Friday Staff Survey: East-passo-nabi Edition
With Easter and passover this week, I thought I’d check in with the staff to see how they’re feeling about religion this week. See their answers below.
With both Easter and Passover this week, it’s an appropriate time to ask: what’s your take on religion? Important social construct or ridiculous social crutch? Something in between? How do you identify? (I guess that was more than one question. Whatevs.)
adam – Chicago Editor
Raised as a black Roman Catholic, I’ve been Baptized, received First Communion, and got Confirmed. After coming out, and growing up, I’ve grown apart from my religion but my faith has grown stronger. I believe that religion is the foundation for you to discover and build your own faith on. Not every foundation is solid or sound and while many can be built on extreme pretenses or ideas, some can help you grow. My faith is more on my personal relationship with whoever/whatever conducts/guides life. I do believe everything happens for a reason and while there might be a higher power I’m not sure who/what that is. But my faith does help me to try to do good by others and to respect all people of all walks of life.
Andrew D – Marketing Director
Religion, religion… I could literally talk for hours on the subject matter.
To avoid a five-page essay I’ll keep it short. I was raised Presbyterian and am thankful for the values that were instilled in me being raised in the church. The Presbyterian Church unlike many others is a really accepting, tolerant, and progressive church. My mother was a deacon and an elder growing up, and there was a female minister or two along the way. I always admired that the Presbyterian Church allowed women to serve in positions of ‘power/authority’ within the church. It’s one of my biggest problems with many religious groups that place women on a lower platform than the men in the church.
Currently I guess I’m agnostic/undecided. I’m pretty sure there is a greater entity or energy out there influencing the atoms and molecules in the universe, I’m just not sure it has one singular face or name. I love the idea of polytheism and if I ever decide to adopt a religion again in the future, Buddhism will be my ‘drug of choice’ for numerous reasons.
As for religion being an important social construct versus social crutch, I think that it ultimately depends on the individual and can be important in both regards. Largely I believe that blindly following any religion is a terrible idea. Religion should be scrutinized just like any contract, bank statement, or textbook. I believe religion is designed to guide its followers to get through the ups and downs of life. In this respect I think it is an important social construct. Religion teaches us the fundamentals of being a good person, in Christianities case, the Ten Commandments: don’t steal, don’t cheat on your significant other, don’t lie… etc. Every major religion has its version of the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If everyone who embraced religion actually followed this construct, the world would be a much better place. Unfortunately this is not the case.
While religion taught me the fundamental dos and don’ts of the world, others have taken much more from what they read/are spoon fed, and this is where it becomes a social crutch. There is not an American alive today who is not aware that religion can and is commonly taken out of context to suit personal gains/agendas. 9-11 and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us of this every day. The radical Muslims who compose Al Qaeda terrorist cells and the insane bigots who make up groups like the Westboro Baptist Church are perfect examples of religious misinterpretation. On another level, zealots like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck constantly contradict themselves via their religion based persecutions of others and consistently fail to “turn the other cheek.” I feel like more and more people forget what Jesus was all about. I’m not here to preach, God knows I have my share of faults, but Jesus was all about loving thy neighbor as thyself, and living by example. He was not a perfect man, but he would certainly question the evangelicals and the radio/TV zealots of today for completely misunderstanding the bible. I believe we call them false prophets, and I’m pretty sure the bible condemns that type of behavior.
I always say that if these people are all going to heaven, send me straight to hell. And while I make light of the afterlife due to my personal uncertainty, I like to believe I’m a good person more or less. I try to put the most positive energy I can into the world and hope that in the end when I’m cremated and my ashes settle on the ocean floor, that my soul has traveled to a better place where people respect each other and have learned to get along. Whether that is heaven I don’t know. But I know that if I play my cards right, I’ll simultaneously be having tea with Ghandi, Buddha, John Lennon, and Mother Theresa. Because, all good people deserve to go to ‘heaven,’ or whatever you want to call it!
Andrew F – Columnist
I guess I’d call myself an atheist, but not in the shallow sense of the word that people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have made popular in the past few years. Atheism as I live it isn’t so much the rejection but the culmination of religious commitment: the self-creation, autonomy, and responsibility that was emphasized in my Protestant upbringing came to outgrow the theology I was raised on. I rightly left it behind me, but would never think of disowning it, and few weeks go by that I don’t reflect on what I take to be the most important idea to come out of Christianity: that an infinite and almighty god would radically limit and then kill himself, leaving us with our freedom and no one to answer to but each other. Good Friday has always seemed to me more honest and more hopeful than Easter.
