interview

Michael Toms: Huston, why have religious structures seemingly lost the Vision, so that people have to seek it elsewhere?

Huston Smith: I think that they, like perhaps all the other institutions in the modern world, were taken in by a development that goes back about three or four hundred years and set the modern world on its course. That development was, of course, the emergence of modern science.
Science in the generic sense had been around as long as art and religion. But what was discovered then—in the sixteenth, seventeenth centuries—was the controlled experiment, which escalated science to a new order of power and exactitude. That power proved to be enough to create both a new world, this world that we now live in, and a new worldview. In the process it brought many, many benefits. But in terms of worldview, it inflicted a great blow on the human psyche by making it appear that life's material side is its most important side. Now this is a logical mistake. Science didn't really say this, but because its power derived from attending to the material aspects of nature, and because that power is great and effective and gave us many benefits, the outlook of modernity is unprecedentedly materialistic.

Now, you asked about religious institutions, the mainline churches. Unfortunately, they too succumbed to some extent to that slip. Not intentionally. But transcendence, as that which is not just larger than we are but also better than we are, got pushed into the background and lost our attention. All modern institutions, churches included, have suffered that loss.

Churches are doing many good things—social service causes, taking in the street people, and so on. They're doing very good work. But the reason that they've failed to inspire as they once did is that their grasp on transcendence has slipped. That also accounts for why Asian spirituality has begun to appeal to people in the West. Not having suffered the modern reduction of reality, they have maintained a firmer hold on transcendence.

MT: Asian spirituality puts more emphasis on the experience. I think of my grandmother, for example. She was deeply saddened when the Catholic Church decided to change the ritual and go to an English Mass. The mystery of the Latin—the mystique—was changed, was transformed, in that simple act.

HS: That's right. And the so-called liturgical reform that you're referring to is an ambiguous move. Certain reemphases were perhaps called for, but there have also been losses. You mentioned one; I'll mention another. I recently was at a gathering with Robert Bellah, the noted sociologist and author of Habits of the Heart. He's a wise and right-thinking man. But he claimed that when the priest stopped facing the altar and turned to face the congregation, the Catholic Church gained, for the congregation felt included. Well, I have to confess that my take is just the opposite. Togetherness is nice. But it can't match the symbolism of the priest and the people—everybody, the priest included—facing the cross, as something that is beyond them all. That's what people need, more than they need the sense of togetherness or creating your own theology—the whole anthropological turn. Once more I'll say that the situation is ambiguous. It's not totally black-and-white. Because the gains are touted more than the losses, it's important to balance the picture. I'm glad you brought up the issue.

MT: The aspect of community also comes up for me as we're talking about the shift. In the previous form—with the priest and the congregation facing the cross, as you put it—there's a recognition, I think, of each individual on his or her own journey in community.

HS: Right.

MT: Whereas, shifting it around it's like, well, we're all in this "together."

HS: That's right.

MT: But it's not quite that way, it seems. It's different. As you say, ambiguous is a good way to put it.

Another thing that keeps coming up for me as we're talking about this has to do with the educational system, of which you've been a part for so many years. With the increasing emphasis on business, career and opportunity—at the sacrifice of what's called the humanities, the bedrock of establishing values and ethics in ourselves—courses on those subjects are going by the by. What about that?

HS: I think it's a serious matter. You may have seen a poll of students recently, freshmen, throughout the nation. One of the questions in the poll was, "Why have you come to college?" Seventy-five percent said, straight out, that their top priority was to make money, make more money. Few checked the option, "to develop a meaningful philosophy of life."

MT: That's almost a direct reversal of the way it was twenty years ago, in the 1960s.

HS: Exactly. I see the shift as ominous. The universities and colleges might say, "Well, that's just a problem of our time. We face the yuppies, and that's what they're coming for." But I personally think that we in academia have to take some responsibility for the shift. Again, there's been no wrong intent. We've simply not seen clearly what has happened. And what has happened in academia is, as President Steven Muller of Johns Hopkins said in an interview, "The university is rooted in the scientific method, and the scientific method cannot provide a sense of values. As a result, we're turning out skilled barbarians."

Now, I think that's basically true. But what academics do not see clearly enough is the way that their own disciplines, including their criteria for knowing, gravitate towards scientific ways of knowing which emphasize objective knowledge—public knowledge that can be verified.

MT: All the proper footnotes and bibliographies.

HS: That's part of it. There's also the jargon and the academese, much of which is unreadable. There's the added problem that because such a large proportion of our population is going to college, professors can get their books published just by requiring their students to read them! There's an ingrown character to academic writing. Professors speak to their colleagues and their own students. A gap emerges between the university mind and our public consciousness.