Varieties of Religious Experiece

By Wayne Brown
Just a few notes on the subject, hoping to move on. It's almost impossible to say anything about religion invokes anything but a spirited defense of whatever your listener thinks about it. The actual exchange of ideas on this subject is, for the most part, impossible.

  • One lesson I got from slogging through Medieval philosophy was the centuries-old attempt to figure out what was true about God without admitting that it was all about human experience - the proverbial elephant in the room. Failure to take this into account largely accounts for the deadening boredom of most church services and the surprising success of the evangelical movement and the "black" Church.
  • While community and authority are more important than doctrine in holding a religion together "on the ground" - in the congregation, we must also acknowledge that we all accept the authority and bow to community standards every day of our lives. So-called "religious" people are no different in this respect.
  • Digging in heels, denying evidence, defending nonsense arguments is such a common behavior of humans that we are startled when it's not present. We do it ourselves all the time. Of course, we deny it and claim it's only other people who are pig-headed and illogical.
  • "Faith" is not about the facts of the world. It's about how you feel about the facts. Feeling guides what facts you think are relevant and what acts you regard as "right". If you are a normal, sane, person, this is the way your mind works whether you call it "faith" or not.
As remarked elsewhere, the religious person re-defines God, spirituality, and morality in such a way as to make it impossible to determine "faith" from disbelief. For example, How would the world be different if God did not exist? Faith demands belief in spite of the lack of evidence. This means, on a daily basis, there should be no place for "God" around the table when issues of public policy are determined (such as abortion). I recently ran into another facet of this issue when a room full of "modern skeptics" were unable to consider the possibility that there was more variation of opinion inside the Catholic Church than outside it or that the behavior of Catholics vis-a-vis birth control is no different from anyone else. The fact that religion makes little or no difference in the behavior of actual people is taken for hypocrisy and widespread schadenfreude among the disbelievers. The subtle truth - denied by both sides for different reasons - is that religion makes no difference.

It often looks very different in the public sphere. "God" or His self-appointed messengers claim a special place "around the table". Paradoxically, these people seem to be especially ignorant of the source of their authority (The Bible), cherry-picking verses to support their position and ignoring the rest. Why is it that they can choose and others can't? It's a matter of interpretation - human judgment. For some reason, this observation is taboo in public discussion, leaving the religious right to claim the "high ground" and speak for a God of their own creation. "Liberal" Christians speak very softly on this issue, for the simple reason that they know that their faith makes them feel good but makes little or no actual difference in how they conduct their lives.  Among Liberal Christians and the pastors who lead them, religion itself is a taboo subject. Nobody wants to be the first to say the emperor has no clothes.

Those of us who have had the good fortune to obtain a solid education in the Bible and the history of the Church have a special role to play in this situation. In theory, we can speak respectfully to those who imagine that "God" has special authority - even over those who don't believe He exists. Like all mythology, Christianity has evolved - sometimes at breakneck speed - but it always seems "eternal" to those who are exposed to it in 5-minute snapshots. We should be able to share "Biblical" concerns for justice, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness that form (or should form) the core of Christianity (or any civilized culture). When hard-core Christians are willing to meet us on these grounds, there is no need to debate theology or be rude about their interpretation of reality.

Whatever this is, we are all in it together!


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