Roger Ray, D.Min.
Mother, Mother, Mother! Everyone foolishly assumes that his clock alone tells correct time. Christians claim to possess exclusive truth... countless varieties of Hindus insist that their sect, no matter how small and insignificant, expresses the ultimate position. Devout Muslims maintain that Koranic revelation supersedes all others. The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: "My religion alone is true." O Mother, you have shown me that no clock is entirely accurate. Only the transcendent sun of knowledge remains on time. Who can make a system from Divine Mystery? But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays, meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your Grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the one goal of spiritual evolution. Mother, Mother, Mother! How I long to pray with sincere Christians in their churches and to bow and prostrate with devoted Muslims in their mosques! All religions are glorious! Ramakrishna (a 19th Century Indian Hindu mystic)
Garrison Keillor had a regular skit on his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, about a guy named Bob who was starting his own religion. He called it "Bobism" explaining that he would have named it after his wife, Judy, but the name "Judaism" is already taken.
Of course, religions don't really start that way. Jesus didn't mean to start a new religion. He was, at most, a reformer of Judaism. Even Islam, which claims to have a very specific beginning with a single founder, was, in any honest assessment, a reform movement that blended existing traditions.
The major world religions could all be compared to a mighty river that might be able to be traced to a specific original source but by the time it is a real religion, it will have drawn from hundreds and thousands of contributing sources. It is safe to say that the Buddha would not recognize modern Buddhism any more than Jesus would recognize Christianity or Moses would recognize Judaism. Muhammad would recognize a lot of the language of Islam but you can bet that he would disown most modern practitioners.
Several influences factor into the birth of a religion. Once human beings became self-aware they began to search for the meaning of their lives. They tended to personify the great mysteries and forces of life. The earth became a mother, the sun and sky a father. They gave the oceans and rivers, the four winds and even the seasons of the year, names and characters to make them into gods.
Every culture's religion became the repository of the wisdom and rules that seemed necessary for them to survive. Some parts of the kosher dietary laws of ancient Judaism had to do with their beliefs about what was healthy to eat and what was not good for you. These traditions became ways that they distinguished themselves from surrounding rival tribes.
The Jews preserved their identity through generations specifically by keeping certain different rules about what you could wear, how to cut your hair and other parts of your body and by what you could and could not eat. Their ritual religious practices and sacred texts identified them as being separate and apart from the Hittites, Philistines and Canaanites. And, you have to take your hat off to them because it isn't hard to find a Jewish community almost anywhere in the world but you just don't hear much out of the Hittites and Philistines anymore.
Religions evolve to meet the needs of a changing culture. As nomadic tribes became settled agrarian cultures, their rituals and life style rules changed as well. Monogamy became important, not because the Creator of the universe has a vested interest in who is sleeping with whom but because the tribes needed to know who owned which farm and which vineyard. Property followed patriarchal lines of inheritance. Therefore a man could have lots of wives but a woman could only have one husband.
As the nation became entirely settled and the land divided such that having huge families was economically unwise, the practice of polygamy also went away. Ancient restrictions against homosexuality reinforced the need to have more babies so that you would always have an army to defend the nation against competing tribes. Religious fundamentalism, devoted to religious values and practices that have long outlived their usefulness, becomes a liability to the world rather than a help.
In the gospels, Jesus condemns divorce and I suspect at that time what he said protected women from what was very abusive divorce practices in that era. Women could be cast off in favor of a new wife and they would likely get no property, support or even access to their children. The early church threw a cloak of protection around women in the first century but in our time, that condemnation of divorce has more often been used to force women to stay in abusive relationships under the entirely neurotic belief that God would condemn them to hell if they became unwilling to suffer any more beatings.
There is a line in that old hymn, "Once to Every Man and Nation," that says, "time makes ancient good uncouth."
Like the tradition of men always having to pick up the tab for a dinner date, what purpose does that serve? Okay, maybe that was too personal but you get my point.
Moses didn't write the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. There may have been a prophetic liberator in Israel's ancient past but their religious texts were an evolving collection of wisdom and tradition that served an ancient tribal religious sect. Jesus didn't say very much of what is attributed to him in the gospels but the historical Jesus became the bulletin board onto which the early church posted their closely held beliefs and values.
As such, every major religion of the world becomes a kind of language in which we tell our sacred stories, express our values and pass along our morals. You would not say that French is right and German is wrong. There are things to like and things not to like about any language but while one may be better than another for certain purposes, you cannot say that one entire language is just inherently better than another language, any more than you would say that one kind of music or one song is right and all others are wrong. You have your favorite songs and there are probably kinds of music that you can't stand but it doesn't take anything away from you if I have a different favorite song or if you can't stand the style of music that I like the best.
As I have previously pointed out, one of the real weaknesses of monotheism is its inherent investment in the belief that any one religion is so right that all other religions must be wrong. One of the things we really need to learn from eastern religious traditions is the willingness to learn from all wisdom sources without having to be exclusively loyal to any one of them.
My Christian faith has been enhanced by my formal study of Islam and Judaism, of Buddhism and Hinduism. I find most of Mormon religious texts to be absolutely hilariously absurd but I envy the often very loving integrity of their families. I think that Christian fundamentalists are often an oppressive danger to society but I can also see that their strict pietism has been salvific for some people who could not otherwise control their appetites for drugs, alcohol or sex.
I find the exclusivism of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam to be anathema. I think that all forms of sectarianism is counter to healthy spirituality but that does not mean that it is helpful to condemn these religious traditions. As Madeline Albright argued in her book, "The Mighty and the Almighty," we need to work to encourage the better, the healthier and the more helpful aspects within each religion.
It is true that nearly all international terrorists right now claim an aspect of Muslim faith. But Islam is not an inherently violent religion. In fact, it can be a source of inspiration for both international peace and individual charity towards the poor. Christianity doesn't have to be misogynistic, homophobic, militaristic or even in bed with out of control capitalism and the political right. Christianity can be a source of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace and passion for justice.
Religious tolerance should not be mistaken for tolerance of abusive, oppressive and neurotic religion. We do well to confront, reject, correct and to refuse to tolerate any religion that perpetuates gender or racial prejudice, that seeks to convert, control or dominate those who do not adhere to their sectarian views. We should not just passively accept that Catholics discriminate against women and Baptists discriminate against gays and lesbians.
No one should use religion as a means of legitimating their abusive prejudices any more than being a member of the KKK would make it acceptable to be a racist.
A persuasive case can be made that most religions have their origin in counter cultural movements intended to defend and improve the lives of the very poor and oppressed. You can certainly see how Muhammad was attempting to rescue his people from chaotic and violent circumstances. Jesus specifically sought out the poor and outcast of a people whose land was occupied by a militaristic empire. In as much as the Moses story is rooted in some history, he was a liberator of slaves, leading them from bondage to independence.
Each world religion was eventually coopted by governments and institutions of religion that used people's faith to control them but there remains in each faith the roots of slave rebellion, a yearning for liberty, self-determination and meaningful living. That is our real spiritual inheritance and that is what progressive faith must restore to adherents of all world religions. There is no reason not to learn from one another just as there is no defense for trying to convert one another.
No Muslim needs to become a Christian, they just need to be a better Muslim. And no Christian needs to become a Jew, they just need to be a healthy and open minded Christian. Every religion has things both in creed and history for which repentance is the only appropriate response but each also contains the seeds of hope for a better future. We progressives are not rejecting our religious heritage, we're just deciding that we are going to get healthy.
