Religion is an interface

June 19, 2007

Buried in an article by my favorite political blogger Maha is the sentence I’ve been waiting for:

We religious people are all thrashing around trying to comprehend the incomprehensible in our own imperfect way. Religion itself is just an interface. [ Heresies, emphasis mine ]

This is the distinction between fundamentalist religious expression and liberal religious expression. Fundamentalisms view their religion as perfectly revealed and self evident, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. Whereas we tend to view our religions as approximations, guesses, and/or metaphors for something we do not yet understand. Our religion allows us to work with these under-comprehended realities in a way that appears to make sense. At least in our own lives.

Organized religions that share these values — of which paganisms, Unitarian Universalism, Buddhism, and even some manifestations of Religions of the Book are but a few — recognize that at least a significant portion of this path is personal, individual, and subjective. As a result they tolerate or encourage deviation from established doctrine, giving room for spiritual exploration and development.

Fundamentalisms replace that spirituality with politics. In fundamentalisms, your adherence to doctrine is a measure of how spiritual you are. This is why I argue that fundamentalisms are dead religions, politics dressed up as religion, rather than being the most dedicated expression of religion many fundamentalists and atheists alike seem to think it is.

This is also why the liberal religious are natural allies to those who would like to see church and state made separate. We recognize that when religious leaders have authority they tend to force compliance with their own paths, prohibiting others from finding their own. This is as much true of our own religion as it is others — religiously speaking, unless you are the Caesar you are always a minority of one.

But it is also why we react so negatively to the absolutist and sometimes eliminationist rhetoric coming from religious circles. In character and tone it is no more tolerant or respectful of individual intelligence than fundamentalism is. The new boss same as the old boss.

And the misapprehension of this deep and significant difference is the primary reason those of us who are liberal say people like Dawkins just don’t get it. They often focus on the oppressive dogmatic character of political perversions of spirituality, and fail to acknowledge that those of us spiritually and religiously dedicated to this deepest of personal freedoms even exist.

Posted in Religion