As usual, Sullivan nails it.

The blog post by Andrew Sullivan that WC points at begins,

The relationship between religion and politics is, to my mind, the central question of our time. As the false totalisms of the twentieth century – communism, fascism, Nazism – have been revealed as oppressive, murderous lies, insecure and inadequate human beings in need of totalist solutions to the human dilemma have returned to religion. But more accurately, they have returned to fundamentalism, because only fundamentalism, with its absolute certainty and literal precision and binding, unquestionable authority, can assuage the anxieties of a world dislocated from tradition, up-ended by capitalism, globalized to the point of cultural panic….

And later,

This ideology comes perilously close to arguing that something must be right because America does it, or has done it. It paradoxically removes the potential for moral improvement and reform by arguing that America was immaculately conceived, and that all that is required for its revival is what Sarah Palin calls a “fundamental restoration”. The core moral narrative of the country – its founding on slavery and its bitter brutal internal conflict to achieve racial justice over the centuries – is simply ignored. This is what we are hearing from Santorum and Romney and Palin: American fundamentalism.

All of this is routine for authoritarian nationalist movements. What distinguishes this one is a co-optation of Christianity. But, of course, Christianity cannot be co-opted by nationalism. It is opposed to all such distinctions:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Yes, the Messiah came from a Chosen People, but in Christianity, Jesus’s death and resurrection made the whole world that chosen people. At the Feast of the Ascension yesterday, we Catholics heard at Mass the words of Jesus from Matthew:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And so the notion of America as a unique nation in the eyes of God is a Christian heresy.

But read the rest.

Here, again, is a reminder of what Christianism is.  Also known as Christian dominionism, also known as Christianity as political ideology, rather than religion. In this case, it’s a form of nationalist idolatry, or idolatrous nationalism — the stuff, in any case, that theologian Paul Tillich wrote about in in a passage of Dynamics of Faith whence comes this quote:

In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate; while in idolatrous faith faith preliminary, finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy.

Among which idolatrous faiths counts the style of Christian dominionist nationalism practiced & preached by Palin & her ilk.

Related posts:

1. Christianist, defined
2. Illimitable god, & related thoughts about why I’m not a Christian
3. Good, evil, & great waves of god

I have a B.A. in Religion.  That was one result of looking for “the answer.”  I eventually found my answer.  And sometimes, as now, I have to talk with people very dear to me, whose answer is different.

It’s awkward to discuss matters of faith, religion, spirituality — whatever word one chooses — when there are differences in belief, even (maybe even especially) between people who care about one another.  Beliefs are deeply held, and it can be too easy too get into arguments about which belief system is right or wrong in ways that hurt each other.  But if we don’t risk the awkwardness, then instead there’s silence…which also hurts.

I’ve been having a conversation with someone dear to me about this religion stuff.  It’s been a sporadic conversation, because it’s been an awkward one.  But if argument is one way, and silence is another, there’s also a third way: to accept the awkwardness, while resisting the urge to argue.  If I love someone, then I want to listen and to know what’s in her heart, his heart —and I want that person I love to be able to know what’s in mine.  Not to argue, but simply to speak from one’s heart, in hopes that one’s interlocutor will listen, even if s/he disagrees.

This post is based upon things I’ve written on my side of the conversation.

I have been cautioned that it’s an unforgivable sin to deny Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our Savior.  I don’t believe there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin, at least not in any ultimate sense.  On a human level — just people being people, no god in the mix — some people will forgive each other for things that other people won’t.  The thing that sticks out in my mind with Jesus was when he said, of the very men who were killing him, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” That’s what I believe of Jesus, whom many call Christ — that he had compassion even for his own murderers (which is what they were, even if they had the “law” of their time and place to “justify” their execution of him), because he knew how confused and limited human understanding can be.

