More from Jack Good's book

In The Dishonest Church, Jack Good mentions his experiences at a church-sponsored college, where he learned a great deal about the Bible from an Old Testament professor named Dr. Loren Dow. He learned the sorts of things that scholars know, but which don't necessarily conform to the party line of the orthodoxy. He then describes the reaction to all of this from his classmates. Some of them, disillusioned by what they learned, went on to have professions far removed from any religious calling. But others did go on to become church pastors. He describes what happened to these pastors:

They are well trained and well informed. They, too, shared in Dr. Dow's classrooms. They know that the Bible is a collection of writings composed by more than seventy very human writers. They know that the question of which writings to include in the Bible has been, and continues to be, a matter of controversy. They know that some of the material in the Bible attributed to Moses includes a description of Moses' death, and therefore could not have been written by him. They know that Paul wrote his letters before the Gospels were composed, and that the Gospels were written, in part at least, to argue with some of Paul's ideas. Yet reports I continue to receive inform me that most of these professionals keep all such matters well hidden from their congregations. With a few important exceptions, they continue to finesse all comments on any subject they consider delicate. Somewhat as a politician might, they tread carefully along the edge of truth and falsehood, using words with which they can live in good conscience but which fail to challenge or engage their listeners. They, along with the vast majority of local pastors, have chosen to reject the role of bridge between styles of faith; they selected, instead, the role of sentinel, guarding the laity from any contamination from the truths they themselves carry.

Food for thought.

Creating Progressive Christianity

Jack Good, while discussing in The Dishonest Church the differences between what he calls progressive Christianity and what he calls popular Christianity, mentions the dangers that both forms of the faith can pose:

Popular Christianity at its extreme becomes judgmental and rigid. Witch burnings, inquisitions, and religious wars are too frequently the bloody, tragic results. Progressive Christianity carries another set of dangers: Unless care is taken to see that it is deeply and strongly rooted in an ongoing tradition, it becomes a watery system with few defining commitments, a wide but thin blanket placed over ideas that are often distressingly shallow.

Personally, I think that witch burnings and inquisitions are a vastly more serious danger to the world than a watery religion, but he does raise a valid point. Progressive Christianity could, if not rooted in Christian tradition, simply evolve into another iteration of Unitarian Univeralism.

That isn't to say that Unitarian Universalism is a bad thing. It serves the needs of a body of adherents, and as such offers a legitimate role in American religion. I myself found the UU denomination to be an entry point back into religion after years of atheism. But this is not the direction that I would like to see progressive Christianity move in. It is interesting to consider what happened in the history of the UU faith. Having originated as a liberal strain of Christianity (well, actually two liberal strains--Unitarianism and Universalism), it nevertheless over time became so attached to the idea of free thinking that it divorced itself from the Christian tradition altogether--to the point where only a small minority of its adherents now consider themselves Christian at all. And, despite an ostensible commitment to tolerance and diversity, many UUs are actively hostile to Christianity in any form.

The key is, as Good points out, staying rooted in the Christian tradition. There is, I believe, a body of faithful believers who want to remain within the Christian tradition but who also want to practice a thinking, non-dogmatic version of the faith that accepts modern science and serious biblical scholarship. This is what progressive Christianity should be about, and it is these people who have left many mainline denominations behind because those denominations did not satisfy this need.

The Dishonest Church

I have begun reading a book, The Dishonest Church by Jack Good, that directly addresses my concerns about the "game" that seems to take place in many liberal-to-progressive churches. The game that I describe involves, during worship services, the recitation of biblical myths verbatim as if they were all true, without any associated commentary or critical discussion, even though the clergy or congregation may not take those biblical myths literally.

Good argues that many clergy members, at least within mainline denominations, learn about higher biblical criticism in their seminaries, and thus develop a non-literal interpretation of the Bible; but in many cases, they never relate this understanding to their congregations, perhaps out of fear of rocking the boat. As a result, there is a disconnect in some congregations between what the clergy says in church, and what the clergy actually believes.

It all seems like a case of "wink wink nudge nudge".

I once had a conversation with the then pastor of the UCC church I frequently attend. I mentioned that one reason Christmas was not my favorite holiday was that I didn't believe that the biblical birth narratives that it celebrates were literally true. She said that a lot of pastors don't believe that either. She described a process that takes place in seminaries, after the first semester or so, when many students undergo a crisis of faith as they become disabused of their previous notions about the Bible. This is apparently a well known phenomenon in seminaries.

As Good puts it in his book,

Pastors and other trained professionals of the church often have developed a system of beliefs that is qualitatively different from the faith they communicate to local congregations. Their individual faith has developed, in most cases, after an intense and sometimes painful time of questioning, dismantling, and reconstruction. For reasons that are not clear, these leaders assume that local church members are either unwilling or unable to survive a similar process. So, in an act of dishonesty that threatens to erode the core of the church's mission, they hold one kind of faith for themselves while the literature they produce for the laity and the sermons they deliver assume another, basically different, style of faith for the non-professional.

My feeling is that this process of pandering to the orthodoxy actually can lead to a lot of disillusionment among thinking members of the congregation, and probably has a lot to do with increasing membership in what John Shelby Spong calls the "church alumni society".

I remember when I was in school many years ago, in English class the students and teachers would discuss the actions, motivations, and personalities of fictional characters in the novels and stories we read, as if they were real people. We would draw inferences about the human condition from these stories. The same can certainly take place on a spiritual level from the events and characters depicted in the Bible. But the difference is that, in English class, we discussed the fictional events and characters as if they were real, never pretending that they actually were real; and we always were aware of the fact that these works were constructed by authors, who had intentions that lay behind what they wrote. The ability to look at fiction on these two levels is what makes it so compelling.

