WESTERN

Atheism in contemporary Theology


Miguel de Unamuno: Catholic atheist Miguel de Unamuno, San Manuel Bueno, mártir, y tres historias más (Madrid, 1933) 79
Brian J. Dendle, The spanish novel of religious thesis 1876-1936
(Princeton University; Castalia: Madrid 1968) 57-8

"Although Unamuno is obsessed by the ideas of God and immortality in his poems and essays, religion plays only a minor role in his novels. ... Ideology has little importance in the face of the forces of race, maternity and Nature; religion is only part of one's inherited culture, not something which can be subjected to reason or question.
San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1930) is more the expression of an intellectual paradox than a novel on the religious problem. Unamuno assumes, like Alarcón and Pereda, that religious faith gives meaning, and thus "happiness," to the lives of the simple. He therefore postulates the existence of two "saints" (one clerical, one lay) who, while not believing in God themselves (a part of God's designs), strive to preserve the faith of the villagers.
The priest Don Manuel does reject certain Catholic attitudes and practices, for example, the Church's hostility to liberalism, its emphasis on mediation and contemplation, and, strangely enough, its intervention in social concerns such as syndicalism. Heretically, Don Manuel declares that there is no single true religion, and that religions must be judged by their utility in helping nations to live spiritually:

¿Religión verdadera? Todas las religiones son verdaderas en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente a los pueblos que las profesan, en cuanto les consuelan de haber tenido que nacer para morir, y para cada pueblo la religión más verdadera es la suya, la que le ha hecho.


re. cultural/Catholic/Jewish/atheists, see Graham Greene, Charles Maurras, Michael Harrington, Ahad Ha-Am,Mordecai Kaplan, and Sherwin Wine.


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