The idea that religion automatically makes people better social animals is shown to not be the case when you consider why fragmentation, rather than unity, is happening in the communion.

Religious diversity

Mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs

Oct 16th 2008 | AMSTERDAM, BELFAST AND MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition

When Christian groups reunite, watch out for the next split

ON THE southern rim of Moscow, where the din of traffic gives way to a silent forest, three steeples shimmer over the trees. On closer inspection, these belong to a magnificent new church. Inside it, and in a much cosier wooden edifice next door, every inch of wall commemorates people who were massacred in this area 60 years ago. Many are depicted in icons, celebrating them as martyrs whose prayers in the afterlife protect the church.

This memorial to victims of Stalin’s purges (albeit mainly recalling one category, Christian believers) sends a timely message to a Russia where reflection on the perils of an over-mighty state is rare. Its construction is one reason why, last year, most of the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) agreed to unite with the Patriarchate of Moscow, which “White” anticommunist exiles long saw as tainted by red links.

But for a passionate minority of ROCOR clerics and believers, dotted across North and South America, Europe and Australia, the Moscow-based church hasn’t gone nearly far enough to justify coming together. For these dissidents, it matters a lot that hierarchs in Moscow still approve the accord made with the communists in 1927 by Sergius, an Orthodox bishop who signed a statement accepting the Soviet Union as a “civil motherland”. By justifying Sergius, the dissidents insist, the Moscow church implicitly condemns others who went underground or remained defiant and paid with their lives.

The dissenters’ argument is that by defending deals made under the Soviet regime, today’s church is endorsing a Soviet-era episcopate which not only obeyed Stalin but fawned on him. Supporters of the reunion retort that most of today’s Russian episcopate was elevated after the Soviet period; they also hope that the reunion will help along a continuing reassessment of all eras of Russian history. Across the Russian diaspora, the dispute has divided parishes and formerly close-knit communities. Priests have broken with bishops, theology students with their professors.

The intra-Russian dispute is only one example of a paradox in the recent history of the world’s largest religion. Almost every time two Christian communities—split by politics, race, culture or doctrine—decide to reunite, a new division is created by those who cannot accept the merger.

In Christendom as a whole, most recent merger activity has been among schools of Protestantism which now feel that doctrinal differences between John Calvin (1509-1564) and Martin Luther (1483-1546) shouldn’t be a make-or-break matter in the 21st century.

The Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC), an association of about 350 Christian groups, has counted 50 “reunited” churches (all involving varieties of Protestantism) and 40 churches that are engaged in talks that could lead to further mergers. But not even the WCC’s keenest enthusiasts are sure that the movement towards unity is stronger than the trend towards fragmentation.

In any case, for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians the idea of a “reunion” between churches is paradoxical, if not contradictory; they speak of the Church as a mystical reality of which they are the main or sole representatives, and which almost by definition cannot be divided. For Protestants, the idea at least of “uniting churches” is not so problematic. A dozen intra-Protestant mergers have been modelled on one that occurred in Canada in 1925. India is one of the few countries where Christians who defer to bishops managed to merge with those who don’t.

But the world’s fastest-growing sects, typically those stressing dramatic personal experience, such as speaking in strange tongues, are uninterested in uniting with anybody. They view the WCC as soft-minded or worse. In this they resemble the “White” Russians, who also abhor the Moscow Patriarchate’s membership of the WCC. (The Muscovites this week left the Conference of European Churches, a WCC affiliate, but that probably won’t satisfy their most conservative critics.)

Going Dutch and divided

Even among those who are interested in reunion, recent news is mixed. In South Africa, the mainly black and coloured Reformed churches have voiced dismay over the refusal of their white compatriots in the Dutch Reformed church to accept their terms for union. While the white Dutch Reformers have eschewed their old belief in apartheid, some couldn’t quite swallow the “Belhar Confession”, a document written in 1986 which stresses racial and social inclusiveness.

In those quarrelsome South Africans’ spiritual home, the Netherlands, intra-Protestant rows also smoulder on in some places. That is despite (or rather, because of) a giant merger sealed in 2004.

This involved the two biggest Reformed groups, plus a few Lutherans; it seemed to many people like a good outcome of a rapprochement that had been under way for 40 years. But not all approved. In the Dutch “Bible belt” from the Zeeland islands to the eastern border, some 60,000 people established a new “Restored Reformed Church” professing true Calvinism.