Church, of course, isn't the same as English class; the Bible, for one thing, is not all fiction, and it is not secular literature; it is a mixture of history and fiction, theology and mythology, poetry and prose, and sometimes it is difficult to discern what is historically true and what isn't, although in many cases we can make reasonable guesses. Nevertheless, I want to make clear that I certainly can accept that I can see the value in discussing the mythological stories in the Bible as if they were real, just as I did with literature in my old school English classes. I don't have a problem with relaying the biblical myths in that way. But, especially since there are fundamentalists out there who actually take these myths literally, it would be nice every once in a while for progressive clergy to just come out and admit that these stories are myths and to treat them as such. Why not admit, for example, that the Jesus birth narratives didn't literally happen as Matthew and Luke told them? I rarely hear so much as peep to that effect in the churches I have attended. Maybe I'm attending the wrong churches or something; but from Good's book, it appears that this is a fairly common phenomenon.

Finding progressive Christianity

An Episcopal church is located not far from my workplace. It has noontime services on certain weekdays, and it would be convenient for me to pay it a lunchtime visit during the work week, as a way of getting a weekday fix on my spirituality. It is true that conventional, Book of Common Prayer style Episcopal services don't interest me, but I was told in an e-mail exchange with the rector that they don't recite creeds as part of their weekday worship, which resolves one of my biggest objections to Episcopal-style services. So far, so good. However, I still haven't managed to make myself visit, in part because I've fallen into my more ingrained resistance to to the whole ceremony of the Eucharist, which is presumably a central part of that service. But I admit that I also felt a little resistant because of uncertainty over the whole question of how progressive this church is.

It turned out that a co-worker belongs to that church, and she told me that her husband, who regularly attends, doesn't agree with a lot of the church teachings and regularly discusses his objections on certain issues with the rector. This sounded pretty good to me. My coworker also wasn't fazed by my objections to participating in the Eucharist; she said you could just cross your arms and refuse to drink the wine if that was how you felt. Again, so far so good. But then, I read some online sermons by the rector, and that is where I found a sense of disappointment. The rector talked about the resurrection in one of her sermons, and she said some things that I just couldn't accept. For example, she said that "the bedrock" of Christian hope is "the resurrection of Jesus, with all its implications for our own eternal salvation." She added that, even though one might not accept a particular argument for this resurrection that was presented in the New Testament, she asks others to "not distance yourself from it. I ask you to trust in it, to accept it as reliable witness to God’s power and propensity for the great reversal."

Now maybe when she uses the word "resurrection", she means something other than the physical, literal walking on the earth by a risen Jesus. But I didn't get that sense from her sermon, and I must say therefore that I will not just trust as an article of faith something that I consider to be a violation the fundamental understanding of the post-Enlightenment world. Dead people don't physically rise from the dead and walk around and converse with others, as portrayed in the mythological resurrection accounts of Matthew, Luke and John. If this is what she expects someone like me to believe, then I am afraid she will be disappointed. It just ain't gonna happen.

She goes on in that sermon to express the notion that the hope of eternal life is the fundamental core of Christian belief. Once again, this has nothing to do with my faith. I couldn't care less about any focus on life after death. And, frankly, it is a point of pride for me that this isn't what my religion is about. To me, focusing on eternal life, if it exists, distracts from the mission at hand--building the Kingdom of God here on earth. My religion is about my relationship with God and others today, in the here and now. To me, focusing on any alleged "eternal life" would mean to turn my entire religion inside out, make it something that it is not.

Recently, I was thinking about the new pastor at the UCC church that I attend, and in particular his differences from the one he replaced. He tends to be a little more conventional in style than his predecessor, and his sermons are more Bible-focused and delivered more in more conventional ways as well. This made me feel a little bit skittish. Is he more orthodox theologically than I can be comfortable with? I'm not sure. But then I thought about the services since his arrival, and I realized that, despite these stylistic changes, there is still, thankfully, no confession of sins as part of the service (and the word "sin" rarely, if ever gets mentioned), no recitation of creeds (UCC services in general don't do that, as far as I can tell), no talk in his sermons about how we need to be "saved", and in general none of the elements of orthodoxy that would make me run screaming.

It is possible that this particular pastor does believe that Jesus was literally, physically resurrected from the dead. Perhaps, if I were to attend services on Easter day, I would know for sure where he stands on the subject. But at least, so far, he isn't telling the congregation that this is something that they should believe. He has not yet asserted that this belief is the "bedrock" of Christian faith. And for that, I am grateful.

Politics and Religion

After the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Representative Pete Stark's announcement that he is an atheist, a Catholic priest from Fremont, which is in Stark's district, wrote a letter to the editor that was published today. The letter-writer actually argued--I'm sorry to say that I'm not making this up--that, as a matter of principle, elected representatives should have the same the religious affiliation as that of the majority of people in the district they represent. This would mean, of course, that if his position reflected the reality of government, a majority-Buddhist district should only have a Buddhist representative, a majority-Catholic district would have to have a Catholic representative, and a majority-Jewish district would have to have a Jewish representative. And thus atheists should only represent districts where the majority of people are atheists.

That is, of course, a ridiculous conception of the relationship between politics and religion.

Personally, I think the more telling fact about Stark's pronouncement of personal atheism was the revelation that he is also a UU. This says more about the state of the Unitarian Universalist Church than it does about American politics.

Evangelicals and the Kingdom of God

When two leading figures in the Religious Right, James Dobson and Tony Perkins, sent a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals to protest the fact that the Association's policy director, Richard Cizik, was emphasizing the problem of global warming, this highlighted a common misconception about evangelicals. The popular imagination holds that evangelical Christians are the same thing as the Religious Right, that they are all one big happy homogeneous political bloc. The reality is something different--namely, that evangelicals are actually divided among themselves on political matters.

Whence comes this common misperception? The fact that Dobson and Perkins would even have sent such a presumptuous letter to an organization that they don't belong to provides the answer--it is in the interests of the Religious Right to equate their politics with their religion, and to claim to speak for all of Christianity in defining what is "legitimately" Christian and what isn't. Acting as self-appointed pontiffs of the Religious Right, Dobson and Perkins presume to speak for all of Christianity, and thus demand compliance to their conception of what it means to be a Christian. The leadership of the Religious Right has been doing this ever since the days of the Moral Majority, if not earlier, and the news media has largely bought into this stereotype.

