Ministry

 In 2004 Sam Harris, a philosopher and neuroscientist published his book, The End of Faith, subtitled “Terror and the Future of Reason”.  It was read by many, reviewed by many and criticized by some.  It was followed in 2006 by Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, subtitled “Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.”   In the same year, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God is not Great subtitled “How Religion Poisons Everything” were published.   All four of these books were on various best-seller lists. The four authors called themselves “The Four Horsemen” in a televised discussion.  Avid Bible readers  will recognize this allusion as being from the Book of Revelation, no doubt citing chapter and verse.  The four horsemen are, traditionally, famine, pestilence, war and death, with death the only one mentioned in the Bible

 There were a number of others such as Michael Onfray’s An Atheist’s Manifesto and Victor Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis´.

 Also of interest to me were two books which focused on the effect the Christian right appears to have had on American politics and government.  These books are Chris Hedges’s American Fascists and American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips.  In addition, there have been at least two television productions related to the subject of unbelief.  One of these by Jonathan Miller called A Rough History of Disbelief is particularly interesting.

 After reading a few of these books and the reviews of several more, I began to wonder if there might be a relationship between the sudden appearance of such titles and the obvious growth and influence of the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims. The authors admit that Christianity is the faith they know best although their books deal with other religious faiths, particularly Judaism and Islam.

 Has there been a time in Western history when so many were writing books about the reasons to question the existence of God and the possible damage religions, especially the religions based on the Hebrew Bible have inflicted on humankind? In addition, has there been a time in the past which has seen such a growth of these religions?

 Before addressing these questions, I would like to mention a few criticisms of my own which occurred to me when I read some of these books.  The authors all appear to base their own concept of God and their atheistic positions on the God they have found in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the first five books.  They seem to fail to realize that the concept of God changed considerably over the centuries of the writing of those books.  The God of Hosea and Second Isaiah are totally ignored by these writers.  The God they describe is the cruel, vengeful, murderous God in some of the bloodiest stories in the earlier books.  In addition, they appear to have little knowledge of the teachings ascribed to Jesus whose God is a forgiving and loving father figure.

 Another criticism I have is that they see very little good in religions, either for societies or for individuals.  Certainly, it is easy to enumerate the many atrocities committed in the name of religion which have been imposed on humankind throughout the centuries. The authors do not give religions credit for the many gifts to all societies in the form of works of art, music and architecture or the influence religions have had on universal acts of human kindness in the form of societies organized for this purpose. The benefits to individuals are obvious in the testimony of persons who believe that his or her faith gives their life its meaning and serves as a moral guide for their lives.  I believe William James was very aware of this when he wrote Varieties of Religious Experience.

 In the 4^th Century during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Empire was facing a crisis due to conflicts within the Christian movement.  Constantine called the Council of Nicea to resolve this conflict.  Out of this event, the concept of the Trinity became dogma and those who did not believe in this concept were declared heretics and exiled.  Christianity became the state religion in much of Europe in the form of the Roman Catholic Church.  It remained so for the next 12 centuries until the Reformation, the invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into common languages so that the doctrines and practices of the church were seriously questioned.

 Another such period was the Age of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution of the 18^th Century with scientists such as Isaac Newton and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume and Thomas Paine.  All, in various ways attacked the accepted church dogmas and the control of the church over the state.  In 1811, Percy Shelly wrote his track, The Necessity for Atheism while a student at Oxford.  He was expelled, of course.

 And then in the mid 19^th Century, German Biblical scholars and theologians turned their focus on Christianity and brought about a second Reformation, but on a slightly smaller scale than that in the 16^th Century.  The Bible was studied seriously, both historically and contextually.  The doctrines of the Lutheran faith were criticized.

Perhaps no scientist in the 19^th Century created a greater firestorm than did Charles Darwin and his Origin of the Species.  His theory of evolution and natural selection are still in conflict with the idea of intelligent design and of the creationists, a conflict that will not soon be resolved.

