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Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard

“Religious Wars”
First Universalist Society
Central Square NY
by Dave Weissbard
9/04/16
The Reading

“Jesus and Jihad”
by Nicholas Kristsof
New York Times
July 17, 2004

If the . . . ”Left Behind” series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:
”Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again.”
These [were, at the start of the 21st century], the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 6[5] million copies worldwide. [One of the last in the series of 16] has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It’s disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.
If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of ”Glorious Appearing” and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it’s time to remove the motes from our own eyes.
In ”Glorious Appearing,” Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid ”hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses.”
”The riders not thrown,” the novel continues, ”leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement.”
One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover.
These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?
As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.
This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for hell.
No, I don’t think the readers of ”Glorious Appearing” will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It’s harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.
I had reservations about writing this column because I don’t want to mock anyone’s religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think ”Glorious Appearing” describes God’s will. Yet ultimately I think it’s a mistake to treat religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia.
I often write about religion precisely because faith has a vast impact on society. Since I’ve praised the work that evangelicals do in the third world . . . , I also feel a responsibility to protest intolerance at home.
Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith?
Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah’s son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God’s word — but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people’s religious faith.
People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of non evangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.
That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.

THE SERMON
[Jesus and Jihad]

This sermon began one summer when I was sitting on my porch in Chautauqua, reading the New York Times. I immediately clipped Nicholas Kristof’s column on “Jesus and Jihad,” which I shared as our reading. After addressing the theme of the “Left Behind” novels, Kristof maintained:
People have a right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of non-evangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.
“There’s a sermon there,” I said to myself. Being tuned into the issue, I have subsequently encountered and saved many internet articles which addressed the contemporary “religious wars.” And then I read Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God, which brilliantly puts the issue into context by tracing the history of fundamentalisms in the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian contexts.
Let me warn you in advance, this is not a sermon that comes to a neat resolution at the end. I am convinced that we, in the 21st Century, are in the midst of a serious religious struggle in which our fundamental liberal religious principles are threatened, and from which we may not emerge victorious. I believe it is important for us to get some perspective on it, which may help us to better understand, and thereby more effectively defend our position.
[religious wars]
Before we look at the issue as it touches us most directly, it seems as if it would be helpful to look at the same phenomena outside our immediate situation. It needs to be noted that there are few, if any, purely religious wars. Economics and social tensions are often integral parts of what are translated as religious conflicts.
It is useful to go back a millennium to the Crusades which began when Pope Urban II, concerned with how the testosterone poison running through the veins of knights was causing them to fight with each other and cause chaos within Christendom. He decided it would be better for them to have a common enemy on which to discharge their energy, and therefore called for the first Crusade. Incidentally, of course, a war against the Muslim infidels could extend the power of the Church. The Muslim culture was, at the time, arguably more sophisticated than that of the Christian nations, but the challenge of reclaiming the “Holy Lands” for Christ served to invigorate the Crusaders. The result was a lot of rape, pillage, and plunder. Another result was antagonism between Muslims and Christians which is still very alive among Muslims who remember the humiliation as if it were yesterday.
[Iran]
One of the relatively contemporary examples of a situation in which religion has played a major role is Iran. While Persia, as it was formerly known, had a long and distinguished history, in this century it has had to struggle to maintain its independence. Both Russia and England had interests there, particularly in the oil. In 1907, there was an Anglo-Russian agreement that divided Iran into spheres of influence. Following World War I, the British formally affirmed Iran’s independence, but actually tried to make it a protectorate, which is to say, an informal part of the empire. In 1921, Reva Khan, an army officer, led a coup which established the Pahlevi dynasty. During the second world war, the then old shah, who had been sympathetic to Germany, was forced to resign and was replaced by his son, Muhammed Reza Shah Pahlevi. While Iran was ostensibly an independent nation, it was clear that it was subservient to the West. There were rich oil resources that were generating a lot of money, but the profits were being enjoyed by the British and Americans who set the prices they would pay for the oil, not the Iranians. In 1951, a nationalist movement was headed by prime minister, Mussadegh. He nationalized the oil industry and declared that the profits were to go to the Iranian people. The Shah, who opposed him, was forced to leave the country. Britain and the United States found it intolerable that the Iranians should claim the right to control their own resources. The CIA and British intelligence organized a coup in which we drove Mussadegh out and brought the Shah back.
