I am a person of liberal convictions, and I spend most of my time with other liberals. Many of my friends share my liberal political views but recoil from my liberal religious beliefs. The reason that they give most frequently is that "religion is divisive and conservative."
My answer is always the same: "You are absolutely right."
Religion, I tell them, is divisive because it deals with important matters -- above all, the search for holiness and God and the struggle to determine the ultimate values that guide our lives. As human beings contend with these questions, they will offer multiple answers; this has been so since the time of Babel. Indeed, I am always amused that my liberal friends who are so insistent on pluralism in the political realm are so surprised and put off by pluralism in the religious realm. But a diversity of views on religious question is inevitable and desirable. Matters of right, wrong, and the character of the sacred are never simple. Theology, precisely because it deals with weighty and difficult subjects, is a discipline of hard edges.
You are stuck, I go on, in a childish, simplistic mindset that sees religion as a gentle, "let's all get along" affair. But no one needs religion for that. And any religion that, from time to time, is not intellectually ferocious in asserting its idea of the good -- as opposed to someone else's idea of the good -- is not a religion to be taken seriously.
At this point in the argument, my friends look at me with a smirk. You have made my case, they say. Aware of what they are thinking, I acknowledge the underside of religion. Ferocious intellectual arguments about what is moral and what God expects of us can take an extremist turn. They can become an instrument to separate those with our beliefs from the despised "other" who thinks differently. They can become a rationale to hate and even to kill.
But in most instances, I point out, exactly the opposite is true. We humans are essentially communal beings, and in our search for meaning, we build communities with others who share our values. And despite our very significant differences and our claims of superiority, it is fascinating that all major religious traditions end up asserting two basic truths. The first is the fundamental dignity of every human being -- a dignity that can only come from without and not from within; and the second is our capacity for a deep and sincere compassion that enables us to go beyond ourselves and to feel the pain of others.
True, religious people often begin by feeling this compassion for those in their own narrow community, embracing and comforting only those who attend their church or synagogue or mosque, who share their rituals, and who define morality in their terms. But what we see, from the American experience above all, is that once we have learned to relate to our own community with dignity and compassion, we rather quickly acquire the capacity to relate to others in the same way.
Yes, strong views can be dangerous, but, I insist to my friends, once we accept religion's divisiveness we can get something back from it. And that something is that religion ultimately leads to healing far more often than it leads to hate. And that is why religious Americans, as Robert Putnam has demonstrated, are, as a general rule, more charitable, more caring, and better citizens than other Americans.
Regarding the conservative nature of religion, I argue that religion is conservative because it resists the tyranny of the new and the culture of now. It asserts that when we decide on the matters of greatest consequence, we must give a hearing to the sages of old and to the sacred texts that record their voices. The religious world, it should be said, does not agree on how much attention should be paid to these voices. For fundamentalists, it is their holy writings that matter most; for religious liberals such as myself, ancient teachings must be interpreted in light of reason and modern realities. Yet both camps defer, in some significant measure, to the wisdom of those who came before.
But such deference can only be welcome. Religion rejects the arrogance of those who assume that by virtue of the fact that they are here now, living and breathing at this moment, they possess greater insight into the human condition than revered teachers of old. Religion gives the dead a vote. It says that when we want to repair the spirit and learn about kindness and compassion, the teachings of our ancestors are indispensable.
My conclusion: religion is indeed divisive and conservative -- and it is also a very good thing.
The religious community tends to ascribe divine sanction to a small number of ancient works giving them a special status over the new. There could be advantages to an emphasis on the old. But it is far from obvious. We tend to value the ideas we grow up with which puts the new at an immediate disadvantage.
But granting divinity to a certain set of ideas is usually not a good way to advance liberal ideas, nor is it a good way to reason.
What I find vexing is that debating the accuracy of the dogma is entirely irrelevant to the issues that matter. It's not like getting someone to intellectually admit that the world really is more than 10,000 years old is going to change the mission. It's not about rational argument. The science/religion debate merely distracts from the real problem. At the most fundamental level, It's not about religion. It's time to talk about the impact of the religious right on our constitutional government and our respect for each other as individuals.
Oh the delusions are strong with this author.
This is a bit too facile an assertion to make after two-thousand years of Judeo-Christian influence over the West following the demise of the decidedly non-compassionate empires of the ancient world.
So the point of this, is that we have a long complicated history of people, institutions, politics and ideas that are mixed. The compassion of the Christians church when it came into absolute power was mixed. The abuses were high. The Christian church inherited the Roman empire and forced its rule. Compassion? I'd be very careful about making too many statements about that.
really you believe that. a christian nation with 47 million without health insurance because corp profts are more important than health insurance for all of its citizens.
pre existing medical conditions to deny coverage to those that need it most so corporations can make better profits and CEO's mega bonuses.
a christian nation that spends 40% of its federal budget on its war machine. large amount of americans homeless. large amount on food stamps. large amount living in poverty.
religious americans that support an ideology of profits over people.
do some research and find out how much of a churches budget actually goes to feed the poor. most is for admin costs and evangel church planting.
Our whole political system is founded on the idea that it's better if it doesn't; that religion should only be a matter of personal faith and not an arbiter of the public good, because that has always led to tyranny in the past. Better the state should be founded on personal freedom and due process of the law than the moral mission of divinely inspired authority.
"Rabbenu Zal (Our teacher of blessed memory) has taught that happiness is the key to approaching the divine. Always cultivate joy. And so we learn that religion, if it is to be called such, cannot be but this cultivation of happiness. Then there is no need for solemnity, that is, for the sternness of the House of Shammai."
Quotes from Afar
Ananda b'Simcha
Seriously? And you find this in modern society? You have found this in ancient society even?
Religion doesn't give people empathy. It gives people a threat of eternal punishment if they don't pretend to be nice to other people.
Okay, at one time peope like Isaac and Moses were "here now." And they changed their religion, in this case yours. So, why are these guys correct and someone today who wants religion to be different wrong? I mean, didn't Isaac and Moses have revered teachers of old back then as well?
Religion does exactly the opposite. Christians, in particular are sure that the universe, with more stars (and likely planets) than grains of sand in the world, was all created for them. The believe that they can live forever. Religion IS arrogance.
Two outta' three ain't bad: in fact, it's good enough for Meatloaf to make a hit song.
Oh how we've succumbed to the tyranny of the new! Lo how awful is it that this modernity, this stinking heap of innovation, has come to subvert a culture of antiquity! How banal it is that we give a hearing to those who brought us out of the Dark Ages and into the Enlightenment! What tragedy it is for us to have come so far in the fields of medicine that we can save millions from disease by giving them rubber things for their ding-a-lings! How horrible it must be for us to save the lives of pregnant women at the expense of a cluster of cells less intelligent than a fly!
What barbarism it is for us to respect our noble women in place of honor killings and enslaved servitude! Such lunacy have we exhibited as we consult Hawkings and Einstein in our understanding of the stars in place of Saints Matthew and Luke! How deranged it is that we acknowledge theft and murder as immoral without the invocation of such rust and rancorous texts as the Bible!