Putting religion back to work (Sunday Reflections for May 2, 2010)

Typically we evaluate religions based on their beliefs. In a recent essay on Huffington Post, spirituality teacher and author Philip Goldberg says it’s more helpful to think of the functions religion serves.

As I see it, religion in its most complete form serves five basic functions. I've given each of these a name beginning with the prefix "trans-", which means "across," "through," or "beyond," because religion at its best crosses boundaries and points to realities beyond the ordinary. Those five functions are:
1. Transmission: to impart to each generation a sense of identity through shared customs, rituals, stories, and historical continuity.
2. Translation: to help individuals interpret life events, acquire a sense of meaning and purpose, and understand their relationship to a larger whole (in both the social and cosmic senses).
3. Transaction: to create and sustain healthy communities and provide guidelines for moral behavior and ethical relationships.
4. Transformation: to foster maturation and ongoing growth, helping people to become more fulfilled and more complete.
5. Transcendence: to satisfy the longing to expand the perceived boundaries of the self, become more aware of the sacred aspect of life, and experience union with the ultimate ground of Being.

Goldberg’s five functions are reasonable and pretty easy to understand. His functional understanding of religion is one that I think a growing number of people accept (even if they might define those functions somewhat differently). I wonder though if we realize how different such an understanding is from that of previous generations. Being able to think about religion as Goldberg does is almost entirely the result of one development in the modern world. Namely, we now have religious choices, including the option of having no religion at all.

Until recently, most people were born into a religion, either via geography or family. It came with the territory or it came with your pedigree. The United States was the first major exception to this tradition. From the start, it was made up of immigrants from a variety of religious traditions. The country’s founders were also acutely aware of the chaos and suffering caused by religious strife in Europe. As a result, the relatively new idea of religious freedom conceived by European intellectuals was put into practice and built into the constitution of this new country in the New World.

Acceptance of religious freedom did not become a global phenomenon until after World War II. It was championed by Americans as part of a post-war new world order (e.g. FDR’s four freedoms). What really moved it forward, however, was the dramatic growth in communication and transportation.

The new burgeoning global economy was soon sending people in all directions. Suddenly countries and communities that had been identified with one religious tradition found themselves with significant minority populations following other traditions, sometimes to the point where everyone was a minority. Growing secularism also weakened religious ties and many people simply dropped religious affiliation from their identity altogether.

By focusing on beliefs, religions end up in a nearly unending state of conflict. Internal squabbles arise continually as there are always differences over interpretation of scriptures, doctrines, theology, ritual, etc. As the world has gotten smaller and more interconnected, there are also increasingly strident inter-religious rivalries as each one, at bottom, inevitably assumes it has the truth and the others are in error.

Goldberg’s view sets aside the question of the truth of a religion’s beliefs but instead asks about a religion’s usefulness. A religion or religious community should be evaluated on how well it is helping its members meet certain basic human needs:

• Is it helping them establish a meaningful and positive identity?
• Is it helping them navigate and make sense of the challenges and stages of human life?
• Is it helping them understand their role in society and guiding them in their interactions with others?
• Is it helping them mature emotionally and socially, especially in learning to balance their personal ego needs with the needs of the community?
• And does it connect them with the wider world and give them a sense of meaning and place in the universe?

The orthodox faithful or “true believers” do not and cannot see their religion in this way. They follow their religion because it is true and right—end of discussion.

More and more people, however, see the religion they personally may follow and all the world’s religions as part of a larger whole, which includes the whole range of human experiences and endeavors. For them it is impossible not to realize how all religions have developed historically and influenced each other, sharing traditions, gods, stories, myths, rituals and scriptures. Recognizing this, to then ask which religion is “true” is not only impossible to determine but pointless.

Fundamentalists would see Goldberg’s perspective as blasphemy but he is, in fact, trying to preserve what he believes is the vital role religion plays in our world and in people’s lives. While born in antiquity, the world’s religions cannot remain anchored there. Much of the energy of contemporary fundamentalism comes from a fear and rejection of the extremes and imbalances of modern life. Such a response is often entirely justified but dragging the world back to religion’s ancient origins is not a workable solution.

Goldberg (and many others) recognizes that religion provides an important critique of human life and its excesses. It provides guiding principles and interpretive stories which help us keep life in balance, individually and as a society. By insisting on remaining stuck in the past, religion is losing its ability to perform that essential role. Indeed doing so often allows it to be manipulated by the very forces it ought to be keeping in check (e.g. despotic political leaders wrapping themselves in religious images and symbols).

Religion’s value and power is not in what it thinks it knows about past events, the origin or make-up of the universe, or about God (which even the Bible insists is ultimately unknowable). Rather, religion’s value is its insight into our hearts and minds, i.e. the human soul. It doesn’t take much awareness to realize that the souls of many individuals and indeed of the planet as a whole are hurting badly. Rather than contributing to that darkness, religion must rediscover how to be a guiding light leading to wholeness and life.

Karen Armstrong: Think again about God

Karen Armstrong, British author and scholar of world religions, writes in Foreign Policy magazine that trying to dismiss or oppress religion only serves to bring out its worst inclinations. God and religion aren't going away so we need to figure out how to live with them, contra the "new atheists" like Dawkins and Hitchens.

