ABSTRACT
Keeping in mind the now common truism that religion is a purely personal experience and that sacred ideals are, by strictest definition, politically ineffectual spiritual quests, peaceful religion's antithesis arises when this disembodied faith is found “entering the political realm” (as this grave transgression is phrased by Pinto [1999: 1]); this is an intolerable sin and a theoretical problem to be closely scrutinized by scholars all along the political spectrum. The problematic that occupies writers such as Charles Kimball and Jessica Stern is that oppositional or marginal group members (whomever “they” happen to be) sometimes “dare to take their beliefs seriously,” as Slavoj ၽiၾek has most recently phrased it (2003, 7). Or, as phrased by Susan Sontag, only as a result of material affluence has what was once called “news” been converted into “entertainment,” and “participants” been able to conceive of themselves as “spectators.” Such affluence provides groups with what Sontag refers to as “the luxury of patronizing reality” (2003, 110–11)—or what I would refer to as the luxury of patronizing competing senses of reality—enabling members of dominant groups to act “as if” they no longer believe. They can thereby displace belief onto the proverbial “Other,” as ၽiၾek argues, allowing deep, seemingly irrational belief to be smuggled back into their own worlds vicariously, by means of the back door. 1
