Coming in late from a mild evening at dueling piano bar (it's usually quite rowdy, but tonight was surprisingly staid), I caught the latter parts of what appeared to be a terrific PBS
Frontline titled
Faith and Doubt and Ground Zero. It was a bit late for the show to get my full attention as it deserved, but it looked to be very well balanced and often quite powerful. It seemed to mark on a quite powerful and probably oft-repeated thing: a difference between faith and religion.
I think people who find faith are rather humanist - in my definition, they are people who have found strength in an answer they feel is very right for themselves, and don't necessarily need religion to reinforce it. They believe in the power of the laity over that of the clergy, the noble notion that Man can be genuinely good whether he praises their God, another God, or no God at all. They are often the most effective religious leaders because they preach to the dignity of the individuals rather than to the might of the clergy or traditions or other actions used to hold power over others.
But so often, there are those who just find religion. It's the words, the repititions, and the actions that come to matter more than feeling. They actively recite their gods, prophets, and other clergy leaders words but are often the furthest from any real connection with their God. They can even be dangerous with their view of superiority - they have the right way, we do not.
The story from the little bit of this Frontline special that I watched that stuck with me was the interview with the Lutheran minister who said the prayer at the big inter-faith service held at Yankee Stadium last year for the families of those still missing since the September 11th attacks. He shared the podium with representatives of all the major faiths. And almost immediately after this event, he started getting very hateful messages from people within
his tradition, calling him a terrorist. Within two weeks, clergymen from his religion had gathered a petition stating that he should not be allowed to preach, that his collar should be removed, that he should be kicked out of his denomitation, and basically that he wasn't a true Christian. Why? Because
"their belief is that the doctrine of the church does not allow a Christian to stand at the same podium with someone of another faith or everybody is going to get the same idea that all religions are equal, and we have made absolute claims, exclusive claims about our faith." (link). He goes on to say:
If religion leads people to make these kinds of accusations at exactly the worse moment in American history, then what's underneath religion? Is religion really part of a lust for power and control in people's lives? Is it a desire for absolute security so strong that people cannot see the need to reach out and help? If that's true, then I've got a lot of wrestling to do with my own religion.
This was sickening to hear, but (sadly) not shocking. Someday, we will learn that no one, but no one!, has an absolute divine superiority granted to them over everybody else, and that any such sense of superiority does not justify violence of any sorts. Here's a man, a good man in his faith, saying a prayer at a very powerful and hopefully helpful prayer service for the genuine living sufferers of a terrible terrible event, and he's being called a heretic and terrorist? And clergymen in his own "faith" are seeking to drive him out?
sigh. Sometimes, I'm an absolute humanist - I see those of strong faith (which may or may not be in any religion - they may just have comfort in themselves, friends, or family, or pure humanism itself) making a positive impact on the world by generally good actions that come as a result of their faith. But a lot of the time, I'm in the misanthropy camp, seeing the despair and ruination brought on the world by the so-called Religious, who will see a brother of their own tradition doing something good, but finding only bad in it because it violates the supposed One True Way.