OK, so it started, most recently, with Jon Krakauer, just about my favorite journalist, nonfiction writer ever. I loved
“Into the Wild” and
“Into Thin Air” and dig on reading about religion in general, so was especially excited when
“Under the Banner of Heaven” finally dropped into my library queue.
And, frankly, it scared the shit out of me.
I have long preached religious tolerance for all faiths. Belonging to none and doling out equal kicks to all their sacred cows, this was an easy position to take. But Krakauer’s look at Fundamentalist Mormons and the history of the Mormon faith in general shook that belief to its foundation. The zeal with which Joseph Smith’s farcical tale of receiving a story, itself more farcical than the way Smith came by it, and the violence that has been wrought in its name, not to mention the ever-increasing political clout of the LDS church, had me questioning whether tolerance was really always the right course of action.
And, really, perhaps it wasn’t that big a dissonance to rectify. I just moved the Mormons from the group containing the Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Wiccans, Moslems and whatnot over to the group containing Scientologists.
But this little challenge to my belief wasn’t sitting well with me. As the Unitarian minister that married me said when we first met, “It is not for me to decide what is right. It is only for me to seek Truth.” Part of my religious tolerance screed, which if you’ve ever been too close to me on a whiskey night you have no doubt heard, has been the central claim that every religion, every religious person, goes flying off the rails when they take their eyes from Truth and look to pointing out the False in the beliefs of others.
Into this crisis of belief drops
"Jesus Camp", a documentary on American evangelicals with a focus on a Evangelical summer camp. Where “Banner” scared me, "Jesus Camp" made me sad and angry.
If you believe anything short of exactly what Evangelical Christians believe, I challenge you to watch this film and not call the things you see “brainwashing.” Seven-, eight-, nine-year-old kids shamed into sobbing fits every night for a week, terrified with the visions of what will happen to them if they stray an inch from the path and the phantoms of Satan coming after them from every direction. Screaming, speaking in tongues, thrashing on the ground, and constantly talking about war.
I imagine their vision of the Lamb of God to have gritted teeth, tats of the cross, a sword and a shield and a sneer, all reminiscent of a caricatured college mascot ready for battle.
It made me sad because of the kids, robbed of the chance to think about anything for themselves, battered into submission, and angry that a faith that I have seen produce incredibly generous, understanding, centered people can be so perverted.
Because that is what the Evangelical message expressed in “Jesus Camp” is: a perversion. The actual words of Christ, the lessons he attempted to teach, would find little place in the modern Evangelical movement. Mega-churches don’t do service to the man that told a rich man “Give away all you own, sell your property and give the proceeds away, and follow me, for it is easier for a camel…” etc (you don’t have to have been raised Christian to know how that one ends). Their constant talk of war doesn’t cotton with “If your brother strikes your cheek, offer him the other cheek as well.” There is no generosity of spirit, no sense of boundless love, none of the critical inquiry tradition in which Christ himself, as a Jew, would have been raised.
Now, before my progressive friends start in with some nodding and muttered “yeah, dumb fuckin’ Christians” nonsense (because while the War on Christmas is an O’Reilly fabrication, one of the few things the Right has correctly identified is a knee-jerk anti-Christianity among us liberal elite), the problem isn’t the faith itself. Fundamentalist Islam is a perversion of Islam, Zionism a perversion of Judaism, hell, I imagine there are Fundamentalist pagans that just can’t stop with the sacrifices and are a perversion of paganism. No faith, system of belief, is immune to fundamentalism.
My point, ridiculously long-winded as it is, is this: religion isn’t the problem. Sorry,
Hitchens, you insufferable prig dickhead, but beliefs in divinity and Cosmic Law and God are not the root of our problems. Fundamentalism is. Whatever its stripe, fundamentalism is by its nature divisive, focused at least as much if not more on what is wrong with others as its own search for Truth.
No, wait, check that. The problem with Fundamentalism is that there is no search for Truth. Fundamentalists believe they already know the truth. And that is what makes fundamentalism dehumanizing. It removes from the religious experience the natural and inescapable human desire to question. We all search for Truth, whether we identify that quest with atheism or Islam or the Sutras, and that should be the one thing that binds people of all different faiths together. But, fundamentalists are not seekers, have no desire to make connections between faiths.
Religion is not the problem. Religion is a natural outgrowth of the human condition. Atheists are not given a pass in this. In the words of Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Fundamentalism, however, is the problem. Terrorism is not endemic to Islam, which non-fundamentalist Moslems are right to characterize as a religion of peace, as should have been made abundantly clear when
Mark Uhl brought bombs to Jerry Falwell’s funeral. Terrorists are, though, almost without exception, fundies.
This is an important distinction because attacks on religion in general or individual faiths in particular actually further the cause and message of the fundamentalists. It is as important to remember that “Jesus Camp” is not indicative of Christianity as it is to understand that the images of 9/11 are not indicative of Islam.
I’m not sure where this leaves the Mormons and Scientologists, however. They still trouble me, and confound my calls for tolerance.
Though, maybe, it isn’t ever the narrative you choose that matters, just how you use it.
I find myself at the end of the page with the same lack of answers I had at the top.