But just a few years ago, when George Bush went to speak at Calvin College, an evangelical institution of higher learning, he faced--gasp!--protests from some students and faculty. What's this? You mean all evangelicals aren't die hard conservative supporters of George Bush? How could this be?

I obviously have my theological differences with evangelicals, but I can certainly put aside those differences when it comes to fighting for social justice in the effort to build the Kingdom of God. And, contrary to what many people might think, there are radical voices among evangelicals.

Zack Exley has written an article for In These Times magazine, titled "Preaching Revolution", in which he describes the phenomenon of evangelicals who use two "R" words that have largely been missing from the American political vocabulary, especially in recent decades: "radical" and "revolution". Citing the examples of Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne, Exley writes:

In Grand Rapids, Mich., a 36-year-old evangelical pastor named Rob Bell regularly describes his ministry as “revolutionary,” “radical” and “an insurgency.” Far from alienating people with such language, Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church draws thousands of new worshipers each year from the mostly conservative and white suburbs of west Michigan.

He also notes,

Bell and Claiborne are two of the better-known young voices of a broad, explicitly nonviolent, anti-imperialist and anticapitalist theology that is surging at the heart of white, suburban Evangelical Christianity. I first saw this movement at a local, conservative, nondenominational church in North Carolina where the pastor preached a sermon called “Two Fists in the Face of Empire.” Looking further, I found a movement whose book sales tower over their secular progressive counterparts in Amazon rankings; whose sermon podcasts reach thousands of listeners each week; and whose messages, in one form or another, reach millions of churchgoers. Bell alone preaches to more than 10,000 people every Sunday, with more than 50,000 listening in online.

One should not, of course, deny the differences that exist between many theologically progressive Christians and these evangelicals. Even those evangelicals who are "anti-imperialist and anticapitalist" nevertheless tend to be conservative on certain social issues, such as sexual morality (although the article does point out that these evangelicals do accept and embrace women in leadership positions), and their views on Jesus, the Bible, and God tend to be quite orthodox. I have serious theological differences with religious orthodoxy, which includes evangelicals of all stripes. But where I find myself in agreement with the "anti-imperialist and anticapitalist" evangelicals is in their rejection of political orthodoxy.

The article points out:

Yet the Revolution is not primarily a reaction to Republican attempts to politicize the church. What sets it apart from mainstream evangelicalism is not a liberal rejection of Republican politics, but rather a more radical rejection of conservatism and liberalism, and anything else that is not the “kingdom of God.”

To the Revolutionaries, what seems righteous or commonsensical to humans does not matter; all that matters is what God wants. Boyd writes in Myth of a Christian Nation: “To the extent that an individual or group looks like Jesus — dying for those who crucified him and praying for their forgiveness in the process — to that degree they can be said to manifest the kingdom of God. To the degree that they do not look like this, they do not manifest God’s kingdom.”

And that is where anticapitalism and anti-imperialism come in. Capitalism doesn’t look like Jesus. Empire doesn’t look like Jesus. In their critique of the political and economic institutions of the “kingdom of the world,” the Revolutionaries are following in the tradition of early Christianity.

This is not mainstream politics. It isn't about Republicans and Democrats. And, despite the amazingly radical nature of the message, it has a following:

The thinking and dreaming of this movement is as utopian as the most far-out sect of antiglobalization anarchists, yet they are living it right at the heart of mainstream America. And they are organizing with unbelievable success, attracting thousands of new participants every week and spawning hundreds of new churches and thousands of new small groups and house churches every year.

This is not the typical impression of Christianity that the mainstream news media portrays. James Dobson would like to present himself as the face of "Christianity", but, in reality, as in so many other ways, Christianity is much more diverse than that.

The closing down of a church

There are several progressive churches in Berkeley, as you might imagine. Some of them are thriving. First Congregational, for example, is a UCC church with several hundred members, and which sponsors lots of activities and events.

However, not all churches thrive. One of them, University Christian Church, a congregation of the Disciples of Christ (DOC), had interested me somewhat over the last few months as I researched progressive faith communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The church appeared from its website to be progressive, at least in some areas; and as one who is interested in contemplative faith, I was impressed that it regularly sponsored contemplative spiritual events, such as centering prayer on certain weekday mornings. The church was located just a little too far away for me to attend these morning prayer events and still keep my desired work schedule, so I never quite made it there.

I took a peek recently at their web site, and discovered that the church has decided to sell the building, and it is currently conducting no Sunday services. There is a page that contains links to YouTube videos, including one from the pastor who talks about the decision to close down the church. She indicated that they were going to continue the church in a different form--using the proceeds from the sale of the church building towards that goal.

I have to admit that I have somewhat complicated feelings about the Disciples of Christ; I was brought up in an independent Christian church that came from the same historical stream (the Stone-Campbell movement) as the DOC. Although the church of my youth rejected the DOC as too denominational (and possibly also too liberal), my first impulse is to associate churches with names like "X Christian Church" with the fundamentalist environment I grew up in. That may not be fair, but it is a reaction to a religious upbringing that I rejected. The result is that the fact that the DOC comes from the same historical stream as that fundamentalist church of my youth doesn't entirely make me comfortable, even if there are obvious divergences between the independent Christian churches and the Disciples of Christ. I never visited University Christian Church in Berkeley, and thus what I know about it strictly comes from its web site. But I do feel that it is a shame that they had to sell their building. Hopefully they will manage to continue on in some other form after selling the church.

Elaine Pagels and Karen King interviewed on Fresh Air

Elaine Pagels and Karen King have co-written a book on the Gospel of Judas, and they were interviewed yesterday on the Terry Gross NPR program "Fresh Air". The interview can be heard here.

In the interview, the authors make the important point that the common present-day conception of what it means to be a Christian--belief in a certain set of doctrines--was not universal among the early Christians. Once again, we have the fact that there was a great deal of diversity within the early Christian movement. The Gospel of Judas was, in a sense, a polemic by one faction of Christians against another one.

