Thanks, Pam…

I’ve spent about 30 of my 52 years pretty connected to Episcopal churches and traditions, wrapping up a decade ago.

The thing that made faith active and possible for me for so long was open conversations about the mystery of it all. Of course there were Biblical texts to consider, but understood in full context, their lessons weren’t always what they appeared to be at first glance.

One of the sweetest church programs I saw was an outreach to young parents and about-to-be parents. Social services folks at the nearby public hospital identified the young moms and dads-to-be, and the program was worked up jointly between the church and the hospital.

Once a week, the young parents and babies gathered in the church basement with experienced parents. They fixed a healthy lunch and used it to talk about healthy meal planning and cooking. There was more structured program and discussion time after lunch on all sorts of topics, with the whole thing wrapping up in two hours.

It was an intensive thing to run, by church members whose employers let them carve the time out of the work day as well as retirees and “at-home” parents. But it was also a powerful thing to do — invite teen moms-to-be into joyful, non-judgmental space to share real-life lessons.

Like you, I’m disheartened that Catholic bishops are as eager to offer the gifts of salvation and an afterlife as they are to snatch them away when people don’t pass their narrow-minded litmus tests. Never mind the needs of teen moms or gay kids in crisis, families without health coverage, homeless and undocumented kids and adults, if the embryos don’t win the day (or LGBT people do), all is lost.

I agree on all points, Pam. And it troubles me that people are ridiculed for mentioning faith in any balanced way, especially online. I’ve stopped doing so on joe my god, as the responses were really nasty.
That said, it’s easy to see where such immediate visceral responses are coming from: religions, especially the catholic church, have done a lot of harm to people–especially lgbt people. And the catholic church is very loud and bombastic in targeting gay civil rights right now. It’s infuriating, and i won’t give a dime to the church anymore, despite being catholic–more catholic than the hierarchy, I’m guessing. They are just chasing catholics away from the church as if it was their own. Well, it isn’t.
One sweet thing: I’m heartened that bayard rustin’s home town named its high school after him–and that in a town that’s three quarters white. You know, another very important human being is also from west chester, pa.: samuel barber, and he was gay too. He wrote the great “serenade for strings,” arguably the calmest piece of music ever written.

Matt (and Steve) – the Catholic church is the perfect example of a top-down faith chasing away worshipers who have great emotional investment in the rituals and traditions of the church by, quite frankly, failing to understand the social change around it that is NO threat to its existence. The church, through covering up its pedophile child rapist problem, all while demonizing LGBTs to try to distract everyone from the evil within the church’s ranks, almost guarantees it will only hold fast its parishioners who cling to blind faith and fear alone, and don’t engage in any critical thinking at all about the shades of gray in society. What isn’t a gray area at all — and this is most tragic — is that the good works needed to help the desperate families and individuals hurt by this recession/depression seem to be nearly ignored by these homophobic forces within.

Pam — I think it’s a very complex issue, and that it’s not just religion driving this. There’s a pernicious link-up between politicians who are after power by whatever means it takes, “ministers” who’ve lost sight of what Christianity is about — and this isn’t recent, it goes all the way back to the first mega-ministries of Tammy and Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, and their like — and a corporate media that’s driven by ratings rather than journalism, so that controversy is the be-all, no matter whether the controversy is credible or not. It’s only been exacerbated by the rise of the Internet, meaning widespread and immediate publicity with no fact-checking: it gets said, it gets repeated, and it becomes true, whether it has any basis in fact or not. And now there’s big money behind it, from the LDS and Roman Catholic churches, and enough Protestants to give a nice “ecumenical” flavor to the whole thing.

There has been, for our entire history, a core of those willing to follow rather than think — the foot soldiers who can be counted on to go out and vote according to their preacher’s instructions. And the preachers are past masters at appealing to all that is smallest and meanest in their congregations. What makes it so vicious now is that they’re losing and they know it. Couple that with the fact that gay rights are advancing no matter what they do, and I think the fact of an African-American president plays a part, too — people like Tony Perkins are equal opportunity bigots — and we’re looking at the last stage before Armageddon.

And the right picked its targets wisely — first they went after the press and its “liberal bias,” which was so much horsepucky. The press panicked and started tracking right, while those sources that remained fact-driven came under heavier attack. And when you’ve got the press running scared, you’ve got the game half won. We tend to blame the real Christians for remaining silent, but even when the speak up, they are ignored — paying attention to them might indicate a liberal bias. And then they started on the courts, which has an effect in the states, mostly, where judges are largely elected, but that’s where the real battles are being fought.

There’s hope, though — Tony Perkins being called out on TV by Dan Savage and David Boies as the liar he is, and being challenged by Chris Matthews of all people, and Bryan Fischer being cut off by Carol Costello for lying and being his incendiary self: there are a few TV anchors and hosts who are starting to get it. (And I’m betting that once they start seeing their ratings jump when things like that happen, there will be more of it.)

Sorry for the ramble — there are a lot of facets to this — but I think what we’re seeing is the latest resurgence of the old American nativist, tribalist, anti-intellectual element, driven by fear and using religion as an engine and smokescreen. (I myself find it incredible that anyone can listen to someone like Patrick Wooden without laughing in his face, but ignorance is a key factor in all of this.) There have always been “Christians” who ground their beliefs more in the Old Testament than in anything that Jesus taught — this is just the latest, and loudest, manifestation.

Great article, Pam! I’m not a religious person but I really wish that those who follow the actual words of Jesus would get as mad as he was when he threw the money changers out of the temple. It’s way past time for them to take back their religion(s)!

Pam, your heart’s in the right place, as always. I think your expectations are beyond reach if the proposed vehicle is any religion.

