RELIGION, OIL AND WAR

Rev. David Leonard

It seems to me that the oil companies should fund their own war. Why should we ordinary middle and lower class Americans have to sacrifice so much to enable a war that we don't even want? The economy is already falling apart as it is, and now more than ever we need to take care of each other and to augment social welfare programs, not to forgive the tax obligations of the wealthy, which includes some of the very the individuals responsible for our current policies as well as the oil companies and other large corporate interests. Something's wrong here.

At this point in writing this sermon I came to a complete block. I had utterly no idea where I could go with it that could be anything other than a recapitulation of my sermon of a similar topic of last September. "Something's wrong here," I wrote, and what was wrong was that I was stymied. Ordinarily this is not an issue for me, since I just go ahead and say something anyway without necessarily understanding what I'm talking about, but this time it just didn't feel right to trust that meaning would eventually emerge. I needed the meaning of it right there and then before I could continue.

When I gave the anti-war sermon in September, I was somewhat taken aback by its reception. I was thinking it might be controversial and that some dissenting opinion among us might be forthcoming as a result, but it didn't happen. The sermon appeared to be a hit, and I thought to myself that I had better watch it, for I might be setting up your next minister to conform to a mold of my making, which would not be a good thing. 

I have not changed my mind greatly since September on the matter of war against Iraq. If anything, I am even more convinced of the dangers of our national arrogance and of our government's clamp down on the freedoms of citizens. Our unilateral war policies and quest for global dominance are in my view greater threats to our freedoms and quality of life as Americans than any potential harm the Iraqis themselves might inflict upon us. War-and especially if it is "successful!"-will create more bitterness and willingness to strike back against us than if we were to ignore the situation altogether, though I certainly do not advocate that. But neither is there much really new that I can say about it today.

Social activism has never been my preferred style of applying religion to life. My spirituality is more contemplative than activist. I have attended civil rights and anti-war rallies and protests from time to time, but if the truth be told, I am uncomfortable with shouting slogans, carrying signs and banners and voicing my anger so provocatively. I question the ultimate effectiveness of these activities-they seem to me to be necessary but not sufficient to effect change-and I see my role more as supporting those who do find hope and meaning in them than for what meaning I get out of them myself. 

It's a good thing that so many others experience social activism differently than I do. They encourage hope in me, and they do make a difference. Just this week George W. said that he would not be swayed by such protests. I already believed this to be the case with him, but the fact that he acknowledged world public opinion even to this small extent is a crack in the door. Maybe war is not inevitable after all, so let us continue to make our voices heard.

But what do I say this morning? Yes, "something is wrong here," and it dawned on me that maybe some of our concern over war is misplaced. Maybe some of what's wrong with religion and war and the world's hunger for oil lies with us, not "them," whether the "them" be the Iraqis, the United Nations or our own government. If religion, oil and war conspire to wreak irreparable harm to our planet, then we need to know that the roots of that harm lie within us ourselves.

To put it in a more concise form, oil is the symbol of our greed and of our willingness to destroy the earth to satisfy that greed; war is the expression of our innate tendencies toward violence and of using our power to defeat those who compete with our greed; and religion provides the philosophical and spiritual basis for justifying the both of them. And all of it comes from our hearts.
I admit that this is a one-sided and cynical view of the state of the world, and I will have something more positive to say about religion in a while, but first let me lay the groundwork for my cynicism. When I talk about religion, I usually mean its character as a tradition and community of people whose work is to define their relation to ultimate meaning. This morning, however, I am considering religion more under its historical aspect as an authoritarian, organized structure designed to separate the "good" from the "bad," the "saved" from the "unsaved," "us" from "them." While religion in another sense may be a big part of our hopes for peace, religion in this sense is the problem.

This may not have always been the case with us. There is a well-supported theory that the old religion, the Pagan religion of Mother Earth, was more egalitarian and based more on cooperation and partnership than the patriarchal religions that succeeded it. See Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade. In any event, it is patriarchal region that we were left with, and this is the type of religion about which I am so critical and cynical.

In the Hebrew scriptures, we read that we human beings were given dominion over the earth. Our place in the scheme of things was that of "a little less than the angels." "Dominion," however that concept should be interpreted, is in fact more often understood as "dominance." We regard nature as ours, not as its own or as God's or the Goddess's, and we are bent on exploiting it for our own selfish purposes. Religion justifies this attitude and gives us the supposed right to grab hold of what is ours, which by definition is what we can conquer and exploit.

But the primary sin of religion is that it divides people into "us" and "them." Religion gives sanction to our culture, to our way of life and to our special place in the world. Further, it sanctions war and violence as means of seeing that "justice" or "God's will" on our behalf is done. It should be no surprise to us whatsoever that people who believe in an evil God who would condemn others to hell for not agreeing with his "chosen" people would themselves adopt attitudes and behaviors that are violent and evil. As you worship, so do you live.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, spoke of the danger to true Christianity that religion posed. He regarded it as one of the most tempting of idols. We can so easily come to worship religion instead of God, he thought. Paul Tillich, who once said "the message of Christianity is not Christianity," elaborated Wesley's warning in his treatment of the demonic element of religion. This is, I believe, essentially the same point I am trying to make here: that religion, as an expression of our greed, imperfection, and desire to separate ourselves one from another, lies at the root of our easy predisposition toward violence. 

Marge Piercy, in a poem titled "The Fundamental Truth" wrote this, and I
quote about half of it:

The Christian right, Islamic Jihad,
The Jewish right bank settlers bringing
The Messiah down, the Japanese sects
Who worship by bombing subways,
They all hate each other
But more they hate the mundane,
Ordinary people who love living
More than dying in radiant glory,
Who shuffle and sigh and bake bread.

They have far more in common
with each other, these braggarts
of hatred, the iron hearted
in whose ear a voice spoke
once and left them deaf.
Their faith is founded on death
Of others, and everyone is other
To them, whose Torah is splattered
In letters of blood.

This is religion at its worst, religion that leads America to believe it is God's chosen people, that we have a right to consume the entire planet and profit from it, and that war is justified in achieving that end. And if you believe that it is someone else's religion that inspires such arrogance and violence, then your religion also must be understood as perpetuating the demonic separation of "enlightened" from "unenlightened," of "warmongers" from "peaceniks," and of us from others. Peace will never come so long as we hate those who hate, as we inflict violence upon the violent or as we self-righteously assume a moral superiority over others.

Hans Küng, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote "there can be no peace between nations unless there is peace between religions, and there can be no peace between religions without dialogue." If religion is the problem, if religion is the inspiration for war and violence, then religion has to be a part of the solution. Almost all of the great religions preach messages of peace. Almost all of their founders taught the importance of justice with compassion. But because religion come from us, because it arises from the human heart in response to the fear and wonder of the world, it is always possible that religion becomes co-opted by persons who have not yet learned love and wonder, but only fear. Hardnosed zealots take charge, common people feel insecure in their moderation, and lines are drawn.

If we are to be effective in our work for peace, then we must do that work in peaceful ways. We must be inspired by religion at its best. Our voices must carry a tone of passionate moral persuasion, not of violent anger. We must show that we do not regard ourselves as separate from, and morally superior to, our enemies, to our government, to the military, to those whose views differ from ours, or to those who seem caught in fear more than love. We are all human beings, and when we truly understand that this is so-and only then-will the peaceful world for which we yearn come to birth among us.

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