Editorial 6.7, July 2004, by Deirdre Helfferich The Fear of God I have always been uncomfortable in churches. For a while, I thought that this was because I was a witch. After all, one of my great-uncles (a Yankee) was a dowser, and another was a whisperer (he was a horse thief, and a damn good one, too, naturally). And I had dabbled in magic as a lass, but stopped abruptly when I discovered that it worked. I didn’t like the idea of catching minor imps with blessed water (an experiment I tried, with success)—for one thing, that meant that I was catching them, and had to dispose of them (imps are definitely toxic), and for another, much more significant thing, it also meant that there really WERE such things as imps. Which implied that there were also such things as demons. So that was enough of that. I gave up my dabbling with witchcraft, and decided that it was best not to go messing with magical beings of any sort. You see, prior to this, I had also experimented with religion, to my parents’ mild horror—Southern Baptist Christianity, to be exact. It was good to hang out with my friends, but the church was unpleasant—too hot, too cold, hard seats, echoey—and the pastor or minister or whatever was distant and, well, a stranger. Hardly anybody in the church read anything except bibles and Reader's Digest. They didn’t seem to like real books. And you could get into trouble by asking pesky questions. I liked praying, however, although kneeling hurt my knees, so I just talked to Jesus in my bed before I went to sleep. It was good to go over the day and talk about things, but it became increasingly annoying that Jesus never replied. At first, I felt like there was a presence, but as time went on I realized that I was just talking to myself. It wasn’t even as satisfying as talking to my various imaginary friends. I knew they were imaginary, but this guy was supposed to be real. He had been real, before he was crucified, but he still wasn’t talking. My friends and my friends’ parents told me to be patient, that Jesus would answer, but after a while I began to suspect that they were deluded. I finally got so mad that one night I tearfully and angrily shouted at Jesus to go to hell, I wasn’t going to believe in him anymore, so there. So I didn’t. I felt a lot better. My parents were relieved. Later, as an adult, I found myself repeatedly horrified by those who justify vicious and reprehensible actions with their religions. These range from the subjection of women to second-class status, to suicide bombings, to torture, to the more insidious restriction of freedoms of thought and speech. My mild discomfort in churches became a deeper understanding and distrust of those who purport to “fear god,” but who don’t actually seem to have any real respect for Him or It—or other human beings. Several cases in point have come to my attention lately, as religious fundamentalism is on the rise, it seems, everywhere. It is particularly worrying to me that Christians have gained political power in places such as Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. It is worrying that violent fundamental extremists have given Islam a bad name, when it is a peaceful religion founded on an individual relationship with God. The violent and intolerant have influenced politics in Israel and the United States to the point that Palestine is being walled up and the United States gives its unequivocal support to this and other repressive and inhumane Israeli policies. Apparently nothing was learned from the painful experiences of Germany and Berlin. I read recently in ArtNews that art curators in Ukraine, a now supposedly free country, have been convicted and jailed for showing art that offended the religious sensiblities of the church. We’re not talking pornography or violence, here—we’re talking blank white icon-like figures with blank black faces. And here in the United States, where we explicitly separate church and state, religious extremists—and they truly are extreme, have no doubt about that—are pushing politics so far to the religious right that our senators actually have the gall to declare that they will support a religious definition of marriage in an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Not only does this proposed amendment attempt to justify discrimination in our constitution, it attempts to enshrine a religious stance, and to take further control from the states. Back in the 1600s, Europe saw an incredible religious bloodbath called the Thirty Years’ War. Protestants and Catholics butchered each other mercilessly. This from a religion in which “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is an extremely important law. The Crusades, in which Christian and Islamic soldiers and civilians died in enormous number, left an indelible memory on both Europe and the Middle East, and when George W. Bush spoke of a “crusade” to wipe out evildoers, he jerked the chain of an ancient and deep-rooted fear, a fear that is based in hard experience of what religious war means. Religious war is not noble. It is perversion. Evoking it as he did was revelatory of either a wildly dangerous naïveté or a truly sinister intent. Neither prospect is comforting. The separation of powers and the separation of Church and State in this country are designed to prevent any one group from gaining too much power. These legal separations are designed specifically to protect the minority and to prevent untrammeled, happily popular opinion from crushing the unpopular and the out of favor. When I made that decision long ago to stop messing with spiritual beings because they might notice me, I was making a choice in favor of self-preservation. Religion is very dangerous stuff, and it can be easy for those who make themselves susceptible to it to become zealots. Yet when politicians and citizens do not recognize it for what it is and stand up to it, zealotry is empowered and entrenched, and we risk the slaughter of the unbelievers. Fanatics, unlike gods or imps, make a practice of noticing—and sacrificing—unbelievers. That’s you and me, folks—even if you think you believe. The zealots always know better, and always seem to want blood. Look at the popularity of the wildly violent and unforgiving Left Behind series. It is time to stand up and speak out, or find ourselves in a world uncomfortably close to that of The Handmaid's Tale, one filled with a biblical sense of justice, and not a humanitarian, secular one of mercy. | ||
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