Religion, Heal Thyself

Many of my essays seem anti-religious. It’s true that I think that the monotheistic religions create way more harm than good in the world. They encourage moral imbecility as a virtue and push hate and tribalistic ideology. As a former Evangelical whose childhood and adolescence were filled with conservative Christianity, faith was all I knew or cared about. I was too naturally curious to think that everyone believed the same thing as we did, but we were taught that most other people were either "lost", that is, going to eternal torment, or just going through the motions of belief. Catholics, other mainstream Christians like Lutherans or Presbyterians were just acting to fit in. They were most assuredly not real believers. Even within similar Evangelical theologies, there was an unspoken animosity for other Christians based on a serious sense of denominational superiority. 

I still sometimes look back at those days and those ways and feel a pang of shame, but then I remember what I have learned since my deconversion. Those of us raised in religious systems have no recourse. We’re made to feel as though there is no other option, no other opportunity outside of God’s ken. We are in a hermetically sealed reality like a snow globe, and within that system is everything and outside of it is emptiness, loss, hatred, ostracism and the promise of everlasting torment after death. Young people raised in these belief systems often feel as though they have no choice or opportunity to break away, let alone to see things from another perspective. 

Today more people are leaving their faith than ever before and it has believers of all stripes worried. The Church doesn't seem to meet people's needs for hope and fellowship anymore. We've been exposed to too much on the Internet to feel isolated enough for the false reality of religious belief to keep us from seeing other people as human. It is no longer possible for the faithful to sequester themselves from reality. What they see is terrifying and the few who remain have become even more militant than ever before. Many now adhere to violent and extremist variants of belief, justifying democracy-ending behaviors out of sheer fright of their looming irrelevance.

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Several years ago, I mentioned my lack of belief to a friend and they stepped away from me, as though they were worried that I would be struck by lightning (that’s Zeus, not God) and they were tepid to me ever after. Their belief could not account for someone outside of the parameters of faith. Having been raised a Christian, I know that Jesus said to treat others like we wish to be treated ourselves, but it is a mistake to look for this as a real output of faith. Lack of belief in others is terrifying to believers. It was frightening to me, when I believed. It made me feel insecure, uncertain, as though my worldview, my hopes, my reality were under threat. The lack of belief in others means that there is a world outside of the snow-globe which in turn means that there are choices beyond what we, as believers, have been taught. And yet, the  Internet age has backed the claims of faith into a corner and as a result, this new strain of fundamentalist religion is more dangerous than ever before.

My problem with faith is deeply personal. It might seem as though I have an ax to grind, but that ax isn’t with religious people, so much as with the religions themselves. I don’t object if a person is a Christian, anymore than I object if a person is a Cincinnati Bengals fan. To me, it’s a moot point, so long as they keep it to themselves. However, especially with Evangelicals, this is precisely what they don’t do. They absolutely want you to know that they are Christians, ‘born again’ and they really are still trying to remake the world in an image of their beliefs. Not every Christian is trying to do more than live a life according to their beliefs, but some definitely are and that point has to be strenuously made. Who better than those who used to be inside that snow globe? Actual regular believers, that's who.

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The fundamentalist brain is a scary place. Loved ones, my mother especially, were led astray by their faith into bleak and gloomy mental prisons where they tried to balance magical thinking, false humility and rabid hatred for others with justification from their scriptures in order to appear as though they had a special protection from sin and eternal death. They often tied themselves in knots trying to appear "godly" while being obviously deluded, or in one specific case, as morally bankrupt and hateful as is imaginable outside of jail or Congress. They absolutely drooled over the idea of The End Times, when Jesus would come back and kill all those who didn't believe in him. 

None of this is particularly new. For centuries,  belief in religious dogma worked to eliminate the unbeliever through assimilation or death. I’m referring to tactics designed to make people of an otherwise non religious persuasion join a faith because of threats of Hell. Here I refer to John Calvin, but there are others. When a person had said the magic prayers, they were told to vote, or rally or behave in a way that would rework our world in the likeness of their bigoted worldview. Those who didn't convert were put to the sword.

