Editor's note: Bishop Robert Barron is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. He founded the Catholic media ministry Word on Fire and is one of the most followed Catholics in the world on social media. Opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinions on CNN.
CNN —
Bill Maher first caught my eye in the 1980s as a witty, sarcastic, politically sensitive stand-up comedian, but I started following him more closely about 20 years ago, in the aftermath of the New Atheist movement, when he devoted much of his comedy to mocking religion and religious people.
Courtesy of Word on Fire
Bishop Robert Barron
Maher would present, over and over again, the most extreme and simplistic versions of Christianity on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, while the audience laughed along with him at the poor rednecks who still believed in such nonsense. All of this was on full display in the 2008 documentary Religious, which featured interview after interview with religious figures who simply could not fend off Maher's fairly standard and hackneyed atheistic rebuttals. (HBO and CNN share parent company Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.)
I guess despite my frustration with him, I continued to watch Maher to see what “the other side” was saying and thinking. In fact, the first YouTube video I had a significant audience for was a rebuttal to “Religulous.” In fact, I can confidently explain exactly why Maher's understanding of religion was so weak: he and I were about the same age, and we both had Catholic upbringings (his mother was Jewish, but his father was Irish Catholic).
Our time in school was not the golden age of the Catholic intellectual tradition, to say the least. I remember religion classes being mostly about banners and balloons and vague commitments to social justice. Many Baby Boomer Catholics left the Church because they grew up to find the childish beliefs they had inherited woefully inadequate.
Over the past five years, Maher seems to have largely abandoned his attachment to religion and has spent a great deal of time expressing his opposition to the “woke” thinking that has solidified its support in most of our nation's major institutions, including universities, corporations, the military and government.
As he did so, I found myself nodding in agreement multiple times. To my surprise, my sworn enemy had become my ally.
Like me, Maher i got you What he and others call “wokeness” represents a departure from classical liberalism, not a development of it. Whereas classical liberalism advocates freedom of speech, a racially-free society, equality of opportunity, and the peaceful resolution of disputes through debate, advocates of wokeness are found advocating strict restrictions on speech, racialized consciousness, enforced equality of outcomes, and the instigation of hostility between oppressors and oppressed.
Moreover, classical liberalism, espoused by everyone from former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy to Martin Luther King Jr., called for solving social problems through reason and political activism, whereas many on the left today embrace a rhetoric of victimhood and grievance. Finally, the classical liberal tradition firmly upholds the objectivity of science and the reliability of mathematics, whereas what I consider to be woke philosophy treats both the fields of science and mathematics as expressions of patriarchy and Western cultural imperialism.
Classical liberalism certainly has its flaws (for a detailed discussion of these, see my book The Primacy of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism). Nevertheless, I would argue that liberalism is far superior to wokeism. Thus, Maher and I are very much on the same page in our opposition to the latter and our preference for the former.
Maher and I feel that one of the ugliest aspects of modern society is the all-or-nothing hostility that characterizes wokeism and the brutal cancel culture that results from it. The woke consensus is that those with whom we disagree should not just be corrected or ignored, but shouted down to silence.
Perhaps the most nauseating aspect of the recent furor surrounding Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's Benedict University commencement speech was a Twitter post by the city's social media manager, who specified Butker's suburban address. (The post was quickly removed, and the mayor said the employee, whose identity was not made public, no longer works there.) Of course, one is allowed to disagree with Butker's views on sexual orientation, relationships, and marriage, but it is absurd to expose him and his family to potential harassment and intimidation. By condemning all of this dangerous nonsense, Maher is performing a true public service by standing up for those who may face backlash for expressing similar views.
In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, Maher noted that today's political opponents don't just disagree with each other, they're beginning to see each other as an “existential threat.” What a sad decline from the 1980s, when Republican President Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, Democrat of Massachusetts, could share a drink together after a workday, Maher lamented. He said he can't imagine President Joe Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, doing that today.
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And Maher practices fraternity beyond ideology. Last week, he was a guest on Fox's Greg Gutfeld Show. Gutfeld hosts one of the most popular shows on late-night TV and represents a very conservative viewpoint. Maher listened to Gutfeld's monologue, laughed heartily many times, and then engaged in lively conversation with the host and the other guests (all of whom are conservatives). Maher and Gutfeld were at odds, especially over former President Donald Trump and his fitness for high office, and neither of them backed down on their positions. But they didn't insult each other or resort to name-calling tactics. They debated, and at the end of the show, they were both laughing.
What Maher was doing, and I appreciated that, was demonstrating that intellectuals don't have to demonize each other, that they can discuss issues without resorting to violence or personal attacks.
In doing so, he simultaneously undermined wokeism and demonstrated a true patriotism that still believed in the democratic process. So, putting aside his past and inadequate understanding of religion for the moment, I say, “Hooray for Bill Maher!”
