Religion: Some Thoughts, July 1, 2021

Evangelicals and Catholics (religion in general) share a common trait: docility under authority. Those in charge know how to play the game, grooming people to surrender their minds, accept domination, and even invite it. For promises of safety, salvation, and sanctification.

Looking over the years, the Calvinist notion of an educated clergy and an educated membership has mostly guided my work.

To awaken the gifts of God, the image of God, in people: the power of the mind, to think through the issues and challenges of life, to frame good questions, to craft creative responses to crisis and need, to protest pretense and domination, to be content with the absence of "answers," and to resist those who would offer up sham solutions to the spiritual, existential, anxiety every human being has to bear.

Religion, in my view of things, is that which gathers up the bits and pieces of life, our experience, our history, our context and our circumstances, and in the gathering up, to reveal patterns of healing and hope, and patterns that threaten and destroy.

Religion "talks" to God, as a way and means of easing us out of ourselves, so that we might have the larger perspective of things.

Religion "listens" to God ... through quietness, and through action ... through community and contemplation ... through the Sacred Texts, and those who've put themselves on the line for faith, hope, and love ... which includes the whole fabric of justice: that people can be safe, and live and work to the best of their ability, to realize their God-given character, their place in the world, and what it means to love with wholeness of heart and mind.

Religion is a human thing - we reach for the heights, we plumb the depths, we seek meaning ... this kind of energy can set us up for the "silver-tonged" apostles with "another gospel."

But the selfsame energy of religion strives to create and recreate God's world - to fulfill and build upon original mandate of creation: to care for the garden, to be our sibling's keeper, to name the animals with care and compassion, to respect the limits of our mortal lives, and to enjoy God forever.

Some thoughts on religion ... this morning, July 1, 2021.

I'd Invent My Own Religion ...

If I owned a company, I'd invent my own religion: against taxes, against wages, against 40-hour work week and vacations, against all benefits, against birth control, so the women get pregnant, and then against abortion, so they have to have their babies, and against maternity leave, so I can fire them when they have their babies. Yup, and no one could touch me, because it's my religion. Woo hoo … oh how I love religion.

Religion and Violence

To a friend wondering about the connection between religion and violence:

I don't think it takes quite so much effort to define "religion" nor does it take a lot of work to define "violence" ... and even less effort to connect the two of them.

Ever since Constantine turned the cross in a sword-hilt, christianity has been killing like mad ... so has Islam ... and Judaism - Samuel and Kings are bloody with conquest and vengeance ... and the rogue State of Israel ... god here, god there ... god everywhere in the bloody mix of religion and violence.

Both World Wars were for God and Country ... what with chaplains blessings bombs and soldiers marching off to war ... and Japan's soldiers blessed by the Emperor/God.

It's not that religion produces only violence, but if I had to weigh it in the scales of history, I'd say that religion has produced more violence than it has peace.

Jesus may be the prince of peace, but the church is the king of war.

Virtually all the big religions of the world, maybe even the smaller ones, avoid this issue like the plague ... it's always someone else's fault ... the cause always lies elsewhere ...

While religion, can sometimes, expose the human heart, mostly religion functions as a mask - the tired old mantra, "Jesus died to forgive our sins" is license for cruelty and violence without restraint. After all, we have to do what we have to do to defend our land, our way of life, whatever it may be ... and Jesus died for our sins, so we're off the hook ... home free and clear, and while we kill here with impunity, when we get to heaven, Jesus will smile and tell us how much his blood covered over our sins and washed them away.

Wow - what a gospel.

Anyway, that's how I see these days ...

Blessings and Peace ... and maybe some turmoil of soul, too.

Tom

A White-Bread Boy

A White-Bread Boy, that’s what I am … to the core, pure, plain and simple.

Mom was of German ancestry, her family arriving here in 1848.

Dad was of Dutch stock, his family arriving here in the 1890s.

And we were racist to the core … deeply religious, too. We all loved Jesus, went to evangelical Reformed Churches, served the LORD and abided in God’s word … and racist to the core.

That’s how I grew up.

In Wisconsin and Western Michigan … I’ll not rehearse the ugliness of it all, but ugly it was, and I was pretty damn ugly, too, as were all my high school and church friends - the whole white environment, establishment, and their world of Christian Schools and Churches, filled to the brim, Sunday morning and Sunday evening, with Wednesday evening catechism and prayer meetings. Not a person of color to be found anywhere, except in missionary tales of Deepest Darkest Africa. Everyone was pious, and when I was 15 or 16, I bought me a big ol’ Thompson Chain Reference Bible, King James, of course, and in that Bible, I could find a verse for everything, but especially for proving how right everyone was, and I carried it to church, too. I was into god, and, yes, God was into me, too … in ways I would only much later discern, and for that, I’m grateful. That this innocent/guilty White-Bread Racist Boy was still the object of God’s mercy.

To make a long story a little shorter, it was in college, Calvin College, that I was converted. With everlasting thanks, I note two professors in particular who opened my mind and my heart: Professor Roger Rice, Sociologist, who had us read Michael Harrington’s The Other America. And Professor Donald Wilson, Anthropologist, who told chilling stories of missionary zeal and cultural abuse. To this day, I recall both professors, and give thanks for my conversion to a gospel that I had “known” all of my life, and with hymns, sung and fine doctrinal preaching; but, now, for the first time in my life, I saw a larger world, and the folly of my faith, the harm it’s done and the callous manner in which it sided with the racist patterns of America.

