Last February, Huffington Post Religion launched with my post "Dear Religious (and Sane) America." It was a call for sanity within the religious discourse, arguing that we could disagree without demonizing one another, that people of different traditions and no tradition could learn from one another, and that sane religion was crucial to a productive and peaceful 21st century.
Nine months later, Jon Stewart has hopped aboard Huffington Post Religion's sanity bandwagon with his Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall.
Well, better late than never.
The Rally to Restore Sanity (and Stephen Colbert's counter-rally to "keep fear alive") will be great fun. Of course, at the root of good comedy is uncomfortable truth. Sanity is sorely lacking in America, and fear seems to be growing as the prime mover in our debates. This is a political problem, but it is also a religious one. My hope is that the Rally to Restore Sanity will also be an occasion for sane religious people to find time to celebrate and promote sanity within religion.
So what is sane religion? The word "sane" comes from the Latin sanus, which means "health" or "healing." Sane religion, then, is religion that, regardless of differences in understandings of the Divine or metaphysical beliefs, promotes a healthy personal life and creates positive relationships among the people of the world. Sane religion is productive and allows for clear thinking and a mind free from rage, suspicion and hatred.
A 20th-century roll call of sane religious leaders would include the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, Mahatma Gandhi, and Pope John XXIII, all of whom found sustenance from within their respective traditions to increase liberty, peace, and justice at a personal, communal, national and international level. Sane religious people include the billions of regular people of all faith traditions who are good citizens, welcome the neighbor who is different from them, volunteer for community service and offer comfort to those in need. Religions and religious people can be a vital source for good and a productive element within civil society, but only when approached sanely with our minds tethered to compassion and our passions moderated by intellect.
Of course we have far too many examples of "unsane" religion: Pat Robertson blaming the Haiti earthquake on a "pact to the devil," Glenn Beck equating social-justice-minded Christians with Nazis, Christine O'Donnell running for the Senate on an anti-masturbation platform, and William Boykin telling a church congregation, "I knew my God was bigger than his," referring to a Muslim. I don't mean to say that Robertson, Beck, O'Donnell and Boykin are mentally unbalanced; I don't think they are. And I don't think that they mean to do harm. They are making these pronouncements out of their own worldview, which they have every right to do. However, I do not think that the religion they are promoting is sane in the sense of being healthy and productive. The comments of these Americans are at best trivial and at worst dangerous for a peaceful future.
In more extreme cases, when terrorists and militants use the Quran, the Bible, the Torah or Hindu scriptures to promote an agenda that condones violence and destruction, we are faced with the hard truth that what we teach within our religious traditions matters. There are destructive and dangerous texts in every religious scripture, and every tradition has its history of oppression. Yet within the same holy texts are passages that have inspired great acts of compassion and justice and which have been the building blocks of every major civilization. Religious people are faced with a stark choice between sane or unsane religion -- and the stakes couldn't be higher. Let's rally for sane religion!
While we are at it, let's rally for sane atheism, as well, for people who affirm their point of view and promote rationality and enlightenment principles without making blanket statements about other people who don't have exactly the same worldview. Sane atheism and secular humanists know that there can be reasonable and productive people from every corner of society, and that atheism can promote good as well as bad. Let's rally for productive and positive atheism and secular humanism! Just like sane religious people, sane atheists must affirm that everyone does not have to believe the same thing for us to live side by side in peace.
One final point, but perhaps the most sane point to remember, is that we can all be unsane at times. Even Jon Stewart rolled a clip of his own over-the-top musical tribute to Glenn Beck when he announced the rally. By its inclusion, he reminded his audience that all of us can lose sight of the imperative to live a sane political life and engage in sane discourse. Religious people can be too serious and forget to poke fun at ourselves and laugh. Religious people who attend the Rally to Restore Sanity should look at ourselves to make sure that our own behavior fits sane standards of productive engagement with the "other" and represents a profound search of the best wisdom our traditions have to offer in the areas of peace, love, virtue -- and joy.
See you on the Mall!
Follow Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raushenbush
Obama Backs Jon Stewart's Sanity Rally
Stewart, Colbert: 'Rally To Restore Sanity' vs. 'March To Keep ...
Rally to Restore Sanity battles March to Keep Fear Alive ...
On Late TV, 'Sanity' Rally Is the Topic - NYTimes.com
Rally to Restore Sanity | Facebook
Jon Stewart Announces DC 'Rally to Restore Sanity' | PopEater.com
Obama Backs Jon Stewart's Sanity Rally On Oct. 30 - CBS News
People in general needs to rally to restore sanity. With sanity literally meaning "healthy" wouldn't the term for being unhealthy, insane, mean one is in a healthy state of mind and outsane would be the unhealthy consciousness? We could start by giving proper definitions to the sane state.
Another requirement is to determine definitions of all words, not the molested definitions westerners use. Another such word is "fear," usually defined as being afraid but in fact it means to approach with cautious learning, needing given life. Afraid means to close down all senses except defense senses, yet we use the term intending "caution and learning" as a term to take a defensive stance.
According to Malachi 4:5&6, Elijah should be added that list of sanity restorers, after all, MIL was clearing open discrimination (Malachi 3:1) allowing him to travel the land without being harmed. The Bahi religion said in the year 60 the proclaimer (MLK) of the glory someone (Elijah) in the year 80 would cause the world to receive. We are now 30 years since 80 and Elijah appears to be all but ignored. Media should lift him up to by allowing him to minister on camera to "draw all man" unto his knowledge of sanity. There are some saying civilization will be over in 2011, although doubtful, but don't you think he should be heard by man of all religions in a single session?
The more religion the less spirituality there is.
