I just finished the most incredible book -- Jesus Land, by Julia Scheere. It's her memoir of growing up in a strict Christian family, and then traveling to reform school in the Dominican Republic, with a mixed race family. Her parents had adopted two African-American boys when they couldn't get a white baby, looking at the offer of black children as a "test of faith."
I couldn't put the book down. I read it all today, and it is not a slim book. It affected me in a very personal way, and the reactions I had to it kept changing as the book continued.
Read this book if you need to learn why the Religious Right is wrong. The kids were physically and emotionally abused, first by their parents and then by their "teachers" at the reform school. I've never read such a brutal first-hand account of someone using faith to marginalize and dehumanize someone. And not that such behavior is ever acceptable, but they were children...
Last Sunday, Rob preached on the dangers of fideism: "any belief system holding that reason is irrelevant to religion or faith." And this plays true in Jesus Land, too. The truth is constructed by those in charge and rained down on upon those with no power; the word of God is used to torture, to maim. At one point, a burly adult finds it not only acceptable but necessary, according to God's will, to punch a teenager in the face until the boy falls to the ground, bloody and unconscious. People believe these things.
The stories in Jesus Land horrified me. But at the same time, they made me feel guilty about myself, about my own faith. Next to these Bible-bangin', Scripture-memorizing, soul-scouring believers, I look like a dilettante. Before the book got really terrifying, I started to feel really bad about myself as a spiritual person. Had I dedicated myself enough to my faith? Wasn't I really just taking part in that "cafeteria Christianity," the pick-n-choose of today's religious liberal? (Not that I'm even a Christian anymore -- I'm that far gone from The Lamb or whatever.)
This is what I find scariest about fideism, about conservative Christianity, about Jesus Land. The old phrase "speaking truth to power" is a beautiful thing, but it's just as easy -- in fact, even more so -- to speak lies to power. And when the lies go on for so long that even the liars begin to believe? Well, then you've got elected officials who believe, wholeheartedly, that God wants to firebomb an entire nation.
I'm really unsettled after reading the book, but I'm so glad I did.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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4 comments:
We read that in book club a while back... did you know?
No, I totally didn't know -- I'm sad I missed it.
ALSO UR FIRST COMMENT EVER LOLOL.
You and Jesus. Does it matter if you are dedicated enough? Does it matter if your faith in the religion is strong enough? Isn't it peace, love, and connectedness that bridge every religion, regardless of denominational affiliations? Isn't it enough that you love, that you believe in peace, and that you believe in connectedness? Don't question your faith...and don't be led astray by it. Know what is true and what is right and precisely who you pray to, and how you pray to them, won't seem nearly as important.
Do you see this? I created an account just so that I could comment on your blogs. Well, your's and Ted's. Wow...yeah...I'm gay.
That's the scary thing about fideism, though! Over the past few years I've become really confident in myself as a person of faith, both in the way I approach my spiritual life and the kind of God I pray to.
But reading that book led me to look at those beliefs with a condemnatory eye, something I never would have done on my own. Fideism says "this is true because I believe it to be so," without any actual reason behind it. So under *that* system my faith, which I know to be full of love and peace, and especially interconnectedness, looks kind of hippy-dippy and silly.
Which blows, because it's so not.
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