Today and for the last four or five decades, Evangelicals have hunkered under a cloak of false holiness and modesty to accomplish these same goals, but today there are other groups that adhere to (or at least claim) religious tenets for their political and economic motivations, like so-called Christian Nationalists. Before I was born, a person’s belief was considered private and personal and it was unconscionable to speak against it. Evangelicals eschewed politics as dirty and corrupt. Then, with the rise of Roe v. Wade, those in power saw Evangelicals and conservative Catholics as a powerful tool in an ideological fight and they melded Christian theology with political policy. Suddenly, Evangelicals were a force to be reckoned with and since it is taboo to challenge a person or group's faith, no one felt able to address the situation. The number of politically active Evangelicals rose and suddenly there was a new ideological ecosystem in American politics that people did not feel comfortable criticizing.

When a system (any system) of belief cannot be criticized, then it becomes a danger. So, to me, unless we call out the deadly influence that religion has had in the world (and on those that believe it) then people’s right to a quiet, personal faith cannot be guaranteed to be unassailable.

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Several years ago, now, my very closest childhood friend and I were exchanging emails on the subject of televangelists. These con-artists are always nefarious rogues and cut purses, always almost a parody of themselves, but they also hoodwink innocent people into sending their last few shekels for nothing but empty promises. This is and always will be a point of deep irritation, as my mother often tuned into these vile snake oil sellers and nodded along with their idiotic End Times prophecies. My point to my friend was that regular preachers needed to make their congregations aware of these predators and call them out for the fiends in human shape that they were. His reply was that his pastor was loath to address this with their congregation, because even a wolf in a sheep’s sweater could bring people ‘to the Lord’. I pressed the issue, though and my friend carried this to his pastor and soon enough I got a snippet of a Sunday sermon in my inbox in which the pastor really did warn his flock about televangelists and other scammers who prey upon believers.

This was a small but satisfying win even if it didn't accomplish very much. Criticism points out weaknesses in a system and opens it up for better operation. The more general and widespread the criticism the better. Ironically, in a later conversation, my friend and I parted brass rags, as Bertie Wooster might say, over the fact that the toothy Joel Osteen was a televangelist, albeit better dressed and more put together. My friend was unwilling to make that claim and we dropped the subject.

The real dangers of belief are when people put aside their more trustworthy critical faculties in order to feel as though they are part of something bigger than themselves. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to associate with a movement that brings joy, or hope or fulfillment. At its root the religious impulse can be neatly boiled down to just that. There is honor and nobility in feeling as though one has a set of beliefs or a code of action and for those reasons it is acceptable to be a person of faith. Again, my argument is not with personal or private belief. 

What irks me is when good people ostracize their children because they don't fit a predetermined mold. There are countless young people who are made to feel that they cannot possibly be who they are, or love who they feel inclined to love because their family and their faith tells them they are evil for their natural feelings. Their anguish and fear often leads to self harm or suicide or other brutalized forms of half life, like addiction and homelessness. The stand against LGBTQ+ rights and freedom by Catholics and Protestants alike—though they claim their faith is about love—has caused uncountable casualties among young people. It is useless to look for sense in these proscriptions, but they are real and deadly. This is merely one example in thousands where faith works to undermine people’s true spiritual freedom and harms rather than heals.

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An acquaintance of mine is a Baptist minister here in my town and he really is working hard to bring the principles of the Sermon on the Mount to the people he serves. He’s a kind and generous man, with a heart of gold and he once told me that every preacher should have an atheist (or unbeliever) on their staff to keep them honest. I was honored by the compliment, but the fact is, faith needs to solve its own problems. 

Criticism from outside can eventually work but only a turn toward internal reflection can purge the venom and complicity of fundamentalist ideas from religious belief. I refuse to give the worst aspects of religion any quarter. “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em”, as the fella said. But the believers in the world aren’t listening to me or other unbelievers even if they now have to acknowledge that we are real and everywhere. They sequester themselves from our criticism, but in the process they allow much evil in their own realm and very often eagerly participate in the name of fitting in.

