Questions for Robert Wright: Evolutionary Theology

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

"The Evolution of God," your new book on the history of religion, strikes me as a welcome antidote to the stream of books by atheists that have become best sellers in recent years. Doesn't it seem as if atheism has become its own form of fundamentalism?

I don't think it's a coincidence that the new atheists really got traction in the years after 9/11. The rise of fundamentalism in Islam, but also in Christianity in America, has so highlighted the dark side of religion that people denouncing religion as a whole have a receptive audience.

Like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. What do you think of their work?
I think they have naïve ideas about the importance of religion in the world. They just seem oblivious to the good that religion has done, and I guess one point in my book is how malleable religion is; it has the capacity for good, which tends to come out when people see themselves as having something to gain from peaceful interaction with other people.

Your approach to religious history is so nakedly materialist. For instance, you claim the Apostle Paul was a kind of marketing guru who dropped the more demanding requirements of Judaism, like circumcision and dietary restrictions, to attract more followers.
Do the math. How many Christians are there today and how many Jews are there? If his goal was to gain a large following, he seems to have made the right tactical decision there.

Do you have to make Christianity sound like a pre-electronic Facebook?
Institutions thrive when they can serve the interest of a bunch of people, and there's no reason to think the church is different. None of this is to say Paul didn't feel divinely inspired.

O.K., but where is the transcendence in your book?
Well, I wind up arguing that the drift of history, however materially driven, has enough moral direction to suggest that there's some larger purpose at work, and I guess you can call that transcendence.

You were born in Lawton, Okla., which sounds like a defining experience.
We left when I was 3 years old and moved to Midland, Tex., childhood home of George Bush, and then moved to a bunch of other places, mainly in Texas. My father was in the Army.

Did you ride horses and do other mythic Western things?
I rode a horse once while visiting a cousin who lived on an actual farm, and I felt scared and inept. I remember my uncles sitting under a weeping willow and whittling branches while they talked. They all had pocketknives. The height of my aspiration was to someday do that.

Were you a churchgoer as a child?
Southern Baptists don't fool around. At age 8 or 9, I chose to go to the front of the church in response to the altar call and accepted Jesus as my savior.

When did you begin to doubt?
I think it was roughly sophomore year in high school. I encountered the theory of evolution, and my parents were creationists. There was a clash. They brought a Baptist minister over to the house to try to convince me that evolution hadn't happened. He was not entirely successful, I would say.

Then you went off and studied science?
No, I'm not a scientist; I'm just a journalist. I don't have a doctorate in anything.

Do you ever pray?
I meditate, and occasionally that turns into a kind of prayer for help in being a better person. But so far as I know, I'm basically just talking to myself.

Do you have any insight into President Obama's spiritual life?
No, except that he seems to have the self-assurance of someone who believes that God is on his side.

That can be dangerous.
Thinking you're doing God's work is fine if you actually are serving humankind. And I think Obama has a better chance of doing that than most. He shifts between the professorial and the preacherly in a way that is reminiscent of the Apostle Paul, although Paul probably attended church more often and worked out less.

--Interview conducted, condensed, and edited by Deborah Solomon