Sermon

The Alchemy of Evil

The Rev. Jack D. Bryant

Hope Unitarian Church

October 9, 2005

First Reading: The dark side of faith. By Rosa Brooks. Los Angeles Times - October 1, 2005

IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.

This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.

He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

. . .

Murder rates? Six of the seven states with the highest 2003 homicide rates were "red" in the 2004 elections (Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina), while the deep blue Northeastern states had murder rates well below the national average. Infant mortality rates? Highest in the South and Southwest; lowest in New England. Divorce rates? Marriages break up far more in red states than in blue. Teen pregnancy rates? The same.

Of course, the red/blue divide is only an imperfect proxy for levels of religiosity. And while Paul's study found that the correlation between high degrees of religiosity and high degrees of social dysfunction appears robust, it could be that high levels of social dysfunction fuel religiosity, rather than the other way around.

. . .

We shouldn't shy away from the possibility that too much religiosity may be socially dangerous. Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational.

. . .

Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

Sermon

How many of you know that Sir Isaac Newton was a Unitarian? He emphatically rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Speaking of the trinity, he said, "Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none.” (Alton, "Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke, and Newton," 1833.) I don’t think it’s particularly surprising. If one takes the bible seriously it’s not hard to reach that conclusion. But how many of you know that Newton was also an alchemist? I find that much more surprising. Alchemy was the pseudoscience of converting one substance into another. It was kind of bridge between magic and modern chemistry and physics. According to some accounts Newton spent the vast majority of his time on alchemy experiments and wrote over a million words about it. One article I found on this said his theories of gravity and light arose out of his work on alchemy. But after his death it was decided not to publish any of those writings.

I thought of alchemy when I read the article from which I drew our reading this morning. After reading it I found the article in the Journal of Religion and Society to which it referred. It’s title is Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies - a First Look by Gregory S. Paul. It’s a serious, scholarly article. The newspaper article is superficial in its description, but in general terms it is accurate. And the actual article made me think even more strongly about Alchemy. That’s because the great goal of the alchemists was to transform lead into gold, to take something of trivial value and turn it into something of great value. Applied to matters of morality and religion one might think that moral or religious alchemy would be about transforming that which is morally evil or doubtful into something good - not just a transformation of appearance, but a transformation of the reality of its substance. That is how it should be because religion is supposed to be about what is right, what is good, what is holy. But the LA Times articles and the article by Mr. Paul seem to support the proposition that the alchemy of religion is one that turns good into evil.

If you look at the classical definitions of God you find much talk of perfection and love and good. Even the great agnostic, Robert Ingersoll - I think this quote is from him, recognized this connection when he said, “I spell my god with two “o’s” and my devil without a “d”. God - in the classical sense - is spoken of as a being who wants what’s best for us. It is the forces of evil that oppose God. As many are want to say, “God is good.” It is only by God’s grace that one can do what is good. But there are those who disagree.

Years ago I had a conversation with a social worker who was responsible for interviewing and assessing children who - in order to protect them - were being checked into a community shelter here in Tulsa after they had been sexually molested. She said something like this:

“The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about is that when we do the intake reports on children who’ve been sexually molested by a family member, in every single case the family are religious fundamentalists. Everybody in social work knows this is true, but it’s too controversial for people to talk about.”

On several occasions over the years I’ve read or heard similar claims.

And there’s another side. We, as a congregation, were generous in responding to victims of Hurricane Katrina. But who was most responsive? It was the fundamentalist churches that loaded up semi-tractor trailers and sent teams of people into those areas. The Catholic Charities dwarf anything we do. And the Salvation Army - that requires people to sit through a sermon if they want a meal - provides hundreds of thousands of meals to people. I doubt I would care for the sermon, but they are actually putting food into people’s mouths on a scale far beyond the relief efforts of others - especially those who would reject fundamentalist religion. And it is the mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic church and Jewish organizations that build hospitals and the finest nursing and elder care facilities in our country.

So what do we make of it? Is religion good for you or is it bad for you? Actually reading the article by Gregory S. Paul I learned a few things. First, he makes it clear that what he is offering is limited and preliminary. He asserts no causal relationship between behavior and religiosity, only the existence of certain correlations - although it is clear that the correlations aren’t favorable to religion. But the lack of a conclusive link to causation is important because it says that question is open - and on reflection there is good reason to think religion per se may not be the issue. Consider the fact that Paul’s study was limited to a comparison between democratically governed countries. By definition he excludes totalitarian regimes which by their very nature are examples of societal dysfunction. There was nothing but societal dysfunction in dictatorships such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Afghanistan under the Taliban. The Soviet Union was officially atheistic and Nazi Germany, while it used religion for its purposes from time to time, was not a religious country in the way we think of it. All this suggests to me that despite the correlation the problem is not religion and the solution is not atheism. Nor is it the other way around. I believe the problem is independent of such factors. I believe the genuine root of the problem is suggested by this passage from the article in the LA Times by Rosa Brooks.

