(132) Response to VIEWS; and Religion & Politics

Author:  JOHN
To: Mostly Bob, and then Steve

         Bob, your “Views” series is truly amazing. Ironically, the force of it had the effect, I fear, of at least temporarily disrupting our trialogue. There we were, shooting at each other with analytical BB guns for months and months, and then all of a sudden you show up with a nuclear bomb and blow us all to, if you’ll pardon the expression, Kingdom Come. It is truly an inspiring, interesting, educational, and thought-provoking analysis. I guess we will have to forgive you for saving the darn thing up in secret and then rolling it right over our poor unsuspecting psyches. Please know that it was well worth all the time and effort you put into it.
         I have no idea how you “found” some of the sources you found, but they are rare and worthy gurus (yes, I’m imposing my term on ‘em, but ya know that’s high praise). I’m referring to Hick, Weatherhead, Erskine, Fosdick, and others, all of them are highly original, articulate, courageous, and wise counselors. They deserve to be studied by anyone who is interested in the meaning of this life and the possibility of one to follow.
         I can’t begin to construct a comparable response that would cover all the things I learned, thought, and reacted to while reading your multi-part analysis. I think the best I can do is to try and respond to some individual issues, in no particular order.

        First, I do want to ask Bob a silly sort of question, the answer to which he probably assumes is obvious. Maybe I’m thick, but something isn’t absolutely clear to me, despite reading all his ‘views’ pieces not once but twice. The question is: WHOSE ‘views’ are these that he assembles and discusses so in-depth-ly? It IS obvious that most if not all the principles that define the three views come from (or at least are present in the works of) various writers and ministers, into whose work Bob has immersed himself. But are we to conclude that these writers thought of themselves as part of a particular “view” and that, moreover, they too were cognizant of the other two contrasting views as defined in Bob’s analysis?
        I don’t really read Bob’s analysis that way, but I could infer that these three “views” were already out there and were known quantities before Bob investigated them and presented them to us for our enlightenment and reading pleasure. The reason I could read it that way is that Bob, for some reason (and that is the mystery here for me) never really lays claim to his trichotomy as his own original analytical idea. From the beginning he writes as if he is simply describing a situation that is out there for all to see, and he is merely bringing it to our attention.
        Well, I am all pretty sure that his Views analysis is all highly original work, which deserves to be read by millions of people and especially ought to be required reading for every single person who bears the title “minister”. And I am hoping and even betting that eventually, one way or another, Bob’s work will achieve exactly that, because it will be on the “latest releases” table at Barnes and Noble.
        I once described Bob as “a Christian in search of a church.” I don’t think he liked that description, but I still think it holds water. And now, having read his analysis, I will take it a step further and proclaim that, having looked far and wide and deep and not finding a church big enough in mind and deep enough in spirit to suit him, bigolly Bob has gone and created his own church, and he is the minister of it, and it is View Three. And again, I want a way for his church to open its doors and let about a million people into it who have been out there wandering around hopefully, but in frustration, for most of their lives. I wish this blog of ours could do that, but sadly the statistics on readers don’t support that.
        Now I am going to proclaim something else, that Bob probably won’t cozy up to. And that is: in my opinion, Bob’s View Three church, and now I AM referring to a church of bricks and mortar, does already exist and has existed for a hundred years. It is my church, the Unitarian Church. Okay, not the whole Unitarian Church, but a room in it. Probably 10 to 20 percent of Unitarians describe themselves Christians, at least if the term is used broadly (I believe I can assert with confidence that NO Unitarians are fundamentalists or View Two types.) Even some Unitarian ministers identify themselves as Christians. There are sub-groups, or interest groups, within many Unitarian churches including my own, where those especially interested in Christianity meet and converse and share and sometimes argue. And I can guarantee you that they would LOVE to get ahold of your analysis, Bob. (And I am going to try and help them do just that, in whatever ways I can discover to do it).
Sadly, of the Unitarian ministers that I have listened to during my own time in the church, few of them have come close to being as interesting and convincing in the pulpit as Bob has been in this blog. And in fact, ever since my favorite minister retired a few years ago, I’ve felt the church just doesn’t offer me quite enough. But what I am seriously suggesting is that Bob would make a wonderful minister in the Unitarian church, and I actually wish he would consider pursuing that idea. And there would be an advantage for Bob, in that he would find a ready and waiting audience for his thinking, rather than having to argue his case and “work up to it” with a more conventional Christian-church congregation. So, with that in mind, and pretending to be you, Bob, I have applied to one of the two Unitarian seminaries in this country, been accepted, and Bob, you start this fall. (don’t worry, ‘cause I tell ya what: your third year thesis is already written; but maybe we better take it off the internet before the seminary discovers it).

