Blind Men, Blind Elephants

In the comments to my previous post, Steve Caldwell refers to a joke over at his blog that parodies the famed Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant -- a parable about the ineffable nature of the divine.

(A digression: Writing that I was reminded of seeing a blog whose motto was "effing the ineffable..." -- which led me to Google that phrase and see it attributed to, among others, Alan Watts...)

In God Is Not One, Prothero also makes reference to the blind-men-and-the-elephant story, and how it is usually interpreted: "No one has the whole truth, but each is touching the elephant" -- a single, unified God perceivable through all religions. He then turns that favorite ecumenical* interpretation on its head:

But this folk tale also demonstrates how different religions are, since it has been told in various ways and put to various uses by various religious groups.

For Buddhists, it is about how metaphysical speculation is pointless and merely induces suffering. For Hindus, it is about the ability to reach God through many paths. For Sufis, it is about using the heart rather than the mind to perceive God. For the satirist John Godfrey Saxe, the British poet who arguably introduced the story to the west, it's about the stupidity of all theology.

Now, I've always liked the story's message about the necessity of humility for anyone who seeks to privilege his or her own faith perspective, so I suppose the Hindu interpretation (or the Jain one, evidently) is most appealing to me. But I smiled in rueful recognition when I read Prothero's take on it.

As Steve notes on his blog, one lesson from the parady is about the hazards of appropriating other religious traditions and rituals:

Like the blind elephants, we may accidentally transform and even distort another's religion into a form wildly different from the original through our exploration.

A point well taken. But I'll say this: In reading Prothero it's fascinating to see how many religious traditions have borrowed from and been influenced by each other over the centuries. This seems especially true in Asia, as Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism all influenced each other (and where it's not uncommon for people to in fact worship in all three traditions interchangeably), but it is not limited to that part of the world or to those faiths by any means.

I've always been inclined to a more laissez-faire attitude toward the issue of appropriation. So long as what is borrowed is borrowed respectfully, and so long as its authenticity is not misrepresented, I'm inclined to give a lot of what some people criticize as appropriation a pass.

Reading Prothero just reinforced my point of view on the matter.

________________
*By coincidence, I just now read this post pointing out that "ecumenical" is not the same as "interfaith". Taking that message to heart, I've edited the passage accordingly, and decided I didn't really need an alternative adjective.

Book Review: God Is Not One

God Is Not One, by Stephen Prothero

DairyStateMom got me this book for Christmas, and I finally got around to reading it over the last few weeks. Eminently readable and often laugh-out-loud witty, it will become a valued reference on the basics of eight major religions in the world. I have no real argument with his selections of which ones to cover and which not to, although I do wish that he'd included a chapter on the Pagan revival. (His closest is a chapter on the Yoruba religion from Africa, which has come to the Western Hemisphere in the form of Santeria, Vodun and numerous other variants.) Of course, modern Paganism is not one thing, and I'm sure there are sensible and thoughtful arguments against trying to lump its many different expressions into a single chapter.

My other principal disappointment (and it, too, is relatively minor) is that when in the chapter on Christianity he assesses the current state of the faith and appraises its growing edges, he focuses almost entirely on the rise of Pentecostalism and the conservative surge, driven mostly by Africa, in Mainline Protestantism. He thus ignores the very interesting (to me, anyway) Emerging/Emergent Church movement where the left wing of Evangelicalism meets a more vigorous and experimental progressive Mainline Christianity. (I would situate other progressive Christian movements, including Michael Dowd's Evolutionary Christianity and the Creation Spirituality of Matthew Fox, in this larger trend.) Again, I presume his defense would be that these eddies are so small within the larger river of contemporary Christianity that he had to draw the lines somewhere -- an editorial task I'm always loath to undertake.

While the book is primarily a narrative reference work, it's framed within an argument about how we discuss religious diversity and religious pluralism. Early on, Prothero takes exception to the common metaphor of pluralists that the different religions of the world are "many paths up the same mountain" and meet at the top there. The religions of the world, he argues, are better understood as going up different mountains, and what they find at the top is equally different, one from another.