That’s where I place myself, too, as a limited human being often confused about this or that, and knowing I have no final answers for everything I meet or see in the world.  But no other human being is any more empowered to give out final answers than I am: every one of us is limited.  And so I don’t believe in any such thing as inerrancy of, say, the Bible, because the people who wrote down its words were human beings.  So were the people who copied down the Bible’s words for later generations, so were those who translated those words into Latin or English or any other language.  So were all those who spoke or wrote down and propagated the words and ideas of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and every other religion.  And being human beings, however much they strove to know and understand the mystery that we call God, they made mistakes. Unfortunately, they also often institutionalized those mistakes in ways that brought uncountable harms to other people — often even to themselves.

I’m not a Christian, nor have I been one in at least  since junior high, because I reject the notion that there is only one way to approach or to believe about god — a notion of exclusivity that is  commonly held amongst Christians, as it is also by adherents of other religions.  If I have a confession of belief, it’s the one I’ve used for years: God is the universe and everything in it.  Illimitable god, I called it in a poem I wrote a couple of years ago: incapable of being limited or bounded, measureless — that is far beyond what I or any human being can completely comprehend or contain.  As my calculus tutor in high school taught me: No system can contain a metasystem.

And so god shows it/him/herself in ways that are infinite in their variety.  Jesus was and is a son of god, but so are all of us are children of god.  And following from that, I believe that Jesus was not the savior, but was a savior: not for having died crucified for our sins but because he taught his followers (and all of us who still heed his teachings rather than only the circumstances and meaning of his death) an understanding and a compassion, even at the point of his own death, that few of us reach even on our best days.  The thing he said that I love the best is: “The Kingdom of God is within you” — and within the limits of my own understanding, I do my best to live according to the goodness, the godness, that is within all of us to live by, if only we choose to.  Righteousness is another word that some use: to live in right relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with illimitable god and the illimitable creation that is one with it.

Being limited, I may be wrong about any of the conclusions I’ve formed so far about the world and god. No “conclusion” that I can make can be final anyway.  If it turns out I’ll be judged and damned for believing as I do by some specific God of some specific ideological belief system — well, mainly that’ll mean that, much to my disappointment, the universe is run by a Big Bully of the Sky who has all the morality of a Hitler, a Stalin, a Muammar Gadaffi, or even that putative enemy of the Christianist God, Satan.

But I don’t think so.

I will meantime try to base my judgments of other people on their actions — whether they do good or cause harm — not on the name by which their faith is called.  When I have problems with some Christians, it’s when they attempt to justify behaving harmfully and hatefully towards others in the name of their religion — not because they are Christians per se. And so with Muslims, Buddhists, whoever — anyone who attempts to justify harmful behavior in the name of religion, and treat their religion as not religion, but ideology: not Muslims but Islamists, not Christians but Christianists. Religion become ideology has ceased to be religion: it’s just ideology, in all its nasty worldliness, used as a club to namecall, batter, murder, and war upon people who believe differently.

So many of the disagreements between people that lead to anger and hatred and war anyway are not really based in who and what they are fundamentally as people, but on the the names they’re called by — Republican, Democrat, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, whatever.  Does god care more that call upon him (or her!) by one name rather than another? — or that we behave toward one another and toward the creation we have all been gifted to live within with respect, love, and the best effort of our hearts and minds?  God has as many ways to enter into people, as there are people: we all have our own language, and god knows them all.

From another poem of mine,

God cannot be enclosed in a book
or in the miser’s soul
which portions out justice in dribbles
and rations out love in crumbs,
then wonders why we starve.

God is too wide and vast and long
and knows us for what we are
as is known the sky, the river, the rocks,
as is knows each creature that breathes.

God is too wide, too vast, too long
and knows us as we are.

Since I’m still engaged in the awkward & sporadic conversation that gave rise to this post, I’ve been thinking a lot more about religion again, and will probably be writing more about it too.  Meanwhile, here are some of the other posts I’ve written about religion, religious/political ideologies, & my own personal god stuff.

