Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion (8 page)

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Florentine artist
Giotto was commissioned to decorate the walls of the chapel with a series of frescoes: there were to be fourteen niches, each one containing a portrait allegorizing a different vice or virtue. On the right-hand side of the church, nearest the nave, Giotto painted the so-called cardinal virtues, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance and Justice, followed by the Christian virtues of Faith, Charity and Hope. Directly opposite these were arrayed a matching configuration of vices: Folly, Inconstancy,
Anger, Injustice, Infidelity, Envy and Despair. To each of these abstract titles, the painter appended vivid specimens to evoke viewers' admiration and stir their guilt. Thus Anger is shown tearing apart her garments, screaming at the sky in indignant self-pity, while two niches along, Infidelity squints out with deceitful eyes. The members of the congregation were to sit in their pews and think about which of the virtues they had embraced and which of the vices they had fallen prey to, while God watched over them from the celestial sphere, stars in hand.

The religious tradition to which Giotto's star chart belonged felt comfortable in making detailed proposals about how one should behave and in distinguishing what it plainly termed good from its opposite. Depictions of vices and virtues were ubiquitous – in the backs of
Bibles, in prayer books, on the walls of churches and public buildings – and their purpose was straightforwardly didactic: they were meant to provide a compass by which the faithful could steer their lives in honourable directions.

2.
By contrast with this Christian desire to generate a moral atmosphere, libertarian theorists have argued that public space should be kept neutral. There should be no reminders of kindness on the walls of our buildings or in the pages of our books. Such messages would, after all, constitute dramatic infringements on our much-prized ‘liberty'.

However, we have already seen why this concern for liberty doesn't necessarily honour our deepest wishes, given our compulsive and wayward natures. We can also now admit that, in any case, our public spaces are not even remotely neutral. They are – as a quick glance down any high street will reveal – covered with commercial messages. Even in societies theoretically dedicated to leaving us free to make our own choices, our minds are continuously manipulated in directions we hardly consciously recognize. It is sometimes said by
advertising agencies, in a prophylactic attempt at false modesty, that advertising does not really
work
. We are adults, this argument holds, and so do not lose our capacity for reason the instant we set eyes on a beautifully photographed
billboard or catalogue. It is granted that children may be less resolute and could therefore need shielding from certain messages on television before eight o'clock in the evening, lest they conceive a maniacal craving for a particular train set or carbonated drink. But adults are apparently sensible and self-controlled enough not to alter their values or consumption patterns simply on account of an unceasing array of artfully created messages which reach them from every side and medium at all times of day and night.

However, this distinction between child and adult is suspiciously convenient to commercial interests. In truth, we are all fragile in our commitments and suffer from a weakness of will in relation to the siren calls of advertising, an ill-tempered three-year-old entranced by the sight of a farmyard play set with inflatable dog kennel as much as a forty-two-year-old captivated by the possibilities of a barbecue set with added tongs and hotplate.

3.
Atheists tend to pity the inhabitants of religiously dominated societies for the extent of the propaganda they have to endure, but this is to overlook secular societies' equally powerful and continuous calls to prayer. A libertarian state truly worthy of the name would try to redress the balance of messages that reach its citizens away from the merely commercial and towards a holistic conception of flourishing. True to the ambitions of
Giotto's frescoes, these new messages would render vivid to us the many noble ways of behaving that we currently admire so much and so blithely ignore.

We simply will not care for very long about the higher values when all we are given to convince us of their worth is an occasional reminder in a modestly selling, largely ignored book of essays by a so-called philosopher – while, in the city beyond, the superlative talents of the globe's advertising agencies perform their phantasmagorical alchemy and set our every sensory fibre alight in the name of a new kind of cleaning product or savoury snack.

If we tend to think so often about lemon-scented floor polish or cracked black pepper crisps, but relatively little about endurance or justice, the fault is not merely our own. It is also that these two cardinal virtues are not generally in a position to become clients of Young & Rubicam.

iii. Role Models

1.
While paying attention to the messages in its public spaces, Christianity also wisely recognizes the extent to which our concepts of good and bad are shaped by the people we spend time with. It knows that we are dangerously permeable with regard to our social circle, all too apt to internalize and mimic others' attitudes and behaviour. Simultaneously, it accepts that the particular company we keep is largely a result of haphazard forces, a peculiar cast of characters drawn from our childhood, schooling, community and work. Among the few hundred people we regularly encounter, not very many are likely to be the sorts of exceptional individuals who exhaust our imagination with their good qualities, who strengthen our soul and whose voices we want consciously to adopt to bolster our best impulses.

2.
The paucity of paragons helps to explain why Catholicism sets before its believers some two and a half thousand of the greatest, most virtuous human beings who, it feels, have ever lived. These
saints are each in their different ways exemplars of qualities we should hope to nurture in ourselves.
St Joseph, for instance, may teach us how to cope calmly with the pressures of a young family and how to face the trials of the workplace with a modest and uncomplaining temper. There are moments when we may want to break down and sob in the company of
St Jude, patron saint of lost causes, whose gentle manner can grant us comfort without any need to find immediate solutions or even hope. At times of anxiety, we could turn to St Philip Neri, who would never underplay our problems or humiliate us but would know how to tease out our sense of the absurd and make us laugh therapeutically at our condition. We might find it particularly consoling to guess at how the imperturbable St Philip would handle the hazards of a family reunion or the crash of a computer's hard drive.

To further enhance our imaginative connections with the saints, Catholicism provides us with calendars that list their deathdays, so that we may have regular occasion to withdraw from our social circle and contemplate the lives of people who gave away all their money and wandered the earth doing good works while wearing a rough tunic to mortify the flesh (St Francis) or who used their faith in God to magically reattach a severed ear to its distressed owner's head (St Cuthbert).

3.
In addition, Catholicism perceives that there is a benefit to being able to see our ideal friends around the house in miniaturized three-dimensional representations. After all, most of us began our lives by having nurturing relationships with bears and other animals, to whom we would talk and be tacitly addressed by in turn. Though immobile, these animals were nevertheless skilful at conveying their consoling and inspiring personalities to us. We would talk to them when we were sad and were comforted when we looked across the bedroom and saw them stoically enduring the night on our behalf. Catholicism sees no reason to abandon the mechanics of such relationships and so invites us to buy wood, stone, resin or plastic versions of the saints and place them on shelves or alcoves in our rooms and hallways. At times of domestic chaos, we can look across at a plastic statuette and inwardly ask what
St Francis of Assisi would recommend that we say to our furious wife and hysterical children now. The answer may be inside us all along, but it doesn't usually emerge or become effective until we go through the exercise of formally asking the question of a saintly figurine.

4.
A well-functioning secular society would think with similar care about its role models. It would not only provide us with film stars and singers. An absence of religious belief in no way invalidates a continuing need for ‘patron saints' of qualities like Courage, Friendship, Fidelity, Patience, Confidence or Scepticism. We can still profit from moments when we give internal space to the voices of people who are more balanced, brave and generous-spirited than we are – Lincoln or Whitman, Churchill or
Stendhal,
Warren Buffett or
Paul Smith – and through whom we may reconnect with our most dignified and serious possibilities.

5.
The religious perspective on morality suggests that it is in the end a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously to being treated like a child. The libertarian obsession with freedom ignores how much of our original childhood need for constraint and guidance
endures within us, and therefore how much we stand to learn from paternalistic strategies. It is not very kind, nor ultimately even very freeing, to be deemed so grown up that one is left alone to do entirely as one pleases.