One particular problem with the one-mountain metaphor, as he notes, is that it tends to enforce a view of all religions that sanitizes their more difficult and troubling elements in the name of ecumenism. Part of Prothero's brief here is to not flinch from those troubling elements and also not to paper over intra-faith conflicts and disagreements in his descriptions.

I think that Prothero's point about the deficiency of the one-mountain metaphor is true as far as it goes, and while I have casually accepted the "many paths/one mountain" image in my own conversation and thought, I'll try very hard not to do so again, and instead to always mentally footnote Prothero when I read or hear those references. I find, instead, a very helpful alternative in Forrest Church's metaphor for pluralism, The Cathedral of the World, in which many varied windows look out on and interpret a mysterious universe. To a great extent, I believe this approach avoids the problem Prothero identifies. (And yes, I am aware of Steve Caldwell's interesting extension of the Cathedral metaphor, in which he suggests atheism offers a clear plate-glass window as an alternative to the many different varieties of stained-glass presented by the world's faiths.)

Prothero's rejection of the one-mountain metaphor doesn't mean he rejects religious pluralism. Rather, he prescribes that conversations about religious differences can and should move from the arena of faith and belief to the more neutral ground of description, and that the project of interfaith cooperation can move ahead by simply focusing on shared values and objectives, rooted in the respective faith traditions and calls of the participants. Of course, there are limits to that, too: I rather doubt a UU congregation that has stood boldly for reproductive choice could find a way to team up with a Baptist church whose congregants man the gauntlet to discourage patients from entering the local Planned Parenthood clinic each weekend -- at least not on anything that has to do with reproductive freedom. But perhaps they could join together on a Habitat for Humanity house-raising.

Prothero says that the old kind of pluralism, which emphasizes getting along with our neighbors over doctrine, was "a game for religious liberals -- religious conservatives need not apply." Of course, to really get to the vision of pluralism that Prothero advances, the most doctrinaire -- whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or even Atheist or, yes, UU -- will still have to be willing to modulate their own dogmas, at least in their words, if not in their hearts.

That in itself may be challenging enough. But if it's not any easier, it's probably something worth trying.

American Grace

I've been hearing about this book and will add it to my ever-growing list of books I want to read:

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam.

One little data point in the review caught my attention, though:

Half of all married Americans have spouses of a different faith.

That's something that demands unpacking, it seems to me. "Have" implies in the current day. Could that be really true? Or does it mean they married someone of another faith but don't necessarily practice both in the home? I'll definitely have to find that book.

And I'll bet Susan Katz Miller might have something very interesting to say about this...

A Tennessee Editor Visits Ground Zero

From The Rural Blog, run by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky:

Tenn. editor visits Ground Zero, shares the experience with his readers and takes a stand
...
"This country was settled by people seeking religious tolerance, a pillar that was built deep into the American infrastructure. Surely we cannot move that pillar, and threaten the foundation, because of 19 people."

Beyond Purity Codes

Just tonight I stumbled across an essay that is several months old. I found it from a link on Brian McLaren's blog. I've just finished reading McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus, and I've been poking around the Web to learn more about him. So far, I like what I see.

This item is not by McLaren, but it is by a Christian, and one who challenges Christians who take an esclusivist approach. Money quote:

Speaking as a Christian, you can find plenty of ammunition in the Bible and in the tradition to insist that the point behind faith in Jesus is to be “pure” for God, with Jesus’ blood being that special reagent that will purify us in the ways that we are incapable of purifying ourselves. Okay, that’s one way of looking at it. But it is just as possible, just as logical, just as spiritually coherent to see in the Christian tradition an arc of wisdom that calls us to move beyond the purity codes that defined our ancestral religious practices, instead embracing hospitality, which includes everything from welcoming the stranger, to opening our hearts to those who are “different” from ourselves, to embracing non-oppositional or non-dualistic consciousness, consciousness that celebrates the action of the Holy Spirit in the most unlikely of places, rather than seeking to judge and divide all things into that which is “good enough for God” and that which is not.