Regarding the three Views, I don’t feel much need to address View Two, as I think everything I have said in this trialogue to date shows my distaste for it. In my mind, View Two is the Christianity of Christian talk radio, of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, of fundamentalists and many evangelicals, of hell and satan, of original sin and eternal punishment, of legalists and literalists, of people obsessed with their own “sin” and the sins of others, and of those who wishfully think they are “saved” and enjoy the idea that most other people are not. It is the sludge that I accused Bob of obsessing over in a cartoon graphic (posting # 103) I did some time ago. (But now that I have read Bob’s analysis, I understand why he was focusing so much on that form of Christianity for awhile: in order to fully describe and separate it from View Three.)

        Regarding View Three, I identify quite strongly with nearly all of what I found in Bob’s multi-part treatise. (I know that I had some positive things to say about View One, as well, but that was early on, before I could contrast it with View Three.) There is very little I could find to disagree with in View Three. There might be a few specific points Bob could further explore (example: differences between View Two and View Three over the concept of the Trinity). And there were numerous times when I had an objection or a question, but in each case as I kept reading I found it answered.

        Regarding View One, however, I have to say, that I’m not sure it really deserves its own separate space. Although I understand Bob’s argument for separating himself from it, personally I see it more as the “farthest-out” faction of View Three.
         One reason I think Bob rejects the philosophy of what he describes as View One is the issue of “personality” that we have disagreed on before. Perhaps a better word is “individuality” or “personhood.” Bob rejects the idea that at death, his personhood could be lost, whether in the sense of a drop returning to the ocean, or in the sense of there being a great nothingness after death, or in the sense that God ultimately “discards” lowly humans and becomes “alone.” Let me consider those ideas and others from View One just a moment.

        Nothingness: I certainly agree that death does not result in “nothingness.” I find it hard to believe that the Buddha taught that either. And one of Bob’s sources pointed out that such a theory would not really make sense within Buddhism, since the state of “nothingness” that is popularly associated with Nirvana was supposed to be achievable in this life. I have to think that the nothingness idea is a misinterpretation of what the Buddha meant, just as many things attributed to Jesus have suffered from misinterpretation.

        Loss of personality: Likewise, Bob also rejects the idea that we are like transient waves thrown out by the ocean, only to return to the ocean and lose all sense of individuality. Okay, I can agree that we must retain something, and that there must be something to retain it. After all (and as at least one of the View Three quotation states) it makes no sense for us to live and learn and suffer and perhaps conquer “sin” if we are to then lose that experience and personal history entirely. So, I can go that far with Bob’s objection. However, I wonder can Bob go a ways with me? I ask you, Bob (I’ve asked it before, but this time I insist on a concrete answer): Do you think you will be MALE in the afterlife? Do you Bob? Really, I want you to commit yourself on this. And of course, I would dearly love to hear Steve’s take on it, too.
I pose this question because I think you will admit that your maleness is one heck of a large part of your personality, your individuation, your personhood, your ego, and your personal history. Yet I find it hard to believe (don’t you?) that our gender continues after death. I believe it is a supreme example of a very significant part of us that we must part with after death. And if/when we do, it will surely not be a loss. We will not be something less, but something more, by tossing off the limitations of maleness. (And I hope and pray that a lot of other parts of myself will disappear as well, into something larger and better.
        To put it in another context, this personality we exhibit now will be revealed to be tantamount to a jail cell or a straight jacket when death releases us from it, and there won’t be any whining about it. Rather, there will be celebration. But I agree that there must be a celbraTOR. It won’t be the Bob who is reading this right now, however. I don’t think you dealt with (or perhaps I should say you didn’t bother to deal with) the idea that many Christians have that our actual physical bodies will be resurrected and take part in the life to come. But I’m pretty sure you don’t believe that, and therefore I’m betting you aren’t attached to the thought of being a male . So what will you be? And Steve, what do you think? Anyway, my point is that very large and important aspects of ourselves that are “real” in this life, may not be in the next. I think we must be prepared for a change in “personhood” the likes of which we cannot imagine.
        This is a trite and unoriginal comparison, but perhaps we will see our lives, our egos, and much of our personalities in a way similar in this life to remembering a dream. Dreams as we are experiencing them are sometimes very intense, to the point of being either terrifying or orgasmic. But upon waking, they quickly fade and lose their power over us. We may then remember the dream, and shake our heads at the power its intensity had over us. We recognize them as something that was unreal to begin with, and something subsequently relegated to a memory of something unreal, making it doubly unreal.
        I think it is very possible, nay probable, that what you will shed at death will be a pretty darn significant portion – if not practically all -- of the “personality” you now consider to be “Bob.” You may remember it, in fact you may be required to analyze it (God knows you oughta be a whiz at that!) but it won’t be you any longer, any more than you are now the babe that suckled at your mother’s breast.

