Palm Sunday to Passover

Yes, religion has been a source of conflict for millennia; it is just an organized form of tribalism. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observed in his book 'The Righteous Mind', “our ancestors faced the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions that could fend off challenges and attacks from rival groups” for eons. It may even be in our DNA.

New Atheists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher, with their legions of followers, numbering in the millions just on Twitter, continue to employ the "Us Vs. Them" rhetoric of tribalism. But what these New Atheists fail to realize is that even if their criticism of religion is correct, pointing them out does nothing to combat tribalism- in fact, it only strengthens it. Their faith in the power of rationality, which is effective but not perfect, blinds them to the larger problem.


This isn’t surprising, because science has convincingly shown that individuals don’t really reason well on their own: our rationality is unreliable because of the pervasiveness of motivated reasoning. This suggests that the only cure for our cognitive biases is criticism from other people. The problem is that we’re more receptive to alternatives only when challenged by members of our own tribe.

So what shall we do? Ironically, we have to expand our notion of what our tribe is- with the ultimate goal of expanding that notion so wide that the tribal concept vanishes altogether. We have to bring people together who will challenge each other’s positions while also being bound by having something in common, a common purpose or a set of common values.

Its naive for any political movement, including the progressive movement, to try to make political change outside religious framework. Such action fails to read our history and the workings of our contemporaries around the world. The view of faith as central to political and social change is one that has had a profound impact on me personally. We have Palm Sunday right here which will soon be followed by Passover which is very symbolic of freedom itself.

Church should ask its congregants to imagine something spiritually and faithfully grounded in the country they live in. They, in turn, must seek to find what’s unique and distinctive about each and weave it together into a value-based commitment for the common good.