Some of the issues at stake are familiar from other Christian battlegrounds, such as the Anglican Communion, where the question of gay rights has split southern-hemisphere conservatives from northern liberals. The Dutch traditionalists reject female pastors and same-sex unions. But the Dutch old-timers’ deeper objection is to sloppy mixing of two traditions: their own Calvinism, stressing the “depravity” of mankind, and the Lutheran view, which is a bit gentler. “We pledged to follow the original Reformist path, and it is a biblical calling that you must continue to do what you promised,” says Willem van Vlastuin, a “restored” church pastor who serves 1,300 souls in the coastal town of Katwijk.

Before 2004, conservatives in the Netherlands’ reformed churches (there were two with similar names) could rub along with the liberal camp because they still belonged to bodies that claimed, at least, to be Calvinist. Once the waters were muddied by throwing in a new, Lutheran set of beliefs, the conservatives marched out. Just as happened with the Russian reunion, some clerics hovered between the amalgamated body and the dissidents, in a few cases switching sides more than once.

In Protestant redoubts such as Scotland and Ulster, there are sects (small in numbers but still dominant in certain places, like the Scottish island of Raasay) which glory in the fact that they or their forebears rejected past efforts to patch over differences. Both the Free Church of Scotland (“wee frees”) and the Free Presbyterian Church (“wee wee frees”) take pride in having eschewed an amalgam between Scotland’s main Protestant churches, achieved a century ago through a slight blurring of theological edges. But like many zealous groups, both Scotland’s hardline Protestant sects have been wracked by squabbles, personal and theological. Ulster’s Free Presbyterians (separate from the Scottish ones) avoided a split last year only after the resignation of their founder, the pastor-politician Ian Paisley.

Schisms and scandals have also raged among the Greek Orthodox clerics who quit their national church in the 1920s when it adopted the modern calendar. And for people who have seen the militant edges of Christianity in several places, there are psychological parallels, at least, between Orthodoxy’s old-calendar holdouts and the ultra-Protestants. “Aesthetically, they are very different, but they are similar in their zeal and exclusivity,” says Sofka Zinovieff, an Anglo-Russian writer who knows both Scotland and Greece.

Even for people professionally committed to Christian unity, such as Odair Pedroso Mateus, a Brazilian Protestant who watches church reunions for the WCC, there is a feeling that shoehorning religious groups together isn’t always feasible or desirable. “Institutional reunion was a modern idea—perhaps in the post-modern era, we have to reconcile the existing diversity,” he says.

Someone asked me what I found threatening about Christianity on a christian forum, where an article on the Codex suggests the bible being the work of man that I blogged on was discussed, where one poster dismissed my blog as the trite of a liberal homosexual. My reply:

It's about liberty

In the Jefferson sense nothing, because your belief neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

But there is something about mindsets which need confronting. For example, the Codex Sinaiticus is described as corrupting, hearsay, the work not of god (unlike other works). So without further investigation we can try and dismiss this manuscript that exists. One of the oldest where we can see original text and corrections.

Yet when you look at the books in the bible, where there are several authors of one work, and the various translations and meanings that are derived from these works over time it sounds less like the holy word of god being revealed then men fighting one another over ideas. Not always conductive to a civil society.

When you start investigating early Christianity, what texts there were and how decisions were made on what to include and what not to include, then belief does not boil down to divine revelation, but the decisions of men. That truth is not something that need be feared by anyone unless they hold belief more important than honest inquiry.

The threat is where the state sanctions a faith over others. It grants privileges to one that it does not to others, at best only denying equal citizenship to people not of that faith, at worse actively persecuting those who do not share that faith. The state has no basis enshrining theology in the public sphere, when faith is a personal one that many citizens differ on. Freedom of thought to practise your faith or none requires that the state does not advocate one over another.

Nor should that belief be enforced on others outside of that belief. For example, I am curious what the poster meant by referring to me as a practising homosexual (lets ignore that is not true). That was not dealing about the issue concerned, rather it was an attempt to diminish me as a person without addressing the article. Again, that is something that I have an issue with religion in how it lends itself to characterising people. [source]

My concern is not just religious tolerance, but the tolerance of religion. The latter is not protected by the state to allow unequal citizenship or hate speech.

