Faithful Magic

Faith stories combine history and literature. Though we do not apply the term to our own faith stories, they are in fact a form of myth. Thus a literal reading of biblical stories and history deprives them of power and fundamental truth. Superficially, they are too fantastical as well as too contradictory to be read for literal meaning. Doing so requires what literary critic Northrup Frye said was required to read fiction successfully, that is, “a willing suspension of disbelief.” To believe that Moses literally parted the sea is to believe that Ramesses II, possibly the pharaoh of Moses’s time (it is open to dispute), was larger than any of his subjects, for that is the way he is depicted in the monumental sculptures that honor him.

Faith documents should not be read as fiction. But they should be viewed, at least in the case of the Bible, as allegorical history. Events are magnified through hyperbole, symbolism, metaphor, and other rhetorical devices to convey important ideas and theological lessons. Ramesses is sculpted in enormous scale not because he was physically large but because he was hugely important. The parting of the Red Sea denotes an event of high historical and theological significance—the freeing of the Jews from captivity, in every sense, through the power of belief in God—not an actual display of supernatural or magical powers, but a magnified iteration of human determination.

When Christianists conflate literalistic faith and modern governance, they apply magical thinking to governance issues and problems that require rationalism. Deus ex machina must be saved for the stage. Magical godly intervention will not solve human problems. Human problems demand human solutions.

Little in biblical history would pass muster by today’s standards of historical scholarship, which has been largely, though not entirely, separated from the story aspects necessary for myth-making. Theological attribution in certain views, however, has maintained the thread of myth-making to the present day—but exactly in reverse of the biblical writers of antiquity. Modern literalists flip this notion of attribution on its head, making storytelling into truth-telling.

For example, we are admonished by those who persist in the ancient belief in a wrathful God, rather than the God of love identified by Jesus, that disasters ranging from the AIDS epidemic to Hurricane Katrina are God’s punishment. This approach to the faith stories of the Bible constitutes a reconceptualized myth-making constrained by an ideologically driven, purposeful misreading of Scripture. It is no coincidence that some literalists’ interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah, the AIDS epidemic, and Hurricane Katrina all focus on divine punishment for homosexuality, because literalism finds its greatest resonance among fundamentalists with strong antigay sentiments. Christianists who use fundamentalism as a political force would reify this magical thinking in governance policy.

Situating biblical truth outside the contemporary culture of the ancient writers of the Bible is problematic because reading the stories through the lens of modern literalism inevitably leads to misinterpretation. When such magical thinking spills over into government, it leads to unreasonable governance—literally, governance in which reason is obscured or subverted by reference to faith interpretation that is grounded in fundamentally misreading the Bible.

When we approach the Bible as allegorical, rather than literal, and thus penetrate the maze of biblical story, what we discover at the center is not a mythological Minotaur but Truth. That Truth is worth examining by people of good character because at root it reveals humans throughout recorded history engaging in human endeavors. Those endeavors and what humankind has learned from them can legitimately guide our modern endeavors to govern well for the common good. 

Falsifying Faith

Galileo Galillei once said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” The Italian physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who shook his head in dismay in the seventeenth century at the Catholic Church’s opposition to heliocentrism—the scientific discovery that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of our solar system—would be equally dismayed and bewildered today by the coopting of Christian faith by persons and parties determined to enshrine their ideologies as “true religion” and thereby to subvert democratic governance.

The discussion that follows here will be as heretical to these interests, which I cluster under the rubric of “Christianist,” as Galileo’s advocacy of heliocentrism was to the dogma of seventeenth-century Catholicism. A definition is necessary. “Christianist” must be understood as distinct from “Christian.” Time magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan (2006) made this distinction: 

Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque.

Christianism falsifies faith through ideological alignment, which is almost universally negative in character—excluding rather than including. Ideological alignment involves a calculated cherry-picking of faith documents, such as the Bible. For example, to justify homophobia and thereby a plethora of antigay civil rights actions, from DOMA to state constitutional amendments that enshrine homophobic prejudice, ideologues often cite the Bible. Leviticus 18:22 is popular; it can be translated, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable” (New International Version). While they adopt this passage (through a willful misreading) as justification for homophobia, these same ideologues completely ignore other literal admonitions in Leviticus, such as:

19:26. “Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it.” 

19:27. “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” 

19:28. “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.” 

19:31.  “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.” 

19:33. “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.”

