Tag Archives: religion

Hey, Florida: Tyranny of the Majority is Not “Religious Freedom”

Posted by on March 14, 2012 No comments

First AmendmentWe hear a lot from the right wing in America about how Christianity is a persecuted faith. And, in some parts of the world, it certainly is. Look at Afghanistan, where you can be sentenced to death for giving a friend a Bible. Coptic Christians have long been vilified and killed in Egypt, and the recent political turmoil has only made their situation worse.

But…in America? Where Christianity is still the majority religion? The best evidence that right-wing commentators can produce for their downtrodden state is uppity women who want comprehensive health care. Oh, and the “War on Christmas” – which isn’t about suppressing Christianity, but making allowance for other faiths and traditions.

Sadly, in the eyes of fundamentalists, “allowance” is equated to “attack”.

While everyone’s been focused on the national stage, the Florida Legislature has been busy fighting for “religious freedom” on a different front. See, in the past, Florida high school legislators felt free to lead their students in Christian prayers, assign them Biblically based assignments, and encourage them to join Christian extracurricular clubs. It was so bad at Pace High School in Santa Rosa County that this public institution was nicknamed “The Baptist Academy”. After the ACLU put a stop to that with their whole “Establishment Clause” nonsense, the legislature passed a law that guarantees religious expression…for the majority:

Backers say the bill, introduced by Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, doesn’t use the word “prayer” and doesn’t favor any specific religion, but allows students to pick a speaker and message of their choosing. If the chosen student gives a prayer or cites a specific religion, that’s his or her right, proponents say. Republican Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign the bill.

Why not make it a rotating position among a diverse body of students? Why not pick who gives the invocation by lottery? The answer to that is obvious: this bill is intended to enshrine the “rights” of the majority of the student populace at the expense of religious minorities.

Anyone who claims such a law “protects students’ rights” doesn’t understand the first thing about why the Bill of Rights was created in the first place. As that Kenyan Socialist James Madison put it:

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Jason Pitzl-Waters recently cited Hindu professor Anant Rambachan along the same lines. Speaking of the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed an employer to deny any type of health coverage on arbitrary grounds, Rambachan said:

“It is important that our voices also be offered in the public square. This amendment threatens to enshrine in law the perspective of particular religions and marginalize others. Once you start enshrining Christian morality into law, you inherently limit the religious freedoms of non-Christian faiths.”

True religious freedom is a stance which is tolerant and accepting of all religious beliefs. Subjecting religion to a majority vote isn’t “religious freedom”; it’s the tyranny of the majority about which Madison so eloquently warned us.

Pagans Beware: Rick Santorum’s War for Fundamentalist Christianity

Posted by on February 26, 2012 No comments

Rick SantorumI don’t know a larger threat to religious freedom in the US at the moment than Rick Santorum. The former Senator from Pennsylvania is currently the popular non-Romney GOP candidate, and he’s using his position to spew all sorts of noxious nonsense about the direction of our country.

Today’s doozy: This Week dug up a clip of Santorum saying he “threw up” when he heard Kennedy’s famous speech in favor of church/state separation. When pressed, Santorum doubled down and declared: “I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and visions of our country.”

Which raises the question, Rick: which church? It’s not like “Christianity” is a single monotholic entity. Like “Paganism” and “Buddhism”, it’s a fuzzy catch-all word for a large family of faiths that loosely prance around a single idea or event. Christians follow the example set by Jesus, and many believe He was divine; Buddhists believe that the Buddha found enlightenment and expounded a Path to reach it; most Pagans believe the gods are many, and a lot of us hold a special reverence for the Earth. Beyond that, the beliefs and practices of these groups are as multifaceted as the people who comprise them.

So, which Christians? I’m automatically assuming that the United Church of Christ will not have a seat at the table. The Catholic Church? A couple large Protestant denominations? Or do you envision some sort of ecumenical Christian hegemony, with a Religious Council consisting of representatives of the major New Testament sects? I’ll bet you dimes to donuts such a Council would look something like this:

The "Yay, Free Viagra!" Panel

The "Yay, Free Viagra!" Panel testifies before Congress.

Now, I don’t think Santorum has a hope in hell of winning the nomination (crosses self with Pentacle). But it’s a bad, bad sign that such radical fundamentalism is earning national airtime and headlines. This is the 21st century. Santorum has every right to free speech, certainly – but in this day and age, the proper venue for these views is from a street corner, emanating from a man wearing a sandwich board emblazoned with the word “REPENT”. He’s not arguing for a return to the 1950s, but to the 1350s: a return to a rabid theocracy, unmoored from the humanistic values that bind our diverse democracy together. While this rhetoric is a threat to all free people, it’s particularly worrisome for Pagans and members of other minority religious traditions, who are guaranteed to be excluded from Santorum’s dreams of Dominionism.

