[Dialogue] Another fine spong article and Q&A

[KroegerD at aol.com]

August 22, 2006 
Understanding Religious  Anger  
One of the things that always surprises me is the level of anger, often  
expressed in acts of overt rudeness, which seems to mark religious people. It  
appears so often that I have almost come to expect it, or at the very least not  
to be surprised by it. A recent episode simply made the connection between  
religion and anger newly indelible in my consciousness.  
It occurred last spring when I attended, at their invitation, the graduation  
ceremonies of a well-known university. Indeed, I was to receive an honorary  
degree. There was much conviviality connected with this event. We were  
entertained royally by the president of the university and his wife. We saw  former 
classmates. Families gathered to share this transitional moment with a  
graduating son or daughter. It seemed to be a very pleasant occasion.  
When the procession formed to begin the ceremonial walk into the arena, there 
 was a panoply of color marking the assembly. The black caps and gowns of  
academia were bedecked with bright and varied hoods, representing the doctorates 
 earned by the members of the faculty and reflecting the school colors of the 
 awarding universities. Harvard's crimson was immediately identifiable, as 
well  as the unique form of the doctoral hoods from the storied universities of  
Cambridge and Oxford. My place in this lineup was in the company of some of 
the  university's deans. While we waited for the signal to begin the 
procession, I  introduced myself to my nearest companions. They were all cordial until I 
 introduced myself to the Dean of the Medical School. It was not a time for 
small  talk for this man. He could not have possibly known that he and I would 
be  together in the procession, so what followed was clearly spontaneous and  
unplanned. He obviously had strong feelings about me and could not miss this  
exquisite opportunity to give expression to them. I had never met this man  
before this moment, but my expectation was that one whose career in medicine had 
 been so successful that he had become the dean of a major medical school 
would  have a broad perspective on life. I was wrong. He was bitter and 
small-minded,  caught more in his narrow religious agenda than in his academic 
excellence. We  had barely unlocked hands in our introductory handshake when he said, 
"I wish I  did not feel this way but I think what you have done to the Church 
is both  reprehensible and destructive. I regret that this university has 
decided to  honor you today." I was taken aback not by the content of his remarks, 
since I  have dealt with threatened religious people many times before, but 
by the  inappropriateness of his comments. This was neither the time nor the 
place for  this tirade. I was after all an invited guest in his world. Yet, he 
simply could  not contain his feelings. I tried to parry his comments by saying 
something  like: "I'm sorry we don't have time to discuss this here, but you 
must realize  that the world has undergone a vast intellectual revolution in 
the last 500-600  years and if the Church is to stay in dialogue with that 
world then the Church  must also change. However, this Dean was in no mood to let 
go; he had the bit  between his teeth. "You totally ignore the truth of those 
first 1,300 years of  Christian history," he retorted, his anger still rising. 
"Would you want to  practice medicine in today's world equipped only with the 
medical knowledge  available in the first 1300 years of Christian history?" I 
enquired. At that  moment the conversation ended because the music started, 
the stately procession  began its journey into the stadium where literally 
thousands were gathered. As  we walked in silence I could not help but wonder at 
the rudeness of this Dean,  who had so great a need to express his anger that 
he violated the good manners  of his university. I learned later that this 
doctor was part of a conservative  Christian congregation. Somehow, religious 
convictions seem to give people  permission to be rude.  
A similar incident occurred in the summer of 2005, when I was the guest  
lecturer at the Highlands Institute for American and Philosophical Thought in  
Western North Carolina. I had been there for the past three summers, and had  
always met with a warm and positive reception. However, on this particular  
night, a local fundamentalist decided to achieve his fifteen minutes of fame.  
About midway in the lecture, this man stood up and drew sufficient attention to  
himself that I stopped speaking and enquired if there was something wrong. "I'm 
 feeling sick," this gentleman replied. So I responded, "There is nothing I'm 
 saying tonight that is more important than your health, so let me pause 
until  you get whatever help you need." "You don't understand," he retorted, "I'm 
sick  of you." Somehow this man felt that his religious convictions justified 
his  interruption of a lecture attended by more than 250 people. It never 
occurred to  him that this behavior was rude to me, rude to the audience and that 
it  reflected little more than his own anger. I learned later that he was a 
member  of the Community Bible Church and that he had been encouraged to take 
this  action by fellow members of his fundamentalist church. Once again if one 
is  acting 'in the name of God,' both anger and rudeness are apparently 
justified.  
