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There are no atheists in foxholes, or so the old saying goes. The original understanding of the maxim was that, in times of danger, everyone resorts to religion. But it might mean the opposite as well, that, absent religion, people are less likely to fight. If that were the case, it would be a good argument for atheism. Even God would prefer an empty foxhole to full church.

I believe the question of religion is not so simple as believing in God or not. Everyone of us, regardless of our beliefs, is in the grip of primal forces, animal, elemental and communal, to which we must make peace if we are to grow out of our true soil. If we ignore the affects of these tectonic forces in our lives we are living largely in our imagination whether we are guided by scripture or the periodic chart.

Getting back to the subject of atheists and foxholes, I would say all religion, theist or not, contains seeds, which if allowed to blossom, will lead us to violence. The seven deadly sins of religion are: literalism, sectarianism, magical thinking,”concretizing,” appeals to fear, hierarchy and scapegoating. We do not automatically leave these problems behind when we say we have rejected organized religion.

Appeals to fear- Our human brains react very differently to fear and to hope.  Among primates, it is very easy to become a leader if one is good at pointing out the enemies of a group. Unfortunately, for humans, the fear factor works almost as well with invented threats. It is easy to spot the scapegoating of the major world religions, but it has been interesting to witness how many of the new atheists have used fear of religion as effectively and skillfully as any televangelist has used fear of atheism.

Sectarianism- It seems harmless to be proud of one’s group, but unless that group is consecrated to the common good, it becomes a cancer cell in the one body of our common humanity. Obviously, when Christians claim Jesus is the only way to salvation, they are appealing to this human frailty, but when some atheists call themselves “brights” and assume that all religious people are taking their symbols literally, they may have fallen into this same “us against them” trap.

Literalism- Again, it seems harmless to take a text literally, but if believers lose a sense of their own subjectivity and think they are looking objectively at what God really means in the Bible, intolerance is not far away. But how is that different than a rationalist who tries to reduce an ambiguouis universe to the catagories of human language? Is not the universe, at a certain depth, a mystery to us all? As Paul said, when it comes to reality, we humans are looking through a glass darkly. Science is a wonderful corrective lens, but we are still looking through our telescopes through primate eyes.

Magical Thinking- When we see the world not as it is, but as we would have it be, we have left the one world we can share. If we do not test our every belief there will be trouble. But if materialists ever think they have left behind this human weakness, the same troubles will enter through a different door. An unthinking trust in technology, or in economic markets, can be every bit as magical as a rabbit’s foot.

Concretizing- “Concretizing” is a word I made up to describe what happens when we try to reduce all input to what we can sense. For a child, it may be clutching to a teddy bear. To an adult religionist, it might be prayer beads or wanting to believe the symbols of religion are physically and historically real.  To the non-theist it might be holding to a clinical empiricism to avoid the agonies of being fully human. One does not have to become superstitious to realize there is more to human experience than we can reduce to our senses.

Hierarchy- A pecking order is formed when we make heroes, or codify social roles for different kinds of people. We easily see this sin when a Pope puts on a big hat or a clergy tells women to stay home and make babies. It can be harder to spot this trait when an academician dons the gown of an academic hierarchy or a brilliant philosopher puts a believer in his or her “place.”

Scapegoating- “Scapegoating” is perhaps the deadliest of the deadly sins. When a clergy blames atheism for the ills of the country, or when an atheist uses religion as a synonym for “stupid” instead of specifying the actual words and actions they have in mind, this religious trait is alive and well.

I believe religion to be the art of putting our worldview together. Lots of religions are non-theist, some of them are scientific, but all of them speak from a depth of living that we cannot put fully into words. Good religion should be scientific, artful and ethical at the same time. Science is a wonderful tool for seeking truth, but it cannot tell us what is beautiful or good.

Healthy religion is a balance between belief and doubt, but it is possible to make a religion out of either of those half answers. If I had to choose between the two, I would chose the religion of doubt because an open mind is less likely to fight. And, as I said before, even God would prefer an empty foxhole to a full church. Still, why not strive to have it all? Why not embrace the truth of science and the art of living we sometimes call “religion?”

A woman from our discussion group has asked us to have a conversation on “marriage privilege.” Here is her note:

I would love it if you would start a discussion on the marriage privilege. I am 100% for equal rights to the option of entering into marriage. But the idea of marriage as THE pinnacle of human relationships has come up repeatedly in discussions of GLBT rights. I want to support GLBT access to marriage, but I have a hard time with whole-hearted support when the cause is presented this way because I have a lot of questions about marriage as the ONLY legally and socially acceptable way to form a family. (I.e. GLBT is not the problem issue for me, it is marriage that is the problem issue.)

The woman then says that she is going through a divorce and she has been thinking about the privileges she will lose by not being married. She wonders if this is fair.