So, if taken literally, the Bible would admonish true believers to avoid rare steaks, haircuts and shaves, tattoos, and spiritualists (presumably of the ilk routinely consulted by Nancy Reagan during her husband’s presidency). And what about all those anti-immigration laws that ill treat foreigners residing among us? But, of course, these strictures do not accord with Christianist ideology, and so they are ignored—faith falsified to serve political ends.

It is no great leap from falsification of one’s central religious documents to the falsification of other historic documents, such as the Constitution, which, if read honestly, contravenes the secular ideology that accompanies Christianism. The founding documents of American democracy provide numerous examples of ignorant, willfully ignorant, or malignly ignorant reading to suit ideological ends. The furor over Second Amendment rights is an example.

The amendment to the Constitution, as ratified by the states, reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The amendment speaks to weapons in the context of an organized defensive military cohort. It was never intended, nor can it be legitimately construed, to provide justification for maintaining a personal arsenal, as indeed rightwing ideologues, including several Supreme Court justices, have averred. Thus faith in the founding documents also has been ideologically falsified to suit political ends.

Neither Christianity nor our American system of governance—if democracy is to be preserved—are well served by ideological falsification of faith, whether religious or secular. The essential understanding that this is the path on which the Radical Right is determined to set the United States is not yet pervasive enough in our society to provoke a necessary counter-movement to prevent the loss of freedom and democracy as we know them.

__________ 

Sullivan, A. (2006, May 7). My problem with Christianity. Time. http://www.time.com/time. Accessed April 8, 2011.

Right Faith, Wrong Religion

With the demise of Rick Santorum’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the focus has shifted to Mitt Romney. In Romney the Republican faithful are challenged. As is well known, the candidate is Mormon. For the religious rightwing of the party this is almost as bad as being Muslim, something the most ardent radicals accuse Barack Obama of being, despite solid evidence to the contrary.

The Latter Day Saint movement (Mormonism) was founded by an American, Joseph Smith, in the 1820s and has been characterized as a form of Christian primitivism. Bruce McConkie, a general authority of the LDS Church, has said that “Mormonism is indistinguishable from Christianity.” However, it was not a mainstream Protestant movement from the beginning. The magical discovery of new biblical texts, such as the Book of Mormon, and early practice of polygamy set it apart from mainline Christian orthodoxy, whether Catholic or Protestant. In fact, Mormonism usually is seen as a type of cult by Christian traditionalists (such as the fundamentalists who largely populate the Republican right).

Mormons are lumped into a kind of limbo reminiscent of Dante—literally on the edge of Hell. Consequently, the far-right faithful see themselves as damned if they do support Romney—right faith, wrong religion—and damned if they don’t, because that will give the election away to Obama.

If we think of faith as a general belief orientation—one of many possible definitions—and regard religion as a specific expression of faith, then all American presidents have identified with the Christian faith. Even those who haven’t been affiliated with a specific religious denomination have held beliefs that were Christian in orientation. For example, among those without specific affiliation, Thomas Jefferson was raised Anglican but his mature beliefs were closer to Unitarian, though he died shortly before the establishment of institutionalized Unitarianism. Abraham Lincoln likely was a Deist, neither particularly Christian nor non-Christian, though he occasionally attended Presbyterian services and often read the Bible and quoted from it. Barack Obama is currently unaffiliated, following his resignation from Trinity United Church of Christ over the Jeremiah Wright controversy, but he was previously affiliated with the UCC for more than twenty years.

Twelve U.S. presidents have been Episcopalian, the most populous religious category. They’ve ranged from George Washington to George W. Bush (though he converted to Methodism later in life). John F. Kennedy, famously, was the only Catholic. Most have adhered to some form of Protestantism.

Ardent religionists cherry-pick the Bible, selecting and interpreting its passages to suit their personal or political ideologies. Politicians do the same with the Constitution. Those who have read the U.S. Constitution will have noted the passage saying that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The wisdom of this ideal is self-evident, as is the wisdom of separating church and state so that our democratic governance is not parochialized. But actualization of any ideal is never easy. Too many biases, preconceptions, egos, and ideologies are at stake.

Will we ever have another Catholic president? A Jew? A Muslim? Or perhaps even a Mormon?

Faith, Race, and Religion

The term faith has many meanings, and one purpose of this blog is to explore them. One expression of faith is a belief that the principles of our nation’s founding are still sound. For more than two hundred years we, as a nation, have put our faith in democracy as it was articulated by our eighteenth-century founders—people such as Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson. Their vision of democracy has had staying power but only, it might be argued, because we have enlarged upon the realization of their vision.