 Then, in the late 19^th century, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed, “God is dead”.  This slogan, if I may call it that, was adopted about fifty years later with yet another period of doctrine deniers in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the 1920’s, Bertrand Russell wrote his book, Why I Am Not a Christian. using many of the same arguments against Christianity that we find in the current writers I have mentioned.  I remember reading Nietzsche as well as the later authors, John A.T. Robinson of England and James Pike of the United States, books which criticized the traditional doctrines of the Anglican and Episcopal Church.  Also urging a more liberal theology was British theologian, Leslie Weatherhead in his book The Christian Agnostic.    The current faith deniers would not look with favour on these church leaders’ efforts to make Christianity more liberal and more rational.  As atheists they see deist and agnostics as “fence sitters”, wishy-washy individuals who lack the courage to declare they cannot believe in any concept of a divine being or divine essence, however it is phrased.

That brings me to my third criticism of Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens.  I may be doing them a great disservice but I felt that they did not recognize that they were being fundamentalists in their atheism.  Traits they have in common with the Fundamentalists are (1) certainty.  They express the same inerrancy in their denial of a supernatural being.  The second is that they seem to read the Bible literally or expect those of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths should do so. They seemed to believe that it was not acceptable or even possible for a person to call himself Christian if he did not accept creationism, the cruel God of the Hebrew Bible, the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of the Christ, the only son of God. I suspect that these authors would not believe it possible that an individual could be considered to be a Christian agnostic or a religious humanist. The third trait is a sort of parochialism.  They focus on Abrahamic faiths, largely ignoring Buddha and Confucius, both of who were agnostic.

 We appear to be in a period of evangelical and fundamentalist growth, while the perception is that membership and attendance in many Christian denominations is declining. I intend to return to this point later. Can we find in history other periods of growth of a religious movement such as the one we see today?  Certainly the first three centuries of the Common Era saw a tremendous growth in the Christian faith.  Islam grew very rapidly after the 7^th century and in the 20^th century appeared to be well on its way to being the dominant religion in parts of Asia and Africa.  However, I was particularly interested to know if there had been a time in North American history when the evangelical movement seemed to be a vibrant as it is today.  Naturally, my first thoughts turned to the time of the great revivals in the United States.

 This period, called the Second Great Awakening, gave rise to the evangelical movements and saw the growth of some of the major Protestant denominations.  The period lasted 50 years, from the 1790s to the 1840 and spanned the entire United States, as it existed then.  It was definitely a Protestant phenomenon; Methodist and Baptist denominations experience the greatest surge of membership.  It also resulted in a move toward greater liberalization and competitiveness on the part of Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist churches.  One of the reasons for the success of this movement was the use of itinerant preachers who travelled throughout the newly settled areas of the south and the Midwest converting great numbers through emotionally charged revivals.  These revivals usually struck more restrained clergy as being excessive emotionalism masquerading as religion.  That description might remind you of scenes you may have observed today on televised evangelical church services. Upper New York State was a place where successive revivals held by various Protestant ministers caused the area to be named “The Burnt Over Area”.

 The liberalization of the Presbyterians I mentioned involved a reconsideration of Calvin’s dogma of predestination.  These ministers began to talk of free will and the possibility of universal salvation through personal faith, which was already the belief of the Universalists.   It was also the doctrine of the Christian church in Armenia, where the first state religion was established, some decade or so before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.

 In the late 18^th Century, the Great Awakening reflected the contributions of the Enlightenment philosophy in moving humanity toward a concept of God and nature as more benevolent entities. Nevertheless, the revival movements resulted in Evangelical Protestantism becoming the predominate religion in the United States as well as Upper Ontario. Even after the 1840s this growth of churches continued through camp meetings held over a period of days and resulted in the conversion of many, especially in the Southern States.

 The Second Great Awakening also had its effect in Canada.  Shortly after the American Revolution, the United Empire Loyalists immigrated in great numbers to Upper Canada coming largely from New York and Western Pennsylvania, bringing with them their evangelical Protestant denominations as well as their newly discovered republican spirit and disregard for authority.  In Canada they encountered the much more restrained Church of England and the Scottish Presbyterians whose religious practices were not so emotionally charged.  Depending on quickly ordained and only modestly educated traveling preachers, the evangelical churches found new converts in many areas of Canada.  Some 90% of these evangelical Loyalist in Upper Canada were former Americans.  At the time of the War of 1812, acceptance of these evangelistic churches was seen as disloyal to the crown and some members of these churches were persecuted.  The growth of the evangelical movement seen in the United States in the first half of the 19^th century met with resistance in Canada, as a result of fundamental political and religious conflicts.  The Methodist in Canada, for example, turned to the English Methodist establishment and away from the American church.