• A brief spiritual history (27 Apr 2006)
• The god thing (30 Apr 2006)
• Hiisi (15 May 2006)
• Sermon (a poem) (17 May 2009; poem written in 1992)
• Religion v. belief (19 May 2009)
• Christianist, defined (23 Jun 2009)
• No Questions, Questions (poem) (24 Jun 2009)
• James Dobson’s God is a child abuser, & so is Jerry Prevo’s (22 Sep 2009)
• Job 42.13 (poem) (9 Jan 2010; poem written in 1995)
• Helping Haiti (& telling Pat Robertson to STFU) (13 Jan 2010)
• Integrity, violation, healing (21 Apr 2010)
• Metsän henki (poem) (30 Apr 2010; poem written in 2000)

Related posts:

1. Religion v. belief
2. An indictment of the Christian heresy followed by Palin & friends
3. God of Mosquitoes (poem)

“Sismo de magnitud 7,3 sacudió a Haití” — photo taken 12 Jan 2010 by Globovision. Used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license.

• RT: @JanFlora49: RT @spacetrucker: Sarah Palin given a job @ Fox “News” 2 help struggling late night comedy shows with unending material. #
• Follow Wednesday? Sure, why not: follow @celticdiva for best info/links on helping quake victims in Haiti. #fb #
• FiveThirtyEight gives history of U.S. relationship to Haiti. http://bit.ly/71GOFC #
• Firedoglake’s liveblogging of Prop 8 Trial, Day 3 (Wednesday morning) http://bit.ly/82J8mP #
• A better link to Teddy Partridge’s liveblogging of Prop 8 @ Firedoglake: all posts collected here. http://bit.ly/7mCxtH #
• RT: @adn_jomalley: Does technology bring loved ones closer, or does it create more distance? // Closer, since none of them live w/ me now. #
• Pat Robertson: Haiti “swore pact to devil” to be free of French, thus “cursed.” Christianism ugh http://bit.ly/5L650b (ht @shannynmoore) #fb #
• Donate to American Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/ for Haitian earthquake relief. #fb #
• Damn. Fire drill. Signing off. #fb #
• Returned from fire alarm. “Duct alarm” rather. (wtf?) Nothing exploded. #fb #
• FBI: Haitian Earthquake Relief Fraud Alert http://bit.ly/89rdVE – Please retweet. #Haiti #HelpHaiti (ht @celticdiva) #
• Helping Haiti means helping, not blaming it stupidly as lackwit Pat Robertson does — again. http://bit.ly/7nQm05 #haiti #helphaiti #
• An intelligent _Christian_ (& conservative Christian at that) response to Pat Robertson’s “devil” comment on Haiti. http://bit.ly/7ztC6h #fb #
• RT: @jansonjones: Call it a day. I’m heading home. Bleh. // Didn’t you already call “it” a day yesterday? (Hope you get good rest @ home!) #
• @jansonjones A balloon boy? “It’s a day.” Except that was one of those several weeks ago its, wasn’t it? (Wasn’t _it_? “It’s a day.) in reply to jansonjones #
• Pat Robertson: Haiti?! I Thought They Said “Hades” http://bit.ly/8T3eyW (satire – but no doubt PR will have a real lame-ass apology soon.) #
• CNN.com: Wyclef Jean helping through ‘Yéle Haiti’ http://bit.ly/5m7N4A – donate at http://www.yele.org/ #ffb #
• Bent Alaska summarizes days 2 & 3 of Prop 8 trial: homophobia and the fear of transparency. http://bit.ly/84lOOT #

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-15: Haiti relief efforts
2. Helping Haiti (& telling Pat Robertson to STFU)
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-02-01: Buzzcuttedness

President Obama made a statement this morning—

CBS Special Report: Obama on Haiti quake relief

At the time I visited, the most recent comment on the video above, from user Gorilla396, read:

I was waiting for him to say, “Just another billion dollars, no biggy, right?” The U.S. gov’t needs to stop spending money in other counrties that will never be able to pay it back or return the favor. When are we as a country gonna stop being the “Emergency Services” of the world? He seems to forget or not care that he has spent trillions of dollars already.  Just another counrty we shouldn’t be in.