During the Shah’s reign, we used to hear a lot about how wonderful the progress was in Iran and what a modern nation it was becoming. That was, of course, from our perspective. In fact, the Iranian people were living in increasing poverty and there was deep resentment of the cultural imperialism that was going on, with Western values supplanting Muslim ones. The population is largely Muslim, and there was a sense that the Crusades were continuing as their land was being plundered. It became increasingly difficult for the Shah to remain in power. The CIA and Israel’s Mossad offered training for his secret police, the SAVAK, which engaged in the arrest and commonly the torture and murder of those who dared oppose the Shah’s regime.
[religious resistance]
Most of the opposition came from Muslim leaders, like Ayatollah Khomeini, who, because of his prominence, could not simply be murdered and was therefore expelled from the country in 1964. Living in Iraq, he was freer than he had been to attack the Shah.
”Islam,” he said, “is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to faith and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism.”
The resistance against the Shah increased, and the United States continued to actively support him. Jimmy Carter flew to Tehran to personally endorse the man whom the Iranians saw as a tyrant.
The issue was not only economic and political. The west was applauding the Shah for moving his country further and further into secularism, which is to say, further and further from its Islamic roots.
You remember what happened. The pressure increased until 1979 when the Shah was forced to leave the country and Ayatollah Khomeini returned to establish a Muslim government. We were, of course, appalled. We, from our secular-Christian perspective, saw this as a giant step backward. The people of Iran, however, saw the same move as a giant step forward toward having a government which understood and was responsive to their needs and their culture. It got even worse when Jimmy Carter agreed to have the deposed Shah come to the United States for cancer treatments. The result of that insult was the taking of hostages in the American embassy who were held for more than a year until the day of the Inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

There was a lot of speculation about the role that the hostage situation played in the defeat of Jimmy Carter, and there are allegations of a trip by George Bush to assure that the hostages were not released prior to the election. Given the personal endorsements that Jimmy Carter had given to the Shah, it is clear that the American election was very much in Khomeini’s mind.
[from whose perspective?]
We have continued to be appalled at what the revolution brought to Iran. From our perspective, it is hard to see it as an advance, because we have values that differ from those of the Iranians. They, however, were suffering from the imposition of a foreign culture which dismissed their needs as irrelevant. There were freedoms that were lost in the Revolution, but, from the perspective of the common people, the vast majority, much more was gained. No longer was a foreign way of life being forced upon them. Their most sacred values were again at the center of their government.
This is more than of passing importance today. For one thing, we were so threatened by our fear that Muslim fundamentalism would spread to the rest of the Middle East, that we encouraged and armed Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, to take on a war with Iran, a war in which, incidentally, both sides used chemical agents. The Iranian history also plays a role in our inability to understand what happened in Iraq today. We removed a vicious dictator, who no longer met our needs, but we have not been willing to permit the installation of an Islamic government that would not be “respectful” of American interests in Iraq. It did not go unnoticed when President Bush first labeled the war in Iraq as a “crusade.” That is, in fact, how it is perceived by the vast majority of the people in the Middle East, and, in truth, by some Americans. It is the Christians against the Muslims, all over again. We are determined that they should view the world through our glasses, and they want no part of our culture. From their perspective, the positive products of our way of life don’t even come close to balancing for the negatives, and some Americans agree, to which we are about to move.
This is one of the examples to which Karen Armstrong pointed in her exploration of the growth of fundamentalism in contemporary religion.
I have tried to think of Christian nations we have treated the way we have the Muslim nations of what we call “the Middle East.” Cuba might historically be in that category, but that seems like a weak example.
