Home > The New Fighters of Faith and Reason
Parties Religions-Beliefs USA Wayne Besen
by Wayne Besen
It often seems like the religious left won’t realize it has a dog in the fight against fanaticism until the right’s pit bulls are lunging at its timid throat. For too long, Christian moderates have been invisible, submissively surrendering and allowing the most destructive elements in America to claim the mantle of God. Fortunately, it appears that people of faith and reason are finally awakening from their long scriptural slumber.
In last week’s New York Times, former Missouri Republican Senator and Episcopal minister John C. Danforth wrote an op-ed that was nothing short of a seminal call to action for moderate Christians.
"We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base," wrote Danforth. "Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the Commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love. Christians who hold these convictions ought to add their voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics."
Less than a week after Danforth’s call to arms, the Times published a powerful op-ed by former New York governor Mario Cuomo chastising President George W. Bush on moral grounds for his primitive opposition to embryonic stem cell research. In a rare attempt to knock Bush off his moral pedestal, Cuomo openly challenged Bush’s religious hypocrisy.
"Although Mr. Bush believes that destroying an embryo is murder, he refuses to demand legislation to stop commercial interests that are busily destroying embryos in order to obtain stem cells. If their conduct amounts to murder as the president contends, it is hardly satisfactory for him to say he will do nothing to stop the evil act other than to refuse to pay for it."
Cuomo is clearly setting a brilliant values trap by calling Bush’s bluff. The president can either act on his professed convictions and block popular scientific research or he can look morally insincere. What is so important about Cuomo’s message is that he speaks as a person of faith and reason. The combination of logic and liturgy is a powerful anecdote to the anti-intellectual ramblings of the right.
Fear is a key reason that moderates have been reluctant to speak up. It is no secret that men such as Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph and Osama bin Laden are products of religious fanaticism. Fundamentalism, by its very nature, must rely on bullying, intimidation and violence to quell dissent, if it is to survive. A rational debate is certainly out of the question, because such open spiritual exploration reveals the irrationality and incoherence of their rigid, illogical doctrines.
Nevertheless, a few brave souls are beginning to take-on the Biblical barbarians. A new book by religious scholar John Shelby Spong systematically eviscerates the right’s dangerous dogma and exposes the utter hollowness of fundamentalism. In "The Sins of Scripture", Spong shows how the Christian right has historically twisted Scripture to launch appalling campaigns of hate against virtually every minority in existence.
"Religion has so often been the source of the cruelest evil," Spong trenchantly writes. "Its darkest and most brutal side becomes visible at the moment when adherents of any religious system identify their understanding of God with God. The two are never the same."
This is an issue that affects everyone, especially those who are secular, because abusive religious systems create intolerant leaders who make restrictive laws that we all have to live by. This is especially true when it comes acceptance of gay people. A nation that has a dominant religious tradition that rejects evolution is one that most certainly will, in the end, reject gay rights. The key to America surviving as a secular society depends on the nurturing of mainstream religion.
In this vein, I think it is crucial that a new religious television and radio network be launched to compete against today’s conservative televangelists. Establishing liberal Air America radio is wonderful, but it only accomplishes half the job. We need to invent CARE America, The Christian Action Revival Entertainment network that caters to the God loving, not the God fearing.
Recently, Dean Hamer published a book, The God Gene, which explains that some people are biologically destined to seek spirituality. This is why, like gay people, religious people exist in even the most hostile environments, such as Christians in China.
Like it or not, religious folks are here to stay. A wise society channels these pious impulses in a way that benefits society, while a shortsighted culture allows profiteering preachers and opportunistic politicians to appropriate these passions for their own hateful and divisive ends.
Events like the invasive Terri Schiavo debacle may be causing the left’s passive preachers to finally join secular America at the pulpit of pluralism. If moderate Christians don’t fight for their beliefs, they will soon find their faith extinct, with Jesus forever transformed into a judgmental bigot who unfailingly votes Republican and watches Fox news.
Forum posts
22 June 2005, 16:42
Well that is all very interesting and I find a lot of truth in what you speak. I for one thou being of a corporation background have only one thing to say. MONEY IS DEATH to a NATION of FREEDOMS and of PEACE. Through money all nations have fallen prey. Even Jesus himself threw out the money changers in front of the temple because of their ability to CORRUPT and DESTROY the SPIRITUAL inclinations of all people. THIS WAS Jesus’s EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE SHOULD DO! THROW The banks that back all the wars, pain, death, and economic repression OUT!
It was not recorded in scripture to be READ and FORGOTTEN on sunday Morning, then completely ignored on Monday when delusional Americans check their bank statements and stock porfolios— IT WAS MEANT as an EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE NEED to DO to BRING the KINGDOM of HEAVEN to EARTH. That is why Jesus did it. Thats why he was a teacher and we are his students! We should follow the example and ACT!
