February 19, 2006

 

Readings 

 

Today is the third in our four-part February series on the Pieces of Abraham, exploring the relationships between the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of whom claim Abraham as the father of their faith.  I do hope you’ll join us for the concluding service in the series next week with our special guest, the Rev. Dr. Michael Spath who will talk about religion and violence. 

 

The past two weeks we have looked at differences between the three religions.  Today we’ll look at divisions within them, and specifically, how that is expressed here in the United States. 

 

The reading to set the stage for my reflections is from the book, The Battle For God, by Karen Armstrong.  Armstrong is a former nun turned scholar of religion.  In this book she is exploring the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism. 

 

There have always been people, in every age and in each tradition, who have fought the modernity of their day.  But the fundamentalism that we shall be considering is an essentially twentieth-century movement.  It is a reaction against the scientific and secular culture that first appeared in the West, but which has since taken root in other parts of the world.  The West has developed an entirely unprecedented and wholly different type of civilization, so that the religious response to it has been unique.  The fundamentalist movements that have evolved in our own day have a symbiotic relationship with modernity.  They may reject the scientific rationalism of the West, but they cannot escape it.  Western civilization has changed the world.  Nothing – including religion – can ever be the same again.  All over the globe, people have been struggling with these new conditions and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions, which were designed for an entirely different type of society (p. xi-xii). 

 

Armstrong acknowledges that “fundamentalism” is an inexact word used to describe a broad collection of religious movements.  Along with other scholars, though, she accepts it not as a perfect label, but a useful one.  She describes a study by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby who argue that the “fundamentalisms” all follow a certain pattern.  She writes: 

 

They are embattled forms of spirituality, which have emerged as a response to a perceived crisis.  They are engaged in a conflict with enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem inimical to religion itself.  Fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a conventional political struggle, but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil.  They fear annihilation, and try to fortify their beleaguered identity by means of a selective retrieval of certain doctrines and practices of the past.  To avoid contamination, they often withdraw from mainstream society to create a counterculture; yet fundamentalists are not impractical dreamers.  They have absorbed the pragmatic rationalism of modernity, and, under the guidance of their charismatic leaders, they refine these “fundamentals” so as to create an ideology that provides the faithful with a plan of action.  Eventually they fight back and attempt to resacralize an increasingly skeptical world (p. xi).

 

Sermon                                      The Religious Fault Line

                                         Reverend Jill Ann Terwilliger, Minister

 

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham.  And before there was Abraham there was Noah.  And before Noah, Adam and Eve.  And before Adam and Eve, Genesis says: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water –“ 

 

This is how the great stories start:  In the beginning, once upon a time, a long, long time ago…  They start with wonderings and questions about who we are and how things came to be.  They start by trying to explain the place of humanity within the vastness of the world, our relationship with the unseen forces of life, and how these lives that seem so small can be lived with meaning.  These are what the great stories try to tell us, and these are the stories that religions grow from. 

 

The trouble is, there are lots of different stories and even more interpretations of those stories, and in many parts of the world – even here in the land of Religious Freedom – those interpretations have become so divergent that there are even divisions, and sometimes violence, between those who are in the same family of faith. 

      There are those who proclaim an Islam of peace and inter-religious tolerance while others teach that violence is an acceptable means of bringing about an Islamic society. 

      There are those who proclaim a Judaism of peaceful co-existence in the land of Israel and others who say that any Palestinian power in those biblical lands is against the promise of God. 

      And there are those who proclaim a Christianity of peace and compassion while others – this is a new one that’s come to my attention recently - others hold protests against homosexuality at funerals of American soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan (the exact logic behind this escapes my comprehension).   

 

During our last presidential election we saw what reporters described as “a loose coalition” of conservative protestants, Catholics, and Jews work together to re-elect an evangelical Christian to the presidency.  And “loose” does seem to be the right word for it.  I think it was more of a coincidental overlap in opinions about homosexuality, abortion, evolution, school prayer, the state of Israel, and the separation of church and state than a concerted effort to work together for common ends.  But the fact that the conservative blocks of these religious groups did indeed converge on a common family of issues set a lot of people to talking after the election about the different approaches to religion and the different world views that are now separating Jew from Jew and Christian from Christian rather than the religious from the secular. 

 

Karen Armstrong takes a step back from these present day divides to ask why they have come about.  For this, she goes back to two archetypal kinds of knowledge – two complementary ways of arriving at truth – which human communities are built around:  mythos and logos. 

 

Myth, Armstrong says, “looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind.”  In that looking, myth communicated truths thought to be timeless and constant; it communicated meaning; it helped people find the significance that helps keep mortal men and women from falling into despair (p. xiii).  “Once upon a time” the myths so often begin, and our minds relax into listening for something timeless and true, whether or not it may be factually so. 

 

Logos is that way of knowing that is about fact, science, rationality, and practicality.  It is the kind of thought that enables us to function well in the world, to get things done, or to persuade others toward a certain course of action (p. xiv-xv).  Armstrong writes, “Unlike myth, which looks back to the beginnings and to the foundations, logos forges ahead and tries to find something new:  to elaborate on old insights, achieve a greater control over our environment, discover something fresh, and invent something novel.” 

 

As I said, these were understood as different but complementary ways of arriving at truth, neither of which is  sufficient in isolation but neither should they be confused with each other.  They had (and have) different jobs to do. 