It is clear that we are propagandized to think of Islam as a hostile religion and its followers as “the other.” We “all know” that Islam is violent in its teachings. There is a fascinating comparison on the internet of the Bible and the Koran. When you run a computer word search of the Koran, words like “burn, fire, hell, punish and torture” are found 621 times. A similar search of the Jewish and Christian “holy book” find them appearing 1261 times. “Fear, terror, horrify and terrify” are found 183 times in the Koran and 1156 times in the Bible. “Anger, despise, detest, hate, contempt, scorn, slave and wrath” appear 74 times in the Koran and 2120 in the Bible. “Attack, battle, fight, force, war, invade, oppress, raid and violence” 85 times in the Koran and 3,445 in the Bible. “Destroy, kill, murder, and slay” 185 in the Koran and 2025 in the Bible. The total for those “hard words” in the Koran is 1,148 and 10,007 in the Bible.
Some Christian apologists have justified the disparity by pointing out that the Bible is longer, which is true, and that the Bible is talking historically while the Koran is proscribing these times. I don’t think that one holds water. I believe the bottom line is suggested by the violence of the “Left Alone” series and Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians. I am NOT suggesting that all Jews or Christians are violent – I AM suggesting that the tone of the holy scriptures of Islam are not as violent as the Jewish-Christians scriptures are. Our judgements of Islam are not based in reality but in prejudice. Islam does, indeed have its radical sects, but so do Christianity and Judaism.
On the other hand, “forgive, hope, mercy and reward” can be found 1,843 times in the Koran and 696 in the Bible.
. . . [W]hy beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. [Matthew VII]
[Fundamentalism: an American tradition]
Another conflict which is really what this sermon is about, is the growth of Fundamentalism in the United States. Since the earliest days of our nation, there has been conflict between those who were religiously liberal and those who identified themselves as true believers. In Colonial days, there was the evangelistic movement of the First “Great Awakening” as the result of the concern of many pious conservatives that their neighbors were losing their way religiously, falling away from the eternal truths. It was followed in the early days of our nation by the “Second Great Awakening” of the late 18th and early to mid 19th Centuries which was opposed to the liberal religious tendencies of the nation’s founders.
The American Revolution, of course, was led largely by people who were religiously liberal – people like John Adams, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and others who were Deists if not outright Unitarians. When it came to writing a Constitution, and then the Bill of Rights which were demanded for approval of the Constitution, there was a confrontation between those who wanted to view this as a Christian nation and those who insisted that religion be kept at least an arm’s length away. The majority knew what religious tyranny had done in Europe, and they wanted no part of it, hence the first amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. The first treaty into which the United States entered, which passed the Senate unanimously, was one with the Muslim nation of Tripoli that stated explicitly that, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” That is fact, a matter of historical record. There are, of course, many who choose not to acknowledge that part of our history, who insist that ours is and must be a Christian nation. Because of the non-interference of government in religion, those who have continued to view it as a Christian nation were left to their view for a long time, which, of course, reinforced their perspective.
[early 20th Century]
The label “Fundamentalist” came about as a result of the publication of twelve paperbacks between 1910 and 1915 in which leading conservative Christians spelled out what they saw as “The Fundamentals” of Christian belief, from their perspective. They were concerned that so many churches were falling short of preaching what they knew for a certainty was “The Truth.”
The tensions between liberals and conservatives came to a head in 1925 in the trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. That trial saw the confrontation between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Because Bryan was a Fundamentalist, we may forget that he was in many ways one of the great liberals of his time; but not religiously. Bryan saw himself as:
. . . the spokesman for a numerically large segment of the people who are for the most part inarticulate. . . . They are part of the body politic and by no means negligible or to be regarded solely with derision as “lunatic fringe.”
While Scopes was convicted — he was indeed guilty of violating the law as it was — it was clear that Darwin and the liberals had won the case in the public mind. Science and reason had triumphed over conservative religion. The fundamentalists were defeated, but again, they did not vanish.