Drop in the Ocean. As to the drop blending into the ocean, I know you reject that, but I have no problem with it. Why would I want to be a tiny powerless drop if I could know the power and vastness of the ocean? I think that is where we see it differently: I see the ocean metaphor as knowledge or consciousness or experience gained and you see it, and define it so in your View One, as lost.
        Another perhaps trite example might make my meaning clearer. Suppose you have a very intense opinion about something. Let’s say you are a View Two Christian minister, and you feel strongly that homosexuality is a sin. It is a strongly held belief and a serious element of your ministry (I could be talking about Jerry Falwell). Then death comes and your little drop of consciousness blends into the ocean of God’s consciousness. When it does, you have access to the consciousness of a hundred thousand homosexuals. You remember their memories, know how they felt, perhaps experience their desires, their conflicts, the effect of society’s majority views upon them, etc. Surely that would be a transforming experience, and (at least to my mind) a necessary and beneficial one. You would now intimately know both sides, or the many sides, of that issue. You would know the truth of it, whatever that truth might be, in a way you could never have known it under the limitations of your previous earthly personality.
        Now a View Two minister reading this would probably say, “Yes, in heaven I will have my personal opinion confirmed that homosexuality is a sin.” I of course doubt that. But the point is that if he died and I died, we would each partake of the other’s beliefs on that matter, and more importantly our beliefs would be vastly enlarged by truths neither of us had the ability to access while alive.
       
        Speaking of the now-late (hey, there’s an oxymoron) Jerry Falwell, I trust you got a laugh out of the cartoon I recently sent you by email. It pictured Jerry at the reception desk of the afterlife, where he is told that reincarnation is in fact the truth, and he for his next life he must can choose between being a liberal, a feminist, or a homosexual. Hey, I say that could darn well be close to the truth!

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(And speaking of homosexuality – let me inject something here before I get back to my View One complaints. I recently listened to an hour-long “This American Life” program on public radio about homosexuality that I found very eye-opening, and I want to share it with you briefly in summary. Did you know that homosexuality used to be considered a psychiatric disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, but that in 1973 it was declared not to be? The APA is the official organization representing thousands of psychiatrists. One of its many purposes is to continually publish and improve a book of definitions of the numerous officially accepted psychiatric disorders. For many years, homosexuality was listed in that book, with a description of characteristics, etc. But during the early 70s, some psychiatrists engaged in a very interesting movement to reconsider that categorization. Some of those psychologists were in fact homosexuals themselves, but were hiding that fact because to reveal it at that time would mean losing their professorships at universities, etc. One of these brave souls embarked on a strategy that I wish I could do justice to here, but I can’t (you can listen to the whole program, and I highly recommend it, at

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1188

The crucial moment for this crusade came when this particular individual spoke at the yearly meeting of the APA. To protect his identity, he wore a disguise at the podium (consisting of a Richard Nixon rubber head mask and a tuxedo three sizes too large, can you imagine that?). This appearance, along with a number of other strategies, opened up the issue for true reconsideration for the first time, as previously it had simply been taken as a fact that homosexuality was an illness. And a major finding that ultimately changed the APA’s mind was something, in retrospect, any good researcher or statistician should have seen: all of the information upon which homosexuality had been characterized as a psychiatric disorder had been taken from cases (hundreds of them) where the homosexuals were already undergoing therapy for emotional problems. In other words, the only homosexuals from whom data had been taken were those who were already seeing a psychologist for emotional problems. A potentially much larger cohort of homosexuals who did not feel they had problems was being ignored. Further, it became obvious that societal prejudice and pressures on homosexuals, rather than homosexuality itself, could be the main reasons for the problems which brought them to psychologist’s offices in the first place….a vicious circle.
        Well, enough of that. But I highly recommend listening to the podcast link given above (the full version), or at least checking out the following related article: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_2002_Nov_12/ai_94598255
      And I would like to hear what Bob’s View Three might have to say about some specific hot-button issues that divide Christians (both among themselves from non-Christians) such as homosexuality and abortion.
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        That was a digression, but one I felt I wanted to make.  Now back to my comments on View One.