Those in the present day who seek to preserve orthodoxy, because it supposedly came from a single "apostolic" faith, actually defy the historical reality that there never was a single Christian faith. Pagels and King point out that it was the winners in those theological disputes who got to decide what got into the canon, thus creating the myth of a unitary and unaltered Christian dogma that goes all the way back to Jesus and his disciples. Those who wrote books that were later suppressed by Christian authorities were not solitary voices, but represented movements within the faith. At the conclusion of the interview, the further point is made that Christianity as a living faith, has never been a "static thing", in contrast to the idea that you have to belief a certain fixed set of theological propositions.

Social Justice

A few news items have come to my attention today.

First, the City Council of Berkeley, California, voted unanimously to endorse the German-led lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes. The measure is purely a symbolic gesture, although it actually could have had more impact; apparently, the Council considered signing the city on as a co-plaintiff, but it feared that there could be liability issues if they did so.

Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton, ever the moral coward, refused to answer a simple question that was put to her in response to a statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When asked if she thought that homosexuality was immoral, she answered, “Well I’m going to leave that to others to conclude.” She certainly wouldn't want to take a stand on a social justice issue, now would she? (Imagine, by analogy, a reporter asking a politician if African-Americans are inferior to whites: "Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude.") This is, of course, the same Hillary Clinton who voted for the war resolution in 2002; who, while thousands of us took to the streets to protest the war, continued to support it; and who, even now, refuses to apologize for having voted for the war.

Politicians are not noted for moral courage. Let's be honest. Even the Berkeley City Council didn't really exhibit any great courage by taking a position that most people in Berkeley probably agree with. The only way we ever get the political establishment to promote social justice is by popular pressure from below. It's one thing to see this at the level of city government. But the higher up the political ladder we go, I believe the more entrenched are the relationships between powerful interests and the political establishment. How many politicians at the national level--Senators, for example--would seriously endorse prosecuting Rumsfeld for war crimes? My guess is that the number would be small indeed. Certainly we would never see Hillary Clinton do that.

Meanwhile, and this is the most amusing item of all, George Bush has actually had the temerity to use the term "social justice" to describe US foreign policy in Latin America. Naturally, he managed to use those words in the same sentence in which he praised the free enterprise system. The irony abounds.

What can we conclude from Bush's misuse of the term "social justice" to describe his policies? My theory is that when right wing politicians try to appropriate progressive terminology for themselves, you know that they are starting to get nervous. In Latin America, there has been a wave of resistance to the political and economic imperialism of the American Empire. Hugo Chavez has taken up the banner as a leading force of opposition to the Bush Administration. Bush may try to ignore Chavez, but he can't ignore the forces that lie behind his rise as an important figure in Latin America. Supporting social justice in Latin America has a long history that precedes Chavez--Latin America, as we might recall, was the cradle of Liberation Theology--and often the movements for justice get in the way of the interests of Empire. Supporting social justice often requires courage. Sometimes it leads to one's death--just remember what happened to Oscar Romero. Or the four American nuns assassinated by Salvadoran death squads. Not to mention what happened to Jesus when he stood up to the Roman Empire.

Politicians may abuse and misuse the concept of social justice to pursue injustice. Let us not let them get away with that. Social justice does not belong to the politicians of the Empire. It belongs to us.

"Saving Jesus"

"Saving Jesus" is the interestingly titled DVD-based discussion group program for progressive Christians who want to explore their understanding of who Jesus was. The DVD features interview segments with leading progressive authors and scholars--among them John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, John Cobb, and Matthew Fox.

A church that I do not normally attend but which is a short walk from my office has been offering the series on weekday evenings. Because I am a fan of most of the authors featured in the DVD, and because this is a subject that interests me a great deal, I was eager to attend. I contacted the church office and expressed my interest, and I was told that I was welcome to join in.

I did feel a little awkward because I was not a member of the church, but for the most part the others who attended have been welcoming. The theme of the second week in the series was the incarnation--which goes to the heart of the question of Jesus's nature. Was he divine? Was he fully human and fully divine? What does it mean to be fully human?

The class includes a period of showing the DVD, followed by a group discussion and then breakout sessions in small groups of 3 or 4, and concluding with another full group discussion. My small group consisted of myself and two women who were, I would guess, in their seventies, or maybe eighties. One of the women stated right up front that she didn't consider Jesus to be God. I said that I agreed. I added that I found a lot of value in what John Cobb said in the video about God's role in each "occasion", as process theology views it. In the DVD, John Spong spoke of divinity as a continuum, where all of us have a little of the divine within us to varying degrees, rather than divinity being a simple either-or proposition where Jesus was divine and the rest of us are not. I offered that I liked that idea, and that perhaps Jesus fit on one end of that continuum because he listened more intently to the divine call in each "occasion" that John Cobb alluded to, and that we all have the ability to listen to that call as well. We also discussed, among other things, what it really means to be fully human--an interesting question, actually. In common language, the word "human" is often a synonym for frailty, limitations, and having the capacity for error ("to err is human".) To say that Jesus was fully human is obviously not saying that. When Spong talks about Jesus as being fully human, he probably means that Jesus expressed the human potential fully.

Attending a group session like this can be an uncomfortable process for me. I never really know what people in liberal churches think about Jesus, and I am afraid that my radical theology will be too out of place. There was almost certainly a diversity of opinion among the people who attended. Certainly there was a generally liberal sensibility, but that still spanned a range of views--probably from those who considered Jesus fully divine and fully human, to those who rejected that notion. The general atmosphere, though, was one of respectful exploration rather than debate, which allowed for people to express themselves honestly.

One of the most reassuring things I took away from the experience was that perhaps I am not as far removed from the thinking of others in liberal churches as I sometimes fear. Unless I attend a meeting like this, I often have little way of knowing where people stand. Pastors at church services I attend often just tell the stories from the Bible without really introducing scholarly opinion about the veracity of those stories, and sometimes it isn't clear to me how seriously people in the pews actually take all the mythology. It was therefore nice to go to a church-sponsored event and hear a member of that church come right out and say that she didn't consider Jesus to be God. Perhaps I am not as much on the heretical fringe as I sometimes think.