In essence, what they did was withdraw to their own churches where they knew they were right and no one could tell them otherwise. Repeatedly, in the struggles between religious liberals and fundamentalists in every culture, the fundamentalists, when they lose, feel embittered and get more intensely conservative. Karen Armstrong asserts:
Fundamentalism exists in a symbiotic relationship with aggressive liberalism or secularism, and, under attack, invariably becomes more extreme, bitter, and excessive.
There were parts of this nation in which the schools commonly began with Christian prayers and Bible readings, and because the majority in those communities agreed, no one objected. Children were taught, in those schools, both by precept and example, that the United States is a Christian nation. To millions of Americans, that is a reality beyond question.
Fundamentalists created their own reality. They started their own colleges, like Bob Jones University, where they could be sure their children would not be led astray by secularism and its false teachings, like evolution. In reality, there were two nations that had very different perspectives, but for a long time, the conservatives kept to themselves. One of the things they knew for sure was that they wanted to have nothing to do with government. Many didn’t even bother to vote.
[a changed arena]
Karen Armstrong suggests three reasons why things changed. First is the economic development of the South, which was the center of fundamentalist thinking, although it was never limited to that region. As Northerners moved into “the New South,” they encountered religious systems that they never imagined still existed, and the Southerners, for their part, encountered ideas they found heretical and reprehensible.
The second reason things changed, according to Armstrong, was the increased involvement of the government — particularly the courts – in areas it had previously left alone. The Supreme Court ruled against religious observances in public schools, which had been a part of many communities for generations. How could it suddenly be wrong? They felt like they were being invaded by outsiders who had been deceived by Satan. As Armstrong put it:
They felt “colonized” by the world of Manhattan, Washington and Harvard. Their experience was not entirely dissimilar to that of the Middle Eastern countries who had so bitterly resented being taken over by an alien power.
Suddenly abortion was made legal, racial integration became the law of the land, the death penalty was put on hold, women were declared to have equal rights, people talked about legalizing marijuana, and homosexuality, even marriage between people of the same sex, was becoming acceptable.

[the enemy]
The enemy, of course, is “secular humanism.” According to a pamphlet from the Family Forum, secular humanism:
! Denies the deity of God, the inspiration of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus Christ
! Denies the existence of the soul, life after death, salvation and heaven, damnation and hell.
! Denies the Biblical account of Creation.
! Believes there are no absolutes, no right, no wrong – that moral values are self-determined and situational. “Do your own thing -as long as it does not harm anyone else.”
! Believes in the removal of the distinctive roles of male and female.
! Believes in sexual freedom between consenting individuals, regardless of age, including premarital sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, and incest.
! Believes in the right to abortion, euthanasia, and suicide.
! Believes in the equal distribution of America’s wealth to reduce poverty and bring about equality.
! Believes in control of the environment, control of energy, and its limitation.
! Believes in the removal of American patriotism, and the free enterprise system, disarmament, and the creation of a one-world, socialistic government.
And their point is . . . ? The only thing I would absolutely challenge is approval of incest, and then we would probably need to talk about what patriotism means – although many of us support the decision of a black football player not to stand for the national anthem. But, for the most part, they have our platform down right, and it scares the living bejesus out of them. They see us as a threat to their continued existence as a religious faith.
The third cause of change, on Armstrong’s list, is the fact that by the late ‘70’s, fundamentalists were no longer just farmers and backwoodsmen. Some of them had become prosperous, and more importantly, some of their spokesmen had discovered television. They could talk to one another, and they knew they were no longer an insignificant force. They came out of isolation.
Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker came to the fore. The so-called Moral Majority decided to exercise political power. They believed that they knew how America was supposed to be, and it surely wasn’t the way America had become. When Jerry Falwell was asked if there was still hope for America. He responded:
I think so. I believe as we trust in God and pray, as we Christians lead the battle to outlaw abortion, which is murder on demand, as we take our stand against pornography, against the drug traffic, as we take our stand against the breakdown of the traditional family in America, the promotion of homosexual marriages, as we stand up for strong national defense so that this country can survive and our children will know the America we’ve known . . . I think there is hope that God may one more time bless America.

