Featured image by Uttam Sheth. Follow the link for more of this artist’s work.
I’m not an evangelical. I don’t personally believe in going out and spreading the Gospel. I would much rather live a good life and pray that God uses me. Living a good life, treating others with respect, and working on myself are good enough. I struggle sometimes trying to please others. I enjoy being liked, enjoy being respected, enjoy people getting along, and enjoy finding common ground with people because I think that leads to a more harmonious environment.
We’re living in a world now where religion is looked upon as backward, ignorant, feeble-minded, and uncivilized. It isn’t an actual perception, but rather a caricature of a perception. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who conform to that caricature would be a lie, but it is equally false to say that every religious person is that very caricature.
The modern progressive left falls into the spectrum from personally but not publicly religious to vehemently atheistic. They have, in effect, substituted Science for God as the font of all wisdom, have their structure of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, their catechisms and dogma and doctrines, and their institutions of excommunication, baptism, and judgment. I have seen the development of neo-progressivism taking on more and more aspects of religion, following the various commonalities of many of today’s religions. According to the Mary MacKillop Library, those are “beliefs, myths and other stories, sacred texts and other religious writings (such as formal creeds), rituals, symbols, social structures, ethical principles and oral or written codes of behaviour, and religious experience and spirituality.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of the free expression of religion, but this kind of institutional capture and advancement would cause in international crisis if it were a fundamentalist religion in the Middle East.
Part of this country’s founding was enshrining in the Constitution the free expression of religion. Certainly the historical context was likely Protestant vs. Catholic vs. Anglican, but the words did not state that. It was religion.
But what is religion? Are we talking about an objective dictionary definition?
I prefer to think of religion as the guiding principles and taboos, of angels and devils. And the neo-progressive left is no exception to it. Frame their arguments through this structure, and it becomes revealed to be a religion, as much as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Daoist’s, Zoroastrians, and so on and so forth. Of course, when you relay this to the most orthodox of members, they become incensed that they would be compared to “those people.” They, after all, believe in science, climate change, and the fight against the patriarchy. They say their prayers in their churches and commune with like-minded believers in order to feel the peace of God and the sense of camaraderie that comes with being a part of a group. The biggest difference is that they don’t see that they are religious, and because they don’t they continue to press their beliefs upon everyone else.
Religion matters because having a set of principles and a belief that there is something beyond this, and that your actions have consequences helps to weave a social fabric. If there is nothing beyond this world, and no supernatural power that sets humanity apart from the natural world, then we are nothing more than smart animals, and power is the only thing that matters. As ethics and morals subside, we begin to see those impulses resurface. Dystopia lurks in those impulses, along with destruction and death.
“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV)
As the Last Crusader says…
A Place 4Politics 