The Easter theme of sacrifice for renewal can be applied to reassessment of two fundamental religious terms, “belief” and “faith." Consider how we use each and what we mean when we do. We should be more alert to slow, subtle change in meaning and usage over time of words like these. Reflect now especially on the evolved, problematic usage of “belief” by the religious — the meaning now accrued to it in contrast to earlier, ancient meanings. Consider: Advocacy of religious “belief” now does more harm than good — to the continuing faith itself.
“Faith” and “belief” lived in harmony for centuries, for believers as well as unbelievers, until the rise of modern science since the 17th century effectively divorced them. Subsequent application of rational-empirical principals and their growing prestige in the past several centuries now increasingly hold hostage the older use of “belief” by the religious, begging the question of the religious “believer”: How can you prove what you believe? The implied response: You cannot. Science cannot endorse the “truth” of religion.
On the other hand, religious “faith” does not really beg such a question. A person of faith may be scorned or trivialized by a skeptic but not attacked for appearing to try to juggle faith into a scheme of rational belief. Faith plays a different “game” than belief, by different rules. It does not automatically claim truth in competition with the findings of natural science. Faith is conveniently elusive, personal, less rule-propelled, less vulnerable to attack by skeptics relegating religion to make-believe. It takes different bearings.
Both terms descend from a long heritage of translation and evolving cultural contexts. We cannot address that complicating heritage here. But we can recognize and re-evaluate their respective functions for us now. We can judge that what remains of our traditional faith will be better served by dropping the problematic term "belief" from automatic, unreflective use among Christian (and Jewish and Islamic) communities. Opinion: We should relieve it of the work it can no longer do successfully without inviting, as it does, failure of communication bordering upon idolatry.
But how then to regard the use of “I believe” (Credo) in the church creeds we inherit from the early church period? Their iconic stature persists. We must recite them now with a knowing wink as we leap over centuries into the mind of the early church to reappropriate that superseded, now problematized meaning, translating it in the process. Tradition does not ask the religious to claim the now reduced, if not spoiled, meaning of belief. It asks us to confess and explore the faith.
Hence, to reclaim faith in its original fullness, we should surrender religious belief disparaged by the “modern” mind as narrowed by single-minded rational-empiricism. (This narrowed use of course serves us well in its rational-empirical capacity for other purposes.) Then encourage faith to play in other areas of intelligence unregulated by scientific methods of verification. “Progress” has effectively now so problematized religious belief that we do our faith traditions this needed service in response to the ingrained skepticism of the scientifically modernized mind.
Difficult as it may be for many, this decision should undercut the influence of publicized atheisms of late. It might effectively reduce the continued falling-off of attendance at services of religious worship across the board, cutting further losses across communities of faith. At Easter, then, for the sake of faith, its integrity and force, consider sacrificing outworn “belief” as Jesus sacrificed himself to become the redeeming Christ.