Jonathan VanAntwerpen is program director for theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. Originally trained as a philosopher, he received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of a series of books on secularism, religion, and public life, including Habermas and Religion (Polity, 2013), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Post-Secular in Question (NYU Press, 2012), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011), and Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). VanAntwerpen was the founding director of the SSRC's program on religion and the public sphere, and in 2007 he worked with others to launch The Immanent Frame, serving for several years as editor-in-chief.
For the record, Maher says he has “no problem with spirituality.” What I think he fails to understand is that many people who belong to organized religious groups actually view themselves as spiritual rather than religious, probably because they associate religion with the same kind of bigotry and violence that Maher does. Actually 40% of Americans use this phrase to describe themselves, according to a 2007 Gallup poll. Meaning, perhaps, that they don’t take the stories of their particular faith literally and don’t just subscribe to whatever nonsense is coming from the pulpit. There’s a difference between official doctrine and how the majority of people live their faith on a day-to-day basis. And Maher paves over this difference. Sure, a small proportion of Christians, Muslims, and Jews take their holy texts as literal word-for-word instructions and thus find it hard to coexist with others. But as the Onion A.V. Club’s Noel Murray so wisely points out, Maher isn’t “quite fearless enough to interview or lay into the multitudes of moderately devout folks who use their religion as a cultural signifier and a way to make a difference in their communities.”