Bad religion

However, granted its centrality in all cultures, there are obvious instances in which religion is a barrier to the ordered operation of society and freedom of the individual. Indeed, it seems that the more religion is established in societies the more chaotic they are. This includes major social indices like poverty, education and health care as well as a high incidence of governmental corruption. This appears to apply no matter what the major religious orientation is.

Surely there are many factors that influence a society's ability to apply the rule of law and ensure the welfare of its peoples but it seems that religious belief is a major player.

This may be contrasted to the well-ordered and prosperous societies of the world that are largely secular. Japan, Australia, Germany, Great Britain and France come to mind. These societies are governed by practical reason rather than religious doctrine and, by and large, they do very well. Religion, in these countries has become a matter of private rather than public conviction.

These observations give strength to the arm of the secularists who believe that religion is a scourge on humanity. If we look past cultural considerations and judge religion from a humanitarian point of view we can see how they come to this conclusion. We wonder what good 150 million cows wandering in India contributes to human well being, or how Islamic legalism produces harsh societies and the temptation to fundamentalist violence. We wonder at the existence of organised crime in Italy and political corruption in many countries in which religion is centre stage.

The Churches should recognise the odium with which religion in general is held and that they are easily tared with the same brush. This is exacerbated by liberal mindedness. An Anglican priest once told me when discussing Islam that we all believe in the same God, despite the incompatibility between Islamic monotheism and Christian Trinitarianism.

A liberal smoothing over of difference enables secularists to lump all religions in the same basket and draw the obvious conclusions: they are all responsible for the existence of superstitious actions and a passive approach to life.

Far from baptising all religion as fundamentally good, Christianity provides a critique of religion absent in other belief systems. We must remember that it was the religious authorities of the day who urged the Romans to crucify Jesus and that Jesus himself stood outside of the mores of the Judaism of his time. Paul took up the cry about how the law kills us off while grace raises us from our deathliness.

Paul gives us the most potent criticism of religion. He saw, from his experience of being a devout Jew of his time that his relationship to God was based on an exchange defined in terms of law. One could be a part of the exchange, keep all of the rules laid down by Judaism but that left the inner man, the spirit, untouched. Instead, it produced an outward appearance of righteousness. He called this living by the flesh.

The parables and actions of Jesus described in the gospels came to the same conclusion. Obedience to religious law was of no account. The genius of Paul was that he came to these conclusions; that demolished all religion as transaction before the earliest gospel was written.

The idea of religion as transaction exists in Christianity illegitimately. Any bargain, be it believing or accepting or performing in order to receive a reward is illegitimate. This is self-assertion, the prosecution of our own plan for ourselves. It is not grace and will leave us in our sins.

The metaphor of death and resurrection here is imperative: if we would have our life we must lose it. We must accept that much of life is contingent, as being out of our control. This is what marks Christianity apart from the world religions who would see it as recklessness.

We may say that Christianity fails when religion gets in the way of a Faith. For religion is bondage and faith is radical freedom. When the Church baptises religion in general in order to be seen to be liberal and tolerant it betrays the centre of its faith. Christianity becomes only one path among many.

The Church will take its mission to the world seriously when it understands the radical difference between it and other world religions, when it claims its exception.