That is, I’m afraid organized religion of any stripe isn’t about your “. . .I just wish more of these organized religions would get back to the mission of helping the poor, the homeless, the sick. . .” It never has been that mission, though.

The commonality of that claimed mission is notable and no coincidence. The claim appeals to most peoples’ charitable inclinations anywhere on an individual basis. Hence, it’s a way to corral them as willing subjects under various command structures. Which one happens to be in play is mostly based upon an individual’s accident of birth and location. Organized religions have evolved into competing enterprises, and not just where their respective fringes meet.

This is most distressing to me because to extricate one’s self from the dilemma would require almost seceding from the culture one grew up in, pretty much all of it, which is an awful prospect.

Maybe someone else here knows the solution. I don’t.

The point is that I don’t propose any vehicle to achieve lasting progress; the problem is that as human beings, so much of our time is spent declaring “I am right” rather than actively listening to and thinking about any other point of view or possible points of intersection. And when there are none — well, we see where we are on so many political fronts.

Everyone is a person of Faith, but not all place that Faith in Religion. The atheist is just as committed to their belief as the Christian or Hindu. The test is just how submissive the believer is to their belief. My experience has been that many of the loudest professors of any Faith are hypocrites, more interested in the power of controlling the followers than living the principles taught by the relevant holy text.

spot on except that it is not complex at all. it is in fact quite simple. it’s sort of like encryption, no matter how many algorythms you use, if it all boils down to a few changes then your overhead is nonsense. or, shuffle a deck of cards as often as you like and you still have the same 52 cards. that may be oversimplified but all religions boil down to what actually? your standard of living. never mind the rules of trade and such, the snapshot is always right there.

ultimately any or all religions or politicos blah blah blah and their rules boil down to the single simplicity;

either you help others build their lives and are rewarded thereby or you build your own at the expense of others

.

Book Salon up with Andy Greenberg’s This Machine Kills Secrets: How Wikileakers, Hacktivists, and Cipherpunks Are Freeing the World’s Information hosted by Kevin Gosztola

Well, I agree.

I was struck by the “Coexist” artwork which I’ve seen on bumper stickers as well. It’s a well intentioned platitude, and could be a pitfall I think. To embrace individuals I have to navigate around all the religions and labels at once, and maybe I have that urge too often.

For me it’s more of a “neither, nor, nor, etc.” prospect. I don’t think it’s intolerance on my part, but just pulling up anchor from time to time, and not get bogged down by any of them.

RE: my #11 replies to Pam’s #7.

Edit and reply don’t seem to be transmitting as such

Traditional religious institutions have been pursuing hypocritical agenda for ages, but the mega churches are part of a public relations campaign that’s massively funded by corporate fascists. Their mission is to defeat “socialism”, to suppress critical thinking, and to instill “humble” conformist acceptance of the austerity/poverty that is being forced upon us by persuading people to look toward rewards in the afterlife, while the “social issues” provide a whipping boy for the wrathful god image they espouse. Similar divide-and-conquer efforts are promoted through talk radio, the NRA, and conservative think tanks, among others.

Don’t confuse “faith” with “belief”. Everyone believes in certain things, but faith is belief without – and often in spite of – evidence. That’s an incredibly dangerous thing and something abhorred by atheists. One may say things like “I faith that my family will help me”, but that is either based on evidence as well or more of a synonym for “trust”.

Stevie1 got here first.

The problem is faith. Spiritual growth is not faith dependent unless you include as faith an understanding of the central place in all humans of an observer that does not judge. The antidote to ego. But you don’t need faith to know it exists.

The duality model has been split by many western religions into absolutes which are patently absurd.

This discussion reminds me of the book A Political Reading of the Life of Jesus by George W. Baldwin. In it, he talks about Powers and the Oppressed. He says that what Jesus did was to provide an example of how the Oppressed can challenge a Power. The way to identify a Power is whether it uses violence — physical, emotional, spiritual, or economic — to get what it wants.

Alas, the much of the Christian church has become a Power intent on its own oppression to maintain its position and status.

What I’m feeling about this can all be summed up by some lyrics from “Jesus Christ Superstar”, the very first song where Judas (preferably the Judas played by the awesome Carl Anderson) is singing:
“All your followers are blind.
Too much heaven on their minds.
It was beautiful, but now it’s sour.
Yes it’s all gone sour.”

Any belief structure can get corrupted by ulterior agendas, and so exploit its adherents as well as the rest of society. There is no immunity from that risk.

But yes, big religion is like big corp and especially egregious in that way.

I am not “a person of faith.” Atheist is a faith like bald is a hair color. Try to learn how to think outside the god box, would you?

They often quickly devolve into “you have to stupid to believe in the sky fairy” insults or questioning their intelligence. It’s not productive, unnecessarily combative, and pointless — no one is going to convert one another from their viewpoints.

Atheists are the group Americans are least likely to elect to office. In several states, they’re legally barred from running. Jessica Ahlquist, a teenage girl, got rape and death threats for insisting that her school obey the U.S. Constitution w/r/t religion.

But, oh noes, somebody said “invisible sky fairy” to some butthurt theist!

Fuck that shit. One of the biggest problems in this country is the taboo against criticizing what other people believe. More-secular countries don’t have this problem. The average American fundie xtian, or for that matter liberal xtian, would be shocked to hear how little respect they’d get if they lived in the UK or certain European countries.

If you want your beliefs to be taken seriously, you have to be willing to open them up for analysis. Especially if you go around claiming they make you a good person and that the adjectival noun for a person of your faith is synonymous with “good person” — despite the copious evidence to the contrary.