I find myself asking, why are there no other options to form care relationships? what are ways that singles and unmarried couples and whole communities can form valuable mutually caring relationships? and what kinds of policies and legal systems would support non-marriage caring as equally valid to marriage?

In all their rantings about “family values,” many churches have remained silent about certain parts of the Bible where it discusses marriage in ways that are inconsistent with church teaching. The fact that the Bible seems to treat women as property in some places, is treated as sacrosanct, but other more disturbing practices are simply ignored.

We do not truly love the Bible if we have to lie about what it says in order to defend it. We do not need to hide from the sexist origins of biblical marriage, but neither should we ignore the Bible’s clear call to outgrow our every immature understanding of what it says, and to grow more and more into universal love and into a commitment to justice for all people.

I believe one reason much of the church has been so reactive on gender issues is that they have no reality based notion of sexuality. When modern people translate words like “family” or “marriage,” we are projecting our modern meanings onto an ancient text that spoke very differently of marriage. Here are 5 things most churches will not tell you about biblical marriage:

1. Biblical marriage was based on a covenant between persons, not on the laws of the state nor the rules of the church.

2. Biblical marriage was based on a call to fullness of life. So, if a wife was unable to bear children, the man was sometimes encouraged by that wife to impregnate a servant so the family could have a child even if she could not. Obviously, I do not bring forward this practice to recommend it, only to show that such arrangements were not like our modern concepts of marriage.

3. Most churches simply ignore the fact that biblical marriages were often polygamous.

4. The Bible has nascent  ideas of gender equality that grow as the story unfolds. Some Rabbis interpreted the story of Adam’s rib as a symbol of equality, not that the man was to dominate the woman. We can certainly trace a literal affirmation of the misogynous cultures into which the scripture was spoken, but we can also hear a call to outgrow the dead skin of what the bible literally said, and to hear its call to fullness of life on this day. St. Paul said we should obey the spirit of the law not its letter. He said we are to grow beyond what he called “rules of flesh” like circumcision and celibacy, and to grow into the “fruits of spirit” which he listed as virtues like gentleness and fidelity.

5. The Bible understood the covenant of marriage as taking place in community. Marriage is not a moralistic rule for two individuals, but a sacrament meant to enrich the larger community.

So let the conversation begin. Feel free to disagree with what I have said. As always, my stance is the first word in the conversation, not the last

A woman from our discussion group has asked us to have a conversation on “marriage privilege.” Here is her note:

I would love it if you would start a discussion on the marriage privilege. I am 100% for equal rights to the option of entering into marriage. But the idea of marriage as THE pinnacle of human relationships has come up repeatedly in discussions of GLBT rights. I want to support GLBT access to marriage, but I have a hard time with whole-hearted support when the cause is presented this way because I have a lot of questions about marriage as the ONLY legally and socially acceptable way to form a family. (I.e. GLBT is not the problem issue for me, it is marriage that is the problem issue.)

The woman then says that she is going through a divorce and she has been thinking about the privileges she will lose by not being married. She wonders if this is fair.

I find myself asking, why are there no other options to form care relationships? what are ways that singles and unmarried couples and whole communities can form valuable mutually caring relationships? and what kinds of policies and legal systems would support non-marriage caring as equally valid to marriage?

In all their rantings about “family values,” many church have remained silent about certain parts of the Bible when it discusses strange views on marriage. Those churches are also unwilling to discuss whether the Bible’s views on gender have been discredited by modern science, as have some of it’s scientific claims. The fact that the Bible seems to treat women as property in some places, is treated as sacrosanct even though such  dehumanization violates other commands we find in scripture to give others their due.

We do not truly love the Bible if we have to lie about what it says in order to defend it. We do not need to hide from the sexist origins of biblical marriage, but neither should we ignore the Bible’s clear call to outgrow our every immature understanding and to grow more and more into universal love and justice for all people.

I believe one reason much of the church has been so reactive on gender issues is that they have no reality based notion of sexuality. When modern people translate words like “family” or “marriage,” we are projecting our modern meanings onto an ancient text that spoke very differently of marriage. Here are 5 things most churches will not tell you about biblical marriage:

1. Biblical marriage was based on a covenant between persons, not on the laws of the state nor the rules of the church.

2. Biblical marriage was based on a call to fullness of life. So, if a wife was unable to bear children, the man was sometimes encouraged by that wife to impregnate a servant so the family could have a child even if she could not. Obviously, I do not bring forward this practice to recommend it, only to show that such arrangements were not like our modern concepts of marriage.

