The Burden of the Church

One of my strongest memories is a Friday evening, attending a Shabbat service at the synagogue. It was in the middle of reading from the Torah—the Hebrew bible—when suddenly there was loud music coming from the street in front of the synagogue. Then a voice, telling us that we must turn to Jesus and we would be forgiven. Only Christ could wash away the sins of our hearts. He would forgive even Jews who had murdered him. We rushed outside—our Shabbat service was disrupted—and saw an enormous truck with loudspeakers pointed at our synagogue and a local evangelist speaking in a microphone. The truck was emblazoned, “Reverend L. L. Roloff, Brings Jesus, Come Let His Blood Cleanse You.”

I was born Jewish in Corpus Christi, Texas. Experiences like mine have been the frequent lot of Jews in the South, but not only Jews. Mormons, Buddhists and Muslims all have experiences like, if not as extreme as, mine. It is not only Christian evangelists who have and continue to do this. The most orthodox of almost every religion seem to delight in perpetrating similar atrocities. “Fundamentalist” Muslims, Buddhists too have their dogmatic “fundamentalists” who prey on others. Ultra-orthodox Jews do not proselytize, but they do treat even less orthodox Jews with extreme cruelty. There are similar dogmatic Hindus.

But it is the protestant Christians like Rick Warren, Charles Colson, James Dobson, Billy and Franklin Graham, Ted Haggard, and Pat Robertson who get most of the media exposure.  The Roman Catholic church now has as its Pope, the man who is an ex-Nazi and who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which is the latest name for what had been called the Roman Inquisition, which condemned to torture and burning many Jews, “witches” and other “heretics.” His rulings as Pope have, while not actually torturing and burning, been extremely punishing to women, homosexuals, and progressives both in and outside of the Roman Catholic church.

I was out with friends the other day. We went wine/olive oil tasting in the beautiful Sonoma valley. Over lunch the couple had trouble understanding why I am involved in the church. She is Brazilian and was shocked that I had been a missionary in Brazil. How could I, a relatively sane and progressive person have been a missionary. All the missionaries she had encountered were determined to convert people to their version of the Christian faith. I’m sure many of my friends must wonder about that same question.

I was a missionary in Brazil in the late 1960s, arriving there just a few months before the very oppressive military dictatorship began killing and torturing any opposition to their rule and that of the powerful elites. I was sent by the Presbyterian denomination, not to convert people, but to help the city administrators of the new city of Brasilia “humanize” the city so that it would be a better place for the citizens. My other main role was to teach counseling at the University of Brasilia. I arrived however, in August or 1968. In December I watched incredulous as the army invaded the campus, arresting students and professors and destroying all hope of free speech and inquiry. An aside: They did it with jeeps and other equipment marked U.S. Army. They were supported by the U.S. government.

The conservative protestant denominations, including the Brazilian Presbyterians supported the military. However, many Catholic leaders and some protestants worked diligently and in peril to aid the ordinary people and oppose the military. They often did so at the cost of their lives. Much of the opposition—the progressives—were supported by the World Council of Churches. My “boss” who was a Brazilian became my hero. By day, he was a mild-mannered, church official. By night he transformed himself into a support system for the Brazilians who were struggling against the oppressors. He did so at great risk to himself and to his family who backed him up.

The Brazilians threw off their military oppressors in the mid 1980s, due in no small part to the work of people like Jaime Wright, Dom Helder Camara, the bishop of Recife, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paulo and the young Christians who had studied and worked with Paulo Freire.

Here 40 years later, the religious world continues to be divided. On the one hand we read and hear so much about the conservative-evangelical dogmatic purveyors of religion who believe that only they understand and have the truth. On the other, there is a smaller but important kernel of progressives, who are un-dogmatic, who see and respect others, who struggle with their own spirituality and who, based in that spirituality, put themselves on the line for humanity.

There is a place for religion. It has fed and clothed millions of people. It has spawned thousands of non-profit organizations to spread education and medical care. It has supported the efforts against oppressive politics. It has paid for community organizing efforts in cities around the world. Members of non-dogmatic religious communities have supported the building of low income housing, digging wells in poor villages, medical facilities in many countries—including the U.S.

Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organization; the civil rights movement of the 1950-70s was born in the synagogues and churches as was the earlier Abolitionist movement. Relief agencies after so many wars have come from religious organizations. Churches have supported women’s health rights—including the right to have an abortion if the woman believes she needs that. Non-dogmatic religious communities have been key in forwarding LGBT rights. Spectrum, the well-known LGBT organization was born and supported by the Presbyterian denomination, organized and led by an ordained lesbian minister. The efforts at stopping the atrocities in Darfur came initially from the efforts of religious communities. In Japan, it was the Christians who worked among the poorest of the peasants and founded schools.

The items in the paragraph above are rarely noted in the media. Most of the media coverage focuses on the absurdities of idiotic ranting of Pat Robertson, or the ignorance of Ted Haggard or James Dobson. We hear about the Westborough Baptist Church harassing the funerals of soldier veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The religious justifications for war from these right-wing pseudo-Christians are presented on television. The murderers of doctors who provided needed abortions are identified as Christians. We hear of the Ayatollahs of Iran, but not the Sufis who are progressive and spiritual. Many who love the words of Rumi don’t even know that he was Sufi.

It is certainly true that many religious groups are dogmatic and proselytizing. They somehow believe that theirs is the only way to their god, who is the only god.  But there are other communities who are not dogmatic, who are delighted to have people join them, but have no interest in persuading and converting people to believe a set of doctrines, who do not believe that they have the “truth”.

To be a part of such a church or synagogue or other religious community that is non-doctrinal is to understand that all spiritual language is metaphoric. The words are only symbols for something that cannot be expressed otherwise. Spiritual language is in the same category as art and poetry. A painting may be described as having a line of 2.7 inches, painted in a color which reflects light of 5900 angstrom units on a canvas of certain technical characteristics. All that is true, but it misses the whole point of the painting. Taking spiritual language literally also misses the point.

The word “god” has as many different meanings as there are people using the word. The word “prayer” means so many different things to so many different people. The word “love” is similarly different for each person. (I know that it is common to say that there are three different words in Greek for love. Of course, that is not quite true, there are actually at least five in the Greek of the Roman conquest period.)

Words are merely symbols that point to a reality but have no reality themselves. Religious words are even more so because they point to spiritual/artistic reality where each person has a different spiritual “truth.” This has been expressed better by others. Alfred Korzybski, whose famous quote is “The map is not the territory,” then there was Humpty Dumpty (Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass.), "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

And finally, more directly to our point, the Buddhist monk, Hotei, “Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

I’ve just used a lot of words to explain why I continue to be involved with religion. It is not any particular religion. It is the community of non-dogmatic spirituality that keeps me centered and that challenges me to learn and grow. But it is also progressive religious communities which continue to foster and support social justice most faithfully and consistently. Do I have to wade through a lot of misunderstanding by friends and others? Absolutely! But in the end, I find it enhancing my quest for meaning in my life.

Like all human institutions, governments, non-profits, churches, synagogues, mosques, monasteries are all a mixed bag. We must learn to be discriminating, make choices, take the good and work to move the balance toward good. We don’t really have the choice of abandoning all these institutions, we would only create new ones, but we do have the ability to work to change them.