While changing feed readers today I had to decide how to categorize various blogs. I noticed how often a religious or spiritual blog could also be classified as a political one. I find that surprising on one hand and inevitable on the other. Surprising because when I belonged to a church for a few years in the late 70s we seldom spoke of politics in relation to religion. The blending of the two was discouraged at that time. Yet some merging of religion and politics seems inevitable today. It’s impossible to discuss one without someone mentioning the other.
Why? I fear it has more to do with intolerance than anything else. Not just intolerance for religion as a whole, or an individual’s intolerance for one or another specific religion or group of religions. This is bigger—intolerance within the leadership and membership of large, established religions—intolerance for all others. I see wider and wider gaps between religions, lack of communication and cooperation, lack of compromise in politics. I find this development increasingly disturbing. Secularism isn’t just vanishing in Iraq. It’s vanishing here at home and in the world at large.
It’s more common these days for a single religion to call all others (including no religion) evil, to condemn all others outright. It’s more common today for a state religion to dominate government to the extent that some form of religion becomes the law.
If I’m wrong, if intolerance isn’t all that common among spiritual and religious people as a whole, then we’re hearing a lot of extreme voices—or a few loud ones—and not much from more tolerant religious folks at all. I wonder why this is, and it worries me. Don’t most mainstream religions still teach some form of tolerance? Have the extremists won all the other religious people over? Why aren’t all religious people speaking out more on the side of tolerance—not just tolerance for their own faiths, but tolerance in general? If they are, why aren’t they being heard? What is behind the lack of tolerance we find so rampant today in the news? Are people more worried their children will follow other faiths than they are worried their children will be forced to follow theirs?
Religion today, at least the religion we hear about most in the news, seems to be led by power brokers, people more interested in gaining followers and keeping them, and even in controlling governments, by any means possible—often through emotion, primarily fear and hatred—than they are interested in anything else. Where’s the quiet work toward spiritual growth? Where’s the charity? Where’s the worship? The humility? Must a religion use fear to gain followers? Force? Domination? That’s what many religious leaders in the world today appear to teach. If extremists are so political and so vocal, perhaps it’s time for the mellower side of religion to speak up in response.
Where will it end? What’s the answer? My greatest fear about this is that the world has entered a new dark age. I fear a future in which my generation’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live as the Europeans of old did, who scrambled to act the faithful Protestants under one king and good Catholics under the next, or have their beliefs vanish like those of the various pagan cultures buried in obscurity since missionaries first traveled the globe.
That kind of scurrying to appease the dominant religious leaders isn’t religion or faith. That’s abuse and survival.
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Some links to related articles:
On Afghani Christian convert:
Afghan Christian asks for asylum
Mood hardens against Afghan convert
Afghan Christian Convert May Avoid Prosecution
Judge Defends Court In Afghan Christian Convert Case
CAIR Calls for Release of Afghan Christian; Islamic Civil Rights Group Says Conversion a Personal, Not State Matter
On Missouri resolution to establish Christianity as a state religion:
Reject state religion
Proposed House resolution on religion irks some here
Missouri House resolution on religion, prayer and government
1.
I’m naturally a very tolerant person, but I also have strong beliefs about protection of children, fairness, protection of the weak, etc.
I think we need to set standards (thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not molest children are the only two that I consider non-negotiable) and then say,
“We will tolerate all religions and give them their due space and respect UNLESS they violate the ban on murders and child molestation.” If they promote murder and/or child abuse, they will NOT be tolerated.
Toleration without intelligent humane moderation allows-nay, encourages-these vile acts of suicide bombing and child mutilation in the name of religion.
Comment by Sarah — March 27, 2006 @ 4:50 pm
2.
Barbara, I think you’re hearing louder voices from extremists rather than religious factions changing as a whole. But you’re right about the political finger pointing and labeling of the to major parties in U.S. politics slowly being more obvious in their religious implications. And the one thing you’re the most right about is that tolerance, which is the basis for this whole country being entered and populated, should be the goal and right above all.
Comment by susan — March 28, 2006 @ 4:35 am
3.
Sadly, the loudest religious voices we seem to hear these days, from the fundamentalists, both here and abroad, seem to me filled with hatred. I have no knowledge of Islam at all, but last year I reread the gospels (I’m not a churchgoer) and so far as I could see Christ spoke about love and treating each other decently and helping the poor. Maybe I had a bad translation and all these fundamentalist, racist, gay baiting, anti-welfare, pro Corporate greed and war folks are reading the original Aramic or something. They couldn’t have found their ideas in what I read.