No Creator God. Another reason, Bob, you say you reject View One is because you see no Creator in it. Well, I guess that may be true of Buddhism (at least one of its forms), but surely not of all the practitioners of View One? Do you think Ken Wilbur and Ram Dass feel that way? Do you think the Christian Gnostics felt that way? Or am I wrong in thinking that those folks are View One? Again, I feel you just need to create a little annex in your View Three for what you describe as View One.

        God within, not without. A complaint I have about your description of View One: You say this View contends that “It is a mistake to look for God outside ourselves.” I have to say I don’t think that assertion is much supported. But more importantly, I think we have a serious difference of opinion about what constitutes “ourselves.” As I have said a dozen times in this trialogue, I believe that what most people think of as themselves is really an impermanent ego that will not survive death. And I believe most Buddhists and other eastern religions would agree with me on that. So, they would say you’ve got it exactly wrong: It would be a mistake to only look for God inside our “selves”. We must look beyond that ephemeral, impermanent thing for God.
However, in the interest of compromise, how about if I amend your statement to: “It is a mistake to look for God ONLY outside ourselves.” Truly, I think we have to look both outside and inside ourselves.

        Moving on to View Three. There were many quotes in View Three that I really really liked. Here’s one of them:

Our present earthly existence is described in the myth as man’s life after the fall. Man exists at a distance from God’s goal for him, however, not because he has fallen from that goal but because he has yet to arrive at it.” (John Hick, Evil and the God of Love)

This to me is the proper answer to what I consider the mistaken idea of original sin. Yes, Hick seems to say, we need and long for a spiritual evolution toward God, but that is not the same as God having condemned us to suffering for something we did to offend Him. Still Hick does use the word “sin” in some of his writings, and I would like to know more about his definition of that word.
        Here’s another quote I liked:

“Why does an omnipotent God bring creatures into existence who grieve themselves and cause grief to Him? I answer, God, in making men, made creatures whom He desired to be good; goodness means choosing to be good; they cannot be made good, they must choose it, and omnipotence cannot do that without unmaking the man; wise and loving training must do it. God desires the joy of seeing His creatures choose to be good, and the capacity of choosing to be good implies the capacity of refusing to be good.” (Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen)

    These quotes and many others in View Three remind me of our discussions early on in this trialogue about free will, about faith as a choice, etc. Moreover, I very much like the “loving training” idea, and the “soulmaking” concept Bob describes throughout View Three. Basically, to me this view conceives of life as a school in which we learn what we need in order to move closer to God. And further, the reason that this life and this world remain apparently forever full of suffering, difficulties, evil, violence, perhaps even disease and accident, and all the other negatives, is that without them this school for soulmaking would not afford the necessarily intense learning experiences we need. That is not a new idea, perhaps, but View Three explains it more convincingly than I have ever heard it explained elsewhere.
        It makes sense, and it answers the age-old question of why there is evil and suffering in the world, and why it continues despite our obvious evolution in many areas. I do think, however, that if we are to assume God is good, then the suffering these experiences cause us must somehow eventually be fully removed, relieved, and countered (i.e., when we evolve spiritually to the point where God deems us worthy of realizing – in my view -- their unreality).
        There is one thing about this theory which bothers me, however; or perhaps I should say I think it should trouble you and Steve. Soulmaking sets up a kind of paradox. First of all, since some of the sufferings in the world result in our deaths, then how are we to keep learning and evolving? You of course know that my own answer is the possivility that we live multiple lives…reincarnation.  However, if we say that reincarnation is the answer, and we keep being reborn and learning a little more and gradually evolving, then why doesn’t the whole world get better as more and more souls evolve upward? And that leads to the questions of where these souls of ours come from in the first place, where they go if they are reborn, and whether there is a constant supply of “new souls” entering the world. One could argue that a soul that has “graduated” from this world must be born in a different world the next time around, one closer to God and less full of suffering. One could argue that all souls entering this world are new to this world and have come from even a worse one. Perhaps earth is the fourth or fifth grade of God’s school, and that planet astronomers have recently discovered (or for that matter a planet in some other universe) is the beginning of middle school.
        This schooling or training idea within soulmaking, and all its attendant questions and paradoxes, finds a parallel within Ken Wilbur’s theories as Bob relates them under View One. I had read some of his transpersonal stuff many years ago. I like his eight steps of spiritual evolution as Bob summarized them. (Ram Dass in one of his books used a clock image with a similar meaning. He described our human journey – away from and back to God -- as a period of time, represented say by 12 hours starting at noon. If I remember correctly, he felt that we had just passed 6 o’clock – the farthest distance from God – and were now heading up the long home stretch to the kingdom). Again, Bob, these gurus you relegate to View One I feel belong in an expanded View Three.
        Wilbur’s comments reminded me of our own debate a long time ago in this trialogue, where we tried to answer the question: “Is the human race spiritually evolving?” about which we had differing opinions. The thing that struck me about Wilbur’s comments was his assertion that, although we are evolving we don’t all evolve together, and those who are stuck in a more primitive state (“pre-rational forces now rampant in the world”) threaten the whole evolutionary process. How relevant that seems to the religious war that is going on today between the Islam and the west. Wilbur articulated his theory some time ago I assume, but it seems uncannily relevant right now. I see the Islamic extremists as a primitive reactionary cult, trying to drag us all kicking and screaming back into perhaps the 11^th Century. And the scary part is that, if Wilbur is correct, this fanatical religious war could be a fatal deterrent to our spiritual evolution.