Those two experiences set me to thinking about the relationship between  
religion and anger. It is far closer than most people seem to realize. Sometimes  
the sweet piety of religion serves to hide anger even from the awareness of 
the  angry one, though it is obvious to everyone else. Is it anything but anger 
when  religious people describe what is in store for those who do not believe 
their  way? Is the threat of hell, which is spoken so freely in religious 
circles, not  a projection onto God of the anger inside the one consigning another 
to a place  of eternal torment? Is there much difference between a person 
saying in  hostility: "Go to hell!" and a preacher threatening a congregation 
with that  same destiny? When one looks at the history of religious persecution, 
which has  included such things as excommunication, torture, and the burning 
of heretics at  the stake, there is ample evidence of hostility associated with 
Christianity.  When one adds to that the Crusades designed 'to kill the 
infidels,' a history of  anti-Semitism, and the wars between Catholics and 
Protestants, the picture of  religion as a source of anger in human society, 
victimizing people in every  generation, becomes clear.  
In moments of social upheaval, religious anger becomes very apparent. Most of 
 the anger that was displayed during the movement to emancipate women came 
from  the Christian Church. Most of the anger displayed in the current struggle 
over  justice for gay and lesbian people emanates from the Christian Church. 
It is  very hard to deny that underneath the sounds of religious conviction, 
there is a  boiling cauldron of anger that seems to be an unrecognized part of 
the religious  experience. Step one, therefore, is to recognize it. Step two is 
to understand  it.  
Religious anger seems to manifest itself first and most stridently in those  
religious traditions that claim to possess absolute certainty. It is only when 
 one believes that one possesses the whole truth of God that one finds the 
need  to persecute those who do not accept your version of truth. What that 
behavior  reveals is that the frightened human psyche needs the certainty of 
religion, no  matter how narrowly defined, in order to feel secure. Christianity 
has developed  many security-giving idols inside its traditional formulations, 
infallible popes  and inerrant scriptures being two of them. How rational, for 
example, is it for  anyone to say: "Since my God is the true God and your God 
is, therefore, a false  God, I have the right to hate you, to persecute you or 
even to kill you?" Yet  all of these expressions of anger are found inside 
the Christian Church.  
The second thing that religious anger reveals to me is that organized  
religion feeds the expression of self-hatred in its people. There is certainly  much 
self-negativity in traditional Christianity with its doctrines of 'the  
Fall,' its emphasis on the depravity of human life, the need to be rescued, and  
the guilt-producing idea that "Jesus died for my sins." The liturgies of  
Christian churches are constantly calling their worshipers such things as 'a  
wretch,' 'a worm,' 'one unworthy to gather up the crumbs under the divine  table,' 
all interspersed with the plea to God to 'have mercy, have mercy, have  mercy.' 
Are these not expressions of self-directed religious anger?  
If one absorbs negativity from any source long enough, one cannot help but  
become negative. When one is denigrated in worship over a sustained period of  
time, one inevitably projects this denigration onto others as anger. It is  
necessary for survival. Does this not help us to understand why prejudice is  
greater among religious people than among non-religious people; why slavery,  
segregation and other overt forms of racism have been the pattern of that region 
 of our country that we call 'the Bible Belt;' and why the 'Religious Right' 
even  today is more supportive of war as an instrument of national policy than 
any  other segment of our national population? Each of these attitudes 
reflects  religiously justified violence.  
Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the  
level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be  
legitimatised? What happened to that biblical proclamation that the disciples of  
Jesus are to be known by their love? How does religious anger fit in with the  
Fourth Gospel's interpretation of Jesus' purpose to be that of bringing life  
more abundantly?  
Perhaps the time has come to recognize that Christianity was never meant to  
be about religion; it is to be about life. The achievement of personal 
security  is the goal of religion. The ability to live with integrity in the midst of 
the  insecurity of life is the goal of Christianity. Religion seeks to 
control life  with guilt. Christianity seeks to free people to be all that they can 
be. There  is a vast difference. Perhaps it will take the death of religion to 
open us once  again to the meaning of Christianity, even 'Religionless 
Christianity.' For the  purpose of Jesus was not to make us religious but to make us 
fully human.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Matthew Baugh, via the Internet, writes:  
I've wondered for a while about the definition of theism and its  
implications. There seem to be three central points you use most often. The God  of 
theism is 1) external, 2) supernatural, 3) intervenes in human lives. Does  this 
statement imply that God is the opposite of these three things?  