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Take Abraham, for example.  Is he part of the mythos or the logos?  Was Abraham a real person?  It’s one of the questions Bruce Feiler explores in his book, Abraham:  A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.  If we were to take the narratives of Genesis as history, Abraham’s story, in Feiler’s words, would go something like this: 

 

[From an a-heroic start, Abram] goes on to abandon his father at age seventy-five, leave his homeland, move to Canaan, travel to Egypt, father two sons, change his name, cut off part of his penis, do the same for his teenager and newborn, exile his first son, attempt to kill his second, fight a world war, buy some land, bury his wife, father another family, and die at one hundred seventy-five (p. 19). 

 

It’s quite a life.  But did any of it really happen?  Textual scholars as much as 200 years ago concluded that the story is cobbled together from various sources and has little basis in fact.  Then, archeologists went to work searching for clues.  Some claimed to have found plausible evidence, others dispute it, but in the end, confirming Abraham and his story as an historical event remains impossible. 

 

Does this diminish the power of Abraham’s role in the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?  Not at all, because Abraham – whether he lived in the flesh or only in myth – remains the first exemplar of unwavering devotion to an invisible, transcendent God.  But Abraham is not only great father of three faiths.  Or, I guess I should say, he is the great father because his story resonated with some common human need.  In Feiler’s words again: 

 

[Abraham] reminds us that even though God may have cut the umbilical cord with humans, humans still need nourishment from God.  …  The lesson of Abraham’s early life is that being human is not being safe, or comfortable.  Being human is being uncertain, being on the way to an unknown place.  Being on the way to God.  The emptiness of Abraham’s invisible youth is the triumph of recognizing this necessity.  His early years are a questioning, a yearning, a growing desperation, and finally a humble plea.  Help (p. 25). 

 

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham, uncertain about his life, yearning for a relationship with something transcendent and eternal.  Once there was an Abraham, and Abraham is us. 

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Mythos and Logos lived side by side and pretty much in balance for thousands of years.  Come the 17 and 1800’s, though, logos began to get the upper hand.  Dramatic advances in science and technology were explaining and mechanizing many of the things formerly understood only through myth.  The modern age was born, and with it came a major crisis in religion.  When – through logos – you can harness the power of lightning, see beyond the stars and look inside the human body, what is left to the province of myth?  And, more urgently stated, if we – mere humans – can understand and control such things, what is left to the province of God?  If God’s power does not work the way the holy books said it does, what about the other things the holy books say about life and death and sin and salvation?   This is a crisis of monumental proportions. 

 

This modern problem created a uniquely modern solution:  Religious Fundamentalism.  The American Christian expression of fundamentalism it is to read the whole of their holly writ as logos instead of mythos.  For example, Genesis is no longer an allegory about the creative power of god or god’s intimacy with each created being, but is a scientific explanation of the origins of our planet and its inhabitants.   And so, creationism must be taught in public school science classes.  The examples could continue and result in the well known cluster of religiously-conservative political agendas I listed earlier. 

 

But as Armstrong described, fundamentalism is more than a political outlook.  It is perceived as a “cosmic war between the forces of good and evil.”  When it’s a holy war you’re fighting in a profane world, secular norms and laws begin to lose their authority.  The basic decency of not holding a political rally at someone’s funeral disappears.  It becomes acceptable to threaten, harass, and even murder abortion providers or beat a young gay man to death. 

 

When religion is turned to law, the mythic stories that once helped people understand their interior lives and their darker impulses are no longer able to do their work.  Mythos and logos need one another.  An excess of either leaves both vulnerable to perversion. 

 

For us to find a peaceful path over the fault line in religion today, Armstrong suggests this: 

… fundamentalists must evolve a more compassionate assessment of their enemies in order to be true to their religious traditions, secularists must also be more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance, and respect for humanity which characterizes modern culture at its best, and address themselves more empathetically to the fears, anxieties, and needs which so many of their fundamentalist neighbors experience but which no society can safely ignore (p. 371). 

 

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Personally, I still find the most important questions about life – the questions of meaning – to remain unanswered by the discoveries of science and psychology.  Many people I meet who are unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism are surprised to hear that I, a religious/spiritual leader, am partnered with a professor of Physics.  But there is no conflict.  In fact, it is a very helpful balance.  Charles keeps me honest, he helps keep my logic in order even in matters of faith, and he helps keep me clear on just where the line between the known and the unknown falls these days.    

 

I’m sure logos plays more of a role in my daily life than it did for a woman, a mother, a wife 500 years ago, but without myth, without the made-up stories that remind of real truths, all the logos in the world wouldn’t help me through the dark nights in my soul. 

 

The meaning in Abraham’s life, the truth it reminds me of for my life, is that no feeling, no state is permanent, I am always on the way somewhere, God’s call can lead to some really surprising places, I am always in need of help, and help is there when I’m willing to ask and willing to receive. 

 

Abraham’s story gives me comfort, too, as I consider the religious conflicts in this country and around the world.  We are not safe or comfortable right now.  We are – as religious peoples, as nations – on our uncertain way to an unknown place, but we are going there together.  Who knows what peace would even look like?  But we are on our way to peace.  Who knows what it would mean for ALL of us to reach God, but we are on the way to God.  In fact, we will always be on the way.  And as we travel we will see untold mysteries, be surprised by our own strength and our own need, we will be humbled by our humanity, changed by our experiences and challenged by those we meet on the way. 

 

May it be so for each and all of us.

May we make it so through our living.