CHRISTIANITY... AND ISLAM... AND JUDIASM...
ALL ARE GETTING A BAD RAP...

In 1962 I bought a set of books on the world’s major religions. Those books launched me on A lifetime project: a fascinating, mostly encouraging but sometimes alarming, mostly casual but sometimes rigorous, examination of what is known in church jargon as “my faith journey.” The books, now out of print, were published by George Braziller, New York. Richard A. Gard, was the general editor of the series known as GREAT RELIGIONS OF MODERN MAN which focused specifically on Buddhism, edited by Richard Gard; Christianity: Catholicism, edited by George Brantl; Christianity: Protestantism, edited by J. Leslie Dunstan; Hinduism, edited by Louis Renou, Islam, edited by John Alden Williams; and Judaism, edited by Arthur Hertzberg. If you come across the set or any of the single volumes in a used book store, don’t hesitate to buy them.

There have been times when I was sorely tempted to abandon the institutional church, all churches, altogether; but I continue to be a member of a Methodist church. It is against a background of study and continuing involvement in “church life” that I write this journal entry on the thirtieth day of March, 2010. Over many years my responses to “the church” has ranged from ecstatic celebration to disgust. Last Sunday at the Methodist Church I attend, one of the ministers, Elbert Kim, led children in a meaningful, delightful Palm Sunday celebration. You may look back to Sunday’s BLOG entry to see a couple of photographs of that occasion. A couple of years ago I was revolted by the Church’s failure to adequately affirm the love and commitment of gay and lesbian individuals who wished to be married by clergy when it would have been legal in California to do so.

Each of the world’s major religions is a vast umbrella under which a great variety of practices and beliefs exist. I often find myself ashamed and embarrassed by some of the groups and individuals who call themselves Christians. Last Sunday’s New York Times ran a front-page piece about continuing atrocities in Central and Western Africa attributed to groups claiming to be doing “The Lord’s work.” In Congo the Lord’s Resistance Army continues to commit atrocities in Eastern Congo and continues to foment strife at Congo’s borders with Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, operates out of Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. Their modus operandi includes abduction, rape, maiming, and killing civilians, including children. Kony has said that his Lord’s Resistance Army is in a holy war to establish a government based on the Biblical Ten Commandments. What they do in reality is kidnap children and force them to become child soldiers. They rape women and girls of child-bearing age to carry out “God’s commandment to go and replenish the earth.” They keep young girls as concubines and reassure themselves that it’s all part of God’s plan. At the present time more than one-half-million people have been displaced from their homelands and are now struggling just to survive in temporary refugee camps.

When Pat Robertson and his colleagues explain God to the millions of people in their fundamentalist Christian churches and schools, the message is clear. The Bible should be read with an understanding that every word, every phrase, every story is literally God’s own words telling God’s own account of what actually happened more than two-thousand years ago. When we read an account of the Garden of Eden with a walking snake, we must believe there was a walking snake. If the story says God walked in the garden in the cool of the day, then we are to believe there was a time six-thousand years ago when God took leisurely strolls around a fantastic garden. We are to believe the account of the Deluge just as it is told, including the big wooden boat and all the animals boarding in orderly fashion before the rains begin. When the Bible says Moses parted the Red Sea, we are to believe the waters rolled up on both sides of a path that miraculously left a dry path for the “children” of Israel to pass before the waters closed on and killed the pursuing Egyptians. We are told to believe that God is sometimes loving, but that He (definitely HE) sometimes goes into a jealous rage.

The fear factor has long been important in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world. This week members of an apocalyptic Christian group in Michigan were taken into custody for planning to murder a policeman and then kill law enforcement officers in hopes of inciting an antigovernment uprising. The Hutaree group planned to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer and then bomb the funeral caravan using improvised explosive devices based on designs used against American troops by insurgents in Iraq. They apparently aren’t affiliated with the Tea Party Movement but are a separate bunch of whackos with their own agenda that grows out of a belief that God wants them to destroy the government of decadent America, where some apparently think the President is the fabled Antichrist. The Hutaree is a word apparently made up by leader David B. Sloan Sr. to mean Christian warriors. These Christian warriors see the local police as “foot soldiers” for the federal government, which the group views as God’s enemy. The Hutaree’s philosophy is drawn from a populist strand that fuses fear of a conspiracy to create a one-world government with a belief that a war is imminent between Christians and the Antichrist, as described in the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

So the obvious question is, “Why do I, Jerral Miles, stay involved with the Methodist Church or with any church?” That’s an easy one. Christianity is built around a philosophy which declares that people can and should live together in peace. The Jesus from whom the religion takes its name was a man of peace. His Gospel is based in a simple idea that a person should treat other people the way he/she would like to be treated... meet the needs of neighbors... do no harm. I will continue to try to live with faith that Jesus’ simple idea works. I am not interested in defending any belief system or creed. I will continue to try to participate in Church activities that are beautiful and reasonable... like the meaningful worship service in which Elbert Kim talked with children... like listening quietly as Stanley Wicks leads his choirs in anthems about peace and love... like enjoying Robert Plimpton’s organ music washing over me as I sit in the beautiful sanctuary... and like listening to sermons by any of the church’s pastors who accept as I do the Church’s commitment to Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors... and I will continue to object and to make my objection known when the church discriminates against any individual or group of individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. I will continue to work with the small group of friends who are determined to persuade our church to become a reconciling congregation. I will stay because I believe the larger community is better with the church in it than it would be without it.