Lately, much of my attention has focused on the benefits and detriments of religious belief in today's world. I will not regale you with the gritty details, but I have been privy to a lively (and at times, vitriolic and acrimonious) debate on the relative merits of religion in today's American society, as least as practiced by a significant number of people in the so-called "Bible Belt" of the American South. The basic arguments, as can be expected, were between a self-described atheist and a number of Christians of an older generation. Both sides have their merits, but the acrimony and venom which spewed forth from this argument astounded me.
Full disclosure, I am not a particularly religious person. I consider myself spiritual, but as a historian and as an academic, I'm not convinced by the concept of religion.* I'm open to it, but it just doesn't seem to mesh with what I've read and experienced in my life. That being said, religion and religious belief gives comfort to billions of people across the world. I may not be religious, but that does not preclude my respect for those of a different opinion. If your religion comforts you and offers you a bulwark against the socio-political predations of life in the 21st century, then I have no valid basis to deny you your beliefs. I have no problem (nor should anyone else, in my personal opinion) with those who rely on their religion and a means of personal comfort. However, I do feel that when proselytization and evangelicalism come into the equation that the very basis of religion is done a disservice and is molded to the often-nefarious political and social viewpoints of a 'chosen' few, railing from the public pulpits against social activism, labor unions, homosexual rights, women, abortion, and any other number of progressive issues.
My primary issue with religion and how it is practiced by many in the United States today is that it has become a vehicle of psychological colonialism. My academic background is in southern Africa and the developing world, so I am admittedly very sensitive to the predations and ravashings of colonialism upon indigenous cultures. For example, when Europeans ventured into the Americas, the people they found eventually became classified as 'barbarians,' simply because they didn't share the same cosmological or social mores. When Europeans ventured into Africa, Africans became identified almost with the sub-human. Both of these colonialist endeavours utilized Christian evangelicalism (not to mention virulent disease) as a method of differentiation and subjugation. Indigenous people the world over were deemed to be inferior because they were not white and not Christian. I feel that modern evangelicals have employed the same psychological tools in their works today.
For example, I have acquaintances who have spent a good amount of time in East Asia, working under the auspices of a major international organization. They have done good works in their community, teaching English and helping with many other areas of the community. However, their personal viewpoint on the society in which they are a guest is as follows: [t]hese people should be grateful for my presence, for it is through me that they can understand the love and grace of Jesus Christ. If I may, please let me utilize their viewpoint - fairly or unfairly - as representative of the evangelicals in which I have come into contact.
Let us deconstruct the personal viewpoint of my acquaintances. First, their viewpoint implicitly denies the human decency in the culture of which you are a guest. It suggests that 'these people' don't know any better, and your particular worldview is infinitely more important than theirs because you are Christian, white, Western, American, or any other signifier of superiority. Secondly, it takes an astonishing amount of ego and self-importance to imagine one's self as the vehicle of a prophet. Finally, it also assumes that one can know the mind and intentions of God, which is another disgusting and inappropriate display of self-importance (particularly, again, in a society where one is a guest). Just as the colonialists I discussed before, evangelicals see themselves as a superior being in the wilderness. I fail to see the fundamental difference between the willful and violent destruction of a society, such as British colonialism foisted on the world and that psychological colonialism of which evangelicals today are cheerfully and voluntarily taking part. They aim to accomplish the same ends with different means. Although colonization was a horrid, bloody affair, I think that evangelicalism has the same end product: it aims to destroy that deemed as 'inferior' by Westerners (who invent the game, make the rules, and then pass the judgement) in a psychological sense. What makes it more nefarious to me is the subversive methods utilized by my acquaintances: they deem their 'subjects' not intelligent enough to devise their true intentions** while simultaneously discarding their worldview. And that is my primary disagreement with the evangelical right in the United States today: they deem themselves Popes of the entire world, with no justification for their claims to pre-eminence.
Perhaps I'm guilty of what I profess to detest, in a different sense: perhaps I am guilty of the supposition of academic superiority. However, I remain convinced that there is nothing more dangerous in the world than blind faith, and nothing more illuminating and rewarding than insight, thought, and compassion for one's fellows.
*My thoughts about this are rather self-indulgent, but so is the very idea of a blog - so bear with me. As a historian, I'm constantly shocked by how quickly the meaning of a particular text can change because of political or social developments in a particular society. For example, the tracts of early modern feminists such as Anthony and Stanton were viewed as dangerous and revolutionary in their time by the social status quo. Decades later, they came to be seen as the opening (and quite moderate) salvo of a much broader struggle against male domination by figures such as Gloria Steinham. Similarly, read the Communist Manifesto in light of the developments in mid-19th century Germany, and then read it again from the perspective of mid-America one century later. My point is that texts are living, evolving documents. History, philosophy, and science have all born that out. While religious texts and beliefs have certainly evolved - and don't misconstrue this piece as the author's contention that they haven't - many mainstream Christian politicos and public figures still believe in the literal truth of the Bible instead of interpreting it as a living, breathing, changing document over the course of some four thousand years. As an academic, I find this kind of intellectual apathy paralytically ignorant. But again, that is my personal opinion.
**I should have mentioned: my acquaintances paranoia extends to the point where they believe the Obama administration, the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI all monitor their communication to the point where they end emails with PR** instead of "Pray" or "YARP." I'm not an intelligence officer, but I believe it possible that American intelligence officials can decipher those particular encryptions. Furthermore, they are stationed in a country which is largely non-Christian, so they evangelicalism is practiced, in their opinion, 'covertly.'
