Two religious responses from the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11 demonstrate how religion has been both a divisive and unifying force in America over the last ten years.
The first was from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who assigned blame for the attacks to God who, they explained, was angry at America because of Gays, Feminists and the ACLU, among others. While fires still smoldered at Ground Zero, Falwell and company were ironically fanning the flames of discord and division by blaming God and liberals instead of religious extremism.
The second response was different. As soon as reports made clear that the terrorists claimed allegiance to the fundamentalist Islam of Osama bin Laden, many feared violence might be directed toward the American Muslim population. Yet in the days after 9/11, reports came from all across the country that Christians, Jews, and other people of faith had called local mosques to offer support and solidarity. Instead of turning against Muslims, the religious community rallied for their fellow Americans of a different faith tradition.
These two examples show the simultaneous yet divergent directions that religious practice and thought has taken in America in the last ten years. 9/11 made it clear that religion, which had been ignored in global political calculations and overlooked by the media for decades, was still a force, and perhaps the force in people's personal and communal lives.
While many still hold that religion is essentially divisive, since 9/11 it has been clear that religion has been an overwhelmingly positive force to bring people from different backgrounds together within American society.
I use myself as a case in point. Ten years ago I knew basically nothing about Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. I knew a bit about Judaism being from an interfaith background, but even that was minimal. I was an ordained pastor, yet my training had ignored other religious traditions. Ten years later, most seminaries require a working knowledge of other religious traditions to graduate. 9/11 impressed upon religious communities that to be an effective religious leader requires knowing the essential beliefs held by our neighbors of other faiths.
In fact, 9/11 gave me a new sense of my vocation as a pastor. From 2003 to 20011, my ministry consisted of promoting interfaith engagement at Princeton University. I worked with hundreds of students from different religious traditions who demonstrated a deep commitment to being with and learning from people of different religious and ideological backgrounds. Since 9/11, interfaith groups have been formed at colleges and high schools around the country. A new movement of interfaith cooperation is growing that values the uniqueness of individual traditions (increasingly including secular-humanist), while believing that people can and must respect one another across differences of belief. Groups such as Religions for Peace, the Parliament of the World's Religions, Fellowship in Prayer and countless of others continue to bring people of different faiths together both in America and around the world.
Yet there is a sense of urgency that surrounds the mission of these groups. Eboo Patel, a Muslim leader who heads the Interfaith Youth Core acknowledged: "In the twenty-first century, faith can be a bomb of destruction, a barrier of division or a bridge of cooperation." Even while there have been great strides among all faiths towards a more unified pluralistic America, there have been episodic physical attacks against Muslims and Sikhs, and there are many for whom religion provides a platform for proclaiming suspicion and division of people of different faith traditions, most notably Muslims.
Last year's observance of 9/11 was marred by an intentional furor over a proposed Muslim community center at Park 51 even though the Imam was widely known for his interfaith cooperation and his rejection of Islamic extremism. A recent study showed that there is an organized and concerted effort to create a fear of Muslims which had led to anti-sharia (Muslim law) bills being proposed and passed in states where nobody was even proposing that sharia might be instated. While anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be increasing, even after Osama bin Laden was killed; Muslims in America have a general sense of well-being, and are actually more satisfied with the way things are going in this country than the average citizen.
In recent years we have also heard an increasingly loud insistence on the essential Christian (and more recently Judeo-Christian) nature of this country. When the interfaith director of a Hindu Temple was invited to open the Senate in 2007, there were protests against an invocation to a "non-theistic god." And who can forget the mustachioed Florida pastor who decided to make a name for himself by burning a Quran.
Yet even the much publicized proposed Quran burning demonstrated how much America had come together across religious divides. As I wrote in an earlier piece, the Pastor was surprised to find himself completely isolated in his desire to desecrate another tradition's Holy book. Both liberal and conservative religious and political leaders recognized that this was not the kind of America we envisioned, and instead as one people we showed our support for a genuinely pluralistic America.
Perhaps nothing has given me more hope in the productive possibilities of religious people coming together than my experience as the Senior Religion Editor of The Huffington Post. We have over 600 religious leaders and academics from across the religious and ideological spectrum who write for the site. Each of our writers is on the front line against extremist and destructive elements within all of our traditions; and are living examples of the possibility of honestly sharing the wisdom and truth of their own tradition without succumbing to the temptation to violate or denigrate the tradition of their neighbor.
We are all still healing from the wounds of 9/11. Religious communities and leaders must continue along a path that rejects division, violence and hate, and must instead harness all of the wisdom and compassion inspired by the world's great traditions to create a more perfect America and world.
Follow Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raushenbush
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No ROY, some G. and lots of BIV.
With the Christian Right moving more and more to the forefront in right wing politics, as a way to score points (Holier Than Thou Syndrome), this is not likely to change for the better very soon, unfortunately. Religion should be a private personal thing rather than a club used to bash others in the public square.
I've come to believe there is such a thing as secular "fundamentalism", with the similarities between religious and secular fundamentalists being defined by attitude, not by any particular beliefs or the lack of them. Religious and atheist fundamentalists are alike in their blanket condemnations, willful ignorance, simplistic analyses, gross generalizations and in a quickness to condemn anyone who doesn't agree with them.
As an atheist myself, I see no value in indulging in deliberate misunderstandings as a means of opposing those aspects of religion I don't like. We're supposed to be the rational ones, remember. If we really want to rid the world of the destructive aspects of religion, it's time to start making clear distinctions. Who is our real enemy here? I don't think it's Reverend Raushenbush and other religious people like him.
