“For all his pursuits, Musk isn’t generally thought of as a theologian,” Higgins deadpanned in an Aug. 17 article.
It’s a line that could have dropped from the pens of history’s great ironists whose stock in trade are sentences that mean the opposite of what they appear to say. Not only is the flamboyant capitalist not “generally thought of” as inclined to theology. The vast majority of earth’s population would be stunned to hear he has so much as an inkling of religious thought in his head.
Higgins notes, however, that “with the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive’s recent political transformation, we are increasingly seeing Musk invoke religion as he discusses his worldviews on topics ranging from parenthood to freedom of speech.”
Those religious views, the article makes clear, tend to the Christ-centred although the Anglican-raised Musk, who attended Jewish preschool as a child in South Africa, jokes about singing “Hava Nagila” one day and “Jesus, I Love You” the next. He is said to have at least dipped into the Bible, Quran, Torah and Hindu sacred texts.
The erstwhile Canadian’s theology, Higgins writes of Musk, is largely a syncretist mishmash of spiritual physics, cosmic curiosity and Heaven in a wildflower. But there’s also a leading emphasis on restoring Christian principles in social conduct. “I do believe the teachings of Jesus are good and wise,” he told Jordan Peterson in an interview last month. The goodness and wisdom are grounded, he has observed, in Christian love of neighbour and turning the other cheek.
Should we watch the sky for signs of the man worth $240 billion coming soon to the corner of Yonge and Dundas to shout Scripture through a megaphone outside Toronto’s Eaton’s Centre? It would generally be more fruitful to watch for a camel making its way through the eye of a needle.
But the significance Musk even publicly raising faith from the dead – as it has been declared by generations of tall foreheads – is that he is far from alone in doing so.
Attack dog atheists such as Richard Dawkins et el have acknowledged in recent years the need for revival of what they call cultural Christianity. Emergence from the showbiz tomb of an astonishing multi-season hit such as The Chosen reveals audience hunger for serious treatment of faith as creedal Christian belief. Stars such as Jonathan Roumie and Mark Wahlberg are creating virtual Catholic hothouses for evangelizing via online videos, Scripture study groups, and prayer apps such as Hallow.
Perhaps most telling are the whispers of recognition within the political world that what ails us is a spiritual crisis that cannot be resolved by government merely continuing to apply the economic palliatives of the past 40 years. This week, the New York Times ran a lengthy profile of Democratic Senator Chris Murphy who has been prophesying for 18 months that such State-sponsored medicine simply will not go down any longer.
The Connecticut middle-of-the-roader, as the NYT describes him, is busily pointing out that the economic miracle of low unemployment paired with record stock market performance and enviable GDP growth turns out to be so much business-techno flummery when it comes to addressing the “metaphysical” epidemic of hollowness afflicting 2024 society.
“The challenges America faces aren’t logistical. They are metaphysical. And as soon as we understand that unspooling of identity and meaning happening today, the sooner we can address this crisis,” Murphy said in a 2022 speech.
What’s more, while he remains something of an outlier in Democratic circles (and would be in a Canadian political environment), Murphy is finding common cause with a cohort of Republicans such as JD Vance and a circle of conservative thinkers coming to the same spiritual reckoning. While party partisanship separates them, their thinking appears to have in common Pope Francis’ message for the World Prayer for the Care of Creation on September 1: “To hope and act with creation, then, means above all to join forces and to walk together with all men and women of good will. In this way, we can help to rethink, ‘among other things, the question of human power, its meaning and its limits.’”
Of course, for all his pursuits, Pope Francis isn’t generally thought of as a theologian. But then neither was a certain carpenter from Nazareth by way of Capernaum and Jerusalem.