From supporters of President Obama to Tea Party activists Americans agree that we live in a time of deeply polarized politics. There are numerous explanations but I suspect it comes down to bad theology. I should know. I was my evangelist father's (Francis Schaeffer) sidekick on the religious/political circuit in the 1970s and 80s. We did our bit to launch the religious right. Then I changed my mind and fled.
One thing didn't change when I changed sides: My slash and burn fundamentalist style of attacking those with whom I disagree. This combative "style" lands me on cable news shows because these days even us "progressives" direct derisive exclusionary condemnation at our enemies. So I've been both a perpetrator and victim of retributive exclusion.
Now I'm questioning the wisdom of being a practitioner of dudgeon for hire, even for good causes. That brings me to three new projects: a movie, book and festival that got me thinking.
Last year a young Canadian movie director asked me if I would be interviewed for a documentary called Hellbound? Was I really interested in speculating on camera about "eternal damnation" when I don't believe in hell? Notwithstanding my reservations, Kevin Miller (who happens to be a moderate evangelical) interviewed me.
This summer at the Wild Goose Festival -- an interfaith religious gathering holding its second annual event -- I watched the movie. It's a terrific film and Hellbound? has political implications far beyond theology. The documentary's point of departure is the attacks of 9/11. But the film veers sharply from the usual exploration of these crimes and presents a non-retributive alternative view of God and judgment to our kneejerk ideas evil, punishment and "justified" revenge.
At that festival, I also heard Chris Stedman speak. He's the Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. Steadman gave me a copy of his soon to be published book Faitheist--How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious.
It's no coincidence I saw Hellbound? and met Steadman at the same festival. Wild Goose is on the cutting edge of a too often media-ignored movement that caters to a younger religious set who affirm their evangelical faith while also having tolerant views on gay marriage and other divisive issues. So it was par for the course that a gay atheist writer was speaking alongside an evangelical filmmaker.
Hellbound? will open this September in New York City and then in theaters across the United States and Canada. Fundamentalists will hate the movie and secular folks may be tempted to ignore it. But if you believe in a literal hell, you need to face the tough questions the movie asks about the logic of your beliefs. And if you scoff at the "religious nuts" who believe in hell chances are you've been infected by their kind of absolutist "saved" or "lost" vengeful thinking. For instance, maybe you believe global warming deniers aren't just mistaken but evil and deserve whatever befalls them.
Forgotten in our exclusionary debates is the fact that there is another gentler tradition that runs throughout religion and secular philosophy. For instance, 18th century atheist David Hume declared "that personal merit consists entirely in the... agreeableness of the person... to others." And in the Christian tradition, inclusive concepts of universal salvation go back to some of the earliest fathers. For instance, the 2nd century Epistle to Diognetus says that God is, was, and always will be free from wrath, and that imitation of God consists in caring for those weaker than oneself and rejecting revenge.
All three projects make this point: When we demonize the "other," even in the name of reason, we open the door to a world of zero sum redemption where one person's gain is another person's humiliating loss. We have allowed condemnation to rule our minds, and so it rules our political life. Strange as it may seem, I believe that one bold new movie, a new interfaith festival and a soon to be published book by a young gay atheist point the way to a better future.
As for me I'm burnt out on rhetorically burning others. I'm going to try Hume's agreeableness for a bit. Instead of damning each other, maybe we can learn to show mercy to those with whom we disagree, taking our cue from a teacher who said that love of enemy -- not correct theology or politics -- is all that can make us whole.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and his forthcoming novel Baptism By Sand.
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
Jacques Berlinerblau: Secularism: Where Are the Women?
Max Perry Mueller: The Lost Art of Political Compromise: An Interview With Al Simpson
Phil Cooke, Ph.D.: Do You Believe in Destiny? Maybe You Should
And now I'm asking, "well, what happened???"
