I talk about religion frequently for several reasons. The most obvious one is that religion is the entire underlying cause for all of the disparagement and hatred directed towards members of the LGBT community. Time and time again the Bible is cited as the authority upon which we are cursed and hated. The Koran likewise condemns homoseual acts on its face. Without these writings, acceptance of LGBT individuals would likely be much diffferent. Indeed, in previous times same sex relations were common. One need only think of Greece, Roman and the Persian Empire for examples of this reality. *
The other reason I write on the subject of religion is because the world seems more and more at a crossroads where one must either accept objective truth and reality or engage in the equivalent of a self-applied lobotomy in order to blindly follow fundamentalist religious dogma. If you will, a struggle between modernity and superstition. In both the case of the Bible and the Koran they are the products of the work of failable men yet are held up by fundamentalist extremists as inerrant. Like it or not both are infused with the limited knowledge of the period in which they were written and/or compiled and are also colored by the particualr agenda of the authors. Increasingly, research and discovery of previously lost sources make the argument for inerrancy ridiculous on its face.
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Gays - because our existence and refusal to be silenced by Christianists - terrify the religious extremists because if the Bible is wrong about us, then the whole house of cards begins to crumble in the minds of our enemies. Their whole artifical world begins to collapse and they hate us intensely for it. Andrew Sullivan looks at this divergency between fact/reality and religious fundamentalism in what I believe is a good summation of the battle:
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[I]n order to study history and maintain one's beliefs, you either have to: 1) deny the facts; 2) develop some system of progressive revelation that encompasses God's guiding hand over history; or 3) revert into some type of mysticism.
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Christianity is in crisis - and in a deeper crisis, in my view, than many Christians are allowing themselves to believe. I start from a simple premise. There can be no conflict between faith and truth. If what we believe in is not true, it is worth nothing. The idea that one should insincerely support religious faith because it is good for others or for society is, for me, a profound blasphemy if you do not share the faith yourself. I respect atheists and agnostics who reject faith; I find it harder to respect fundamentalists - of total papal or Biblical authority - because of the blindness of their sincerity; but I have no respect for those who cynically praise religion for its social uses, while believing in none of it themselves.
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No educated Christian today can deny that the scriptures we have - copies of translations of copies of copies of oral histories - are internally and collectively inconsistent, written by many authors, constructed in specific historical contexts, reflecting human biases, and supplemented by several other gospels that at the time claimed just as much authority as those gospels eventually selected by flawed men centuries later.
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[T]he solid architecture of the faith we inherited has been exposed more thoroughly in the last few decades than ever before. There is no single authoritative text, written by one God, word for word true. There is a much more complicated series of writings designed by many men, . .
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The same, I think, is true of the papacy as an alternative to Biblical literalism. . . . I do not see how the limits and flaws of such total authoritarianism could have been more thoroughly illuminated than in the recent sex abuse scandal. When the man whose authority rests on being the vicar of Christ on earth consigns children to rape rather than tarnish the image of the church, he simply has no moral authority left. Yes, his position deserves respect. But its claims to absolute authority have fallen prey to the human arc of what Lord Acton called "absolute corruption".
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Yes, this intellectual sifting is hard and troubling to faith; yes, it may end with more mystery than clarity. But if our faith is to be true, it must rest on something more than denial of reality. It must rest on being the greatest experience of reality.
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[I]n order to study history and maintain one's beliefs, you either have to: 1) deny the facts; 2) develop some system of progressive revelation that encompasses God's guiding hand over history; or 3) revert into some type of mysticism.
*
Christianity is in crisis - and in a deeper crisis, in my view, than many Christians are allowing themselves to believe. I start from a simple premise. There can be no conflict between faith and truth. If what we believe in is not true, it is worth nothing. The idea that one should insincerely support religious faith because it is good for others or for society is, for me, a profound blasphemy if you do not share the faith yourself. I respect atheists and agnostics who reject faith; I find it harder to respect fundamentalists - of total papal or Biblical authority - because of the blindness of their sincerity; but I have no respect for those who cynically praise religion for its social uses, while believing in none of it themselves.
*
No educated Christian today can deny that the scriptures we have - copies of translations of copies of copies of oral histories - are internally and collectively inconsistent, written by many authors, constructed in specific historical contexts, reflecting human biases, and supplemented by several other gospels that at the time claimed just as much authority as those gospels eventually selected by flawed men centuries later.
*
[T]he solid architecture of the faith we inherited has been exposed more thoroughly in the last few decades than ever before. There is no single authoritative text, written by one God, word for word true. There is a much more complicated series of writings designed by many men, . .
*
The same, I think, is true of the papacy as an alternative to Biblical literalism. . . . I do not see how the limits and flaws of such total authoritarianism could have been more thoroughly illuminated than in the recent sex abuse scandal. When the man whose authority rests on being the vicar of Christ on earth consigns children to rape rather than tarnish the image of the church, he simply has no moral authority left. Yes, his position deserves respect. But its claims to absolute authority have fallen prey to the human arc of what Lord Acton called "absolute corruption".
*
Yes, this intellectual sifting is hard and troubling to faith; yes, it may end with more mystery than clarity. But if our faith is to be true, it must rest on something more than denial of reality. It must rest on being the greatest experience of reality.
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