By Robert Kent Smith

Been a lot of talk about religion. It seems a mostly negative dialogue that has taken the forefront, full of accusations, demands, demonizing and evangelizing on all sides. Recently, from 9-11 to the more strictly domestic issues such as same-sex marriage and prayer in government assembly, religion has once again taken the forefront as the primadonna of blame and blaming.

Like few other things on Earth, religion can motivate people to action for good or ill. Our history surely shows us that we people tend to move more towards the ill side of action when our religions become a source of overly heated, negatively charged arguments. Left unchecked, these arguments have, many times, resulted in tragedies of violence and death. Given that this is a cycle that has reccurred over and over in our collective course of years, our divisions over religion cannot be ignored. It will not go away. It never has.

The problem with blaming a particular religion for the hurts of the world wrought from it is that one can only ever be half-right. Religion exists in both the dark and the light at the same time.  For no matter how many cases can be cited for religion’s ills, just as many can be cited where religion has been an impetus for great good in the world. Examples abound of people for whom their religious faith has served as a guide toward many acts of self-sacrifice on many levels in the names of peace, compassion, love and fealty to others. It cannot be denied that the world would have fewer examples of beauty and acceptance without them or their inspirations.

What we end up with by trying to make one religion versus another our focus is a circular argument. This gains us no insight nor works itself toward a resolution to the hostilities we inflict on each other with God’s name on our  lip. There is a methodology, however, that seems to find itself at the “scene of the crime.” A tendency that seems to crop up like a canker among all faiths and throughout all time. That methodology has become known today as religious fundamentalism. I say it is this methodology which merits our focus and not a particular religious faith itself.

This approach grounds itself in a hyper-literal interpretation  of religious text and seeks to use the text as the primary source to establish the rules of conduct for a society and to define what is acceptable and what is not. One glaring problem with this approach is the fact that these tomes are from the ancient world. Ancient societies were, by and large, very oppressive and bigoted.  Racism, sexism and class-ism were the norm of societal and state operations. These things are most certainly reflected in aspects of our religious books from that era. Notions such as social justice, equality, freedom, and democracies as society’s underpinning simply had not occurred yet. Humanity has generally been on a course to try and move away from these ancient mentalities as social norms. It is little wonder that using those aspects of these ancient texts may meet with resistance and raise rancor in a significant portion of today’s people. It basically runs contrary to what the majority of our cultures have come to regard as the essential human foundations of a good society.

But this approach is also intractable in its nature and execution, citing only one source for all knowledge. This also runs contrary to our real experience and makes the avenues of civil discourse harder to reach. The scope of conversation is simply too narrowed by the rejection of other schools of thought such as philosophy, science, literature and other religions. When conversation is strangled in this way, strife often follows and is frequently the very tool of those who hold intractable points of view.

So what is the answer to our religious infighting? I don’t know. I feel pretty confident, however, that if we persist in this argument by trying to question the legitimacy of a religion’s creed we will continue to focus on the wrong thing and continue to demonize good people. This will most likely not lead to a good resolution. It will lead to more violence as it always has. It is high time that we hold our tendencies towards intractability and intimidation accountable as well as those who use these as weapons without giving them the credibility or power of religious title.

Robert Kent Smith resides in Spencer.