Religious faith is inherently nonrational.

. . .

Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

First, I have to disagree with the statement that “Religious faith is inherently nonrational.” There are many forms of religion which are inherently nonrational - but not all. By defining religion as inherently nonrational the suggestion is we don’t have to think about it, we’ve put people in their pigeon hole and we can leave them there. But the second part is closer to the truth. It is where he says

. . . the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

The problem I have is with the phrase “religious extremism”. Why not just extremism. To paraphrase her original remark: The most serious threat humanity faces today is extremism: non-rational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

It doesn’t matter whether it is the extremism of religious fundamentalism or of some secular variety such as Communism or Nazism or Apartheid South Africa or the Eugenics movement or countless other examples. And when it comes to religion it doesn’t matter whether it is Christian, Islamic or Jewish fundamentalism - or the fundamentalism of any other religious tradition. The problem is not the specific belief system - whether it is belief in the personal God of the Abrahamic religions or the nonexistent God of atheism. The problem is rigid, unthinking absolutist belief systems that allow no room for doubt nor possibility of error. The solution is not the affirmation of any particular belief or set of beliefs, nor the rejection of any particular belief or set of beliefs, it is in a different way of believing.

For most of human history to believe has been about absolutism. There was no room for doubt. If you didn’t believe properly you were to be burned at the stake or worse. Such beliefs created an absolutist world view that was little more than a stage for puppets to be manipulated by cosmic strings - or in the case of atheistic dictatorships by political strings. Both religious and secular absolutisms have seen the world as objectively knowable in a way that could reduce it to a book of rigid, unbending rules. But the twentieth century saw the emergence of a new world view, a view that said there were no absolutes, that truth was completely relative, that each person had a separate truth, a personal truth and that all such personal truths were equally valid, equally real, equally to be honored. Instead of requiring obedience to a single set of truths, it requires obedience to every truth. But this is just another kind of non-rational absolutism that refuses to tolerate difference or dissent.

I cannot accept either extreme. One extreme finds expression in what we commonly call fundamentalism - be it secular or sectarian. The other finds expression in claims that everything is true, that every opinion must not only be tolerated, but accepted and embraced. I believe it is true that an absolutist, fundamentalist religious faith is more likely to produce certain kinds of societal dysfunction. I also believe non-rational ideologically rigid secularism will produce it’s set of problems, just as the anything goes approach will have it’s own unique consequences. I believe the time has come to stop arguing between such extremes and to assert a different way, a way that embraces the importance of passionate belief - but a passion that rejects absolutism, that rejects the non-rational, that is expressly open to difference and dissent while avoiding the soul destroying mush of trying to believe everything. And as a minister I believe the time has come to insist that we reject the voices of secularism that insist - wrongly - that religion is an inherently non-rational enterprise. What I don’t understand is why those who want to reject religious fundamentalism would insist on defending the world view of religious fundamentalism. I believe the best way to be against such a view of the world is by being for religion as a rational enterprise.

This means we must embrace what William Ellery Channing said in 1815:

Say what we may, God has given us a rational nature, and will call us to account for it. We may let it sleep, but we do so at our peril.

This doesn’t mean a religion without belief or passion. Indeed, I believe it demands a religion of belief and passion. But it means we must also be willing to hear the results of science. It means the old supernaturalisms of yesterday must yield to what the telescope shows us. The sun does not revolve around the moon. The bible does not justify women being second class citizens in the United States anymore than the Koran justifies it in Saudi Arabia or custom and culture in sub-Saharan Africa. The bible does not justify suffering and just because it feels good doesn’t mean it’s right.

We need a religion and a culture that says we shall believe passionately, but always with an eye to new knowledge, constantly affirming that revelation and discovery are not closed. Instead of the hubris of absolutism we need the humility of the student, of one who is always ready to learn. At its best that is what our tradition affirms. At its worst we have sometimes tended to fall into the hubris of believing what we want to believe, believing what is comfortable, forgetting J. L. Adams’ admonition that we should have open minds, not minds open at both ends. But we began as the religion of the Enlightenment. I believe our future is as the religion of the Enlightenment. I believe what we have to offer the world is a call for passion without hubris, for belief without absolutism, for religion that is rational and willing to learn. That is the kind of religion that is the basis for societal health instead of societal dysfunction. It is the kind of religion that can say no to all forms of absolutism, the kind of religion that offers a rational approach to problem solving and emphasizes humility before evidence and tolerates difference, dissent and doubt because doubt has and always will be the sign of the honest mind seeking an honest religious faith. Such a faith is one capable of transforming and re-inventing itself, of transforming and re-inventing individual lives, of transforming and re-inventing society. That is the vision of the faith of a free church that proclaims it is Seeking Truth, Sharing Love - Within, Among and Beyond.

Amen.