Collisions in the name of religion

     A friend attended a memorial service last week for a good friend and neighbor. She hoped--as we all do when we go to memorial services--that words would be spoken that would recall memories of her friend that would give comfort to those grieving a good man's death. Instead, the preacher used the final five minutes to preach about Hell. It was, she said, "spiritual bullying," putting words into the mouth of her friend to which he never would have agreed.

     When I was a young woman, my then-mother-in-law tapped on her  King James Bible and said, "Women don't have needs, of course, but men do.  If you don't give them what they need, they will find someone who will."  She saw the signs of our unraveling marriage, but she had no curiosity about the reasons.  In retrospect, that moment stands out as one in which "the lights came on" in my mind and illuminated this: I had married her son when I was too young to know that I, a mere girl, had needs.

      When the U.S. first went into Iraq, a woman visiting from out of town reached for my hands across the table at a restaurant and before I knew what she was going to do, she began to pray: "Dear God, Bless President Bush as he leads our troops into battle." Politics aside, I didn't want to be drawn into a public, hand-holding prayer, implicitly agreeing with someone else's words.  I've never liked "words being put into my mouth" by someone else.

      A woman I know told her gay grandson that he was "going to hell" for his sexuality.

      All religions have toxic spin-offs: people who bully, ignore, judge, and club other people over the head with their own agendas.  The Tudors, a series that focuses on the reign of Henry VIII,  shows Protestants and Catholics of the 16th century inflicting unimaginable horrors on each other, including beheadings and boiling the "heretics" in vats of oil.

        While I know and love many beautiful Christian hymns and traditional gospel music, I cringe at the "theology" of  hymns that include phrases like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Soldiers of the Cross."   Those kinds of songs, in any religion, perpetuate a dangerous metaphor: armies on the march to conquer others.

       "Holy wars" and kidnappings and torture are going on today all over the globe. Power-hungry people form cults that, in extreme cases, wind up with followers drinking poisoned Kool Aid.  I like to imagine what could happen if all religions were demilitarized and de-politicized.

        Thomas Moore, (psychotherapist and former monk) in A Religion of One's Own, appreciates traditional religions, his own and others. But he believes that a spiritual life does not have as its business control and manipulation. David Whyte, another of my teachers, says, "If people don't have houses of their own, they will try to take away yours."

        Whether we choose to live in a room of an Already-Built House or to camp out on the fringes of town in a tent, Moore might say that we--ourselves, by our own lights--should decide what to keep inside.