"Stay Down Here Where You Belong"

The Dick Cavett Show "Comic Legends" DVD box set includes an episode from 1971 that featured Groucho Marx. On the show, Groucho sings the poignant antiwar song "Stay Down Here Where You Belong", which Irving Berlin wrote in 1914, after the start of the Great War:

Down below
Down Below
Sat the devil talking to his son
Who wanted to go
Up above
Up above
He cried, "It's getting too warm for me down here and so
I'm going up on Earth where I can have a little fun
The Devil simply shook his head and answered his son

Stay down here where you belong
The folks who live above you don't know right from wrong

To please their kings they've all gone out to war
And not a one of them knows what he's fighting for

'Way up above they say that I'm a Devil and I'm bad
Kings up there are bigger devils than your dad

They're breaking the hearts of mothers
Making butchers out of brothers
You'll find more hell up there than there is down below

After singing the song, he compared its message to the pointless and endless war that was then being fought in Vietnam. Later in the same show, he made snide comments about both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and their respective responsibilities for the dead and wounded of that war.

Thirty-six years have passed since that show was aired. And some things just don't seem to change. We still have pointless wars, and presidents who start them.

The so-called God gene

The Sunday New York Times magazine featured an article by Robin Marantz Henig that discussed whether there is an evolutionary basis for religious belief. This idea has been tossed around for a while now in the popular press--there has been talk of the so-called "God gene". For me, there is no contradiction between the notion that religious belief may have evolved within humans and the notion that God exists; I think this would no more refute religious belief than the fact that humans have evolved an organ for perceiving photons refutes the existence of light, or the fact that humans may have evolved some sort of artistic appreciation for poetry and music refutes the existence of poets and musicians.

However, I do take issue with some of the points that are presented in Henig's article. To start with, in order to assert that there is an evolutionary basis for religion, you first have to establish what religion is. And here is where things get fuzzy.

For example: religion does not necessarily entail a belief in a theistic God. Henig acknowleges this early in the article when she refers to "an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science." This clearly expresses a broad definition of religion to include non-theistic religions, such as certain varieties of Buddhism, or panentheisic religions like process theology. But then, throughout most of the rest of the article, it seems to me that she essentially falls back on the assumption that religion really is about believing in a Western-style, orthodox Christian, theistic God, who acts by dint of divine intervention--even when she tries to make generalized, universal statements about religion as a whole.

She writes, for example: "According to anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features — belief in a noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth." Such beliefs may indeed be found in virtually every culture, but they are not characteristic of every religion or variety of religious belief; and, within many cultures, theistic beliefs and non-theistic beliefs may even co-exist side-by-side. The key point here is this: "religions that share certain supernatural features" is not the same as saying that all religions share those supernatural features. The mistake that I think creeps into this article is that it conflates belief in those theistic elements with belief in God per se. They aren't necessarily the same thing.

To cite another example, Henig points out that

"About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent."

She goes on to use the word "universal", based on this survey of Americans, to describe these beliefs. I don't believe in angels or the existence of miracles, and I'm an agnostic on the question of heaven and life after death. Yet I believe in God. So where do I fit in? And if 6 in 10 Americans believe in something, that means that 4 in 10 don't--a substantial minority. And Americans are not the whole world. What do most Danes, or Germans, or Swiss believe? And what about non-Western cultures? The Japanese? (And how do atheists fit into this scenario? She does address this question near the end of the article, a point I will get to later.)

In much of the early part of the article, she reports on the ideas of anthropologist Scott Atran, who asserts that "religious belief requires taking 'what is materially false to be true' and 'what is materially true to be false.'" This is nonsense. Religious belief requires nothing of the sort, and this fallacy apparently informs everything about Atran's research. Later in the article, she focuses on other Darwinian perspectives on how religious belief may have originated. Yet, in all of this "debate" about how religion originated, there is still the problem of defining what religion really is.

She asserts, for example, that "the notion of spiritual existence after death is at the heart of almost every religion." This is not really true. To cite a historical example, the early Jewish religion did not focus on an afterlife, and made only the vaguest reference to it in the early biblical writings--dead people were sometimes referred to as having gone to Sheol, the realm of the dead--not really much of an afterlife. The book of Ecclesiastes suggests strongly that the author did not believe in life after death. It was only later, particularly in post-exilic times, particularly when martyrdom for the sake of Judaism needed a kind of vindication, that you started to see more of a development of ideas of an afterlife. Even in Jesus's lifetime, the Sadducees did not belief in the resurrection of the dead. As this example shows, there is nothing inherent about a belief in an afterlife for a religion to be meaningful to its adherents.

Indeed, it is not at the heart of my religion at all. To me, religion is about life in the here and now, about my relationship with God and how I live in accordance with that, not about any afterlife that may or may not exist.

Returning to the question of how atheism could even exist, given this supposed universal human trait, Atran's faulty conception of religion as simply another word for superstition is illustrated by his supposed struggle to retain his atheism in a nonatheist world: "Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case." Here, Atran confuses religion with superstition, atheism with rationality--a serious misconception on his part--and he also equates his own propensity for superstition with some sort of universal struggle by atheists to maintain their hold on their belief system. I bet this is news to a lot of atheists, who are quite comfortable in their beliefs and who face no such struggle to hold on to them.

In my own atheist days, I had no trouble resisting any supposed impulse to cross my fingers or knock on wood. I don't believe I was superstitious then, and I don't think I am superstitious now. Religion has nothing to do with Atran's facile conception of it. One can be religious and superstitious, or religious and rational; one can be, as Atran shows, an atheist and superstitious. The real struggle within modern Christianity today is, I believe, the battle between rational religion and irrational religion--between the vestiges of premodern theism and a broader conception of God that is consistent with post-Enlightenment science. Both conceptions of religion are equally possible. One is not "more" inherent to religious belief than the other is.

