RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THE GREATEST THREAT TO CIVIL SOCIETY
Right now I am reading Robert Reich's Reason (2004), subtitled
"Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America."
In it, he defines liberal very broadly in its larger historical
context; by that definition, most of us are liberal. By casting that
broad tent, he hopes to include enough people perhaps that most will
regard the Radical Right as a minority fringe who do not represent
typical American values.
I am not yet convinced. Most Americans certainly believe in the general
historic values of liberalism. That is true, even of the far right.
Most Americans also believe to some degree in the principles which the
Radical Right espouse also. In their particulars, these two worldviews
do not seem mutually exclusive. The antigovernment, pro-fundamentalist,
pro-conformist attitudes of the NeoCons may be against the spirit of
America's founders, but they do not lie outside of the letter of
Constitutional law.
However America's right/left squabble needs to be put in the larger
global context. Then the greater danger of this schism becomes more
apparent.
First we must understand that the greatest danger to American
principles, historically, have been cultural purists. Within American
culture itself, it is the purist bigotry and racism that enabled the
ruling whites to see African Americans and Native Americans as somehow
less than human. That view of racial purity enabled us to commit both
genocide and slavery.
Outside our country, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were our greatest
threat in the mid-20th century. Both were state systems founded on
ideologies of racial purity. As we fought these two states, we were
forced to see the persisting hypocricy of our own system. World War II
set the groundwork for fundamental shifts towards a pluralist American
state: citizenship for Native Americans in 1948; school desegregation
beginning in 1954; the Civil Rights act of 1963; and finally, admission
of guilt and reparations to Japanese-American internees in the
mid-1990s.
We often view these aspects of our American history with shame. But our
own reaction is worth noting. We want our nation to be consistent with
the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the
United States Constitution. We want this, and it is by these ideals
that we judge our own history, both in praise of our successes and
condemnation of our failures.
Not all people in the world see a pluralist society as ideal. I think
Americans are misled by the stories of immigrants who come to this
country from all parts of the world and remind us of our ideals.
Immigrants are a self-selected group who have chosen to give up their
homeland, and most of their native culture, to come and assimilate into
America. That does not mean that the people back in the home country
want liberty and equality for all; it does not mean the homelanders
even regard equal protection under the law as a worthy ideal. In 1905
the Swedish nobility would have let thousands of poor Swedish farmers
starve rather than reform their government and redistribute their
wealth. Tens of thousands of Swedes fled starvation and immigrated to
the United States, embarrasing Sweden into reforming itself into one of
the most socially-just countries in the world. I point this out because
arrogant Europeans forget their own history too.
Our Enemy existed in the old, unreformed Swedish system, as it did and
does in any oligarchy: an elite who hold themselves apart, regarding
themselves as pure.
Religious intolerance is the oldest form of identifying the Other as
impure. As best we can reconstruct (Fustel De Coulanges), before
civilizations, families typically worshipped their own ancestor-spirits
and defined humanity by kin-relations. The ancient Greeks certainly
regarded non-Greeks as somehow subhuman, unworthy of the same rights,
priviledges, and protections. In fact the establishment and advancement
of every civilization was the common acceptance of the belief that
unrelated strangers are humans of the same intrinsic worth as oneself
and one's relations. This commonality was established in different
ways: divine monarchs broke the exclusionary boundaries of family
religions and put everyone under a single belief in the ruler himself.
At least then everyone within the kingdom was regarded as a human.
The more radical idea, which came later, was that human beings are
people because of their common Creator. Christians and Muslims spread
this message most effectively. Although both of these religions have
controlled states, Christians and Muslims have always believed that any
human in the world can embrace their religion, regardless of
nationality, gender, race, or language. They both have always tried to
evangelize well beyond their spheres of direct political control,
because they believe any human can benefit from their message. This is
the core of humanism, and Western liberalism is founded on this
tradition which Christians and Muslims share.
However, evangelists are still prone to the old belief that others who
are different are less than fully human. I was subjected to
evangelization from fundamentalist Christians during my first two years
at Berkeley, and it was cruel abuse. In the name of trying to 'save'
me, evangelists twisted every emotional tool to their purpose: trying
to shame me, trying to frighten me, trying to ostracize me. Their
worldview required that I believe exactly the way that they believe, or
that I am not a Christian, not saved, not forgiven, not redeemed, not
reborn. In other words, something less than them. In one of the few
lines they like to quote from the New Testament (out of context), 'I
was either with them or against them.' To intolerant Christians, others
can receive the Word, and become part of the Christian family. But only
by submitting to that specific brand of Christianity does one become
'whole,' as they might put it. In fact this masks a return to the old
way of drawing an excluding boundary outside of which the unrepentant,
undeserving sinners should not enjoy the same rights and privileges,
even here on earth. Homosexuals, Jews, and women who divorce men who
beat them should not have full rights, because they have not become a
particular form of Christian.
Some of you reading this will notice that I do not characterize all
Christians as intolerant. In fact most Christians, including the ones I
worship with, strive to follow the humanizing ideal of seeing all
people as creatures of God; essentially worthy of respect and love. And
this is the same humanizing belief I have experienced with the Jews I
grew up with, and the Muslims I have known for many years. But I see
the same danger--the very same--shared by all three religious
traditions. Remember after the Oklahoma City bombing, when the first
assumption was that the perpetrator was a Muslim extremist? More right
than wrong. The type of Christian extremist who committed that attack
shares a worldview similar to that of a Muslim extremist: the same
disregard for human life, the same cruelty driven by a narrow
puritanical ideology. And such extremists act against the central
beliefs of their own religious tradition, a shared humanist tradition
of Christians and Muslims.
In the seventeenth century Americans fought a successful cultural war
against the Puritans in our own midst. Independent-minded women in the
1670s were burned as witches in America. One hundred years later such
superstitions were expunged from the culture and there was serious
consideration of the voting rights of women, and the unacceptability of
slavery. Progress in this struggle towards a humane state, true to its
principles, has been extremely painful and bloody in America. But this
is the central ideal we strive for, to affirm the right of people to
live, and love, and worship as they believe to be right. This liberal
ideal is inherited from the Christian belief in the essential humanity
of all people, but it is therefore an ideal shared fully with the
sister religions of Judaism and Islam, and essentaially with every
universalizing religion.
And now we must recognize the Enemy that we face: puritanical,
intolerant beliefs from any religious tradition. Those who justify
brutality and rule-by-fear in the name of their own narrow worldview.
Apply this to wherever you live; and if you can, vote appropriately. If
you cannot vote, then fight to the death for the sake of your children
and your children's children.
Berkeley, California, August 17, 2004
|