But see Renard Sexton’s article today at FiveThirtyEight.com about the U.S.’s relationship to Haiti, which includes a history of occupation & interventionism for the protection of American business interests.  We continue to have an economic relationship with Haiti:

Today, the U.S. remains the largest trade destination for Haitian goods (more than 70 percent of exports), while imports from the United States (34 percent) are even higher than Haiti’s next door neighbor, the Dominican Republic (23 percent). U.S. official aid to the country is quite significant (USD 260 million according to OECD DAC), though quite variable, with large spikes during Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and 1995, and a tripling of aid from 2004 to 2008, after the 2004 coup that threw President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power for the last time. [Ref #1]

I’m proud that my president and my nation is stepping up to the plate.  Besides, it’s not as if the U.S. is the only nation working to bring aid to Haiti in a time of such desperate need — Wikipedia editors, in the Wikipedia article on the quake, have been keeping track of the numerous countries & organizations which are working to render assistance .  There are also lots of international organizations seeking to bring aid.  Public Radio International’s program “The World” has compiled a list of reliable aid organizations that you can donate to.  (But beware of scammers.)  I donated to the International Response Fund of the American Red Cross, which has already pledged $1 million to Haiti relief.

Christianist lackwit Pat Robertson, in one of his typical & predictable damn them when they’re down/blame the victim statements, claimed in a broadcast of the “700 Club” this morning that Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” in order to free themselves of French colonial rule, and that as a result “they have been cursed by one thing after the other” ever since. [Ref #2] Yep, just like the residents of New Orleans brought Hurricane Katrina on themselves too.

This is the kind of bastardization of history — not to mention lack of compassion — one can always expect from a Christianist like Robertson.  This is their simplistic & immature response to the problem of evil in the world — what in theology is called theodicy, which attempts to reconcile the belief in God with the existence of evil, whether moral or physical.  Like Job’s comforters in the biblical Book of Job, Robertson’s kneejerk response is to blame any harm that befalls a person or an entire nation on that person or nation (or their ancestors).  But remember: the Voice in the Whirlwind rebuked Job’s comforters, & vindicated Job:

[T]he Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me [the thing that is] right, as my my servant Job [hath]. [Job 42.7, KJV]

I recommend that Pat Robertson take note.  And shut the frak up.

Thank goodness for all those Christians who really are Christians, & give their money to relief efforts instead of creeps like Robertson.  Thank goodness that most people of faith throughout the world believe in something other than the Big Bully in the Sky God of Robertson & his ilk — a god which by Robertson’s own account is capable of committing greater cruelties & evils against large populations than the “devil” simply because (supposedly) their ancestors fought off another (no doubt Big Bully in the Sky God-sanctioned) evil — such the French-imposed slavery that ended in Haiti with the Haitian Revolution (1701–1804).

Steve Aufrecht at What Do I Know? gives another reason than Wrath of the Big Bully in the Sky God for high Haitian casualties:

Wrath of God or lack of adequate building standards?

God is one of the stories people use to explain how the earth works.  “Government is evil” is another story that people use to explain things.  Another story we can use is that much of what government does is invisible and we don’t notice it until it isn’t working.  Zoning rules, including building standards, are often seen as one of the evils of government.  People resent government rules that say they can’t build a house the way they want or that they have to use a method that will increase the costs considerably. And sometimes general rules sometimes don’t make sense in specific situations and there are cases of corrupt building inspectors.

But Port-au-Prince’s apparent devastation compared to San Francisco’s relatively minor damage shows how science and government can set standards for construction, which, if enforced, save lives.  As individuals we are always tempted to cut corners when our dollars don’t match our desires, but the law encourages us to use methods that were developed with potential disasters (fires, hurricanes, as well as earthquakes) in mind.  Again, I realize these rules are not perfect and as the science improves old methods get changed.  And humans who enforce the rules aren’t necessarily consistent or honest.  But looking at the difference between the damage in Haiti in 2010 and in San Francisco shows the value good, well enforced, building codes make.   The low death toll in San Francisco is, in part, a result of one of the invisible roles government plays in our lives when it is working right. [Ref #3]

Now, that makes a lot of sense.  Haiti’s people need help in the form of humanitarian relief to recover from the immediate effects of the quake; but also to establish and maintain a government that is responsible to its people & its needs — including good building codes.

Meanwhile, visit at least one of those reliable aid organizations I already mentioned and pony up.