 The point is that there have been other periods of growth of evangelical and fundamentalist churches in the past. The Second Great Awakening in the United States and in Canada had a profound influence on political and social institutions.  Is that what we are observing today, especially in the United States?

 We must acknowledge that there is a tremendous growth of evangelical sects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Many of these see themselves as Christian, even if they bear little resemblance to the traditional christian churches. Their belief systems are based on divine authority, literal interpretations of the New Testament, super-naturalism and, in some cases, faith healing. The African country of Nigeria, for example is almost evenly divided between Christian and Muslim believers setting the stage for even more conflict in that country which has seen years of civil war. Of the emerging counties, Nigeria has the largest population, is the richest with its oil reserves and is one of the most corrupt democracies. Religion has become a powerful source of identity.  High birthrates and aggressive evangelization has increased the numbers of believers from less than 200,000 to 51 million in the last century.

  The Anglican Archbishop, Peter Akinola of Nigeria led the revolt against the ordination of gay ministers.  With 15 million Anglicans in Nigeria, his influence cannot be discounted, even here in Canada where that denomination is struggling with that issue.

 Some have called this a period of religious renaissance. In an article printed in the October, 2002 Atlantic Monthly, Phillip Jenkins predicted that by 2025, 50 percent of the Christian population of the world will be in African and Latin American countries with another 17 percent in Asia and that this will have profound effects on history comparable to the Reformation.  These religions in what are generally third world countries will need to address the debate over the appropriate relationship between church and state.  Questions of tolerance, diversity, minority relations and the role of religious law in the public realm will soon require resolution, according to Phillips Jenkins.

 Non-western countries are also seeing the growth of what has been called mega-churches.  The largest of these is actually in Korea, which has long had a large population of evangelical Christian churches.  We are much more aware of the presence of these very large churches in the United States.  Churches with weekly attendance in excess of 1000 are generally called mega-churches.  Some are much larger than that.  Some have their own television or radio stations, their own daily newspapers and have well-known televangelist leaders.  A few have established their own schools or colleges.  Although some congregations claim affiliation with established denominations, most are non-denominational.  They can be, I believe without exception, described as fundamentalist, evangelical, socially and politically conservative, and have members who largely vote Republican.  Many preach that homosexuality is a sin and abortion is murder, while supporting the invasion of Iraq, capital punishment and the dissolution of the separation of church and state.

 We have not seen the growth of huge mega-churches in Canada as yet. Although sociologist Reginald Bibby in his book of 2002 titled Restless Churches lists ten mega-churches in Canada with more than 1800 in weekly attendance. Three of these are Pentecostal and three are non-denominational.  I would mention one: the Springs Church in Winnipeg.  This church claims a church weekly attendance of 5000 although some have disputed that number and the method used to obtain it.  The church has a very sophisticated web site which does not reveal anything about its origins or its affiliations that I could find when I perused it.  The minister, Leon Fontaine, does have his own web site and appears to be leading what might be called a “personality cult church” This church is planning to open a satellite church in Calgary in the near future.

 Harvey Cox predicted in his book The Secular City, published in 1962 that “The rise of urban civilizations and the collapse of traditional religion are the two main hallmarks of our era...It will do no good to cling to our religious and metaphysical versions of Christianity in the hope that one day religion or metaphysics will once again be back.  They are disappearing forever.”

 So far,the evidence is to the contrary.  Although the perception is that the mainline churches are experiencing a decline in membership, Bibby has found that, in Canada, at least, they have been growing in the last five or so years.  Surveys show that in both the United States and Canada a growing percentage of people claim to believe in a supernatural being, in life after death, in angels and in the devil.  Even Cox has come to believe that his prediction was wrong. In the March issue of Atlantic Monthly, Alan Wolfe stated his belief that there might be at least 80% of the world’s population professing an adherence to some religion by the end of this century.  He stated “Faith will unsettle politics everywhere in this century.”  Wolfe’s article titled “And the winner is” raises the question of which religion will gain the most adherents during the coming decades.  He concludes that Christianity has the best chance as the Pentecostal and the Mormon faiths are growing worldwide and that Pope Benedict’s insistence on stricter religious teachings is winning more souls in Latin America.