These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

Team Jesus thrown for a loss (Sunday Reflections for October 18, 2009)

The cheerleading squad at Lakeview Fort Oglethorpe High School in north Georgia got an unexpected civics lesson this semester. A couple weeks ago, the cheerleaders were informed by the district superintendent that a practice they had begun six years ago violated the US Constitution. Oops.

As happens at many high schools, the LFO cheerleaders hold a banner that football team members crash through when they come onto the field before the game. Sometime around 2003, however, they added an original twist and began painting inspirational Bible verses on the poster, such as: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14”.

The school is in the smallest county in the state (just south of Chattanooga, TN) yet has 66 Baptist churches, as well as dozens of others of other stripes. Church life is very important for the area’s approximatley 10,000 small town and rural residents. Still, the principle of church-state separation is hardly a secret and you might have expected someone to point out problems with the cheerleaders’ banners before this.

The whistleblower was not who you might expect. The mother of a LFO student recently took a law course at Liberty University, an evangelical school founded by the late Jerry Falwell. Though a committed Christian herself, she alerted the school district that, based on what she had learned, the cheerleaders’ banner probably violated the law. She was afraid the school was setting itself up for legal trouble and a few days later the district agreed. The banners had to go.

Residents don’t seem surprised by the decision but they’re also not very happy with it. Prayer meetings and rallies have been held in support of the banners but a challenge to the decision seems unlikely. As one resident said, the signs were “probably” unconstitutional yet he also believed in what he called “heart laws.” He said the Bible tells Christians to be bold witnesses and the signs were “a way of being bold.”

The incident raises questions on several levels. You have to wonder what is being taught in LFO’s social studies classes that such a basic constitutional principle is being missed. On the other hand, recent surveys have shown that in some states less than 5% of high school students can pass the constitution test required for naturalized citizenship.

This would seem to be a teachable moment. Several banners in the stands at the game following the banner-ban read, “You can’t silence us.” You? You who? Students and parents imagine some oppressive dark-force-out-there has taken away their banners. “They did it.” That force is the force of law and the United States Constitution, presumably our country’s most cherished legal possession.

Unfortunately both the district superintendent and the school principle have taken similar “we’re sorry but we’re being forced to do this” stances. Both professed personal support for the banners. The principal acknowledged he wished everyone were Christian “because I believe that's what's best” but admitted vaguely “you can't force anyone to believe what you believe." The superintendent who issued the ruling said she regretted doing so but she had “the responsibility of protecting the school district from legal action by groups who do not support their beliefs.” Yes, the constitution can be a nuisance sometimes.

Interestingly people in the community seem aware of First Amendment, freedom-of-religion issues that are at stake here. They just don’t like them. More than one said that verses from other religions would not have been welcome. The principal (!) even admitted that "As a Christian I would not have liked it if they had used verses from the Quran, and if I had known about it, I probably would not have approved of them doing so.” It seems even the adults could use a refresher course in the Bill of Rights.

The banners and the supportive attitudes expressed also raise questions about the nature of the Christianity being practiced here. A local youth minister defended the cheerleaders saying they were not trying “to shove religion down someone’s throat” but were only using the verses “to show motivation and inspiration to the players and the fans.” Cars, t-shirts and local businesses sport slogans like “LFO FOR CHRIST,” and “WARRIORS (the school mascot) STAND FOR JESUS.”

It’s hard not to conclude that at LFO Jesus has really become the school mascot and evangelical fervor is providing the inspirational energy to win football games. (I’ll let you interpret the game following the banner ban, a 34-0 shutout and first loss of the season.) It now seems nearly blasphemous for medieval Crusaders to have assumed God was on their side (with crosses painted on their shields). It’s hard not to see using Bible verses to fire up the team and the crowd before a game as a nearly blasphemous trivialization of the Christian tradition and the gospel.

One of the concerns of American evangelicals is that the country is losing its Christian heritage. What they don’t realize is that their response of trying to “Christianize” culture usually serves only to accelerate that process. Using verses like the sayings on those colorful “inspirational” posters hanging in office hallways doesn’t lead anyone to spiritual insight (let alone an encounter with God). Instead, they become as quickly forgotten and ignored as the slogans of last season’s marketing campaign.

The early Christians were firm in their beliefs but still went out of their way to avoid being offensive to their non-Christian neighbors. Today it can be nothing but offensive to refuse to recognize that we live in a multi-cultural and multi-religious country and world. Every community, no matter how small or insular, will have non-Christian members. They have the legal right to feel welcome and safe in public places and Christians have the responsibility born in Christian charity to support that right.

Our non-Christian neighbors are not the opposing team, let alone the enemy. We have not been called to “win one for Jesus.” Rather, the Bible speaks of our calling in language that is remarkably simple and universal. In Micah it says we are to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. According to Jesus we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

I doubt such verses ever appeared on the cheerleaders’ banners. They probably wouldn’t do much to fire up the players or the crowd. Ironically, however, they probably would pass legal muster because these words or words like them appear in nearly every religious tradition and secular philosophy. They are words that bring people together and create community, rather than words that define a community by telling people who’s in and who’s out.