Allegorical Religion

If you're not reading Indistinct Union, you should be.

To other matters: I wanted to comment on Matthew's recent post about religion as allegory, particularly as it pertains to Christianity in the post-Christian west.Whether he [Mario Loyola] knows it or not, this description is dripping with a Paglian view of Christianity, which she ultimately holds as a respository of a vast symbol system; precisely why, not as literal truth but rather as allegorical poetry, Christianity is so important, especially for working artists of the West. It's this perspective that is most ignored, I think, in contemporary religious debates, which usually descend into a tripartate dance between orthodox and liberal religious views and those of the secular humanist community, a dance that has become so tedious I'm sure you've all memorised the steps (and leaving aside for the moment, Wilber's experiential proposal, of which I'm a fan).

Several prominent figures have expressed similar sentiment, from Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, to Harold Bloom (the former bemoaning that Christianity, which once inspired so many works of high art, has been reduced to a messy, pluralistic feelgood club). Bloom has come under fire from TNR for his latest book, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, ironically for the same reason Bloom has attacked much recent literary criticism (to steal from Bloom's wikipedia article: His position, stated simply, is that politics have no place in literary criticism: a feminist or Marxist reading of Hamlet, for example, would tell us something about feminism and Marxism but nothing about Hamlet itself). The TNR article suggests that Bloom, by studying Jesus and Yahweh as literary characters and concepts, fails to actually take religion seriously, it avoids interacting with Religion on religious ground. Sam Harris, in a sweeping gesture, gathers up not only this approach but also liberal christianity and suggests that such tacit appreciation of religion actually does more harm than good, because it provides a smokescreen for religious abuse.

I'd be curious to hear not only what Matthew has to say in response, but also what my Christian readers (if you're still reading) have to say about the allegorical understanding and reverence for religion, when that understanding is divorced from an imperative to practice: to put it bluntly, respecting Christianity because of its artistic and historical importance. I'm not actually sure what I think on this topic, but I'd love to hear from you all.