Remember this is WHAT JESUS DID! If you are a CHRISTIAN and a followers of TRUTH you must Live your faith AND ACT!
peace out 7b
22 June 2005, 18:45
I believe He said that it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil, not money itself. In that case, getting rid of money will not solve the problem, it will just make the bookkeeping more complicated!
22 June 2005, 23:12
Jesus acted AND DIED for what HE BELIEVED IN. Peter did not. HE DENIED JESUS THREEE TIMES because he was Too much of a pussy - like all good bankers and bookeepers are they hide behind their books of digits counting away predenting that they have a life, a life of exploitation and destruction for the poor. Remeber PROFIT is the LOVE OF the USE of MONEY in a transaction, and that love is death.
Bookeeping is for fools that worship the green! Account for the death and the profits in the stock market in the
miltary industrial complex. Thats the bookeeping I DO? DO YOU FOOL?
Remember Money is an abstraction of value it is not reality itself, UNLESS WE MAKE IT SO. On the other had
a gun blowing of someones head is real and the COST of that LIFE is ALSO REAL. Just thought that would clear things up a bit.
You know it should help you with your book keeping.
Mantra of the MONEY WAR MAKERS:
1 dollar 2 dollar 3 dollar 4 how many more Iraqis and Americans will die in the WAR??? It Rymes.
Check American History. It may help you understand REALITY.
peace out 7b
23 June 2005, 00:35
Um...what will you eat? How did you get a computer? Do you wear clothes? How did you get anything? It all costs money. Why do you think others should just give you these things?
A profit is what creates jobs. Without a profit, there is no livelihood. Even Jesus refused to condemn the tax collector. With the logic in your post, you should be careful whom you call a fool (and a pussy, of course.)
Interesting use of that word "pussy" by you, by the way. You use it in a derogatory sense, as if it depicts something weak or lesser. When in fact, the word represents one of the most powerful forces on earth. Think about that before you defame an entire gender with a derogatory label.
23 June 2005, 11:05
Thank you for supporting me. I note with interest that he said, and I quote " ... love is death." This leads me to think that maybe he has one or two psychological problems he needs to deal with. That and his use of the word "pussy," which you so ably pointed out.
In my view, money is nothing more than a means of bookkeeping to show the transfer of value; i.e., I have done something for you or given you something, and you give me something in return of an equivalent value. It is nothing more than bookkeeping for a barter system. It has no intrinsic value of its own. Acting as if it does have an intrinsic value is an illusion, and people who base their realities on illusions are often refered to as neurotics, or even psychotics. This why I will never be rich, because I know that money is only a symbol for the transfer of energy within a closed system!
4 July 2005, 20:44
Money is a hierarchical social control structure using amounts and values to control behaviors. Thats why we are being lied to by the money holding corporations. They believe in the lie of money and the false power they believe they have from it. As a result they always defend a lie with voilence of wars, politcial and economic lies and manipulations. Their house is built on nothing but exhaled manifistestions of lies, and psychologcial psychopathic models of abstractions. Thats why it always brings problems into every culture it permeates. It is outdated, unable to serve humanity, and impotent as a motivator of the higher self.
it is just some DUMB method that has been programmed into your psyche by those that would use and your use of their behavior shaping insturments.
peace out 7b
Money Changing and Abstract valuations are a LIE.
LIfe is in fact value dynamic and evolutionary, something that money could never be.
4 July 2005, 20:49
The questions you ask are retorical as you know the answer and the answer is not the point of the discussion. It is about the processes that associate behaviors, motivations, and goals with an abstract valuation system as it relates top down of the value propegation model of importance that eminates from the dominant financial institutions. Their agendas and the ideas around what a profit is and what that means in terms of the how you shape and influence the behavior models of people. That is what Jesus was talking about. Perhaps you need to apply logic to the original codex of herbrew, the aramaic, and the greek interlinear and discover what the prophets where really talking about, not the psycho babel distributed in the local money back religious institutions that are also money changing and psycho social institutions of parametric mind control.
peace out 7b
23 June 2005, 13:56
Eric Rudolph’s purpose in fighting the abortion center and their personel and protectors was to protect innocent children from being killed in the abortion centers. This is a noble cause, to protect the innocent, even though Eric possibly went about it the wrong way. Those who should be condemned should be those who abortionists who murder the innocect children not those who try to protect the innocent children.
24 June 2005, 01:24
"Eric possibly went about it the wrong way"?????
Blowing up innocent human beings to protect innocent children?? "Possibly", you say?
WTF? The guy is a nut case who left bombs to try to blow up dozens of innocent parents and children at Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta! And then left bombs to kill clinic workers. And then left bombs timed to go off later to kill firemen and rescue personel when they arrived to help the injured.
He is a cold blooded murderer.
A fetus is not a child, by the way.