The Heretics

by Barrows Dunham

Orthodoxy versus heresy, political, social, and religious

499 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1963

About the author

Barrows Dunham (October 10, 1905 – November 19, 1995) was an American author and professor of philosophy. Dunham also gained notoriety as a martyr for academic freedom when he was fired from Temple University in 1953 after refusing to “name names” before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Reviews

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It is...part of the strategy of leadership and part of the politics of organizational life to regard doctrines not merely as true or false but as conducive to unity or disruptive of it. In this second pair of alternatives lies the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. For a doctrine is orthodox if it helps unite the organization; it is heretical if it divides.”

Without orthodoxy there is no unity; without dissent there is no innovation. This book explores the tensions between the two that have always existed. We tend to associate the terms with religion, and the author delves deeply into the schisms that have led people to be killed for their beliefs. However, the word heresy can also be extended to political and social deviations, and even science relies of new theories disrupting the existing ones. Where would we be if Newton’s cosmology had not overthrown Ptolomy’s, and if Einstein’s had not overthrown Newton’s?

Although I have never spent time reading about organizational psychology, this book made me think about looking into it. The author does a fine job parsing the elements that make for stable groups, how they manage to integrate or isolate potential innovations, and how easily beliefs harden into dogmas. The reader begins to see how it is possible for people of good will, who are kind, thoughtful, and caring, to send others to the stake or the Gulag with a clear conscience.

It has always seemed to me that religious debates all boil down to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Nobody argues what two plus two equals, but ferocious, sometimes murderous conflicts arise over things that are entirely unprovable, just hand waving and smoke and mirrors. When I read a biography of Martin Luther I was amazed at how vicious the arguments were over the act of Communion: was it transubstantiation into the actual body and flesh; was it a miraculous event but not actually bread and wine into flesh and blood; or was it simply a symbolic act of remembrance? The Bible verses are ambiguous, so no one can say for sure what the authors meant, but holding the wrong opinion at one time could have got you burned at the stake. The Heretics explains why it mattered so much: it wasn’t necessarily a matter of interpretation, but of asserting a core belief that helped hold the believers together, binding them tightly so that they would follow and obey.

Now a sentence, simply as a sentence, is (if unambiguous) either true of false. It remains so when it becomes part of an organization’s doctrine, but it now takes on certain new and striking attributes. After it has become an object of assent by the members and part of their ground of agreement with one another, it is involved with the whole psychology of belief, with the ebb and flow of institutional loyalty, and with the policymaking of the leadership. When a number of people believe a certain sentence to be true, when that belief helps to make them content in the organization and loyal to it and willing to pay dues to it, neither they nor the leaders are prepared to be told that the sentence is false. For unless they are to voice a credo quia absurdum, they must accept the rule of reason that a false sentence is to be disbelieved. From that moment on, the bonds of unity begin to loosen, for if it turns out that the organization has been professing one false doctrine, there is surely some reason to think that it may be professing others.

I once slogged my way through read Pilgrim’s Progress. The imagery is memorable but the theological arguments tedious. Of all the various people representing errors that the pilgrim met, the one I found most memorable was the character of Ignorance, who tried hard to be a good Christian, lived a pious life and performed charitable acts, and sincerely believed he was living as the Bible commanded. Wrong. Since he did not believe what the author believed, which was that all mankind is fundamentally wicked, he was hauled off to hell just as he finally approached the gates of heaven. Many readers then, and perhaps some now, are sure he got just what he deserved. Such is the power of orthodox beliefs to harden people’s perceptions of right and wrong until they are convinced that not only are they right, but that everyone else is perniciously wrong.

“Human organizations are founded by human beings, and their ideologies have precisely the same human source. It follows that into the ideologies of organizations there creep errors, which may on occasion be gross. Once these errors embed themselves in doctrine, they are beyond the reach of easy correction. They have become part of the source of unity. Their removal is not a mere scientific adjustment but a dislocation of the corporate body.”

The Heretics will change the way you think about how organizations sustain themselves even at the cost of destroying the very ideas they originally espoused. Communism would be a fine example of this, an ideology that promised freedom, equality, and abundance, and became the antithesis of all three.