It is up to believers to call for an end of extremism in their own faiths. I’m not just talking about Christianity, now, but all the monotheistic faiths must be called to account by their own kind. The Southern Baptist Conference is experiencing this very thing as regards child and sexual abuse inside their organizations, but it also needs to be happening elsewhere. I credit my friend’s minister with having the courage and tact to call out televangelists. It is a message that needs to be repeated often. It is the only way the TV goons lose power. They also need to call out (and some have, but not enough) political extremism, crossovers between faith and fascism, prejudice against LGBTQ+ groups, pro-life movements, hate or fear of people of color (yes it is still happening) and women among many others. Book banning, flat earth and weird offshoots like anti-vaxx and Q-Anon all take their foundational structures from religious dogma. Religious people know this, but they refuse to address it. Criticism is a tool that if used might bring the whole house down. Rather than face this, they will wink and look past much evil toothy to stay relevant.

I have believed for some time that America and the world are coming to an end of faith. People can now find the fellowship and support and camaraderie they seek in other places and in other ways that don’t require dogmatism. Some are seeing that the others they feared and hated are actually not much different than they are. Lifestyles that they were insulated from are now much more prominent, less strange and alien. Paradigm shifts of this nature always take time and there are always moments of discomfort and anguish, but in the long run, it becomes impossible to hide from or disparage people once detested and estranged. Slowly we begin to come to terms with each other despite our previous lack of empathy.

In opposition to this movement of unification, fundamentalist dogma attempts to stand as a bulwark. The essence of faith is in separation from the masses of a specialized community, saved, uplifted, sanctified. That mentality rebels against and eschews anything that challenges its hold on those that believe. This is perhaps my own biggest problem with faith. Inside of the snow globe realm of belief, followers tend to look askance at anyone who doesn't fit. They rebel against those who are different, choosing to remain closed off and inaccessible to growth and tolerance. These are the trappings of totalitarianism and no humanist impulse can survive in the thin atmosphere of suspicion and otherism inside.

For me, faith ought to be about helping people, caring for those who are outcast; the prisoners, the addicts, the orphans and widows, as the scriptures suggest. Instead, faith has become about who proclaims their belief the loudest while simultaneously trying to prove how intolerant they are to anyone who is different from them. This grotesque worldview rebels at any movement of unification and acceptance. Religion has found itself on the wrong side of history too often to be mistaken yet again. Given the opportunity, it burned women who were suspected of witchcraft. It reveled the ideology of slavery. It regularly participates in homophobia and racism and is evidently quite disposed to living with the evils of child abuse that thrive within the confines of its cramped ideological ecosystem.

There are many good believers, people who are genuine, caring, who use their faith to help others. And, for all I care, they can continue to be found worshiping and living their best lives. However, they are the ones who must now bring to bear all their criticism on their own systems. They must, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller did in Germany during the rise of the Reich, stand against the tide of intolerance and complicity with evil in their faiths even if it means their lives.

Some have begun to speak up against the hatefulness within their own systems, but until they all scream out in unison and until the faiths themselves become less intolerant, less angry, less prudish (on the outside), less judgemental, less anti-democratic as a result, faith will continue to die of asphyxiation in its own stifled and turbid air. As an unbeliever, my hope is that this pressure will finally crack the shell and burn off the fundamentalists and the stark raging fools and leave religious belief more humanist, more innocuous, more sheep-like, but much more skeptical and incredulous as a result.

Unbelievers have to make believers critical of their own systems. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity all have been allowed to become deeply fanatical and complicit in the worst of human atrocities. Right now, a war is raging in Palestine that is, at its heart, a battle over whose religion grants land rights more firmly. How many more must suffer and die while we allow this to happen? 

Until the evil power of religious fundamentalism is amended the world will be less welcoming to personal faith. So, as the scriptures say, "Physician, or perhaps, religion, heal thyself".