I think Henig is correct when she says near the end of the article, "No matter how much science can explain, it seems, the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural." This yearning for the supernatural, this seeking of what Tillich calls the Ultimate Concern, this reaching out towards that which is greater than us--that is, I believe, what religion is really about. Not superstition, not narrowness, not attachment to a set of doctrinal beliefs about the afterlife or spirits in the sky--but rather that which opens us up to the greatest of our ambitions, our hopes, and aspirations. The way this manifests itself varies greatly among different cultures and individuals. Some individuals may also incorporate beliefs of angels, or an afterlife, or a God who intervenes in the world, into their religion. But there is nothing inherent about these beliefs in the nature of religion. And if you are going to make universal statements about religious belief, you need to remove those elements that are optional.

What Would Jesus Drink?

I went to church today, but I didn't feel like partaking of communion, so I just stayed seated during that part of the service. I'm not sure why I felt that way. During Lent, our church has been doing the ritual weekly instead of only on the first Sunday of the month, and, maybe, well, doing it weekly was seeming like a bit much. Or maybe I was just in an ornery mood. I don't know.

But my significant other did go up and partake of the bread and the wine. When she came back, I whispered to her that her breath smelled of alcohol.

"That's not alcohol, that's the blood of Christ," she told me.

"In that case, Jesus has been drinking a little too much." If his blood smelled of alcohol, think of what his blood alcohol index must be! "I wouldn't put Jesus behind the wheel of a car."

She told me with some amusement that she had been downstairs and noticed that in the church office there were several cases of Two Buck Chuck.

Church budgets being what they are, this is not surprising. But given the cult following that Two Buck Chuck has, not to mention its bottom basement prices, it still seemed like an entertaining thought. Now, I guess we know what kind of wine Jesus drinks.

Videos worth checking out

There is a very funny series of videos on YouTube called "Mr. Deity" that spoofs conventional theism in a brilliant way. The characters in the series include Mr. Deity, who is, of course, the Man in Charge; Larry, his harried assistant; Lucy (short for Lucifer), a feisty, attractive woman and Mr. Deity's nemesis; and Jesus, whose name Mr. Deity seems to have trouble getting right. This Mr. Deity uses cell phones, holds press conferences, and manages to give an irreverent perspective that does George Burns one better. It is unfortunate that the Mr. Deity web site provides quotes of praise from someone like Julia Sweeney who is rather hostile to religion, because this gives the wrong impression about who would enjoy this series; in fact, these videos should be quite entertaining to religious progressives, or anyone with an open mind and a sense of humor.

Another interesting YouTube series is God, Inc., which imagines heaven as an impersonal corporation, complete with with departments for marketing, miracles, disasters, and so on. Office politics abounds, some employees have to worry about layoffs, the staff has to submit proposals for approval, the IT department sometimes screws things up, and there is even sexual harassment training. The God character in this series is never actually seen, although his secretary does show up in one episode. It is very well-done; the episodes are only a few minutes long, but I think it has the quality of an actual television series.

Katharine Schori sells out

I did not see the live webcast conducted by Katharine Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, but the AP religion writer Rachel Zoll reports that she is now urging her church to "roll back their support for gays -- at least for now -- so the denomination can keep its place in the world Anglican fellowship."

This confirms the worst fears that I have had about Schori in recent days. She accuses those who support social justice on this issue of being "impatient", calling such impatience an "idol". This is nonsense. Were slaves in 19th century America just being too "impatient" when they demanded their liberation? There is no compromise when it comes to the imperative for social justice, to include all of God's children within the greater community of faith. This is not a mere stalling tactic that she is advocating. To "stall" would mean moving neither forward nor backward. But apparently, if I understand this article correctly, she is now actively seeking to roll back progressive, inclusive gains in her church, in order to placate the reactionaries in the Anglican communion. And why? In the hopes that somehow at some distant point those who preach hatred, those whose intolerance of difference and dissent and inclusion, will suddenly reverse themselves and become beacons of inclusiveness? And what are those who are excluded supposed to do in the meantime? How many years should they expect to twiddle their thumbs and remain second class citizens in their church? To take away the promised land from someone who has been to the mountaintop is worse than not allowing them to the mountaintop at all. This is an insult, a slap in the face of gays and lesbians in her church, not to mention their progressive supporters.

The article reports

The Episcopal House of Bishops will take up the proposal for the first time at a closed-door meeting in March. Jefferts Schori said she was also trying to find a way that the House of Deputies, which represents clergy and lay people, could weigh in on the decision without calling a special convention, which would be expensive and time-consuming.

I don't know much about Episcopal politics to know how these two representative bodies relate to what is required for a reversal in policy, or what the odds are that this would even take place. But this illustrates once again why "unity" over "principle" is often a very bad idea.

"The core of most religions is not doctrinal"

An article in the Guardian about the divide in Britain between people of faith and militant atheists contains the following quote:

John Gray, professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, whose book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia will be published later this year, detects parallels between dogmatic believers and dogmatic unbelievers such as Hitchens and Dawkins. "It is not just in the rigidity of their unbelief that atheists mimic dogmatic believers. It is in their fixation on belief itself."

Gray argues that this fixation misses the point of religions: "The core of most religions is not doctrinal. In non-western traditions and even some strands of western monotheism, the spiritual life is not a matter of subscribing to a set of propositions. Its heart is in practice, in ritual, observance and (sometimes) mystical experience . . . When they dissect arguments for the existence of God, atheists parody the rationalistic theologies of western Christianity."

Dogmatic atheists and fundamentalists really are two sides of the same coin. Those who vociferously criticize religion usually end up attacking straw men and thus utterly miss the point. Religion is poetry for the human soul. Doctrines are just tools for parsing out that poetry. But one thing about art is that it can never be reduced down to attempts to explain it. Art, like religion, ultimately speaks for itself.