Now, the so-called “Moral Majority” fell apart to some degree after the scandals with some of their leaders and the attacks of fundamentalist leaders upon each other, and there were articles in the media about the death of the movement, but they were, indeed, premature. In truth, as one looks at the current election campaign, it is clear that the evangelicals and fundamentalists have a clear sense of their power.
[the Republican alliance]
What happened was that the Republican party, which had never been known as the party of the people, sensed a deep dissatisfaction in this nation to which Democrats were blind and deaf. There are people who feel betrayed by their nation, or that it has been captured by evil forces.
In his book on Kansas, Thomas Frank, a native of that state, explored what happened to make one of the most liberal states in the nation become so conservative. What he found is right in line with what Armstrong told us about fundamentalism. Frank was amazed at how so many poor and lower middle class people were consistently voting against their own economic interests, raising their taxes, and depriving themselves of services, to put more money in the pockets of the already wealthy. The reality is that economics is less important to many people than are the fundamental issues of the kind of moral world we are living in. The Republican party in Kansas was taken over by a coalition of the very wealthy and the very poor and lower middle class, who had a common enemy: the liberals. The motivations of the two groups, the rich and poor, were very different, but they both seek to end the domination of liberal intellectuals whom they believe were taking America down the wrong path.
It is fascinating, in the current campaign, to see Donald Trump, a man in his third marriage, and currently married to a woman whose nude modeling has been shown in the national media, a man who doesn’t even know the names of Bible books, who not all that long ago was openly pro-choice, whose business dealings are less than ethical, is acceptable to many conservative Christians as their representative.
[a challenge to liberals]
I have the sense that most liberals still do not understand what is happening, and you cannot stand up to an adversary you cannot comprehend. If the conservatives continue to be rooted in fear, continue to be focused, and continue to play it smart, we could experience the loss of the freedoms we cherish which to them are only traps for the unwary.
The mistake we liberals have made has been to ignore the presence, the humanity, the feelings, the sincerity, the fear that evangelicals and fundamentalists have experienced. Too often, we have dismissed them as dinosaurs, as irrelevant to the world in which we live. Our dismissal and disrespect have made them angrier, and therefore more powerful. It is, of course, a violation of our own principles to suggest that we respect the inherent worth and dignity of every liberal person but not those who see the world in a very different way from us.
When you show someone respect, the possibility emerges that you can find a common humanity that makes dialogue possible.
In the first iteration of this sermon, I confessed it had no “neat resolution.” I left that sentence in this morning, but I want to back away slightly from it. Just this week, I discovered a new book written by Nathan C. Walker, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, who left parish ministry to become the executive director for the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute in Washington, D.C. where he teaches civic leaders about the guiding principles of the First Amendment. Cultivating Empathy is subtitled “The Worth and Dignity of Every Person – Without Exception. [I encourage your book group to consider his fascinating latest book. It is very readable and I found it very stimulating.]
Nate’s focus, in his ministry and in his current work, on the “moral imagination.” He began his introduction with the story of Ruby Bridges, the young black girl who was led by US marshals through raging crowds opposing her integration of a school in New Orleans. The psychologist, Robert Coles, who wanted to help her deal with the stress was amazed by her genuine insistence that she prayed for those people. In response to his challenging why she should feel sorry for them, she replied, “Well don’t you feel they need feeling sorry for?”
“Moral imagination” was defined by doctors at the University of Kansas School of Medicine as “the ability to anticipate or project oneself into the middle of a moral dilemma or conflict and understand all the points of view.”
