This posting is a bit too personal for me, and it is about me.
I was encouraged, early, by a little semi-fundamentalist community
of good people, to think about becoming a parish pastor.
I was one of the kids who could read pretty well, so I was
appointed to teach Sunday School classes to kids just a bit
younger than I was. Mostly I remember putting my feet up on
the wood stove, because they were wet and cold, and causing
the soles to crack across the bottom, ruining the shoes for Jesus.
And for me.
And for my parents.
I became the parish pastor they wanted me to be.
I was a good one, increasingly haunted by the questions
of what I mean when I said the words I had learned.
I finally went to the University of Chicago to get a Ph.D.,
and to try to discover what it was I did think and believe.
Some of the finest people I have ever known were members
of that parish in California. If ever there was a better man
than George Miller, I salute him now! He is in the company of two.
There were many others; good people, kind people, whom I
recall as often as I think about what a good life means,
who taught me that religion is probably more about community
than it is about God, or doctrine, or the Pope's red shoes.
So I have an enormous reservoir of good will for religious people,
but an increasing scorn for what it has become, today.
Religious people have become the thoughtless defenders of
first century, or sixteen century, or imaginary thought.
They often insist that to be religious is to think like a Neanderthal.
They want us to affirm angels, or miracles, or pigs with demons.
They preach a doctrine of getting rich by getting religious,
and of hating gays or hating immigrants or hating liberals.
Haiti, the poorest of poor nations in the western hemisphere
has just been nearly destroyed by an earthquake: "an act of God".
Pat Robertson says they brought it upon themselves:
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."
I know that a good number of the people who read these postings
are religious people themselves, something like the congregation
of which I was the pastor in California. I know that they believe,
that they are good people, that they cringe as I do at such statements.
But I cannot go there any more. Even if my religious friends are good,
the enterprise is not good. Religion is not a humane occupation.
It defends gay bashing. It celebrates gathering wealth as a virtue.
It defends buggering altar boys. It laments laws that punish
buggering altar boys. It denegrates women with lacy praise.
It scorns women as equals in the high, holy priesthood.
It assumes men should tell women what to do with their bodies.
Religion tells doctors and politicians what is acceptable,
and punishes them with shunning if they do not agree.
Religion praises holy wars, and unholy torture, and racism.
I will not take refuge in the argument that the institution of religion
is the problem, but that the ideas and people who create the
institutions are good, and that if we could just get back to
something that never was, we would all say we were religouns.
Or faithful. Or spiritual. Or something else evasive and delusional.
Nothing in Haiti, not a single sin or virtue or idea in Haiti
caused that earthquake. The earth shook, as it has to, as it heaves
and spreads and piles up because of inexorable forces, not a one
of which has anything to do with the sins or virtues or children of
Haiti. Earth does not listen to people fornicating, or ideating,
or singing. Earth does what it has to do, and this time, it heaved Haiti.
Pat Robertson, and all Pat Robersons, are simple-minded idiots.
They explain nothing. They create demons, and blame poverty,
and stand, like avenging angels, over death and destruction.
They are death and destruction; of ideas, and of human decency.
I have come to scorn them for their religion.
I yearn, instead, for human decency, and tears.
I was encouraged, early, by a little semi-fundamentalist community
of good people, to think about becoming a parish pastor.
I was one of the kids who could read pretty well, so I was
appointed to teach Sunday School classes to kids just a bit
younger than I was. Mostly I remember putting my feet up on
the wood stove, because they were wet and cold, and causing
the soles to crack across the bottom, ruining the shoes for Jesus.
And for me.
And for my parents.
I became the parish pastor they wanted me to be.
I was a good one, increasingly haunted by the questions
of what I mean when I said the words I had learned.
I finally went to the University of Chicago to get a Ph.D.,
and to try to discover what it was I did think and believe.
Some of the finest people I have ever known were members
of that parish in California. If ever there was a better man
than George Miller, I salute him now! He is in the company of two.
There were many others; good people, kind people, whom I
recall as often as I think about what a good life means,
who taught me that religion is probably more about community
than it is about God, or doctrine, or the Pope's red shoes.
So I have an enormous reservoir of good will for religious people,
but an increasing scorn for what it has become, today.
Religious people have become the thoughtless defenders of
first century, or sixteen century, or imaginary thought.
They often insist that to be religious is to think like a Neanderthal.
They want us to affirm angels, or miracles, or pigs with demons.
They preach a doctrine of getting rich by getting religious,
and of hating gays or hating immigrants or hating liberals.
Haiti, the poorest of poor nations in the western hemisphere
has just been nearly destroyed by an earthquake: "an act of God".
Pat Robertson says they brought it upon themselves:
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."
I know that a good number of the people who read these postings
are religious people themselves, something like the congregation
of which I was the pastor in California. I know that they believe,
that they are good people, that they cringe as I do at such statements.
But I cannot go there any more. Even if my religious friends are good,
the enterprise is not good. Religion is not a humane occupation.
It defends gay bashing. It celebrates gathering wealth as a virtue.
It defends buggering altar boys. It laments laws that punish
buggering altar boys. It denegrates women with lacy praise.
It scorns women as equals in the high, holy priesthood.
It assumes men should tell women what to do with their bodies.
Religion tells doctors and politicians what is acceptable,
and punishes them with shunning if they do not agree.
Religion praises holy wars, and unholy torture, and racism.
I will not take refuge in the argument that the institution of religion
is the problem, but that the ideas and people who create the
institutions are good, and that if we could just get back to
something that never was, we would all say we were religouns.
Or faithful. Or spiritual. Or something else evasive and delusional.
Nothing in Haiti, not a single sin or virtue or idea in Haiti
caused that earthquake. The earth shook, as it has to, as it heaves
and spreads and piles up because of inexorable forces, not a one
of which has anything to do with the sins or virtues or children of
Haiti. Earth does not listen to people fornicating, or ideating,
or singing. Earth does what it has to do, and this time, it heaved Haiti.
Pat Robertson, and all Pat Robersons, are simple-minded idiots.
They explain nothing. They create demons, and blame poverty,
and stand, like avenging angels, over death and destruction.
They are death and destruction; of ideas, and of human decency.
I have come to scorn them for their religion.
I yearn, instead, for human decency, and tears.
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