Is religion inherently violent? Can a person be religious without causing or supporting fighting and division? Is any and all religion a destructive social structure, a meme with an abusive streak as Daniel Dennett might suggest?

 

Most religiously minded people might quickly respond in the negative. Religion is peaceful. It brings about a calming effect by helping people realize their deeper spiritual selves. Besides religion has played an instrumental role in social reform movements such as abolition and Civil Rights.

 

People without a religious bent could easily show errors in this way of thinking. They could point to any one of the countless religious wars waged throughout history, persecutions performed in the name of orthodoxy, and the repression of women. Religion, some may say, gives people false hope while laying arbitrary moral burdens on people and justifying its existence as a secret revelation from God. Although some religious folks like Martin Luther King, Jr and Mother Teresa have sparked social change, they have been the exception rather than the rule. In fact, they stand out precisely because of religion’s propensity toward violence.

 

Comedian and social commentator Bill Maher falls into the second category. In the documentary Religulous, he illustrates the destructive bent of religion by interviewing a variety of people from several religious backgrounds.

 

Maher has never hidden his antipathy toward religion—not in his stand-up routines or on his HBO program Real Time. In Religulous he interviews his own mother and sister, and they discuss their family’s religious diverse background. The mixed messages he received as a youth certainly informs his current view, yet this is true for everyone. For instance, Maher asks one woman in the movie about the difference between the Bible and a book of fairy tales. Had her parents told her the Bible was a compilation of make-believe stories and the fairy tales were real, would she today hold on to her faith in the fairy tales?

 

Maher takes on Christianity, Islam, Scientology, Mormonism, and even a marijuana-based religion in the Netherlands. He asks pointedly thoughtful questions that religious people often dismiss or answer blithely such as: do you believe Jonah lived in the belly of a whale?

 

He talks with truckers, Catholic priests, ex-Mormons, visitors at a Christian theme park, a Muslim rapper, an Imam, a curator of a creationist museum, a Christian gift store owner, an anti-Zionist rabbi who is sympathetic to the politics of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and several others. Some people, like the Catholic priest Father Reginald Foster in St. Peter’s square, are engaging. Others feel threatened by Maher’s questions so they walk away, and some talk to Maher condescendingly with an apparent hope to convert him.

 

More than taking gratuitous potshots at religion, Maher seeks to uncover how normally rational people can adhere to non-rational beliefs. Such absolute devotion can be directed in personally and socially destructive ways.

 

 

Maher seeks to illustrate what he perceives to be hypocrisy and absurdity. With religious zeal, he turns the tables on the pushy inquisitiveness of religious zealots and has a series of Job 38:3 moments. “Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” Four conversations represent the serious nature of Maher’s project.

 

The first involves his discussion with the character “Jesus” at a Christian theme park in Orlando, Florida. They share a mostly cordial conversation that concludes with “Jesus” asking what he believes to be his trump-card question. “What if I’m right and you’re wrong?” The Jesus character wants Maher to consider the metaphysical and eternal consequences of his skepticism.

 

Maher replies by turning the question around. “What if I’m right and you’re wrong?” Stunned, “Jesus” apparently had never considered the possibility that he could be mistaken. He had invested so much of his life into convincing people of his religious understanding that he never once inquired into other possibilities.

 

The second conversation involves the owner of a Christian gift shop, Steve Burg. Maher asks the “ex-Jew for Jesus” to describe his conversion experience. Burg readily obliges and tells Maher about several miracles that led him to faith in Jesus. Maher follows up by asking him to describe the miracles. The gift shop owner says that there are too many to recall. Maher astutely notes that anyone experiencing a miracle would surely remember it. At this point Burg describes a time when God had performed the sign of making rain fall into a cup.

 

Maher scoffs. Unfazed by the comedian’s suggestion that this could have been mere coincidence, the owner insists that this rain shower was the work of God.

 

Their talk continues, and Maher asks what might be the most piercing question of the entire movie. He understands that most religions concern themselves with the afterlife by contrasting the decadence and apparent imperfection of this life with the assumed delights of the next. With this in mind, Maher inquires if Burg believes that the next world will be better than this one. He affirms his belief in a superior afterlife, and Maher asks seriously, “Then why don’t you kill yourself?”

 

Not a laughing moment, you can see the utter confusion and existential anguish in Burg’s face as his countenance drops. 

 

Third, Maher speaks with Propa-Gandhi, a British Muslim rapper known for his lyrics advocating jihad and suicide bombing. Propa-Gandhi describes his firm support of free speech. When Maher asks him about the Salman Rushdie, the rapper becomes agitated and backs away from his previously stated position. For Propa-Gandhi, free speech means that he can say whatever he wants, but those who make statements offensive to his religion should not be afforded the same right.

