Faith Takes a Holiday

In this Season of Universal Love (see below) it's not unnatural for me to start re-examining my own faith (or lack thereof). I've been in my life at times a very faith-based person (to borrow a phrase) and at other times, like now, more doubting than believing. At the same time, the world is enmeshed in dealing with the rise of religious extremism -- and I'm not talking just about the rise of radical Islamism -- I'm also talking about the rise of powerful "Christianists" as Andrew Sullivan calls them here at home.

Christopher Scott gets to heart of what I've been thinking lately in a thoughtful post on his blog.

On personal faith vs. religion, he says:

I've always struggled with maintaining faith. While I do have faith in a great many things, I increasingly find myself questioning my ability to continue to believe in that which cannot be proven.

I'm not referring to religion, per se, because with religion I know exactly where I stand. As a sociologist, I see religion as a quantifiable social construction, a functional template of culture and philosophy and ideology molded together to serve a common societal cause. Sometimes that cause is to oppress (as Marx suggested), other times it is to unite (as postulated by Durkheim), but always it is to guide.

On the rise of Christianism he says:

But today I see my faith waning. I'm having difficulty believing in the goodness of my fellow man as the hate-spewing fundamentalists that compose the Religious Right continue to find new and repugnant ways to spread their corrupt message of fear and ignorance to the masses. Take, for example, the new video game based on the popular Left Behind series of books about the Rapture. As I discovered earlier this week in an eloquently-written post by thephoenixnyc, the game lifts religious intolerance to staggering new heights by creating a playable scenario in which gamers must either convert people to Christianity or else kill them.

It would be tempting to write this disturbance off as the nonsensical babblings of a lunatic fringe, but prominent groups like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition, groups that boast memberships in the hundreds of thousands, have a strong voice that rings out loud and clear. Terrified of progress and evolution, they reinforce their backwards conservative agenda in more than just the church, reaching government, education, community, and the media. These people are powerful, and they're everywhere.

And quite frankly that scares me. Because when it comes to issues of diversity, freedom, and human rights, we all know where these groups stand. Rather than truly embracing the teachings of Jesus — teachings of togetherness and brotherhood and acceptance — as they falsely purport to do, they redefine the concept of "people of faith" to exclude people like me and use video games to teach children that it's okay — no, necessary ‚— to murder those who are different.

It's quite right to be afraid. We're living in a time when those who think they have a right to force their religious beliefs on others with the backing of the law have gained acendancy. A Christianist president has ended habeas corpus, the bedrock of limited government power and individual freedom. Christianist groups demand that the Bible be made the only book that can be used to swear in Members of Congress. Kids are trained at Jesus Camp that George W. Bush is a God-chosen president.

So forgive me if I can't help feeling like that popular bumper sticker -- "Jesus, save me from your followers."