3. Most churches simply ignore the fact that biblical marriages were often polygamous.

4. The Bible has nascent  idea of gender equality that grows as the story unfolds. Some Rabbis interpreted the story of Adam’s rib as a symbol of equality, not that the man was to dominate the woman. We can certainly trace a literal affirmation of the misogynous cultures into which the scripture was spoken, but we can also hear a call to outgrow the dead skin of what the bible literally says, and to hear its call to fullness of life. St. Paul said we should obey the spirit of the law not its letter. He said we are to grow beyond what he called “rules of flesh” like circumcision and celibacy, and to grow into the “fruits of spirit” which he listed as virtues like gentleness and fidelity.

5. The Bible always understood the covenant of marriage as taking place in community. Marriage is not a moralistic rule for two individuals, but a sacrament meant to enrich the larger community.

So let the conversation begin. Feel free to disagree with what I have said. As always, my stance is the first word in the conversation, not the last.

Today is a day that makes you proud to be a Texan. I am always grateful when another state looks dumber than we. I have been grateful to Arizona, Louisiana and Tennessee, when of late, they have distracted the world from the clown car that is Texas politics.

Not to be dragged against its will into decency, the state of Mississippi refused to pass the 13^th Amendment ending slavery until 1995. But as proud sons and daughters of the Confederacy, even that resolution was not sent to the Federal Register which would have put the law into effect. After seeing the movie, “Lincoln,” two University of Mississippi employees decided to study the passing of the 13^th Amendment only to find out the necessary papers had never been filed.

So kudos to Mississippi who, even if they weren’t able to make Texans look smart, at least they have made us look less dumber, as my English teachers here in Texas would say.

Yesterday,

some child, on the other side of the world,

looked up from playing

to see the metal rain.

A bullet

fired by a trigger on the far side of the world.

aimed at some real or imagined evil,

instead, came to rest in this now lifeless child.

You and I want to speak of it,

But, because every nation wraps its evil in some sacred good,

we dare not mention the death of this innocent child,

for fear our friends will say

we are attack our brave troops,

or our wise president.

And so, we will fall into the silence of that truth

for which no nation has a word.

And if we speak at all,

it will be in the bleating lyrics of our herd,

in that hideous ape song

we call “patriotism.”

And, as a result of our silence,

tomorrow,

another child will look up into the sky

and see the metal rain.

The formula for being a good citizen of the world is simple. Picture the way the world should be in one hundred years, and live that way now. End your compromises with what you know to be evil and live as an ambassador for the best world you can imagine.

Arundhati Roy is a novelist and a great activist who lives in India. She has just written an essay envisioning a world beyond capitalism or communism. As every visionary knows, our hope does not lie in the hands of western efforts to rescue the environment, nor in our technologies and especially not in the charity we give to the suffering people of the earth, always with strings attached. Our only hope lies in listening to the simple people of the earth. We sometimes call the third world. They are the indigenous populations all over the world.. It is only they who have never broken ties with mother earth nor forgotten their own humanity.

If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them. Arundhati Roy

We Americans are taught from the cradle that we are born to lead the other people of the world. We are taught that our great inventions and powerful weapons prove we are smarter and better than other people. We tell a false history that has been purged of our atrocities to the simple people of the earth. Drunk in such arrogance we have nothing to give or teach the world. It is they who can teach us how how to live close to the earth, and how to remember our own human hearts.

The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.

To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars. -Arundhati Roy

Our hope lies in ending our lectures to the humble peoples of the earth, and becoming their students.

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/101/decolonize-consumerist-wasteland.html

I spent the other night in an ICU room with my mother who appears to have had a stroke. At this point there is no way of knowing how much of her memory and facilities will return.  As a minister I have spent countless nights in just such situations with others. In some ways this is very personal, but at the deepest level, I feel surrounded by the memory of those who invited me into their lives and into their deaths.  Thanks to their generosity, these evening seems strangely familiar. We all imagine ourselves to be living out a personal story, but in truth we are being swept along by a current we often ignore, the river of life.

I am listening to my mother breathe in between the beeping machines and the chaotic intrusions that constitute modern hospital care. Underneath it all are the eyes that never missed one of my baseball games, nor one school play. Those same eyes are now staring at me as a stranger. The arms that held me so many times are now bruised and strapped to her bed rails so she does not tear out any of her numerous tubes.

As a human I am an orphan tonight, but I feel strangely connected to life, to my mother, and to the two nurses, one kind and one gruff who watch over her tonight.

Sometime in the night, my mind flashed back to boyhood memories of a field that lay just behind our house. I did not know it at the time, but that field became my core metaphor for life.  Whereas my Sunday School teachers said to “consider the birds of the air,” meaning that God never gives us more than we can carry, the field taught me that “considering the birds” meant realizing that the bird which today feasts on insects, will someday be a Luby’s Cafeteria for the ants.

The field showed me that everything that is alive today was been born from what had previously died, and what is alive today will someday, through its death, give new life. At our birth we are breathed out of the field, and at our deaths breathed back in. The field taught me that we plants and animals are more like folds on a blanket than separate objects.