Sara Miles on Communion

Sara Miles, a member of St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in San Francisco, has recently written a book about her experiences as a convert to Christianity, titled Take This Bread. In an interview on the San Francisco Chronicle web site, she makes the following comment:

I think the most important thing for me about St. Gregory's is the practice and the theology of open Communion, which says basically that the altar does not belong to the church. The altar is God's, and everybody is welcome. It is not up to the church to say, "You don't deserve Communion, because you're not baptized or you're gay or you're divorced or you're a child."

The church doesn't own Communion. It's God's meal. That made it possible for me to even take Communion in the first place. It also made it possible for me to look at the church not as a way to divide people from each other, but as a way of joining people together.

Life After Death

Reverend Mom has given an account of her disappointment upon visiting a Unitarian Universalist funeral; while, not unexpectedly, there was no mention of personal immortality or resurrection, perhaps more surprisingly, there was no mention even of the idea of the deceased living on in spirit through the memories of others. She wrote,

Can we relate to the universe as incarnational without a belief in Jesus as the son of God? I believe so, and it would have lent more power to this service which honored a powerful woman. We celebrated her life; what was missing was the celebration of the life-giving force within and among all life that is always creating, that never dies.

I always liked the concept within process theology of "objective immortality", which proposes that all of our experiences live on after we die, objectively, in God's perfect memory. Of course, we also live on in the imperfect memory of others we have affected in our lives. But those around us will, after all, someday die. As the author Anne Lamott puts it, every 100 years or so, the world has "all new people". Unless we are particularly famous, the world will likely forget most of us. But God always remembers us, and in that sense we enhance God's own experience, just by having lived.

Still, it matters to me to think that I have a positive influence on those around me. Perhaps I shouldn't admit this, but I sometimes daydream about what other people would say about me at my hypothetical future funeral. If I were as good a person as I want to be, then my egoistical self I would like to imagine that people would talk about all the wonderful things I did that touched them in some way. But my other self wonders if they would even have positive remembrances of the impact I have had on them--or if all they would have to say about me were just nonspecific, blandly sentimental nothings. Would I get credit for the things I think I deserve credit for, or would I be the only one to remember them? On the other hand, would they remember things I had done that I have long ago forgotten about?

I have always wanted my life to mean something to the world around me. Am I leaving the world in a better place than it would have been had I never been born? I don't know the answer to that question. There are so many ways that we can have a positive impact without curing cancer or saving people from burning buildings. We don't have to be heroes to make the world better. I know that, at some level; but still, I wonder how I make an impact through the everyday actions of my life. And then there are the things I feel guilty about, sometimes actions that I took long ago, sometimes when I was young and naive and didn't know any better.

The idea that for each and every one of us, that which constitutes our egos, our selves--the subjective collectivity of our experiences and remembrences--is snuffed out at some point when we die--seems like a terrible tragedy for me. At some level, I am open to the idea of an afterlife, but I am not focused on it, and I am not confident in it either. At the very least, we can honor the memories of those who have died before us.

Humpty Dumpty and the Episcopalians

An article in yesterday's New York Times compared the divisions taking place now in the Episcopal Church with divisions that took place among many US churches before the civil war over the subject of slavery. It is an interesting article, and worth checking out. Many US denominations were split over the issue of slavery, and a similar split seems to be taking place, over homosexuality at least within the Anglican Communion, between the generally progressive Episcopal church and the reactionary church leaders in sister churches elsewhere in the world. The divisions over slavery were bitter and many of the denominations that split took a long time to reunify (and the Baptists never did get back together again.)

The article highlights a problem that many Episcopalians face--they seem to value unity above all else. The example of the Civil War was presented as a case in point:

The Episcopal Church is one of the few that did not split over slavery. Churches in the Confederate States did form a separate alliance, Mr. [John L.] Kater said, but the national Episcopal Church met without them and “pretended they were out of the room,” calling out the dioceses’ names for a vote “as if they had just gone to the bathroom.”

“After the war there was a simple reconciliation process, and they were all brought back in as if it had not happened,” he said. “I was taught in seminary that this was the great strength of the Episcopal Church, that when all the other churches divided, it stayed together and this was a sign of its great sense of unity. I think it was shameful, that the church considered that unity was more important than slavery.”

I think that last point is critical. This valuing of unity above all else is apparently what led to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Schori, to have essentially sold out the gays and lesbians in her church by signing on to a document that issued an ultimatum to the Episcopal church to change its ways by September 30. Imagine an American church in 1860 that supported equal rights for African Americans being given an ultimatum to rescind its position on the issue by the end of that year. History judges harshly those who buckle under in such circumstances. While up to this point I had had respect for Ms. Schori, it seems to me now that she doesn't have the moral courage to stand up to the reactionaries in the Anglican Communion. Just as the antebellum Episcopal Church considered unity more important than slavery, Schori seems to consider unity more important than standing firmly for the the dignity and equality of all God's people in her church.

We know that this love for unity is a one-sided proposition. The other side couldn't care less about diversity under a big tent, and will happily kick out anyone who doesn't conform to their rigid and morally bankrupt doctrines. As the Times article points out,

The liberals insist that what defines Anglicanism is theological diversity, and the conservatives claim Anglicanism requires a commitment to doctrine. The liberals are saying, “Can’t we all just get along,” while the conservatives are saying, “Can’t we all just get in line?”

This contrast between "getting along" and "getting in line" is clear. The theological fascists within the Anglican Communion, like their like minded brethren in other churches, are primarily interested in crushing opposing viewpoints within their organization, and evicting anyone who thinks different. How can anyone who believes in "getting along" possibly miss this point now? All the conflicting parties have to agree to "get along" if "getting along" is going to work at all. The other side, the theological conservatives, couldn't care less about such a lofty goal. Tolerance has never been the hallmark of theological conservatism.

Unfortunately, this intolerance extends all the way to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The blogger MadPriest has given a clear example of what he correctly calls an alarming example of this; he quotes from an interview with Archbishop Williams in which Rowans said,

The stance of the Anglican Communion is clear: It has never said anything other than that. The ordination of active homosexuals is not acceptable.

