Finally, as for the common people,
the great majority,
who exist and are only allowed
to exist to serve and to be of general utility,
religion gives them
an invaluable sense of contentment
with their situation and type;

it puts their hearts greatly at ease,
it glorifies their obedience,
it gives them (and those like them)
one more happiness and one more sorrow,
it transfigures and improves them,
it provides something of a justification for everything commonplace,
for all the lowliness,
for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls.

Religion, and the meaning religion gives to life,
spreads sunshine
over such eternally tormented people
and makes them bearable even to themselves.

…it refreshes, refines,
and makes the most of suffering, as it were.
In the end it even sanctifies and justifies.

Perhaps
there is nothing more venerable
about Christianity and Buddhism
than their art of teaching even the lowliest to use piety
in order to situate themselves in an illusory higher order of things,
and in so doing
stay satisfied with the actual order,
in which their lives are hard enough
(in which precisely this hardness is
necessary!).

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Butler, aphorism 61

This passage could be subtitled ‘On The Other Hand,’ or simply, ‘Part II.” The preceding post described religion as a venerable, outrageous idea that humankind ought to be loved, for God’s sake, an idea that is in the process of being abandoned. To my mind traditional piety is similar to a once splended shopping mall that has fallen on hard times, now becoming a ghost of what it once was.

Yet, there is always an ‘On The Other Hand” the rest of the story that demands to be said out loud. The lines of aphorism 61 describe the durable utility of religion.  You could say that religion is a stage-managed effort to celebrate the lowly, to choreograph the common. Huzzah to “the working man.” How often do we hear candidates for political office use similar language. This note is being lifted from the “sheet music” of religion and is immediately understood by an audience.

While considering this “Nietzschean” view of religion, the insight came that traditional religious piety will always be uncomfortable with the idea of democracy, with a democratically constituted society. Democracy, everyone’s right to have a voice implies a gradual reduction of suffering, improvement in the general condition of everyone, over the arc of generations. Democracy is a distinctly secular idea. You’d think the ideal of democracy, would be a clear advantage over authoritarian rule, the rule of one man or a single party-imposed-will upon everyone else.

Traditional piety on the other hand accepts suffering as the norm; indeed to suffer is made noble and holy by religion. “Do not regard your misery as a objection to the status quo, because a better life awaits.”

A last thought. Never assume the multitudes of apparently affluent, upper middle class participants of Evangelical mega-churches are not eternally tormented. Success is no exemption from eternal torment.

Torment lends itself to a taste for authoritarianism.