The Wisdom of Youth

"If life is all about choosing the right God, then life has a few flaws."

Words from one of the graduates of an Interfaith coming of age program in the Washington, D.C., area. For the full story, read On Being Both today.

Raising Children in an Interfaith Context

On Being Both is a blog I very much appreciate and enjoy reading.

To be honest, its issues are largely an abstraction for me: DSM and I have an interfaith (Christian/UU) marriage, but we married after my sons were already well-established in UU church life, so we have never felt a need to try to expose them equally to DSM's Christian church (even though I attend whenever I can and consider myself very much a friend of and even at home in her congregation). We have brought DSK#2 to her church twice, but that was to include him in church outings that followed the service.

Still, if our children were the product of our marriage from the start, I would want to follow an Interfaith template. I've written before about Rabbi Marc Gellman's "God Squad" column, which I generally find supportive of religious pluralism. My biggest difference with him, however, is his notion that trying to live as an Interfaith couple or family is somehow a bad idea. (I also think he tends to limit Christian doctrine largely to the traditional terms of Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, giving short shrift to some of the more progressive interpretations. But that's another story.)

So I think Susan Katz Miller's latest blog post offers a strong and sensible rebuttal to the prejudice against raising children to be part of both parents' faith traditions.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day has never been very high on my list of holidays. Nothing against it, just it was never particularly special.

A couple of random recollections.

I was in China for 3 weeks some 8 years ago, part of a team of mostly teachers (plus a couple of ringers, including me) from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois who were teaching in a summer school program to offer English language and American cultural immersion. Each of us prepared a lesson on a particular state or major city of the U.S. Having gone to graduate school at The World's Greatest Journalism School, it was natural for me to pick New York City. When it came time to pick a holiday associated with the city, I chose St. Patrick's Day, and on one of my presentations I talked a dear friend and fellow teacher into serenading the class with "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

Red hair, of course, is associated with the Irish. DairyStateKid#1 once won a red-headed-kid contest at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. But years before that, he had the greatest comeback ever to a nosy question about his hair. Neither his mother nor I have red hair (I don't have much hair at all, to be sure), and in a restaurant with his mother for lunch one day when he was about 3, he was approached by a well-meaning older woman. "Where did you get that lovely red hair?" she asked.

"It started growing on my head when I was a baby," was his reply.

Finally, here's a lovely little essay on today through an Interfaith lens.

Top o' th' mornin' to you all.

A 2-tiered system of religious liberty

A case in California challenges the state's system of recognizing only five faiths -- Protestant Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Native American spirituality -- in authorizing who is to be prison chaplains. (h/t The Wild Hunt)

And a conservative religious organization called the WallBuilders seeks a ruling that reinforces that two-tiered system.

A couple of thoughts...

1) UUs should be (and I'm sure are) part of the coalition seeking to overturn that discriminatory law, purely on grounds of our broader principles. But bluntly, since so many people consider UUs not Christian, I can't help wondering if non-Christian UU chaplains would be rejected too?

2) I can't think of a more appropriate name for the petitioning anti-pagan group than WallBuilders. (Even if that's not how they meant it.)

Syncretism: It's a good thing

Fela: On Being Yoruba, Christian, Muslim...at On Being Both.

Real persecution

Martin Marty sorts out the faux claims of persecution of some American Christian pundits from the very real and horrific persecution of Christians around the world.

Money quote:

One hopes that more Christians, in an empathy exercise, will picture themselves as devotees of minority faiths, having to listen to people like Hume downgrade and demean them. What is striking is that the American Christians who most readily criticize Muslims or Hindus for using the “superiority” of their faith as a basis for penalizing Christians, often do the best job of imitating these others.

The Kingdom of God

Today's post comes courtesy of John Vest, associate pastor for youth ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago.