Arthur – Sports Writer
The problem with religion is when you force your beliefs on someone else. I’m very, very comfortable with my personal relationship with God, and as a born, raised, baptized and confirmed Irish Catholic, that’s all I need. I do think a belief in something more is important, and I don’t think religion is a social crutch. People who are too fervently religious or too staunch in their atheism either try and use fear or mockery to convince others in my experience, which is troubling. But, I’m also well known as an idiot, so….
Chris – Columnist
Others have said they could “write a book” in response to this question. I feel similarly — in fact, I just wrote a 340 page thesis on it. A month away from completing my Master of Arts in Religion, I’d like to think I could answer this question succinctly, but I cannot. It speaks to the complex nature of religion that I struggle to do so. As a self-identified Secular Humanist and interfaith dialogue facilitator, I both acknowledge the limitations of religious ideology and am forced to recognize its profound power for individual and communal transformation. I think religion is a morally neutral form that has been used for both great good — it was the most significant impetus behind the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and others’ work in the American Civil Rights Movement, Mahatma Ghandi’s in India, Thich Nhat Hanh’s in Vietnam, Oscar Romero’s in El Salvador, and more — and, of course, terrible ill. I find myself standing in the middle of this tension, desiring a way to both honor religious conviction seriously and find a way to critique problematic religious ideas. In spite of the many ways I have been hurt in the name of religion, at the end of the day I choose to err on the side of empathy. We’re all just trying to make meaning of our existence. If we cannot respect the ways in which others try to process and express the ambiguity of their experiences, we will struggle to navigate religious difference with grace. It is essential that we engage the religious beliefs of others in this way because religion remains one of the most powerful forces in the world. And though I haven’t always felt this way, my openness to the religious experiences of others has broadened my horizon. I learn something about myself and the wider world from the religious beliefs of those who I collaborate every day. Now, as often as I find myself dismayed by the things done in religion’s name, I am inspired to awe by religious aims. The reality is that life can be fucking hard, but religion provides a framework for hope, ambition, and comfort. And though I do not believe in God, I do not want to close myself off to the possibility that encounters with different religious ideas could improve my life. For more on my views on religion and secularism, check out my religion column here for The New Gay, or my blog.
Hans – Photo Editor
I could write you a book, but for the sake of keeping it short -
I don’t subscribe to any faith, but I do spend a lot of my spare time thinking about religion as it pertains to politics and the GLBT community. To me, it’s not so much about religion itself as it is the manner in which it is practiced. I’ll admit that having faith can be a good thing; it can cause a person to be charitable, graceful, forgiving, and a generally more decent person in ways that they otherwise might not be inclined. On the other hand – blind, inflexible, overzealous adherence to a religion, to the point of intolerance and fear of anything that is not in lock step agreement with it, using faith to justify the advocacy of prejudice and hatred instead of using it as a tool to examine and overcome them, is absolutely never a good thing.
I’ve had friends of all faiths who were good people, accepting of me for who I am and supportive of GLBT rights. I’ve attended gay weddings in churches and heard preachers tell their congregations that God’s love extends to *all* people, not just heterosexual Christians of their particular denomination. I’ve also been mocked in person by Jerry Falwell, a stadium full of Liberty University students, the Phelps clan, and countless other so-called Christians and Muslims. I have an extended family full of arch-conservative Mormons that I’m thankful to not have to deal with very often, and two wonderful parents who ditched the church before I had a chance to become yet another gay Mormon suicide story.
Religion is like most mood-altering substances: fine in moderation, bad in excess, and not cool to push on those who don’t want it or are too young to fully understand it.
J. Clarence – Columnist
I think the first thing we ought when we are discussing the issue of religion, and what category to place it in (i.e.”important social institution” or “a social crutch), is distinguish between religion as an institution and belief in the supernatural or superstition. Both have played a pivotal role in the development of human civilization; however, there are criticisms (and praise) of each that come from different angles that do not necessarily have anything to do with the other.
