Thats my opinion
Thats my opinion's JournalCan we discuss religion in a fresh productive way? I'm ready.
This post seeks to discuss the nature of religion as a positive value for some of us, while others legitimately and with good reason see it in a negative light. I realize that I have often responded belligerently before listening.
There is something of a dead-end in what has been happening here. I admit to being part of the problem, but what has been going on has gotten no one anywhere—no growth, no new insight, no understanding of each other. We may joust about who is the bigger, the smarter, the most stupid and superstitious, but there is really little sharing of information, just each of us trying to make debater’s points without success. Nobody is enlightened, let along changed. But perhaps we are not really at work to change anyone else—but to listen.
So let me a suggest a different approach.
First of all, there are some things we all might admit.
1-Every perspective, discipline and point of view has within it both the positive and the negative. The accusation has often been made that religion has an abundance of evil in its history. That is an accurate observation. As a theist, there are many of the terrible works of religion and religious people which are part of my heritage. I must own them: The Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem witch trials, apartheid, slavery and segregation, and much more right down to right-wing religion as captive of the political right wing.—all are part of my history. It is a sad history. At the same time, atheism has its dark side. Like every other perspective good and evil are intertwined. Even science has its issues. The spoiling of the earth, atomic weapons and all weapons for that matter, are the products of a scientific discipline without a moral compass. To make points about who is worse gets us nowhere. We all share a mixed heritage.
2-The crisis facing America has little to do with who is right in our debates. The real issue lies in two very separate notions. One says every person for him/her self, and the devil take the hindmost. The other says that we are all involved in a community in which we need each other. The Christian fundamentalists who talk about their own personal salvation and the Objectivists who talk about the same thing in secular terms come from identical cloth. In both cases, that’s the enemy, not each other. Here in the Democratic Underground we have a very different perspective. We are a community of mutual need and support. Government is one way we manage that perspective.
3-Hard as it sometimes seems, we have much to learn from each other. I need to hear why atheists have been persecuted over the centuries, and to stand with and for them in their persecution. Atheists need to know that underneath the dogma of religion is an ethical imperative with which they probably already agree.
If we can agree about these things, is there a way to become a positive force, particularly as we face the decisions that must be made this year? I am ready to admit the many ways I have been part of the problem, not part of the answer.
Here then is my proposal as to what I will do, only asking a similar response.
1-Instead of focusing on what is evil, wrong, negative about others with a different view point, I will leave that aside and listen to what positive ideas and actions each of us has to offer. I’ll give up on Pol Pot and Ayn Rand. I will no longer try and point out the dark side of atheism, but listen to the positive things atheism and atheists have brought to the table—and ask the same from you.
2-I will immediately remove everyone on my ignore list from that designation, and try and listen with fresh ears to what all have to say.
3-I will quit trying to make smart debater’s points, and try to find ways we can agree about action, even if we will not agree about points of view.
4-While this group is titled “religion,” the issue is not pro-religion or anti-religion, but how each of these perspectives adds to our store of wisdom, and moves toward positive outcomes in the crises facing our country.
5-When I receive another’s post, instead of immediately thinking how I will respond, I will stop and listen before I react.
I’m ready for this transition whenever anyone else is.
Charles
The question has arisen as to the importance of religion and religious people in the civil rights
movement.
I think that any reasonable look at the history will tell us that King, and the religious people, money and institutions that were with him, were essential to the Civil Rights movement, and that without them there would have been no voting rights law and no breakdown of segregation.
Were they the only actors and the only groups that brought an end to segregation and the opening of a whole new America? No. There were many groups, ideologies and perspectives with him. Some of them were non-believers who saw in the religious movement a positive force. There was no effort by anybody to devalue the religious impact.They joined it and were happily welcomed. There was no discrimination or litmus test. Religion or ir-religion was not an issue. Getting rid of segregation was!
What was true in this case was and still is also true in a dozen other positive progressive movements in the United States.
Using a common logical formula, I believe we can say:
Religion, its people, its institutions and its money were necessary causes but not sufficient causes.
The movement could not have existed without them, but what they contributed was not enough. it took many others. It still does.
So we need to join hands, trusting in what others bring to the cause.
Something revolutionary new in religion
When any institution gets stuck in its own dogma, style and government, and refuses to understand that change and growth are endemic to culture, it is in serious trouble. Any wider notion of evolution posits that change and growth are in themseves a fact of existence. Few successful political strategies suggest that if we only go back or concretize the status quo, all will be well. When General Electric said, “progress is our most important product,” the American people said, “Yes!”
