All religions call us to radical love

There is a unity without uniformity in religion. The diverse ways that the various traditions think about the relationship between humanity, nature, creation and the divine are beautiful, wondrous and complementary. It is important to honor the differences. At the same time, all religions, at their best, take us to a place beyond ourselves and beyond their own doctrines, disciplines, rituals, laws, philosophies and experiences. They take us to radical love.

First, let us clear something up once and for all. There is no such thing as a religious war. There is no such thing as sacred violence. Wars are not religious; they are economic and political. Groups of people fight for money and power. Religion is an aspect of group identity. Scratch a war between groups defined according to religious identity and one will usually find economic disparity between the groups. You will find competition for political and economic control of land and what is either on or under the land. You will find competition for who will control trade routes. Follow the money.

When someone says God told them to kill, do not believe it. If one believes in an all powerful God who is able to give and to take life, who is sovereign, who controls the breath of life, then why does God need human beings to kill? God commands peace. The texts of terror that exists in sacred writings were written at a particular moment in history by human beings with an agenda. Scholars within each tradition ought to do the necessary hermeneutical work to help us hear what they are saying to us today. If an Almighty God wants anything dead, S/He simply takes back the breath. And, we grieve. We sit and wonder at the awesome power of God. We turn to our religious traditions for meaning and for comfort.

On 9/11, people who practiced Islam did not fly airplanes into Riverside Church or St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. They did not fly into the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. They did not fly into a little country church in rural Pennsylvania. They flew into the World Trade Center towers and into the Pentagon, symbols of money and military power. The airplane that went down in Pennsylvania was probably on the way to the Capitol Building or to the White House, symbols of America's political power.

For many years in Northern Ireland, people were not fighting over the doctrine of transubstantiation; they were fighting over questions of politics and economics that left one group poorer than the other. In Iraq, the Sunnis and Shias are not fighting over who is the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). They are fighting over who will hold political power, over whether or not one group's economic situation will improve. The battles are often fought for the sake of vengeance, not for the sake of anything holy.

The Crusades were not religious wars. They were wars of empire. At the start, Europe was economically able to look east, see an Islamic empire heading its way and send armies out to stop its spread. They went with the blessing of the Pope who held political power at the time. People went with the name of Jesus on their lips and in their hearts and minds. History remembers this quite well. What we hear less about is the peace movement that came into existence to resist this notion of holy war.

When we consider groups such as al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan, it is a mistake to think they have anything whatever to do with the religion whose name they speak. Their religion is gangsterism and their gods are their own fear, hatred, prejudice and will to power. The Ku Klux Klan has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

If we imagine God as an old guy in the sky sitting on a golden throne keeping the sparrows in the air and counting the hairs on our heads, we can also imagine him pulled down off his throne bound hand and foot by our politics and by our greed. We have gagged him with our patriotism when the nation becomes our ultimate concern. We take up arms in his name then wonder at the horrors of war and ask ourselves: "Where is our God?" When Nietzsche says: "God is dead," this is what he means. We have killed him with our hypocrisy and with our lies.

Moreover, we are mightily confused if we think that our religious differences are the source of violent conflict. This is an exercise in prestidigitation, of misdirection, to blame religion for wars when real responsibility lies with political economies that make a few people rich and leave most people poor. The new atheists are right to say that this god that we use to justify our wars and tortures does not exist. They are wrong to think that without the concept of God that there will be no more war or torture. Humanity will find another way to justify its murderous madness. I say: Humanity ought to take responsibility for its own insanity and leave God out of the argument.

Economic disparities that fuel wars also keep the poor in poverty. They live with the pain of death, cope with psychological and physical injury, experience homelessness and mourn the loss of their cultural heritage. None of this has anything to do with how or whether we pray, when or to whom we pray. Religion exists to help us find a way past the madness.

In his book, "God Is Not One: the Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter," Stephen Prothero does a good job of showing us what the various religious traditions have in common. He says that when it comes to ethics, they are very closely related. As an ethicist, I say: He is right. He shows us not only how they all say basically the same thing, but he shows us how ordinary people in their encounter with various religious traditions, in their daily practice of religions, mix various aspects of them to suit their personal tastes. He shows us how religions influence each other and how religious philosophers and mystics reinterpret religious traditions to meet the exigencies of our historical moment.

Prothero tells of a friend who considers himself a Confucian Christian. He tells of Jewish Buddhists. He explains a phenomenon in West Africa called Chrislam, which merges Christianity and Islam in a Pentecostal style of worship. Ann Holmes Reading, an Episcopal priest for twenty years, confesses both Christianity and Islam. I know at least one Bapticostal Hindu Sufi committed to social justice. The combinations are endless and are all beautiful.

The major difference between religions that Professor Protero describes is how various religious traditions state the problem of the human condition and provide the solution. Even here, I see unity. Sin is not only an act, but an attitude of atomistic individuality. Sin is an attitude asserting that our individual selves is paramount, thus leading us to fail to recognize or to submit to a transcendent power. It is a feeling of separation and exile. When realities of living, growing old and dying come, we suffer in this individuality. This atomistic understanding is ignorance.

Wisdom liberates us from delusion. When we yoke ourselves to our true selves, to community, to transcendence, when we recognize that God is love and that we can be and ought to be love incarnate, we find peace. We are free to wonder as we wander. We liberate ourselves from fear. Religion has brought us back to the source, has brought us back to radical love.

By Valerie Elverton Dixon  |  July 9, 2010; 11:29 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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