And with regard to theodicy,  remember again the lessons of Job & the Voice from the Whirlwind: bad things sometimes do happen to good people.  Celebrate the goodness of the Haitian people, & help them.

A special shout-out to my friend Lynne, who lived in Haiti for a time & knows this.

Update:

Matthew Yglesias unpacks Pat Robertson’s religious bias & ignorance of history:

[T]he Haitian Revolution began in 1791, years before Napoleon took over France as Consul. Napoleon III didn’t come to power until 1848. So clearly Robertson is confused on the basic history. But I believe that Robertson is referring to the Bois Caïman Ceremony that in Haitian national mythology initiated the revolution. This was a Vodou ceremony and the following text is normally attributed to its leader, Boukman:

The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.

If you were a white, Catholic French person or Haitian plantation owner, I can see why you would characterize this as a prayer offered “to the devil.” The black Haitians are postulating the existence of two Gods, one for the whites and one for the blacks. The whites regard the God they pray to as the one true God. So if the blacks are praying to some second god, and doing it with a Vodou ceremony, it stands to reason that they’re engaged in a satanic ritual of some sort.

But there’s no reason for 21st century Americans to accept this interpretation of the story. From the Haitian perspective, I think you’d say they were just praying to God for his assistance and asserting the justice of their cause. This is what pretty much everyone does before heading into battle. [Ref #4]

Well, that’s not new: one of the foundations of Christianist ideology is to assume that any religion (including much of Christianity) that does not kowtow to the narrow strictures of Christianist ideology is “satanic.” Remember, Christianism isn’t identical with Christianity: it’s a religio-political ideology that believes that (its version of) Christianity is superior to all other religions, & seeks to establish itself as the dominant political power to the exclusion & even eradication of other religions & belief systems (not to mention the people who believe in them).   It’s basically about power grab through religion (much as with the religio-political ideology Islamism – which is not the same as the religion of Islam.)

I’m with Yglesias.  Boukman’s god sounds not unlike the god upon whom the biblical King David calls upon time & again in the Psalms, & his prayer sounds not that much different from the psalms of David that called upon God’s help against David’s enemies.

Update #2:

Ta-Nehisi Coates names it: Pat Robertson was “equating an attempt by slaves to claim their freedom with ‘a pact with the devil’”:

The next time your wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ. And there’s an African-American right next to him, nodding in agreement.

Fuck Pat Robertson. Fuck the “Christian” Broadcasting Network. And fuck any black person who’d nod reverently while a white supremacist slanders our founding fathers. She should be ashamed of herself. [Ref #5]

References

1. 13 Jan 2010. “Haiti and United States Inextricably Linked” by Renard Sexton (FiveThirtyEight).
2. 13 Jan 2010. “Robertson’s ‘true story’: Haiti ‘swore a pact to the devil’ to get ‘free from the French’ and ‘ever since, they have been cursed’.” (Media Matters for America).
3. 13 Jan 2010. “Seven Point 0″ by Steve Aufrecht (What Do I Know?).
4. 13 Jan 2010. “Did Haiti Form a Pact With the Devil?” by Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress: Yglesias).
5. 13 Jan 2010. “Professional Bigot Pat Robertson Does It Again” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (TheAtlantic.com).

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-13: Haiti earthquake
2. Haiti: Disaster profiteering v. helping Haiti rebuild for Haitians
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-15: Haiti relief efforts

Christianist is a term I first heard from Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan — a useful term that to me conveys not Christiantity as religion, but rather Christianity as political ideology.  Sullivan, who is gay, Catholic, & conservative — but not a “war of values” social conservative — does not feel any more represented by the religious right than my friend Dianne O’Connell of Immanuel Presbyterian Church does; in an essay written for Time magazine, Sullivan writes, “let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism.”

Hence, a handy term to distinguish the politics of Jerry Prevo & his followers & allies — the ideological contemporaries & descendants of the Moral Majority — from other forms of Christianity found in Alaska, the U.S., & the world.

Related posts:

1. An indictment of the Christian heresy followed by Palin & friends
2. Illimitable god, & related thoughts about why I’m not a Christian
3. The new Carrie Prejean?