What we the people need is A Greater Awaking and I can take you there @
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=64&Itemid=195
It offers a structure for belief, but what adherents do with it is up to them. They are accountable for their actions. Perhaps one can have "spiritualism" (depending on the definition) without "religion," but religion without spirituality is meaningless.
As John Lennon said: "That what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong…Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
“You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate...All we are saying is give peace a chance...All you need is love...Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one...Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
There is no such thing as a "Christian politics". If it's political, it cannot be Christian! Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign was this present order, my servants would have fought again my being turn over to the Jewish authorities. But my reign is not here!" Jesus brought no political message or program.
This truth needs to be emphasized at a time when some of America's Democrats, fearing Republican advances by the use of religion, are sorely tempted to respond that Jesus is on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap Him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea.
But doesn't Jesus say we should care about the poor? Repeatedly and insistently...but what He does say goes far beyond politics and is of a different order.
The state cannot indulge in self-sacrifice; if its for the poor, it must be on the grounds of justice, appealing to arguments that will convince those who are not Jesus' followers.
Are you saying the "State" can't be compassionate ?
The flow of my thoughts was about the Gospel message and how what it teaches would apply to a Christian faced with the question of Politics and social responsibility.
But what I was implying was that Christianity is not a collective of souls open to the power of the Gospel, and could possibly be regenerated en-mass, so by this definition there can be no such thing as a "Christian" country.
Only a country that recognizes God's sovereignty and honors the teachings of Jesus in their mores, customs, traditions and laws. and I believe... as far as they do so, they will be compassionate.
He declares that only one test will determine who will come into His Kingdom: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would treat Jesus Himself. "Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me." No government can propose that as its program! The norms of justice will inevitably fall short of the demands of love Jesus imposes.
A Christian may adopt just political measures from his or her own motives of love, but that is not the argument that will define justice for State purposes!
But some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics.
They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan "what would Jesus do?"
That is not a question His disciples ask in the Gospels. they never knew what Jesus was going to do.
The Jesus of the Gospels is not an ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading Humanitarian.
And no politician is going to tell the lustful they must pluck out their right eye.
We cannot do what Jesus would have done because we are not Divine.
And next line "They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan "what would Jesus do?" I don't see how "They" can think both. ?
I feel like I stoped to listen to a political disscussion and it turned into a Sermon.
If a political party wins congratulating themselves they "We can't lose, God in on our side.after all we're Gods Own Party " . Don't you think ' Would Jesus cut spending on the poor ?" is a valid question ?
If the lessons of history are any indication, the only possible results, as we are now already seeing, is the corruption of both Christianity and Government.
Each of these numbers are the recent findings. Each is also a downward slide from previous ratings. It is a gradual but, nonetheless, consistent decline.
I don't thank that has anything to do with religion, or not. Religions would claim to be the moral fabric, but if they are, then they need to ask themselve what the hell they are doing? Why are they failing?
It is the same with human secularism/atheism. What the hell is going on?
I watched the rally in Washington today. It began with the national anthem. Why bother if it is wrong to be a nationalist, patriotic?
I remember John Lennon, and I remember his song, Imagine; no nations, no religions, no heaven no hell?
Who rules? The UN? God forbid. Are the people of Iran going to adopt our values if there is no nations, or will we be forced to adopt theirs, or Russia's, or how about China's.
John was an old hippy, like the rest of them, who grabbed sound bites from the communes, gathered them together, then sold them back to you. That's what they all did. We believed these things; a brotherhood of man. And the brothers? They fight back. They don't want our hippy tunes and ideas, they have their own.
Have you been listening to Glen Beck again with "Sob..it isn't illegal to be American , yet..sniff, wipes tear."
The Rally was all about NOT letting the extreme Right or Left ru(I)n this country.
How all the differant people on the freeway were working together and making it work. And how our leaders weren't.
Your post just once again trots out the FEAR, no nations,no religions,no heaven,the hippys will rule we will be JUST like China and Russia.UN rules, Run Away! Run Away! Save us Glen and Rush !
And now I'm suspossed to be AFRAID of " the Brothers"? Did you just watch the Rally,and not listen to anything ? It's the very FEAR you and Glen/Rush are peddling that the rally spoke against.
Well I guess thats why you live in Fear of anyone that doesn't dress,talk ,and think just like you.
BTW which "Brothers" are we suspossed to FEAR now ? The Blues Bros. or the Jonas Bros.?
We are America ,The middle class. Not the Hippies and Not the Wall Streeters.
Power really does corrupt wheather its the followers of Jesus and the inquesition, or Joe Stalin saving the working men of Russia.
Power will destroy any religon who touches it. And any politician who touches it.
Perhaps we should require our politicians to have this saying written accross each of their foreheads just as a reminder to all of them.
I don't see what a Christian can possibly do, who doesn't see creating a better world and society through politics as a duty which Jesus Himself said was wrong, can be ask to rally against those Evangelical Christians in the Tea party for example, who are dead set on creating a kingdom of God on earth, who don't see blurring the line between Church and State as any problem.
And there is even the much larger problem of a country that honors God with its lips, but indulge in most of the great cardinal sins forbidden in the Bible.
How can he ask Christians to join with atheists and agnostics in finding solutions for a better world, when this world is the only one they ever hope to have, but Christians are to look for the world to come, and are specially told to" love not the world, neither the things in the world, for all that is in the world, is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
So, I would like him to be a little more specific about what he means by restoring sanity?
Uh-huh. Who's jumping on whose bandwagon here?
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
I can only be there in spirit, but will pray for a wonderful rally -- we sure could use the sanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtyWFXDg24c