Much of what you write suggests that this is clearly true of point 3. You  
present God as not intervening and not capable of intervening. The opposite of  
point 2 would seem to be that God is natural. Is this a correct assumption 
and,  if so, how do you see God as manifest in the natural world? The opposite of 
 point 1 would seem to be that God is internal.  
I'm very aware that I might be reading too much into your words but the sense 
 I get is that you suggest that God is internal to human experience. This 
seems  to fit with some modern brain research that suggests that human beings are 
 "hard-wired" to believe in some higher power and to worship it. This 
research  suggests that belief in God is a natural part of being human rather than a  
social construct imposed from without.  
Is this the non-theistic understanding of God? Internal, natural (thought not 
 manifest outside of human consciousness) and unable to intervene in the 
world  (except perhaps through God's effects on the consciousness of each 
believer?  
Dear Matthew,  
Thank you for your penetrating and perceptive letter that gives me an  
opportunity to think publicly once more about the meaning of the word "God" in  
human experience.  
Let me begin by making a distinction. I try not to talk about the "God of  
theism." I regard theism as a human definition of God. It is not who or what God 
 is. Theism is a human attempt to describe a God experience in pre-modern  
language. Prior to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, people inevitably thought of  
God as a supernatural presence over the natural world.  
Before Isaac Newton, they thought of God as setting aside the laws of the  
universe to do miracles or to answer prayers. Before Darwin and Freud, they  
thought of God as the external creator and portrayed God as a heavenly parent.  
Prior to Einstein, they assumed that these perceptions were objectively true 
and  not subject to the relativity in which all human thought dwells since both 
the  time in which we live and the space we occupy are relative, not absolute. 
So  when I dismiss theism, I am not dismissing God. I am dismissing one human 
image  of God that sought to define a human experience of the divine.  
To suggest that if theism is not true then the opposite of theism is true is  
to make the same mistake. Every human attempt to define God is nothing more 
than  a human attempt to define the human experience of the divine. We can 
never tell  who God is or who God is not. We can only tell another of what we 
believe our  experience of God has been. Even then we have to face the possibility 
that all  of our God talk may be delusional.  
When I try to talk of God, I am only talking of my God experience. That is  
not what God is, that is only what I believe my experience of God to be.  
I do not experience God as a supernatural power, external to life invading my 
 world in supernatural power. I see no evidence to think this definition is 
real.  The problem is that most people have most deeply identified this 
definition of  God with God that when this definition dies the victim of expanded 
knowledge, we  think that God has died.  
I am not trying to form a new definition. I am only trying to share an  
experience. In my human self-consciousness at both the depth of life and on the  
edges of consciousness, I believe I encounter a transcendent other. In that  
encounter, I experience expanded life, the increased ability to love and a new  
dimension of what it means to be. I call that experience God and that 
experience  leads me to say that if I meet God in expanded life, God becomes for me the 
 source of life. If I meet God in the enhanced ability to love, God becomes 
for  me the source of love. If I meet God in an increased ability to be all 
that I  am, God becomes for me the ground of being.  
I can talk about my experience. Having only a human means of communication I  
cannot really talk about God. Horses can experience a human being entering 
their  horse consciousness, but a horse could never tell another horse what it 
means to  be human. Somehow human beings have never quite embraced that fact 
that this is  also true about the human being's knowledge of God.  
I do not know how God acts therefore I can never say how God acts. For me to  
say God is unable to intervene would be to say more than I know. For me to  
explain how God intervenes or why God does not intervene is to claim knowledge  
of God that is not mine.  
I test my experience daily in the light of evolving human language. The  
result of that is that every day I believe in God more deeply, while at the same  
time, every day I seem to have less and less beliefs about God. Human beings  
seem almost incapable of embracing mystery, especially ultimate mystery. I am  
content to walk daily with the mystery of God. I walk past road maps, past  
religious systems, even my own but never beyond the mystery of God. I suppose  
that makes me a mystic, but an uncomfortable, never satisfied, always-evolving 
 one.  
I find great meaning and great power in this approach. I commend it to you.  
Thank you for your super letter.  
John Shelby Spong
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