Fourth was DairyStateMom's previous church, before she moved north of the border to become DairyStateMom; she still gets the church's daily devotions on e-mail. Mr. Vest's devotion for today, January 5th, is a timely reminder that Christianity is not the exclusive province of the fundamentalists whose particular take on the religion dominates both the media and the head-space of Christianity's harshest critics.

I reprint it here with Mr. Vest's kind permission. As he told me, "It certainly looks like we share some common callings." Indeed, it does.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Scripture Reading: Revelation 21:1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away." (NRSV)

Reflection
The kind of Christianity I grew up in was all about what happens when you die. The goal of life was to make it into heaven instead of hell, and the way to do that was to profess faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior--which really meant to accept a narrowly defined list of doctrines as the absolute truth. Apart from this kind of "faith" and this kind of orthodoxy, neither truth nor eternal life were possible.

After many years of wrestling with this kind of Christianity, and with the help of many faithful companions and spiritual leaders, I arrived at the conclusion that this is not what authentic Christianity is about at all. Instead, Christianity is about the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about is right here and right now. Life isn't about preparing for the afterlife. The gospel isn't good news deferred; it is good news for today. It is the hope and promise and inspiration for nothing less than the transformation of the world.

That is what John of Patmos envisioned when he wrote about a new heaven and a new earth. It isn't about us going to heaven; it's about heaven coming to us. As Jesus put it, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

This is some good news that the world needs to hear from the church. Let's not be timid about sharing it.

Prayer

God, help me to be an active agent of your transforming love. Inspire me with a vision of your kingdom, and give me the courage to be a part of it now. Amen.

Written by John W. Vest,
Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

What I believe

I saw this bumpersticker a few years ago on a pickup truck outside the local post office:

I laughed. It probably sums up my own frame of reference more succinctly than anything else.

I actually think it's a delightful rejoinder, not just to cocksure theists of any kind, but also to most hardline and smug atheists. And it appears that some hardline atheists are noticing.

As I say, I like it. Yet I don't consider myself, in formal terms, an agnostic.

What I believe in is the Mystery, and the metaphor.

When DairyStateMom and I first met a little more than six years ago, our religious differences were something we looked at directly fairly quickly. She was a committed Christian who happily belonged to the Presbyterian Church. I was a committed Unitarian Universalist and long-time active member and lay leader in my own church community. Despite creedal differences we found that we could appreciate and respect each other's perspectives. Her Christianity is not of the "Believe in Jesus or you Go to Hell" variety. I do not share the scorn of Christianity, especially Mainline Christianity, that I hear from some people in UU circles. I belong to a religious movement that was the first in the nation to celebrate gay unions and has been on the forefront of the fight for Marriage Equality, and to a congregation that is one of many in our religion to have an openly gay minister. She left one congregation because its pastor was overtly hostile to opening Presbyterian ordination (which includes lay leadership, not just the clergy) to gay and lesbian people, to join first one, and later a second, congregation whose pastors are at the forefront of the fight to do just that. We found very close congruence in our deepest values and attitudes.

Sometime during our courtship, we had an earnest telephone conversation that revolved around our beliefs. I honestly don't remember how it got started, but at some point it became clear to me that it was necessary for me to lay out what my own rock-bottom beliefs were. It was a little scary: I know that I worried that I might "say the wrong thing." And, indeed, I had not had the occasion to articulate for myself even exactly what I was going to say now.

This is what it came down to:

I believe that there is more to the universe than we are capable of seeing or knowing. That is not a supernatural belief. It is simply a reflection of the limits of our senses, experience and insight.

I believe that all religious doctrine is ultimately metaphor -- allegory: Our attempt to explain and understand the mystery we cannot fully know.

And I believe that all religious scripture is the work of human beings, not dictated by any outside supreme being.

Those underlying principles make room for pluralism: to accept one particular religious truth does not have to lead one to say that all others are false. But they also make room for discernment: This is not a statement that all religions say the same thing; moreover, it allows for the judgment that some metaphors and scriptures are healthier and closer to the mark than others. It allows for eclecticism, even a so-called "cafeteria religion" -- a concept often derided but one that I openly embrace. And finally, I honestly admit I cannot prove it. It is the product of a lifelong hunch, the cumulative result of experience in the world, exposure to a wide range of ideas and belief systems, and my own contemplation.