OTHER BLOGS:

Do not judge a book by it’s cover (dealing with the prejudice mentioned above)

You will learn nothing about Jesus with the show

Episode 3

We start off episode 3 in a run down church. Joanne tries to get Aaron to realize that it is about getting the church running for the last part of the series rather than the long term future. Aaron’s mum told him at the start that she had not brought him up to “believe that crap”. Father John visits the Mum (Michelle) at her pub, who has been ill (possibly cancer), to get the family on side – starting by giving them all rosaries.

Father John reckons that the Virgin Mary appears to people even now. It is not about proof but experience of faith according to Father John. Which is one of those circular reasons that means anything can be considered true. Father John sends a letter to Michelle saying he has prayed for her and he is not trying to convert her or her family. She invites Father John back – who suggests the anointing of the sick.

She receives the sacrament of the sick at Father John’s church in Manchester. He says that God does work in our lives otherwise he would be mad doing what he does. It is a pity he feels that the work he does in his community would only make sense with a God (perhaps the dressing up only does with one). A week later Michelle gets the all clear.

Martin has decided to not attend a Sunday service – seeing it as a waste of his time. He spends his time constructively down the greasy spoon (it is implied he is here during the service but maybe that is not the case). During the service Kevin raises his hand to receive a brochure – the singing has really inspired him. Laura made a joke about communion last week (I was hungry) but the service has made her feel bad about having done that. I must have missed that because that was not included in previous episodes – you begin to wonder how much of the experience has been edited out.

Laura has found a London church that accepts homosexuality. George is not convinced because it denies the power of god to change sexuality to what it was in the first place (presumably to make babies). Now a flash back to Kevin and his fornicating ways – now they have sent him to a Christian group rather than the usual night clubbers.

Going bowling Kevin asks one of the women how she controls her urges, to which she has no answer as she drinks her Red Bull. Kevin has left his girl friend in ignorance of his infidelity. George and Wale have told him to sit down with Lindsey and tell her what has been going on. It is not made clear how that encounter goes.

Laura has gone to the church she has found. A match made in heaven where faith and her lifestyle go hand in hand. The Reverend states that Jesus never said that a woman cannot love a woman – but Laura has doubts over which version of faith has it right and remains at cross roads. Joanne sends her to a convent; hoping that the silence will help her listen rather than bombard with questions. The idea is retreat as Laura chooses which way to go; rather than being in a community of sexually repressed women.

The family having been asked to host a community BBQ. The idea is extending brotherly love by loving thy neighbour. After a slow start, in one hour it is busy and people seem to be having a good time.

The group go to a crematorium to ponder the question of whether death is he end of it. Belief in god, and the supernatural is often based on this question. They are shown remains from the other day – Laura dives straight in to pick up some bone. Martin says when you are dead you are dead; but he could be wrong. There is no discussion accept being left with do you want this life to be all there is? Which is not the same as saying how can you possibly know anything beyond death with any certainty.

Wale wants to show Martin that religion is more then talk, taking him to a salvation army. The idea is Martin helping out for the day with the elderly. Despite his misgivings he has some banter with them as he picks them up then serving them food. For Martin helping people is good and Christians doing that cannot be knocked. George suggests visiting a dentist (Martin has a phobia to a point of using pliers; and has no front teeth). He ends up with false teeth and Martin is happy that George arranged that for him.

We come finally to the service at the church that has been closed for ten years – and they invite people in the neighborhood. All the participants are involved and give their own testimonials on the experience. Martin has been more open. Laura is now more worried about the things she does understand and thinks there is a higher power. Faye feels more humbled and wants to keep in touch with the mentors. Kevin feels more respectful of women.

Joanne wanted to be left out of the series

Review of the series

The presentation of this show leaves a lot to be desired. About a fifth of the time is spent going back on what has been done before. Understandable for later in the series for people that have missed previous episodes – but this was the format in the very first episode. It seemed more about filling in time and hopefully catching people channel flicking to see what followed after the commercials.

This was plainly not a documentary. There was never any captions on screen. So ironically while you were constantly reminded what the participants had been doing (and having their stereo types reinforced) it was not always clear where they were or even who they were talking too. This fitted the reality TV style of the show – all we needed to know was the Reverend was a lesbian rather than what her name was.

Rev Joanne wanted her contribution to the series to be pulled. Laura has complained in the comments on previous blogs that it did not show her conversations with the mentors about the issues she had. The series was fixated on sex and telling people how they should live their life rather than suggesting that Christianity was a community way of living. The series never attempted to answer Martin’s question in the first week why he should accept anything in the Bible being true.