As Jason Pitzl-Waters argues at The Wild Hunt, tolerance for all religions – including polytheistic religions, and yes, no religion at all – is a pagan virtue, and must remain an essential part of the fabric of our country:

Every president, every politician, who takes the oath to uphold our Constitution, are [sic] taking an oath that the founders knew would allow for men and women of every faith (or even no faith) to someday take their place among our leadership. They are taking an oath on a document crafted by men who are products of the Enlightenment, whose thinkers looked to ancient pagan thinkers, politicians, and philosophers for wisdom and guidance, unencumbered by the filter of the Christian church. The religious pluralism of the United States of America is a pluralism that had its first breaths in ancient Greece, and later ancient Rome, where a variety of gods, goddesses, cults, sects, and traditions had to live together in a civil society. To return to Professor Majid’s essay, “one can’t imagine the American Republic without the Founding Fathers’ knowledge of Greece and Rome.”  Democracy, republicanism, are core pagan inventions, and no matter how Christian the hand who steers the ship of State, those ideals remain lest our institutions crumble.

We are a nation of diversity: ethnic, linguistic, sexual, gender, intellectual, religious, and spiritual. If you value this diversity, I encourage you to speak out against the likes of Rick Santorum. Because the last thing our country needs is a 21st century rendition of the Inquisition.

The End of Church, or the Beginning of Spirit?

Posted by on February 20, 2012 No comments

Church ruinsDiana Butler Bass has a doozy of an article on Huffington Post which, at first glance, is about the continued decline of American Protestant and Catholic churches. But Bass has a larger, positive point: that ol’ time religion is giving way to a non-authoritarian approach to faith.

This is my favorite bit from the article:

“Spiritual and religious” expresses a grassroots desire for new kinds of faith communities, where institutional structures do not inhibit or impede one’s relationship with God or neighbor. Americans are searching for churches — and temples, synagogues, and mosques — that are not caught up in political intrigue, rigid rules and prohibitions, institutional maintenance, unresponsive authorities, and inflexible dogma but instead offer pathways of life-giving spiritual experience, connection, meaning, vocation, and doing justice in the world. Americans are not rejecting faith — they are, however, rejecting self-serving religious institutions.

Can I get a “Blessed Be”? (An “Amen” will work, too.)

Joe Perez offers his two cents for what this means for a new “World spirituality”. I’m more interested in what this means for religious diversity, and for the freedom that this affords individual practitioners. This shift away from hierarchical, power-over religious structures signals a new model of “religion” in which “going to church/temple/zendo/the open grove” doesn’t mean receiving The Holy Word, but sharing part of one’s spiritual practice with like-minded practitioners.

I had the good fortune of taking my kids last week to Gaia’s Temple in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The Temple, which has been in operation for over a decade, welcomes people of all genders, races, and sexual orientations to come once a month and celebrate the Divine Feminine through song, meditation, and discussion. I had never even knew it existed until a friend told me about it.

Oh, what I’d been missing. My younger kids liked it. My (Pagan) teen son loved it. I loved it. I have no clue what most of the 100+ people in attendance that Sunday believed, or how they practiced on their own time. What mattered is that I could sit with them, chant with them, ground myself in Earth energy with them, and celebrate the turning of the Wheel with them.

And that, to me, is the true meaning of “religion” – from the Latin religare, “to bind together”. I felt this binding together at Gaia’s Temple. I feel it when I practice zazen with my fellow Buddhists. Rather than being bound by doctrine, we come together around a few principle ideas or practices that are sacred to us. The officiants of such practices are highly esteemed in the community, and may even have special recognitions bestowed upon them. But they’re not there, generally, to chastise us for our sinful ways. They lead practice. They instruct gently. They remind us, over and over again, to come back to who we really are.

Is this type of religious practice on the rise? I sure as hell hope so. Despite our technological prowess and burgeoning wealth, our planet and its denizens suffer immensely. It’s going to take a living, breathing spiritual practice – and not mere religious dogma – to wake us out of our slumber.

Contraception Coverage Isn’t a War on My Religion

Posted by on February 14, 2012 No comments
I had to call out this clip from The Daily Show and make a couple notes from the spiritual side. Jon Stewart did a serviceable job knocking this “Holy Sausage Fest”, wherein the all-male panel wailed about how awful it is that women can have sex without their permission.

First, none of these privileged older males is mentioning a woman’s right to be free from her employer’s religion. How far do they want to take this, anyway? Should an employer who’s a Christian Scientist have the “freedom” to deny paying for coverage if his employees haven’t first sought healing through Jesus? Should a Jehovah’s Witness be “free” not to cover blood transfusions? What if my religion forbids me from covering Viagra? (“Gee, Dave, sorry your dick’s gone limp, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a sign from God.”)

I have no trouble with a Christian who chooses to pursue abstinence until marriage. That is a valid, personal spiritual choice. These fine men are free to do whatever they want with their own bodies. If they don’t wanna take the pill, they don’t have to! But society has a right to conclude that they shouldn’t be allowed to use coercive means to make that decision for others.

Second, I nearly died when Hannity goaded his “experts” into slamming Obama’s extension of birth control coverage as a “war on religion”. Bullshit. It’s a war on antiquated notions of sexuality. It’s not society’s fault that certain religions (mainly the Abrahamic faiths) still believe that women should keep their legs wired shut until marriage. My religion has no such beliefs. Family planning does not constitute a “war” on my faith.

While “religion” is something of a dirty word in the circles in which I travel, I think it’s important to reclaim it from the fundamentalists. “Religion” should encompass all faiths – not merely the fire-breathing, Spanish-Inquisition varieties.