It has never said anything other than that the marriage of same sex-couples is not to be admitted.

So much for agreeing to "get along".

I'm not an Episcopalian, and it is not my place to tell them what to do, but it seems absurd to me at this point for progressives within that denomination to hold to the pretense that "getting along" is either desirable or possible within the Anglican Communion. Maybe if they shake the shackles of religious conservatism from their denomination, they might find themselves free to blossom into a remarkably progressive faith that can move forward without having to negotiate at each step of the way with the religious reactionaries.

There are other mainline denominations in the US that are facing similar divisions. Except for the occasional breakaway church, the mainline Lutheran, Presbyterian, and the Methodist denominations continue to pursue official policies of bigotry against gays and lesbians. To my knowledge, the UCC is the only mainline denomination besides the Episcopalian church that takes a progressive stance on this issue. Whether these other denominations will some day split or not over this issue isn't clear to me. The progressives remain hopeful that slowly and steadily they can sway their denominations towards an inclusive policy. However, the Episcopal example suggests that what instead will inevitably happen is a breakup rather than a transformation from within. But what is clear to me is that courageous people of faith in the US before the civil war realized that unity was less important than taking a moral stand for justice. There seems to be a kind of Humpty Dumpty paralysis, a fear that the world will somehow come to an end if a denomination splits. But I suspect that all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put these diverse factions back together again. Sometimes it is better if those who want to get along just leave those who want everyone to get into line. Inclusiveness and exclusion cannot easily coexist under the same roof.

Poverty in the US is on the increase

Tony Pugh of the McClatchy newspaper chain reports that poverty in the US is on the increase. According to his article,

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

What is particularly interesting about this is that this is taking place during a supposed economic boom:

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind and the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.

Profits are up, and poverty is also up. This tells us in a nutshell, I think, what is wrong with American society. It seems that, as long as corporate profits are higher, the economy is said to be "booming" and "expanding", and thus we are told that the economy is doing "well"--poor people be damned. As long as we live in a society that serves the interests of corporate profits rather than human needs, then nothing else matters. Is anyone--is any politician, even those who talk a good game about ending poverty--willing to do what it takes to challenge the corporate ruling class? It is clear to me that corporate interests lie at the center of the social and political system of the modern-day American Empire. I would argue that this contemporary alliance between capitalism and politics serves as the analog to the class-based peasant society of the Roman Empire that Jesus lived in. People like Walter Wink and Marcus Borg prefer to use the term "domination system" to describe the kind of rule that Jesus lived under. But I would assert that we have a new kind of domination system today, and it is just as oppressive in its own way.

The Tony Pugh article concludes with a somber note:

"Whether these patterns will continue throughout the first decade of 2000 and beyond is difficult to say ... but there is little reason to think that this trend will reverse itself any time soon."

What are we doing today to bring about the Kingdom of God? And is simply settling for "reversing" a trend what we should be seeking--or should we instead seek nothing short of total social justice?

In Diana Buter-Bass's book Christianity for the Rest of Us, she addresses the question of justice-seeking as a part of the life of a congregation. She points out that the cause of social justice has had little to do with traditional political liberalism:

At the time of the civil rights movement a few white mainline churches, even some southern ones, supported integration and voting rights for blacks. However, they typically did so on the basis of political liberalism, drawing from the language of fairness, equality, and rights. While fairness, equality and human rights are very good things, they are also primarily secular ideals. As shocking as the discovery may be to many American Christians, that secular language is not found in the Bible or in the vast consensus of Christian tradition. Instead, those ideals emerged during the Enlightenment, the liberal philosophical movement that has shaped Western thought for the last three centuries. By the 1960s, Enlightenment liberalism dominated ideological thinking in white mainline churches. During my Methodist childhood, it was hard to figure out what God had to do with what was happening in Mississippi or Alabama. "Justice" had more to do with the courts than with the Bible.

Unlike white Protestants, African-American Christians spoke a different language of justice--one that was deeply spiritual and tapped into the stories of the Bible. King talked of justice as a spiritual journey, as doing the work of God. Although some white liberals agreed with his cause, many found King's religious vision, with its implicit criticism of secular politics, hard to take. At Cornerstone [United Methodist Church] on Martin Luther King Day, political liberalism is notably absent. They celebrate King's vision of diversity and justice as biblical ideals, as part of their spiritual journey. For them, justice is not about backing a secular political agenda--whether that be liberal or conservative. Rather, justice is part of the faithful life of being a Christian; justice is spirituality.

There is, in my view, a contrast between the polite, restrained values of the modern liberalism, and the radical values of social justice as espoused by the such diverse characters as the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Abbie Hoffman. Does that mean that I think one should then reject politics out of hand? No, I don't. I think one can take that view too far and conclude that politics don't matter, or that we can build justice by ignoring politics. I do not believe that. I am deeply interested in what happens in the political arena, and I would not, therefore, agree with the rock band The Police, who, in their song "Spirits in the Material World" claimed that "there's no political solution to our troubled evolution." However, the Police were correct in that song about the corruption of the existing political processes:

"Our so-called leaders speak
with words they try to jail you.
They subjugate the meek;
but it's the rhetoric of failure."

To me, secular political processes may not always be the direct conduit for us as we seek the Kingdom of God. If we consider the corruption of the domination system to be the primary means through which we achieve the Kingdom of God, if we ally ourselves too strongly with it,I believe we are doomed to be corrupted by that very system. To me, we need to seek social justice first and foremost, and let the political chips fall where they may. That means standing outside of the system as voices of conscience who afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I am a cynic and a radical. I believe that we can only achieve the Kingdom of God if we seriously look at building a a new social order based on the principles of justice, where human needs instead of corporate profits are what define what we do as a society. The current domination system of our time cannot lead the way to the Kingdom of God, in my view. Only the people at the grassroots, listening to God's call (whether they believe in God or not), can do that. It's a tall task indeed. Jesus died 2000 years ago because he would not bend to the domination system of his day. What are we doing today to honor his sacrifice?