From an institutional standpoint as social animals religions have reinforced and perpetuated our human bonds and social norms, by establishing and teaching those societies norms, mores, and rules for acceptable behavior–the 10 commandments were not so much religious doctrines for the hell of it as they were rules meant to maintain a Jewish identity (Commandment #1, #2, #3) and maintain civil order (pretty much all others). Even as we look at religious ceremonies today, such as baptisms and funerals, we can clearly see the behind the scenes social and biologic benefits they have, like incorporating new members into your community, and establishing a support network (i.e. godparents, your local congregation). As social animals we gather into groups, form social habits such as customs and rituals, and instinctively we try to protect that group from outsiders; religion does all of things; and for a species with extreme amount of intellect that tries to find meaning in a lot of things, religion did a fabulous jobs of satisfying humans desire to have an explanation and reason for everything wrapped up in a moral message (i.e. when it is lightening the gods are angry, so be good).
This is where aspects of it being a crutch comes into play, because as the institutions become larger, bureaucratic, and cemented in its own philosophy there is a natural to preserve what you hold dear and thus it challenges countering opinions. We see that most evidently with Galileo and others that were persecuted by the church. The Vatican now has a huge observatory and a batch of scientists that study the cosmos, once people figured they could have their science and religion and eat them both, they were into it. So I don’t think religion, or at least the Abrahamic religion in particular Christianity, has within its nature has a anti-science and anti-intellectual stint about, but rather that as humans we just naturally do not like to see the institutions or ideas that we hold dear challenged or criticized. Just look at our secular government, there is a whole swat of the American populace that really does not like it when America as an idea or our institution are criticized and are extremely patriotic, to the point of nationalism. And it all seems to be a natural instinct in humans to be protective and defensive about certain.
When it comes to superstition and belief in supernatural events I don’t think that is so much of a crutch either, as people generally quickly move beyond it once the scientific evidence is clear. I would say again look at the lightening, the idea that the world is flat, the development of agriculture, and even evolution–which a segment of the population still has issues with but they all generally take their antibiotics instead of just prayer to it better–as examples of that. And finally I think the biggest one, both physically and metaphorically, look at how our views of the cosmos has changed, we know that the Earth is but on planet in a sea of other heavenly bodies with nothing particularly special about other than the amazing fact that it is host to intelligent life. Even the most fundamentalist among us does not disagree with that fact and so the superstition around that has faded away.
As for myself, I describe myself as a secular Christian. Christianity was the community I grew up within as a child and there are tenants of that faith that I will have with me for the rest my life. I celebrate the holy days not out of some superstitious inclination, but rather because of what the days are meant to represent, such as Lent being about sacrifice and really evaluating what is important in your life, and challenging myself to do the Christ-like-thing everyday. When it comes to the more supernatural aspects of the faith that really does not hold my interest very much so I don’t particularly pay that much lip service to it.
Jean – Staff Contributor
I’m one of those folks who thinks religion is a creation by people to make ourselves feel better. I don’t participate at all in religion, although I appreciate that some people do, as long as they don’t try to use religion to restrict the happiness of others. I think this happens far too frequently, which tends to put me in the position of “God-bashing Athiest” when I am upset by the Ten Commandments in our schools, God in the Pledge of Allegience and on our dollar bills, or when anti-gay marriage folks claim God as their reason for supporting legislation that restricts other people’s rights. I support believing in God like believing in art, in nature, in beauty – but its not that often that someone tells me that I’m going to hell because of something Renoir painted.
michael – Co-founder, Webmaster, Managing Editor
I was raised Roman Catholic. When I was in 9th grade or so, I decided I wanted to read the bible. I hadn’t gotten very far before my eyes moved across words stating the laws of God that included people being put to death for things that I had done or desired to do. I nearly had an anxiety attack, lying there in my bed after putting the “good” book down, and prayed to God to indeed put me to death, take my life, if he really existed and really held those laws true. I woke up the next morning, deciding that either God didn’t exist, or he was much cooler than everyone made him out to be.
Since then, I’ve “recovered” from my Catholic upbringing (and 4 years of Catholic elementary school), and consider myself spiritual but definitely not religious. I like the cultural aspects and traditions of others’ religions (but not those of my family, since the RC’s religious culture seems centered around guilt and self denial) but fear that religion as a concept is entirely flawed, since most belief systems have a tendency toward superiority (the chosen people, the rapture, etc.) that can do nothing but divide people. People should treat their religions like their sex lives, out of the public eye, and start assuming that every person on this earth has as much right to be here and celebrate life in any way they choose, as long as it doesn’t bring harm to others.
Amen.
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Atheism over all :P
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