Guest Post by Morbo
Nicholas von Hoffman of the New York Observer is one of those guys who deliberately writes over-the-top stuff to get people worked up. It’s a fun formula that usually provides a good read.
Von Hoffman’s column this week is an inflammatory screed calling on all heathens to rise up against their religious overlords. I love a good rip-snorter as much as anyone, and von Hoffman knows how to deliver the goods.
Somebody or something has got to start battling religion itself. God is the enemy — meaning the God locked up by organized religions and guarded by ministers, priests, rabbis, popes and mullahs.
This is not a struggle to be carried on in the law courts and the legislatures. Religionists are crawling in everywhere, swarming the schools, movies, medicine and research labs. Their intent is to install a faith commissar to oversee every major social institution. We don’t need lawyers here; we need fumigators. We need people in HAZMAT suits to go in and smoke ’em out.
The emotional part of me says, “Preach it, Nicholas!” while the rational part says, “There, there. Let’s take a deep breath. Religious people are not the problem. Fundamentalists are the problem.” The rational side wins out. I know plenty of religious people who long ago made their peace with the modern world and have no desire, as von Hoffman puts it so quaintly, to engage in “old-fashioned religious throat-slitting.”
I can introduce you to moderate Baptists who, while theologically conservative, defend freedom of conscience and demand that everyone enjoy the right to worship or not worship as they see fit. I know progressive Protestants who just want to meet in church and do their own thing with no desire to use the power of the state to force their beliefs on anyone.
I’ve met sincere Christians who really have made the world a better place because they take seriously the teachings of Jesus about providing for those less fortunate.
Yes, there are many in America whose faith motivates them to hate. They are loud and aggressive and their voices often drown out those whose faith pushes them in the direction of service to fellow man. We call these folks fundamentalists.
Somewhere along the way, Christianity became identified with the James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons of the world. This is a shame, because I remain convinced that the founder of Christianity, were he to return today, wouldn’t spend one minute inside Robertson’s Georgian mansion or Dobson’s high-tech fundamentalist factory at the foot of Pike’s Peak.
Jesus would spend a minute listening to Dobson and Robertson rage against all those they hate, he would observe their faces twisted into masks of rage — and he would walk away, probably shaking his head as went off to comfort a sick person or help a poor kid. If Heaven is full of people like Dobson and Robertson and the self-righteous prigs who follow them, please send me to Hell.
Let’s face it: The United States is not going to be like Western Europe any time soon. In Western Europe, the idea of religion playing a political role is thought absurd; people tell pollsters that religion has little influence on their daily lives. It’s not going to happen here. America will continue to be a religious society for a long time to come. Shutting down religion is not the answer; directing people away from virulent forms of fundamentalism is.
The problem is, I don’t have an easy answer for how to do that. Something in the American psyche seems drawn to religions based on the primitive emotions of fear, hate and self-loathing. Perhaps someday we’ll have the answer and a remedy. We don’t today.
So what do we do in the meantime? For starters, not alienate those believers who are not insane. Tarring all religions with an extremist brush does a disservice to the believers who every day rebuke the fundamentalists and stand up for what is right.
Consider this: During last month’s “Justice Sunday” Religious Right rally, one observer said the following to the Louisville Courier-Journal: “We see ‘Justice Sunday’ as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island.”
Strong stuff. So what card-carrying, religion-hating Secular Humanist said it? His name is the Rev. Joe Phelps, and he’s pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville. Phelps was one of 17 Baptist leaders who spoke out against the event.
It can be hard to believe today, but Baptists once led the fight for separation of church and state. Some still cling to their historic roots and continue the struggle today. In an overwhelmingly religious nation, we need their voice. We’d be lost without it.
Non-believers in America are a marginalized minority with zero political influence. Non-theists are great at getting into arguments about the writings of Immanuel Kant. They don’t know beans about lobbying Congress or winning an election.
I love von Hoffman’s shoot-from-the-hip style. I love that in America we have the right to criticize religion or praise it. But if secular lefties don’t build some bridges to progressive and moderate religious leaders our rights will slowly fade away as we slide down the slippery slope to James Dobson’s Theocracy U.S.A.
My guess is that you, me and Jesus himself won’t fit in very well there.