April 3, 2022 Dr. Roger Ray
John Shelby Spong: You can't go to church without praying ten or fifteen times for God to have mercy on you. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. That's the thing we've got to get out from under. That's not Christianity. That's sort of fourth-century Christianity that got turned into doctrines and dogmas that we've never been able to escape.
Early in the 19th century a very enterprising young con man in New York, Joseph Smith, combined some specious archaeological theories of the day with some crass and immature theological speculation to create a sex cult that masqueraded as a new religion; a spin off from traditional Christianity. The fact that he was able to draw thousands of adherents to his new religion is a commentary on both how sexually repressed 19th century Americans were and how gullible people can be. That it was a “thing” in that era of revivalism that saw the creation of many American denominations is not much of a surprise, but that it survived the murder of Joseph Smith, as well as any number of embarrassing revelations of what a fraud he really was, is both amazing and deeply disturbing.
The Mormon religion is not much outlined in Smith’s now famous “Book of Mormon” but his original work claimed that the lost tribes of Israel had migrated to South America and the resurrected Christ had appeared to them there. They inscribed their tragic history on tablets of gold and hid them in the Finger Lake Region of New York until an angel revealed them to Smith, and he was able to translate the ancient Hebrew by looking through two stones that he named for the Hebrew Bible’s dice, “the urim and thummim.” The story becomes increasingly obvious a con job as Smith never showed the golden tablets to anyone and he claimed to read them through the urim and Thummim while he had them in his hat. You literally can’t make this stuff up.
The beliefs and practices he taught were remarkably self-serving, allowing him to amass a harem of wives, numbering somewhere around 40 women, at least a couple of whom were children.
Even though the mainstream of the Mormon movement abandoned polygamy a hundred years ago, there are still spin off Mormon cults that practice polygamy and one was ritually raping children as a part of their religious practices. It just doesn’t get much worse than this.
(https://www.newsweek.com/mormon-cult-leader-sex-rituals-underage-girls-god-flds-764315)
In spite of a host of embarrassing and hypocritical, racist, and, frankly, stupid teachings, still, there are 16 million Mormons in the world and some very famous American politicians, such as Mit Romney and the late Harry Reid, who evidently were and Romney is magic underwear wearing practicing Mormons.
Nothing I have said about the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, or Mormon beliefs would have been unknown to Reid, Romney, or John Huntsman or other well-educated, high-profile Mormons, and I do not doubt that many of these things would be quite embarrassing to them, but the less defensible parts of the Mormon religion are probably not what keeps them in the Mormon church. Because, folks, like remaining in your family of origin in spite of the creepy uncle and drug addicted cousins, you focus on the good, try to help out where you can, and you just don’t let your alcoholic aunt define the quality and nature of your whole family.
There are things about modern Mormonism, family values, community, sobriety, that they find to be meaningful and important. I have been hard on Joseph Smith and Mormonism but, honestly, you could look at the clay feet of most modern founders of cults and sects and you could find some very embarrassing things. That is one of the hazards of living in the modern era when reporters and critics can document their faults.
If you looked into the roots of and the more bazaar beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Moonies, or the Bahia’s movement, you can find things that would make them seem horribly silly, but then, if you have never heard of the Catholic Church and someone started telling you about their beliefs and practices, you would assume that only the most gullible and ignorant people would be Catholics, and Protestants can be just as bad or worse. You wouldn’t want to dig too deeply into the psychological speculations about Martin Luther or John Calvin either, if you wanted to take the denominations that claim them as founders very seriously.
As David and I are working our way through demythologizing modern religions in this series of sermons we are in, we’re not trying to say that they all need to be carried out to the dumpster and forgotten. In each case, honesty demands that we highlight the positive aspects even as we fearlessly consider the downsides.
Is Christianity, taken as a whole, from Catholics and old-line Protestant denominations, all of the way through the more strange modern versions of Christianity, a good thing or a bad thing? As the largest of the religions of the world, certainly, there are some of both to be said. Christianity has given us the Crusades and genocides, it has promoted misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and it has hidden centuries of pedophilia and domestic violence. But Christians have also started hospitals and homeless shelters, done more relief with refugees and the hungry than any other charity or religious group.
It would be absurd to try to offer some kind of equation that would say that a certain number of homeless shelters might make up for centuries of misogyny and pedophilia. Christianity has been good in many ways and absolutely a nightmare in others. The question that is relevant for our purposes is just this: can you extinguish the bad things while preserving the good things?
For example, for churches to continue to teach that being gay is a sin deserving of eternal punishment in hell is not a matter of opinion, it is just wrong. And, especially for the Catholic church to continue to teach that homosexuality is a sin when professionals agree that the overwhelming majority of their own clergy are gay is hypocritical at a totally indefensible level.
As you have heard me quote Voltaire many times, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” If you teach children who are getting some education in science, ancient myths about miracles, talking snakes and donkey’s, winged angels and scary demons, and the biggest of lies, belief in a literal heaven and hell, you are teaching them to deny reality, to believe in lies over facts, and when you can get someone to reject critical thinking and dabble in fairy tales, then there is no telling what they might be willing to believe, and worse, there is no telling what they might do.
