The relationship between religious belief and hate — not love... (Sunday Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Monday, May 25, 2009, 16:19 (1460 days ago) @ CathyT

Thanks, Cathy, and all, for the contributions to this discussion — both in this string and in the original string where Peter first posted it. I know I'm searching today for some new liturgical or spiritual or prayer-like experience that better 'gels' with my spiritual and life (and after-life) aspirations. I suspect I am one among the many. This is a major characteristic of the 86% as I keep suggesting. Not even the fear of eternal damnation can any longer keep them "in the pews". Do the goody two shoes think that these people who have given up participation do so lightly, and without thinking about those things? The rise of what I dub "secular liturgies" are an expression of this searching. The questions Peter has raised in this reflection are important.

Could I throw into the mix a short section from Spong that I was reading yesterday that itself raises another important dimension to this discussion — the relationship between religion and hate, or anger, the very antithesis of what religion is supposed to be all about:

I observe first the fact that for some nineteen hundred years institutional Christianity lived comfortably with prejudices based on gender, race and sexual orientation. With the emergence of the twentieth century, however, Christianity started to fade precipitously, beginning in Europe and spreading to the United States. Power shifted dramatically from institutional Christianity — to a rising, vigorous, secular humanism. It was this secular spirit that proceeded to rout the prejudices with which Christianity had accommodated itself for so long. This enabled the twentieth century to become the most dramatic century in human history for the rise of human rights.

Women first broke open the social order and demanded equality in the voting booth, before the law, in education, jobs, professions and even the military. Next the back of racism was broken as segregation fell and doors opened through which black Americans could and did walk until they reached the highest pinnacles in the world of social, and business life in America. Finally, in the second half of Twentieth century, gay and lesbian people abandoned their closets and demanded and won equality and acceptance. I do not mean to suggest that following the twentieth century there was no more sexism, racism, or homophobia, but I do mean to say that all of these prejudices were routed in that century and began their long and inevitable marches into oblivion. No prejudice in human history has ever been debated publicly, as each of these has been, that it did not proceed to die. Debated prejudices are always dying p debate is actually part of the death process.

My question is: Why did these enormous transformations of consciousness take place only when Christianity receded and secularism rose to replace it? Why was institutional Christianity unwilling to challenge these dehumanizing practices when they had the power to do so? If there is no connection and these occurrences are just coincidental, then why did so many parts of organized Christianity resist these changes so vigorously? Why is it still true that the largest expressions of institutional Christianity continue their relentless baffle against the full equality of women in both church and society? Why do Christian leaders in the highest places still today seek to wrest from these newly emancipated women the power to make decisions about their own bodies? Why is the most segregated hour in America today still the hour of worship? Why is the strongest bastion of homophobia in the developed world today still the Christian church? What is there about Christianity, organized as it is today around the concept of a theistic God, that seems to require a perpetual victim? Does not removing prejudice, enhancing the humanity of those that the stereotypical definitions of our religious past cast into the role of victims, actually serve well the stated purpose of Jesus to bring abundant life to all? Has the theistic way in which we have traditionally conceptualized God and through which we have defined Jesus been a factor in our blindness? I think it has; but before drawing this conclusion, let me look at our Christian and religious history from a different perspective from which additional data can be drawn.

A cursory look at Christian history will provide ample evidence to support the conclusion that there is a very high correlation between theistic religion and killing anger. Religious people are loath to face this fact, but it is painfully and obviously true. One has only to listen to conversations about religion among people holding competing views to see how quickly anger surges. These conversations rapidly escalate into high levels of noncivility. Voices rise, emotions flow, interruptions occur, threats are made and insults are exchanged. Religious discussions become war zones that not infrequently make street brawls look civilized.

In the conflicts that I have engaged in my life as a bishop, the levels of hostility that I have been forced to absorb have been all but inconceivable. Vitriol has come by way of hate mail, abusive telephone calls and threats against the well-being of the members of my family. It has included sixteen genuine death threats that could not be dismissed as insignificant. When I was walking in procession in full academic regalia prior being given an honorary degree from a major university some years ago, the dean of the medical school at that university used that opportunity to berate me for removing his comfort level in church. Does disagreement in any other area of life result in that kind of public rudeness among strangers? The fascinating thing about this kind of abusive behavior is that the hostility typically comes from fellow Christians-in my case, some of them well known in evangelical and catholic circles. None of my death threats came from an atheist, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. They were most often delivered by Bible-quoting Christians who defined themselves as true believers, men and women who said they were acting in the defense of or on the instructions of God. God, indeed, appeared to justify their killing rage, their overt anger. The connection between religion and anger is real.

John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Non Religious, Harper Collins, pp229-231

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]