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Religion is broken for many, but not faith
Author Anne Rice said last week that she was 'quitting Christianity:' The once-lapsed Catholic wrote that she was could no longer accept her religion's teachings on homosexuality, feminism, politics and birth control.
"In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian," Rice announced on her Facebook page.
Can you leave Christianity and keep Christ? Can you be spiritual without being religious?
Anne Rice's decision to quit Christianity in the name of Christ hardly represents an exit from Christianity. It would be like a Jew leaving Judaism in the name of God and Torah. In either case, the declaration is against what some, or even most, people identify as expressions of those traditions, but hardly constitute leaving the tradition behind.
If you keep Christ as the benchmark of your actions, I am fairly certain you remain a Christian. And I know that if you maintain God and Torah as your benchmark, you remain a Jew, even if others may not approve of your understanding of such benchmarking.
The truth is that there are lot's of ways of being Christian and at least as many ways of being Jewish. And it's equally true that there are now, as there have always been, people who confuse their way of being either with the only way of being them at all. They are entitled to their opinion, and perhaps they are right, though I don't think so, but it's a matter of historic fact that there are many ways of being part of either the Christian or Jewish traditions.
The real story with Ms. Rice's comments is the breakdown between the inherited definitions of terms like Christian, Jewish, religion and religious, and the lived experiences of people which do not fit into those inherited definitions. One option is to buy into the "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual" game, but it may not be the best move to make.
Why surrender the terms Christian, Jewish, religion or religious to other people simply because they currently dominate the conversation? Whether such folks admit it or not, each of those terms has meant different things at different times, so why not now?
I think it would be more interesting for people to claim their "Christian'ness" or "Jewish'ness" or religiosity as they see fit and let those who oppose them deal with the fact that nobody deserves a monopoly on such big, important words.
Of course there are people who are done with Christ, Torah, etc. and they will have no use for such terms. But for people like Ms. Rice and the millions like her - people for whom much of what they call religion is broken, even though faith, passion, practice and commitment are not, I would encourage them to use the language of their traditions and create new understandings of these ancient systems. At the end of the day, that is precisely how these systems came to be.
Every religious tradition was once a novelty. The history of religion is the story of people living their faith in the present, while drawing on traditions from the past. In fact, that's how the future is most successfully created. So why stop now?
By
Brad Hirschfield
|
August 2, 2010; 5:53 PM ET
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Posted by: APaganplace | August 4, 2010 12:36 PM
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Why does a Rabbi, a religious man, say such silly things about religion? And I speak to this particular column of yours.
Put more to the point, why would a man who believes in God exhort people with rationale, and favor their leaving their religion? What reason does a religious teacher have offering people reason to be unfaithful and fall away from their Church or Synagogue?
I would like to hear you speak to your reasons, and even your theological reflections, on saying it is okay to leave even the attempt at a formally made religious and spiritual faith in observance that is engaged in a relationship with God.
More so, you seem congragulatory towards such failure in righteousness, however modest it may be.
Peter Menkin
Mill Valley, CA USA
(north of San Francisco)
Posted by: pmenkin | August 3, 2010 3:32 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Let's break this down, Pmenkin:
""Why does a Rabbi, a religious man, say such silly things about religion?
Put more to the point, why would a man who believes in God exhort people with rationale, and favor their leaving their religion? What reason does a religious teacher have offering people reason to be unfaithful and fall away from their Church or Synagogue? ""
Cause, being a Rabbi means being a 'teacher,' not claiming by some stolen birthright to be (your) 'Father' or 'Reverend,' (Latin: to be revered?)
I don't follow the Rabbi's religion, but he's a teacher of his own.
I don't know if you know what it's like to *have* a 'vocation' as clergy: sometimes it's about an 'institution,' and sometimes it actually is about someone's Gods and traditions. They called who I presume is *your* Jesus 'Rabbi,' and in story, he totally trashed the temple over it becoming theoretically lost and corrupt.
For all that Judaism kind of 'invented' certain concepts of legalistic monotheism, a Rabbi's role as clergy and lorekeeper is still recognizeable, and that's very different from ideas that the primary purpose of a 'priest' is to represent some 'absentee king' and first and foremost secure fealty to belief.
The fact that you can't see the difference is in fact why, for one, Christianity's corruption has not survived the information age, and for another, why people realize it's not 'spiritual' and *leave.*
Judaism, by and large, is much concerned with keeping its people *together* and keeping their traditions *alive,* ...which is different from Christianity and Islam's structural basis in 'Convert the world to obedience.' If they run out of 'others' to try and 'convert' they're pretty much doomed to 'schism' and start killing *each other,* for just that reason.
They'll also turn into the exact opposite of what they claim to represent if that'll preserve the notion that people are awful and 'need to be saved.'
It seems you can't even see it, but sometimes devotion to a God means *precisely* that it's time to ditch a temple. The problems of Christian and Catholic churches that are so prominent lately are precisely there: the churches and books and authorities believe so much that 'what's good for our Church or makes people obey is in the long run better than admitting we're becoming corrupt, overbearing, or turning into exactly what we claim everyone else in the world must be.'
Christian churches seem to think that if someone says, 'This is wrong,' their only problem is anyone knowing it. As long as they stay in the pews and keep surrendering power.
Political and theo-political orthodoxy become the 'end that justifies whatever means,' and though this may have enabled them to *consume* much of the world, they can't sustain or keep it that way.
Maybe you ought to listen to some more Rabbis.