        That segues me (well, I hope it does) into something completely different that troubled me a little (but only a little) about part of Bob’s recent analyses. And that is the fairly intense political views that Bob expressed in his discussion of (actually an attachment to) his piece on the Golden Rule as the Moral Compass of View Three. Previously, and with a few exceptions, we have pretty much kept this trialogue focused on matters of religious belief. We have said relatively little about some truly earthshaking events happening in the world around us, for example about 9/11, Iraq, al-Qaida, the Taliban, etc. Bob has departed from that, with his strong disapproval of the Iraq situation. He presented a strong undisguised condemnation of the Bush administration’s policies and actions.   
        I agree 100% with his feelings about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. However, going down this road does open up a can of worms, if you don’t mind the very mixed metaphor. For one thing, if there were any View Two Christians still reading this blog, I think we can kiss them goodbye now. I say that because (a) evangelistic/fundamentalist Christians as a group are a strong supporting element in the Republican party, and (b) my fairly extensive experience listening to Christian talk radio convinced me that the typical listener probably thought it was a moral imperative to open up Muslim countries to Christianity. Now you might ask why should I care whether any View Two Christians stay or leave this blog room; after all, I would argue that I am the most “liberal” (regarding religion, though Steve would call it most “flaky”) member of this blog. But isn’t part of Bob’s whole point to hopefully influence some folks in View Two to consider View Three? Also, unless Steve steps forward in a very unexpected way, then there is not going to be anyone arguing against Bob’s political views, as I suspect all three of us are in agreement when it comes to Iraq and Bush.
        Of course, the other side to all that is, first of all, that spiritual values we hold dearly cannot be divorced, nor should they be, from our personal, national, and global activities. And secondly, if evangelistic/fundamentalist Christians are arguing (and some of them are) that the Iraq situation is God’s will, then somebody darn well ought to be countering that argument, and why not us? So, though I am somewhat troubled by where Bob may have led us, I am willing to go there.
        Actually, Bob’s venture into the political realm brings up two questions: a specific one about the morality of the Iraq situation, and a more general one about religion’s place in politics and government. And since we have always tried to be honest about our thoughts here, I am going to honest about these areas.