Maybe I’m alone in this - the way I raised, with plenty of religion and plenty of racism - and finally, by the grace of God, beginning to figure it out: that religion and racism do not belong together, and where there is racism, the professed faith is more an illusion than a reality, more about heaven, of course, and so little about this world, other than avoiding its taint, doing what could be done to convert lost souls and persevering to the end. Meanwhile, it’s okay to fear and hate your neighbor, if they’re persons of color, because they’ll come into the neighborhood, and there goes the neighborhood. And if met on the street, be careful - they’re all dangerous.

I’ve learned a lot over the years, and I’m still learning. 

When I was in Detroit, I learned that in the postal system there, well up into the 80s, white supervisors routinely assisted white applicants with the testing, even adjusting scores, while making it virtually impossible for African-Americans to enter the system.

Never once in my whole life have I been humiliated because of my color. Never once. Never once have I been denied anything because of color. Never once.

I now have African-American relatives, and I’ve learned a few things from them.

It’s not a pretty picture, and there’s no end to the humiliation they’ve experienced - centuries of it, to this very day.

Perhaps the Trayvon Martin jury decided correctly - it was just too difficult to prove, either second-degree murder or manslaughter.

But for many African-Americans, it’s just one more humiliation, one more moment in a long and sad history of discrimination - the failure of virtually every system in America - schools, churches and courts.

I was a racist, and though much of it has been removed from my life, the stains remain on my soul and in my memories - stains that can’t be removed, and that’s all right, because then I can never claim innocence. 

So I know racism, because shreds of it still flow around the dark edges of my spirit and mind. I hate it, but that’s the way it is. It’s my reality, and if there’s grace in this world, it can operate only in my reality. Grace, thankfully, doesn’t need a clean environment in which to do its work. Though grace cleanses, not even grace can remove the stains of the past.

So I know racism when I see it in others, because I know it so well in my own life.

The racist looks at the Trayvon Martin story and says, “Justice was done.” That’s that, and like Lady MacBeth, simply washes her hands, endlessly.

But I look at it and say, “It’s one more sad chapter in a story of unrelenting sorrow and humiliation.”

I cannot pretend this kind of hurt isn’t real. It is real, all too real, for millions of people.

I will not close my eyes to the sorrow of others, and though the jury may have rightly ruled, though I think not, many in our nation see this as one more episode of justice denied, a moment filled with all the usual suspects of hoodies, black teens, white women frightened, racist males acting tough with a gun in their hand, nonchalant police and courtrooms where defending white honor is more important than the truth.

That’s how I see it.

And don’t anyone tell me I don’t know what racism is.

Can Religion Ever Lead the Way?

Congress is holding hearings on discrimination in the government against transgenders, who are finally being given a chance to tell their story. Hats off to Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin for these hearings.

The Bush admin has been a hostile environment, but the simple truth is sadder: the TG community has long been on the thin margin, and only the recent efforts of the gay and lesbian community has brought the light of compassion and common sense to bear.

But once again, "religious" folk reveal a narrow, if not malicious mindset - hiding behind religion, convoluting and twisting it, rather than using religion to open doors and "make straight the way of the Lord."

Opposing the legislation, Glen Lavy, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, said it would be a mistake to define gender identity or gender expression as a protected class. He said that objections to "the concept of transgender" are based on religious beliefs and that forcing the idea as a valid concept "is like forcing an Orthodox Jew to eat pork." And he said that employers would have difficulty enforcing dress codes and assuring privacy.

Exclusion arguments all have the same ring.

Read what folks said about integration 60 years ago. Dire predictions of social decay and disruption, not to mention "religious beliefs" supporting segregation.

Religion always has a narrowing impulse (see Leviticus), yet this is the very book Jesus quoted when adding a second component to His summary of the Law: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18).

When Peter (a Jew) is engaged by God to reach outward to the Gentiles (Acts 10), Peter has scruples, but in a vision/dream, Peter sees a sheet (picnic blanket) coming down from heaven with all kinds of unclean animals on it - the Lord says, "Eat!"

It seems that Peter was hungry!

Peter objects: "I've never eaten anything unclean."

The Lord says, "Don't call unclean when I've made clean."

Did the Lord have a change of mind?

Yup.

Lots of things necessary at one point give way to a new scheme - that's pretty much the heart and soul of the Bible - God really changes - not in love or purpose, but in the details, as God moves religion along a pathway from exclusion to inclusion, from narrowness to expansiveness, from hatred to love of neighbor, reminding all of us to not call "unclean" what God calls clean.

In these days of transition, God is clearly shaking the pillars of religion all around the world. Giving us a good shake, we're nervous, clinging to outmoded models and shouting our little laws and traditions all the louder, in the hope of proving their validity by our volume.

Like Peter, are we not hungry?
For Justice and Peace?
For a better world?

Like Peter, are we not tempted to stand by the old laws and regulations, the old patterns of thought and prejudice?

Yet in our hunger, God shows us a better way. At first, "Oh no, Lord; I'd never do that."

But God is doing a new thing (see Isaiah 43:19).

I thank God for the windows of understanding and tolerance being opened. I just wish "religious" folk could be at the vanguard.