 A recent Harris-Decima Poll found that 72 percent of Canadians say they believe in a god although many of these do not attend a religious observance regularly.  25 percent of Canadians admit they do not believe in a god.  We might compare this to the United States were only 8 percent claim to be non-believers.

 In his book, While Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer explored the enormous growth of Islamic populations in European countries, especially the northern ones and England, as the result of immigration.  In countries which have always been proud of their religious tolerance, Islam is increasingly demanding that Islamic traditions and laws be observed.  In cities such as Rotterdam, the Muslims are now a majority and might be in a position to have their Islamic law made the law of that city.  The growth of Islam is not through conversion but as larger Islamic populations move into those areas, the radicalization of some, especially the young, poses a real threat to the security of some countries, as we have already seen in London and even here in Canada.

This brings us to the subject of conflicts, wars and terrorism.  I remember Gwynn Dyer stating in a television interview that religion does not cause wars but does often get involved in them.  I doubt that any army has ever gone to war without believing that its god or gods marched with it, from the Greeks invasion of Troy to the Romans attack on Gaul, the Thirty Years War, the American Civil War or the “Troubles” in Ireland. Young Canadians went to war in World War I in defence of God and Country.  We do not usually think of World War II being a religious conflict but we cannot deny that Hitler, whether a Christian or not, used the common belief that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus as a reason for the Holocaust.

 I remember singing songs during that war which had lines like “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition” and “coming in on a wing and a prayer.” There can be no doubt that his religious beliefs lead to Shinrikyo’s setting off a chemical bomb in a Tokyo subway killing about a dozen and injuring hundreds.  A particular interpretation of Islamic Jihad led to 9/11 and many other acts of terrorism before and since.

Sam Harris, in The End of Faith uses war and conflict as an argument against religion. Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion  “that religion is undoubtedly a divisive force [but] wars are seldom about theological disagreements.  [Rather] religion is a label of in-group/out group enmity and vendetta, often available when other labels are not.  From Kosovo and Palestine, Iraq to Sudan, from Ulster to the Indian subcontinent, look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups.  I cannot guarantee that you’ll find religions as the dominant labels for the in-groups and the out-groups, but it’s a very good bet.”

Let us focus for a moment on the belief in the Last Days and the Rapture.  The books called “The Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye have sold many millions of copies. This concept is based on a faulty interpretation of the book of Revelations, an apocryphal book that has caused no end of problems for serious Bible scholars and others. Scholars believe it was written in the last decade of the first century, after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and dispersion of the Jewish sect later called Christians.  This book has inspired many to expect an eminent return of Christ or the Messiah and the End of Days with Armageddon.  Although we cannot be sure that George W. Bush actually accepts these beliefs, he and his advisors have never disavowed them.  We might have reason to suspect that this interpretation of the Last Days influences America’s foreign policy especially in the Middle East.  Evangelist John Hagee is the leader of an organization called United Christians for Jews. He appears to support the Jews against the Palestinians and has raised a great deal of money for this cause.  A part of his belief is that the Jews must occupy all of the Holy Land before the Rapture can occur.  Of course, they must also then be converted to Christianity or be condemned to hell.

This leaves us with a number of unanswered, and probably unanswerable questions.  Is there a correlation between the growth of religions, especially fundamentalist ones, and the destruction of the World Trade Center and subsequent events?  Are the numbers of books being published which present atheistic views a response to this growth?  Is it possible to keep religion out of politics and government?  Do we have anything to fear from the growing numbers of fundamentalists and evangelicals throughout the world?   Might there be in some coming decade a truly devastating Holy War with the combatants having nuclear weapons instead of rocks, swords or long bows? What should be the response of the more liberal religious groups such as Unitarians?

At the same time that best-selling authors deny that religion has any validity whatsoever, and the right wings of the Abrahamic faiths are using their religious beliefs as the rationale for acts of terror and oppression, what have we to offer?

We Unitarians, along with the Ishmali Muslims and the Reconstructionist Jews are attempting to preserve and advance the ethical and social justice values of our three Abrahamic faiths, without the creedal trappings which have been at the root of so much evil done by the fundamentalists to their fellow human beings.  In concert with each other, and with many other religious liberals in other faiths, we should continue to attempt to build bridges among faiths and to ameliorate the social justice and the environmental state of the world in which we all live.  We do have a message for this troubled world.  May it be heard.