My View on Iraq
        Based on previous personal conversations, Bob and I actually disagree on certain aspects of Iraq. We ARE in complete agreement that it was a horrific mistake made out of arrogance and ignorance, along with global politics involving oil and other factors. I blame George Bush and his neocons for the deaths of at least 80,000 people, based on recent reports. What I have remained torn about is what will in fact happen if/when we do pull out. Would the pulling-out result in many thousands more deaths, as happened in Viet Nam, or would it change the situation for the better? That's the problem: nobody knows. Sure, we do know it would be better for our own soldiers and their families, no doubt about that. But the question that haunts me is what do we owe the Iraqi people now for our horrible mistake then. If there were an open and fair survey of all the Iraqi people, asking THEM if we should immediately leave, I would dearly like to know what their own answer would be.
        Bear with me while I try and put my concerns in an analogy and then hopefully get back to the spiritual element: It seems to me that what we have done in Iraq is something like a police sting gone horribly wrong. Based on some wrong information, the police chief orders his men to storm a family’s house looking for drugs. They tear the place apart, but no drugs are found. During the operation, several of the family are either accidentally killed, or are killed because they resist the police. The house is in shambles, the power is out, the plumbing doesn’t work, the roof is full of holes, the breadwinner is dead, the children are hungry, and all around there are crazed and possibly evil neighbors, who didn’t like the family in the first place, just waiting to loot whatever they can and possibly murder the rest of the family. The police have realized (though not exactly admitted) they made a mistake. They have quarantined the house and posted guards to protect it and what remains of the family. But now the police themselves are very much in danger, and in fact are being picked off my snipers and homemade bombs of confusing origin. And this situation has gone on for a very long time.
        The question is what to do now? What is the right thing, the Christian thing, the Golden Rule thing to do? Is it really to walk away? The police would like to be able to do that; yes, of course they would. And to do so would save some lives: the live of policemen, and of course their families are understandably wanting that to happen. But what would View Three say, what would Jesus counsel in this situation? My personal feeling is that we owe that family continued protection and sufficient efforts and investment to stabilize the situation. Yes, even if it means more policemen are killed.
        The bottom line is that we have done a horrible wrong, and not to do what needs to be done to fully right that wrong is another wrong. I know my analogy is simple compared to the much greater complexity of the actual situation. Unlike policemen, our young soldiers cannot quit the police force and get out of harms way, nor did many of them realize they could ever be put in this kind of situation. Further, it is not at all clear how or IF the situation can be stabilized, and I have nothing but contempt for the man who's ultimately in charge: our Commander-in-Chief But we have to ask ourselves if we have done all that we can and should do. And I am not convinced that we have.
        I sympathize with the millions of Americans who at this point have pretty much given up the whole situation as a total loss and want an immediate pullout. I identify with the soldiers who have remained for years in harms way and are dying every day (I spent 6 years in the Army Reserve during Viet Nam, teaching Nam-bound solders...some of whom I'm sure came back in body bags... how to shoot machine guns, praying I myself would not have to go, and thanking God that I didn’t. My old unit was in fact recently called up and sent to Iraq, where the guy in my old slot probably taught Iraqis to fire machine guns). But most of all I am torn up about the American families, now more than 3,000 of them, whose sons and daughters have come home in a caskets, and so many more who have come home either physically or psychologically wounded, or both. Furthermore, I am an unashamed liberal Democrat, and a majority of my fellows appear to want an immediate pullout. And believe me, it pains me to find myself agreeing with the likes of Bill Buckley. But I think this country must do the right thing, even if the price for our mistake is tragically high.
        Having said all that, I also have to admit that I have lost a good bit of my open-mindedness about Muslims, because I don't feel they have done enough to stop their own extremists. Again, they are an example of Wilbur’s pre-rationalists. And finally, I do not necessarily support a continuation of the same old same old (with perhaps just more soldiers) in Iraq. For example, I don’t think sufficient political and other means involving other countries have been tried, and that is probably again due to the arrogance of our leadership.

Something else that is depressing about the whole Iraq situation, and which also makes the subject highly relevant here is the harsh light it has cast on religion in general. It is hard to argue against those who point to Iraq and say, “See? I told you! Religion just screws up the world!” There is no denying that extremist religious factionalism in Iraq is a major cause of the violence continuing over there now, and Muslim perceptions of the Christianized West undoubtedly contributed to 9/11. One result of religious aspects of Iraq, the “war on terrorism”, and the situation in Israel is apparently a new surge of cynicism toward religion in general. There are about half a dozen fast-selling books in stores right now which argue that all religion is not only superstitious hogwash but is decidedly detrimental to world social and political welfare. A recent New Yorker article describes the authors as militant atheists who are all but celebrating the current mess in the middle east, because it gives them leverage to bring converts into their un-church.
        John Lennon may have got it right, it seems to me. In his song “imagine” he called for an end to ‘country’ (Bob’s ‘nationalism’) but along with that he also wanted ‘no religion, too.’ By that I think he really meant organized, dogmatic religion. I know that ‘churches’ have done a lot of good in the world, but only God knows if the bottom line in the calculation is a plus or a minus overall. As the bumper sticker asserts: Jesus, save me from your followers.