Walker says:
Understanding does not necessarily mean agreement. I may disagree with your point of view, but often my disagreement prevents me from understanding the true, untainted nature of your standpoint. If I never demonstrate that I understand you, then I cannot expect you to understand me. Understanding is a type of sympathetic awareness of another. Even more powerful is mutual understanding between two or more people – the fertile soil in which the moral imagination is planted and peace is grown. Our moral duty, therefore, is to till our understanding for one another and to plant our words and actions as the seeds of an ethical empathy. Failure to do so creates misperceptions and misunderstandings, which are the roots of conflict, stereotypes, and violence.
In his book, Walker recounts episodes in which he and the congregation he served in Philadelphia, were able to resolve conflict situations by the use of empathy. He is clear that he is not a saint, he sometimes failed to live up to the standard he sets, but he expresses appreciation for the members of his congregation who challenged him and thereby saved him “from spending a lifetime living as if my opinions were facts.” He refers to them as his “spiritual trainers.” Walker challenges us on our “liberal fundamentalism.”
He asks:
Why is it so easy for me to become what I set out against? The minute we see some injustice, we pounce. I am sorry, I mean to say, “I pounce.” I cast myself in the role of the Righteous One. I have long since mastered this role. I rehearse it when watching the political pundit, when reading the flaming blog: It is the same old game in which “success” is built upon demeaning others rather than making meaning of our lives.
Citing Nelson Mandela as an example, Walker observes:
Nelson Mandela was a man who captured the moral imagination of a country and inspired its people to adopt policies that reflected the belief that all of us are worthy of equal treatment under the law. His years of sacrifice and his ability to see no one as “other” freed a country from racial segregation. His use of the moral imagination emancipated a country from the bowels of an imagination that found ways to picture certain people as inferior, and therefore as less worthy of civil rights.
I am trying to process my ministry in the context of his book, and, like Walker, I find examples of success and failure. I have mentioned that I produced a TV show when I was in Rockford. When I was contemplating what to do with the broadcast time I was offered, I happened upon a book by Arthur Koestler in which he spoke of “Fusion” as a “new way of looking at things that leads us to wonder, inquire, and investigate.” I named the program “Fusion” and opened with Koestler’s statement and the declaration that :
When we speak of religion, we don’t mean a set of answers so much as a quest for greater understanding: understanding of ourselves, of our ideals, of our communities, of our universe, and of the relationship of all of these.”
I was always delighted when I was stopped on the street by people who would tell me that they often disagreed with things I said, but watched because they could tell I would not judge them for their ideas. The program was viewed in 5,000 homes every Sunday – and I can assure you there were not 5,000 liberal homes in Rockford. I was, in fact, invited to address the city-wide annual dinner of the Knights of Columbus, suggesting that I was able to reach out to people whose world view was different from mine.
The books in the “Left Behind” series to which Nick Kristof referred in the article with which we began, is a product of the deep anger which the marginalization of the Fundamentalists has produced in them. Stories like those are cherished by people who believe that the present world has abused and dismissed them as worthless. Such experiences produce rage which seeks the suffering of the oppressor, and sometimes turns inward, further crippling the one who was a victim. This rage becomes a violation of the very principles of Christianity which the fundamentalists cherish.
Karen Armstrong suggests:
Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating spiral of hostility and recrimination. If fundamentalism must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance and respect for humanity which characterizes modern culture at its best, and address themselves more empathetically to the fears, anxieties, and needs which so many of their fundamentalist neighbors experience but which no society can safely ignore.
I believe it is clear. If we increase our hostility to those who see the world differently, there is a real danger that the United States, like Iran, will see an emergence of a Fundamentalist society in response to the insecurity of our times. Many of what we see as the advances in human rights for which we have struggled could be reversed almost in the blink of an eye.
We are living in a divided nation and there is no certainty as to which side of the division will dominate in the long run. As in any struggle between people, the best hope, perhaps the only hope, lies in mutual respect and dialogue. May we seek the wisdom and the empathy that will enable us to become builders of bridges that are wide enough for us all, liberals and conservatives, to celebrate our differences and walk together into the future.