Religious Terrorism Comes For Us

We're rightfully horrified by religious zealots who perpetrate murder by some twisted dogma, festered into life-denying campaigns. Now it's time for us to recognize the same sort of spiritual violence being perpetrated across our nation in the name of belief systems being forced on the populace by the few. In a nation constructed on the principle of no state religion, this is a travesty all Americans should fight against. I say this as a devout Christian.

"American Jihad", by Tim Holmes

I'm horrified that zealots who call themselves "Christian" using the powerfully transformative message of Christ for violent ends. They thereby not only trample the rights of others, but this profligacy also ruins the idea of 'religion' in the minds of the generations, who can tell from a distance this has nothing to do with Christ's message of love. The religious right is often the first community to suggest we address societal problems with violence, supporting "pro-life" and other restrictions on women, championing guns, supporting the death penalty and refusing health care to trans people and the poor. It's curious how they can twist violent solutions from the teachings of Prince of Peace. With such violence peppering daily news, no wonder the churches are emptying out!

The fundamentalist streak of the Christian faith began shortly after Darwin published his seminal 1859 work pointing out that creation, like ourselves, is not fixed but in process. Those who confused faith with certainty felt threatened, and so scared whole congregations to rally around an idea that creation was fixed by a metaphor used in an ancient creation story that eventually was crystallized into the Bible we know, (including two different versions of the Creation! How often do fundamentalists mention that?) But none of that has to do with Christ. A Christian is one who supposedly follows the example of Jesus, the guy who said "You have heard it said...but I tell you...". These are not the words of a fundamentalist. Yet the general understanding of 'faith' is rooted in fundamentalist fears.

The real transformative work of the Christian faith is often lost under the bloody footprints of church institutions, which were often controlled by people who loved power more than Jesus. Nevertheless, the most respected of institutions in Western culture–– our hospitals, universities, public schools, welfare programs–– were begun by faith organizations. The inspiration of love can be clearly seen in all these faith institutions before they were taken over largely by corporations and bureaucracies. Now in the services of many of them can hardly be discerned a motivation from love.

I come from six generations of Methodist ministers. We are among a quiet population of millions of religious people, Christians among them, who take Love seriously and work in our world to do acts of kindness to all. Love is our master but we don't force our ways or refuse our service to anyone, a lesson we learned best from Christ, but a principle shared by many faiths. Love means never forcing. Use of force–– regardless of the identity of the perpetrator–– is violence, not love. And the perpetrators are following their own agenda, not Christ's. We are saddened that our nation has turned against religion, which I feel is the critical medicine we all need to face death. But in our media world, if it bleeds, it leads, so the religious terrorists are the ones that make the headlines and therefor control the dialog.

My pastor father used to say, "The Christian church is the single organization to which membership rests on unworthiness to belong." That kind of humility is critical to keep any of us from becoming our own god, which is a great temptation, particularly because you can find justification for it in the Bible! My tribe is populated by no better people than any other. But we know that love is the most powerful thing in the universe. 

Power-hungry people the world over have seen how fervent is the devotion of people of faith and how easy it is to force their way into the PR office of 'organized religion'. But the resulting religious terrorism can be minimized the more the public can separate the idea of love from the talk of religious identity; of how we are rather than who we are. I doubt the followers of any faith tradition can disagree with that. It all begins with love.