Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Peculiar People

Home
Latter-day Saint
Andrew Sullivan on God, Doubt, and Organized Religion

Andrew Sullivan on God, Doubt, and Organized Religion

Last updated on: June 15, 2016 at 5:03 pm by J. Paul Valley

Andrew Sullivan on God, Doubt, and Organized Religion 2016-06-15T17:03:12+00:00 J. Paul Valley

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image courtesy of Banksy98/Wikimedia Commons and Trey Ratcliff/Flickr Commons. Alterations by JJ Feinauer

Blogging pioneer Andrew Sullivan formally retired from the daily content grind last year when he announced the closure of his subscription-based blog, The Dish. Apparently he’s spent the last 12 or so months seeking greater spiritual peace and working on a book about modern Christianity. But as he told Ezra Klein in an interview released Tuesday, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has pulled him grudgingly back into the world of political commentary.

Sullivan discussed this and a whole bunch more in a nearly two hour interview on Klein’s interview podcast, The Ezra Klein Show.

The most interesting part of the interview, and the reason I felt compelled to mention it on Peculiar People, is a section where Sullivan describes his views on faith. Sullivan is a rare gem: A public intellectual that openly discusses his belief in God. This has in turn allowed him to give an elegant voice to some of the complexities of modern faith. “If we have never doubted,” he argued in 2006, “how can we say we have really believed?” According to Sullivan, faith is not about “blind submission” but instead “open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it.”

This interview is full of that kind of stuff.

In my view, Sullivan is a remarkable thinker and I like having his voice around, even if I don’t always agree with him. In this particular interview, he shares his thoughts on proselytizing (he’s not a fan), describes his friendships with New Atheist figures Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens, and explains why he keeps his faith separate from his relationship to the institutional Catholic Church. Sullivan is also a Gay man (and a pioneering figure in the marriage equality movement) who was diagnosed HIV positive during the AIDS epidemic. One of the most interesting parts of this interview involves Sullivan describing how this tumultuous period of his life — which included the death of his best friend — counterintuitively served to strengthen his faith.

He gets at some of the poetic elements of belief that I think get lost in the culture war rhetoric of believer vs skeptic. For example, he Borrows from T.S. Eliot to explain that “humankind cannot bear too much reality so we flee it,” further arguing that “we rightfully flee it because it’s kind of terrifying unless there is a loving God.”

Sullivan is careful in the interview not to come across as a zealous missionary, noting that he believes atheism to be “an absolutely honorable and principled position to take.”

“We all face the existential darkness alone,” he explains, “and whatever you make of it is what you make of it.”

If you’re interested in politics and the changing landscape of the news media, be sure to check out the whole interview. If those things don’t interest you, but you’re curious about his thoughts on religion, start at about the 47 minute mark. You can also check out a short summary of the interview over at Vox dot com. And if you’re itching for some more Sullivan on God stuff, check out his Newsweek piece from 2012, “Christianity in Crisis.”

Like Peculiar People on Facebook:

BlogName

Previous Post

May 25, 2016

Film Journal: The Land Before Time

Next Post

June 3, 2016 Normalizing Gun Violence on Campus

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category American society Art baptism Blogging Book of Mormon Book review Brigham Young Brigham Young University Bundy Catholicism Christianity Communalism Community of Christ conferences conversion correlation Culture denominations Digital History Discipline Councils diversity Doctrine Donald Trump education Emma Smith ethics family feminism fiction Film review food French Polynesia Fundamentalism Gay rights Gender global Gun politics Halloween health History Honor Code hymns Joseph Smith Kirtland Temple law of consecration massacre site military Ministering missionary moderate Mormon feminism Modern Mormonism Mormon origins Mormon War Mormonism Mormonism, politics, Romney Obama Peace politics Polygamy Pope Francis Poverty Prayer Priesthood Protestantism Race Religious freedom Revelation Reviews sacred sites Scientology Scripture Secularization See Stones sexual assault Star Wars television temples Tithing Utah violence war women's ordination

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 October 2017 September 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 November 2016 October 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who betrayed Jesus with a kiss?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Peter Judas Herod Thomas