What is true of almost everything else, is also true of religious institutions. Those here who insist that there is no such thing as a dynamic modern religious movement, and who want to believe that all religious thought must be dated sometime back, just hope for a moribund form of faith they can more easily attack.
Just last week we saw a biting example of this truth. The Vatican has just unleashed a vigorous attack on its growing progressive edge. Once the nuns got out of their black and white habits and entered the modern world, they discovered that a religious enterprise mired in the 16th century was hopelessly out of date. Up they came from the bowels of a church that never realized that the feminist movement is real, that sex is not universally evil and that a group of old celibate men did not have the last word about life.
For a long time the Vatican has been able to control creative thought through heavy-handed juridical power. What they had not countenanced, however, was the advent of women who had come into their own and were no longer subject to an outmoded patriarchy.
For decades Catholic religious women have been abandoning their orders and the rule of the church. Now within the church the revolt is in full bloom. While the Vatican may now attack the orders in hope that those they appointed as their heads will bring their groups back into proper order, it is a losing battle. Once the Genii is out of the bottle, no amount of old-time pressure can stuff it back.
Women have unleashed something vibrant in a deadly hierarchy. Here is a single contemporary example of what is happening throughout Christianity. There are two groups which are resisting the developments. One is the established religious authorities. The second is those non-theists who are threatened by anything new in religion they cannot put down. They both come out in the same unfortunate place.
Sometime back I posted a version of this newspaper column before it was printed.
Since then several readers have offered important revisions which I have happily adopted.
RELIGION IN NATIONAL POLITICS
No Constitutional issue has generated more legal tangles than the words in the First Amendment; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The language states that there can be no governmentally authorized religion, but no restriction on religious practice. The purposeful ambiguity has allowed courts to read into the words about anything society was feeling at the moment. Nevertheless, even given the fluidity of the language, there are boundaries.
On one hand, it is clear that the United States has no official church. We are not legally a Christian nation. Those who want an authorized religion are always defeated in court. On the other hand, those who hold that religion should play no public part in national affairs come off no better. Ambiguity seems to rule. Since 1974 Under God has been in the Pledge of Allegiance. In God we trust is on our coins. We have chaplains in our armed forces, and even in Congress. I believe the courts have given a wink and a nod to what many believe are violations. On the other hand, officially sanctioned religious prayers in classrooms are forbidden.
Here is a contemporary question: what is the legal role of religion in political campaigns? Does a candidate have the constitutional right to insert his or her private religious convictions into public pronouncements or campaign literature? When Rick Santorum publically said the birth control issue was part of his religious commitment, that affirmation probably fell under the “free exercise” language. However, if the Catholic Bishops declare that the United States must bow to a purely religious edict, and Congress goes along, that is clearly over the line.
Among a small group of Americans one hears the cry, “keep religion out of politics.” While for some that feels right, we still have the balance found in the First Amendment. Many of us on the political left fume when activists on the political right want to include creationism in science classrooms. On the other hand, there are those who decry the incursion of other issues into the national debate. Would they have tried to keep Martin Luther King Jr. out of the civil rights struggle because he was an avowed Christian who believed that what he stood for flowed from his faith? Had his voice been eliminated on that basis, we would never have had a voting rights law. King’s effort clearly falls on the side of free exercise, but the argument of the creationists may not. In the Dover School District case, it was ruled that creationism was an effort to prove the existence of God using public funds, and therefore unconstitutional.
The Constitution does not guarantee freedom from religion, but freedom of religion. Liberal churches these days are committed to certain social policies, and work to see that they are part of the national consensus. Some examples are the end of the death penalty, the full rights of gay and lesbian persons to marry, the end of torture as a national policy, health care for all, a just immigration agenda, strengthening the social safety net, an end to world hunger---and much more. Promoting these vital matters not just as vital social matters but also as moral and religious imperatives, clearly falls on the free exercise side of the First Amendment.
There are nations which prohibit religious values from having any role in public affairs, but their governing documents are not like ours. For those who believe that religious convictions should have no place in national life, their only option is to seek a change in the Constitution. As of now, the free exercise clause does not prohibit religious groups from speaking in the public square.
