Churches Attacked Amid Furor in Malaysia
addresses the issue of the relation of religion, politics and violence. I've asked before whether or not religion itself fosters intolerance and division. If it does, then I would join those who look for a means other than "organized religion" to create a broad based human community with shared and noble goals and values.
While the article discusses the role of religion in the civil strife in Malaysia, it quickly gets to a thesis that the differences among Muslims, Christians and Hindus there is based upon a concern of politicians to create and maintain a "national identity:"
“In Malaysia the central theme will always be about the Malay identity and about Islam. The parties come up with various policies or means to attempt to appeal to the Muslim Malay voters. ... This is the last hope — to incite racial and religious sentiments to cling to power,” he said. “Immediately since the disastrous defeat in the March 2008 election they have been fanning this.”
While one could conceive zealots here proclaiming "This is a Christian nation" with the same antagonism against other religions as in Malaysia, we should still listen to the point being made by the article: religion, at least in the Malaysia case, is the pawn of those wishing to maintain political power. To the extent this might be true, the thesis that religion itself is divisive is undermined.
If we look to any other part of the world where religion has been blamed for violence, we can see the same sort of dysfunctional connection between religion and politics, where religion becomes the vehicle for political aspiration and control; religion has sometimes taken the lead for its own advantage in backing a ruling political party. But it would be difficult in any of these situations to find a close correlation between the values of a government in power and a particular religion, contra a different political party and its religion. In the case of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, for instance, the issue was and is economics -- jobs, benefits, dignity and opportunity-- more than the differences between Catholic and Protestant religion -- although the one comes to be labelled as identical with its counterpart. Thinking people see beyond labels and work to find common values upon which to create peace and practice reconciliation.
In parts of Moorish Spain, for prolonged periods -- for instance at the Great Mosque at Cordoba -- Christians and Muslims and Jews lived together peacefully and fruitfully (although the condition for that was submission: See http://www.medievalists.net/2010/01/20/why-minorities-were-neither-tolerated-nor-discriminated-against-in-the-middle-ages/. The Great Mosque, incorporating in a place of shared worship both Islamic and Christian art and architecture, was considered by all one of the great monuments of the world. Some would say it still is.
It is not unusual to find people of different religions who are great friends -- but who have not, in order to achieve that friendship, been forced to give up the convictions of their particular religion. Tolerant and enlightened religious people are those who know that "religion" starts with a "re:" that is, "religion" means re-uniting the "ligaments" that hold a body, and therefore a soul and a mind, together, in the common pursuit of goodness, beauty and truth. That goal, and not passing political fights, are what religion is truly about. In this context it does not serve the common good to opt out of the religious enterprize in favor of a "spirituality" or a dis-organized religion that is disembodied from either "organized religion" or politics, even when "spirituality" is at the core of religion and not identical to it. To be a spiritual person is to be compassionately involved in the human enterprize as a whole, and not give in to the temptation to stand aloof from the conflicts which come upon us in any and all times in human history.
When Jesus asks Peter, after Peter pointed out that Jesus was saying "hard" things (setting himself apart from the religion of the Pharasees), whether Peter would like to leave off following him, Peter thought for a moment and said "Lord, to whom else can we go? You have the words of eternal life." Point being that we all need to start somewhere and that somewhere is always based on our subjective grasp of the truth, in the case of Peter, Jesus himself. That our starting place is necessarily subjective (even when we believe that truth is objectively verifiable) should not be a rationalization for “standing above the fray” of religion. Religion is at once our greatest means of re-ligamenting a wounded and broken humanity, and a peril if it is given only lip service and not practiced from the heart. GKS
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