Breaking News: All Religions Are Not the Same

Recently, many mainstream secular writers have made the simple mistake of assuming that all religions - and all religious believers - are essentially the same.

Listen to Michael Kinsey summarize Christopher Hitchens' arguments from "God is Not Great":

How could Christ have died for our sins, when supposedly he also did not die at all? Did the Jews not know that murder and adultery were wrong before they received the Ten Commandments, and if they did know, why was this such a wonderful gift? On a more somber note, how can the “argument from design” (that only some kind of “intelligence” could have designed anything as perfect as a human being) be reconciled with the religious practice of female genital mutilation, which posits that women, at least, as nature creates them, are not so perfect after all? Whether sallies like these give pause to the believer is a question I can’t answer.

Robert T. Miller of First Things does a great job of analyzing this book review. Miller doesn't waste time breaking down Kinsey's and Hitchens' mistakes about religion, but I will. Let's take two. There is one religion that argues that Christ died for our sins - Christianity. There is another that claims that Christ did not die - Islam. Have neither Kinsey nor Hitchens ever noticed that Christians and Muslims disagree with one another? Let's take another - that the "argument from design" (which Kinsey conflates with Intelligent Design) is apparently inconsistent because of religious leaders' support of female genital mutilation. Huh? Have Philip Johnson or William Dembski become African animists without anyone noticing?

On a less serious note, the same kind of ignorance is found in Max Brook's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Way, a bestselling science fiction novel by the son of Mel Brooks. The novel is set ten years after "the zombie war" in which, yes, the living dead nearly took over the world, and it's structured as a series of interviews with survivors, war vets, political leaders, etc. Overall, it tries to give a "realistic" version of what might happen. Brooks takes into account regional and cultural differences as he imagines how different countries - the US, South Africa, China, North Korea, Israel - would react to the catastrophe. As sucker for post-apocalyptic science fiction, I was massively entertained.

But Brooks stumbles big time when he tries to write about conservative Christians. They are referenced a couple of times - dismissively called "Fundies" by a few characters - and they are mocked for their belief that zombies signal the end of the world, their panicked reactions, and, most curiously, an apparent wave of suicide cults formed by Christians.

First, if the dead begin to walk as reanimated zombies, "The End Is Near!" becomes a reasonable belief for everyone, not just Christians. Second, I know a lot about religious history, and I cannot think of a single suicide cult formed by theologically conservative Christians - or Christians of any kind, for that matter. Even Christian groups that sincerely believed that the world is going to end on a specific date. When that date comes, those Christians - well, they usually realize their mistake and move on. Mass suicides like Heaven's Gate or Jonestown were conducted by fringe, cult groups whose beliefs had almost nothing in common with traditional Christianity. Brooks seems to have made the same leap as Hitchens and Kinsey above - he knows that some religions have sanctioned mass suicide, so therefore it must be a common feature of any religion.

Living in the Dark Ages

I have been following the Hitchens - Wilson debate on ChristianityToday.com with great interest. Overall, I think Douglas Wilson has been doing very well against a brilliant, vicious, and thoroughly unrelenting opponent. Hitchens' role in this world, I believe, is to bludgeon out hypocrisy, poor thinking, and overall stupidity. I am grateful when he turns his pen against things that I, too, dislike. However, he is not much of a spokesperson for his own "you don't need religion to be be good" argument. I love reading Hitchens' articles on slate.com. I have a hard time imagining spending more than two minutes in a room with him without jumping out a window. Douglas Wilson, on the other hand, I knew only through the classical Christian school movement. It's satisfying to see that he seems to be a good foil for Hitchens.

As well as he is doing, I wish that Wilson had made more of Hitchens' use of this quote from Heinrich Heine, advocating atheism in this modern age:

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as
guides.

This plays on a central pillar of the Great Scientific Mythology. Following the fall of Rome, this mythology says, the Western world was trapped in the "Dark Ages," when virtually all important knowledge was lost and Europe labored under the yoke of mysterious and fanatical Religion. Beginning with the Renaissance and fulfilled in the Enlightenment, the Light of Science rescued us from this horrific era. We can now cast off the blindfolds of faith, belief, etc., and see clearly into the bright and boundless future, etc., etc. It's a great story - except that it's not true.

Heine died in 1856, so we have the advantage of historical perspective that he may have lacked. Considering the state of the world during the past 100 years, in which psychopathic tyrants have repeatedly seized control of entire countries and, with the consent of their citizens, slaughtered millions of their fellow citizens, in which school children have taken to murdering their parents and teachers, in which the largest and "most advanced" countries of the world have decided from time to time that forced sterilizations, compulsory abortions, and medical experiments on less-than-voluntary human subjects are sound public policy....

Can we really say that "daylight" has come? If religion is the best guide for "dark ages," then perhaps religion is exactly what we need.

Government-Approved Religious Symbols

After seeing the list of emblems available for military headstones, I'm now wondering why there was such a controversy over the Wiccan pentacle. After all, the list also contains such notable religions as Eckankar (the "Religion of the Light and Sound of God," led by its Mahanta, Living ECK Master Harold Klemp) and the Church of World Messianity.

Update: More information and analysis of the pentacle decision from GetReligion.org.

Give Me Some of Organized Religion

Barry Taylor writes about "fluid theology" in a recent Out of Ur blog, an excerpt from the new book, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. His point is difficult to make out, but, as far as I can tell, he is calling Christians to accept the potential dissolution of the institutional church in favor of a "new way of living and being in the world" in our postmodern world. He concludes,

All of these thoughts can be summarized as a commitment to weakness rather than strength. “Muscular Christianity” and “robust faith” are views that worked well in modernity’s concrete world, but the viability of Christian faith in the twenty-first century is not guaranteed by claims to power and declarations of strengths and doctrinal postures. This is not a slide into relativism but a commitment to nondogmatic specificity. We can tell the gospel story without resorting to competition, exclusivism, or elitism.

Well, Christians have been calling us to abandon "competition, exclusivism, and elitism" for 2,000 years . Nothing new about that. I think I understand what Taylor is trying to get at, but he phrases it very poorly. He rejects "certainty," but shouldn't all Christians be certain in Christ, in God's love for us, in God's love for the world?

I understand the rejection of institutional religion that is dead and lifeless. Taylor favorably cites Bonhoeffer as the great example of trading "religion" for real Christianity. Absolutely, and when Bonhoeffer chose to promote "religionless Christianity" he, um, founded a church and a seminary. Hmm. Sounds pretty institutional to me.

The fact is, human beings need institutions. We need organizations. That's why they seem to spring up everywhere human beings exist. When you combine relationships, a common commitment to some value or cause, and one or more leaders, you naturally get an organization, whether it's a nuclear family, a clan, an army, a nonprofit, a business, a local church, or an informal formality like the Emergent Village. The question should be, What kind of institution will it be?

World Religions: Christianity

As more of an experiment than anything else, here are the slides from recent series of lessons on Christianity, part of my series at Lakeside Christian Church on world religions. If this is successful, I will add more, along with additional notes.