The legal favoring of one religion over another or even religion over irreligion has no valid place in our official governmental life. The Ten Commandments are not to be placed in our schoolrooms or on public property. Religious symbols, such as the cross, have no place on national shrines. Congress is prohibited from saying that any one religion or religion in general is the basis for any part of our official national life. Nevertheless, in The United States religion never has been simply a private affair. In the meantime many of us will grimace when some types of religious activities get intruded into our political campaigns, as politicians stand reverently while being prayed for by a religious authority. Although the Constitutional line may not be crossed in such displays, respect for the principle of church/state separation may be.
Here's an atheist with a sense of humor.
He heard about some Christian fundamentalists who believed that God would suddenly rapture them right off the earth, leaving beside everything they possessed. What about their pets? This chap agreed to take care of their pets when their owners disappeared. All he needed was to be paid $100 in advance.
There are those liberal Christians who argue with all sorts of hard weapons against such silly notions as the rapture of the righteous. But here is a young guy who made the argument--which turned out to be a sham--with his tongue way down in his cheek.
This item was reported as a brief news clip in The Christian Century--a flagship journal of liberal Christianity.
Maybe we would all do better is we just learned to lighten up and laugh at ourselves and one another instead of you know what.
Is religion responsible for our wars?
While this accusation is often made, lets look at the facts.
The US has been involved in the following wars:
Revolutionary war
1812
Mexican
Spanish American
A dozen against Latin American nations
Civil War
First World War
Second World War
Korea
Vietnam
Iraq
Afghanistan
Have I missed any?
In WWI 30 million were killed, and in WW11 60 million or over 2% of the world's population.
In our Civil War 700,000
In these wars hundreds of millions on all sides have been killed.
None of these wars were instigated for any religious reason.
There are lots of reasons why nations instigate wars. In our history, which includes the major killing in historic wars, none of them had any religious roots. In fact in our most recent wars, thousands of religiously motivated people were COs.
For the first 4 centuries of Christian history, there were no Christians in any army. War was anathema
to their faith.
Religious people have been vital in positively defining the most important ethical issues
to face the county.
While this has been true historically, it has been massively true in modern times.
Let's' begin with the Civil Rights movement. Any solid examination of this vital American phenomenon will conclude that it was the religious community that made civil rights possible. It was more than M. L. King. It was Ralph Abernathy, James Lawson, Abraham Heschel, black and white Churches in every Southern Community, the National Council of Churches, the liberal wing of Judaism, on and on. I was President of the Washington D. C Council of Churches and we were deeply involved in the struggle, in addition to thousands of congregations.
The Freedom Riders and the lunch counter demonstrators were either mainly clergy or devout members of churches.
Without religious groups and persons there would have been no civil rights movement.
In "religion," at least half of the posts have attacked religion in one way or another. But the time has come to ask another set of questions. The involvement of religious people in civil rights is clear. But what has been the participation of either atheists or organizations of atheists? Certainly Ayn Rand was on the other side of the issue--as was Madeleine Murry O'Hare. But what name of an individual atheist or group was prominent and involved? Could it be that it was absent because at its core atheism has no substantial ethical posture? If so, what is it, who is identified with it in the same way that religionists act out of their faith?
Value in society is not known by what people believe--what doctrines they espouse, but how what they espouse forms the substructure of what they do. I think we all hold to that as an ethical reality. Who here would have denied the religious community from participating in civil rights struggle--and at what cost?--
I have pointed out how this applies to theists. How does it apply specifically to atheists?.
This is is a group designed to talk about religion.
For the next week I will post and respond to nothing. For these days, let's add up the number of posts that bash religion, and the number that bash atheism, and see what this forum is really about. Or we could go back to any past week and list the responses. Bye for now. Do we really want to know?
Easter's theme---"nevertheless."
Of the tens of millions who were in church this Easter Sunday--including the 2,000 where my wife and I attend, there were probably as many notions as to what happened in Jerusalem that Easter day as there were people. But Easter does not depend on how people see the events. Each of the four gospels has a different version. But the Easter message has little to do with whose version is correct. The mystery lies far beyond belief in this notion or that.
The Easter truth is finally in this: no matter who you are, what race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or non-religion--no matter what you face or have faced: your deteriorating health, your heartaches and tragedies, your disappointments, dead ends NEVERTHELESS there is built into the heart of reality an optimism, a hope that is for everyone of us. The Christian work is to communicate this hope.
The meaning of the word "gospel" is "good news"--not doctrine. And that is for all of us, no matter who we are or have been. We are not blessed because we are good or have a certain faith, believe certain doctrines, or don't--but because we are created to be loved.
So whoever you are this day, the Easter message is for you. You are accepted!! Whatever you face--NEVERTHELESS!!
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