For example, when the founders wrote the first words of the Constitution, “We the People…,” the de facto definition of “the People” was white male property owners. They were the demos of our democracy; they could vote. But they comprised only ten to sixteen percent of the population of our fledgling union.

As our “experiment” in democracy, as Jefferson called it, has evolved, it has been understood that through the office of time “the People” would come to encompass the entire citizenry of the nation. We are still working toward that realization in many areas of civic life—all rights are still not equal—but we have largely succeeded at minimun in enfranchising all citizens. The property-ownership requirement was eliminated by 1850, the 15th Amendment extended the vote to nonwhites in 1870, and the 19th Amendment in 1920 finally enfranchised women. These were major advances.

Other inclusive actions, often overlooked, include the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, which granted Native Americans citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections; and the 23rd Amendment, which granted District of Columbia citizens the right to participate in presidential elections.

The evolving nature of enfranchisement also is illustrated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed to protect minority rights that had been compromised by some states’ erection of barriers to voting, such as literacy tests.

Remnants of old prejudices, however, linger in today’s politics, often intersecting with religion. A strident—and at the moment, increasingly visible—racist faction is rattling on the radical right. This has meant that some candidates, such as Rick Santorum, have played pander and deny, first aligning themselves with the radicals and then backpedaling to assure the moderates. Santorum, for example, was widely reported talking about “black people” and welfare this winter, something he later tried to deny, despite video evidence.

The most egregious example of racism at work in the current presidential election campaign is “Don’t Renig in 2012.” Despite fancy linguistic footwork by some defenders, the phrase is short for “Don’t Reelect a Nigger in 2012,” and when that slogan is paired with an echo of the Obama logo, the meaning is clear.

Faith in our democratic experiment remains thin among a significant portion of the population, not a majority but a substantial, often strident, sometimes influential minority. This minority fears and opposes anyone who is not them: not white, not their brand of “Christian,” and so forth. In this respect, the remarks of Dennis Terry, a pastor whose introduction of Rick Santorum recently went viral on the Internet, are illustrative:

“There is only one God, and his name is Jesus,” Terry said. “I'm tired of people telling me that I can't say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or that we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me: if you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things I got one thing to say—GET OUT. We don’t worship Buddha. We don't worship Mohammad. We don't worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”

In a nation as diverse as ours, this is a narrowly defined demos indeed.

Faith and Religion

Let me posit a definitional distinction between faith and religion. The distinction is personal, rather than universal. But it will guide this discourse. In this context, by faith I mean a pervasive, transcendent belief in the common good—in essence, in the divinity of humanness. In contrast, religion is bound by dogma. Religions—multiple—are discrete belief systems, each separate and distinct from all others in certain ways, some slight, some substantial.

The label God crosses both faith and religions, and so it is important to make a distinction between God as faith shorthand for universal divine humanness and God as appropriated by religion, such as the “Christian God” (as if there were only one) or the “Muslim God” (remembering that Allah is merely Arabic for God.)

This distinction is maintained, despite much confusion and argument over the point, in the national use of the phrase “in God we trust,” which can be seen on most currency and coins. This is not the God of a particular religion (despite the desires of those who would make it so). This is a faith expression, not a religious one. Therefore, such use does not violate the Establishment Clause, that phrase in the First Amendment that says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

One has only to look at the most basic of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, to see an initial iteration of this principle in its opening words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is a faith expression, not to be confounded with a religious declaration. Such expression, in fact, would have had to cross several religious sensibilities, given the numerous religions represented among the signers of the Declaration.

Faith, governance, and democracy intersect in this foundation, as they have done ever since. However, the intrusion of religion into this intersection also has been, since the founding days of our union, a danger. In the current political climate this danger has been heightened. Narrow religious dogma, as espoused by some political candidates, is incompatible with democracy because it resonates with only some of the people, in many cases a very narrow band of the population spectrum.

Democracy relies on compromise, on the participation of all the people in the governance of the nation. When religious dogma descends to rigidity, it is incompatible with democracy because some people are excluded from participation by the beliefs and practices of their religion. Many religions are exclusive; faith and democracy are inclusive. The Founders understood this distinction, and our notions about separating church and state stem from this understanding. It should be further understood that some religions are, at heart, faith-less. One may be faith-full with or without benefit of religion. And it is faith that supports the enterprise of our democratic governance.