Politics and Religion
           Assuming, however, that religion will persist in this world, a question I think relevant to this trialogue is what is the proper relationship between religion and politics/government? It is a question that has surfaced prominently over the last 15 years or so nationally, with the rise of groups like Jerry Falwell’s moral majority, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the right-wing conservative Christian wing of the Republican Party.
        A founding principle of this nation is the Constitutional provisions forbidding the government to establish a national religion, and guaranteeing citizens the freedom to worship as they choose. However, a little jaunt through history actually seems to show (and I am open to correction on this if I’m wrong) that relatively little objection was raised by the populace for hundreds of years when their governmental leaders called on God or Jesus in public speeches, Congessional debates, courtrooms, etc. As far as I can tell, it is only fairly recently that non-Christians, agnostics, atheists, and rights advocates have objected to obvious religious leanings and posturings, or even to very serious governmental actions based on religious beliefs. I happened upon some interesting examples of this in some random reading I did recently. Here, for example, is a quotation from a speech during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln:

“…if God wills that [the war] continue until…every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

And that was from a man actually known to be an anti-clerical, anti-dogmatic skeptic. But that’s nothing. Give a look to this quotation from President McKinley during the Spanish-American conflict:

“I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance that one night. And one night late it came to me this way….There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, [the Philippines] and to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.”

Can you imagine the reaction today if a government official, even an elected one, suddenly asserted such a thing? He would be excoriated in the media and probably removed from office. That’s exactly what happened recently, for example, with the southern judge who defended the posting of the 10 commandments in his courtroom, and with the entire Board of Commissioners of a Pennsylvania community who sought to have creationism given equal time to evolution in the school system.
        Just because our leaders don’t talk like Lincoln and McKinley today, however, doesn’t mean they aren’t (a) listening to and being persuaded by the arguments of particular religious groups, (b) receiving monetary support directly or indirectly from them, and (c) delivering the goods for these supporters and interest groups, in terms of legislation, legal decisions, and possibly even military actions. This is particularly obvious with hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, stem-cell research, etc. And of course, on a given issue the individual citizen is often going to vote in accordance with his deeply held religious views, whether he discusses them or not, and he has the right to.
To some degree, the power of the Christian Right appears to have faded during President Bush’s terms, because of various factors not the least of which is Bush’s perceived incompetence. Still, no candidate can afford to offend or even strongly disagree with the religious attitudes of the America electorate, the vast majority of which are Christian. (It always HAS been Christian, which I guess is why, in the absence of such groups as the ACLU, Lincoln and McKinley had no fear in speaking the way they did).
I find it interesting that in the runnup to the next presidential election, the Democrats appear to be unabashedly (though I am not saying insincerely) appealing to Christians as well. A recent article in the Washington Post showed with convincing anecdotes that Hillary, Obama, and Edwards have not been shy about playing up their Christian upbringing.
        Now somebody very wise has said: “spiritual values we hold dearly cannot be divorced, nor should they be, from our personal, national, and global activities.” Oh wait, that was me speaking, just a few paragraphs ago. But I really beg a pretty big question, don’t I? And that is: What is the proper role of religion in public commerce, in politics, in government, in military activity, even in business, and so forth?
        In Bob’s discussion of View Three’s moral compass (the golden rule) he seems to believe in living by our religious principles in all areas of human endeavor. And I can’t argue against much of what he concludes, BUT: is that because I happen to agree with most of his religious principles? And, at the risk of offending everybody in the western world, is that not exactly what the extremist Muslims are doing, with their violent Islamic jihad? (Suddenly I remember the trouble Bill Maher got into when he denied on TV that the 9/11 terrorists in those jets were cowards.) And how does Jesus’ advice to “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s" fit into this? How does the idea of faith-based organizations being supported by government funds fit into this? How about public support for religious schools and colleges? Should ministers of churches be able to endorse candidates from their pulpits? And then there are those little things, again, like homosexuality, abortion, etc., the “sinful” nature of which (according to most Christians) greatly affects their legality.

        Well, I am not going to answer those questions now; it took enough energy just to raise them. But it does seem something we ought to explore. And I have a feeling there is going to be (surprise, surprise) some disagreement about it. Oh no: what are people going to think if they catch us disagreeing in our blog?