I do not pretend to think that it is going to satisfy anyone who firmly believes their creed is the only, absolute belief system and one that must be accepted and understood in literal terms. Such a person would, quite understandably, dismiss my claims, telling me: "What I believe is true, not just some metaphor."

But I do think it helps advance the conversation beyond the statement that "well, everyone can't be right in their beliefs. If you believe X and I believe Y, one of us must be wrong."

Needless to say, my "faith statement" didn't shock DairyStateMom. She didn't even argue with it. Our courtship continued and the rest is history.

When we married, our ceremony was officiated by one of her favorite Christian ministers and my favorite UU minister. We lit a chalice (the one that is now the symbol of this blog) and stood before a stained glass cross.

And since then we have attended each other's churches. DSM loves my church's minister and appreciates our services -- but she misses the anchoring in Jesus and God that she gets in the Presbyterian Church. Meanwhile I have enjoyed visiting her church and getting to know its members and pastors. I've also grown from getting reacquainted in a meaningful way with the story of Jesus and of the God of the Old and New Testaments as a window into the Mystery of the Universe. But I remain a UU, and would miss the insights from my own church that are drawn out of sources as diverse as the ancient Jain tradition, neo-Paganism, Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism and Rational Humanism.

I feel blessed that neither of us has to make such a trade-off.



A Happy and Meaningful 2010 to One and All.

The Faith of my Father

"Dad, what's that?"

DairyStateKid#2 and I were headed out the door at way-too-early into way-too-cold this morning, getting him to his bus stop. I was still in pajamas and bathrobe, with boots and winter parka and hat and gloves to keep me warm.

"I'll explain in the car."

"That" is this:

Some 28 38 years ago, upon graduation from college with a degree in Anthropology, my sister won a prize, a small grant that would enable her to travel to a former English colony in Africa. Her husband, a wonderful amateur guitarist and folk music enthusiast, went with her of course. At the encouragement of our father (also an Anthropologist), she chose The Gambia, a tiny West African nation that is surrounded by the former French colony of Senegal. (About a year earlier I had been fortunate enough to go to both countries on a trip with my parents.)

In the Gambia my sister and brother-in-law wound up apprenticed for a year to a kora musician and praise singer who was Muslim.

It is the custom, at least among this particular group of Muslims, to write sayings from the Qur'an on a wooden tablet, then to wash the ink into a bottle. The bottle of inky water would then be worn on one's person as a sort of talisman.

Aware of a particular saying from the Qur'an, my father, through my sister, commissioned their host to make several such tablets--but not to wash off the ink (a request that, my sister later reported, their host found quite puzzling). Everyone in our family got one of these, and when my first marriage ended several years ago, I left mine behind, designating it as belonging to DairyStateKid#1. My mother kindly got me a second one, which, now that I think if it, has been designated as belonging to DSK#2.

My father--we can call him LoneStarStateDad--had grown up attending an Episcopalian church, but when I was growing up he only attended on Christmas Eve and, perhaps, once in a while on Easter. (And when I was confirmed.) His real God was the God of the natural world, and his worship was simply to live in and learn about it as much as he could. But, owing to his personality or perhaps his choice of academic discipline or, more likely, some combination of both, I found him to be a strong influence for pluralism.*  Indeed, when I converted to Unitarian Universalism (and I accept that term for the process even if some don't), I was in some ways coming home to the inchoate faith of my father.

This is the translation of the verse on that tablet, typed out on my father's old typewriter, nearly 3 4 decades ago:

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*This is not to take anything away from my mother, EmpireStateMom, who herself is an open and pluralistic person on matters of religion.

More like this, please

In the New York Times of November 23: Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship

What distinguishes the “amigos,” who live in Seattle but make presentations around the country, is a unique approach to what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

h/t to DairyStateMom for the link.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all