From time to time, one of our viewers would ask me if I would consider being interviewed for a pastoral role in their church. It plays out about the same way every time; I might consider it if I could honestly be myself, but every church would require that I be ordained in their denomination. For example, had I gone to a Presbyterian church to be their pastor, in the installation service, I would have had to stand up in front of the church and answered their formal ordination examination questions. And so, I asked this search committee member, can you imagine me standing up in front of several hundred people and being asked:
1. Do you trust in Jesus Christ your savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church, and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
2. Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s word to you?
I appreciate that they wanted to interview me, but when you look at what I would be expected to publicly swear to uphold, it is obviously impossible. When you talk about Christianity as a set of beliefs: that Jesus was uniquely God’s son and that his death on the cross won salvation, only for people who believe and confess the right things, from an eternity in a burning hell, and the potential for a beachfront eternity in paradise. . . then the whole religion is absurd. And when you add, in the second question, to affirm that and omniscient and eternal God inspired the composition of a book that was clearly actually written by many ancient authors, none of whom knew where the sun went at night, then Christianity, as a set of beliefs, is just ridiculous.
And here, my friends, is the crux of demythologizing and reforming Christianity and all other world religions. It is a radical shift from beliefs to practices, from orthodoxy to orthopraxy. John Huntsman and Mit Romney are obviously not still Mormons because they hope to become gods on their own planets, or, at least I hope that they don’t believe in their own deification, but I can understand why they are still in a faith community that teaches morality and promotes strong families.
I couldn’t be a Mormon, or a Catholic, or, for that matter, a Presbyterian because, to me, the beliefs they use to define their fellowships are patently absurd. And, though I can respect a lot of their moral teachings, I find some of them to be just plain awful. No one in the 21st century should still be mired in homophobia, but where Mormon’s are concerned, even though I don’t drink much alcohol, I maintain the right to have a beer or bit of rum on occasion, and I will continue to drink coffee and diet coke on a daily basis.
But for a church to teach abstinence from alcohol or caffeine is a personal choice; but perpetuation prejudice against gays, the divorced, or people of other religions is intolerable. And even though churches like Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Disciples, and the United Church of Christ, have made a lot of progress in their views on women, homosexuality, racism, and sexism in general, their continued insistence upon loyalty to the Bible and the anthropomorphic theology it teaches, continues to lend credence to the absolute worst aspects of modern civilization.
Church reform that amounts to rearranging the furniture on the Titanic will not prevent the death of the church due to irrelevance and moral obfuscation.
The popular internet meme that says, “You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion,” is obviously true enough. In fact, traditional religions can leave you with more to unlearn than to preserve in a post-theistic way of thinking. The ten commandments were not actually carved in stone by the finger of God. The gospels and letters of Paul were not inspired by God. The Quran was not dictated by Gabriel to Muhammad. They are all of human design from a very primitive time.
No religion can simply hand you a set of divine moral instructions. The truth is that we are all on our own to figure out what is right and what is wrong but, knowing what is right or wrong is not really the issue. Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong, that’s the really difficult thing.
I already know how to be a much better man that I have ever been able to be. Converting from one religion to another or from one denomination to another is not what is needed for me to be a better person. Changing my beliefs would not make me easier to get along with nor more likely to change the world for the better.
Changing our behaviors is what a spiritual journey is about and, folks, that is much more likely to happen in community than it is if we just wish that we could be better.
I have been a part of relief work in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago, and in the hollers of Appalachia. I have made multiple trips to New Orleans helping families and neighborhoods to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. I have been a part of expansive medical, food, education, and housing relief in the poorest regions of Central America, and locally, I have helped to pay for and build 14 Habitat Houses, and fed tens of thousands of meals to the homeless. But I have not done any of these things on my own.
Almost every substantial act of compassion and generosity that I have been a part of in all of these years of my spiritual evolution has been done in community, as a part of a church in which I was encouraged and accompanied by hundreds of other people who were also trying to manage their id and bring a bit more light into the world.
Because I have been a part of feeding the victims of domestic violence in a family shelter, I have also found the courage to open my home to victims and felons, sharing my own resources with those who were most in need . . and I know myself well enough to know that I never would have done that if I had not been a part of a faith community that encourage compassion and sacrifice.
I don’t know if organized religion has a future. Frankly, it’s not currently looking too good. But I know this with certainty, holding onto absurd beliefs in eternal reward or punishment, trying to find all of your important truths in an ancient book, or projecting all of your hopes to an imaginary friend in the clouds is like grasping the anchor of a sinking ship in hopes that it will save you.
Orthodoxy, right beliefs, will not save the church and, honestly, it shouldn’t. Orthopraxy, right behaviors, is what faith communities of all stripes have to offer to a world that is destroying the planet’s ability to sustain life while we still engage in warfare for land, temporal wealth, and power.
The world still needs strong churches, it just doesn’t need any more religion.