Devisive? Yes. For those who are faith based, leave those of us who are not, alone. If you think getting me to your god will give you a higher seat in your heaven, your problem starts there and not with those of use enjoying our lives with religion.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans use the Bible more than the US Constitution is carrying out their agendas. And We The People allow this. We say, "There needs to be Separation of Church and State," then instantly cross that line to further our agenda. The Democrats say, "Not me, it's THEM." The Republicans say, "Not me, it's THEM."
The truth is that We The People have our heads up our.........!!!
But when one dives into the esoteric level of each religion, one will see unity.
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P.S. I used to post as "tolerant", but there is a technical problem with that account so I can no longer post as "tolerant". Consquently, I have created this new account, "still-tolerant".”
Each religion forms unique radius of that circle.
At the circumference, the religions reside at their most exoteric level, with all the religious forms.
And they all differ.
At the Center is The Truth or the Divine Essence, which is formless.
All radii begin their journy from their exoteric (formfull) existence but they begin to converge as they reach near the Center.
At some point, they cross a line that divides their esoteric and exoteric levels and become more and more esoteric.
Eventually, when they converge at the Center, they "arrive" at the formless Truth, a union with the Reality.
Most of the differences, which divide us, are at the circumference of the circle.
Many people are stuck there and engage in arguing and belittling the others.
But there are those men and women who have the right perspective and attitude.
So while they recognize their religious differences at the exoteric level, they are fully cognizant of the fact that every planery religin contains within it the Universal Truth.
So the objective should be to stop arguing over forms and start living our own traditions to the fullest and journey along our own radius.
I recall many years ago how for example esp. Catholics had deep hatred for Jews/Israel, blacks.
That's not to say that individually the Catholic and the Jew couldn't be good friends.
But I know what I witnessed whether racial violence against blacks on the beach, or hate harangues in private or mostly public against the jews etc.
A possible theory appears to be that adversity that reverts human existence to a more natural state also eliminates many of the distractions that divert humanity from its most important priorities, apparently expressed in the Bible as loving God with all one’s heart and one’s neighbor as oneself. I welcome your thoughts.
The issue appears to be conflict of opinion and the perception that one’s perspective accurately represents the standard. This appears to suggest a higher-level entity who establishes the standard of propriety. The Bible appears to suggest this entity to be God.
If one God is establishing one standard of propriety, one would expect that it would be at the center of EVERY religion, and remarkably, there is a standard that qualifies: The Golden Rule. Perhaps we ought to be move back, stop assuming God has found us competent to supervise other people, and simply use "do unto others" to test our own decisions, while respecting others' right to do the same.
Just a congratulatory aside, I have noticed that those who post on these religious questions are generally more polite and respectful to one another as a group than on politics, even when there is crossover.
Politicians want us to believe that Big Oil has control over government.
Politicians want us to believe that Bankers have control over government.
Politicians want us to believe that Wall Street has control over government.
Government stopped my daughter from saying, "Merry Christmas."
Government owns the oil in the US and makes more profit than all American oil companies combined in the petroleum business.
Government controls the US Dollar and fights wars to maintain that control.
Government uses Speculators as tax conduits from our pockets to their control.
Representatives are suppose to be our employees, but we have allowed them to become our puppet masters through distractions like religion, etc
We The People allow politicians to continue to work for their political parties, when they are suppose to be working for We The People (who pay them their wages).
Politicians put band aids on broken legs and tell us they have "fixed" the problem and we should continue to vote for them.
Rather, I see the problem as following religions that base their faiths on books that cannot change. What these religions do is insist that the information in their book cannot change. They see information as static. And as a result they are forced to make the current environment they find themselves fit the static information of the book they use.
So for example, if bad thing happen, the reason must be found in the book. This is why Pat Robertson is able to blame liberals, gays, and the ACLU for the 9/11 attack. People of the book must twist current reality to fit the reality described in the book.
But information is not static. Information is dynamic. Information changes as we learn more.
This is why eastern religions are going to survive much longer than than religions of the book.
The only time they bring people together is when you subscribe/commit to one of its factions and beliefs.
It's not in its DNA to bring people of all faiths together.
You've leapfrogged and made assumptions and characterized a "dichotomy" in a very narrow spectrum "railroading" to a presupposition.
Assume we know there is a god, how does anyone know his "requirements"? Different beliefs, and their factions, have drastically varied interpretations of these "requirements".
It's not similar to other social structure, we're dealing with an entity that's based on pure speculation and assumptions that our speculation is valid. Most other social structures are based on a "real-world" experienced premise that we can wrap our brains around... the afore mentioned we cannot (although many think/want to believe they can)
How does one distinguish/identify those "some who misrepresent"? And what are the qualifications/validations for one to judge so?
It's not necessarily a dichotomy. "Non-believers" aren't necessarily direct opposites to "believers". "Believers" believe with certainty that god exists, "non-believers" make no claims of certainty in their arena, they just don't know, and admit that (exception, hardcore atheists)
Believers leverage on dichotomies as it simplifies complex/not understood into palatable black and white premise. When in fact, life, particularly the concept of "god" (beyond my/your ability to grasp) is a gray area.
"Man" is an insecure animal, with the ability to reason himself in and out of anything, "coloring" the misunderstood/unknown to squelch his insecurities and fears. Understanding this provides a premise to understand and avoid misleading, and potentially negative, conclusions.