They only showed three testimonials at the end, while the narrator suggested that they all had done. One wonders whether that was because the ones shown were positive, and the others were not or if it was done for editorial reasons. Whatever they were, not interviewing all the participants at the end or even the mentors did not make sense if we wanted to see how far in making people a Christian the show had succeeded.

This seems to have been about entertainment rather than serious look at Christianity in the twenty first century. Each episode started with suggesting that Britain had an epidemic of sex and lawlessness sweeping the land. All the show proved was that being a part of the community, taking an interest in the vulnerable and neglected, and having positive self esteem were important. Not for one moment did this show that it needed Christianity to make these things necessary.

The mentors made clear that what Christianity was necessary for was salvation, and acceptance of Jesus as the Son of God. It was not clear whether that part of the show was accepted by one an all. What was on display was that George and Wale were obsessed by sex, Joanne wanted people to understand the purpose behind things and Father John found a connection with people through his faith.

This show may have been different if it had just been Joanne and Father John. Virgin Hester coming to the show seemed to be the focus on sex – yet with Pick-me-up-sticks instead of foreplay and suggesting to Kevin that his behavior was about excess energy. She was sent up by the production team. A nice looking girl waiting for marriage before having sex. Fine if that is her choice, but she was made to look a fool. Giving them “The Game of Life” would have been a good one (while that is a rather secular game, I supposed pick-me up-sticks is too).

This was a missed opportunity. The characters looked self absorbed by the experience, rather than as a community answering questions together. The mentors looked like religious reps in a holiday village keeping people in line, rather than actually going one on one with people about questions of faith.

George came across as an arrogant, sexist, homophobic. He did one good turn for Martin with the false teeth, though Martin seemed to be the only person in the group challenging the validity of belief. That part of make me a Christian was not answered. It seemed to boil down to accepting the dogma that someone had; and the volunteering as a justification for having that dogma.

In all it was at least more watchable than big brother but a missed opportunity. With fewer participants (who wanted to become Christians) and a focus on the title rather than gimmicky tasks this had a promising premise that was left in the wilderness for too long never reaching the promised land.

Episode 2 can be read here.

Episode 1 can be read here.

Sam Harris (author of  End of Faith and Letter to A Christian Nation) has conducted a survey of belief from Atheists and Christians – 36,781 people took part:

The primary purpose of this poll was not opinion research, in fact. Rather, we were designing stimuli for an experiment that we are now running on atheists and Christians using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The goal of survey was to produce stimuli of two categories – factual and religious – which would behave appropriately once we put members of each group inside our MRI scanner. We needed factual statements that both atheists and Christians would accept with the same order of confidence and religious statements that would divide them more or less diametrically.

In addition to vetting our experimental stimuli, however, we took the opportunity to solicit the opinions of believers and nonbelievers on many psychological and social topics that are not strictly relevant to our neuroimaging work. Many of these results are now available for viewing on my website.

Some highlights of the research:

The idea of secularism being supported by people of faith and none shows some promise here.

Pluralism as to ideas that lead to a good life seems to be rejected at the faithful end with Christianity as the real thing.

The idea of a Christian God that can be called on to interfere with the problems in the world is strong with 80% of believers agreeing.

If you really believe this about the after life, then a fear of death is a powerful incentive for faith.

90% proclaim the second coming of Jesus. Not sure whether on a horse is optional – but believers profess it as a real future event – to be prepared for.

Majority of believers disregard the poetry notion of Virginity that the Archbishop of Canterbury told Dawkins. 95% of respondents that were Christian think it actually happened.

In many ways the point being drawn out is that there are a lot of believers that literally think Jesus rose from the dead and literally was born of a Virgin, that Armageddon is literally going to happen, that literally Christianity is the only truth that will save you.

At only $4.95 worth getting (£2.48)

As those of you that read the blog know I am a fan of Jefferson – and recently acquired the Jefferson Bible and did a review of Christopher Hitchens: Thomas Jefferson Author of America. Useful background if all you know of Jefferson is he wrote the Declaration of Independence and said something about the wall of separation of church and state.

Jefferson himself would not want a blog on his religion:

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Yet I have Jefferson to thank for this blog because in a letter to Mr. Charles Thompson Jefferson remarked that he was a “REAL CHRISTIAN [the capitalisation being his own], that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus”. He rejects the dogmas and doctrines that develop from the “heathen mysteries” based on words and actions that Jesus himself did not say or do. Reflective of that The Jefferson Bible ignores the supernatural elements such as god speaking or angels comforting him during crucifixion. Rather it stresses the ethics and morals of a philosopher.

