“Once you assume a creator and a plan it make us subjects in a cruel experiment,” Hitchens said before causing widespread laughter by comparing God to “a kind of divine North Korea”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I suppose this reflects the fact that religion has once again become a powerful social force in America, with many conservative lawmakers quite openly basing their policy decisions upon their reading of Christian scripture.<\/p>\n
What’s more, many American denominations — from the once-progressive Roman Catholic church to many African American congregations — have become far more traditionalist.<\/p>\n
Many churches are political as well as spiritual institutions, lobbying against everything from same-sex marriage to abortion rights.\u00a0\u00a0 It is increasingly common for religious leaders to condemn candidates outright.<\/p>\n
This makes people nervous, with good reason.\u00a0 As Hitchens points out (fairly, I think) societies where religious faiths hold a lot of political power are rarely happy ones.<\/p>\n
Early puritan and Roman Catholic America was a wretchedly intolerant place, with Christians of various sects generally murdering one another with a savagery that makes us wince.<\/p>\n
As late as the 1800s, honest American Protestants were committing pogroms against Roman Catholics and Mormons.<\/p>\n
In modern times, countries where religious leaders dominate policy-making are invariably poor, backward and violent.<\/p>\n
Still, as Tony Blair rightly points out, faith also has the power to enrich and illuminate our lives, especially as so many aspects of society become regimented by modern economic forces.\u00a0 Again from the Guardian:<\/p>\n
“The proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable,” he said. Blair called religion at its best “a benign progressive framework by which to live our lives.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I agree.\u00a0 My own answer to the question posed at the start of this essay is a confident but qualified Yes.<\/p>\n
I think those who view faith as a business of dreamers, charlatans and manipulators are missing something precious and irreplaceable that many people find within a spiritual life.<\/p>\n
Hitchens is practicing a kind of smart, engaging and provocative bigotry.<\/p>\n
But I also think many religions –and many Christian sects — have gone horribly off the rails.<\/p>\n
Rather than battle against “modernity,” as so many spiritual leaders do, it seems (on the contrary) that a new kind of modernist reformation is in order, one that deliberately updates the various scriptures handed down across the millennia.<\/p>\n
It seems long overdue, to cite one rather easy example, that people of faith accept that women are equal to men, intellectually, morally and spiritually.<\/p>\n
I’m startled (and dismayed) by the number of conservative Christians who still struggle with this question.\u00a0 But this is also a sticking point for many Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims.<\/p>\n
In the end, faiths that lack the courage to do the heavy lifting that comes with societal change and moral evolution risk appearing so bigoted and intolerant that they fall into Hitchens’ stereotype.<\/p>\n
So what do you think?\u00a0 Is faith a hold-over from a more primitive time, a stick wielded by cynical politicians?\u00a0 Or is it a force for awakening and enriching our lives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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