 

Fourth, Maher interviews US Senator from Arkansas, Mark Pryor. Among other eccentricities, Pryor announces his belief in the rapture—a feature of Christian Dispensationalism that anticipates righteous people being levitated from earth while evildoers remain here to suffer unspeakable horrors. Pryor believe that humanity is living in “the end times.”

 

These four dialogues illustrate that incurious faith can have dire consequences and hinder personal growth. Rather than freeing people to discover truth, unreflective acceptance of religious belief systems cover up inquiry and divert attention from pressing matters. Absolute certainty in one’s understanding of absolute truth can result in horrific costs to self and others.

 

Is it wise in today’s world for policy makers to hold unswervingly to a violent tenet they believe to be dictated by God? In a world where people are murdered for making movies or cartoons with a religious theme, should we promote religion as simply a harmless private affair? What are the social and existential repercussions for believing that this life is only a proving ground for the next?

 

Religion plays a key role in the affairs of our globalized culture. War, terrorism, and policy are forged by people with pre-modern religious sensibilities. Maher is asking the questions: Is this rational? Is there a better way?

 

 

Some people may be offended by Maher’s style. They may not appreciate his ridicule of cherished stories such as the talking snake in Genesis, Mohammed’s ascension to heaven, or Scientology’s belief in the presence of evil aliens called Thetans.

 

Nevertheless, his serious questions guised in humor are thoughtful, insightful, and genuine. Anyone dismissing them as mere flippant trivializations does so to their own impoverishment. Anyone unwilling to honestly listen to the critique of religion is demonstrating the dangerous tendencies Maher highlights.

 

I highly recommend Religulous for its laughs and for its directness. If you are easily offended by the mixing of religion and humor, I especially encourage you to see it. Listen to the questions. Really listen.

 

You may not agree with Maher’s premises or his conclusion to do away with religion all together. Yet listening is the first step in creating dialogue and understanding—not as an attempt to better equip yourself to do battle in the arena of culture wars or to arm yourself with better arguments to convert atheists, but with the desire to find and appreciate truth where it is found.

 

Instead of finding counter arguments to Maher’s viewpoint or simply accepting his conclusion, Religulous can awaken you to recognizing that we must find a transformative religious approach that transcends all fundamentalisms. Sociologists, anthropologists, and neurologists have shown that religion is integral to the human experience. Whether it is the God-gene or a developed need based on millennia of social structuring, humans tend to have a religious impulse. Theorists such as William James and Ken Wilber have demonstrated the varieties of religious experience the structures our individual and collective interiors.

 

Any attempt—however well-intentioned it might be—to simply do away with the human religious impulse is doomed to failure.

 

Instead of fostering an atmosphere that nurtures hostility toward religion in general, an alternative would involve religious people healing the wounds that religion has caused throughout the centuries.

 

 

In his discourse on agape love, Paul of Tarsus wrote that when he was a child he thought, spoke, and acted as a child. But as an adult he gave up childish things. Nurturing the healing of humanity requires us to recognize childish things for what they are. This does not mean that we must harbor a crushing sense of guilt for what we’ve done in the past. Instead, an adult spirituality allows us to recognize that we can move forward in our human development and multiple relationships in at least three ways.

 

First by addressing the flaws arising from literal fundamentalist reading of sacred texts, religious people can acknowledge that all scripture emerges from historical contexts in which humans were responding to their circumstances in their day. They spoke of their hurts, hopes, and dreams.

 

To affirm that sacred texts are human documents is not to deny that they have transformative and inspirational power. For instance, who cannot be moved and challenged by the word of Jesus found in the Gospels, “Love your enemies”?

 

Recognizing the historical and human nature of the texts empowers us to make rational decisions related to their message. Do we really want to kill gluttons? Can we wear clothes with mixed fibers? Should you become a eunuch for the kingdom of God or pluck out your eye if it offends you? This nuanced understanding raises scripture from being a flat announcement applicable to all people for all time by appreciating the temporal context of the texts and our relationship to them.

 

Consider how the three Abrahamic religions read their texts in relationship to the city of Jerusalem. The majority of people in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam see Jerusalem as a holy city in a holy land. They all point to their sacred writings to back up their assertion that God wants them to have exclusive property rights to the city—and especially the site of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. In their attempts to own the city, armies of all three religions have waged (and are waging) war. Blood has filled the streets on countless occasions all because people read their books as property deeds.

 

If the Sabbath was made for people and not people for the Sabbath, how might we see ourselves and our religions in relationship to Jerusalem?

 

A mature spirituality affirms that all places are sacred and that killing in the name of God is little more than a greedy attempt to wield power. It understands that we all inhabit just one earth and that a war of religion could kill us all immediately and poison the planet for thousands of years.

