In and around Spokane there’s a buzz about religion, and it’s the same buzz that’s perhaps running behind the old faux mahogany-paneling that’s been hastily tacked throughout the North American continent. Namely, the buzz is that interfaith conversations don’t really happen among the non-elites, or the anti-intellectual blue-collar crowd, and that the sound we often hear is the crunching and crawling sounds of the proverbial church mice, storing up whatever’s left from Meals on Wheels.
Religion in Spokane is notoriously ghettoized, which is to say, we ‘talk’ and ‘listen’ on sites like this one, but in the process we discover how afraid we are of being ignorant, or being wrong, or being unfaithful, and so we scurry back to that enclave where people think and believe like us.
I am here, among the esoteric intelligentsia of the Inland Northwest for my second go-round. From June of 1988 to September of 1991, my spouse and I served as associate pastors at the First Presbyterian Church, just off I-90, going west – and what I recall from those pre-Clinton days were the homeless Native Americans who stole my guitar as well as the guy who asked for gas money (for a vehicle that had run out ‘not far from the church’), and for whom I instead bought a two-gallon canister of unleaded. The stranded motorist was supposed to fill up his car and drive back to the station where he would return the container. Alas, he walked off with that flammable fuel and in the direction of that fictitious car, which I assume he drove as far as the mirage of Cheney.
These days (as of 2012 until the present) I’ve confirmed that Cheney does, in fact, exist, and that the people who commute there want something more than church guitars and gas-money. Eastern Washington University students are diverse. A quick browse of the website claims that 33 percent of last year’s incoming freshman considered themselves an ethnic minority, and truly this statistic has laudable implications for the experience of all students.
What interests me now, however, is not the world views we inculcate by virtue of being African-Native- Hispanic-Asian-Russian-and Pacific-Islander American, but those we don’t by the vice of avoiding religious conversation. That is, for God’s sake… or for the sake of overcoming Samsara… or for the sake of unknowingly offending a reader of the Qu’ran… or for the sake of fending off another Holocaust… and yes, for the sake of Four Noble Truths – let’s find a forum in which we don’t just agree to disagree, or where we co-exist without authentic dialogue.
My fear, I suppose, stems from the way Americans so value freedom and how that freedom has morphed into a mutually-agreed-upon autonomy, each to his or her own place of worship. And if that becomes too tedious over time, Bill Maher’s on H.B.O. reinforcing how ridiculous and irrational religion can be, and how it threatens the democratic values we hold dear. Au contraire!
From my vantage point – the millennial generation’s a mixed bag of inquisitive idolaters (in the best sense of that word) who ought to be encouraged to hold their theological or nontheistic assumptions as loosely as they do their Snapchat accounts.
What we don’t want in society at large are various iterations of the Westboro Baptist Church, rampaging around our institutions and encouraging us to circle the wagons. And let’s just ponder, for a moment, how Liberty University’s president can hear Donald Trump’s lewd braggadocio on the Access Hollywood video, and declare that “we’re all sinners,” as if the conversation’s over. How did we Christians so easily jettison our humility? Where are the popular voices who cultivate contrition? There is no way in heaven or hell the apostle Paul intended his rhetoric to be so abused in such a demagogic fashion, and it boggles the mind that so many – nearly forty percent of the voting public – believes whatever the Donald spews is evangelical.
And so, I should mention that I’m teaching an Introduction to Religion course, and I love it. I love it because I have leverage with the students in terms of their G.P.A., and most would assume that Religion’s that easy and that incidental, just a matter of one’s personal opinion. Bah! Ha! And Bah! even to the Bahai’s who gloss over the real thoughtful differences between the world’s religious expressions. While learning Hinduism, a student says he’d like proof for reincarnation. There is none worth mentioning. While teaching Buddhism, a guest lecturer defines Nirvana as “the overcoming of suffering.” “That’s funny,” interrupts another student, “because Thich Naht Hanh claims that a literal translation of Nirvana is extinction — “the extinction of all concepts.” Huh? Can we reconcile?
That is to say, if we’re really into an authentic religious discussion we do have to surrender our concepts in the hope that our pursuit of Ultimate Reality is really there — that we’re not simply deluding ourselves. And, of course, maybe that’s what hurts most of all; people are so infatuated with their concepts of divine judgment and divine love that we fail to see, hear and appropriately touch the person who believes or wants to believe.
Two quotes to ponder:
One from Stephen Prothero: “Godthink is ideological rather than analytical— it starts in the dense clouds of desire rather than a clear-eyed vision of how things are on the ground. In the case of Hitchens and the New Atheists, it begins with the desire to denounce the evil in religion. In the case of Huston Smith and the perennialists, it begins with the desire to praise the good in religion. Neither of these desires serves our understanding of the world” (“God is Not One,” p. 334).
The other from Douglas Coupland in “Life After God:” “My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”
Hey, do you hear that buzz about religion? We assume it’s the usual church mice, spreading their gossip like stale cheese. But it’s getting louder, and the mice may be lonely behind the mildewed baseboards.
Adrian Rogers i believe said something to the effect that “Man’s religion can only take him as far as his concept of God.” I’m not sure if this fits into your discussion of interfaith conversations, however I found it quite revealing in talking about beliefs/religions.