Comment by Eric Mayer — March 28, 2006 @ 9:44 pm
4.
I come from a family of Catholic fundamentalists. They didn’t take the extreme right-hand turn till I got into college and so, I wasn’t raised in such a strict, constructionist household as they became. But they are almost the ONLY fundamentalist churchgoers that I know. Not that I don’t know other churchgoers. I belong to a very moderate Presbyterian church and have friends of many faiths (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim) and none of them exhibit the intolerance that you talk about.
But the fundamentalist sects are the ones that shout so loud that they are all that the world hears. Why is that? I think people who are angry and/or frightened are the ones that act out and strike out. People like me don’t shout at other people about our faith; we just quietly go about trying to live our beliefs…hoping that we will be an example that others will want to follow rather than insisting that others agree with us and be clones of who we are.
I am actually more of a spiritual person than a religious one. There are many things that the Presbyterians believe that I don’t and I find the structure of religion with all of it’s manmade rules and folderall as really outside my frame of reference. So, I am not actually defending religion, per se, but just remarking on how many truly fine and tolerant religious people I know.
Comment by violetismycolor — March 28, 2006 @ 10:08 pm
5.
Here’s an update on the Afghan man who converted:
Afghan convert ‘arrives in Italy’. He’s been granted asylum and has arrived in Italy.
I also found some interesting opinion pieces at Belifenet, a couple by Muslim authors, who appear to have a more flexible view than the Afghan government on apostasy.
The Legal Tradition of Islamic Apostasy by Ibrahim Abusharif (reprinted from Alt.muslim).
Converts from Islam: Let God Be the Judge by Hesham A. Hassaballa, a midwestern Muslim.
Conversion Prosecutions Rare to Muslims by Jasper Mortimer, Associated Press Writer (I found the headline misleading).
Middle East Democracies Must Protect Religious Freedom by Charles Colson (reprinted from Breakpoint).
Good starter reading for those of us interested in learning more about this issue than we can get from TV and radio news.
Comment by Barbara — March 29, 2006 @ 5:05 pm
6.
I have been completely turned off from organized religion for many reasons — and the main one being that intolerance tends to be tantamount to BEING religious. I do think that the vocal fundamentalists push that doctrine. But, I also think of people I know who are not particularly fundamentalist — just supposedly “Christian”, and their views are similarly narrow-minded. My cousin, who is truly a fresh breath of air and in many ways sets a warm example of living a Christian life, was dumbfounded when I once mentioned in conversation that that there was proof that homosexuality was inborn, not a choice. Even presented with evidence and studies clearly documented (and superbly explained on PBS in a documentary called “Brain Sex”), she refused to believe it. Refused to go there. Ca-chink. Case closed. (Probably believed it was the “work of liberals” — a word that they tend to equate with “the devil”).
I agree with Sarah, that murder and abuse should never be tolerated. But in the name of religion (including present-day Catholic priests), these vile acts occur regularly, and always have.
I loathe the hipocrisy of organized religion. Standing on the beach, watching the seagulls and the waves and the glittering sun, smelling that fresh briny air — feeling total spirituality from Earth’s awesome beauty granted to us — that’s where my soul is lifted, and there’s certainly no intolerance or politics present.
And even if I don’t 100% believe that Jesus is my savior, I still resent being told by people that if I don’t believe that, I won’t be going to heaven. I don’t think it’s up to them! I tend to think that silly seagull has more to say about it!
Comment by Tonya — March 30, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
7.
This is just my somewhat-humble opinion, but I’ve always felt that organized religion is to spirituality what the Ku Klux Klan is to a high school pep rally. Beware fanatics of all kinds.
Comment by blogdog — April 2, 2006 @ 6:16 am
8.
The worst that can happen is for people like you and me to sit by on our hands, muzzled, and not to risk speaking out. ‘”Just” say no’ is simplistic and unrealistic. Be brave and say NO! No, you will not run our country and make laws based on your particular religious beliefs. Yes, it is dangerous to speak out against intolerance and abuse, and it is dangerous to your spirit to stay silent.
Comment by Georganna Hancock — April 2, 2006 @ 11:35 am
9.
I’m for tolerance and discussion.
Comment by Kim — April 7, 2006 @ 4:31 pm