 

Moreover an adult spirituality related to ancient books respects the ongoing development of humanity’s knowledge base. George Coyne, former head of the Vatican observatory, noted in Religulous that the Biblical texts were written several centuries before the emergence of modern science. To reduce the Bible, then, to a series of statements that unveils the nature of the physical world dishonors the story that the Biblical narrative communicates, the truth as we now see it, and the integrity of our own experience.

 

This doesn’t diminish the importance of sacred texts. Instead it honors the text on its own terms, while recognizing that today we have a broader sense of our understanding of the universe and our place in it.  It respects the process of learning, frees us from the abuses and ignorance of the past, and humbly invites us to courageously create a constructive future.

 

The second feature of a mature spirituality is to refrain from dogmatic metaphysical speculations. Perhaps the key element of most religions—especially Christianity and Islam—is the emphasis on our individual post-mortem existence.

 

Our longing to know what happens after death pervades human experience. Every culture has its beliefs, assumptions, and mythologies. Codifying these speculations into metaphysical absolutes may originate in the desire to alleviate existential fears.

 

However, dogmatized beliefs tend to create arbitrary and competing dualisms regulating behavior and identity: this is good; that is bad. Dividing humanity and human behavior between the righteous and unrighteous sets us up for reciprocated animosity, intense self-loathing, and consuming anxiety. If we view the world as God shining divine favor on the upright while afflicting the outcasts, we’re bound to hate and fear whatever we believe to be the cause of our current hardships. This results in things like jihads, witch trials, and pogroms.

 

Instead of hypothesizing on the post-mortem fate of individuals and the metaphysical state of the cosmic order, adult spirituality invites us to live gracefully now. Rather than fight over who is “in” and who is “out,” a new constructive spirituality embraces the equality of all people and practices the principles of reconciliation, social justice, human dignity, and preservation of the earth for future generations.

 

Third, religious factionalism isn’t the only form of division in our world. We’re torn apart by nationalism, racism, tribalism, sexism, and so much more. Religious dogmatism tends to pervades many of these battles.

 

Mature spirituality can take the lead in healing the rifts by embodying the principles of forgiveness, restoration, and new creation. It bids us to admit our failings of the past and not to demonize others who differ from us. Yes, humanity has tortured people in the name of God. It has enslaved, exploited, and dominated individuals and whole people groups. To forge new deep structures that will yield peaceable fruit, we must own up to our collective actions.

 

Often adherence to religion nurtures a childish spirit of holding grudges, failing to own up to our misbehavior, and scapegoating others. Mature spirituality brings us the freedom that comes from confession—freedom for ourselves and for future generations-liberating us from the bondage of self-deception. It elicits from us an authentic sense of compassion toward people that we may have considered enemies for generations. A new adult spirituality tends and keeps the garden by pulling up the overgrown weeds of hatred, bitterness, and revenge as it cultivates mercy, interconnection, and mutual respect.

 

Integral to this way of life is a global ethic that upholds the dignity and value of people regardless of their nationality, political views, or even their religious preferences. More than a naïve idealism that sees everything as equally good, a mature spirituality understands that some beliefs (religious or otherwise) can be downright harmful; it therefore looks to protect people from violence, not by inflicting violence but through creative measures.

 

Significantly, healing of the world—tikkun olam—happens as we practice love for ourselves and others. Love, then, is the divine impulse whose healing ointment is made from the leaves of the tree of life.

 

 

Living in the exceptionally religious community of Colorado Springs (the home of James Dobson’s religious-political organization Focus on the Family), I somewhat expected to see protestors picketing the movie theatre. There were none, and the dozen of us viewers watched the opening matinee without interruption—except for the uproarious laughter.

 

As I watched Religulous I laughed until I cried. Then, I cried until I laughed. The sheer ridiculousness of our collective religious beliefs turned by tears of humor into tears of sorrow over what we in the name of our religions have done and continue to do to one another.

 

Yet that is not the end of the story. Those tears of sorrow transformed into a positive affirmation of what we can achieve with an adult spirituality.

 

I believe—yes I still have faith—that we can alter the direction that we are going. Our unflinching adherence to our conventional religions may be driving us over a cliff. We can take the wheel and make a turn.

 

Thankfully our future isn’t written in stone, delivered from on high by angels. Instead, it emerges as we make the conscious choice to practice mature spirituality—what I describe as Agapetheism.

 

Agapetheism sees God not in terms of number like monotheism or polytheism. Instead, Agapetheism recognizes one principle: God is love. If there is a hope for humanity, our religious impulse must grow up. And to grow up, we must put away the juvenile things of our pre-modern ancestors and live in the present with an awareness of our inextricable interconnected fate with one another and the whole world.

 

Kevin Beck is COO of Presence International and author of This Book Will Change Your World. He is married to Alisa, and they live in Colorado Springs with their three electrifying children.

 

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/per_religulous.php

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