One that Jefferson  rated Jesus above all others. The ancient philosophers, while well schooled in concepts like justice and precepts that lead to tranquility of the mind, left out virtues life peace, charity, love – the concept of benevolence to humanity was almost alien. The deist god of the Jews (and the portrayal of Jehovah) was injurious to a brotherhood of humanity let alone of those virtues. For Jefferson, the teachings of Jesus – a man who lacked education or status in his society – make his doctrines the more remarkable and rates him above the philosophers.

However what has come down to us is lacking because he was a young man (33 at death) and taught for three years – his full faculties and ability to refine his message were denied him:

Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective, as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have to come us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.

Thus the Jefferson Bible concentrates on the Gospels only, arranged by chronology and subject. The rot that set in from Paul onwards is ignored. For in a further letter Jefferson spells out Jesus as a moral man:

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others and ascribing to him every human excellence, believing he never claimed any other”

On blogging about the television show here in the UK “Make Me A Christian” some Christian’s have replied

You can be for the Son of Man

that living a christian life based on the precepts of Jesus is not enough. To be a Christian is to accept that Jesus is the Son of God (going beyond the Unitarianism that Jefferson considered true, that Jesus is God) and that only through is sacrifice are we saved. That you actually need faith as the minimum in this to qualify as a Christian and to be saved. Good works based on the precepts are either also necessary or a supplement to that.

If that were so atheists could not be considered Christians if they agree with much of his teachings on how to live your life. If you think the notion of an atheist agreeing that Jesus had much of value to say the you may want to read Richard Dawkins article Atheists for Jesus where he says:

I think we owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time. And perhaps the oxymoronic impact of ‘Atheists for Jesus’ might be just what is needed to kick start the meme of super niceness in a post-Christian society. If we play our cards right – could we lead society away from the nether regions of its Darwinian origins into kinder and more compassionate uplands of post-singularity enlightenment?

The barriers to this way of thinking about Jesus can be considered that he is only worth listening to if he is divine, and that salvation is an appealing (some may say lazy) way of accepting grace by having a scape goat that takes away your sins. Further, just read the first chapter of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life – you have no purpose but what God has set you. The supernatural is linked to Jesus being Christ from conception to rising from the dead. The beauty of the Sermon of the Mount is lost amongst the message that he is the Lord our Saviour.

It reminds me of Douglas Adams who said:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Down in London last Saturday I passed a rally in Trafalgar Square. Having just eaten at the Texas Embassy and had a Mexican beer (always liquid fuel for philosophical thought on past form) I was feeling pretty good. However the speaker was talking about happiness and the banner in front of his podium had the word Gospel.

Life cannot really be less without accepting that someone was tortured to death, and that their death on a wooden beam allows humans to be worthy. It makes me rather unhappy to think that an other’s death due to religious intolerance as the ultimate scapegoat is the basis on which the validity of the human race depends – our actions meaningless without accepting the dogma of the economy of salvation.

This dogma makes me sad. The idea that Jesus proved Satan wrong – that it was possible for a man to live in a way that Adam failed – seemed a better one when I studied the bible. But then, according to that study Jesus was born only of woman – and in a previous incarnation was the first of all creation. According to scripture this was man plus – one that has never walked the earth before or since with such timeless first hand knowledge and supernatural power. The Christian role model is a hard act to follow, and morally speaking sometimes questionable when it comes to family and the destruction of those that disagree with you.

In the Jose Mestre blog someone is offering to send me more Jehovah’s Witnesses literature – stressing the hope and comfort the teachings give. Yet the hope and comfort I get in life comes from something greater then the supposed authority of the Gospels. It comes from the fact that many people will speak out because of injustice, even if it means their death. That as a people, sometimes against insurmountable odds, we shall reach beyond what is deemed possible for the betterment of ourselves.

Life has it’s highs and lows. The good times and the bad – and we can be fixated on particular moments, chained to them as a prisoner or drunk on their memory like a maturing wine in the cellar that we keep getting drunk on – not moving out of the rut. Happiness is indeed a quality that makes the human condition bearable.

The happiness that day in London was being able to see people I disagree with being able to talk without fear of imprisonment; to be able to eat a good meal; to go to a book shop without fear of censorship. And joy for my friend and her husband who I found out in London are expecting their first child.