The Practicing Progressive

Issue 6
January 15, 2007

More on the church’s culture of deceit…

You have certainly read of the nasty business in the Virginia Diocese of the Episcopal Church. There, two congregations have voted to separate themselves from their American bishop and diocese and join forces instead with the Diocese of Nigeria. The ostensible reason for their defection was to align themselves with a church body that more closely adheres to a strict interpretation of scripture and the traditional teachings of the Anglican Communion.

In fact, barely scraping the surface, one can quickly discover that these desertions have less to do with custom and more with convenience. Conveniently, the Diocese of Nigeria is rabidly anti-gay with a bishop who advocates the restriction of civil as well as religious rights for homosexuals. If these pious Virginia parishioners were sincere in their need to honor the ancient cultural prohibitions listed in the Bible they would be forced to change more than their diocese. Women would be forbidden to assume any leadership role in their parishes, priests would be stripped of their robes and titles and a perpetual ban on pig roasts would have to be invoked, just to name a few. The truth, as I see it, is that these two parishes, and a growing number of other Episcopalian churches, even dioceses, wish to continue the barbarous biases against women and gay folk that have marked Christianity for far too long. Hiding behind a rationale of scriptural literalism is a cheap and obvious sham for perpetuating hatred.

Another interesting albeit depressing example of deceit in the name of Christianity comes in the peculiar alliance between Evangelical Christians and Israel. Millions of dollars to support the continuing military build-up in Israel have been raised in Evangelical churches for many years. According to conventional Evangelical theology, Israel plays a key role in the second coming of Christ and its maintenance as a political power is essential. So the money pours in. What is so strange to anyone looking in from the outside is the transparent deception of this arrangement. In the eyes of most Evangelicals, Jews will be damned to an eternal punishment for refusing to accept Jesus…and the quicker he comes, the more imminent their damnation. Israel, on the other hand, appears more than willing to accept the Christian’s cash. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from as long as it keeps coming (and beats the arrival of Jesus). Politics may make strange bedfellows but religion seems to make bizarre ones.

Such an alliance may seem nothing more than an exercise in hypocrisy but it can be far more sinister. Think, only hypothetically of course, if a certain president of the United States was to accede to this odd understanding of Israel and shape his foreign policy in accordance. Unprovoked and ill-advised incursions into sovereign Middle-Eastern nations may have more to do with the man’s religious perspective than his political one.

On a more personal note: Pastors are reasonably expected to live lives of integrity and purity but often congregations move far beyond reason. Many a pastor friend has found him/herself caught up in a charade that has them pretending that all is well even when it is not. To act as if doubt never enters the cleric’s consciousness, or to make believe a world of divine order, creates a conundrum for both pastor and parishioner that ultimately results in a culture of deceit. I’ll pretend if you’ll pretend and we’ll all pretend together. That, it seems to me, is the very definition of a dysfunctional relationship. Honesty, from both sides of the pulpit, is the only antidote for this kind of self-destructive behavior.

Finally, on this day for honoring Dr. King, I share with you a poem I came across a few weeks ago that I found both profound and profoundly moving:

CREED
By Stanley Moss

I salute a word, I stand up and give it my chair,
because this one Zulu word, ubuntu,
holds what English takes seven to say:
“the essential dignity of every human being.”
I give my hand to ubuntu-
the simple, everyday South African word
for the English mouthful.
I do not know the black Jerusalems of Africa,
or how to dance its sacred dances,
I cannot play Christ’s two commandments on the drums:
“Love God” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I do not believe the spirits of the dead
are closer to God than the living,
nor do I take to my heart
the Christlike word ubuntu
that teaches reconciliation
of murderers, torturers, accomplices,
with victims still living.
It is not blood but ubuntu
that is the manure of freedom.

From “New and Selected Poems: 2006”
(Seven Stories Press: 248pp., $18.95)