his theological argu- ments with jokes. “Saying Christian faith is an explanation of how the world came into existence is a bit like saying Moby-Dick is an explanation of the whaling industry,” he said, making the point that Dawkins has mis- understood the Christian doctrine of creation. He was bought up with an attractive form of theology: “I was lucky enough, when I was a student at Cambridge, to encounter a the- ology which made a lot of sense to me morally and politically. If one did reject it, one had to pay a certain price. I was lucky enough never to be in a situation where one just bought one’s atheism on the cheap. In that I was very for-
tunate to be influenced by various Dominicans: Laurence Bright, Herbert McCabe and many others.” He has recently written a foreword to God and Evil, a book on Thomas Aquinas by the late Fr McCabe (Continuum, £18.99). He was also positively influenced by his education at the De La Salle College, Salford. “They gave us a good education. They got a largely Irish working-class set of children into English society. And they also, like much Catholicism, taught one not to be afraid of systematic thought, not to be afraid of rea- son. I think that passed over to me and into the rest of my work.” For Eagleton – whose 25-year-old work Literary Theory: an introduction is still selling well – his Catholic education has brought him to the conclusion that the the- ology peddled by “Ditchkins” is nonsense. “I knew just enough [theology] to know that they were talking out of the back of their necks,” he said. “I was annoyed by what seemed to be a certain complacency and smugness about that particular position. “There are many cases for atheism and agnosticism which I find honourable. But this position seemed to me one they were buy- ing on the cheap, a lurid caricature of Christianity, accompanied by an almost par- ody of the Enlightenment.” Eagleton argues that Dawkins presents a
straw-man view of Christianity. He makes the subtle point that belief in God has little to do, as Dawkins suggests, with belief in a supreme being. “The devils believe in God but they don’t really believe in him,” he explained. What Dawkins et al. miss, he says, is the role
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40