So whatever happens on this evening I know my mother is returning to the field, if not this evening, soon. Nor do I feel myself an orphan on the outside of the field watching my mother either get better or worse. What I love is not in peril. Our two breaths, and every other comes from one source.

What is it we are afraid of losing? What is it we love in one another? An immortal soul? A combination of molecules? Or is it the field?

I haven’t been as good an example of communication lately as I would like to be.  I’ve been having to blog on the fly this week. My mom seems to have had a stroke and I am needing to go back and forth to a hospital in Dallas. Some of my responses via cell phone may have seemed curt. I do not mean to be.

The problem is I get very frustrated when the subject of sexism comes up and it sounds like a roomful of men question the importance of using non-sexist language by citing examples of when someone did it inappropriately. I try to hide the fact that it pushes my buttons, but it might be more authentic to just make a confession.

I am coming from a long history of just such conversations, where roomfuls of men presented logical reasons why they should be counted as friends of the women’s movement, but not have to surrender their male privilege in the process. The radical feminists in Washington DC who helped bring me to consciousness called us SWM,” “sensitive white men” (translation “Guys who want to work on the women’s cause while remaining clueless about the dynamics of their own white male privilege.”

It isn’t fair to project that frustration from another place and time on the men of this blog, and I am trying not to. At the same time, I cannot really think of a good reason on God’s green earth why men would want to protect sexist language from analysis and criticism other than to protect their own privilege. I realize it would sometime be wiser to let the topic drop, but there is something within me that cannot be silent when it seems someone is being mistreated even if it is done so by a dear friend.

Understand I come from Dallas. When MLK was shot, there was applause in my classroom. The people who l loved most, and who loved me, taught me a world that was sexist and racist. I don’t believe most prejudice comes from evil people, but from wonderful people, like us, who have viewpoints that are problematic for someone we aren’t taking into consideration.

All forms of prejudice seem like cancer to me, and purging them all from my speech seems the only way to get them out of my mind and heart. I understand that there may be greater souls who can come in and out of the language of prejudice with their souls intact, but I am not one of them. I am raging against my own prejudice, not assuming I understand someone else’s.

My entry into feminism originally came from working with sexual assault survivors. My trainers were themselves feminists who patiently worked through my resistance to the reality that there was a connection between such abuse and my own male privilege. Like every man in the class I felt attacked when I was held to account, but that superficial pain was the beginning of a healing.

Know that when the topic of sexism comes up, my heart returns to that pain. I picture the end product of sexism to be beaten women and little girls alienated from their own center. Again I realize it is not fair to project that agony on men who have no such motive, but even if I do not say so, those are the storms that rage in my heart when the subject of inclusive language comes up.

I understand no one here wants anything but the best for women, but because of my past, when the subject of sexism comes up, my mind goes to the endgame of sexism which is women who are unable to leave abusive relationships because they lack a vocabulary for their own power, and men who choose violence because they lack the vocabulary for recognizing their own fears and hurts. It is very difficult to think about a truth for which we have no words.

Again, I realize to project my agony on the men of this blog is unfair, so I apologize for any insensitivity on my part. But please realize if you post on this page I will have to respond because my understanding of justice demands it. I am not just responding the men who make a given comment but also to those men who will hear those words as a justification not to self-examine, and to the women who will hear my silence as evidence that this blog site is just another place to be disrespected.

When I was younger, I had a magician’s deck of cards that was “marked” and “stripped.” A “marked” deck is one that seems to have standard patterns on the back but, in fact, has subtle differences that tell the magician what each card is without turning it over. A “stripped” deck is one where the cards are narrower at one end so the magician can pick out an inverted card simply by feel. A magician’s deck can easily be used to cheat an unsuspecting person, so a losing gambler is wise from time to time to request a new deck.

In the same way that a marked deck stacks the game, language can develop in ways that reinforce the hierarchies of a culture. Sexist language, for example, stacks the deck toward men. Every form of prejudice adopts its own vocabulary which may be completely unconscious to the person speaking. The loaded vocabulary will just feel more comfortable and proper to someone who reaps the rewards of that particular prejudice.

Anyone truly interested in working for justice must be willing to adapt a new way of talking about human beings that does not privilege some and disadvantage others. Inclusive language is awkward and can seem very silly to those who benefit from the hierarchy, but our language is a decisive battleground in the battle to be fair. Speech is the gateway to the mind.  If we do not purge our speech of prejudiced terms, those prejudiced words will become prejudiced thoughts. Our prejudiced thoughts will eventually become an unconscious lens through which we view the world. We must stop prejudice at its source which, for many, is the loaded words of our culture.

The wise do not trust themselves to be fair but, instead, remove those cards from the deck which seem to be “marked” or “stripped” by the culture. Anyone interested in justice must purge loaded words entirely from our speech, or else we may believe we are working for fairness, but are actually playing with a magician’s deck.