Change is hard, and it's easy at times to fall into old patterns. A lot of folks out here believe in you, Frank. But if you're struggling 5 days after you post this, then you might want to have someone help hold your feet to the fire.
Grace.
A perfect summary, and not that easy to achieve!
Delaware; 1776
ART. 22.
" I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."
New Hampshire; 1784
VI. As morality and piety, rightly grounded on evangelical principles, will give the best and greatest security to government, and ... by the institution of the public worship of the DEITY, and of public instruction in morality and religion;
New Jersey; 1776
XIX. That there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; ...but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect...capable of being elected into any office.
Vermont - July 8, 1777
Section IX
And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz.
" I ____ do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Uniiverse,... And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the old and new testament to be given by divine inspiration, and own and profess the protestant religion."
Yale Avalon Project http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/18th.asp
So, if I am not "agreeable" to another/other, I lose, have no personal merit?
I have no value? I am demoted? Demeaned? Denied? Dismissed? Diminished?
So, if "we" citizens of the USA don't agree with terrorists, and they fly planes into buildings, killing thousands of people, Hume will appllad them, and condem us for not being "agreeable".
I suspect thatt Hume didn't believe in Human Rights either, though I've never read him.
Might pay to meditate on just what is meant there... .
Jesus really meant love your enemies but 2000 years later most of the world still does not understand what he really meant.
To love your enemies is to love self even more important it is to love the divine in God and others.all are holy and divine even our enemies. even the bible states all are holy and divine.
As long as we feel and act separate from God we cannot love our enemies.
Tolerance is still judging others first then act with tolerance.
Jesus teachings were very profound; most of the world today still has little understanding of how profound his teachings were and are even today.
Respect is operational as is tolerance is operational ie doing but love is spiritual and jesus taught spiritual reality.
We are all a work in progress and often a work in progress. :-)
I found this spiritual teacher on the internet and he does a good job of teaching love your enemies. ie google PAGL
this being said, i don't believe an inclusive/emergent/integral paradigm can logically transcend and include exclusivist/fundamentalist paradigm's with integrity.
tolerance of the other from a position of freedom/liberty and respect of the individual as one who is 'precious in His sight' is the only way i see to resist condemnation of the other AND impact the world— with persuasion by example.
most disconcerting for me is the lack of the understanding by both 'progressive' and fundamentalist believers of this basic notion of freedom — the Liberty to love into the dark, to love and be wrong.
thank you Frank Shæffer for your loving warmth and wise light.
I watched Bill O'Rielly last night and was informed that 100 million USA Citizens are forced to live on govenment subsistances of some form or another; yes, you heard me right, 100 million.
Putting that into perspective, 1/3 of the Citizens of the USA have been demoted, devalued, denied, disabled, demeand, dismissed and diminished by their own country because jobs are "purposefully" being sent overseas by social scientists, and that's a fact!
Scientists accept the "uncertainty" principle,as they wave their magic wands across the world deciding who's turn it is to eat or not. That it's your family that goes hungry, or that it's your children's, childrens, children that inherit a debt so substancial that they will be unable to bear it, is of no concern to scientists; and it has never been their concern and never will be.
That the world is in jeapordy of losing the greatest gift ever given to Human Kind and that is Human Rights, means nothing to the powers that be who reject Human Rights, and that would include "social scientists".
A free documentary titled The Century of Self, explores this issue and is available on the web.
Notice that neither side talks about that. Both sides are shipping jobs overseas, and purposefully so, knowingly so through Free -Trade agreements destroying economies on both sides of the issue, and allowing the rich to become trillionairs.
While O'Riely rants about government assistance numbers increasing, he says nothing about the poverty rate, or the real reason for it's occurance: loss of manufacturing jobs that have traditionally supplied jobs that pay fair to well.
While the USA was pushing higher education, and sending traditional manufacturing jobs overseas they refused to recognzie that not all people are "college" material, and for various reasons. They failed to recognize that a country cannot sustain a populace that has more college graduates then the job market can sustain.